User blog comment:Lord Boots/Potential Problems and Solutions for the Dishonored Wiki/@comment-16241899-20160620200707

First of all, and I can speak only for myself here, your reasoning for suggesting all those changes feels like "exaggerated expectations" to me in terms of what is the purpose of a wiki. Terms like "professional" and especially "competetive". Competitive to what? I agree that some rules need to be in place to not let the wiki descend into chaos. However, at least to me, this is a hobby and fun, and not a competition or a thesis paper.

Some of your points I can see/agree to:

- the punctuation issue: as DrTeatime pointed out already, this issue occured basically due to the fact that there was edit warring between British and American users about which punctuation should be used. We had a vote which ended in favor of the British punctuation, because the majority of people (including myself btw.) found it to make more sense. Thus, the rule about the punctuation was added to the MoS after a great deal of those pages had already been written, and just no one meticulously went through all pages to correct the punctuation afterwards. Teatime has offered to take care of this inconsistency already, but I'd like to hear some more opinions on which punctuation we establish in the end.

- mentions of a position (i.e. Royal Protector) linked to a book: We have basically been doing this because the books pretty much summed up the information we actually have on that position. We could probably get more  with some digging and asking Harvey. I personally have no problems with  pages being created for positions, I will go with the majority of opinions here.

- infoboxes: What exactly do you have in mind and what should go in them? I'd need some examples to decide whether I find them useful or too excessive.

- page creation: I can see the inconsistency you mentioned. The thing is, the assumed "hypocrisy" you have noticed  is basically due to the fact that sometimes people (including yourself) go ahead and create pages for rather minor occurences without asking or discussing the use/necessity of the page first, like you did with War of Four Crowns (if I missed something here, please correct me). Had you asked, we would have most likely told you that the little info we have on this war can be implemented into the History section of the Empire of the Isles page. Once those pages are there, though, we are usually rather hesitant about deleting them, cuz while they may be not essential, they are no harm either, and most often get forgotten in the depths of the wiki. I agree that a clearer guideline on what is worth its own page and what not could be helpful here.

- expanding of the main page: You have a point here.

However, there are also some points where I don't see the problem or disagree with:

-  lack of past tense: I agree with Teatime here, I really don't see the problem. Once the comics and Dishonored 2 are out, we can make subsections for each time period and stick to present tense while describing the events therein.

-  avoiding plurals: Why exactly is this irksome? Because it contradicts your personal preferences? To me this looks perfectly fine. And if this is again because of how wikipedia formats things, more about that later.

- italicized titles: I agree with Teatime here, it looks painfully ugly, especially in cases where it is inconsistent in itself (e.g. Dishonored (comics) ), and again, "Wikipedia does it" is not a valid reason to me, especially as I've seen this handled inconsistently even within Wikipedia itself. I think italicizing them in the article body is enough.

- appearances: Could you please elaborate this a little further or show an example of what you mean on another wiki. So far I can't really imagine what this means, nor see why it should be necessary

- linking to overview page for Businesses or Notable Clergy instead of having pages for every business or overseer: You might not have noticed, but at the mention of a specific business on another page, we actually don't link to the general Businesses page and have users scroll down the whole page, but link directly to the subsection of that specific business, where the same info is provided as would be on a separate page for that business. In my opinion that is neat and tidy and convenient as opposed to a flood of pages that would basically contain the same two sentences that we have on the collective page now. We'd probably need to find a way of splitting it up a little  (e.g. Dishonored Businesses and Dishonored 2 Businesses, or Dunwall Businesses and Karnaca Businesses, you get the idea) once D2 is out to not make it even more lengthy, but the general concept is useful IMO and should be kept.

Sleep Darts vs. Sleep darts: I always thought the 'Sleep Darts" was due to a convention on English headers, while sleep darts as an item are written with lower case within the article body, like it is actually done on the page. The only  "Sleep darts" I've seen in this article is at the very beginning, which to me is due to one of the most basic  grammar rules: starting a sentence with a capital letter.

-red links: You mentioned something about creating red links for pages that still need to be added. A clear NO from me here. Red links make the page look unfinished and ugly. Create the new page first, THEN add links.

- lack of active user base: What exactly do you consider an active user base? As you mentioned yourself there's a good dozen of regular editors here, some of whom have been around for several years and  are still contributing daily. If we are not an active user base, then what is, in your opinion? I really fail to see your problem here.

- Forums vs. comment section: Again, I fail to see your problem. We used to have a forum that was never really acknowledged because the comment section apparently was (and is) more attractive to users here. I fail to see how a comment section makes the pages look "unprofessional". I personally prefer comments because to me the only thing forum posts do is clutter both the activity feed and my e-mail account because you get notifications for them by default. For bringing up wiki-wide changes, blog posts and message walls have worked quite well in the almost 3 years I am here now, so absolutely no reason for forums for me.

Last but not least, a general comment on our wiki vs. other wikis vs. Wikipedia:

I agree with you on that we should not generally be doing things just because we can and for the sake of being different from other wikis. However, quite a few of the changes you suggested are not a matter of "boiling water to get rid of the germs and not getting ill"  but a matter of "you drink spring water and I drink sparkling water. They both serve the same purpose but I think sparkling water is more fancy and the majority drinks sparkling water, so how about you drink sparkling water as well?" The "Businesses" and "Notable Clergy" pages for example. It has worked fine for us for years, why should we change that now just because other wikis might do it differently?

- Piko