Hi there folks, just thought I'd drop this on a blog to let people know what some of my ideas for MonsterWiki are.
First off (and I know it's something that I keep going on about) is categories. Categories are, I feel, a key part of any wiki, and one that is really letting this one down. I would suggest that we put a blanket ban on creating new categories until I can get a handle on all of the duplicate, extraneous, irrelevant and just plain nonsense categories that are clogging the place up at the moment. Examples of this are "Worst movie monsters," "Villains," "Survivors," "Neutral Monsters," etc. Once that's done - and it might take a little while - we could then look at adding additional, more usable, categories. As a side note to this, I was also considering changing many of the existing categories so that every word begins with a capital letter; this should make it easier to spot a category that has real relevance to MonsterWiki over one that is, perhaps, redundant. I know this may look like badge-hunting to some, but it should, in my opinion, be the first step on the road to cleaning up around here.
The next thing about categories concerns "Articles with Wikipedia content" vs "Articles in need of de-Wikification." I think that Articles with Wikipedia content" should contain pages with which we're happy to have sections of Wikipedia text intact as long as Wikipedia is credited with authorship. Writing, for example, "According to Wikipedia: 'The character of King Kong has become one of the world's most famous movie icons, having inspired countless sequels, remakes, spin-offs, imitators, parodies, cartoons, books, comics, video games, theme park rides, and a stage play.' " would be okay, whereas simply copypasta-ing Wikipedia and passing it off as original work would not. This should apply to all text from another website, and is the way that I've been applying this category here. The second should really be applied only to articles containing text that we're not happy about keeping on a page, e.g., blatant plagiarism, copypastas, etc. These pages simply need rewritten with different wording. I realise that I've probably been the worst offender in implementing this.
The final thing that I have to suggest about categories is that we create a page on the wiki for the sole purpose of recording "approved" categories. This way, nobody need ever be in doubt about what it's okay to use, and what it's not. We could even protect this page to prevent vandalism and give us a cornerstone to work with on categorising MonsterWiki.
Phew. Now that I've got the categories rant out of the way, there are a couple of other things.
The "Pages that need help" category is growing enormous. There's a reason for this, simply the fact that there was no Moderation for a significant portion of MonsterWiki's history. This category really needs help, and it's not something I can do solo. There are simply too many things on this wiki that I have literally no knowledge of, and Googling everything takes an awful lot of time. Not sure what the solution to the problem is, just throwing it out there.
Finally, I feel the front page of MonsterWiki needs an overhaul. For example, the poll has been there for four-and-a-half years. I know that this isn't currently a priority, but I think it should be looked at. On a similar note, I think that the wiki theme needs to be rethought. I realise that the theme of "Monsters" should be a little dark, but I think that the grey-black-blue look is a little subdued.
Of course, all of these are just my thoughts. If anybody has any objections to what I've said, or has any ideas on how to improve the suggestions made here, please drop me a line,
Fil