Board Thread:Wiki Improvement/@comment-5518179-20150330205533

This is a topic that's been seldomly specified and majority of the people who refuse it don't seem to know the benefits of it. I'm talking about message walls and article comments being added to Sonic Fanon Wiki.

In an age full of comments, YouTube, facebook, Twitter, and all that social media business, people are more accustomed to using comments and walls than blank pages that have a rich text interface, so today, I'll do my best to convince most of you to go for this newer alternative.

For starters, message walls and article comments are more cleaner and more organized. Sure, they might seem a bit cluttered and hipsterish, but it's the newer generation. They aren't going to break if they're too long either, unlike talk pages.

The most important thing about them is that they are easier to access. For newer users, they typically don't know how to use a talk page because when they see a new message, they reply to it on their talk page, which won't notify the sending party of the other person's reply, unless they are following the receiving end's talk page, which results in e-mail notifications every time someone edits that page.

Essentially, what I'm trying to say here is that comments/walls are less labor intensive and are more likely to attract the newer users because they don't appear so alien and useless. If our goal is to bring in newer users, let's make one step by making this place friendlier to the newbies.

At the same time, I'd like to address some fears regarding these two features. You can still use signatures on a message wall/article comment, you just type in the four tildes (~) and it is done.

While average users can't delete comments (unless they own the page/wall/made the comment themselves, or are an admin/moderator), you can still pretty easily send a message to an admin and get them over there and delete it for you.

Copying and pasting might sound like a problem, but remember that you can easily make a subpage off of your userspace and link it, or use something like pastebin to copy and paste stuff. It's pretty easy to do.

Anyways, I hope that was a refresher, and if anyone has any questions or concerns, please, please, PLEASE, ask in the comments, and I will reply to you as quick and as educated as possible. This is something that I seriously want to be taken seriously and not left in the dust or given a cold hard "message walls suck" sort of reply.  