Board Thread:Wiki Improvement/@comment-7637833-20150218223947/@comment-10690212-20150220051919

True, TheDarkMantis15. But there's a matter of perspective to all this. I feel the more seriously you take the website, the more seriously you take its reputation as a result. Me? I just come here to have fun-and I think within the years people spend on this site, and the various calls for reform like this one, that sometimes people lose focus of just having simple fun like they should; surely it's possible to have fun without strictly following every rule, yes? Rules are good, but not always the be-all-end-all. I mean, the website's about making fictional characters within a universe of fictional characters. It's not the type of thing that people should be completely gung ho about in my opinion, for what that's worth. Blank articles or ones with nothing but headings? Sure, delete them. Get rid of the random person posting a string of obscenities on the message board, and by all means keep the ridiculous characters far away from your roleplays (I wouldn't delete them though). In other words, if the destructive stuff can hurt people on the site, get rid of it, and if not, I'd say ignore it. Whether constructive or destructive, the end goal of everyone coming here is simply to have fun. The occasional harmless troll's gonna roll along and make a terrible character just to show his friends later and have a good laugh. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

As a matter of fact, I'm a troll. An unconventional one, sure. I'll insult the talk page of a character every so often and I've made a joke article or two. I hate Sonic Fancharacters (mainly because I feel they try too hard, sorry man that's just how I roll. At least I'm not trolling right now, right?), but I like to do this. To just talk and urge everyone to have fun in their own way. I'm a bit laissez-faire about certain rules unless they're really necessary, you know? I make fun of you, you make fun of me, whatever. I don't live here. As long as we don't start having a really obscene thing going on that leaves too much of a bad taste in everyone's mouth, I'm good. As for the wiki's reputation, I don't think stopping recolors and reinforcing grammar rules is gonna fix anything. Not to be pessimistic, but this isn't the only source of Sonic fancharacters by far. You've got the Cool Sonic Fanon wiki, probably some other offshoots, and the omnipresent deviantart (anyone heard of Coldsteel the hedgeheg by chance?). It's the perfect opportunity for the average internet-goer to accentuate the negative and ignore everything else. I do that, and I know why everyone else does. They simply don't care about looking at quality work-they come to any source of fanfiction expecting and hoping for something terrible to riff about. Either you're in it to play or you looking from outside trying to make fun of it. It's a combination of prejudice (justified or not's up to interpretation) with a self-propagating cycle: Person comes to fanfiction with preconceived notion that it will be terrible. He finds something that isn't. Disappointed, he moves on until he finds something terrible, then tells his friends about this terrible thing he found. Repeat.

Personally I think you've got a brand here, some potential that's going untapped. If you ask me, you shouldn't just have a section for joke characters. I say stop worrying about the reputation and go full ham on people's expectations. Have a whole section devoted to intentionally bad fancharacters and fanfictions that you create. Hold events every once and a while and give out an award banner for the person who makes the best-worst fanfic, and put that stuff out there. People love "so bad it's good," and if they know you're interested in giving them what they want, then how can they hate you? You still get to keep your status quo of how you've been doing things, meanwhile avoiding most of the backlash if the word gets out that you view this as entertainment and not as a major part of your lives. THIS is your chance to turn the court of public opinion in your favor, and I'd be disappointed if you wasted the opportunity. That's my 2 cents, sorry for the wall of text and some of the depressing speech.