Board Thread:Wiki General Discussion/@comment-5645428-20170112154907

Hey guys, how we doing today? I wanted to bring up a few things about what you should and shouldn't be posting on your message wall and forum posts. I'll admit some of it sounds a bit silly, but it's all part of running behind-the-scenes maintenance and personal analytics on what content is being actively used and accessed so we can make decisions on what to kill or keep and other magical management stuff.

Firstly, we have a number of templates on the wiki, with many different purposes. Some improve how content is presented, like infoboxes and toggleboxes, some are used to mark articles' statuses, like the notices, and some are just for fun on user pages, like userboxes and the USERNAME template. The only templates designed for forum use are the three Support, Neutral and Oppose stance templates for formal discussions, and the Image template to embed images from off-site. Other than that, there is little reason to be using other kinds of templates. Special:Mostlinkedtemplates is where we monitor template usage, and it would be preferable that this is not cluttered with results coming from the forum.

Next, links are another thing monitored, you can see at Special:Mostlinkedpages, and we do this to make sure you can effectively navigate to different areas of the wiki. Now, we have such things as internal links and external links. Internal links you are probably familiar with: they have double brackets enclosing the name of the page you wish to navigate to. These links are detected by the aforementioned Special page. External links are URL's enclosed in single brackets. There links are not detected by the Special page, and this is the kind of linking we prefer you to use on the forum. This is the kind of link we like This kind of link can interfere with the Special page results

Now, I'm sure you all love your quotes, but this is truly a nuisance when people use it not because they are quoting a significant piece of information lost above a tower of replies, but because there is a button there and they feel empowered by using it. Don't, unless you're going to elaborate on why it deserves to be quoted. Oh, and please, do not quote a quote. From this point forwards, I will just remove these whole comments without a second thought, considering them an abuse of a feature to either spam or obstruct content visibility. Neither, quote something just to add "yea I agrree". That contributes little to a discussion. To further explain why quotes are frustrating, particularly with long threads which there has been insistence to exceed 100 replies, it makes it very difficult to moderate content and carry out maintenance tasks like explained in previous paragraphs. I kindly ask that you all try to limit your use of quotes.

Alright, I think that's all for now. I know some of you mess around on the Off Topic board, but even then, please do not abuse the forum capabilities to satisfy your boredom. Go for a nature walk, read a book or get a nice long banana to eat. With fibre, B vitamins and potassium, you can't go wrong. 