>or insert catchy blog title here<
Greetings, Wikiers. I'm writing to you today in hopes of making this Wiki a better place. So lets get started.
Zoey 101 Wiki needs work, and it doesn't take a whole lot to notice it. There's few active contributors here, and many, many articles are outdated. This Wiki is in desperate need of refurbishing and quality editing. So here's some proposals.
One of the biggest problems is initial: the main page. It's so old and unsightly it's not even funny. This is a rather significant problem because the main page of a Wiki is usually where the attention-grabber is and or should be, so users can get psyched to become part of the community.
Main page[]
I think that the main page needs some more decent categorization and updates. Here's an idea: start over with the "featured" sections and start from scratch, that is, forget any characters/episodes that have been featured considering that there's barely any feasibly obtainable history of it. Start setting standards for this as well. The next time something is featured, keep track of it so it so it doesn't become old and dragged out like the Zoey Brooks character article and the Prank Week episode article, which have been featured for God knows how long so far. An active member(s) should be responsible for this, resetting and making new featured sections on some kind of a monthly/weekly basis (whatever the standard is set as). When a feature runs it's *standard here* course, then a user should archive it in some kind of special article (Zoey 101 Wiki: Featured) or something like that should work. Also, there should be standards on nomination criteria. We don't want poor-quality articles being featured, that's unprofessional and doesn't give good articles a chance to shine. Such standards should be on the aforementioned Zoey 101 Wiki: Featured article. Maybe hold the actual nomination polls there, too.
Moreover (this is just a suggestion), combine the "featured" sections into one group, like a general "Featured Article" headlight. Zoey 101 episodes and characters are over and done with, so we will eventually run out of thigns to feature with the way it is now. With something more general like "Featured Article" or something similar, I think that it offers a much broader area of articles to feature. Like I said before, episodes and characters may be done, but Zoey 101 as a whole is not covered on this wiki, so there's still tons of information left to create articles on, like locations, misc. articles, concept articles, and etc. We can still do more featured sections, like featured image or featured media or something. Again, this is only a suggestion.
Take out the trivia section, and replace it with a "Did you know" with the same general basics as the other featured sections. The one we have now, like everything else, has been there forever and is really just taking up space.
Remove the background contest thing from the main page. That's been there forever too, and it's unnecessary considering that contest pretty much went nowhere and died out. Hosting a new one might be a bad idea, but just don't let it die again.
Add a "news" section. For you know, new things related to Zoey 101 (which is unlikely) or preferably the Wiki. Maybe we could do a "new admin blogs" thing like the Victorious Wiki. These things would really open people's eyes about things concerning the Wiki.
Also, this isn't part of the main page, but we should upload an favicon, too. The default pair of black brackets is so... unZoey101.
The community[]
As said before, Zoey 101 Wiki is severely lacking in terms of user contribution/edits. There are currently 6 staff members here (only 4 of those have contributed in the last few years and only 2 of those are currently active). We need to consider observing the most active users on this site and weigh our administrative promotional options.
What should we do?
- Well, again, maybe we could host another design a background contest, closely track it and really decide what we should do with the background on this Wiki. Honestly it really needs to go if you ask me...
- Start doing more things with the community and the wiki. Start posting in forums and chatting with users to make this place a more comfortable Wiki for users to contribute in. Not trying to sugarcoat things here or induce laziness, but this kind of thing could hopefully make things less stagnant.
- Make some userbox templates for people to put on their user pages.
TL;DR. Just tell me what I can do to help?[]
- You can definitely help out with some of the high maintenance pages. These are articles that have errors or issues with them, like stubs or double redirects. These would be greatly appreciated.
- Add images to articles without images. If you see an article with zero pictures, try adding one if it fits! That should spruce it up a bit.
- Changing the gallery articles titles to something more...unanimous. Gallery:Articlenamehere is ideal.
- Report an issue if admin's don't notice a problem. Or you can always leave a message on an admin's talk page too.
Sorry to make this seem so overly important, I just really feel that something needs to be done about all of this. Hope you guys can understand <3
That's about it. Please please comment if you have any thoughs, questions, or concerns.
Together, we can make the Zoey 101 Wiki a better place.