Thread:Byte Me/@comment-499247-20190714155638/@comment-10507735-20190717044919

I will try to clarify this area as requested.

Unlike the 'Parent' S.T.A.L.K.E.R. site which has a pretty rigorous conduct policy, we had no official guidelines until about two years ago. We also kept the comments sections for each article "open" rather than hiding behind a 'talk tab' and weren't too heavy handed on some of the language used there.

For the most part it worked. If someone wanted to vent about a game that was still in its dev cycle, they could go and eff and blind in their own blog here. Let off a bit of steam. Until recently it was also possible to post / edit here anonymously. All in the hope of increasing meaningful activity.

I'm pretty thick-skinned, ad hominems don't much bother me, but they lower the tone of the wiki and get removed along with the bullshit edits that frequently accompany them. These people help NO-ONE.

So why would I want to add another feature (Discussions) that will more than likely attract posers to what amounts to a pseudonymous fancy dress party?

Now, before you get your hackles up, there IS a place for "Discussions" on SOME wikis, but it's not a one-size-fits-all mapping. It might well work on something like a TV-show or film franchise wiki where aficionados can contemplate their navels about some fake character or storyline (they're all fake by definition)

But on a mature set of game wikis that just try to document the game(s); where further development is not scheduled; where we're not geared up for 'modding' anyway, a Discussion area could quickly devolve into any variation of the following themes:
 * 1) "I wish they'd put <> into the game..."
 * 2) "Why doesn't <> work? FIX IT!!!!!"
 * 3) "My game crashes on startup..."
 * 4) "Byte Me is a c**t Byte Me is a c**t Byte Me is a c**t Byte Me is a c**t (continued on page 94)"
 * In other words - all the negatives to bring people down.....

A final hypothetical point to reflect modernity:

The "Oxford English Dictionary wiki" introduces a "Discussions feature"
 * 1) The first thread spawns to discuss how to integrate 569247 genders into the OED-wiki.
 * 2) The second thread has the job of correlating grammar and syntax for the first thread.
 * 3) The third oversees microagressions between "contribs" in the first two spaces.
 * 4) ...and thousands of other meaningless diversions.


 * Sometimes Sitb, the best thing that can be done to an "encyclopedia wiki" is not to fit it with wings. That way it's less easy to imitate Icarus.
 * And you're quite welcome to take any part of this back to Fandom.