Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-24841494-20140413162532/@comment-4620507-20140422074407

I'm going to have to go with Maria with this one. Sure, on paper this rotation thing seems to appease everyone. Hey, you've got the admins happy, the users on chat happy, Maria happy, everyone's happy! Best case scenario, eh?

What we don't see is that if we did this rotation, we don't get the benefits of

a) shutting down chat permanently (not like there are any anyway)

b) keeping chat up

If we shut down chat, we'll see, as Maria's and other people's stats have proved (I think) a dramatic increase in productivity. Whether or not this is going to last, however, I will address later.

If we keep chat up, we maintain our current level of productivity (which isn't bad, I have to say, compared to other wikis) and have no butthurt.

So, if we look at this, we go, "Hey, why not both?"

The main reason there was a large amount of productivity was because this was the first formal chat shutdown we've ever had. We've had some that were a few days long before, but this was one that was approved and welcomed by the community. This was a first. People began to write stories and edit again. But a person can only edit and write so long. Remember your magnum opus? That's what I'm talking about- a brief spurt of creativity and productivity that produced something akin to a child for you. How often do you have that?

If we shut down chat over and over again, we reduce the capability of another surprise chat shutdown. I predict that every week, people will slowly lose interest in writing stories for the wiki, but more importantly editing for the wiki. By introducing a rotation, we achieve nothing but make editing seem like a requirement in an occupation, rather than something that came naturally and could be done whenever and however someone saw fit.

Think of it as this. We are working in shifts. We rest, and we work. Rest, and work. There's a reason people remember their first day at their job- and that was because everything was so different to what they've experienced before. But as time went on, people saw their jobs as monotonous. As part of a daily routine. We are doing the same for chat. We are making editing monotonous. We are saying to the wiki, "Fuck chatting and editing and doing stuff on this wiki! This is a wiki about EDITING! We even have a chat rotation to prove that point!"

Right now, chatting and editing are the same thing: they are part of life on Creepypasta Wiki. We rest some, and we work some- all at our own pace. Sure, this resembles a job- you work some and you rest some. But we create the illusion of leisure and freedom in the choice of whether or not you want to edit or work. Instead of accepting people into a community, we bring them onto this society of workers and rulers. Where you aren't supposed to enjoy Creepypastas, but instead work for Creepypastas. Whatever happened to being able to go onto this website to do whatever you wanted that was related to Creepypasta? It's like programming a game that tells you what to do, and punishes you for not doing it. Sorry, Infinity Ward.

Rotations on chat bring nothing but a sense of slavery to this wiki. Rotations seem to fulfill both criteria of the warring sides of the chat war taking place on this wiki. But instead, it takes both ideologies (pure chat, pure CP), halves them, puts them in nice little boxes, and puts them back up again. By trying to make nice, we destroy our ability to let the wiki progress naturally, and instead artificially impose rules and shifts on it that turn it less into a wiki and more into a website dedicated to editing pastas, in addition to not gaining the benefits of shutting down chat permanently or letting chat remain. I say oppose, because this just isn't right for the wiki. A forum thread not about Creepypastas but instead about forcing wikiers to edit for 10 day-shifts is just not right.

I agree. We've come a long way from the dark days of 2011 with weird US categories and overall messiness. But I don't agree that a change in the wiki requires a change in policy.

No rotations, please.