Board Thread:Administration/@comment-2240864-20150914003404

Hello everyone, it's old man Cleric here with some news! As some of you may or may not know, I very recently traveled to California to attend Wikia's Community Connect event.

What's That?
I hear your questions, traveling across time and whatnot, so here's the answer: Wikia Community Connect was an event where admin from wikias like Memory Alpha, FNaF Wiki, Wookieepedia, and many others met at Wikia's headquarters in San Francisco, California to hear staff talk about upcoming changes and improvements (Infoboxes, SEO optimizations, Discussions, and Mobile Optimization, among several topics) and for us to discuss with them about how we use the tools they give us on a daily basis. Not only did we all come away with new ideas and aspirations for the future, but I believe Staff came away with several great ideas we provided them (not to mention all the bugs we had them squash along the way).

All-in-all, it was an experience I will treasure forever and I met really great people. That being said, I thought I would like to state some ideas I gleaned while there, and you are all free to discuss them and tell me which of these sound great and which of these sound like too much work or just plain dumb.

The Ideas

 * Pasta Profiles: Although we have a large amount of stories, and we have almost all the classics on here, I think it would be a great idea to have a section of this site devoted to detailing information (Author, Earlier known appearance, video game appearances, movie appearances, pop culture references, etc.) about the main characters in the stories. People come here for the stories, but they also probably come here looking for information on them.

I have had dozens of people over the years email me about original authors and origins of stories, and it speaks to the vocal few who are actually looking for this kind of information. Infoboxes are due for an update, and I think they are going to be the perfect tool for this.


 * Pop Culture References: Recently, in an episode of Criminal Minds, the subgenre of horror we call creepypasta was mentioned by name. Some of you may remember the incident that occurred not too long ago, and yes they are going off of this.

That being said, though, creepypasta have long since been in indie games and some indie movies, and I think we owe it to those we have helped inspire to catalog their contributions to the world of creepypasta as a whole.


 * Author Spotlights: Again, much in the same way infoboxes would be the perfect tool for the layout of Pasta Profiles, they would again help here.  This would be something that could resemble the current interviews, but on a page with far more information.  Profiles could include people such as Victor Surge, Bogleech, and others, though interviews would not need to be mandatory.  It's a great way, I believe as I hope to link people toward their works and personal sites, to get them exposure and to help readers learn more about their favorite authors.


 * Navboxes!: For stories with multiple pages and for image galleries, navboxes would provide on-page linking to other chapters/gallery pages/etc. without the need for clicking back to the original subpage and/or revamp the system we currently have.


 * New Polls System and PotM: One of the things I learned about was a desire to revamp the forums and to integrate polls into the new model. However, they are not the monstrosity you know and loathe.  These polls will require users to be logged into the site in order to vote.  When this rolls out, I propose we change the PotM voting system to a forums post where users can nominate without having to worry about signing posts and people can easily both vote on and comment on the stories nominated.  This feature, though, is still in development.


 * New Forums: Taking a cue from the folks over at the FNaF wiki, I propose creating creative outlets for people. Creating a section of forums devoted to discussions of horror films, movies, etc. and even possibly a roleplaying board for everyone to indulge in things they might otherwise do on comments, etc.  Creative outlets like that can be useful I am told.  We could also use them to post information on upcoming horror movies, games, etc.  It's a way to engage and interact with the community since chat is RIP.


 * Cleanup of Redirects and Broken Links: Both of these things really hurt out SEO, or Search engine optimization. This is how visible we are on sites like Google or Bing when people look for stuff.  Removing these broken or missing links (Special:BrokenRedirects & Special:WantedPages) will help the robot overlords' spiders to find pages.  This is a good thing, though.  Trust me.  Now, I will say this: Category:OC‏‎ (29,243 links).  This is most likely something a bot will need to start on, replacing the broken links to text to keep archives valid and older pages looking more or less the same.  There are hundreds of smaller 1-3 entries on WantedPages, and it wouldn't be too hard to knock those out in a few hours or days.


 * Mobile Cleanup: Every year, more and more people are viewing websites on their phones. This site is no exception.  I am aware that, currently, not everything on every site translates well to mobile, but we have an advantage in that we are heavily text-based.  That being said, though, I still would like to go and check to see if there are pages that completely break on mobile.


 * Creepypasta Wiki App: Ever wanted to view the site in a sleek, compact, and mobile app that delivers carefully curated content to you? There is an app for that!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wikia-fan-app-for-creepy-pasta/id963580126?mt=8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wikia.singlewikia.creepypasta&hl=en

If you haven't downloaded it, I suggest you give it a try. Over the next couple of weeks I will be working on curating content for it and having those really odd images you might see or may have seen make more sense and generally be less goofy and off-putting. The long and the short of it is that although literally thousands of people have downloaded it, this bad boy is about to get even better. And less bad. But more bad. You know what I mean.

In Closing
I'm excited to share this information with you guys and for the ability provided to me to be able to take our existing content and transform the experience you and others have in reading it. Again, let me know what you think about the above ideas and as always, stay spooky. 