Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-4544033-20160127002158/@comment-25356303-20160127032543

Hmm. This is a complicated issue. Before I reply directly to the thread though, I'm going to talk about some stuff about this and the wiki in general because there seem to be some misunderstandings about what's up.

First, I'd like to mention that we have stopped the MOTM award for the time being as we did in the past for the same reason as then―not enough outstanding members. According to Special:Statistics, we have 401 active members. However, that's a bit... high, right? You don't see 401 people building up hundreds of articles or uploading loads of images. In truth, we're a much smaller community, and have been for a lot of our history. I would give a (somewhat liberal) estimate of the actual number of regularly-contributing editors at more like thirty or forty.

A lot of people have the wrong idea about what the size of our userbase means. Some people feel like we'll keep shrinking into nothing. I respectfully disagree. Is the size of the place annoying sometimes? Yes. Is it as bad as some of you are making it out to be? No.

Fallout 4 was released two months ago and as such interest in The Elder Scrolls is currently at its lowest point right now. I've reiterated this a lot, and I will continue doing so because it's important to stay realistic. The thing you should take away from this, however, is not that we're too small or anything, but instead that everyone here keeps coming back, despite this challenge.

And you know what you do in ANY situation you come across? You make the best of it. You work with what you have and work toward what you want. That's what we're doing now. We don't need a massive community to do that, although it would be a nice addition.

We've got a decently active userbase, over 40,000 articles, and on top of that we're still getting 500,000-750,000 page views per DAY. Think about that for a second. This is our slowest point and we're still getting THAT MUCH attention? Come on, that's pretty good. So stop thinking negatively about the wiki's current state of affairs, as doing so will not get us anywhere.

Anyway. The MOTM badge has been halted because we aren't the super-wiki we were in 2012. We have a lot of great users, but it's only enough to keep the ball rolling. It's not enough to run this sort of competition for an extended period of time.

I see what you're saying CCC, but until our activity levels rise back up to what they were just after Skyrim ' s release, having this kind of system in place simply will not be possible. There are definitely a few users who haven't gotten MOTM who I think deserve it, but only a couple, and they have been here for a while.

If we start up the award again, it'll run dry in a couple months like it did earlier. And if you lower the bar, that kind of ruins it for everyone else. We have awards like sweetrolls for smaller things like that. I don't think it's a good idea to continue MOTM just because. Like it or not we'll have to wait a while until we can start doing it again.

Bronkiin: You have some stuff right too, but I don't agree with your view on what this wiki is. While a lot of edits are made by myself, Shockstorm, Tim, and the others you listed we are not "the wiki." If that were the case, there would be no reason for weekly updates or moots or any kind of community outreach, as everyone there is tied together pretty closely anyway, so there would be no reason to interact with anyone else.

The fact of the matter is that the community can't be disregarded. A lot of great ideas come from people who don't happen to have thousands edits. Spend time on the forum or chat and look at how many people contribute. It's a LOT of people, and all of them together give it something really unique. There's no way that kind of interaction could happen with a group of ten or something.

That said, you are right about how not enough of these people are editing. I'm perfectly happy with the number of people we have right now―the problem like you said is that these people are not "pulling their weight" enough in terms of the mainspace for us to be able to efficiently use the MOTM system. I've spoken about this issue of semi-inactive editors in the past and I don't want to get too repetitive, so I won't go into detail here about that particular issue.

The only way to fix our MOTM problem is to wait until TES: VI is announced, as lowering the bar is not an option. So we will just have to be patient. Until then, I would recommend everyone work as hard as they can to improve the wiki and stop worrying about trivial matters like this. There are more efficient ways to spend your time.