Hello all!
We've noticed some of you seem concerned about some 'changes' that are happening on Discussions and I wanted to make a blog to address on what might have changed and our vision for what Discussions is.
Now, as most of us wiki editors weren't aware of the Discussions going live until a few months ago, a sub-community of users formed here that was able to interact with each other essentially unmoderated, which brought both good and bad things. The best thing is that a community has formed here very naturally, and we want to maintain that. The bad thing is, that some users have taken advantage of the lack of moderation to showcase poor attitude.
Now we want to make clear that this kind of poor attitude, picking fights with other users, using insults and offensive terms, and outright attacking other users, in no way flies around here. This is not a new rule, this has always been in our guidelines. There have already been some bans and post deletions due to repeated misbehaviour after several warnings, and we hope to not see any more of that in the future.
Now, more importantly for the future, the AC Wiki team wants to share what exactly our intention is for the Discussions section to be, and hope we hope everyone can agree to that or that we can open a discussion to find a mutual agreement.
We realize that Discussions is the primary tool of communication for the mobile app, which is why a lot of users have been using it kind of like an instant messaging platform. However, we want to stress that Discussions is not only accessible through the mobile app but desktop as well, and considering that in the future it will be the primary form of communication for the ENTIRE wiki, we want to make sure we're all professional. (Note: that doesn't mean no fun is allowed!)
However, we do have to impose some guidelines on what we'd like to see for Discussions. The most important thing is that we stress the literal meaning of the platform's name: to DISCUSS things. I think it will be to everyone's benefit if posts are made with that in mind. That means sharing your own thoughts, wanting to hear other people's thoughts, and discussing each other's points of view.
We've noticed a lot of posts become dead-end because of very short and often unneeded responses. We don't need you to write an essay for every post or comment, but being a little more constructive would go a long way in making each post something to come back to. :)
To that end, we'd like to ask users to refrain from posting things like memes, because they're more something you'd share in PM or Facebook than to open a discussion, and to refrain from making the same type of posts that have already been made in the last week.
We've seen a lot of posts with titles like "arno vs. shay, who would win?" or "who is your favourite Assassin?" These posts aren't bad (do try to refrain from making too much of them though), but be constructive in your opinion. Why do you think they would win or why are they your favourite Assassin? That's more important than just listing a name.
With stimulating conversation also comes proper writing, so please pay attention to the guidelines when we ask you to write in proper English. This includes punctuation and capitalization. We know English isn't everyone's first language (myself included), so of course we provide some leeway for non-English speakers, but please write in your best English.
So, we really want to stress the discussion side of things, and to keep things to Assassin's Creed. We are the Assassin's Creed Wiki after all, guys! People come here out of a passion for Assassin's Creed and that's the kind of stuff they want to see.
We don't want to be too strict in how people interact with each other as long as it's polite and constructive, so we hope not much changes for the people here.
And we hope that everyone can agree to our vision, or if they don't, this post is an opportunity for people to address their concerns, and we'll engage in conversation to see if we can make things better for everyone!
And as always, do refer to the guidelines if you're not clear about something.
Thanks for reading!
And only 6 more days, guys!