Board Thread:Smashpedia Business/@comment-16072884-20131003014753/@comment-8-20131004062842

SMASHFan: you say "That's not what this wiki is for", I would say "why not?". It feels as though you are focused on one vision of what this wiki is and should be, and that vision is the one of the previous community of this wiki.

I'm not saying that can't be the way the wiki decides to go (or stay) but it is definitely not the only way it can go.

Here are some examples of wikis which probably describe themselves as "encyclopedic", but who use blogs successfully:
 * Avatar uses blogs for news, reviews, opinion, speculation, and so on. The posts are varied in quality, but kept on-topic by the admins.
 * Call of Duty separates their blogs into news about the game, community news, and opinion blogs
 * League of Legends has an active blog section, that includes descriptions of their custom characters, opinions and (remarkably detailed) analysis of the game

Not all posts are great, and not all wikis want blogs. But they can be a useful and attractive addition to a wiki, something that can attract and interest both readers and contributors, hopefully encouraging them to explore the wiki further. Avatar Wiki's blogs get roughly 40.000 pageviews a month. That's a whole lot of people reading those pages!

I would love to see some consideration of blogs, and other possible features, on their own merits - and not on the basis of what has been done before, or on an assumption of what an encyclopedic wiki must be.

Right now, the page Toomai mentions should really be titled "Smashpedia:What SmashWiki was not". What Smashpedia is (and is not) is still a work in progress :)