Forum:Chat Rule

Okay, this forum was opened because and  think that there should be an edit limit on chat. Meaning that you must have ten edits before you are allowed to enter our chat, those who don’t have those edits will be forced to leave and not allowed in chat until they have the edits. The reason given for this is because a lot of new users come to the chat to troll and this would help prevent this. I think both of them have good intentions but I don’t think they care enough about the social side of our wiki to understand just how adversely this could affect it. True, this rule would limit the number of trolls, however, it is a double edged sword. Not every new user comes to chat to troll and disrupt chat. Putting the rule in place would not only keep the trolls away but it would discourage regular chatters from entering the chat as well. Now, I know some of you may argue that it’s not that hard to get ten edits, but if you aren’t visiting the wiki to edit in the first place, then you aren’t going to feel like getting the edits to get on chat. And it’s not fair that we make anyone edit who doesn’t want to edit. Our site is very free and fun. If a user wants to edit, they can. If a user wants to chat, they can chat. Telling someone that in order to do one, they must do the other is ridiculous and is putting limitations on something which doesn’t need limitation. Besides, the rule is somewhat ignorant in my opinion. The user trying to gain access into chat is only going to make ten edits and then never edit again. That’s not going to encourage any good editing. We’d only get a bunch of minor, likely erroneous, edits that serve no other purpose than to unnecessarily crowd up Recent Changes and Wiki Activity. In addition, we don’t have chat mods online at all time. So there’s no 100% way to enforce this rule. Furthermore, how many wikis can you think of that actually have this rule in place? Very few if any. And it’s for a good reason. The rule would be harmful to the social side of our wiki. I think it’s very obvious by now that the Fairy Tail wiki is far from the average wiki. We’re both an encyclopedia and a social site. Trying to force the encyclopedic side on those who come for the social side of the wiki is wrong and wouldn’t be helpful to our wiki by any means. As a matter of fact, the only wiki I know to have this rule is the Bleach wiki and here’s why they have it "Any user entering chat will be required to have a mainspace edit count of ten edits. This is because Bleach Wiki is a content focused encyclopedia style wiki. The focus of the wiki is to build information, not to chat. Users who use the chat should be editing in addition to chatting."

You read it right there. The Bleach Wiki has it because they are a “content focused encyclopedia style” wiki. It works for them because they aren’t really a social wiki, which is great. However, what works for one wiki doesn’t necessarily work for all wikis because our wiki isn’t a complete encyclopedia wiki. While we do put a lot of work into our content, we also put a lot of work into our social side of the wiki. Meaning that we’re more of a half/half kind of wiki so why would we take a rule that was designed for a completely encyclopedic type wiki and apply it to our wiki? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the rule itself. As a matter of fact, when I was a Policy & Standards Committee member over at the Bleach wiki, I was actually one of the people who supported the rule becoming a policy on the site. However, I supported it over there because it works for the Bleach wiki. It doesn’t work for the Fairy Tail wiki. As I said, what works for one, doesn’t work for all. Putting a harmful rule in place to make the lives of our chat mods easier is not something that I want done on our site. Anonymous users create a hell of a lot of more problems than regular users. Have I ever ONCE tried to contact staff and have them disable anonymous editing on our wiki? No! Why? Because I know that there are plenty of good anonymous users as well as there are bad. It means more work for me as an Administrator, but I suck it up and do the work because that’s what I’m expected to do. In addition, the rich text editor was a huge problem because it was so error-filled that it ruined a lot of pages. Did I ever try to have that disabled? No! Because I know that most new users wouldn’t be comfortable enough to use the source editor when they first start out. Fixing the problems created by RTE caused more work for me as an Administrator but I sucked it up. Chat mods are sort of like Administrators for the chat, and just like I sucked it up and dealt with it, they have to as well. If behavior is such a problem, then chat mods should be able to handle it. They have the power to kick and/or ban people from chat. So if a newbie is trolling then why can’t they handle it? That’s what their abilities are in place for. They aren’t for decoration. And if it is such a big issue, then either a chat mod or a regular user can just contact an administrator. There are five of us and we are always ready and willing to help out.

What I’m essentially trying to say is that wikis that get too strict tend to lose members and they lose them fast. The Fairy Tail Wiki used to have a slim number of edits per day. I, along with a lot of other users, have worked tirelessly to improve the wiki and make it more appealing. The chat used to have absolutely no one in it, but due to the copious amount of users joining it, it became the hot spot that it is today. Do we really want to ruin that? The more strict our chat gets, the more users will avoid it. This 10 edit rule sounds good in theory, but take a second to analyze it and you’ll realize just how harmful it is to our wiki. As I said, Glassy and Prime had good intentions when proposing this rule, but I don't think they understand just how negative the effects of implementing it.

You can support or oppose this rule below. I did not place a neutral section because that doesn’t help the voting process. If you are neutral, just leave a comment in the comment section. The support/oppose sections should have nothing but the votes. Please leave all reasons in the comment section so that we may keep the voting sections clean.

Process
Simply put the #/ ~. No comments in the voting section please!

Requirements

 * At least 100 edits
 * At least 3 months on the wiki
 * Never received any serious or lengthy blocks due to behavioral issues.

Oppose

 * 04:34,9/2/2012