Board Thread:Administrator's noticeboard/@comment-4652200-20121130231836/@comment-4959312-20130128182624

I personally don't like the format of talk-pages. They may be easier to moderate which would explain why this idea would appeal to many moderators. I know that one of the main things I appreciate this wiki for over others is the simple commenting system, as opposed to say, wikipedia where they have wall-of-badly-formated talk-pages that are a pain in the ass to comb-through for the average user. I'm sure better formats could be implemented, but just because it's easier for an experienced wiki-user to use talk-pages, doesn't mean that it's better for the majority of site-users.

However, the idea of deliniating commentors from editors seems like a false dichotomy: it's a wiki, anyone can and often is an editor. Editors are just readers with time and/or the intent of change something, for better or worse. The idea that somehow this wiki is FOR the people who are registered and spend the most time on it is problematic though, as it implies that by spending a lot of time on here and investing a lot of effort one can sort of OWN the wiki. Which is ridiculous but I feel like I see that sometimes from some of the most respectable editors.

I'm looking at several of the mods who seem to push their ideas as privaledged ones, which they sorta are by personal influence, but there are legitimate opinions and a huge number of people for who the mods and editors are here to SERVE. Moderators on a wiki are effectively volunteers who serve the public interest. Part of that public interest is their own, but if a majority of people disagree with them they should accept that they have been overruled by the public and either offer a better proposal or move on.

It sounds like the real problem is the inability of the site architecture itself to handle to forms of communication that are both favored and desirable for different reasons. I may have missed this somewhere in the discussion, but is there any way we could persuade Wikia to change it's coding so that you can do all of the options at once? I don't get why these things should be mutually exclusive. That sounds like some lazy site-design/coding  on the part of Wikia to me!