User blog:Shadowmaster/Major Revisions

Hey, guys. I'm Shadowmaster. You may (and probably don't) know me as one of the administrators and bureaucrats of the Custom BIONICLE Wiki. With the impending return of BIONICLE (and, in addition, with the fact that this wiki shows up before BIONICLESector01 in Google searches), it goes without saying that this wiki may be getting some new activity as 2015 arrives. What does this mean for all of us?

Well, it means we need to step up the game. I'm not going to sugarcoat anything: as a result of BIONICLE's end for the past several months, years, even, this wiki has been severely lacking in terms of user activity, and its pages have been very lacking in content and quality. It's really not very debatable. BS01 is constructed of a far more active and diligent userbase. It's pretty much officially recognized. Really, as it stands today, this wiki pales in comparison to BS01.

But, it's never too late. We can still fix the wiki, IF users are willing to cooperate and work on articles to make a better, more uniform system. This is a wiki on solid canon, after all. There's absolutely no reason that pages shouldn't be uniform. So, I have a couple of propositions to make.

Revamping Article Templates
The Custom BIONICLE Wiki got rid of these for a reason. They're just so simple. It's a colored box with words in it. No dividing lines, no nothing. I don't mean to say that we should adopt the Custom BIONICLE Wiki's article template system, but I do think we need to make something far more visually appealing and presentable.

Making a Uniform Page Layout System
Again with "uniform system". I think we need to make sure that every single page has what it needs to have. For example: I came on tonight and found that Hakann] was missing an appearances section completely. The Kakama Nuva page has a "Powers" section and an "Example Usage" section as a part of that, but Kakama has only an example usage section. Reidak and Hakann have a section called "Characteristics" which contains both their powers and tools and their personality, while Hewkii contains two separate "Personality and Traits" and "Powers and Tools" sections, and Hahli contains an "Abilities and Traits" section with "Mask and Tools" within it. That's from just a brief look-through of a few pages. What does that mean? Nothing is uniform on this wiki. It's very far from uniformity. Three different character page layouts, and possibly far more? That's a problem. A non-uniform system is far more difficult to navigate through. We have to make them uniform.

Deleting Unnecessary Pages
High Commander. It's three sentences long. The template takes up more space than the article's content itself. It's clutter that I personally think we should get rid of.

Updating Things
Just from a brief look: This wiki needs an update. The main page itself is outdated. The BIONICLE Wiki is no longer an affiliate of the Custom BIONICLE Wiki, HeroPedia, or the Custom Hero Factory wiki, as Wiki Metru has dissolved. That's just the first of many things on this wiki that I think need an update.

General Content Improvement
I think this one's self-explanatory.

Conclusion
As I said before, I really think we all need to step up the game if we want to be a valid BIONICLE fan site that can compete on the same level as BIONICLESector01. You all may feel free to disagree with me, or comment on all of the changes I suggested, but I'd recommend that you heed my advice if you want this wiki to return to the level of activity it once enjoyed. What do you guys have to say?

 Shadow master    (Contribs)   00:07, October 5, 2014 (UTC)