Forum:Where is the right place for mid-level stuff?

or taking the hubs idea further

Over at Wikisocial we've been exploring what it might offer other wikia or groups of wikia. One obvious idea is some sort of news thing, and more specific version - news from the hubs. There's also the idea of forums for the hubs. Both of these might be described as mid-level stuff, in that they are not about the whole of Wikia, but are about something wider than single wikia. But where is the 'right' place for this sort of thing?

A literal interpretation of the guidance or policies that have evolved so far for central wikia - eg for images and new pages - might suggest central wikia should be reserved for stuff about the whole of wikia. On the other hand there's a sort of precedent with Society Gardens, which is deliberately mid-level stuff and has so far been located (tolerated?) mostly on central.

On the one hand, as one of the guys put it, we don't want to be seen spamming central, but on the other we don't want to be seen as filching stuff which others might think ought to be on central (or otherwise treading on someone else's toes). So is it possible to get some sort of ruling, guidance or whatever from the community support team on this question?

If it's a case of let the community / consensus decide, does anyone have any objections if we offer wikisocial as a place for (for example)


 * news - such as news from the hubs, news from Society Gardens, etc (we're maybe seeing this a resource for The Daily Edit to tap into?)


 * forums - forums for the hubs, forum for Society Gardens, etc? Philralph 07:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't feel this is something that needs a staff decision, there is room on Central, but maybe another wiki would work better. What I would like to see, in an ideal world, is wider topic wikis becoming "hubs" for wikis with similar topics.  For example, "Living World Wikia" might contain information on the Dogs Wikia, and the Birds Wikia with news, links, and forums for the group as a whole.  Which wouldn't stop people editing at the more broad wiki if that's what they prefer.  This would take a lot of cooperation between communities, in fact it would take a level of reassessment of what a wikia community is.  Allowing and encouraging this sort of cross-over would be quite new, but it could really work well on many levels.  Wikia might help with making features such as "group recent changes", and cross-wiki watchlists.  But the real effort would be from the community in setting up such "wikia-groups" and making them work. -- sannse (talk) 09:11, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Generally what I see is kinda a differentiation on whether something is a project independent of any wiki, or something on a wiki about other wiki:
 * Society Gardens, and the WGEP are projects independent of any single wiki. And because of that, they put their stuff here on central.
 * A wiki putting information on it's relation to other wiki, would put that stuff on it's own wiki.
 * ^_^ Sannse, don't you remember the WGEP... Multiple wiki on a group of topics identifying themselves as part of one cross-wiki project and sharing/syncing content that is used for multiple wiki. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) Aug 16, 2007 @ 10:16 (UTC)

I agree with Sannse that expanding the role of the hubs could make people reassess what a Wikia community is. Part of the reason I've been working on the hubs is to encourage that kind of reassessment -- to help people develop connections between similar wikis.

My gut feeling is that the hub development should stay on Central, and not get diverted to Wikisocial or another wiki. When people go to the hubs, they're already taking a step away from their "home" wiki. It makes sense to me to keep the hub activity in that common meeting space, and help people interact there.

But there are a bunch of ways that we could encourage people to participate on the hubs -- polls, featured wikis, a discussion area, a news area. I'd be interested in pursuing one of these, if I can get a sense of what people would be interested in. -- Danny (talk ) 19:42, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's a suggestion
The hubs get their own news page. People can add links to pages about the news events and to the relevant articles that need creating/updating. This would allow members of the wider community to get involved as they do not need any special knowledge of the topic to summarise these articles.

as an example lets say a new film comes out. It will then start appearing on review sites. and the links to these can be added to the news page. you could also add links to the cast as their wiki pages will need to be upgraded.--Drawde83 03:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Eventually the Wikia blogs will fill that role... Can we get a priority bump on making that thing easily scalable? I personally think that can help the meta-community significantly more than... What are the techs working on right now BTW? -PanSola 05:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What improvements do you think are needed to the blogs? I'm not sure what you mean by making them scalable. Angela (talk) 10:34, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Not easily able to add more wikis/groups (refer to prior discussion at Talk:Wikia_Blogs) was what caused me to characterized it as not "easily scalable" at the moment. If that information is out of date, then most of the general wiki community probably have not heard of any news regarding Wikia Blogs yet (after the initial announcement). A small number of wikis have expressed interested in being added to the blog, and I'm sure they'd be thrilled to learn of any updates on the situation. -PanSola 19:37, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Any Wikia staff member can add a wiki to an existing blog using WikiFactory. Adding new blogs is harder, but the blogs are meant to be limited to the breadcrumbs, so each breadcrumb would have a blog. I'm not sure if they all do though yet. Angela (talk) 04:31, 19 November 2007 (UTC)