User blog comment:Jenburton/An Update on Message Wall/@comment-28861328-20111001175014

I don't get this. I honestly don't. The others below me have all made some very decent points in the flaws in this, but what I'd like to know is why. Why are you all forcing this on us? And I want an answer from a Staff if possible. Each wiki is unique and have different goals. The communities of those wikis have worked very diligently and hard to make their wikis work the way they want them to work with that wiki's specific goal in mind. You all, on the other hand, are focused on Wikia as a whole, and cannot possibly see the needs and goals of each individual wiki.

For example, I find article comments on mainspace pages to be horrendous and practically an invitation for trolls and spammers to derail an entire page with their useless blather. For this reason, most of the wikis I administrate have come to decision that we prefer talk pages over blog comments. It doesn't clutter the actual content page, and is much more professional in look in our opinions. However, over on Glee Wiki, they welcome blog comments on mainspace pages; and it works for them.

Point being, what works for my wiki, may not work for another wiki, and vice versa. The same can be said of this Message Wall. Intentions of the Staff aside, all this Wall will do is imitate a Facebook wall and invite social networking. As I said, on certain wikis, this may actually work very, very well, whereas on others, such as the Bleach Wiki or Wookieepedia, Talk Pages are the best course of action, as it is best suited for their wiki's goals and intentions.

For these reasons, it is best that this be placed in the Wiki Features page and be made optional. I want to make this clear, forcing new features on your community that don't actually improve the software or the way a wiki actually works, which this feature doesn't, than it is best to make it optional rather than ramrod it down our throats. You're causing a lot of distrust between your experienced editors, such as myself (having been here nearly 4 years now), and your Staff, which is not a good thing at all.

So again I ask a staff to answer me this one question; Why are your forcing this on us?