Thread:CzechOut/@comment-4189499-20131104070616/@comment-4189499-20131109090644

Heh, don't worry, I didn't break my devices. I might just have raised my voice in frustration at the wrong family member, resulting in the confiscation of my internet things.

Another thing on the spotlight driving traffic and those polls, well, apparently the spotlight wasn't even pointing to the right blog for the first few days! And on being "spotlight ready", well, I know DWA already conforms to the standard of the spotlight to get people to come to the wiki, but I had other ideas for things to do to to try and encourage people to stay on the wiki, and for some of them I had even purposefully delayed their implementation while expecting a Nov 15 spotlight, such as editing achievements since I wanted new users to think they had a chance to actually do well by coming in at the start. Other things planned were firstly to actually finish writing that blog post which people landed on and opening up some threads in the Watercooler (linked from the blog and highlighted) to encourage people to get involved and also so they would keep being drawn back to DWA every time one of their followed threads gets altered (see, I have put some thought into this).

As you said, DWA doesn't get many registered users who stay. One of the main reasons I am paying so much attention to this spotlight is because we really need more users. On Tardis, I doubt it would make a big difference in the long run to get a couple of extra users deciding to stay because of a spotlight as you have so many regular users putting in loads of effort already. But at DWA, even the regular IP users have been slowly disappearing, and the amount of unanswered questions is piling up, along with bad answers, mostly uncited, and very few questions getting categorised, or other such clean-up jobs. It is very important that DWA not only gets new users, but keeps them as well.

I understand your interest in getting Tardis a spotlight as well. I mean, that's why I first suggested to you the idea that our wikis might do a joint spotlight or something! As long as the spotlight images aren't too similar, hopefully users will want to look at both. Although I see Merrystar mentioned that your spotlight would probably go up on Nov 15th in the slot around the anniversary, but could be pushed back to Dec 1st. I might want to warn you that that was exactly what I was told, and neither of those dates was what actually happened.

Also, on month long spotlights, that suggestion didn't come out of the blue. In what I thought was my spare time (not knowing that the jobs I was to do were actually more urgent), I was reading what others said about spotlights and their length, and Merrystar mentioned once or twice that wikis could have what is essentially a double spotlight, but that counts as both that wiki's spotlights for that year so they can't get another one for at least 10 months. Upon checking my talk page and reading that the spotlight went up early, I remembered what I had read and, since series 8 isn't gonna start until the UK's autumn next year, I reasoned that there would be no reason to spotlight again before then and so asked Merrystar to put us up for the whole month, which she has since accepted.

I must say, I have refreshed the page what feels like much more than 23 times, yet I still haven't seen the spotlight. I was also noticing the spotlight change in the few days before I was told DWA was up, yet in that time I never saw DWA, and I wasn't exactly inactive then, even if it was on another wiki (not realising just how desperately the things at DWA needed finishing). When we were up earlier in the year, I saw the spotlight all the time. It's weird I still haven't seen it this time, despite the few days internet free.

Anyway, I see you appointed SOTO as temporary admin. Can I just say that that was an excellent choice! I have seen him around a bit at Tardis, and have thought a few times that it would be good to have editors at DWA who were as dedicated at doing the small, boring stuff as SOTO was with those days of the year pages. It has been a relief knowing that somebody has been looking over the place while I've been away, as new users aren't gonna want to stay if nobody responds to their edits. Thanks for bringing him in.

So, yeah. Thanks for organising all that while I was away. It is extremely frustrating when you make plans which rely on something happening, and then that thing goes wrong, especially when you then can't fix it. Good luck with getting Tardis ready for the 50th!