User blog comment:Dopp/Communicate Easily with Message Wall/@comment-893506-20110927031517

Why are you guys so bent on turning Wikia into a social networking site? Wikis have been established to bring information of certain subjects to people. If you guys update anything, it should be the site tools that help users edit Wiki pages, and that's only if there's an actual problem with existing ones or if certain tools need to be added to help improve editing quality. The updates you guys have been giving us lately barely have anything to do with improving Wikia's tools; instead, you've been adding mostly needless social features that you want to use to eventually turn Wikia into Pseudo-Facebook.

When I joined Wikia, I was under the impression that we were trying to bring detailed information to people looking for it, not creating some pathetic Facebook imitation. My Wiki, the Bleach Wiki, is all about bringing detailed information about Bleach, not some random social networking site. Many of the Wikis out there desire to have top-quality content delivered to users who visit them. Yet, you're introducing nothing but features that are more focused on people socializing with each other rather than helping to improve whichever Wikis they are visiting.

As it stands, a vast majority of experienced Wiki users are tired of receiving updates that don't help improve their Wikis in the least, and actually hurt it more by attracting users that have absolutely no intention on helping the Wiki out by contributing. While many Wikis have quality information and content, they're still trying to improve their own Wikis by adding content in an organized fashion, and while many users on them are dedicated, each user still has trouble keeping things up at a reasonable speed, and the amount of users seeking out social networking on every one of them isn't really helping them getting their work done.

You keep preaching to us that these changes are for the better, but they're clearly not for the many Wikis seeking to deliver content. You keep saying that you are listening to us, yet all you do is just ask us to comment, do not listen to anything we say (especially if we do not like it), and then make the change anyway as if nobody had any objections to begin with (which they did, and hate having their thoughts on the matter ignored). If you guys want your most experienced Wiki editors to stick around, then listen to them. They know what their Wikis need, and the fact that you're adding features that will ultimately slow them down means you are more focused on delivering features for users who will only stick around for a very small duration of time instead of the users who have been with you for a long time and have made many Wikis more organized and detailed.

Ultimately, if you guys do end up adding just imitation Facebook features, then you should just let the Wikis that desire to close take their content down. If you just want a social networking site, then content is irrelevant at that point. If you want to pride yourselves on content, then focus on upgrading features that will help edit articles in the long run instead of these waste of imitation Facebook updates. But if you want to focus more on social networking, then at least be mature enough to let the Wikis with the desire to leave take their content with them.