User blog comment:Dopp/Updates to How We Search/@comment-28861328-20120501022247

Now its my turn to chime in. I'm an admin on quite a few wikis. I must say, the change, has been rather bothersome, if not downright infuriating. Now, instead of getting directly to the page I want, I have to sift through a list of possibilities. I'd be better off searching for the article on Google. At least it is mildly reliable. Not to mention, when I enter the search for a redirect, and on rare occasions even the full name of the article I'm looking for, it gets me NO search results. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Its so frustrating, it makes me want to yell at my computer.

Also, I find it somewhat counter productive on your parts, as Wikia Staff, when you have other members of our Wiki communities contact us admins and say things like "Welp, Wikia did it again. Now we can't search correctly anymore." Your own members feel helpless about it, and yet they're so use to the bad changes being made to their wikis, that all they can do now is just sit and shake their heads.

If Wikia really needs to gather data on searches, there is a better way to do it. Announce a project and have wikis who have had their community's consent sign up for it. You can then implement the change for a short time, gather your data, and then back off their wikis. Data collection is an extremely poor reason to piss of your users, I assure you. Keep pissing them off, Wikia, and mark my words, one day you won't have enough users to gather data from.

I must say, Wikia has change tremendously since I joined in '08. Back then, it at least seemed like you guys actually cared what we thought and were doing what you could to make Wikia a positive experience. Lately, however, from my perspective, it looks like you all have just dove off the proverbial edge of Mount friggin' Everest.

Yes, we could all just move to another wiki farm, but let me let you in on a little secret... I don't want to! I love Wikia. But the Wikia I love, and the Wikia you're creating are not the same things. You're pushing us too far Wikia. Its time to end the charade and either start making EVERYTHING optional, save for software updates that are needed for the running of a wiki, or you lose users. Its your choice, and you may not think it true, but each time you pull this, users leave. Users who actually make the content you are so keen in getting non-users to read and take interest in.

When you have a horde of anons that can't maintain the content, much less present it correctly, instead of the hardworking editors you have doing that job for you now, don't come crying to us. We'll be doing our own thing by that time.