User blog:M67PattonZippo/People Leaving Wikia - My Response

If you look through Recent Changes with any regularity (like I do), by now you have probably noticed a lot of blogs about people leaving Community Central chat and/or Wikia, sometimes forever. A lot of users have mentioned the seeming decline of chat as one of their reasons. To which, I offer my response.

Chat is what we make of it. Staff, admins, and mods are just there to make sure that the rules are followed and everyone has a good time. It is the users themselves that make a wiki (and its chat) a fun place to be. Some users have left, true, but this is the time of year when school starts for a lot of users. Some people are also starting college, which takes up far more free time than high school ever did. Trust me, I know that from experience.

As for the percieved decline in the quality of Community Central chat, that is in part related to the departure of so many users. When more experienced "veteran" users leave a wiki, it is up to the rank-and-file users to take their place, mentoring new arrivals and keeping the spirit of the wiki alive. Without leadership, a wiki can quickly become a magnet for trolls, vandals, and spammers. This ruins the experience for those loyal users that remain.

What I am saying is, even though a lot of people are taking a break from Wikia and/or CC chat, there is still hope for this wiki and countless others out there. It is up to us, the ordinary users, to make sure that our wikis continue to grow and thrive!