Welcoming New Contributors
New users are something that every community needs, whether it's an established community or a brand new one. New users bring more hands to do the daily work of building and improving the content, and can bring valuable new ideas too.
The problem is that many people make their first edit and then disappear back into the Internets. Reaching out to talk to new users is one way to help bring them into the community.
All communities come with an automated welcome tool that leaves a message for each person when they make their first edit. This is a good start, but it's not the end of the welcoming. Each message is "signed" by an admin. That way, if a new user replies to a welcome message, there's an admin who's notified of that who can write back.…
Welcome to Community Central
If you're reading this, then you're already familiar with staff blogs here on Community Central. You're reading one right now, after all! But do you know what else Community Central has to offer? There's lots to do here beyond reading staff blogs, and we'd love for you to join us!
Community Central is actually the first Wikia community ever created. Our technical guy at the time (yes, just one!) created it as the hub of all the future communities to come. Over time, it has grown into an even more robust resource to provide help, support, and information to all communities on Wikia. This is the home of help pages, as well as a venue for blogs and forums about all aspects of Wikia. This is also only one of many Community Centrals, with all of…
Blogs on Community Central
There's been some confusion recently on what is and isn't allowed on Community Central's blogs, so I thought I would do a quick blog to explain.
The best blog posts are things that are on-topic. That means they are about Wikia, its communities and Community Central. These are eligible to earn a Community Highlight, and are likely to be of the most interest to the most people. They could be help blogs that explain how to do something on Wikia, blogs about a specific community and what exciting things are going on there, promotions of a wiki to try and reach new people, or just blogs about you and your Wikia life. Anything related to Wikia and its communities is great!
We also welcome introduction blogs. If you are new to Wikia, or just to Com…
Whose Desk is Whose?
Wikia is written by all sorts of fans. From Marvel fanatics to Trekkers to genealogy enthusiasts and more, everyone can find a place for their passion in the Home of Fandom. One of the best parts of working at Wikia is knowing that, like you, the staff in our office are also superfans. The fact that we're all fans of something is a big part of what motivates us to make Wikia such an awesome place for fans.
Here in our San Francisco office, we display our passions on the "Wall of Fandom." This is a big wall at the front of the office that's covered in items that we all chose to represent the things we love. My contribution is the plushy chihuahua on the second shelf, representing my love of my dog Daisy and her furry friends.
Many of us like …
You and Your Socks
Allow me to introduce to you User:Sanns sock. She's a pleasant enough sort of user, not very active on Wikia, but she's been around for a while. She's useful when something goes wrong and there's a need for some non-staff testing.
Then there's User:Sanns bot. She's retired now, but used to do some work around Wikia every now and then. Just routine spelling corrections and other simple changes.
There's also User:A user name with spaces, User:Sannsetestingagainandagain and, for some reason, User:APrettyPinkPotofPreciousPetunias.
As you might have guessed, these are just some of the accounts I've made on Wikia over the years, my "sockpuppets". Most of them were made to test various features and verify bugs. Although, as an old Uncyclopedian, the…