Forum:Is the wiki dying?

I really do hate to say it, but the wiki is dieing. The only cure is to get an influx of users, and the only way for that to happen is for a new Pikmin game to be released. While the thought of Pikmin 3 soon is promising, I am curious if they are doing anything with Pikmin on the 3DS. I mean if it can run Metal Gear Solid 3 it can easily run a Pikmin game.

As for everyone leaving, I think it has to do with losing interest. Remember that most of the potential users here are the 9-13 years old youngins that have a short attention span. We need to have more interesting stuff here to keep their attention. In order to do that, we need more users. And the only way to get them is to have interesting content.

I am extremely guilty of not being active here, and I really do regret that. It was about the time that Volatile Dweevil and Gamefreak left that this started. If only they had stayed, then maybe we would be a better, more active wiki. Oh well, gotta move on and keep looking forward. I'm not going to make a promise about how I will be more active here or something, because we know it's not going to be kept. However I will at least try to try to be active.

Ahem.

 * Thank you for the message, Sir Pikmin. You are right, most people here are younger. We need an attraction, which is why Pikmin 3 will do us well. And excuse me for being cynical, but I think NIWA doesn't help us with traffic one bit. It's us that helps us with traffic, and this is a primitive system at large. I can compare this to the times before 1900 when small businesses ruled the market independently. Although they can have a better grip on what the people need, the larger corporations have surplus attention to every aspect of the rising market called advertising. In other words, Pikmin Fanon is too small to gain advertising because we would run out of things to promote and staff to handle these wiki-wide ads and deals. If we were to be taken in by a larger organization (NIWA does count, but we already have membership) that doesn't just say "You are a member now!" and instead says "Here is this and this and this to help you get going better", it might benefit us. I am not saying we leave NIWA, for that would surely plunge us into an inactive "dead zone", I am saying we take action. Get better at writing. Get better at coding. Get better. That's the main point. We have to Get Better. Somehow this must be achieved because a thousand "thrown-together" articles won't help, yet one hundred quality articles will. Sorry if this is a confusing post, but here I'll sum it up:

I hope you all can handle these things, and to do it you can continue making your fan games, but just try to improve 10 articles instead of making 10 new ones. That is a short-term goal that I think we all can handle, and so I leave off with that. 19:46, 2 February 2012 (EST)
 * We need to improve all of our writing and coding, presenting things in a unique way
 * We need to have less better-quality articles than more bad-quality articles
 * We need to find a better way to promote the users' more "creative" things
 * We need more traffic
 * We need to become active to do all of this
 * An active community is more likely to spawn new users and more creative content, at the same time prompting other sites to want to promote our work

Agreed

Activity
Hey there guys, it's Drigibug313. I've noticed recently that a lot of users have became less active over the past few months. Heck, Cheepy-Cheepy has practically dropped off the face of the earth. I think that this could be because of one of two issues. One, it may just be because people have become less interested in th Pikmin series. And two, it may be because of the fact that most of our users now have school, and they dont have time to use the wiki. I have also become less active recently, but I promise that I will start being more active, and I'll help out as much as I can.

And with Pikmin 3, there's always hope.

Let me have may say in this... I am very sorry I have not been here much. A couple reasons I'd like to say why; one being I have some big projects in school going on, and two, I am out of the ideas for the moment. When I first began my fan-game, I had a lot of ideas that I had not yet transported here to Pikmin Fanon. And since now I have done that, my brain has stopped producing ideas. I need an a sudden spark of ideas to zap my brain... simply known as inspiration. Although I have been thinking about the plotline of future games very thoroughly. If it has to come to it, I will force myself to think about ideas, no matter the quality. Of course I can improve those ideas, though it may take awhile, as ideas are like sprouts, and as they grow up, they turn into an tree of ideas that spawn many more ideas and so forth.

Another thing about this I'd like to address is how enticing Pikmin Fanon is. The Main Page, is, well, the Main Page, but its featured articles/images/Pikmin have gotten...boring. We should probably change those so they are "refreshed", as I would like to call it, maybe once every week or every two weeks. Adding onto this, it has been a close to a year since I proposed that we improve all the low-quality articles into nice, clean pages. On the Site Notice, Wraith wrote this: "Happy New Year everyone! Our new year's resolution is to achieve the 2,000 article count, good luck editors!" This actually may help Pikmin Fanon! We need a big, prosperous wiki. The bigger it is, the more people will know about it. And how will it get bigger? If everyone works together.

Again, I'm sorry I don't edit as much as I used to. However I do check occasionally to see if a vandal has arrived so if you want to see me I'll probably be on once every other day.

I agree with both Drigibug313 and PikminFanatic23. I, too have enormous amounts of homework. I will try to be online and be a more frequent user here, so. And one more thing, let's keep our fingers crossed for Pikmin 3!

I am very pleased and glad to see all of this initiative! Please keep up the good work as we build up more great content on this fair wiki. And I will not stress enough that we need to scout for any creative Pikmin-followers. On the web, in real life, in family life, just please help us endorse the name of Pikmin Fanon.

I have a really good idea that is we make a pikmin fanon game on roblox and make a pikmin fanon group in roblox.

I have an idea, but you can just shoot it down (graciously) if you think that it is bad. Someone could post a challenge in the main page news that challenges editors to contribute in some small way at least three times a day. I am personally resolving to do this.

Summer
Well, it is now obviously summer, so where are all the new users? Last summer we got quite a few new users who were actively participating in making their new fan games. However, those users have disappeared. I think they have truly disappeared, despite sometimes showing up and making claims that "they will be here more often". Sure, it is the beginning of summer, but come on, Pikmin 3 was shown a month ago at E3! You'd think it'd cause some users to show up, but, honestly, I think during that time frame little to no new users created accounts, and an even smaller portion of those users actually made edits. Sir Pikmin and Wraith, you are both right about how these dark times will stay until Pikmin 3 will come and lift us out of this dark era.

At the end of the summer, Pikmin Fanon will have been independent for two entire years. During our almost-to-be-two-years of independence, well, I think activity has declined slowly. (I don't just think it, it has; look at the Recent Changes.) When Pikmin 3 comes out, which, by my estimates could be as far away as February 2013, Pikmin Fanon will be close to being two and a half years old. So closer to right now, lets hope that more users will show up. Young, fresh and creative minds that will show up that can add quality pages to our barren wiki. This statement does not mean we do not have quality pages; what I'm saying is we need new pages. New pages for readers to read on. They will be able to keep us satisfied until Pikmin 3 comes out, where we will most likely see tons of new gameplay. When this happens, users will be able to manipulate the new gameplay and create new games, ideas, etc.

I have recently proposed a new template for buttons, but, like Wraith said, is it really worth it if nobody edits here anymore? Sure, there's a few users who may or may not enjoy the change, but what the hey, at least it keeps me us occupied. Right now, we are basically tweaking the wiki so it will have a suitable format for the new users later on in the summer, and even later in the year. Who wants to edit on a poorly managed, trashy-looking dumpster of a wiki? Nobody does. So lets keep trying to fix up little typos and things like that. They will serve a good role model for the new users. (Think of the new users!)

Ok, so I'm going to try to wrap up this long, drawn out section. So yeah, it's summer now, so some users should show up. Activity should spike a bit, if not moderately. Pikmin 3 is this wiki's hope as it will provide double benefits: one, more popularity, and two, new forms of gameplay for users to use. During this time, we are trying to fix up the wiki as there is nothing else really to do. Users will hopefully see the wiki and how good-looking it is so they'll want to create an account.

So, to everyone as a general message: Keep on editing!

I'm very sorry about not showing up, but I am really exited to start editing my game now that it's summer! And I can't wait for Pikmin 3 to come out! Sorry, once again.

No problem at all! I'm glad that you are so willing to edit here!

Actually, I have to disagree. We've gotten 3 new users this month, and in June we got a whopping 14 new users (not counting the former LordPikmin's new account)! What's surprised me is the lack of a welcoming to these new users! I've been busy for most of the summer, but every time I manage get on here there are several new users that have not been welcomed yet and more often then not a couple forum questions by new users that nobody has bothered to answer! Many of the users haven't come back to this site because they failed to receive a response in time. The only time the new users do seem to have new messages is if they have been doing something wrong. If this wiki really is dying, then it's our fault.

Well... I don't really welcome users until they start editing, because I don't want to give a vandal knowledge to important pages they could potentially vandalise. Also, I don't think a lot of these users have... potential, IMO. So I don't really consider them "users" unless if they edit. So if they don't edit, then it's like they never really exist. I only count the users who do edit, and I know last summer we did get a bunch of these active users, but not really this summer. But again, this is my opinion. I suppose I can welcome users more than I used to, if it'll help - but wait - I'm on that ban from editing user talk pages, so... Gotta get more mainspace edits! I can, however, edit the forums, so I will try to respond to any new topics that pop up.


 * Let's agree to disagree. All users have potential. You just need to be nice to them and help them, and don't go banning if they vandalize on accident because they don't know what they're doing.

Facebook Publicity?
I agree that there isn't as much activity on this sight as there could be. I personally enjoy this wiki very much, and I would not be happy if this whole wiki dies. Don't lose hope, as there is a page for us on Facebook. If you have an account, "like" that page. And I agree that this is probably a calm before the storm, and I think there will be flood-in of ideas about new games.

I think that some new users might have been scared away by all the complexity of this place. I sure was when I first came here. I encourage experienced users to be helpers to the newer editers. This place has a great chance for people, old and young alike, to come and exercise their creativity. We just have to work to keep it alive!