User blog:Makaveli./Houston, We Have a Problem (Again It Seems)

Hi there, I am Frank Zhang. The vast majority of you don't know me, since I've only been here for about 5 days. I've got something to say about the problems with chat and IRC and the like. How do I know so much about this already? Well, it seems to be the hot topic here, I was informed very fast. Before you write this blog off just cause I'm new, know this: I am a bureaucrat of two wikis, admin on another, and rollback/chat mod on my home wiki and your affiliate Camp Half-Blood Wiki. I know when wikis have issues and this wiki sure falls into that category. So first, the admins decide to shut down the chat because of large problems with fights, flame wars, and policy-breaking. There is good reasoning behind it, new people might get a bad impression of this wiki right away from getting on the chat in the middle of a fight or something. So the switch to the IRC is made. Hey guess what? That created more problems. Users are leaving the site by the boatload in protest of the change. The IRC is more difficult to navigate, there are new things to learn about it, and it looks plain weird. I mean, the entry to it isn't easy either. There are times where is is practically impossible to read the captcha to enter. The IRC does solve the sockpuppet, spam, and fight issues, but it is pretty unpopular. It may be only here for a month as a trial, but a lot of people are impatient. Back to chat now. Why was this decision made in the first place? My educated guess is this: too few chat mods there to enforce the rules and ban users. There was a time that I was on chat and not a single user with a star was on there. Kind of troubling huh? So what is the solution now? Here's what I think: I understand because of the popularity of the series and the movie coming out, you have a lot of new, inexperienced users that know nothing about wiki etiquette coming on here to soak in The Hunger Games information. I'll leave that up to the admins to decide how to deal with them, but there needs to be a campaign to teach these users some manners and get them to read the chat policy before connecting.
 * Pull the plug on the IRC and switch back to chat immediately. It's killing the user base on here fast. Do you really want people to leave the wiki over chat?
 * Once back on chat, increase mods by a lot. You might say that there are enough already. Not the case. This way, there are several users capable of kickbanning on the chat at all times to cool off fights and hand out bans if the users are causing large issues.
 * Be more strict on ban lengths and rules enforcement. I'm not saying to shove the policy down people's throats, but don't be a softie and let things slip by either. If a policy is broken, kick that user for a day or a week at least! 1-12 hour bans are pathetic. Rule breakers need to be taught their lesson. And if a mod is being too lax and letting problems happen, remove them from their post right away and appoint a new person.

You may disagree with me, and that's fine, I'm only speaking my mind and suggesting some things here. If you read this post up to this point, thank you very much for your time. Hopefully this wiki can clean up and become a stable, peaceful place like I heard it once was.

Frank Zhang  ~It's all good in the hood man  01:01, May 3, 2012 (UTC)

The opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the writer's