Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5797509-20131120204716/@comment-3271569-20131121002223

An short history lesson:

I was active on this wikia on the day it was created and back than we worked with an manual system.

The problem was that the manual information was vandalist faster than we could create it. We endup with spending 99% of our time reverting edits and an lot of our general information became lost in the process.

This first team that managed this wikia exist out 4 staff members. They couldn't handle the vandalisme and they quit and left an vandalised wikia.

The second team that existed out more than 6 people couldn't handle the vandalisme and left and left an vandalised wikia.

Finaly I decide to take over the wikia solo since back than the entire wikia was dead and started coding a database secured behind bars so when users add information it couldn't get vandalised anymore. This database we known now as Template:Data/Dragons that currently still gives an global acces to all dragon information listed on this wikia.

From that moment whe where finaly ready to manage an community that can be refreshed in the process without ending with an vandalised wikia. I add some remaining users to admin and the system still works.

With the database under construction whe where fighting against the remaining vandalisme and where forced to ip secure 60% of our pages. The risk was to high an vandalisme so we searched for systems that could handle these problems. This way we slowly end with more and more templates to handle the data. Dragon city release about 1 dragon/week so we continue working with these things. Finaly we end like any other heavy updated wikia where the community is the focus and it works.

How you move or turn it. The wikia has never looked better than before. With more time to actualy discussing the structure, lay-out and rules the wikia can be kept alive and is able to handle the heavy update flow that social point is putting in this game. So far whe are the only site that actualy can keep the data up-to-date. All other survived sites still struggle with this.

@Wintermelon43: When you say people don't have an free edit. That's the point where you are wrong. Whe keep track of our updates in the forum that's always open for suggestions. If you have an idea that you can to show visualy you always can post it in your sandbox. An personal page that people mostly forget in these situations: Special:Mypage/Sandbox.

When it comes to html an lot of visualy option will always require some html. That's the reason why I'm trying to focus more on scripting so our users have less problems with this. The visual editor is basicly impossible to support in the current state since the support is so limited it will break on every time that is higher that an certain amount of bytes.

When it comes to grammar I can say it's not my field. My grammar is horrible and that's the reason why I was never intended to handle the community in the first place. My field is coding that I still try todo if I have time left.

When it comes to badges, honnestly I don't find earning badges an reason to edite. On most main wikias it's even turned off because it brengs to many vandalisme on pages. The badge system is broken anyway. I believe I'm listed first in the badges history when it's purely because I worked in sandboxes to test out the new templates. Besides people still earn edits on the forum (community) and by adding trivia and updating usefull pictures. If their is something outdate on the wikia and someone notice it he report it on the forum (= 1 edit) so people still earn the same amount of edits when their active on the wikia. You also still can earn adding categories even if their automated. If you edit and page the wikia system check if these automated categories are confirmed in the system. If not you recieve edits from all those automated categories. So active edite still rewards the same way as before. The differents is that you actualy have to make an edit to get the same rewards for it. If you correct some grammar you get rewarded for it. It's an good system ones you understand how we implement it in the wikia.

If you look to all the progress whe made in this yeah it's really massive:
 * New Infobox
 * Structure update on pages
 * Tutorial pages
 * Page Reworks (and planned page reworks)

And offcourse their is still an lot of new stuff planned for the future like:
 * Translation project
 * Another Infobox Rework
 * Tools (eggs overview, island builder, etc)
 * Homepage rework (pc & mobile)
 * Forum rework
 * etc...

Things like this where never possible if we still worked with an manualy system.

Btw currently I believe their are still +/-10 vandals banned every day. In the old days this was arround the 50/day...