Post by SpaceManiac888 on Jun 14, 2021 11:20:17 GMT
Hey all,
Recently, I was speaking with SenaUW about a problem I feel Lost Media Wiki is experiencing as its gets ever larger.
I love this Wiki, but one of the main problems is that it can be rather difficult to navigate towards relevant articles one is interested in. Say for example, you are a fan of lost BBC media like myself. The problem is that some of these relevant articles are very tough to properly access, as very few, if any, articles link to them. Hence, there are probably still some lost BBC television articles I haven't gotten around to reading simply because they are not visible enough on the Wiki. They are effectively known as "orphans" (Wikipedia page about the problem), and serve no useful purpose in "building the web".
Additionally, other articles suffer from what is known as the "walled garden" effect (Wikipedia essay explaining this issue). Take the KaBlam! articles for instance, which have a See Also section that only link to one another (As seen here). What if someone wanted to find out more about other Nickelodeon media? Not exactly the most helpful, right?
Now, I know someone will say "use the categories...", but here in lies the problem: The categories are becoming severely bloated. Lost TV is especially so, because as of writing this, 1,155 articles are categorised under it! I like reading about lost media, but I am probably not the only one who isn't interested in every single program that has lost television media. One has to sift through so much filler before they are able to navigate towards something that are actually interested in. For casual users, this isn't great, and I think a solution is needed.
So, how about a bunch of navboxes that place relevant media with each other? An example comes from another Wiki I regularly edit, the Robot Wars Wiki. Our navboxes mean that even the least known competitors on the show have articles that can be linked to and from each other from various other articles (Our Series 7 competitor list, for instance). Essentially, no article is left prone to never being read nor edited by anyone, because they are just too visible to be forgotten.
The same solution can be implemented on the Lost Media Wiki. Take the KaBlam! example earlier. If a Nickelodeon lost media navbox was created, people would be able to easily access KaBlam! articles after visiting a Spongebob article, or ICarly, or Invader Zim, just to name a few fellow Nickelodeon shows with lost media. All of sudden, every single Nickelodeon article has greater traffic, because they are far easier to access. Heck, you could improve things further by sub-categorising, listing lost Nickelodeon movies in one section, lost TV in another, lost video games, and so forth.
Hopefully, you folks will support this. As much as I love the Wiki, I fear that overtime, a lot of these articles are going to be forgotten without enough outcoming and incoming links. Any way of improving visibility will help tackle this, and who knows, might allow for these articles to be improved or even add more people to be on the hunt for lost media. What do you folks think?
Recently, I was speaking with SenaUW about a problem I feel Lost Media Wiki is experiencing as its gets ever larger.
I love this Wiki, but one of the main problems is that it can be rather difficult to navigate towards relevant articles one is interested in. Say for example, you are a fan of lost BBC media like myself. The problem is that some of these relevant articles are very tough to properly access, as very few, if any, articles link to them. Hence, there are probably still some lost BBC television articles I haven't gotten around to reading simply because they are not visible enough on the Wiki. They are effectively known as "orphans" (Wikipedia page about the problem), and serve no useful purpose in "building the web".
Additionally, other articles suffer from what is known as the "walled garden" effect (Wikipedia essay explaining this issue). Take the KaBlam! articles for instance, which have a See Also section that only link to one another (As seen here). What if someone wanted to find out more about other Nickelodeon media? Not exactly the most helpful, right?
Now, I know someone will say "use the categories...", but here in lies the problem: The categories are becoming severely bloated. Lost TV is especially so, because as of writing this, 1,155 articles are categorised under it! I like reading about lost media, but I am probably not the only one who isn't interested in every single program that has lost television media. One has to sift through so much filler before they are able to navigate towards something that are actually interested in. For casual users, this isn't great, and I think a solution is needed.
So, how about a bunch of navboxes that place relevant media with each other? An example comes from another Wiki I regularly edit, the Robot Wars Wiki. Our navboxes mean that even the least known competitors on the show have articles that can be linked to and from each other from various other articles (Our Series 7 competitor list, for instance). Essentially, no article is left prone to never being read nor edited by anyone, because they are just too visible to be forgotten.
The same solution can be implemented on the Lost Media Wiki. Take the KaBlam! example earlier. If a Nickelodeon lost media navbox was created, people would be able to easily access KaBlam! articles after visiting a Spongebob article, or ICarly, or Invader Zim, just to name a few fellow Nickelodeon shows with lost media. All of sudden, every single Nickelodeon article has greater traffic, because they are far easier to access. Heck, you could improve things further by sub-categorising, listing lost Nickelodeon movies in one section, lost TV in another, lost video games, and so forth.
Hopefully, you folks will support this. As much as I love the Wiki, I fear that overtime, a lot of these articles are going to be forgotten without enough outcoming and incoming links. Any way of improving visibility will help tackle this, and who knows, might allow for these articles to be improved or even add more people to be on the hunt for lost media. What do you folks think?
