User:GreenReaper/Featured wiki/Creatures


 * This is an archived featured blurb from Wikicities, later known as Wikia.

Creatures Wiki

 * This wiki was featured on February 21, 2005.

I'm going to be bold and nominate Creatures Wiki. --GreenReaper([ talk]) 01:38, 15 Feb 2005 (GMT)

Creatures Wiki was founded just before the New Year. Since then it has grown in both contributors and article count - currently it is the clear leader in both, excluding Memory Alpha which has over a year's head start ;-) - and is on track to pass 1000 articles by the end of the month. Creatures Wiki is also highly ranked in search engines and Alexa ratings.

This is all despite relying on a community which is dwindling - the company that made the Creatures games was liquidated almost two years ago, although the memory is being kept alive by their successor, who has repackaged the best of the games.

Techniques used to achieve this
 * A moderate amount of seed posting (~300 articles)
 * Enticing news postings emphasising community involvement on all relevant sites
 * Extensive advertisement in related forums (including other languages - many fine edits have come from German users, one of whom became Wikicities' 500th user, but they would probably not even have heard of the Wiki without being specifically addressed)
 * These forum posts have provided most of our hits. They allow you to expand on all the cool things that have been added recently and get people looking at them.
 * You must keep your threads active by providing links to new content every now and again - eventually you will get other people talking about it as well and so users will continue to look at your links.
 * Remember that most smaller forums do not have nofollow on yet and so you will be "voting for yourself" in search engines as well by posting them - this is probably one reason that Creatures Wiki comes first in MSN search.
 * Don't forget to ask people to link to you - preferably after you've just shown them something interesting to make your Wikicity worth linking!
 * Addition of the Creatures Wiki to the Open Directory Project (which is mirrored by many sites)
 * Appropriate use of CSS modifications, especially subtle image changes to emphasise the site's Creatures theme. As the users are mostly young this is particularly important (most Creatures sites are highly graphical) and further changes are planned in this direction.
 * Related to the above, adding lots of images to brighten up the pages - the Creatures Wiki is also the leader in image links, and has an extensive breed images category.
 * Creation of a Firefox/Mozilla/Safari search plugin (prominently placed on the front page) - I don't think this actually helped much, but it's cool ;-).
 * Talking about the Wiki in game-related chat rooms.
 * This extended to modifying the community's predominant chat client to support Wiki Syntax for links.
 * Adopting Wikipedia policies and guidelines in most instances, and relying on their extensive experience in user management to deflect conflict away from articles and towards consensus.
 * Involving the community by explicitly rejecting Wikipedia's stance against Vanity pages (since describing the community is an objective of the Wiki), allowing users' first edits to be something that they know best - themselves. These can be moved or split into user pages later. Several users have created such pages and subsequently edited many other articles.

All of the above have contributed to a wiki which is already proving to be a useful, informative and fun tool for the community it covers - an excellent example of what a Wikicity can become. --GreenReaper([ talk])

Support

 * 1) I support the nomination. I played Creatures when it first came out - it's an interesting game, though it didn't captivate me for very long. It's nice to see that a community still exists around it, and I think the effort that has gone into this wiki reflects well on Wikicities as a whole. I would also like to thank GreenReaper for his good advice on community building, which should be required reading for any Wikicities founder.--Eloquence 13:18, 15 Feb 2005 (GMT)
 * 2) I support this nomination.  It has a very good start and is appropriate to be a showcase wiki.  JamesTeterenko 06:30, 17 Feb 2005 (GMT)
 * 3) Ditto. "In The Beginning" ... the Peace Elements Wiki had the numbers as there was a great flurry of activity and rapid expansion. But we have no specific focus and are trying to appeal to a very wide audience. We are feeling our way as we go. We are novices. I find the Creatures Wiki to be inspirational. In addition, GreenReaper is open to sharing his knowledge and skill with any and all who inquire. Creatures certainly gets my nod. Using Creatures as an example of what can be done, I think all of our Wikicities will benefit. Kudos. BTW ... I may just have to find a copy of Creatures 3 and become One of you. ;)  14:12, 17 Feb 2005 (GMT)
 * 4) You can get Creatures Exodus, which is both Creatures 3 and Docking Station. :-) --
 * 5) Although both this and WikiMac had three supporting votes, I chose to feature this one since it has developed a far larger community than WikiMac so far. Angela 01:03, 22 Feb 2005 (GMT)
 * Also gives us more time. --DavidFeng 06:11, 22 Feb 2005 (GMT)