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NIWA Discussion / My thoughts on NIWA
« on: November 13, 2010, 03:28:28 AM »
I've been following NIWA since it launched and thought it was an interesting idea. Now that I've seen how much its grown in the past year I thought I'd share some of my thoughts.
First I feel too many wikis are joining NIWA and they don't offer much, if NIWA will allow any Nintendo wiki as long as its independent then I guess its ok but lets look at the quality of the "Founding" wikis. Bulbapedia, Mariowiki, and Zeldawiki are extensive encyclopedias of said franchises. You look at some of the other ones and they are severely lacking. Now I realize that Pokemon/Mario/Zelda are Nintendo's Big 3 franchises that have the biggest audience/content/fandom as reasons of them being so big, heck I list them in that order since Zeldawiki as great as it is doesn't have the level of content as Bulbapedia or even Mariowiki. I mean I do hope NIWA would allow the other wikis to eventually grow as right now many of them consist of mostly stubs and not a lot of content. I think before joining they should have a certain amount of content. Like most here I'm a Nintendo fanboy and would love to have say a Kid Icarus wiki but if there just isn't a fandom or content to support it then it maybe shouldn't be its own independent wiki until it is if not NIWA will end up being just 3 big wikis with a bunch of mostly dead wikis.
Now my main reason for this topic is as of right now all NIWA is just a glorified affiliate links section. I believe NIWA can be so much more. Theres quite a bit of overlapping articles between all the NIWA wikis, pretty much all of them besides the franchise that doesn't have a N64 game all have an article about Nintendo 64 and other examples like that one without even counting the overlapping from that Smash Bros causes. NIWA should really be a network and not just an affiliate link system with a fancy name. I think all wikis should be linking to each other for those articles, I noticed just a few seconds ago that Bulbapedia is already doing this, if you search for Mario/Link/Kirby etc it re-directs you to those respective wikis. All other wikis should be doing the same redirecting or at the very least give a direct link with "For more information on X go here". Only problems I'd see is some Smash Bros stuff and Donkey Kong since it wouldn't be fair to Mariowiki to give up their hard work on their DK articles.
Anyways I also think NIWA should start its own wiki on this website, it'd be a general wiki about Nintendo which would include articles on all their systems and other franchises. This way all the NIWA wikis could link to that wikis article on N64 instead of all of them having their own. It would also give other Nintendo franchises a chance at being on a independent wiki, I'm talking about smaller franchises like Wave Race and Pilotwings and even bigger ones like F-Zero and Kid Icarus. They are awesome franchises but really aren't big enough to carry their own wiki, and if they ever did they could always branch out of NIWA if say Kid Icarus makes a Metroid like comeback.
Anyways those are just my thoughts/suggestions on what I think NIWA should be heading for, I think NIWA is a great idea and it'd be awesome to have an extensive all-Nintendo Encyclopedia online through joint wikis. I'd love to be help NIWA beyond editing articles in the future since it'd be nice to see NIWA grow.
First I feel too many wikis are joining NIWA and they don't offer much, if NIWA will allow any Nintendo wiki as long as its independent then I guess its ok but lets look at the quality of the "Founding" wikis. Bulbapedia, Mariowiki, and Zeldawiki are extensive encyclopedias of said franchises. You look at some of the other ones and they are severely lacking. Now I realize that Pokemon/Mario/Zelda are Nintendo's Big 3 franchises that have the biggest audience/content/fandom as reasons of them being so big, heck I list them in that order since Zeldawiki as great as it is doesn't have the level of content as Bulbapedia or even Mariowiki. I mean I do hope NIWA would allow the other wikis to eventually grow as right now many of them consist of mostly stubs and not a lot of content. I think before joining they should have a certain amount of content. Like most here I'm a Nintendo fanboy and would love to have say a Kid Icarus wiki but if there just isn't a fandom or content to support it then it maybe shouldn't be its own independent wiki until it is if not NIWA will end up being just 3 big wikis with a bunch of mostly dead wikis.
Now my main reason for this topic is as of right now all NIWA is just a glorified affiliate links section. I believe NIWA can be so much more. Theres quite a bit of overlapping articles between all the NIWA wikis, pretty much all of them besides the franchise that doesn't have a N64 game all have an article about Nintendo 64 and other examples like that one without even counting the overlapping from that Smash Bros causes. NIWA should really be a network and not just an affiliate link system with a fancy name. I think all wikis should be linking to each other for those articles, I noticed just a few seconds ago that Bulbapedia is already doing this, if you search for Mario/Link/Kirby etc it re-directs you to those respective wikis. All other wikis should be doing the same redirecting or at the very least give a direct link with "For more information on X go here". Only problems I'd see is some Smash Bros stuff and Donkey Kong since it wouldn't be fair to Mariowiki to give up their hard work on their DK articles.
Anyways I also think NIWA should start its own wiki on this website, it'd be a general wiki about Nintendo which would include articles on all their systems and other franchises. This way all the NIWA wikis could link to that wikis article on N64 instead of all of them having their own. It would also give other Nintendo franchises a chance at being on a independent wiki, I'm talking about smaller franchises like Wave Race and Pilotwings and even bigger ones like F-Zero and Kid Icarus. They are awesome franchises but really aren't big enough to carry their own wiki, and if they ever did they could always branch out of NIWA if say Kid Icarus makes a Metroid like comeback.
Anyways those are just my thoughts/suggestions on what I think NIWA should be heading for, I think NIWA is a great idea and it'd be awesome to have an extensive all-Nintendo Encyclopedia online through joint wikis. I'd love to be help NIWA beyond editing articles in the future since it'd be nice to see NIWA grow.