Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24133975-20141230033116/@comment-7697305-20150102042902

Squazzil wrote: Not only is the colored names a "perk", but it is a useful way for me to be able to more quickly scan pages for my name in places like the recent activity and any other place the colored name would appear whenever i make a comment. Sometimes I want to go back and check my edit or comment for various reasons, and this is a handy way to do so. As a side note: this is something which could be done via personal CSS, either here only or globally. This would be done by editing Special:Mypage/wikia.css or w:Special:Mypage/global.css and adding something like the following to it: In reference to the IRC discussion, I don't agree with the opinion that these additions to a promotion are behind any motivations to be promoted. Are there any examples of this occuring? Do you know for a fact that this is what other people on the internet are thinking, or is this a reflection of your own beliefs that people desire the added responsibility strictly for the "perks"? If someone wants to be promoted for the "wrong" reasons, it is more likely because they want the powers that go with it such as being able to kick/ban in chat, or the other abilities that come with higher titles.

Having your name change to a different color is merely a neat little addition and in many cases a helpful tool as you navigate the wiki. I'm sure during the selection process, the admins can tell who is suited to take on the extra responsibility, and who wants it just for the perks and powers. Speaking for myself, I didn't accept the role as Chat mod because I would get a differently colored name, but I don't think it is right to take this feature away from the existing staff who I'm sure are all here for the "right" reasons. I don't see the harm at all in having some "fun" elements to a wiki, things that bring a smile to the face of someone who has worked hard here and devotes a lot of time here. This brings to mind the "perks" of badges. It was a nice way to reward someone for their hard work and hours of time spent trying to improve the wiki. This feature however, was easily abused and ruined it for those that edited for the right reasons, and not just to farm badges.

I would like to know how having your name a different color can be "abused" or used in a negative way, because I don't see it. It just feels like any fun elements to editing and being promoted, and chatting casually among fellow gamers are being taken away. Maybe we should remove all emotes and just stick to text emotes, because people may get a kick out of spamming Mario heads. I was actually never trying to use people potentially wanting rights solely for the aesthetic perks that come with them as a reason to remove colored usernames. Looking back through the IRC log, I believe there were quite a few posts like this one: [20:09] Oscuritaforze  The idea, I feel, is to make it so that people can tell at a glance who they should go to for help while also not giving the impression that you get a shiny badge for being given additional rights. ...which gave that impression, and for that I apologize.

It was also not my intention to imply that the username highlights are being somehow "abused" in any way.

Instead, I was suggesting that there seems to be too much of an emphasis on hierarchy (of user rights, social status, or whatever else) on the wiki, and that removing username highlights could go some small way towards counteracting this trend. In retrospect, though, I think I was a bit remiss in putting that suggestion forward in the first place, as it may have been a bit too hopeful to expect these changes to have the desired effect, especially when all user groups wouldn't be affected.

Instead, I think directly addressing the aforementioned trend in a blog post or highlighted thread would be a better idea.

Lastly, this is an element that is used without a problem across all of Wikia, not just this wikia page. Even out in the real working world, there are little perks added to higher positions, to make it a bit more enjoyable to work there and to keep staff motivated to stay. We are contributing to these wikia pages for free, spending hours of our time improving pages for a business that doesn't pay us to do so. So I think the least they can do for our efforts is encorporate some perks and things to make it a more fun and rewarding experience (above the satisfaction of knowing you are making a positive change to an online community.) I'm sure Wikia staff would like people to stick around,try to raise up through the ranks, and continue to add traffic to the pages. These little elements help to do that. 652Graystripe said: Particularly the comment highlights, as it lets people know in the common encounters who's who, but there's not really much purpose in pointing at a link and saying "There. That is a staff member." My original idea actually sorta incorporated this kind of thinking into it, in that all user groups would be given comment highlights and forum tags. That was dropped per the minimalistic approach of the second part of this post, though.