Forum:Removing article comments

Hello everyone. I know this may not appeal to a lot of people at first, but please hear me out and listen as to why I want article comments feature removed from the wiki.

First and foremost, I want to address the effect that article comments have on everyone. When one is browsing through the wiki, these comments are able to be viewed at the bottom of every page related to anything in the game. The content of these comments can range from spam, vandalism, and vulgar language to legitimate questions or concerns that people express. However, most of them tend to live up to their names: just plain old comments. Overall they tend to deviate from the content of the article, sometimes being so different and out of place, one can only wonder why they were even posted there. That is one of the problems that I am seeing with these article comments -- their content pulls away from the content of the article itself, making even the most professional article appear to be nothing special.

Second, these comments seem to affect the ability to patrol edits. This concerns more on the administrative side, but the effects can be applied to everyone. "Patrolling" is a tool used by admins to filter through all the edits made to the wiki. Marking an edit as patrolled results in the removal of that edit from the list of edits that have yet to be reviewed. This allows us to go through each edit and easily find/revert vandalism. It also allows us to see which edits have not yet been reviewed, so we can ensure that all edits are covered. However, the article comments seem to be disabling our ability to patrol edits made to the main namespace (everything about Tekkit). Furthermore, the comments mark themselves as able to be patrolled; in reality, nothing can be done to actually patrol these comments. This leaves us admins with just a list of comments that cannot be shortened. So here lies my other problem with article comments -- they remove the ability of admins to effectively review edits.

Third and final, I want to address what exactly we will be reverting to if the article comments feature is removed. Instead of comments, we would be using Talk pages, a separate page designated for the discussion of each article. These are not able to be viewed when simply browsing content; the talk page must be opened to view anything on it. I am promoting the usage of these instead because, like the other edits, these have the ability to be patrolled, which means the admins can go through the list and effectively review each one. They are also much easier to maintain, and replies to removed comments can be kept, unlike the current system which deletes all replies if the parent comment is deleted. Like articles, their content can be broken off into sections, allowing discussions of the same type able to be clumped into one space. Overall, talk pages triumph article comments in their much more suitable ability to organize and maintain conversations.

I now ask each of you your opinions on this matter. I wish to know what you think and where you stand. All of you. Anyone, registered or not, can post on here because it affects you all. Please tell me whether we should keep the article comments feature or not and explain your reason why. I would like to hear strong reasons as well, as they tell me what you truly believe. I thank you for reading this and, if you do, replying to this. You participation is very much appreciated. -- The Exterminator  ( talk &bull;  email  &bull;  contribs )  17:50, October 7, 2012 (UTC)

Possible positions:
 * Keep -- keep article comments
 * Remove -- remove article comments
 * Neutral -- not sure about standing or have not decided yet

When formatting your response, please have it reflect the following style: Position: Reason for position. Signature

As an example, it should turn out like this: Neutral: I'm really not sure. ExampleUser (wall) 17:50, October 7, 2012 (UTC)

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Discussion
Remove: As per my reasons above. -- The Exterminator  ( talk &bull;  email  &bull;  contribs )  17:50, October 7, 2012 (UTC)