Pixar Cars Wiki:Proposals

Welcome to the hub for proposals. This section of the wiki allows users to share their ideas for potential changes to the wiki and look for consensus in approving them. The goal of this feature is to promote collaboration as a community and ensure that all World of Cars Wiki users have a say in important wiki decisions.

Process

1. If you have an idea you would like to suggest, you may create a proposal by adding a topic under the "Active proposals" heading. Proposals can cover any articles and spaces. As the proposer, you must provide both an explanation of what your proposal consists of as well as a compelling argument to justify why it should be passed.
2. Once a Proposal has been created, the voting period begins. Users have one week to declare whether they Support or Oppose the given proposal. This can be done by signing your username under either the "Support" or "Oppose" sections respectively, accompanied by an explanation of why you feel the way you do. All users can debate and discuss with one another in the "Discussion" heading.
3. In certain cases, the Support or Oppose dichotomy may not do a discussion justice. Sometimes there are more options. In these sorts of situations, you can offer your opinion in multiple sections, so long as your selections do not contradict one another.
4. After the week-long period ends, the final result is determined by which section had the most names signed. If the majority of users chose to Support the proposal, it indicates consensus, and the change may now be implemented. If more users chose to Oppose, the changes will not be put into effect.
5. In the event of a tie, the voting period will be extended an additional week.
6. Once completed, the result of the proposal will be logged at the bottom of this article, and an archive of its voting process will be catalogued here.

Rules

1. Proposals must provide a detailed explanation of the intended change, as well as a mock-up or draft of what the change would look like in effect.
2. You must choose to Support or Oppose, not both. In discussions with many options, you can sometimes pick more than one option, but make sure your answers are not contradictory.
3. While you are free to explain yourself however they like, you may not edit any comments that are not your own. The only situation in which a comment should be edited or removed is by an administrator in the event that the comment violates any of the site rules.
4. All comments must stay on topic.
5. While there are no limits or requirements for the lengths of comments, explanations should be as clear and concise as possible. Do not reply with sarcasm or "jokes" that do not reflect your true thoughts.
6. Proposals are all about discussing changes to the wiki. They are not a way to rally for community projects. For instance, an idea like "Upload screenshots for Cars: Radiator Springs Adventures" is not a valid proposal. These sorts of discussions are better had in the Forum.
7. Please be respectful. It is perfectly fine, even encouraged, to debate, but arguments should be kept formal and not personal. Remember: Don't be a jerk.

Active proposals

Disable the achievements system

Hello everyone, this week I would like to propose to disable the achievements system. If you do not know, Fandom offers achievements as one of many widgets available for use, and our wiki has utilized it for a very long time. When you reach certain milestones, such as editing a specified number of pages or adding a specified number of photos, you get an achievement awarding you an amount of points. The more achievements you earn, the higher your points total grows, and the twenty users who have the most points are displayed on a leaderboard.

However, there are many problems I have with this system, many of them stemming from the fact that it goes against the philosophy of a wiki. First and foremost, editing is not a game. When you contribute to our site, your goal should be to help build the best Cars encyclopedia possible, not work towards arbitrary goals that earn you points on a leaderboard. Your sole motivation for editing an article should be to improve it. Article improvement is the end, not the means.

The next problem is that the actions that earn you badges are not in any way proportional to what is actually helpful to maintain our site. For one thing, the mainspace is the only namespace for which edits count toward the badge counts. This means that the file, template, talk, and special spaces (among others) do not provide any kind of reward for editing them, despite being extremely important and needing just as much work. For instance, we have an absurd number of files that are uncategorized or do not display the proper license information. Contributing to those pages would be a massive help, but they would earn you absolutely no points for badges. That defeats the purpose.

On the other side of things, actions like adding categories and photos are highly rewarded, despite not always being useful. We don't need categories that have five articles each, or a frame-by-frame gallery of a movie scene. In our wiki's history, we have had countless people who make hundreds of edits adding unnecessary categories and duplicate photos to articles, presumably for the sake of earning points. Even if they are not directly motivated by that, it is ridiculous that they are rewarded for doing so.

When I was younger, I myself fell into the trap of trying to rank up my leaderboard score as much as possible, so I know how fun it is to watch your points go up. However, I can assure you, as a long-time administrator, that quality is far more important than quantity. You don't need to be number one on a leaderboard to be a valued member of our community!

In short, the disproportionality of usefulness versus reward, as well as the sheer number of users we have seen fall into this trap over the years, makes the feature an active nuisance for the wiki. I think disabling it would be for the best. RodRedlineM1 (talk) 20:29, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Proposer: RodRedlineM1 (talk)
Deadline: Wednesday, May 12, 2021, 23:59 EST

Support

• RodRedlineM1 (talk) – Per proposal.

Completed proposals

Proposal	Voting Period	Proposer	Result	Effect
Decide how to organize character articles	April 17–April 24, 2021	RodRedlineM1	PASSED!	We will use an out-of-universe style of writing, using present tense, when writing character articles.
Decide how to organize character infoboxes	April 27–May 4, 2021	RodRedlineM1	PASSED!	We will be using the classic character infobox template with some additional parameters on character articles.