User blog:SSWerty/Wiki Business

Hello everyone. Swetty here today with a couple of propositions.

A few matters have come to my mind recently, and I wish to have a community discussion about them, as opposed to just an admin chat. Before we get started, this isn't about any personal matters or anything, just in case you were wondering, these are simply ideas which I think could potentially attract new users and help make our site a little more respectable.

Our Main Page
Okay, I know I've said this plenty of times and all, but I think we need to work on the main page.

It's looking okay at the moment, not bad, but not particularly great either. I'm really of the opinion that we need to do something with it, even if it's just a simple format change.

I am of the opinion that we need to change the background colour. I absolutely hate the orange. I wouldn't mind what it was changed to, just so long as it wasn't so ugly. Similarly, I don't know if this is mutual, but whenever I look upon the main page, I get this feeling that we are unorganized, as the MP seems a little messy, out of place.

Now, I leave this down to community consensus.

Should we rework the main page, and if so, in what way shall we do it? What should we change, what should we keep, what should we just downright remove?

Our 'Attitude'
This is a subjective term, I know, and could be misinterpreted the wrong way. By this, I mean how our wiki appears to outsiders.

Occasionally, we do get the new frequent user. But, at the rate we're going, we get about ten every six months. And half of them leave within the next few months. Of course, that is not entirely accurate, but that is the image I get. And so, I propose we think about the following ideas in order to keep these new users and attract more:

Have a contest, or something similar every month. This helps integrate new users into the wiki and gives us a more friendly demeanour

Have a 'mascot'. A very subjective term that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. This can mean a fanon, user, motto, anything that makes us seem fun and appealing

A system where we vote for the article of the month, maybe a user of the month, anything that gets users to read and have a look at some of our articles (our good ones) so they can get a sense of what our standards are like, or what we want them to be.

More community discussions. Meaningful ones, as opposed to the silly talks we have about reviews and the like, ideas that involve the whole community

Talk to our new users more. Be more friendly, and give them friendly pointers. Don't take this personally, but an image I occasionally see is that we can be rather hostile to our users, new and veteran alike. If, and again this is just something I've seen a couple of times, we can give helpful and friendly pointers to our new users, as opposed to reading their work and trashing on it, we can start to form some great authors and really lift our standards up here.

Have a newsletter every month. Again, this could be modified in several ways but if we could have a regular newsletter, or something similar, we would appear much more appealing. Our previous attempts have failed, but if we really try it should be easy to maintain.

And so, I leave you the question to answer.

How should we welcome new users, and integrate them into our site?

What are your thoughts?
I am very interested and looking forward to hearing the response to this. I am very much of the opinion that we should come together as one great wiki, regardless of whether one is a good author or not, regardless of whether one isn't interested in Dragon Ball much.

If you have any ideas, feel free to post them.