Forum:A Few Suggestions for the Voting Center

First off, allow me to acknowledge the success of the changes made several months ago to the voting system. The set periods for nominationss and voting have achieved exactly what they were meant to, allowing a variety of candidates when voting rolls around. That being said, there's a few more things I'd like to address in regards to the Voting Center.

First off, I propose we remove the Featured Trivia section of the main page. As I see it, trivia is neither a substantial enough aspect of the wiki nor one with enough interest to sustain a spot on the main page. A trivia section is an optional part of an article, and is merely a collection of footnotes about the article's content. Often there is nothing to merit a trivia section on an article, but one is added anyways presumably for the sake of producing trivia for the main page. It makes more sense for trivia to simply be considered as part of the equation in the Featured Article category, rather than its own. More significantly, it does not attract significant attention from the userbase. The last Featured Trivia vote to have more than two nominations was in November of last year. The past two sessions have seen a total of three votes for Featured Trivia a each, and the session before that there was a total of one. Overall I would say there is adequate enough reason to remove it.

Secondly, I request a change to policy prohibiting self-nominations for Featured User. Of the four current nominees for Featured User, three are self nominations. When voting started this session, there were SEVEN self-nominations. And this is not a first time incident. Back in December there was a similar bout of self nominations (five out of six). While in neither case did these nominations affect the votes and were more satirical in nature than anything else, they do clog the Featured user section and set a generally bad example. Until recently there was an unspoken rule against self-nominations, but as that seems to no longer be the case, it may be prudent to at last speak it.

Lastly, I propose we limit Featured Quotes to actual quotes from released stories, articles and blogs. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the verb quote as "to repeat (something written or said by another person) exactly." While I suppose this is a bit of nitpicking on my part, I suggest we add a small condition to the Featured Quote section requiring all nominations be actual quotations from released stories, articles or blogs. This way we are actually featuring content that can be found on the wiki on the main page. This is, after all, the goal of our Featured Content sections.

While none of these are problems, per say, they are areas in which a few minor changes could be made to improve the Voting Center in the near future.