User blog:Chicken Bond/Promoting the Wiki!

We were all present when CBW hit a decline in activity earlier in 2011. We were all present when Slice announced his efforts to expand our borders to other BIONICLE communities on other sites, in an effort to draw new users to our community, and reenergize the wiki in the time when a majority of users were lounging around on blog posts or simply going inactive. Our work also brought us into the Wikia Spotlight, and for the last few months, we've been receiving an big influx of new users to our community, which is exactly what we wanted to see.

However, we cannot to take a sigh of relief or a breath of relaxation there. As you are all aware, BIONICLE is dead, and the fan communities are either dying out, or the smaller, less structured ones have died out entirely. CBW is fortunate enough to be one of those stronger communities, and we need to stay on guard in order to prevent us from slipping back into another decline. This now brings me to the topic of this blog post.

At the last staff meeting between representatives of CBW and the WMF (just in case you guys were wondering, this was Slicer's last meeting as a Bureaucrat and "unofficial site leader"), it was decided that we need to continue the expansion efforts to promote our wiki. The topic of the meeting was promotion. And that's what we want you guys to do. We still need to draw new users to the wiki to repeatedly stabilize it, and we need to do a little more than just bumping into random users and sending them our way, we need to actively promote the site. And there are numerous communities out there we can do so. YouTube is a prominent place to promote ourselves, and a good place to start is in whatever remains of the BioTube community. TheSlicer, even though gone, is still helping us out by devising a new video that will not only promote us, but WMF as well. As much as CBW needs new blood, so does the Forums. The WMF are our lifeline, our main source of communication, socialization, meeting, and discussion with the other wikis that make up the WMF family. If the Forums disappear, then we will be hit very hard. So we not only need to advertise for CBW, we also need to advertise for the WMF. They need members dearly, and its one of our responsibilities to help them out in any ways we can.

Now, this is how we get around doing it. YouTube is fairly straightforward, all you need to do is compose a video of some form which can promote CBW/WMF and request people to come. If, perhaps, you follow BIONICLE artwork on DeviantArt, try posting pictures or artwork out to promote the WMF and CBW, or like we previously have, try directing some of their artists here. MOCPages users who been quite easy to get to come here, and some of the more prominent users there are active here, so we need you guys in particular to try and bring new users here, and convince them to stay here and join the WMF. The community amongst FanFiction is a lot smaller, but still a buzzing center of activity. You can try posting your own stories there, and try and lead some of these writers over to CBW and WMF through conversation with them. All in all, CBW and WMF need as many new members as they can get. So try to convince users to come and promote the wiki through any means you can along the way.

However, this will only ever happen if you guys put commitment into this, and try to help out and promote not only for CBW but for WMF as well. It is critical we continue to get new members before any form of decline or inactivity can hit us again, and WMF needs the same remedy as well. So I really do appeal to you to try and help out the wiki community with this one. For those who will or will not, or those who wish to make a comment on this matter, please do so below.