User blog:Notdn/Proposal: Goofballs will save the wiki

The wiki is in a pretty bad state right now. Users are getting into petty, pointless arguments, morale is at an all-time low, and less and less people are enjoying writing actual fanfiction. What could possibly save this wiki from its inevitable downfall?

That's right. Goofballs.

For those of you who joined too late to hear the announcement of Goofballs, it would have been a feature-length film that followed seven then-admins of the wiki through a real-world representation of the events that happened in late 2013, including many bureaucrats getting globally blocked by Wikia and setting up shop on another wiki host. It also would have acted as a sort of history lesson for new users as a way of warning them what would happen if these actions were repeated -- we certainly didn't need more users getting globally blocked.

But because Goofballs never actually came to fruition... exactly that happened. More global blocks.

Of course, some of these were warranted. Very recently, a user was blocked for creating sockpuppets to support their own request for chat moderator -- this is obviously their own fault, and not really something we can prevent. But other blocks since the announcement of Goofballs have been because of a simple ignorance to the Terms of Use, something most users don't even bother to read, so people who have been blocked probably didn't even know what they did was wrong.

That's exactly what happened to the users the characters in the film would have represented. They broke rules they didn't even know were in place.

Writing, making and releasing Goofballs would ultimately prevent global blocks like these, even if just to make users aware that there even is a Terms of Use with very clearly stated rules, as well as show what would happen if those rules were to be broken, regardless of how stupid or pointless the user thinks they are. But obviously I can't make an entire feature-length movie on my own -- that's something I probably should have realized a long time ago -- and that's where I need help from you guys. If this proposal passes, I'll accept sign-ups for literally any role -- you can help write, animate, voice-act, edit, or do anything else you want to do to help the film get made. In the wiki's current state, this film is almost a necessity to save the ever-dying community, so I'm asking that you help in any way you can.


 * 1) Goofballs20XX

(SRA2 is also still a thing maybe someday)