In under one week's time the affiliation between Nukapedia and the Strategic Nuclear Moose ( http://www.strategicnuclearmoose.com/ ) will end and must be reconfirmed by the community for another six months of affiliation.
On Nukapedia we have sister sites and affiliate sites. The sister sites are directly relating to the Fallout universe, as an example the "Wasteland" wiki is one of our sister sites. Affiliate sites are sites that are linked to our wiki in the capacity of relatable topics (Bethesda games, Post-Apocalyptia fandom, PnP gaming, et al) or community.
Affiliates and Sister wikis are mutually exclusive links between communities; from a Nukapedia perspective, these links exist to expand and support our core mission by covering areas outside of our normal scope. If a site is not providing towards the Nukapedia mission, then, although we may have personal interests for the other site, it would not be suitable as a partner site.
At the end of the last vote on sister and affiliate sites of Nukapedia ( Forum:Vote:_New_affiliate_sites#Results ) affiliates were given six months for their affiliation length before being submitted to the community again for review.
The Strategic Nuclear Moose is currently (for the remainder of this week) an affiliate site. This forum will be used to discuss the upcoming vote at the end of the week. The community vote will take place to legitimise the affiliation of the Strategic Nuclear Moose, however, due to original wording there was no clear decision on whether this vote will result in a permanant affiliation or a recurring six month review, thus it is recommended that its length of affiliation should also be discussed here.
This forum is only a supplementary discussion and has no weight on the vote.
Comments
I think we need to be looking in any analysis at things like Traffic, and how the features of the Moose support our function. Its not required to have both - many of the sisters are almost dead, but they do perform a function that is not covered in the main wiki; conversely if there was a gain from the wiki in some other way - such as a traffic gain, it could be beneficial to be an affiliate even without some specific feature or direction, and I encourage the Moose staff to detail how they think they meet this.
However from what appears to be visible, I'm not seeing any supporting function or traffic that would warrant continuation at the moment. However, even at the moment this doesn't have to be the end... if there is a detailed plan that can be measured against to imminently add some sort of supporting function a "stay" of affiliate status might be warranted, obviously with continued status based on meeting the expected milestones. Agent c (talk) 01:10, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
This down-time affects both sites. When traffic picks up again the affiliation will produce more visible benefits. Nonetheless, it is still perfectly fine right now and I have not convinced that the affiliation should not be renewed. --Skire (talk) 01:17, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
I guess I need to make clear what the relationship is between the Moose and Nukapedia:
1. I did not start the affiliation because the Strategic Nuclear Moose needs Nukapedia. I started the affiliation, so that our communities could compliment each other, and so we could mutually benefit each other in small ways.
2. We have held up our end of the deal, with many offers. These offers include, but are not necessarily limited to:
- Sharing news from Nukapedia should we be asked.
- Providing news over projects that need help, should we be asked.
- Providing Twitch streams for Bethesda/Fallout related games. We have fulfilled this already by streaming Wolfenstein on Nukapedia, and we also have plans on creating streams for The Evil Within, and Wasteland II.
- As an affiliate, we recommend all of our Patrons to Nukapedia, as a source of knowledge.
- We have provided an alternative chat-room for when Wikia's chat-room feature goes down, or becomes overly buggy.
- Soon, we will be bringing many community features to Nukapedia, which were originally hosted back when we were a blog series. This includes the weekly/monthly challenges, community interviews, Ask Marcus, game/mod reviews should our community writers give permission, as well as secondary Twitch streams and Let's Players.
3. I also mention point 2, because I am not under the belief that we have little or nothing to offer, when we have offered quite a bit, with much more in the works, while Nukapedia has hardly done anything for us outside of social media help. I am not saying this to be passive-aggressive: like I said, I want our communities to compliment each other, with no pressure from either side - just helping each other when either of us are needed/useful. But it still needs to be made clear that an affiliation takes work from both parties, and we have been upholding our part.
I hope the community still wants to have us as an affiliate, as we have some big features in the works. We did go under a short hiatus for about 2 months due to a myriad of reasons (mostly involving work and college/university for us), but we are now back and active in a big way. If there is anything the Nukapedian community wants to see from us, or something they would like for us to improve upon or scrap altogether, please do not hesitate to let us know. We are always open to criticism and feedback, especially from the community we were born from. Thank you for reading. 
Some Assembly Required! 01:21, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
1. At the start of the affiliation, there really wasn't a Moose community, it was well understood you were in startup mode. I would be interested to see what figures this stands at now, what the rate of growth has been.
2.
- Sharing news/projects - For this to be a benefit to us there needs to be a substantial audience we don't already reach. Is there such an audience?
- Twitch Streams - We do have our own (neglected) stream, TEW and Wolfenstein arent part of our core competence. Wasteland 2 is, and we have streamed the Beta.
- Recommending as a source of Knowledge - again, there needs to be an substancial untapped audience for this to be seen as a feature.
- Alternative Chat room - I'll not comment on that, as I havent used it.
- Bringing back community features to Nukapedia - What do you mean by "back to Nukapedia", are they Moose features, or are they going to be here?
3. At the moment, the help on Nukapedia primarily exists of advertising space on the front page, and use of the Talk pages to relay your newsletter, that much is true. We've had basically no communication back as to what you've expected beyond this.
Agent c (talk) 01:54, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
1. A good question, and one I would actually love to share: before we went under a short hiatus for a little under 2 months, we were, on average, hitting 200-250 unique hits a day. Like I mentioned in the last SNM Sentinel, we can compare this to the most unique hits NMA has ever gotten in a day, which is around 900. Our hiatus hit our numbers pretty good, but we are already catching up quickly, with around 30-60 unique hits a day.
2.
- Yes. Not only do we have unique Patrons (currently more now than Nukapedian Patrons), but we also have a substantially different social media audience.
- I do not really see how that affects our Twitch streams. We offer entertainment, which is relevant to the wiki, and that is what matters.
- As mentioned in the first bullet, we have a unique community that is not solely, or even majorly made up of Nukapedian Patrons. With our numbers on average getting up to, before our short hiatus, to almost 300 unique hits a day, we can most assuredly boast that our news will reach a decent audience.
- That is at the fault of Nukapedia. Not only have we found a way to bring the chat to Nukapedia, in which our offer was ignored, but then, other chat-rooms are consistently advertised over ours. It took us actually having to directly mention that our chat was an official alternative, to get a notice in a recent blog when our chat-room was temporarily shut down here at Nukapedia. However, many Nukapedians have and are using our chat-rooms. Our different set of rules have been especially effective.
- They are going to be here. Some of them unique, some of the shared.
3. Like I mentioned - we do not need Nukapedia. Nor do we expect anything from Nukapedia. The reason I bring this up, is because we are upholding our affiliation by doing things for Nukapedia. It can never be claimed that we offer no benefits towards Nukapedia, as currently we do much more than Nukapedia. This should not have to be brought up, and I know that sounds passive-aggressive, because both of our communities should not have to feel pressured. The whole point of our affiliation was just to compliment each other in small ways. Not to keep having to do more and more and more for each other - especially if it ever gets to the point when only one party is having to live up to those expectations. Some Assembly Required! 02:05, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
If we're comparing SNM to the Moose. Alexia has a ranking for NMA (290,338), about 9.7% of their visitors come from Wikia, and they have over 500 sites linking into them.... The SNM has no Alexia Ranking, and the only category they have enough data on is the number of sites linking in... 3 - Us, Gamepedia, and the service's host Enjin. Agent c (talk) 02:23, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
- We are not comparing the Moose to NMA - I am only giving an example that our unique hits are actually pretty high for a community site that has only been active for less than 2 years, with the only comparison made, is that we are hitting a rather large portion of unique hits compared to other similar communities, which have been alive for a dozen years or more. It is unfair to bring up rankings and affiliate links, seeing as in how young we are. That is essentially raising the bar to unrealistic standards that we cannot possibly hope to meet for years. Some Assembly Required! 02:25, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
- Also, it needs to be pointed out that your affiliation data is incorrect to a rather large degree. We also have quite a few links through multiple other sources, such as Planet Minecraft, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and a few others, with a rather interesting affiliation deal currently in the works with Reddit. In no way are we only affiliated with, or linked to, from those 3 mediums.
Some Assembly Required! 02:40, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
My Data is direct from Alexia, and is only included as you compared your page views to NMA, to continue the comparison you started (and then disowned). Agent c (talk) 03:12, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
- I disown nothing. Our unique views were hitting rather high numbers, which all of us have been very proud of. Especially when we were hitting numbers so high, after only being 5-6 months active (I never did anything with the site during the first year, and has only been active for around 8-9 months now), compared to the largest community sites that were similar to us, which have been active for years. Some Assembly Required! 03:19, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
I'd like to point out some of my future plans that I have been attempting to work on on my end as an admin to be transparent into some of my goals. Right now, my main focus has been gaining more "viewers," so to speak. We do currently have a pretty sizable amount of daily hits at Leon mentioned earlier, being close to 300 a few months ago. The break we had from active content and updates has damaged our active hits, but they are recovering. I have been working on my end to increase users by promoting us viraly, mainly through the use of Twitter (This is somewhat evident in the confusion the other day with the SSB mixup). I have also been trying to look into getting affiliated with Reddit, either through the /r/Fallout moderators or by offering services for Reddit Gold users. I have also been trying to plan out a user referral system where people can get benefits for referring a friend. While the Reddit part is still quite a ways away, if it does go through it would see not only a large turnover for the Moose, but here of course by extension. Currently, the only one of those I have really been working on has been gaining a larger Twitterbase, and have gone from 12 followers, I believe to 64 followers at the time of writing this, over just two nights. Some of these people have shown indication of having visited our site. If we keep growing just through those means alone, I believe that over the next 6 months we will have a sizable userbase, higher than we even had before. - Chris 
03:22, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
From what I've come to generally understand from this forum and various talk page messages, the jury is out on the nature of the review.
Supposedly the BCs had discussed and intended for six months to be a trial period in case SNM had died and that a review is just a supplemental action in case it did. At the same time, the nature of the review was unspecified and the verdict rationale was based on then-current circumstances.
I was wondering from the wording of this forum whether or not the community was interested in renewing SNM for another review later. I personally see no issue with this should the community decide to hold it to a vote as I feel it's well within their power. Should there be no objections, I propose that a yes/no vote should be held for another review alongside the yes/no vote for our continued affiliation with SNM. Should the former result in a yes but the second no, perhaps a re-affiliation could be considered in place of a review?
Let me know how this sounds to you. --The Ever Ruler (talk) 20:28, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
- Even though that was not the original deal made, I am perfectly fine with the community making an overall decision again, as personally, I feel that the community here needs to make both decisions anyways. The only real question I have, is over why we should be treated differently, when considering our other affiliates/sister sites. We have proven ourselves as offering a rather large amount of beneficial features, with a growing and sizable community unique and separate from Nukapedia's. So when that is taken into account, it seems rather tedious to me to have a review every 6 months, when no one else has to undergo that sort of constant scrutiny. Some Assembly Required! 20:38, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
- In all honesty I'm not entirely sure, in the verdict of the affiliation forum the RP wiki was designated as a sister wiki and SNM was referred to as an affiliate site with only the latter being subjected to a 6-month period which would follow with some sort of review.
- The community may raise a forum of renewal for any sister site just as they could raise a vote for this review when none is technically required. I figured that such a vote was going to be in order based on the wording of the opening paragraph and that a proposed way to handle it could avoid confusion should someone in the community generate enough approval to go through with it.
- Why single-out the SNM if that's the case though? I'm not certain. To guess, it could perhaps be because it was the only one with a review imposed upon it and people didn't feel obligated to hold any other site to it, or maybe perhaps the recent miscommunication about the SSB tournament generated some doubt.
- I trust our administration will handle it regardless. Also, I'm now curious as to what the others involved in the original deal have to say about the review. They would likely handle this review better than I could. --The Ever Ruler (talk) 23:43, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
- I went back and re-read the emails to make sure I correctly recalled the reasoning behind the 6 month review. The 6 month review was only for the affiliate site, not the sister wiki. In none of the emails does it state anything about "The reason for the review is due to the fact that if the site dies of in 6 months for no apparent reason (I really don't see that happening) we do not have a banner that links to a non-existent site". Clyde added that himself to the results, I believe, in an attempt to give at least one example of why (perhaps from his perspective) we might need to review this at a later date. That is not the only reason any of us had to review it. There was a legitimate concern that we were going to get nothing in return for placing a banner on the front page. So, I'm here to ask: What have we gotten in return? Any editors that migrated here after joining there? I don't know how many link clicks we've gotten, but let's face it: We generate all the link clicks we need on our own. Our search results always come up first for just about anything.
- As it stands now, we have a large banner on our front page for them. They have us listed on a separate "affiliates" page, not on the front. I recall our general attitude toward this whole thing was: I don't see what the benefit to us is here, but I don't oppose it. Let's run with this for 6 months and see how it goes. I still don't see what the benefit to us is. At the very least, we should move the banner off the front page and place it in a similar position as our link is over there. I personally would like to see the community vote again on whether they still want the affiliation. And we certainly need to make sure something like what happened with the improper use of our name being in association with anything they do without prior approval never happens again. The Gunny 23:57, September 24, 2014 (UTC)
- I am not going to reiterate upon our benefits, seeing as in how both Chris and I have made it very clear already as to what we have done for this wiki, and what we plan on doing for the wiki soon. And then there is the question as to why so many expectations are being forced on us, when Nukapedia hardly ever does anything for us in return? I mentioned earlier that our affiliation was mutual, and I stick by that. This whole logic that we owe Nukapedia for becoming affiliated is preposterous, as neither of us ultimately need each other. We are simply affiliated to mutually benefit each other as a single community entity which co-existed long before the affiliation was ever considered, as well as to become a general extension upon Nukapedia in which to replace NMA, which we have been seen doing much more for the wiki than they ever had, which is exactly what the community agreed upon when voting yes. Some Assembly Required! 00:00, September 25, 2014 (UTC)
- I am not going to reiterate upon our benefits, seeing as in how both Chris and I have made it very clear already as to what we have done for this wiki, and what we plan on doing for the wiki soon. And then there is the question as to why so many expectations are being forced on us, when Nukapedia hardly ever does anything for us in return? I mentioned earlier that our affiliation was mutual, and I stick by that. This whole logic that we owe Nukapedia for becoming affiliated is preposterous, as neither of us ultimately need each other. We are simply affiliated to mutually benefit each other as a single community entity which co-existed long before the affiliation was ever considered, as well as to become a general extension upon Nukapedia in which to replace NMA, which we have been seen doing much more for the wiki than they ever had, which is exactly what the community agreed upon when voting yes.
- As it stands now, we have a large banner on our front page for them. They have us listed on a separate "affiliates" page, not on the front. I recall our general attitude toward this whole thing was: I don't see what the benefit to us is here, but I don't oppose it. Let's run with this for 6 months and see how it goes. I still don't see what the benefit to us is. At the very least, we should move the banner off the front page and place it in a similar position as our link is over there. I personally would like to see the community vote again on whether they still want the affiliation. And we certainly need to make sure something like what happened with the improper use of our name being in association with anything they do without prior approval never happens again. The Gunny
Leon, I will not stand for intimidation from you or anyone else on this wiki. If someone says something you feel is incorrect, correct the record. Do not demand that your critics be silent simply because you do not like what you have to say. Agent c (talk) 00:58, September 25, 2014 (UTC)
Banner Discussion (The Gunny)
There seems to be a bit of unrest over a detail at the Strategic Nuclear Moose, and I figure we should discuss it personally. The concern I am hearing is that you and perhaps a few others are not happy over the fact that we do not have a Nukapedia banner on our front-page. It needs to be understood, when taking this matter into account, that like most websites, we dedicate a single and very public page towards affiliate websites and communities. Our affiliation page is not hidden, it is not a sub-tab/page, and it is not a page that you have to hunt down. The link to it can be found on 98% of our pages, and is right there in our top-navigation bar, as a main-tab, which means the link to that page is essentially in all of our Patrons' faces when they access our site.
We are hesitant to add banners onto the front-page, because our website is strictly against advertisement of any sort, except through very well defined pages, so that our Patrons will not feel betrayed in that we are shoving external sources down their throats. If there is a solution or compromise that we can come to, then I am more than happy to discuss matters with the offended parties. However, please keep in mind that I still feel as if our affiliate main-page is more than fair, especially in light of the fact that our affiliate banner is located at the near the very bottom of the front-page here on Nukapedia. So those that come to Nukapedia, will only see our banner if they happen to visit the main-page, and then only if they scroll all the way to the bottom.
On our website, all affiliation information over Nukapedia can be located on every page except certain maintenance pages. Please let me know your thoughts on the matter, as I am hoping to put this matter behind us so that we may move on. Some Assembly Required! 00:21, September 25, 2014 (UTC)
- Leon posted on my talk page ( I have no idea why, since I brought it up here, so I'll keep the discussion here) that his site can not place front page banners on it. I'm cool with that. Rules are rules. I propose that we immediately remove the front page banner here and add a level 3 nav menu link to affiliated sites. That way we are both linking to each other in the same manner. Is anyone opposed to this? The Gunny 00:29, September 25, 2014 (UTC)
- You are making stuff up. Please excuse yourself from this discussion if you are going to ignore what I said to you, and fabricate what I said instead. Some Assembly Required! 00:31, September 25, 2014 (UTC)
- You are making stuff up. Please excuse yourself from this discussion if you are going to ignore what I said to you, and fabricate what I said instead.
- Seeing as in how he just blatantly lied, in an exceptionally transparent display of vindictiveness, I am fully within my rights to ask for him to excuse himself, since he is dangerously close to starting a user conflict, which is against our rules. Not only did I tell him that we are willing to discuss this matter, and possibly even come up with a compromise, but then he just lied by saying that we have our affiliate information hidden between a level 3 nav menu link.
- My message to Gunny has been posted here verbatim. It is exceptionally clear what he just lied about, and I will not stand for it on a forum that is supposed to be civil. Some Assembly Required! 00:36, September 25, 2014 (UTC)
- My message to Gunny has been posted here verbatim. It is exceptionally clear what he just lied about, and I will not stand for it on a forum that is supposed to be civil.
- I did not say you linked to us through a level 3 nav link. I said we would link to you that way. That way we both link to each other from the nav menu that is on every single page. Perhaps you misunderstood me? The Gunny 00:46, September 25, 2014 (UTC)
- I did not say you linked to us through a level 3 nav link. I said we would link to you that way. That way we both link to each other from the nav menu that is on every single page. Perhaps you misunderstood me? The Gunny
- "...that his site can not place front page banners on it." - A lie. As seen in my message to you, I clearly stated that while we are strongly against ads, that we were still willing to talk about it to try and find a solution or compromise. My exact quote:
- "If there is a solution or compromise that we can come to, then I am more than happy to discuss matters with the offended parties."
- "I propose that we immediately remove the front page banner here and add a level 3 nav menu link to affiliated sites. That way we are both linking to each other in the same manner." - I misunderstood nothing. You clearly said in that adding our information through a 3-nav menu, would reflect upon how we treat Nukapedia's information on our site.
I have nothing further to say to you until you become more civil towards both me and Chris (yes, I know about that, too). If you choose to fabricate information and/or my words again, I will be asking for a neutral admin to step in. Some Assembly Required! 00:51, September 25, 2014 (UTC)
Twitter Surge
Someting I'm reposting here after raising it in Chat... I've noticed some anaomolies with the SNM feed.
In the past couple of days, the SNM feed has had a surge of followers. Both related accounts have gone from 3-4 dozen, to several hundred each.
A surge of course isnt a big deal, we had a surge with the Erik Dellums interview.
However, this surge seems to be coming from what Chris has confirmed in chat to be Random Follows. This can be seen by the virial increase in the number of accounts they follow - randomly following accounts to hope for a follow back.
We can see some of the quality of the accounts that are following back here:
An Indie Hip Hop station (@yessurrFM); "Followers Central" (@GainFastNow); 100% Followback (@Mantaray1977); Follow Back (@EasyFollowers); and the last one I think the twitter name speaks for itself: @StripClubHookup.
This isn't a random sampling, its a few that I've curated to highlight the problems with this strategy. It seems to be a play for numbers, without worrying about the quality of the followers, and thus the actual interest in what we have to say.
Nukapedia in contrast has 1430 followers. Our policy, whilst not 100% adhered to is to follow people who have, or are liekly to say something about Fallout, we follow a whole 58 accounts. Not the Hundreds that the Moose have followed to build numbers.
Our numbers have grown organically, from people seeing our message, and wanting more, not in a reciprocal follow without much interest.
Having a lot of followers is good.
Having a number of followers who are actually interested in what you have to say, and engage is better.
Having a lot of followers who are not interest at all is pointless unless you're playing a pure numbers game. Its not an effiective strategy to communicate with an interested audience. Agent c (talk) 00:57, September 25, 2014 (UTC)