The Giant Bomb wiki is something that I care a lot about. As someone who slips in and out of the top 100 contributors to the site, I am constantly adding images, release, dates, credits, and misc details to various games old and new. This is not some sort of grandstanding comment as it is a description of the type of 'wiki work' I contribute to the site. As someone has been doing this going on 4 years now (sheesh) it frustrates me to see things that I commented on at that time have not been changed much at all.

Sure, no one will argue that Giant Bomb as a website hasn't gone through important UI/usability changes since 2008, and that many features have been introduced that have helped users discover pages and content. However, as I remarked at the very inception of the site, I feel that the wiki aspect of the site will always been overshadowed by the obviously more important personality aspect. People go to Giant Bomb because they like listening to the guys opinions. On most other video game databases/wikis their is rarely a editorial voice. Not that I am suggesting that Giant Bomb should drop this aspect, but that I consistently wonder what the place of Giant Bomb is when websites like MobyGames clearly have a far more in-depth database. Very rarely have I gone to Giant Bomb to look up a game. Why? Because 99% of the time, that information is found elsewhere. The 'exclusive' content comes from videos and podcasts. If anything most of my activities with Giant Bomb revolve around me bringing in data/images, etc to the site. Not that I have any statistics to back this up, but I would imagine that less than half of the games listed on Giant Bomb contain images, a deck, release date, and some type of summary.

Now, what can be done about this? Obviously I can't say for sure, but as I have said before I would like for the wiki tools themselves to be overhauled quite a bit first. For power users, things like entering credits and release information could be far easier than it is. Their are also a lot of questions I still feel like have been left unanswered since day 1. What kind of voice should I write in? Where is the style guide? What is a example of a ideal page?

To their credit Giant Bomb is a far better organized and designed database than any other, but that doesn't mean it can't be better.