Recently BlueFrackle stated that he would be interested in having article comments on the wiki. As I am strongly against it, I am here to provide the cons while he will provide the pros for you.
My list of cons:
- Hard to follow conversations. Exactly what it sounds like, conversations previously discussed may be accidentally discussed again. Without topics on the comments, it's painful to wade through dozens of comments to find what I'm looking for.
- Unprofessional. In Wikia Staff's recent string of "social site" releases, they have been making what is supposed to be a specific online encyclopedia into a social site. This is not facebook, this is wikia.
- It makes admins and bureaucrats seem like average users. Admins always had a sense of authority to them, whenever interjecting into talk page conversations you could feel a presence of power. People respected admins. The article comments take away that respect and replace it with a sense of "chummyness". Not to say admins shouldn't be friendly with the community, but we have reputations as wiki leaders to keep up. As a particular bureaucratical person I like to keep up the wiki to a certain standard.
- Less editing, more commenting. This applies to newer users especially. People will be more concerned with commenting than contributing. I would like quality users at this wiki, not quantity.
I rest my case, again refer to BlueFrackle for the pros.