Lit Wookieepedia, the Star Wars wiki

It's just a Wiki, though. I get that people can get depressed by something like that, but it's still just a wiki. Think of it as carmic justice when the EU was reset. After all those years posting articles, over 90 % just got invalidated in a moment. There is some schadenfreude to be had.

Pretty much the impression several people have had, based on his comments to new editors. I think he's even banned a few admins once he "tired of them".

 

In all fairness, that's the way the banning process works -- if you're banned, you can't keep editing the site anyway while you're banned.

The real problem is the way the banning process is used. The mindset among the administration is not welcoming of contribution, and it is especially not tolerant of mistakes or aberration from the standard that they've defined. Rather, the mindset is more that the users are a problem -- that Wookieepedia exists as a playground for the select, who have been deemed worthy by proving their editing talents and supporting the administration's policies, to make Wookieepedia perfect. Allowing any old yahoo off the street to come in and try to add something or make some improvements without knowing the rules, The Way Things Are Done, is a massive annoyance to them. And god forbid these people should disagree with them about How It Should Be. And as a result, they're far too likely to ban people who violate the rules or make themselves a nuisance, rather than trying to educate them in a welcoming way or just shrug and move on. Because if you're new, if you're not established, you're an obnoxious peon and probably a troll, vandal, or imbecile. They immediately jump to the negative far too often.

In part, this is an extension of inherent issues in the wiki model -- how do you enforce the rules when the entire internet can edit your site without having any idea what the rules are? When you have to deal with thousands of edits, how do you keep the patience to try to deal with each person nicely rather than just going through and dismissing every problematic edit as the result of a problematic editor? How do you quality-control the writing on a site open to the entire internet when half of the internet is completely illiterate? How do you keep your policies strong when your rulemaking is the result of direct democracy? (Really, would you want your site to be governed by the votes of YouTube commentors?) These are issues that are hard to deal with, and I know that we struggled with them in the early days of Wookieepedia. The roots of what went wrong are back in the good old days, too, inherent in the system. The problem is that those issues have spiraled way, way out of control and created a super-insular, hostile administration that's forced out anybody who tried to moderate the system, thanks to the personal issues of a few personnel who were able to manipulate the system to entrench themselves in power. Because, yes, they don't care about anybody but themselves, or about anything but amassing as much power for themselves as possible so they can make the site their own personal little fiefdom. And the site and the users have suffered for it.

 

These days, I spent very little time doing actual edits, and hours reverting atrocious contributions (people who can barely write their mother tongue) and vandalism (someone just told me "**** you, you hispanic ****" just because I wouldn't let him write "Penis Palpatine" into the articles or blank said articles entirely).

(To be honest, although that guy obviously meant to offend me, I'm quite amused by the fact he would call a French-speaking, blue-eyed, pasty-skinned Belgian like me a Hispanic.)

 

The other day I came across this bit from the behind the scenes section of the Doctor Who wiki article on Romana II:

It made me laugh to imagine what it would take for Wookieepedia to adopt something that was as common sense as this. Instead the article would be named something like "Unnumbered Romanadvoratrelundar incarnation (post-Key to Time)" with the BTS section saying "Fans commonly refer to this incarnation as Romana II but as it is not said on-screen it is fanon."

 

And yet, the Tardis Core wikia refuses to count sourcebooks as valid sources, despite the wealth of information they represent... while still incorporating BBV productions as dubious as Zygon: When Being You Just Isn't Enough. ;-) It's not like it's perfect either, you see. You can't have common sense in everything. (Please note that I also edit on this wiki, though not nearly as much as on WP.)

 

Of course nothing is as bad as The Walking Dead Wiki. In the TWD comic section of it Sophia started off the comic being one year older than Carl but now she is one year younger.

 

That kind of vandalism isn't really new and has always existed. But I imagine it's probably more work for editors like you nowadays because (from what I've seen ) there aren't that many active editors around compared to, say 2008 or 2010. Back when I was still active this kind of blatant vandalism wasn't a big problem because it was easily identifiable, got reverted in a matter of minutes and there were more people around reverting such edits.

The most time consuming editors back then were either a) the people who decided that articles were too short and started adding meaningless empty phrases to prop up the word count, repeating the same information in three different one-sentence sections, and - worst of all - added pure conjecture without actually knowing anything about the article subject. I remember one guy who edited small articles about Jedi characters and added made-up information about them being trained on Coruscant under Yoda, being made Padawan and Master, etc. because that was the standard for Old Republic Jedi. Or b) the people who edited and moved articles to rename things like starship classes and other stuff from the names given to them by canon sources to conjectural titles not supported by any source, just to make the names "consistent" across the board. Didn't matter that there was no consistency in the soruce material. For some people, inconsistent article names seem to be like an itch and they just have to scratch it, even if it doesn't make anything better.

 

I think the bigger point is the general *******ness of the Wook admin, as much as I like the Wook as a resource.

It's never OK to be an *******, even if other wiki admins are.

So now we have a whole thread devoted to their *******ness.

It's out there, and it should be.

They can have good content and rules and not be *******s.

If the Wook admin don't appreciate being characterized as being *******s, they should perhaps consider not bring *******s, even when others are *******s to them.

 

Oh yeah I remember when I talked my little sister into trolling a certain page back in 2006 to say um.. something. Yeah the mods were on top of that in .2 sec.

BTW Jack Nebulax you are a beast for calling my little sister "stupid" and an "idiot". I take the blame on that.

Although she is a troll.

 

He can't hear you, he was banned years ago.

 

to be fair, Walking Dead continuity age and time passing is lose in all mediums, especially when it comes to how may days gone by. ("Time passed...sometime. Eventually." is the best you can get out of WD). Has anyone seen that Carl basically sprouted 2 feet over the course of Season 5 to Season 6 when it literally takes place over, like, a day from the S5 finale to the S6 opener?

 

True. And the problem probably arose because there was a time skip of indeterminent length (the two year time skip isn't canon).

However it does show that the people who post on the Walking Dead wiki site are definitely not communicating with eachother when they can't even get on the same page with one another about the ages of the characters.

 

The editors of Wookiepedia are FASCISTS!!! I wanted to upload a gallery of Colin Cantwell's concept art and they wouldn't let me. Also, they have a rule where you have to make 50 edits to upload an image, and they delete it if you do not follow their clear-as-mud rules.

 

People tend to use the word "fascist" quite carelessly and loosely these days.

 

Baiting is not allowed.

 

So went I back to Wookieepedia for the first time in several years for a visit and then read this thread, and all I have to say is WOW, and not in a good way. I see Tope is still a cancer to the Wookieepedia/greater Star Wars community, and that April Fool's joke from last year was terrible and a huge black mark on them. If I was still there and in an admin position, I would have fought against that horrible idea tooth and nail. I guess they should realize that running away their female admins and active contributors over the years wasn't such a good idea, because we could have prevented that nonsense.

I remember this. The trolling on that page was annoying at first, then I found it actually kind of hilarious, mainly because of Nebulax's reactions.

I sympathize with your post. I too suffered (and still do, to a certain extent) from depression and I do understand how those actions would make you feel. I'm sorry you were treated like that and made to feel like **** over something that should have been relatively benign.

/hugs

 

The jokes have gotten ridiculously mean, I think. Did Dave Filoni kill someone's dog?

 

The internet institutionalizing April Fool's Day is just full of awful in general. But there's no denying that the ones on Wookieepedia are an excellent example of how it's become an echo chamber that is not only unreceptive but downright hostile to feedback.


...Which is really missing the point of the wiki model.

Bring back the Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, I say.

 

I just want to crate a gallery of Colin Cantwell's SW artwork.

 

The problem with a printed encyclopedia is that it can never be complete unless you're willing to release addenda on a regular basis. "Complete," "ultimate" and "everything" are words you should never use in a lore book's title. "Essential" is way more honest.

 

So I've just discovered that Wookieepedia has done away with the categories that separated sentient species by name. It's a relatively minor annoyance, but I'm at a real loss as to why this was done.

(It also reminds me that there still doesn't seem to have been any attempt to create subcategories for canon articles).

 

Thanks

 

Hey, no problem man. We do what we can.

 

hey, they're gonna default the pages to Canon soon, possibly before the release of TFA, neat!

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:CT:Canon/Legends_Default_Switch?t=20151130161054