Lit Wookieepedia, the Star Wars wiki

For all we know, he is a beard.

 

Well, a talking beard.

 

It is telling that a proposal to switch from IRC to Discord was stopped dead after the recent fiasco.

On a related note, nothing has been done about a myriad of blocks issued by the runaway admins either: Toprawa's last ever block of NaruHina still stands. As a noted author of not-"The Winds of Winter" wrote: The Seed Is Strong. No effort has been made to actually have an introspective into what having a white supremacist as the Senior Admin/Beaureacrat for 15 years has done to the site. Unless the current policies, systems and ongoing permablocks implemented by those two remain unchanged, the site will continue to be the opposite of a user-friendly place.

 

There are plans in motion to retire IRC and make Discord the site's official chat room, with some members of the administration brainstorming how we might address the issues that were brought up in the CT by myself and other users with IRC's outright retirement at this point in time. IRC is basically dead as it is (we currently only use it for Mofferences, article review stuff, and WookieeProjects, despite Discord being treated as a secondary option by current policy), and pretty much everything else is done on Discord now. This is just a situation where a user created a CT on an issue that was already in the process of being tackled by some higher-ups, which is why it was closed down so quickly.

 

"in the process of being tackled by some higher-ups" sounds pretty microcosmic of exactly what's wrong with the IRC channel. Why isn't it a public Senate Hall discussion? Why are only members of the administration brainstorming about it? Getting the general editorship in on things at the ground floor is one of the changes that needs to be made in a post-Tope Wookieepedia.

 

The Chimaera and Pellaeon are a great example of things not being the same. In Legends, Pellaeon served on the Chimaera basically his entire Imperial career and Thrawn didn't take command of it until after returning from the Unknown Regions, shortly before Tatooine Ghost/Heir to the Empire. Now the Chimaera is Thrawn's ISD for his whole career and Pellaeon is off on some other ship (and probably got killed by space whales).

 

He could be a member of a species that somehow resembles a human's beard. Or simply a species called the beards. Stranger things have happened!

 

I have an interesting idea: Pellaeon made it to an escape pod as the Harbinger went down in orbit and was later rescued, ending up on the Imperial II-class Chimaera that fought and survived Endor.

 

I mean, official statements already say he didn't die when the whales wrecked Thrawn's fleet.

 

Worth noting that @Immi Thrax withdrew the proposal herself (unless I'm misreading it or they just flat-out lied) after learning about some of the complications involved. I agree that whatever debate happens going forward should be as public as possible but I don't read this as quite the same as what was happening before last week.

 

Well, it MAY be another Chimaera - but yeah, the idea too, of Pellaeon being a more junior officer on the Chimaera always feels odd, especially after True Colors and No Prisoners (Traviss-verse) and all that time in command roles. Guess he kept being sidelined for his attitude or record, maybe?

Also, is there any Legends articles on Wookieepedia that need expanding or updating, particularly post Endor? I'd be happy to contribute. A few corrections may be useful too (for instance, I disagree on Empire at War being set around 6 months pre Yavin - I think that's more a literal take on the in-game day clock or something?) For me, it works better covering more of a year and a half, with a timejump post Carida mission, say.

 

Exactly-- I realized "whoa there!!! This is a bigger discussion than I realized!" and requested the closure to give it more time. As pointed out, even though it's been discussed on Discord, not every editor uses Discord, and thus this proposal comes out of nowhere to them. Intent is to re-open a SH for community-wide discussion but... well, I'm tired. I'm really, really tired. Nothing stopping another person from changing it to an SH.

Also, I joined the ranks of "everyone's first CT completely TANKS!" MILESTONE ACHIEVED!

 

Also worth noting:

It's been 4 days. It's going to take awhile to unwind things that need to be unwound. The community is not just thinking about what needs to change, but also processing the fact that many of them have just realized that they've been manipulated for years. It's important to remember the human element for Wookieepedia editors too -- they need some time to breathe and figure out what the right next steps are.

Better to do it right than to do it fast.

 

Also, there's no need to drag out the anger. They're gone, the remainder will fix it. Patience is a virtue.

 

I already addressed my Discord/IRC proposal thing, but I just want to second what Brandon said. Just because you don't see discussions taking place publicly doesn't mean they aren't happening. People are privately or in small groups processing that revelation (already knowing from experience Culator was a dick is different from discovering he's also a white supremacist they unknowingly kept company with) along with how Toprawa manipulated them for years. It takes time and support to come to terms with everything. I know that for me, it's been very helpful to share my experiences with other people instead of holding them inside.

There's a lot of instruction creep to review. Making changes won't happen instantly, but they're already beginning.

Personally, I'm delighted to have launched a project that's the exact opposite of what those two wanted. Feels reeeeaally good to not be held back, and know that the current admins support it and/or have joined it and/or have promoted it on social media.

 

At the same time, it's crucial that the remaining administration continue to be held accountable. Asking questions early is much better than never asking them at all. It would be far too easy for everyone to assume "Oh, the two worst actors are gone, everything is going to be fixed" and then go on to ignore the Wook while some of its worst aspects (decisions being made in private chat rooms rather than in the public Senate Hall, admins resting on their absurd supermajority rule to prevent progress or change) continued unabated.

Vigilance is needed, now more than ever.

 

Accountability is definitely important, as is open communication and transparency. I just want to caution against what I saw a lot of across various forums and social media in the past couple weeks, which is not distinguishing between the two worst actors and any other individual admin. Unsurprisingly, guess where a lot of the "administrative autonomy"-type policies came from? I think users and admins alike need to review the history of the systems in place now and consider the source. That'll take time and work, but it has started.
ETA:

 

Speaking of truth, published yesterday on Project Stardust:
"I Rebel": How Wookieepedia Became a Human Rights Battleground

(It's also linked on their Twitter and Instagram)

 

I only started hearing about this around the time Eleven-ThirtyEight started tweeting (and people I followed retweetd them), so that was a great read to get the context.

 

I do hope the lesson learned from this is not "Those guys were bad, so we need to keep bad guys away." but more "allowing individuals to accrue huge amounts of power with little to no oversight is inherently dangerous and should not be allowed". This finally came to a messy conclusion when it intersected with transgender issues. But in reality, it could have been any number of things (and in fact, I'm surprised it didn't occur earlier).

Wookieepedia needs to ensure admins work on a collegial basis, ensure no one has supreme power and most of all, ensure that the exercise of power is transparent! Decisions need to be proposed, debated and voted on in publically accessible pages, not in shadowy back-room IRC or discord chat rooms.

 

I can't believe I spent almost an hour trying to figure out what all the drama over at Wookiepedia was about, and it all came down some artist wanting to update his page with his current name. And some people got angry for reasons I'm still confused by because there is literally no reason anyone should be angry at this.

Regardless of anyones views or opinions, an artist's chosen/current name should ALWAYS come first so they can be RIGHTFULLY credited for their work.

 

If it was anything less controversial/political no one in the larger community would have noticed. If the admins were abusing their power over something like, say, whether or not to consider FFG material canon or who merits inclusion in the "Commanders" section of a battle page or whether Howlrunner in ESBFACPOV is Cive Rashon, Fandom wouldn't have stepped in and no one outside of a handful of nerds would have even cared. There certainly wouldn't be articles written about it.

 

Going back to the FFG stuff, yeah I think it should be treated the same way as Galaxy of Heroes. The canon stuff is canon, the legends stuff isn't.
There should be a unique disclaimer box at the top of those kind of pages basically saying that.

 

Well, it's been nearly two weeks. I made this. Let's see how it goes.