File:Epic_Smiley.jpg << a test
The actual number of pages which I have edited here is 3518. I tend to revise myself a lot, and I think that edit counts are meaningless.
I like the open nature of wikis. Everything public, nothing going on in secret behind closed doors. I think that everyone should be treated fairly and equally, and that admins should be bound by more rules than other users, in order to ensure they remain fair, equal and objective.
I was asked to become a Wikia Star, but since the list of Wikia Stars includes some choices I do not agree with, I decided not to associate myself with those people. Plus, the whole thing seems a bit fishy to me.
I think that all pages should be editable by all, and that locking the User_blog namespace but not locking the User namespace is stupid. Any arguments about changing either of them should be equally applied to the other: it should be both or neither.
I think that the implementation of the "Thread" pseudo namespace is massively flawed, and that all threads/comments should be able to be edited/moved/imported just like everyone other page. Any feature which uses custom handling instead of utilising the core functionality just feels "tacked on" and unprofessional.
I think that everyone is responsible for the content of their edits, and anyone who messes up the formatting of a page due to using a visual editor is guilty of vandalism. If I use a hammer as a flyswatter, it is still my fault when the hammer causes damage.
I think that anyone who uses a bot is responsible for any edits it makes, and that people who do not clean up after their bot's mistakes should not be allowed to operate one. I make mistakes, but I always fix what I mess up.
When I started editing with this account, I was unfairly blocked. I created a second account to evade the block and report the blocking admin to the bureaucrat, who then demoted the blocking admin. One month later, I became an admin there, another month later, I became a bureaucrat. So my advice to anyone who is blocked unfairly is to never just walk away, because "walking away" will not fix anything.
For the record, I never asked to be an admin, and have never wanted to be admin.
I have 5 main reasons for editing on Community Central:
- Helping everyone
Rather than solve an individual's problem by doing everything for them, I prefer to instruct them on how to achieve their goal: that way, they know how to do it in future, and anyone else finding the thread in future will be able to solve their own problems.
When people quote help pages without linking to the help page, it does a disservice to everyone else, as they deserve to be told the source of the information, and a chance to read the rest of the page themselves.
- Promoting fairness
I think that all people should treat others, and be treated, fairly and equally. More often than not, I will add my opinion where ever possible. I can't turn everyone into a good person, but if I can convince one person to be good to others, then I have made the world, and Wikia, a better place.
Wikia does not care how users treat each other, because the goal of Wikia is to make money, and forcing everyone to treat everyone else fairly would drive users away.
- Dispelling misinformation
There's a lot of misinformation repeated all over Wikia, and I think that we would be all be better off with the false information corrected.
Many times, people will tell others that something is impossible, when the case is simply that they do not know.
- Helping myself
When I was a beginner, I learned a lot by reading threads on Community Central. Unfortunately, my own questions lately tend to surpass the level of help available here.
While I haven't learned many new things lately, I did recently learn about "allowusercss/"allowuserjs", although I already knew about "usesitecss"/"usesitejs".
- Sharing the love
Although I ask few questions, I've still received a lot of help, either from things other people have posted, or from Staff answering my numerous support tickets. As such, I feel that it is important that I share my accumulated knowledge with others. To keep my knowledge to myself would be selfish.
Unfortunately, Community Central has many problems, which can be summarised by saying "A poor signal to noise ratio". There is so much junk noise it's easy to miss good information: both for Users and for Wikia Staff.
Specifically, the cause of the noise includes:
- People not reading threads before replying, which causes:
- Duplicate answers
- Questions and responses which have already been addressed, or invalidated
- People leaving deliberately repetitive replies:
- Deliberately repeating the exact same answer
- "I think you should do what the person above me said"
- Allowing off-topic replies, while simultaneously disallowing on-topic replies to old blog posts
- People making off-topic comments about other people's posts, which is happening with increasing frequency, and the admins are ignoring.
- People posting for the sake of posting, despite not knowing the answer. If you do not add any value to the thread, you should not post a comment.
- Time-discrimination is a cancer plaguing many online communities, especially forums staffed with admins who will use any excuse to flex their mod-muscles. It is unfortunately present on Community Central, causing the locking of threads entirely because a new post has been made too long after the date of the last reply. But valueless replies are a-okay in new threads. There is no reason to display a date in threads, or forums, at all. If a reply was ever worth posting, there is no reason for it to matter when it is posted, or how long since the last reply, as it's going to remain readable in future either way, and it doesn't matter to the person reading it next year how much time passed between replies.
- Lack of "sub-threads"
- The thread system supports direct replies and creating sub-threads, but the existence of sub-threads is not listed in threads.
- Partially answering questions directed at other users
- While anyone is free to reply to anything they like, giving a partial answer to a question directed at another user is pointless and rude.
- If someone actually has a complete answer to the question, then this isn't an issue.
- If someone cannot answer the question in full, then they should give the person being asked an opportunity to answer first.
- If someone partially answers a question directed at me, they obviously think they can answer the question better than I can, so my participation in that thread is over.
- Too much negativity
- This negativity comes in many forms, but the most increasingly prevalent is telling people that their opinion doesn't matter if it is not constructive.
- Replying with "Yes, and..." is more likely to encourage further discussion than saying "No".
- Several times recently, people have responded to feature requests with "that's against the TOU".
As a person who is "here to help", unhelpful replies are frustrating.