User blog:NecrusIV/To who it may concern

A concerned anonymous user has written an open letter to the admins:

"the admins are more interested in bickering among themselves than in being admins. chat is being ravaged by admins poking at each other what is the point? why do people even care? the admins are not what is important here. one could argue that the admins are in fact holding this wiki back by turning every little disagreement into a much larger and more distracting ordeal. the entire administration should relinquish their positions, since it is clear that they have no intention of making good use of them. do you really think the common wiki user cares whether or not you think someone deserves to be an admin or bureaucrat? well, we don't! you decide to make a fuss over ds, bb, and total when they haven't even done anything worth making a fuss over! ""total demoted dirge, that is wrong!"" total has explained his reasons for that, and even reversed the demotion. yet nobody seems to notice supahbadmarine demoting both total and lither without a single word to the general community. if you are going to treat something as serious enough to warrant someone's demotion, shouldn't it be serious enough to be at least noticed when someone else does it? where is the solidarity. here is an honest description of each of you: supah- very helpful to all who need help, but too passive as an administrator/bureaucrat. his comment on the blog calling for the demotion of other bureaucrats supports this. rather than voicing an opinion, he took the path of least resistance. his lack of confidence is disheartening. cal- what does cal do again? i see him in chat, sometimes prodding at total, but other than that im at a loss. total- undeniably the most controversial admin. he has the opposite problem of supah, and is very willing to make use of his position. this lack of hesitation coupled with his jarring personality causes him to come across as a dickish douchebag. consider, though, that he does more for the wiki than cal, lither, and dirge combined. i also think it is interesting that while total is constantly demonized and spat upon, he doesn't act against or disrupt the wiki. he's annoying, sure, but he isn't actively retaliating against the huge amount of flak you all give him. solomus- aside from organizing a collab, what does he do? he is largely unnoticeable, unless he is making a demotion blog to polarize and distract the wiki. were the bureaucrats doing so much with their power that it was really worth interrupting the flow of the wiki for days? the answer is no. solomus allowed his personal feelings to completely disrupt wiki activity. necrus- while he has the most potential to be useful, as he has knowledge of basic coding, he is also the most childish of the admins. drawing total's avatar as a tattered flag lying on the ground after total's demotion was utterly juvenile, and proved that his promotion was premature. lither - does nothing but come on chat to make political statements/analogies, as far as i am aware dirge - does nothing, unless i am mistaken on any other wiki, i would release this statement as a blog. to do so on this wiki would be to welcome armageddon, which is precisely what i am trying to avoid. i ask that you each take this to heart, but i know you will not. you will laugh, and you will mock, and all the while the wiki will be held back by your incompetence."

I think it’s fair to give them a detailed response and hopefully aim to give them some insight into how this wiki is run as well as clear up any misconcpetions.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have taken your points into consideration and discuss them at appropriate length

Point 1: “the admins are more interested in bickering among themselves than in being admins. chat is being ravaged by admins poking at each other what is the point? why do people even care? the admins are not what is important here. one could argue that the admins are in fact holding this wiki back by turning every little disagreement into a much larger and more distracting ordeal.”

Oh yes, because clearly that’s what admins are always doing. They never delete articles. They never declutter the site. They never help new users. They never code in new useful features. They never fix up coding issues. They never seem to do anything? Oh wait.

First of all I’d like to clarify what being an admin actually entails. It is the role of monitoring a wiki for issues and resolving those issues in as efficient manner as possible. They also have an enhanced dashboard that allows for integral code to be edited (this is what helps make the wiki look more professional). Their primary tools are the ability to delete articles and ban problem users. They also have additional powers such as the means raise users to the status of Chat Moderators and perform rollbacks.

“but necrus,” I hear you cry, “u don’t don’t do anything.’”

That’s a perfectly fair point to raise from abject ignorance as it’s not immediately clear just how much the admins do. Speaking for myself, Khalael and Solomus-BlackWing, we go through the Admin Dashboard on a weekly basis to ensure that the Special:BrokenRedirects and Special:DoubleRedirects remain clear. After periods of absence where the wiki was left in the care of Total and Supah, these pages were swamped with over 100 each. When it came to the double redirects being resolved this was a good two hours work between three admins. Admins take time out of their life to clean up this clutter. You don’t have to worry about it because they prevent it from becoming a problem.

“but necrus, double-redirects don't affect me,” you say, “you just do nothing.”

Maybe you have a point there, they don’t directly affect you but they affect the performance of the website itself and can lead to a saturation of redirects that hinders the ability of admins to find articles quickly. But I’ll bite and take it that in that instance I am doing nothing. Speaking for myself, Khalael and Solomus-BlackWing again, the triad checks the Category:Articles in need of improvement and Category:Article stubs weekly to delete all articles that have expired beyond their grace period. Now, you can’t claim ignorance here, there’s a notable decrease in the number of articles on the site every time we do this.

“but necrus, that’s harming the wiki,” you protest.

On the contrary, the admins are streamlining the wiki and removing unnecessary content in an attempt to maintain some form of quality control. It’s not a high quality control but it’s better than just letting the place be swarmed by articles of the same standard as Gue’vesa Obliterators. The admins have been doing this consistently since both before and after my promotion, so please try to save your general ignorance and maybe appreciate how much effort the admins actually put in while realising what “being an admin actually entails”.

“b-but, y-your just making up excuses,” you try to retort.

Well I guess it’s flogging a dead horse if I can’t convince you by this point but we also sort out countless coding issues that occur on your that’s right, your, articles. Admins such as myself, Khalael and Lither are particularly well versed in sorting out these issues as we often advise new users on them as well. Oh yes, and we occasionally ban people who are disruptive to the community. Compared to all the other crap we have to deal with, users are minor ones.

Contrary to popular belief, Admins aren’t actually obliged to help users, we do it because it’s generally a nice thing to do and helps the community. Complaining about the admins generally does not endear them towards helping you. Probably because admins are people too and have a life outside of the wiki. They don’t want to have to put up with your whining if it’s without merit. I’ll put a special mention out to Supahbadmarine and Khalael in this department as being the site’s welcoming public face for a very long period of time when we didn’t have active admins and their continued role as community support. In latter months, myself and Solomus-BlackWing have tried to step into their shoes to perform a similar role.

But yeah, all we ever do is bicker and make sad face for pookums. We’re never “being admins”.

Point 2: “the entire administration should relinquish their positions, since it is clear that they have no intention of making good use of them.”

Well except for all the stuff I just mentioned we don’t make good on our positions at all. But sure, I’ll humour you. If the entire administration relinquished their positions we’d have no coders, artists or users versed in actually dealing with issues. Popularity doesn’t make you a good admin. Experience and skills do. I’m a coder, Khalael is a coder, Lither is a coder and Total’s demonstrated he can code some stuff too. I don’t know anyone else with skills on par with even Total’s let alone my own. But sure, we don’t need to fix massive coding issues like this one: .

Point 3: “do you really think the common wiki user cares whether or not you think someone deserves to be an admin or bureaucrat? well, we don't! you decide to make a fuss over ds, bb, and total when they haven't even done anything worth making a fuss over!” A lot of wiki users do care who is given positions of responsibility and in fact were the ones that brought up the whole issues with Total in the first place. So please, try to at least be properly informed. But sure, it doesn’t matter what kind of callous wankers end up in charge so long as the users all bend over backwards for them. The community want a bureaucrat they can trust as it is an irrevocable position (beyond Wikia Staff intervention). People didn’t trust Total. That’s the primary reason they opposed his promotion to Bureaucrat.

Point 4: “""total demoted dirge, that is wrong!"" total has explained his reasons for that, and even reversed the demotion. yet nobody seems to notice supahbadmarine demoting both total and lither without a single word to the general community. if you are going to treat something as serious enough to warrant someone's demotion, shouldn't it be serious enough to be at least noticed when someone else does it? where is the solidarity”

Total went on to demote other admins repeatedly after that first incident. The first incident is cited more often because it was a blatant display of his new power. Supah did it once and apologised for his actions and regretted going against the community. So once more, can you at least have all your facts straight before you make another ignorant attack?

I’m going to rise above your ignorant attacks and dismissals of the admins since I feel I’ve clarified what we actually do and I believe in maintaining solidarity with them to avoid further drama from arising.

Sincerely,

-- NecrusIV -(Talk |My Wiki) 10:24, July 30, 2014 (UTC)