User blog:Joeyaa/My views on everything here

Hi all, I'm Joeyaa (Joey), as I doubt most of you know me here, and I am just a normal Wikian whom does a lot of cross-wiki editing (I mostly do anti-vandalism stuff, but I do get familiar in certain wikis and help administer it). In my experience with wiki editing, about a year now and 30,000 bot and regular edits later, I've learned a gross amount of HTML, Wikitext, CSS, and even a little JavaScript (nothing that much). And of course, some of the great communities I spend my time on (such as My 'home' wiki Avatar, The Simpsons Wiki, Futurama Wiki, Wikianswers, and The CoD WikiUncensored, to name a few) are just great, responsible, and mature. Why am I telling you this? I believe from my own experience (I know it's not much, but still...), that I can help with a few pointers for your wiki. Just trying to help :)

Editing
Remember why this wiki was founded? Content. Information. Knowledge. A wiki is an encyclopedia, and a Wikia wiki is an encyclopedia of one topic, and in this case it is Club Penguin. You guys have some great content here, and I applaud you for it, but we both know it could be better. I notice some articles remain incomplete or grammatically incorrect, and I understand; the great thing about a wiki is that anyone can help improve an article, but I'm noticing some users prefer to talk randomly about nothing than to help improve one of the articles. By definition, a wiki is an information source, not a social networking site. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, they're all great, but Wikia isn't a social networking site. The closest thing on Wikia to social networking is the blogs, and really those were created for 'mini-articles' and reflecting on changes and announcements (as seen here). Now, it's not my business as to what you guys choose to do with regards to unrelated chatter, creating random user sub-pages for use of games, and disregard for editing, but if you ever want to become the greatest knowledge bank for Club Penguin information, you'll need to cut the games and get editing. I deeply believe you have the editors and the knowledge to achieve that.

Feeding Trolls
My biggest problem here is how you guys can seemingly set yourselves up for vandalism. Of course, nobody asks for vandalism, but one definite wiki guideline regardless of the wiki, is to not feed the trolls. What does that even mean? Don't give vandals the compensation of knowing they made you angry. Don't make a big deal about a vandal. Don't mark a vandal derogatorily in a way that would make them want to come back. Three step cure for vandalism: Revert, Block, Ignore. Things like this don't make the vandal stay away, it makes them want to come back because they know they "pissed you off". If you want to stop these repeated sock puppets, walruses, and general vandals, stop letting them know they made you mad; don't entice them. If you want my suggestion, and I'll back this with every second of experience I have, not to mention the thousands of users that will support this statement: if you delete all of your categories, templates, images and anything else that would want to make a vandal (walrus) come back, you'll have a drastic decrease in vandalism. You'll of course notice the decrease in vandal (walrus) activities here already, but that's only because Wikia staff were forced to do something extremely drastic. Due to the fact you didn't do the aforementioned before, IPs and some users without an email listed for their account can't edit. What does that mean? You've stopped your vandalism problem, yet stopped any new users from joining this wiki (IPs are the next admins for a wiki, and when they find out they can't edit without an account, they decide to leave instead of edit). So now, due to lack of control, you guys have a major loss in editing, and probably won't see much growth if you don't change.

Another note, don't make this into a game. Fighting vandalism is not a game, so don't make it into one. If it becomes a game for the revert-ers, then it also becomes a game for the vandals. Playing a game of 'move my user page to a derogatory term and then I'll unwelcome you' is not beneficial to the wiki, nor does it discourage vandalism. (And that Wall of Shame is a terrible idea, you're giving recognition to these people, do you like them that much? Delete it.) Simply following that three step rule: Revert, Block, Ignore will ensure your wiki's success. If you want my advice, and I suggest heavily, delete Template:Notwelc, and any other thing you'd slap onto a vandal's page, and do the smart thing, if you want a generic template for a blocked user, use something like Avatar Wiki's blocked template. Why is this better? Read it. It's simple, to the point, yet doesn't make the vandal want to come back using a proxy or IP range to vandalize more. Think of it like a professionally styled template, it's quite similar to Wikipedia, and it retains its effectiveness. Switch to something like that, and you won't be wrong.

Policies
One problem I have here, is the government and its policies. Most wikis are democratic, everyone has an equal say with administrators and 'crats equal to the simplest of users (sometimes even IPs), but I really don't see that here. What is an administrator? In reality, an admin is someone with the delete, protect, and magical block button they are suppose to use against vandalism and for housekeeping. My feeling here, is people want to become admins so they 'hold more power', and that isn't right. A person is a person, they have their own thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions, so someone who accumulates a large amount of edits and has a bunch of friends shouldn't be considered 'a God'. Really, in my opinion you should re-look at how you elect sysops, and how sysops behave. Not to mention your polices, or lack of that is, in which really your base guideline for rules is whatever a person with a high 'level' says, is law. That's admin totalitarianism, rethink that, please. Also, you need policies. I was glad when I saw your block time forum, and to see you actually have a policy for that, regardless of whether I agree, I'll tell you that it's a step in the right direction.

One thing wrong here, is your titles. Nobody on this wiki is a Wikia Webmaster. Nobody here operates, controls, has server-side access to, or anything similar. That term doesn't make sense when used here, and take my word on this, it reflects on how more experienced users reflect on your wiki. No other Wikia wiki has any users titled 'Webmaster'. And just as bad, if not worse, is 'Dictator'. This really seems like social taboo whereas you make this a game, you're not a dictator. Honestly, just stop. It's like a game gone wrong, and you just keep pushing these limits and expect to get away with it. Well, at the end of the day, it reflects on your maturity, and look where that ended you up :|.
 * That's something you guys should just think about.

Why did you guys lose the right to promote bureaucrats and edit the MediaWiki namespace?
I'm sure you guys question each other on this, and foolhardily harass ask Wikia Staff about this daily, well it's simple. Before I answer this though, I'd like to repeat I am not Wikia Staff myself, nor am I affiliated with Wikia Inc. Think of it like this, whatever the reason, it obviously had to be a big reason, right? Wikia Staff don't remove these types of rights, so for them to do that here, something big must have happened. Now, if something big had to happen, obviously it's not common, and it must be extremely important. Something import, rare, and big with a negative touch, what could that be? Abuse. I'm not an 'official person' saying that, do understand, but to everyone of the Wikia world, you abused it too much. As mentioned above, you gave credit, acknowledgement to the Walrus vandals, you had your own bureaucrats vandalizing (I'm not making that call, it was up to the people that can see user's IPs to make that call, and what did they decide?), and you really weren't tight enough with your sysop promotions. This wiki has more sysops than (any other?) most wikis (including the huge ones), yet you're really small compared to those, and you (are|were) promoting users that were just socks of old vandals.

I bet all of you are wondering how to get these rights back. I recommend you follow this simple plan:
 * 1) Stop harassing Wikia Staff; they're tired of you complaining to them about this, so just stop. (Also, being smart Alecs with them by calling them 'Masters' doesn't help anyone.
 * 2) Delete all of the Walrus pages, stop being little kids with your gossip of them too.
 * 3) Stop misusing your tools, be appropriate with your tools. And hey, if you have admins that can't help but misuse their tools, demote them. Seriously. Admins are leaders, not trouble makers.
 * 4) Show you can be mature. Editing really is serious business, Club Penguin is a game for fun, Club penguin wiki is a knowledge bank.
 * 5) Wait. Prove you're mature; don't mention anything about the past, stop whining, and voila. Wikia Staff have hearts, but first they have brains, think about it.

Help
These are my first few points, probably the most controversial, and I understand if some of you disagree, but I wanted to let all of you in on the view of from the rest of Wikia's point of view. Think about it. And, if you would like me to help you guys out change some things, improve editing, get statistics up, improve navigation, create new templates or policies, I'd be glad to help. If any of you express interest in gaining my aid, I'll be sure to write more regarding other issues and ideas. Cheers... for now.