User blog:WaglingtonŒ/Complaining

It's not much of a stretch to assume that I've been frustrated with the state of the wiki for the past few weeks. Who wouldn't be, in my position? The fact is, this site is in a hilariously backwards situation where fewer people are making content than ever and our maturity levels are somehow even lower than they were circa 2011. Well golly, how could that be? We've all grown so much since then, right? Wrong.

See, the problem is that we, as a community, are refusing to actually try to make progress. If we want to be taken seriously, we have to make an effort to be serious. Instead, most of our staff members are walking memes ~90% of the time who make little to no worthwhile conditions to the wiki apart from grammatical corrections on 5 year old pages and instead spend their days intermittently sitting around on chat, where they take every opportunity they can to rile up clueless users who occassionaly just want to have something resembling an honest discussion. Since around 2013, the administration has arguably been one of the biggest problems with the wiki; if the people in power can't at least try to be mature, then no one else will. Their actions absolutely reflect on everyone else's.

But moreover, a huge issue with the wiki is that there is very little genuine motivation to create. The administration claims they want more activity, and they've openly admitted to supporting the "quantity over quality," philosophy (which is a problem in itself) and yet they've done next to nothing to actually try and spur content.

And what can they do? In this ever expanding, sprawling quagmire of a website that lacks anything resembling a clear goal or focus, what could they possibly do to create activity? Is motivation the issue? Perhaps to some extent concerning users who prefer long, carefully thought out projects, but for the grand majority of users who simply create when they feel like it, I can't imagine it's that difficult at all to set aside a few minutes to make something. So what's stopping them?

Apathy.

The sad truth, once more, is that the so-called authority figures don't really care, so why should the common users? While we wait for the next hit story to surface, how many informational pages will be made in the null period? What will they write about? Will they simply retell something cool that happened in Minecraft, or will they spend some amount of time plotting something new and inventive up? That's not to say it's the creators' fault; just as in the real world, the root of the problem rests within the sub 10% of the population who are perfectly content leaving things the way they are as long as the problems plaguing the working class don't start to affect them in turn.

This isn't me needlessly painting a negative light on everyone but myself - I'm sometimes also guilty of being apathetic to the events of the wiki as a whole. But as it happens, I just barely cared enough to spend a few minutes writing this rant. No, this isn't an angry call for change, because lord knows one blog isn't enough to cause anything all that drastic to happen (especially in this administration). As I mentioned, I'm just frustrated and I want to see things change for once, exactly how is another story. So if anything I said in this blog resonates with you in the slightest, maybe get a little bit angrier the next time an authority figure does something stupid, even if it's me. Remember: you are here on your own free will. You can't be expected to sit around and quietly be frustrated with how things are until the end of time.

All governments, large or small, must be run by the consent of the governed.

tl;dr things are crappy right now and if we want things to change it has to be a collective effort (but mostly just the guys on top)