A wiki is a hub where online users who share the same interest come together to form communities and provide detailed information on said interest; a so-called online home where these online users edit daily to add new information and update information, as well as create blogs to interact with each other where they write and reply about their interest. At the helm of these wiki communities are the Bureaucrats and Administrators, the guardians of the wiki who maintain order and prevent misinformed facts from being written and announce important updates or changes made without hiding anything. To shed and help with this great responsibility are the Content Moderators/Rollbacks; after having earned their strides from many months of hard work and praise from their fellow editors, these trusted users are the ones bestowed with a similar responsibility.
Together, Bureaucrats, Administrators, Content Moderators/Rollbacks and their fellow editors work in harmony to update and present correctly detailed information on the interest or topic they admire and to help other online viewers who share the same admiration gain more information, while defending it from those who dare sully their favourite interest/topic.
I have always believed that a Wiki’s purpose is to be an information hub for viewers to see and find out detailed information on the interest or topic of their choosing. I am glad to say that the My Hero Academia Wiki has become such an information hub with an active and robust community continuously updating information and defending it from those online fiends called vandals. As time goes by and the wiki continues growing with more and more skilled editors joining to share their passion, the old guard from the wiki of days past finds himself simply looking on, pleased that the wiki he grew up with from the miniscule period to the active time where many skilled editors can update and defend the interest they admire themselves. Soon, the old guard realizes that there is not much for him to do, comes to accept that it’s time to quench the aged fire the and pass on the newly lit-torch…
That time, for me, has come.
For the past several months, I have been mostly inactive, and it certainly shows; I’ve barely edited and only make a small five edits or so every month, most of those edits were updating the Weekly Shonen Jump Rankings. This has nothing to do with more skilled editors joining and being able to excel at a variety of wikia tasks, it has to do with personal circumstances preventing me from doing so. My personal circumstances have taken priority over that of the My Hero Academia Wiki for most of this entire year and therefore, not only have I been able to do any editing, I’ve lost motivation and enthusiasm to make meaningful and worthwhile edits and contributions. These past few months dealing with my personal circumstances have taken its toll on me and it’s unfortunate to admit that I no longer possess the same enthusiasm and consistency for editing, nor do I have the patience to abide by the established rules; I know that when it comes to dealing with vandals I must give them a warning and then ban them for three days, a week or a month depending on the severity of the vandalism, but instead I outright ban them for a year or three years. I’m well aware that this is the incorrect way to go about this, but I no longer have the patience in dealing with vandals, especially considering there was a time in the My Hero Academia Wiki where vandals were widespread over two years ago and there were fewer editors dealing with them; as such, I’ve been dealing with vandals for a long time and have developed zero tolerance for vandalism.
It is not only my personal circumstances severely affecting my ability to edit properly, it also has to do with the state of Wikia as a whole (nowadays known as FANDOM). In recent years, FANDOM/Wikia has been embracing social media over quality information gathering (for example, those Trending FANDOM Articles that lists five articles such as Five Anime You Need to Watch for Halloween). This has nothing to do with information or knowledge about particular interests; its just meaningless knowledge within Wikia’s context and such information is better suited for vlogs, Reddit or other online forums. But FANTrending-Whatever-Their-Name-Is-Called-Nowadays wants to have it both ways, and it doesn’t work when one doesn’t have anything to do with the other since “Wiki” or “Wikia” is synonymous with information gathering and storing; when someone sees or hears “Wiki”, the first image that comes to mind is a website about storing detailed information about a particular interest, and this synonymous view has been etched within the recesses of the general public since the founding of Wikia. Now changing it to “FANDOM” makes it difficult for people to recognize that the Wiki they are viewing is about detailed knowledge and god forbit not about articles that have memes or troll comments on them about their interest. But this is all a debate for another day.
I am just glad that the My Hero Academia Wiki hasn’t adopted this misguided mentality and has stayed true to updating factual and detailed information.
However, speaking of social media, the wiki has had a Discord for quite some time. For all that time, I have never once made use of it. Because just like Wikia and FANDOM don’t have anything to do with the other, neither does the wiki have anything to so with Discord. Personally, I’ve never approved of Discord and would have preferred using forums to discuss wiki related matters than using an impersonal social media tool. A few months ago in July, there was a Discord problem and I didn’t intervene not because it didn’t have anything to do with me, it’s because I knew this lack of transparency between the Admins, Content Moderators and local editors would occur as a result of using a social media communication platform that creates a transparency division between the editors who use it and the editors who don’t use it. Therefore, I would have preferred to use wiki forums instead since there would be transparency amongst everyone. I have seen this occur before in a previous Wikia occupation and all it does is breed mistrust where people speak behind other people’s backs. I could have intervened and put a stop to this…but I didn’t because most of the editors wanted to keep Discord and since the wiki acts on diplomacy and majority rule, I knew my forum idea would have been rejected anyway. If the wiki wants to continue using Discord as it has been doing ever since that incident, so be it; the majority made their decision. But I beseech you, Administration of the My Hero Academia Wiki, be aware of the consequences in using social media and the transparency issues it causes, otherwise it will eat you all from the inside out.
You must have taken note when I said “Administration” instead of “my fellow Administrators”…well, it’s because you have some foresight regarding the announcement I am about to make. To make a long story short, my personal circumstances, change in Wikia mentality and my grievances against social media have made it difficult to do my Administrator duties and to edit properly daily. I have been contemplating this decision for these past few months and there is only one decisive, logical outcome that will not only benefit me but benefit the My Hero Academia Wiki in the long run…it is a bitter pill to swallow after being here for so long, but:
I am resigning from my position as Administrator and leaving the wiki.
I have also come to terms with the fact that in the end…I was not up to the task after all. To be honest, I never had the social skills necessary to form meaningful and professional working routines with my fellow former Administrators nor the other local editors. Perhaps if I tried to be more outward and interactive, this conclusion would be different. All that my tenure as an Administrator has taught me is that I simply don’t have the social skills needed to work in this new FANDOM environment…and I never will.
Regardless of these sad truths I have learned about myself, I thank the My Hero Academia Wiki for these three years of editing, professionalism and for letting me stay long enough to see it become a respectable wiki.
I know that whoever takes up the empty Administrator or “Hero” role will uphold the responsibility and duties with the same enthusiasm, motivation and hard working ethic I once had when I began here and will provide meaningful change more so than I ever will.