User blog:CJC95/Failure

5

Good news everyone! Brickimedia will fail. I'd say its been fun, but who are we kidding...

Fine I'll explain why. Apologies in advance.

1) Views are back to basically pre-launch levels
2) Editing is there, if not worse
3) Everyone sucks

We need good editors. Since we can't really find them here (the good ones know who are they are), we need to bring them in. To do that we need people to come here. To do that we need good google rankings. To do that we need people to come here, and we need good pages to get them here.

Since the last one isn't happening, the first won't. I mean, the best newer editor decided to stay and some stupid people decide to troll him for it. You frustrate me. You think sitting on chat arguing about crap and then going to Wikia and insulting Sannse and vandalising and then going to other wikis and trolling is the best thing for us, and in doing so you are doing a great service to us all. Well you are just making things worse, and you suck. Stop being arses. Stop giving Brickipedia a bad name, which is currently going to be the name the current Brickipedia slowly dies with. I always knew the past 5.5 years of work would die at some point, but the fact that it is going down to due to this means I've wasted many hours of my life. Thanks. We all knew that moving this time was risking everything, and it looks like we've drawn the bullet. The good news is you've helped kill Brickia too. The bad news is that will come back to life. Hell, its got articles on new sets we haven't, and already has two competent editors that aren't admins, so they are already doing better than us in ever single way.

"We have the better community" you say. You are deluding yourself. Sit in chat for an couple of hours. Either no discussion, discussion that upsets someone somehow, or insults people who aren't here. Most people know no boundaries, such as when a joke should stop, when people are upset, basic human emotions like that. Answer me this, if the community is so damn great, why does 9/10 of new users join chat, then leave within a few minutes, never to return?

Perhaps the worst part of the community is its expectations that someone else will do it, when by someone else they usually mean one of the old admins who have done every bloody other thing that already exists here. Its not entirely your faults. You've been spoiled. Chat gave you a reason to be here, and various visual editors mean code confuses you. But please put some effort in - if you make a mistake, no one will be mad, they'll just fix it. Because if we wanted to create a chat, we would have just got NXT to make his chat module and then make that the whole site. We aren't here for that. If you wanted to do that, we could have just stayed at Wikia and not waste everyone's time.

Basically DO SOMETHING USEFUL OR THIS WHOLE THING WILL FAIL

Addendum by ToaMeiko

We had the choice to stay at Wikia, but we chose to continue the efforts towards Brickimedia because of all it had going for it. The thing is, everything it had going for it is gone without you people actually working on it. If you've lost interest in it, you've ruined everyone else's too. The work put into Brickimedia has been done by several dedicated users who have no purpose using the Wikia wiki. UltrasonicNXT has developed many great things for this community that can't be done at Wikia. If we stayed at Wikia, he would have no reason to be there. As you know, we already lost Cligra due to his disinterest in Wikia. Other users, like myself (ToaMeiko), can't return to Wikia because of their work here. My work at Brickimedia has gotten me globally blocked at Wikia, and if efforts towards Brickimedia were to be discontinued, I wouldn't be able to call myself a Brickipedian anymore.

Also, most of you have ruined your good standing in Wikia's eyes. You've wasted so much time trolling Brickia that you could have spent here editing. That's outright stupidity. Brickimedia won't just "happen" on its own. Laziness doesn't make things succeed. Right now, the good editors that you've been trolling at Brickia have a better work ethic than you and are editing Brickia. Here, you're not editing. If anyone should be making fun of someone else, Brickia's users should be mocking this community at how much of a failure it is. You want those users on Brickia to join here, but I can tell you right now that being assholes to them won't convince them to join us.

Like CJC said, it's only the admins doing anything here. What would you do if we all left like Cligra or any past admin? You'd be here with nothing, and you won't get anything out of it. All you people who just chat, you're probably going to wish you had adminship at some point in the future, right? Imagine if there were no crats here that would give it to you? No crat at Brickia would ever give you it after what you've done to that site. You have to do some work on your own for once, since not everyone is going to sit here and spoil you by doing the hard work for you. If you don't think there's anything for you to do here, don't lie to yourself. We're missing a ton of new set articles, information about the LEGO Movie characters, stuff about TLM videogame, and I even noticed that the article for the LEGO Star Wars III video game is 2 years out of date. There's a ton of stuff to do here. Like I said, Brickimedia has a lot going for it, but it will be nothing compared to Brickia if this apathy in the community persists.

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CligraBricktastic

131 months ago

Score 2

So. I'm back.

I've returned due to a combination of reasons, but the most important one is that this site is now up, and I don't have to give free work to Wikia anymore (there. now that's the last time I will mention them ever again). However, would I care about that, and come back almost as soon as the new site is up, if I didn't want the site to succeed? Nope. I've put a not inconsiderable portion of the last three years of my life into this damn site in one form of another, and if I have anything to say about it, I'm not going to see that all wasted. I admit I have mixed feelings about being back, and I'm still not quite sure if I care about LEGO again, but what I know is that I do care about this site. It's an awesome thing, and deserves to succeed. I'm going to do all I can to make that happen, and I sincerely hope you all will as well.

</motivational speech>

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TheNightingaleNovice

132 months ago

Score 2

Mostly per NovaFlare and KoN. When I joined the site in 2011 it was a fun time. Lots of editing, even if I didn't personally make good quality edits for a while. I miss a lot of the older users like Cligra, SKP, and Skdhjf.

I'm trying to be active but as others say, I slowly grow out of LEGO, or just don't have time to edit as much.

I still love the community but it can be hard. My current aim is to get a few articles to c2. Including the LEGO Movie sets, Galaxy Squad and finish off a WIP I added last year for 70702 Warp Stinger to get to c1.

My photography is something I'm trying to use a skill for here. Taking photos of sets, adding reviews and helping out.

If there's a set you'd like for me to take photos of, or just figures - ask me.

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LFY1547Thinking With Bricks

132 months ago

Score 3

This blog has inspired me to begin regularly editing again. I feel pretty awful about trolling Brickia, and wasting my time there instead of doing something productive here. I may not be editing as active as I was in, say, September or October, but I'll still try as hard as I can to at least make a couple of edits per day. :) Thanks for finally getting this message into my head, CJC and Meiko.

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NightshadeAmateur

132 months ago

Score 5

I would like to apologize for my trolling incident with Wikia. I only did it that one time, but it set an example and it seems other users have continued to do it. While I may not have continued to troll Wikia, I have not been editing. I'm not a very good editor and I have spent all of my time on chat in the past. In order to make sure my behavior abruptly stops, I have proceeded to ban myself in chat until I have managed to continually make good contributions.

Here are my goals for the future. I will, special emphasis on that word, create five pages a day, make 70 edits each weak, and create one inventory per week. This is on the internet now, I have a promise to keep to the entire world now. I'm not perfect, and I may fall short. At least if I try my hardest to stick to this, I will be helping the wiki a little.

Again, I'm sorry for my behavior and hope to dramatically improve in the next while.

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

132 months ago

Score 2

That's a great goal you've set for yourself, SoH. :) Just don't take it too seriously; if something prevents you from meeting your goal one week, don't worry about it. All that matters is that you're putting forth effort in contributing, which is just what this wiki needs from everyone.

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

132 months ago

Score 2

I said it under a similar context and I'll say it again:

It is easier to clean up a bunch of poor edits in good faith than it is to do everything by yourself. If you can't edit well, that's okay. Anything is still appreciated as long as you are actually trying to help.

And per Nova too. I'm trying to clean-up Princesses and Hero Factory stuff and then maybe some Super Heroes here and there, personally....

(Also, one thing that I kind of find demoralizing is that so many images are missing. There wouldn't be any way to get a list of missing files or something? And then maybe have a bot import them all? No? Okay. Sorry I asked. :P)

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

132 months ago

Score 2

As a bit of a follow-up....

Nobody is going to be a good editor when they start out. You grow as one, just like you grow as a builder, writer, whatever. And actually, I've found editing beneficial in my real life. I've gotten all sorts of compliments from different teachers about how I write well. I used to find that strange, since I didn't read a lot until recently, but then I realized it was because I learned how to from editing a wiki. It's a more useful skill to develop than it seems.

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XYZBricktastic

132 months ago

Score 0

Another discouraging thing is that on the Marvel and Super Heroes pages, there's a glitch with an image which is causing both pages to crash, but it's impossible to know which one... so we might have to just remove all the images and re-upload them by hand :/

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NightshadeAmateur

131 months ago

Score 0

KoN - This page appears to have the same problem (maybe :S) Just putting this out there, I'm not sure how to fix it. http://en.br...g/wiki/Scala

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

131 months ago

Score 0

brickimedia#217

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NovaFlareMaster Builder

132 months ago

Score 3

I've gotten used to chat being immature, and not a lot of editing happening. It's just what I'm used to these days. Then I read KoN's comment- back in the "golden age" with Samdo, Fudgepie, TGE, Cptatain Rex, etc. It reminded me that once upon a time we actually just got in and did things- if the current community had what we had to work with back then- the wiki would've never gotten any attention.

However. While I totally agree with everything said here, we can blog about everyone being useless forever, people will say "I'll try more", or "I agree", and that will be it. What we really should be asking is- what are we actually going to do?

If you're not great at writing, then stop using that as an excuse. Start out small, set yourself a daily goal like "I will improve 10 infoboxes each day". Typing in the number of pieces a set has doesn't require a degree in literature. I know I'm a rubbish writer, I've still managed to write a few FA's though.

Personally I'm aiming to get 76013 Batman: The Joker's Steam Roller to FA status by the end of the month, so there's actually half a point to the FA section of our main page. (or at the very least C1 status, it's not ideal, but at least it'll be a new C1). What would really be great though is if someone or a group of people could get together and write yet another FA-quality article by the end of the month so we don't have to worry about April. There was a time, largely thanks to BF2 and a few otheres, where our queue about 6 months to a year ahead- it looked like we were never going to run out of FA's. Let's try and get that happening again.

Now, as I'm writing this, today (since 0:00 UTC), I've seen 58 mainspace edits, which is great, it's much higher than usual, I'm guessing this blog has had some impact. However, compare that to the 513 chat messages that have been sent since the same time:

If one edit was made for every chat message, that would probably be more mainspace edits that were done in a week.
Just a rough guess, the average chat message was about 8 words long. 513 x 8 = 4104 words. Anakin Skywalker, one of our longest pages, has a background+description currently 4222 words long.

Just something to think about if we spent more time editing and less time chatting.

I know people have other things to do, myself included, my time here is unfortunately pretty limited. But we're at a critical point in the wiki- we've just officially opened, the Brickset Effect's worn off, and we need to start pulling ahead and getting some new users. New users will only come here if we're better than the wiki we just left.

So basically- Help us <insert name here>, you're our only hope.

(And yes, I realise I sound like a hypocrite in some areas of this post because I could have probably written a C2 by now. But if this somehow helps to even slightly convince one person to edit a bit more, I'd say it was worth it)

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

132 months ago

Score 0

I've been writing some articles, but for me, I write articles best (C2 and C1 level) when I have the physical set in front of me. I don't know why, but it's not as easy for me to describe sets based on images of them. Sure, I can do it, but never as well, and that doesn't mean I won't ever try. I will hopefully try writing some more this weekend, but it does get difficult when I feel like I'm the only one doing anything.

I've also been trying to come up with new ideas that I occasionally pass on to you or other admins in PM on chat. Maybe one of these upcoming days I'll get an idea that will really make a lot of people want to consistently edit. The editing contest I launched at the start of the month seems to have had a bit of a positive impact, and this callout blog that CJC and I worked on seems to be working well too. Ideally I could come up with an idea that will get people editing without the need for it to be a contest where we spoil people with prizes.

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NightshadeAmateur

132 months ago

Score 0

Meiko, I don't think it's necessarily the idea of prizes, but the idea that we have to meet the "goal". I work better with a stricter schedule type thing.

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

132 months ago

Score 0

I'll keep that in mind. Maybe we can have similar editing contests every month or so. :)

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AwesomeknightBricktastic

132 months ago

Score 1

Thanks for writing this message. Yeah, I'm basically doing what you're saying. I'm going to go through each Castle theme per day from recent to oldest fixing them. I fixed Castle (2013) today and feel really good about it.

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XYZBricktastic

132 months ago

Score 4

I feel bad, but I probably should, as most of the addendum was directed specifically at me (if it wasn't, then sorry but it's an easy mistake to make, as I fit a lot of the criteria in it).

I've been on Brickipedia for almost five years. Back when I joined I was twelve years old, so I technically shouldn't have signed up, but who cares, try telling that to a good 25% of everyone who comes on chat from time to time, there and here. The Chat feature wasn't an option then, but I instantly got along with a lot of the people there while editing, like Byzantium3000, Nerfblasterpro, SKP, Samdo994, NHL (sorry NovaFlare :P) and a lot of other cool dudes who know who they are. The only drama I remember happening was people squabbling in the maintenance forum over whether or not we should make pages for videogame minifigures and stuff like that to do with editing. Okay, so there were big drama events like Skdhjf going crazy, or one of our best editors suddenly flipping out at an annoying kid and getting permabanned for it (his name escapes me now), but things like that happened what, once a year? Now it seems like people have fights every single god damn day. I try to rationalize this by reminding myself "Oh, this is a fansite for a children's toy, of course kids are gonna come and squabble" but then I remember that it didn't always use to be like this.

So where was I? Oh yeah, I was 12, and LEGO was the coolest thing ever. I would easily spent hours at a time just doing solid editing, creating pages for hundreds of key chains, inventories for large BIONICLE sets, etc etc. Then, in 2010, my favourite theme was cancelled which flipped my whole view of the company and the hobby as a whole. But I stayed, and I edited, out of my devotion to Brickipedia and this lovely community we had. Since then however my interest in the hobby has been dwindling and dwindling... I think the moment I knew when it was time to move on was when I saw the look of sheer horror on my ex's face when she opened one of my cupboards and a sea of BIONICLEs and LEGO bricks knocked her to the floor. (I've never told anyone else this so consider yourselves lucky...)

However. Before you build pitchforks in LDD to stab me with, I'm not completely removed from the hobby. I've always loved superheroes, and the minifigures in the SH theme have always caught my eye so I've build up a nice collection of them in a few containers. My room now looks like a normal person's room, yet I'm looking forward to the GotG sets.

Uh... okay, something tells me I went off on a tangent again, so I'll sum this up: I'm still here because some of those cool dudes I mentioned are still here, and although I'm not riveted by the hobby any more, the goal of building a collective database for the produce of a company that is over 50 years old is a damn noble one, and I would like to help with that where I can. If it means I have to make a ton of pages like I used to do to save this site, then so be it, but please understand that I won't enjoy it anywhere near as much as I used to.

TL;DR WE'VE PUSHED OUR BOAT OUT TO SEE BUT WE DON'T HAVE THE ENGINES OF THE WIKIA SHIP. WE NEED TO ROW. AND BY NOT BEING DICKS AND THROWING ROTTING FISH AT THE WIKIA BOAT, SOME OF THEM MIGHT ACTUALLY COME HELP US AND ENJOY IT HERE, LIKE LITTLE KON DID.

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

132 months ago

Score 2

I actually didn't have you in mind when I wrote the addendum, but I'm glad you took something out of it. I know you're still passionate for the wiki, and I know that your interest in the product isn't what it is. I knew that you were waiting in anticipation for Brickimedia to re-open so you could return to editing though, and that's something honourable that other users should have been doing as well. So many users were so excited for Brickimedia's return, but it seems like it's made no difference to them since. It's just odd. Unlike others, you, Nova, and a few others patiently waited for Brickimedia's return and when it did return, you guys hopped right back into the editing efforts you're known for. That's why I respect users like you, and other users should take inspiration from people like you.

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Edward NigmaMaster Builder

132 months ago

Score 1

It all makes sense now. We should have had this blog way before. But like you and George said, why did some of us go and troll the users at Brickia because they didn't join us? Same with LMBW. They despise us, except for a few other users... Many of us have gotten ourselves globally blocked from Wikia. I myself probably would have for trolling, but the fact I am an admin at a wiki with potential prevented me from spamming and trolling Wikia, Brickia, and LMBW like certain people did. And the lack of editors here marks the death of Brickimedia, as we need editors. Who am I kidding? As of now we don't have the editor power to rise up past Brickia. If we continue to be such *dumbasses*, maybe, a few months from now, we'll be living a Brickipedia-free life.

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AwesomeknightBricktastic

132 months ago

Score 0

Sometimes I want to troll, but I don't. My test wikis. D:

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Edward NigmaMaster Builder

132 months ago

Score 0

Yeah, my test wikis and a wiki I adopted. If I was blocked from Wikia while being the admin at that wiki, the forum members of the game that wiki is about would mock me. I'm well known on their forums for having incorrect information there, getting a global block would make certain people's day.

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

132 months ago

Score 1

We have more active users and more knowledgeable users here than Brickia does. The only problem is most of our users are too busy chatting rather than editing. Looking at Brickia, there's rarely anyone in chat and much more editing, while we're the opposite. We could easily do better than Brickia; we already have the users, just very few of them are doing anything constructive.

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AwesomeknightBricktastic

132 months ago

Score 1

Yeah, I always consider myself not a good editor. I'm starting to try harder. I've made some useful edits today. Not just edits, but adding information, even a page. That's what you should do. Just do a bit more each day. Editing doesn't even have to cancel out the fun social stuff of Brickimedia, either.

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