User blog:ToaMeiko/Regarding something I said in chat

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As some of you will have known, I recently said something in chat that I stick by and do not wish I withdrew from saying. For those who weren't in chat, what I said was in regard to a recent policy change that will merge bureaucrat and administrator rights. It sounds good in thought but it isn't something I supported, the reason being is that bureaucrat is the one position that essentially keeps administrators in line. It allows the addition of administrators to the site to be better moderated and the removal of administrators to be the same way. Having the smaller bureaucrat group ensures accountability for rights changes at administrative levels. Giving every current and future administrator the same rights as bureaucrats lessens that accountability and gives more people a larger responsibility. First of all, this means that when voting, future admins have to have a higher level of trust than they do currently. Let me remind everyone that user rights are a voluntary position to help out in more ways than the standard user. Contrary to popular belief, user rights do not equate to power over others. The problem with requiring more trust in admin candidates since they'll now also have bureaucrat rights is that it means that newer users have less of a chance of getting administrator rights, even though they could probably benefit from the ability to delete and protect pages, along with the other administrative tasks. To give an example, for a while I have been anticipating LK901 becoming an administrator in the next year or so, however with bureaucrat merged into administrator rights, I'm no longer sure as to whether he's ready for the responsibility. This means that there's one less admin candidate I see in the next year, which means one less person who can help take the load of the current admin team's back. That's not a good thing in my opinion.

What I said about this recent policy change is that I am expecting I will be requesting CheckUser/oversight (now a single user right called "functionary") so that I can still personally feel like I'm serving a use here. Because administrator rights, though they are a big milestone, aren't too hard to get if you're a dedicated, familiar user with the site, me having bureaucrat rights doesn't serve any purpose if someone like LK901 can get those administrator rights as soon as I previously expected him to be able to. Now that the groups are merged, he'd have bureaucrat rights and I'd no longer have any inclination to stay here. Though I know that just because one person has the rights doesn't mean a whole team isn't necessary, you're all aware that I've been progressively losing motivation in this community since we moved to Brickimedia. I've tried to leave the community several times, most of which I've only gotten away with calling a "temporary vacation" or something. The reason I never could bring myself to leave altogether like other members of this community have done is because I know I can't. Though it may sound stuck up, this community depends on me and I know that, which is why I can't leave it. Yes, there are several other admins here that do a great job—NovaFlare, CJC95, Berrybrick—but they've been here longer and, like in any job, volunteer position, or any involvement whatsoever, people do leave after a while, and I know that since I'm the younger user here, I will likely—or at least I should—"outlive" their time here. I'm not trying to say they're getting old and should retire, but because they're "senior" admins here, before I'm still technically a newbie in the admin team to them, thus I still have a lot more years on me given I have the motivation to make those years count.

I'm not hungry for user rights nor do I live off my feeling of importance (well, not more than anyone else. If I didn't feel good about my importance I'd probably be suffering from depression). It's just that without the motivation I had back in 2013 before we moved to Brickimedia, I have a hard time convincing myself that my time I spend here is worthwhile, which is why I've depended on all the responsibilities I've taken up here. If you look at my user page, you'll see that I'm a member of every user group (sans functionary) and team, even ones that don't do anything anymore. Sometimes I hate myself for volunteering for all those responsibilities but it's close to the only thing that keeps any motivation in me. The feeling that I have the ability to do something in the community (besides editing the mainspace and other things any user can do) is what keeps me going. And of course the friends I have here. If I didn't have friends here then you probably wouldn't see me in chat ever.

Many times, especially lately, I've been wishing Brickipedia could go back to the way it was. Not necessarily going back to Wikia, but just being an independent site where everything happened. The fact that we've divided what used to be all on a single Wikia wiki across several Brickimedia wikis has proven itself unintuitive lately and I really regret what we did. Meta seems useless to me anymore. With how little activity Customs has, I wish it were still just a namespace on Brickipedia. These things that we've complicated across a failed network of communities is why we have a hard time getting new users and convincing people to move from Wikia, which is something that's killed my motivation to continue here at Brickimedia. I know that as long as I have a purpose here, I'll never abandon this community, but everyone (not everyone, but a large number of people here) being so apathetic towards editing and voting in forums and whatnot alongside knowing that we really screwed up our move off of Wikia this time is what's made me lose motivation. After we moved, we didn't do as well as we planned— we didn't even do as well as we did the first time we moved. Not many people edited, and eventually I and some others such as NovaFlare were the only ones doing work here. Going back to what I said earlier, knowing that NovaFlare would probably retire from the wiki sooner than I would, and me spending inhuman numbers of hours contributing here wore me out. I think sometime around March was the first time after our official move when I took a "temporary vacation". I came back and I believe things were doing well for about a week but it went back to the same as before—nobody but me and other admins doing anything, and me begging people to edit. I'm sure everyone here has heard me tell them to edit. This isn't because I want to punish you with labour. It's that I want some relief knowing that I'm not doing a community's load of work by myself. Because really, if you've never imagined what it's like to be me on this wiki, it's not a great feeling. Sure, I enjoy contributing to something I deem useful, but just imagine feeling like you're the only one doing anything useful. If this were a smaller wiki, I could do it. Actually, I've done it before.

If you didn't know, before I joined Brickipedia I worked at The Ninjago Wiki. Not the Wikia one; the better one that doesn't exist anymore sadly. The Ninjago Wiki was an independent wiki that a friend of mine from BIONICLEsector01 started and gave me a staff position at (crazy idea for him to do, I was a big noob then). At the time, my only wiki experience was at BIONICLEsector01 and its sister site HEROsector01. I was a noob there. But I did a lot of work editing and I enjoyed it. That's where I learned basic HTML+CSS and wikisyntax by experimenting with it. When I started at The Ninjago Wiki, I wasn't in charge of course, but it was my first experience as an administrator of an online community. I had no prior knowledge of the responsibilities that entailed besides observing the administrators at BIONICLEsector01. But The Ninjago Wiki was successful. It was small (even though I had dumb, guaranteeably unsuccessful ideas of expanding into new areas like a blog and stuff), but since I was wildly motivated towards making it the best and the most popular source of Ninjago information, it got a lot of attention and had some great content. At times I'd be the only contributor for a few days, but I never stopped because I knew I was building something great. I felt like I was being useful to someone somewhere who wanted quality Ninjago information delivered in a professional format. During my time there I also got a lot of experience in community management and public relations. I never gave up on The Ninjago Wiki because I knew I was being useful to it and at the same time, I was both satisfied and able to grow as a person from it. About the time Brickipedia was planning its creation of Brickimedia, I stumbled upon it (previously I had a grudge against using it because I despised Wikia for the mere reason of its interface, even though that's not the community's fault. It's just that I had started my wiki life on a non-Wikia wiki thus I knew how much better things could be). When I found the forum about the move, I of course volunteered to help in any way I could, since I had experience in setting up wikis. About that time, Ajraddatz offered me a position as system administrator. This was also a dumb idea giving me this kind of position, but like how my friend Bioran made me admin on The Ninjago Wiki, I learned a lot about programming and servers because Ajraddatz gave me that position as sysadmin. Since I now had a position in the Brickipedia community, I finally felt useful and like I could join. Everyone here I'm sure knows it can be daunting to join a community and be that one "new guy". When I joined, since I had that role as sysadmin for Brickimedia it took a lot of the stress of being a new user off of me. Without that stress it gave me the opportunity to fit in sooner and learn the community. If gave me a sense of place and being. I felt like I belonged in the community for once, which is something I've never been able to say about any other LEGO fan site. But also, those who remember when I joined know that I was a dickhead who thought he could get away with anything since he was a sysadmin. That was just my own immaturity, but thank god we moved past that. :) Anyways fast fowarding, we moved, I didn't do much at Brickipedia, then our site crashed, we came back to Wikia. That was when I started becoming active at Brickipedia. I edited a lot—over 5000 edits in a couple months, plus earning patroller, chatmod, RQM, CQM and QCG—and I really got to know the Brickipedia community. I also matured a lot with the responsibilities I accumulated. Needless to say, I've accumulated a lot of skills from my time at Brickipedia and I'm thankful for that. Anyways, we started planning to move back to Brickimedia. This was a terrible idea and we should have just stayed at Wikia and compromised with Staff to meet our needs, but that ship has sailed and we can't go back unfortunately. Anyways, I got hyped to move back again of course and ended up violating Wikia's Terms of Use a lot. I'm surprised how many times they cut me slack and let me off with just warnings, but in September, 2 days before my request for adminship would have passed, I got globally blocked for good. After several appeals to no avail, I was basically crushed. All my hard work in the Brickipedia community moving up in the ranks and having a feeling of accomplishment through the responsibilities I held was gone. However I didn't completely give up. I still had motivation to make Brickipedia great, so we moved back to Brickimedia and did great... well our community did pretty well but our publicity didn't. We hardly got as many visitors post-launch as we did the first time. I tried so hard to do everything I could to increase our number of daily visitors but slowly I started losing motivation. We did make a lot of progress internally on our site. A lot of dumb policies from Brickia have been improved. We've gotten a lot of partnerships. We even have support from the LEGO Group. The only problem is very few users are editing and very few people are visiting our site. This is why I've lost motivation towards contributing here. I don't want to stop trying, and I don't want anyone else to stop trying, but we have to know that if things keep spiralling downward like they seem to be, we're screwed. We need to make an improvement and we need people to work hard again. I'm going to try to be more active than ever in the next week or so, but I'm sure that if I don't see anyone else besides the other admins doing anything, I'll likely lose all hope in the community making any progress. Maybe it's my ignorance that I was never a member of this community without some role of some sort, or maybe it's the fact that I've devoted more time to familiarising myself with the site, the community, and all their technicalities, but I've struggled for months to understand why Brickipedia is failing as a site and as a community, but to no conclusion have I been able to answer that question. I've stayed up countless nights just thinking about it: "What went wrong?" "How do go back to being the successful site we once were?" The only answer is that we all need to be motivated. I'm trying to motivate myself, and I will do as much to contribute here over the next week or so as I can, but we need the whole community to do this instead of just one person.

So, if you've read all this, which I hope you have, you will now know my entire background history throughout my time in this community and my opinions on it. You'll know why I've told so many of you to edit time and time again, and you'll know why my activity has been decreasing lately. You'll know why I've stuck around at this community so long and why I've never managed to leave it, though I've tried to several times. You'll also know what I want to see of this community and why I want to see it. You'll also know why I've made some of the choices I've made, said the things I've said, and thought the things I've thought. Just know that I'm not leaving this community as long as I have a purpose here and a responsibility to fulfill.

Kind regards,
ToaMeiko (talk)

Comments (21)[edit source]

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CligraBricktastic

126 months ago

Score 1

I feel the need to point out that this message is not directed at anyone in particular. I'm also not here to deconstruct anyone's arguments, or right a long post agreeing with or disagreeing with or shouting at someone. I've come to realize that's not really my style.

I'm just here to say this:

You're all great. I like all of you, despite any flaws you may have, perceived or otherwise. I also really respect all of you for being more dedicated to the site than I am right now (I could blame an increasingly hectic life, and more real-world commitments... but I won't. I could be just as dedicated here as I was before if I really wanted.)

So yeah. You are all wonderful people, and, whatever any of you decide to do, you have my thanks for all the time and effort you've put into this site.

And into being a friend of mine.

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FB100ZNovice

126 months ago

Score 1

"User rights" is a terrible, terrible name for what it's referring to. They are privileges, not rights.

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

126 months ago

Score 2

Okay, I'll stop talking about talking later and try to get this done, even though it's getting late and I still have things to do tonight- not that that matters.

"Contrary to popular belief, user rights do not equate to power over others." I disagree there, kind of. In a perfect system it would mean that, but people generally flock around admins for guidance. I believe that is totally natural and though I do appreciate when they show initiative themselves and admittedly don't particularly like moderating, I knew that it came with the toolset, and I am okay with it. But the admin should not abuse his/her power, and I would not accuse anyone else of that (I'm a different story, but we don't need to get into that; since I did bring it up though I'm referring to my Wikia block), I'm just saying. And if the additional tools don't give you the power to do anything more, then what is the point? (That is a genuine question, I might not quite understand.)

Anyway, I was a little perturbed by the chat message (hence the "Ok" or whatever short response I gave), and I don't feel it has been justified either. I kind of see where you are coming from and maybe I don't quite understand because I am a different kind of person. "Well, not more than anyone else. If I didn't feel good about my importance I'd probably be suffering from depression." Well, yeah, that's right, but I've always thought it is a difficult balance between insecurity and pretentiousness. Of course one should feel good when they do good work, but that should require good work. That isn't to say that you haven't put any in, quite the contrary, nobody is denying it. It isn't to call you pretentious, either, but food for thought?

I will admit that you might have a point about merging bureaucrat and admin. I honestly shared some similar reservations, but not enough to oppose (I believe I was neutral). At the end of the day, I always considered bureaucrat an honorary position, so I decided it wasn't really a big deal. Back in my day (I guess you are right about me being a "senior" :D ), we only had two or three because the wiki didn't need any more. I don't think I have ever told anyone this, but the reason I have never accepted a nomination for bureaucrat or nominated myself (even when I said I would...I can't give an excuse there) is because it was really just an honorary position to me, and I still thought of it as being the "2 or 3" best users on the wiki. By accepting it, I thought I would be putting myself on a pedestal. I did it to keep myself humble. Actually, when we get around to the "Remove rights and start again?" section of the forum, I was going to resign as Checkuser because I'm not really using it, and probably still will. I would be happy for you to have it because I am sure you would use it better than I ever would, but I can't say I like the reasoning. This is a difficult topic for me to cover, especially since you are implying depression and nobody wants you to feel that way, but I hope that watering over it hasn't done too much damage....

The merger of admin and bureaucrat personally would not change my support for LK901. In fact, I would vote for him now if I was sure he would remain active and if he had more experience. So as long as he sticks with us through the next year and doesn't go crazy, that's at least one vote, and I have been pretty tentative with support in the past. :P

I am a little disappointed that you feel you do need rights to contribute effectively, when I am content with writing a description to the best of my ability. Usually I am not too happy with the description myself, but I am pleased when other people deem it good enough to be featured. I suppose that is just another difference between us, and I that is okay. It takes all kinds. Though, it does seem that you were content with similar accomplishment, at least on the Ninjago wiki. I know that I haven't been as active as I possibly could since the move, but I have been trying harder lately and I will continue to do so (at least when I return to better activity on Thursday). "Sure, I enjoy contributing to something I deem useful, but just imagine feeling like you're the only one doing anything useful." Maybe I am taking this out of context, because I did just jot a few quotes into notepad when I read this earlier, but is editing not useful?

I already voiced my opinion on the responsibility thing in reply to BFN. It is difficult to play to our strengths when there are so few of us, and I'm really not sure what other people's strengths are, nor how wide a range there may be. Some of them might not include editing at all, and even if it isn't the most productive thing, people like Nexus are trying to help in their own way, and Bug has been doing a good job of stewarding Customs. Knight has also been doing a bit of advertising and trying to get Stories more active. Yeah, it's not too unified; like you and CJC mentioned, the media thing was poorly thought out, but they are making an effort.

I haven't been keeping track, but I think in the blog you said that you haven't been extremely active since March? That's okay, since I am sure you have been productive (those are some ungodly hours you were working, even if the pay was amazing) so it isn't my place to complain, but I think you worry about us a bit too much. You have done a lot, and I think I do understand why you are feeling so fatigued. You have only been an admin with us through stressful times, and you were more or less thrown right into it. I don't want to speak for everyone (I even hate saying I so many times...) but I think we all appreciate it. You do deserve a break.

However, I must admit that I do agree with Nova to an extent, even if his wording was rather harsh, but I don't want you to leave either. You have done wonderful things just recently with getting us support from TLG and I haven't got any qualms with your running of the social media outlets (though I haven't been keeping a close eye on them either), but when you say tell people to edit and haven't done it very seriously since March, it's kind of difficult to listen. I know you have said that it is because you do not want people to rely on you to do everything, and it is understandable if you do not want to be our rock. However, on the flip side, I do sort of feel like you have been relying on Nova, CJC, NBP, etc.. If you are feeling stressful or depressed, I think that you might need another outlet, possibly one that doesn't involve computers. Or maybe you have one, I don't know, but it seems as if this experience might not be so healthy for you. Far be it from me to get involved in your personal matters, and I am the kind of person who tries to stay out of other people's business, so if I am far off base or you just don't want me rambling about these things, feel free to reprimand me. :P

Anyway, I feel this needs a closure. I can't give it one though, so I'll just leave it here and hope it does the best it can....

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

126 months ago

Score 0

(I probably won't be able to reply until at least Saturday night, unless I can tomorrow morning, and I already realized I may have forgotten a few things, but hopefully any issues will have blown over by then....)

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

126 months ago

Score 0

I guess I phrased that part about user rights not equating to power poorly. I should have used "authority" instead of power, since power can be used with different meanings. In my mind at least, I try not to ever use my user rights as an authority over people with less user rights. (So when Nova or anyone calls me "supreme overlord" or something, it hurts. No Nova, you're not the first to say that to me either, so don't take that too personally with recent events.)

I also worded my message about looking to request CheckUser/oversight poorly. It's not that I want more responsibilities over other people, it's just that now the "bureaucrat" team will have so many more users that I feel I could have the time and resources to take on another responsibility, but CU/OS is the only responsibility I don't have here so even though you may see it as the overlord-ish user right, to me it's just that one other thing I don't already do that I probably could.

Again I probably worded another thing wrong. I don't feel the need to have user rights to contribute effectively. It's just that the responsibilities with user rights are something I actually like to have (not trying to sound like a douche) because intermittently it's nice to do something else on the wiki besides writing content, which is why you'll sometimes see me start deleting or renaming something out of the blue, since it gives my head a bit of a break from editing. Another thing you won't have seen, but I often will have my bot do something while I take a break from editing. The rights aren't the key to me wanting to contribute, but it gives me something beneficial to do besides mindlessly writing content for hours. I hope that makes sense.

It could be my ignorance like I said which is why I feel the "need" for user rights (still trying not to sound like a douche about that, but my explanation for why I like to have them is in the above paragraph). I guess since I ever started using wikis, I always had some sort of role or user right that I had to use alongside editing. And no I didn't mean to say editing isn't useful. Just forget I said that sentence, I don't even know what I was trying to say there...

Also I'm not trying to scare people into thinking I'm leaving. I know I've done a lot of great things here and I take pride in that, but what I was meaning to say is sometimes without the motivation to edit anymore, I feel like my responsibilities here (user rights) are the only things keeping me here. Of course I won't be leaving since I know the community would lose a lot by me leaving; I just meant that I sometimes feel like there is very little for me to feel obliged to stay.

I'm really sorry for not contributing as much as I used to. It's just I've lost so much motivation since we moved. After I dropped out of high school/got my GED instead of a diploma so I could finish early, I would have thought I'd have more time to contribute but with the combination of no motivation and more real-life responsibilities, I just haven't been able to. Don't get me wrong, I used to love editing and haven't decided to just become useless. When I do edit here and do something good, it really makes me feel accomplished and I like that. I just wish there was more of a community that could also appreciate it.

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NovaFlareMaster Builder

126 months ago

Score 2

"but now I see it's been "resolved" already..."

I don't know what you all want from me anymore. There was no opposing vote made in over a week. The overall ratio was 89% support to 11% oppose. I have to beg you all incessantly to get any sort of response from nearly anyone. When the forums were opened, everyone went off everywhere, when the whole point of opening the forum about how we do forums first was so that forums could then be closed in a fair and objective way. But, I was so amazed that people were actually doing something instead of sitting around on chat wasting time that I let it go. But of course, if I dare to close anything with a very clear consensus, I get sarcastic remarks directed at me. Thank you.

02:26, 17 July 2014 ToaMeiko (Talk | contribs | block): if I decide to become fully active here once I have a computer that is sufficient and I have time to spare, I guess I'll be requesting oversight/checkuser rights because with bureaucrat and administrator being merged now I have no responsibility that keeps me any more useful than the average joe
02:27, 17 July 2014 Berrybrick (Talk | contribs | block): Except bureaucrat and admin? :P
02:28, 17 July 2014 ToaMeiko (Talk | contribs | block): yeah but with them merged now, I'm serving no more of a responsibility than any other admin therefore I'm not really any more useful than them

And then, we have a user who won't bother contributing to the mainspace unless they're the supreme overlord of the wiki, and has to feel more important than any other ~~admin~~ average joe. This means getting checkuser and oversight rights, a right we've never even had to use on the wiki to date. Which basically makes the right a title more than anything, in this case, a title for bragging rights. So how exactly does a title, which doesn't actually do anything make you "more useful"? Being liaison with TLG and self-appointed owner of the Facebook and Twitter sites apparently isn't enough. Not to mention doing things which shouldn't even be within their power, such as trying to change contest rules mid-way through a contest without discussing it with anyone else and buying themselves a Mini Cooper out of our budget without any sort of admin support (Czech was neutral, I opposed wanting to start with a contest instead, noone else commented). It's not like I was against Meiko getting a free set, if anyone should have one, it's him for setting the whole thing up. But doing it without any sort of ok from anyone else really set me off.

And, you've got to love his attitude to other admins, when he sits back bossing them around (who are actually his equals, believe it or not). For example, in the time it took him to go tell me to do a task like a good little admin, he could have uploaded the images himself.

Well, I'm bit bit over Meikopedia. But don't worry, apart from adding in any Comic-Con (or other) news, you won't be seeing the big bad angry weirdo around much for a while. But that doesn't matter:

It's that I want some relief knowing that I'm not doing a community's load of work by myself. Because really, if you've never imagined what it's like to be me on this wiki, it's not a great feeling. Sure, I enjoy contributing to something I deem useful, but just imagine feeling like you're the only one doing anything useful.

Apparently, Meiko's the only one doing anything anyway, not CJC, Berrybrick, NBP, me and a few others as the RC would suggest.

Look. This sounds like a rage-post, I know. But despite everything I have said, I really do like Meiko a lot, and he has done a whole lot for the wiki, especially with relations with other sites and organisations. But at times, more and more lately, I feel like we've traded Wikia staff for Meiko, and I'm getting more than a bit tired of it.

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

126 months ago

Score 0

(I haven't finished reading, but to be fair, I didn't see the proposal for that. That could be my fault, however.)

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

126 months ago

Score 0

(("That" being the budget proposal.))

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NovaFlareMaster Builder

126 months ago

Score 0

It's towards the bottom of the second section on the main Bricki discussion forum.

@my post: I fully take back what I said with the Twitter/Facebook thing, that "self-appointed" bit was very poorly worded. I just meant they're responsibilities that exist which most other admins don't have.

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BrickfilmNutBuilding Bigger

126 months ago

Score 0

"I don't know what you all want from me anymore. There was no opposing vote made in over a week. The overall ratio was 89% support to 11% oppose... But of course, if I dare to close anything with a very clear consensus, I get sarcastic remarks directed at me. Thank you."

Assume good faith. I wasn't making a sarcastic remark, though I realize that the message going over the internet makes tone ambiguous. It was kind of a "Dang it, timing" sort of thing. If anything, I was upset with myself, not you. :P

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

126 months ago

Score 0

About the number of support, there were several neutrals who couldn't decide between opposition and support. I think it could be better left the same. At this point I don't care.

When did I say I won't be contributing to the mainspace? I said I didn't feel like I had a responsibility anymore. Responsibility. Nowhere did I say "supreme overlord" or anything involving power. Is it bad that I want to fulfill more responsibilities? Responsibilities aren't a liability. I don't have to do what I do at this wiki but I do it because I have the time to take on more responsibilities than other people. Actually I don't have that much time, but I do it anyways because I'd rather do more work over time than less.

Yes, I'm the liaison between us and TLG currently, but I was actually planning on hooking up a couple other people, you included, to also be in contact with LEGO so that I don't always have to be present to get prizes if there's a contest even if I'm not involved in the contest, or if someone else wants to do a review. I technically don't own the Twitter nor the Facebook pages. Lcawte is listed as the "owner" of the Facebook page (I'm only set as "page administrator" last I checked) and the Twitter account is shared between myself, Lcawte, and CJC. That doesn't really have any power associated with it like you seem to think I think it has.

I never tried to change the contest rules midway through the contest. I had misread the rules, didn't double check them since I was on my phone whilst writing that comment. When you approached me on chat about it (somewhat rudely, I might add, but I didn't hold that against you when I responded), I told you that if I was mistaken, you could delete my comment.

I didn't go ahead and buy the MINI Cooper out of the blue like you seem to think I did. And I didn't buy it for myself. I bought it to review for Brickipedia. I'd gladly turn it over out of my possession and leave it at Brickipedia's corporate headquarters so I don't own it for myself anymore... oh wait we don't have one of those.. It was offered to me by Kim through an email sent out to everyone with the same affiliation with TLG that we have. Since it was the first time we were offered something, it would be rather off-putting to decline it. I have since declined the offers for the Exo Suit and the Research Institute sets, even though those would be nice to have someone review. Just be thankful that the MINI Cooper review did get us good publicity and PR.

My attitude? Yes, I get pissed off at times as I can tell you do too, but that link you presented is invalid towards your point. If I can remember correctly, late March was when I didn't have a computer I could use since mine was suffering from hardware issues I didn't fix until April. Therefore I must have written that comment from my phone. If it came off as having a negative attitude, that's not something you can hold against me because it's not really the easiest thing to portray perfect emotion through text. You can't say that I don't perform tasks like a "good little admin" because I was unable to perform changes like that to the article. I did my best to edit what I could without a computer, but it's not really the easiest thing to do when at that point of the year I was busy with work and getting my GED and finishing my education.

I specifically named you, Berry, CJC and others as other hardworking users when I wrote this blog. I intentionally included those users, not just picking random names. What more appreciation do you want?

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

126 months ago

Score 0

Also I forgot to include this in my reply, but we actually have had to use CheckUser here. Actually, I've had to use it on this wiki even though I've never been nominated for it. Until we implement the new request process for all user rights, I technically have the authority as a board member to give myself that right. I've taken advantage of that privilege in times that I've spotted a spambot or something before you or someone else, because it's one less thing I can leave for you to have to do. You're welcome, I guess.

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BrickfilmNutBuilding Bigger

126 months ago

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I was going to change my "neutral" on the 'crat/admin thing to a weak oppose after reading some of your points again, but now I see it's been "resolved" already...

Regardless, as for your main points... I guess I don't really know what to say. I can certainly feel for you, though it's not like I didn't already kind of comprehend all of this before the big blog.

Though, honestly... I don't think this emphasis on "responsibility" is going to get anyone to edit. Did we ever have that emphasis back at Brickia? Come to think of it, at Brickia, which is doing pretty well, do any of them edit because they feel a "responsibility"? I'd be surprised, except for maybe in the case of Matau. The problem with this "responsibility" is that it is indefinite in both scope and length, so it can become pretty easy to get disillusioned or lost after a short amount of editing. Especially with this competition with Brickia, which adds a lot of pressure, futility, and frustration. Maybe if we start treating it more like what it originally was for a lot of us, a hobby instead of a chore, we will regain some motivation and, hopefully, get newer users to be more interested in it?

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

126 months ago

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I'm still trying to figure out how to word my response, but I don't usually consider it a chore. I haven't been happy that I have had other things to do this week though and I will come back to find a dead chat where people were discussing something that hasn't been updated, but usually I'm fine, at least when I can be left to focus on my strengths and don't have to bother with templates and page creation.

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

126 months ago

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To start my reply I'm going to skip a couple of your paragraphs because there's nothing to respond to in them.

Anyways, like you said I'm a "valuable person" here because I'm the most active in so many of the teams that basically do all the work here. And that's the problem I see. I'm basically the only one doing any work in most of these teams which not only has worn me out but made me lose hope in the others, therefore I have no motivation to continue on so many of the efforts I was previously making here.

The reason you say you haven't retired is also a problem in my eyes— not your fault though. You've been here for many years longer than me, yet both of us are looking for and waiting for someone to be able to replace us. I shouldn't have to be at the same point as a more senior member of the community. I've only been here for little under 2 years, so at the rate of which I've worn myself out here, you probably would have left this site several years ago. Either I don't have the endurance you do or lately we're working harder than we should have to be. I think it's the latter. Not enough new users here are staying long enough and familiarising themselves to the point where they can eventually "replace" us. So if new people don't pick up our positions we currently work on, and we're still wearing ourselves out here, eventually there's not going to be anyone to lead this community. We need more people like our old selves to step in and help give new life to this place...

Anyways, if this site doesn't improve to a healthy level in the next year or so, there's no hope from what I can see. It's sad to say but if our users continue to become increasingly apathetic and we don't move forward and keep up with Brickia, there's no point competing with them. Like you said in your response to how I got here, I did a lot of "rebellious" things like standing up to Wikia and getting globally blocked several times. Now I see users who at one point I was standing up for because they wanted to abandon Wikia—the people who we took the time to try again at Brickimedia for—who say they're going back to Wikia (~~not~~ to name names, LFY1547). So essentially, I went through a ton of trouble to get people to Brickimedia which ended up destroying my chance to be able to fall back to Wikia again, and they go back to Wikia leaving me and others like you CJC to rot here at Brickimedia. This is the problem with the community. I don't think they've made up their mind if they want to be here or not. If they want to be here, we need to get them to stop being lazy and do the work that was once something that every community member did because it was their responsibility. Responsibilities shouldn't be have to be repeatedly told to be done, but if the users who sit in chat, though they say they love Brickimedia, aren't going to do the necessary work to keep the site alive, then they're not only hurting themselves but the rest of the community, especially members like me and you who don't have another option to go back to the old site or whatever.

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CJCBricktastic

126 months ago

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As I've said many times, the users who were so vocal about moving are mainly moving back. Why? I assume they think its going to die here and want to get on the Brickia admins good sides. I'll re-read to see if I have another thoughts on your response tomorrow.

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NBP3.0Brick Master

126 months ago

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I just want to say that your views on merging the rights are not farfetched at all, I just can't seem to pick a side in the matter (Which I wish I could). I also understand the feeling of sometimes feeling no motivation to come back. It's not always something that anyone else can control, human nature requires a motivation to succeed. If you've run out then you are acting against your own character to continue (Like users like NovaFlare and CJC, who sucks but still stays). It's all about what motivates you and keeps your here (or not here), but I wouldn't be too hard on yourself if it is difficult. We appreciate all the work you have done here, and how often you are on chat and talk to other users. You have been an immense help to this site and I'm sure anyone can agree, therefore your input and opinion on the change that this site is going through is most likely shared by others (definitely by me, though I've never been one for change).

Also, cool story bro. I wish I had known N00bMeiko. :P

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

126 months ago

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tl;cr, but I will later.

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

126 months ago

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I need to digest this, and find a tasteful way to regurgitate the thoughts I have already had...we'll see how that goes when it goes.

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NexusAmateur

126 months ago

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I understand. And our fiasco on Skype awhile ago made me also think "What can I do to be better and how can I help this wiki grow?" I took a great time thinking, I understand now. We all need to pin-point our strengths other than chatting and use those to do something good for the wiki. Ex. I'm a decent builder and I love being social. We need help on our social media sites, I'm there. I'll make customs articles, advertise the wikis on Flickr. And most importantly, it's my goal to make 50 mainspace edits every week. With a system like this we can work for something more than just a site full of fans, we can be bigger than that. We have resources and we can use them if we can use them smarter than we possibly are now. With all the changes for the upcoming weeks, I believe it is the perfect time to start a system like this...

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

126 months ago

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Though you've thought it out a lot, I don't think a requirement to edit is a good moral to follow when editing. To drive more people to edit, more people need the willingness and motivation to voluntarily contribute rather than feeling obliged to edit. If people feel editing is an obligation, and then they lose the ability to meet that obligation, instead of taking hiatus from editing, they either flock to chat and don't go back to editing or they leave the wiki altogether, which works against us rather than for us. The most important thing to get people to edit is that it's a responsibility as a wiki member. Responsibilities aren't requirements but without fulfilling a responsibility, things don't work out in favour of the masses, which is what we're seeing right now with our lack of contributions from users here.

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