User blog:Zippertrain85/Hiatus

Hello everyone, it's about time this is announced. I am going on Hiatus, this might last until tomorrow, a week, maybe a couple years, or longer, but I do think a blog about it would be acceptable.

My Experience
So I first really started looking at this place for information in mid 2012. Usually regarding Skyrim, from the articles here, I learned about characters, lore, etc. I loved it, it made me start to really appriciate the series and inspired me to want to play more of it. As an anon user here, I made a couple minors changes to pages, and I didn't really know a ton about editing Wikis. Here and UESP became the places I searched for my info for TES on, and it was cool! But than I noticed they had a blog community here, one where the Civil War got discussed often. Really the only place I debated stuff like that was YouTube and I got excited seeing this whole blogging area regarding it. I wanted to add my own Civil War ideas, my theories, etc. I made my account and created two blogs, one about Harkon and the other the Civil War!

People were not totally happy with my blogs, as a matter of fact I got some hate at first for going against the site's Imperial bias, or questioning mainstream lore, however I did debate it and both sides learned new things about the TES series. It was fun to have these discussions about the series we love, being smart, and meeting some great users. Than I discovered the Forums and this debating went to the Next Level, I discussed pretty much everything there was in the TES lore. On the Forums I also found a lot of games and Roleplays I could join. The games mostly consisted of silly things and funny stories, but we all needed a fun break from debating TES lore at some time. The RPs though, soon became one of my favorite areas on the entire site.

I always enjoyed the concept of Imaginary Play and the TES universe, so a section where a user can come up with characters and events in TES that you made up, it's awesome. At first, I didn't go into the community too well (you can ask some RPers regarding that, XD) and that was a little irritating honestly. But after that, I joined some really fun Roleplays, and got some new friends in that community. As well as some Great RPs out there. Then at the dusk of last year, they introduced the chat. Which got all of us to loosen up even more, and really get to know our community members. I still have good friends from the Chat, and I think it brought good things to the Wiki even if others do not agree, atleast when it first started here.

Corruption
When the year rolled in, and I tried to be a better user, with a goal of becoming a member of the staff, since I enjoyed this Wiki, I wanted to help with the order in it. So for that, I argued less, started editing the mainspace, and answering people's questions. It was actually fun to do and even got into helping the Wiki a lot. I spent days editing pages, creating pages, etc. However, I sort of felt frustrated by it by the end, I felt like my work was getting nowhere, I would spend days and nights creating stuff, trying to help the Wiki. Only to be practically edit-hounded by Patrollers and Admins, and given nonstop criticism on my talk page. I don't mind criticism, but sometimes it was just so out of nowhere and It didn't really make me want to edit more, I also noticed people doing the same thing as me were getting praised a nominated for higher positions, while I pretty much got nothing, it frustrated me.

But looking into the Wiki, I came across something, I began to notice how corrupt some of the staff was becoming, especially the Sysops. How most of them didn't edit at all (but still edited other places, or came only to argued on CTs), didn't care about any part of the site outside editing, constantly made emotional decisions regarding the Wiki, etc. Not every Admin did this, but there was a large amount who did. Jimeee a previous Administrator was the biggest offender, and eventually I got tired of him doing those things, and noticed other users being held accountable when they behaved poorly, and thought the rules applied equally to Admins (people claimed they did), so I made a CT against Jimeee listening my points. Which the Admins and Patrollers all opposed, as well as some regular users, only a few standing by me. What really got me upset by this was that pretty much no one could actually back up Jimeee in a good way, as in, they didn't have any explanation for his wrong doing here. They simply acted like since he edited a lot in the past, he was above the rules, and de-modding him wouldn't be "fair". Eventually the Forum got full of drama and people making insults at me, and with the blatant Kangaroo Court that was taking place on that Consensus I got angry, and sweared.

Now, I admit that was certainly not my finest hour, but the community's reaction was so over-the-top it was ridiculous. Now, what happened was that the Admins decided to remove my Forum Mod tools, without Consensus, without warning, completely just taking it, as some childish attempt at revenge or something, I'm not entirely sure. Pretty much one slip up, and they kicked me off the staff. Months of working on the Wiki, editing pages day and night, enforcing order in the chat. All done because I lost my temper at one point. In addition, other users who did similar things only got slaps on the wrist, barely, which only made me realize how some of the Staff here truly was, corrupt and biased. Even to this day, that tempet outburst is still being used against me, everytime someone would get an argument with me, it would come up. Everytime, I got CTed, it would come up. When Jimeee had banned me (wrongfully may I add) it came up. As if my reputation on the Wiki was forever tainted. Which I personally found absurd, since other users had done similar stuff, and almost got no punishment for it. Or even a stain of their reputation, even then, it's someone swearing on an online Forum. The worst it might've done was rub some people the wrong way, was it really worth getting rid of my Tools and having it still being held against me, like is saying "F*ck you" on an internet Forum (once may I add) really that much of a crime!?

But yeah, I should stop rambling with this. My point is, the Administration, or some of it, remained corrupt here for a long time, until myself and another user got banned from Jimeee, than people saw what was going on and stuff begane to change. But, even though the Wiki is better now, I don't know how the Wiki can just get on track again. The damage this whole Power Abuse battle has caused, many users left, good postions got removed, and drama occured the Wiki is going to have a hard time making up all the time we spent dealing with this. And it can be seen on the lack of Mainspace activity, and just overall leadership for this site, it's one of the reasons I feel this place isn't going great. This Wiki has gone from a TES community to a boarderline warzone, and with the small amount of community that stuck around the process to change it back will be tough honestly

Chat
The chat used to be one of the best parts of this place. It was the area to just relax and talk about all different sorts of stuff, it reamined fun until around maybe, May or so, I was re-nominated for Chat Moderator. Until the summer, the Chat remained the way it was, until a bunch of drama happened, and Mods started turning on each other, for some of the most ridiculous & childish reasons. The Forums were pretty much flooded with CTs from our little feuds. It was extremely immature, and made me start to dislike the chat. It became pretty much two groups of users pitted against each other. The very thing that made it fun was how everyone got together, but the Chat was now just a feud place for drama, it did technically end, but the whole thing made numerous users leave and good mods have their tools removed.

Now stuff has kind of calmed down in the chat, you could almost say too much. The chat went from being so Chaotic to being boring, users now are simply "away" most of the time, and a lot of the people who made it fun stopped coming for multiple reasons. The discussions are boring, since most of the users either don't contribute to conversations much, or only want to talk about NS or something. The Chat is just slowly going to obscurity here, and I don't think there is anything I can do about it.

Forums
The Forums reamined a fun place on this Wiki for a long time, where we could discuss TES lore and other stuff. But soon most of the interesting lore discussions became less interesting, and the people who used to comment on them left the community, I would see the same users debate the same things on the same threads, And RPing has not gotten better. Everytime I made an RP here, next to no one would join it. I don't know why everyone did that, but no matter what it was, next to no one would play, back in the day, almost every RP made would get atleast a couple users. People would tell me stuff like "you can't have Republics" "You're too strict" and stuff, but everytime I changed it the same thing would happen. It also happened on the regular parts of the Forum too! I don't know if my ideas are just THAT uninteresting or people are purposely going out of their way to avoid me, it's annoying. Now I don't want to make any new discussions because of this, or mostly RPs.

Even with the RP board removal, the community has like I expected, lost a lot of contributers (now I get some of you are saying are they never contributed and I don't deny that, but still), and a lot of cool people and creativity on the Wiki went elsewhere. The Hub Compramise seems to have been a shame, since no one is doing it, they left like originally intended from those supporting it.

Blogs
I have been doing this for a while, and I still think blogs are interesting but apparently the community doesn't. Since almost no one even pays attention to us anymore. Only a couple blogs even get made, which are usually news articles, or some Skyrim thing. Not the interesting stuff like, about lore or debates, or simply fun games. I seem to be the only one trying to keep that stuff going. It shows how little people are interested that my blogs which used to get, quite a few comments now have maybe one or two.

Conclusion.
My Conclusion is that the Wiki has lost it's fun mostly, and as Dark Jeto said not the same one in the worst way. The Mainspace is a disaster (though Admins are trying to fix it), the Forums are boring and I get ignored there, the Chat is boring and feuds are coming up, most of the good users have left due to the constant drama and battling on the site, my blogs are becoming pointless, etc. As I said before, maybe my Hiatus will be complete in a couple days, maybe once the next TES comes out, who knows, maybe longer. I'll still come by here, especially for New CTs, just won't be on every day and such. I can answer comments also.