User blog:Madman97/The Deterioration of this Wikia

Many of you who are new here probably have no clue who I am or probably won't be bothered to read this (Or even be on the blog page in this part of the wikia) but trust me when I say that this used to be a pretty hype domain that I was practically ruler of for a brief period of time, and I'm here to put some perspective in your fresh new user minds (Meaning any users that have joined this wikia recently and look to get involved). I've had my friends and my enemies. Before you leave, this isn't a memoir of my time here. Don't worry, sappy origin story is almost done. I started this profile on the June of 2013. Many of the mods you may see in chat or the Admins also started to crop up around that time. Call us the generation X of this wikia, a bunch of old dogs struggling to keep what used to be a vibrant place of godlike debates, histerical blog series's (Sounds weird, doesn't it?), and forum threads that raged for months all in the spirit of Elder Scrolls Lore. Why am I bringing this up to an audience it wouldn't even resonate with anymore?

This Wikia's community is drying up. I can chronicle its heyday and downfall like a bunch of pins on a calender. In fact, much of what was going on was reflected within my many blogs that have written. Usually, I wrote comedic blogs that were not meant to be taken seriously, much like my fellow User: FishySalesman, or DubiousPeddler as he goes by now, but when I collaborated and debated with other users such as Zippertrain85, Man of Steak, and various others, some really enlightening stuff happened. To the point, things were going great. Then everything changed when the fire nation attacked....

Not really. It's be cool, but unfortunately, my internet generation of Wikia users, while a good-hearted bunch of dudes, grew into an angsty phase of constant arguing that eventually, after many months of instigation and back-and-forth, a large portion up and left. Petitions were created in forums to oust Admins, the mods were getting angry at being treated unfairly, especialy some key users like Zippertrain85 and EmperorJohnson and the former Administrator Jimeee. It was not pretty how the latter two left, and Zippertrain85 was met with heavy opposition. I even did a political op-ed on the subject when we discussed it in chat. That too was met with heavy criticism, though it wasn't meant to be taken seriously, but I understand their points on why it was innapropriate, but that's when my audience started drying up, and nothing except the subject of the lorebook known as C0DA brought them back in for a brief moment. Then I left. I drop in every once in a while to see how the site is doing, but I see this sorry state of a blog page and the chat is near dead as well. Heck, the last blog I did when I said I was officially retiring the blogging business was about how the Chat was dead.

And a couple days ago, I stopped by again and happened upon a strange occurence. More than three people were in the chat. Of course I stopped in, as I knew most of them well, and friendly user Lab Coat Billy turns up. I don't think I've ever had a problem with this guy. He's been on here as long as I have as far as I know, and he told me stuff was not going well. Apparently, this Hub Compromise I have only just heard about didn't work, and it was ery debilitating to the wikia as it stands right now. I thought, ''Well that's not right. GhostAnubis was supposed to have everything under control when I decided to leave. We had a conversation! What went wrong?'' GhostAnubis was the next guy in line for Administrator when Jimeee left, a user who rose from the ashes of the Zippertrain85-led war against the poor ex-Admin that eventually actually worked in getting rid of him--To my surprise--and he was always a popular candidate. The only other one I think matched his popularity with the candidacy was some other old user whose name I forgot. But I had confidence in GhostAnubis that he would get the job done. I'm dissapointed then when I come back and find the Wikia still in as much a sorry shape as I left it. I'm not blaming EVERYTHING on GhostAnubis. Of course not, Administrator is probably a tougher job than most of us realize. But if things are really not well, they need to whip themselves into shape and turn themselves into, as the Angry Video Game Nerd puts it, "F*cking Tigers!!!"

And that, new users, is the purpose of this blog. I guess I am placing this website on a pedastal, like it's anything more than just a jumbled collection of articles you look up when you're stuck in one part of an Elder Scrolls game. I will admit, when I first played Skyrim, I had never touched an Elder Scrolls game before, and when opening a stone door in a tomb after looking at the back of a claw, I didn't know it was on the claw, so I eventually had to look up how to get inside. It's not the first time I had a difficult time in Skyrim. Another time I could think of is when the Companions hired me to settle a fight in my own home against my wife, who could no longer wear clothes because of a glitch, so I had to beat my naked wife to near death in front of my crying children and servants while the rabbit watched. I got my virtual daughter a doll after that and forgot to get the boy something because I was busy murdering someone. Oddly enough, my marriage with Mjoll the Lioness was friendlier after that incident.

(Ahem) Anyway, this IS just a website, but it used to be a nice one. It certainly rivaled the other Elder Scrolls Wikia when it really got going. The community was absolutely huge, full of diversity. With diversity comes some @$$holes but those eventually went away when everyone started to hate me because of some blunders I made with a few blogs. It was usually disagreements about lore, but I do remember trolling a lot. Oh well, I thought it was funny. But I miss that community, and seeing it reduced to these shambles is disheartening, especially after I got in that chat with Lab Coat Billy. It really started to get going. A lot of old people I knew started to show and it devolved into the chaotic I-don't-know-what's-going-on-type crazy we used to have. Some Brazillian guy said he was my number one fan even though I had just met him that day and he didn't even know what I used to be known for but that's alright. He was a cool dude. Good English. The Forums, surprisingly and unsurprisingly, seem to have survived this Wikia "Recession" though most of the topics are repeats of those I debated years ago, like the Imperial vs Stormcloaks and stuff like that. Some can be original but don't hold enough intrigue to really spark a discussion. That's not to say some havn't been pretty interesting though. I've found a couple I liked.

Blogs, of course, are dead as a door nail, have been since the first great recession of users right around when I was completing the Season 3 Finale of my blog series (That's right, there were seasons), and marked the end of what I like to reffer to as the Golden Age of blogs. Everyone was making them, everyone was reading them. Some, like me, based their entire profiles around it. I rarely did anything else besides chat on occasion. However, with the ending of Season 3, I also left the site for a few weeks before ESO came out so I could review that, as it was the basic function of my blog series but in a satrical ranty kind of way that was meant for comedy. I left my legacy to my friend Dave, also known as User: 4.1.22.5.M97. The numbers correspond to the letters that spell Dave, by the way, so that's why he chose that.

Unfortunately, his Blog Critic series didn't gain as much weight as others in the past, and with other prominent bloggers leaving for a brief vacation (Zippertrain85, back to him again, probably made nearly as much blogs as I did), the blog page started to dry up, leaving only dumb@$$ blog post that either just said "Hi" in order to get badges or some question blog where users asked how to beat a certain part of the game. There was no lore discussion, theory blogs, commentary on how the wiki was run (We would get that in chat) When I came back, others started to as well, and their was a quick revival, but as mentioned before, with the second user's recession close at hand only a few mere months away, much of my audience was dissapearing, hardly attracting any sort of attention. I had to cut my series in the middle of Season 4 and my friend Dave's series ground to a violent halt as well. Then returned those terrible blogs I told you about before.

It was a dark time of the wikias history. Many users came, socialized, made this wikia great, but the Zippertrain-Jimeee war left its scars, affecting pretty much everyone who was mildly social on this site, and even those who aren't, as the Hub Compromise that affects the entire website in terms of rules was put forth by GhostAnubis and other Admins, who probably owes his position to the fall of Jimeee. It's amazing how much political struggle can happen within a wikia. It's astounding. And that's why I want to bring the attention of its importance to you new users that have been filling up the chat rooms three at a time. Almost all of you are different each time I see you within the chat, so I think it's safe to assume generation Y has taken over while those that have remained from X are usually in positions of leadership or used to be. So I want to make something very clear.

As you can probably guess, this site was a bit of a passion project for me. No, I did not make waves to contribute to its betterment, Hell I might have made it worse somehow, but for this moment of me stopping in means that I still believe it can be saved, and it requires an effort from everyone, Generation Y included. I'm not asking you to write blogs or start forum threads if you don't want to first. But if you do want to, I want to ask that you blog about something intelligent. After you're done, ask yourself if you were looking through the blog page and you saw the blog you just made, would you read it? Or starting a forum thread. If you want to mention anything about Michael Kirkbride, or anything regarding his lore in the Elder Scrolls, the nature of Aedra and Daedra, the most powerful being within the Elder Scrolls universe or top ten lists of most powerful characters, or the Civil War in Skyrim, look up some debates from 2013 and early 2014. You will learn everything you need to know. So if you plan on starting a thread, make something new and make something you would think actually matters.

As for Chat, well, that depends on if you're comfortable with being around folks. The mods that are usually there can be silent most of the time because they're probably off doing something else until they see a fluctuation of users within the chat room and it can be pointless to enter if there are not three people or more, but it can be revived if you're willing to talk to other users and discuss things even more in depth than in blog comments or forum threads.

But this is just an old dog ranting about things, as was his sacred duty in times long past. But the bottom line is that this wikia is wounded and it needs healing. Months have gone by and the wound has festered. We need to clean it out, bandage it up properly, and coat the wound with fresh guaze. Only then will it be properly restored.