TheHoverpope/WhyIAmHere

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An explanation.

I'm posting this primarily as a rebuke to my earlier, positive comments about the official wiki. As such, I consider it an offense against myself and my advocacy for that cause more than anything else. If people from this community feel this is offensive and shouldn't be here, I'll get rid of it. And now, for the article.

Why I'm Here

So, I'm back on this wiki. You may or may not have noted that I've been a fairly ardent advocate of the official site, and I still like rather a lot about it. The template set-up is still gorgeous and helpful, it's clean and navigable, and I really, really miss getting to use apostrophes and spaces in page titles. I really miss that. In fact, all of the merits and flaws of the official wiki that I talked about in earlier articles (/ATaleOfTwoWikis, /WikiPrescription) are still the same except for the changes worked by months of diligent effort by devoted fans.

So why am I back? I'm somewhat leery of saying. I mean, I view it as somewhat of a private matter, I view it as something that is a personal decision that one person made, and I personally have never been a fan of airing dirty laundry, mine or others. And so I won't, quite. I'll keep the relevant private correspondence that way, and I'll only talk about what's on the public record here. Normally, I wouldn't do even that - but a wiki is a community matter, and exalted is a community matter. I'm willing to accept the affair is concluded, that I'm not stepping on anyone's decision-making time, and that what has happened is essentially final.

Basically, what happened is this: I got banned.

Gasp, shock, people fainting everywhere, yeah yeah. I got banned for my aforementioned articles about the exalted wiki, and my article annoyedly talking about their deletion two months ago, available at /OneMoreRound. I got banned by the anonymous moderator ExaltedWiki, with a smug little explanation on the log page, no notice to me, no discussion of reasons or anything else beyond this message: "This person was actively being antagonistic to the company in direct violation of his promise not to do so. Sad that." This is, I believe most would feel, infuriatingly smug. As well, it was factually inaccurate. I was actively avoiding being antagonistic, in particular in my third article where it would have been easy. Certainly, I was not opposing anything the company ever did, as antagonism would imply. I believe the consensus opinion of commenters on both sites agrees. Another factual inaccuracy: I never promised not to be antagonistic to the company, and I never would. A company is an abstract thing, not a person; there's no respect to cause me to refrain besides what the people who it represents earn, or in this case, spit on. So even this doesn't change my feelings towards White Wolf as a whole, they are a group of spectacular artists, wonderful writers, and creative geniuses, and obviously they've put together my favourite game. There's just a little extra tarnish on their public relations side I've now noticed that everyone else already seemed to know about.

Which brings me to my next point. There seemed to be a lot of worry about corporate censorship and heavy-handed moderation on the new wiki when it was first under discussion. I thought it was silly, that only people with absolutely no grasp of how to keep a fan community active and supportive would actually do things like that. Certainly from my experience moderating forums on the tubes, it seemed completely uncharacteristic of common sense. It would appear that I was wrong, and that the main reason that moderation wasn't heavy was because the mods bothered to check the site only once every few months. And I'm sorry I disregarded everyone whose opinions - founded on more experience then my own - I disregarded.

But, as I noted, almost everyone seemed to already feel this way about White Wolf's internet side. So this likely won't have any long-term effects or change anyone's minds. The official wiki will probably soldier on, the small community there just getting slightly smaller. There's not likely to be much of a change here except for a few extra demons and some momentary amusement at someone or another's expense. Ultimately, this doesn't amount to much, as one would expect from a single person being banned from a small subset of a niche fan community.

I just thought that I should get this out in the open, mostly as advice to anyone running fan communities of their own: it's not a good idea to ban one of the few people actively trying to draw more eyes to your community, it's not a good idea to ban one of the few people producing work on your site, and if you are representing a company which sells actual products, you should generally try not to actively go out of your way to alienate your fans. To summarize: I'm back.

Comment is free.

Welcome home. - Wordman

Indeed, I'll say it again. A hearty welcome. Your demons, creativity, and personal demons, are welcome here. -- GreenLantern