User blog:Flamefang/Prospective Retrospection

In writing this blog I have three objectives: to provide a unique perspective on the current state of the wiki, to provide a similar perspective on where it might go in the future, and to not be overly tedious in doing so. I hope to do a reasonable job in accomplishing the first two, but I have every reason to believe that I will fail the third, as I tend to be unapologetically verbose and long winded, so please bear with me. I've been on Wikia for around seven years now, and naturally that gives me a lot of perspective. Part of that perspective is understanding that, going forward, what I know will only be half relevant; times change, and people with them. However, there are always things, or aspects of things, that don't change, and those are what I intend to talk about here.

Retrospective
About three of my years on Wikia were spent on a number of smaller wikis, mainly focused around World Building and fiction writing, and of course the main thing I took away from there was that the majority of 'creative' wikis are small and without significant prospects. Although I was elected, or in one case popularly propelled, into Bureaucratship on two occasions there, simple factors resulted in those wikis' decline and eventual collapse. The communities were tiny, and so when one or two members vanished due to unforeseen real-life complications or reasons less transparent, the effects were devastating. Such small places, with so few dedicated members, could not withstand those pressures. This experience I took with me when I was asked to assist in building HRPW (Hogwarts Roleplay Wiki), and later CHBRPW (Camp Half-blood Roleplay Wiki).

The next three and a half years were spent mainly on CHBRPW, and it was there that I tried to implement a lot of what I had learned previously. As I saw it the best method to creating a solid and lasting community was the creation of chat. At first we used a third party site called 'Chatango', but later we were cleared for privileged access to the first testing of the Wikia chat system we all know today. Personally, I think that this chat was the main reason why CHRPW was ever able to succeed in its early days, and it served as the core of our community. As much as we can communicate through talk pages and message walls, there is something much more intimate, personal, and effective about communicating in real time. This helped us massively in the early days, though we were always worried about the future. In that first summer, we wondered whether CHBRPW would make it through the fall, no less into the next year. Our solution to that problem was to create activities. By and large this was successful, and CHRPW flourished, but after some time the problems came not because users were bored or disinterested in the wiki, but instead because they were too interested. We experienced internal power struggle, drama, and a lot of unnecessary conflict. For the record, I think this wiki has that matter relatively sorted, at least for the moment. My real concern is in the next issue CHB faced.

As time passed and the wiki grew larger we faced two concurrent and interrelated problems. We had established a very effective administrative bureaucracy, but because of all the information we needed to keep, store, and reference, our work grew proportionally as the population increased. Our solution to this problem was mainly to upscale the administration in response, and so our ranks swelled. For some time this was fine, but as trusted users left, their replacements were of increasingly lower quality and lower dedication. Our standards for leadership fell, and soon pretty much anyone who could accept a claim (the equivalent of clearing citizenship) could become a Rollback. The community also started to grow apart, certain users abandoning chat for their own private ones, and the administration moved almost entirely onto a private Skype chat. Of course, wiki chat still remained the heart of the wiki, but in the eyes of some users it was no longer really necessary, and as a result we saw people completely estranged from one another. The functional part of the bureaucracy basically ignored chat, with its head member refusing to even enter, and so for the first time many admins ascended onto a level above everyone else; a sort of cold and faceless administration with very little idea what was happening beneath it.

Prospective
These problems, simplified so that I don't need to take several pages, have lead to CHBRPW's general decline, and are also largely why I left it. These problems are also what I'm keen to avoid here. At the moment I think ARPW is in the equivalent of CHBRPW's early stages, in the equivalent of that first summer I mentioned. We have a lot before us, and so let's take what's behind us, and use it to shape our way forward. There are solutions to the problems CHBRPW faced, if we care to learn the lessons.

I think the first thing we need to do is really prepare for the future in a comprehensive manner. At CHBRPW we assumed that our trusted members would always be there, that we could always count on people, and that they'd never change. Instead some of our best users turned for the worse and left the wiki in ruins, while others simply left. I think we need to accept that similar things could happen here, and therefore prepare for it. CHBRPW always had a robust system of policies to guide its users, but most of those were created in reaction to problems instead of before them. By the end they were so heavily misquoted and misinterpreted by the administration that they were often almost meaningless. So, one of our first jobs should be to establish a clearer and cleaner set of policies, if not to guide us now, to guide ourselves in the future and whoever may follow after us. At the moment we have no stated policies regarding voting (except a vague reference on the voting forum) or user activity, and I think our chat policy could use a little review considering how much is left to chatmod discretion.

The second thing has been mostly covered already, and that is specifically the structure of our administration. As I stated on the vote to change it, establishing a strong but flexible administrative structure is one of the greatest challenges faced by any wiki. However, it is also one of the most specific, and each wiki benefits differently from different kinds of structures. Since this problem has been mostly solved for the moment, it is simply something I would suggest that everyone keep an eye on and consider as things change over time.

The third thing is more difficult to describe, as it can't be written into policy or 'enforced' in any serious manner. Essentially, given what I've seen, I think one of the most effective ways to ensure that a wiki will endure in the long term is to ensure that it has a tight knit and serious community. In essence, I think we need a solid and determined 'wiki culture' that persists even after our founding members have left. If we can create something that ensures that all of our members, old and new, are able and willing to perpetuate, hopefully we could avoid CHBRPW's flaws all together. I think my previous wiki lost so much of what it once was over time that the wiki we see today is almost different entirely. I'd hate to see that happen here. One step might be to really ensure that chat remains the center of our community, or to create a system of collective responsibility whereby everyone knows the rules and how to follow them, instead of needing a small group of people to keep everyone else in line. At the end of the day though, only the wiki itself can decide.

Conclusion
I apologize for writing so much and even being a little vague about it. As I write this I'm not sure that I've exactly covered everything that I wanted to when I started, but at the same time I think I've made a contribution, and I hope it proves useful. I want to make it understood that these are merely reflections upon my past time on previous wikis, and that they are only suggestions at the strongest. As one of the few people who's been around here for a long time, and had a hand in the success of at least three of Wikia's largest RP wikis, I feel that I have to pass at least something on.

Thanks for reading,

Flamefang (talk) 03:57, January 12, 2015 (UTC)