DoA
Old Alpha
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2015
- Posts
- 851
- Location
- Romania
- Society
- Freelancer
- Avatar Name
- Daughter of Anarchy
Disclaimer:
1. Despite being quite a bit emotionally involved, in this thread, I tried to keep myself out of any personal comments and just state the facts; if you want to read the full article (where I didn't removed the subjective parts), you can do it so here.
2. Please be noted that before posting this thread I asked permission from forum moderators and I was granted said permission.
It all started with this announcement (or print screen version of it, in case something happens with the original post) of a contest for most wiki contributions in a given time interval. From the very moment I saw it, I knew that’s just the kind of contest that would suit me; it’s not only that I always loved contributing to wikis (having spent a few hundred hours on Wikipedia alone for example), but also the fact that the winning criteria (number of contributions) really suited someone like me (a perfectionist, OCD person, who pays attention to details and is good on spotting and fixing various small issues).
So, without any further hesitation, I start working – gathered all info I could from other sources (like entropedia, entropiaplanets, forums, etc), start comparing them against already existing info in Monria’s wiki, then update any missing/lost info, while at the same time try to get some consistency against various wiki sections (starting from having same sections in all similar pages to using the same color palette on all pages). Now, to be honest, I would have tried to contribute to the wiki anyway (just like I posted quite a lot on forums where there was no reward), even without a contest, just because I like to try to help and get involved in community projects, but I would have done it at a relaxed pace, not sacrificing my game time for it.
I created whole wiki sections from scratch, I had pages where I added a lot of content (and here are a few such examples), and I also had small contributions, where I only did some minor, but never useless, corrections (like adding a new ore / enmatter drop location). I won’t deny it, I may have slightly inflated my contributions count (as in if I would have three different updates to a page, I would have done them one by one, not all three in a single go), but each and every edit made sense of its own and improved the wiki (and since the software keeps revisions of each single edit, there’s no need for anyone to trust my word, but they can see for themselves what all of my contributions were about).
And everything was going just fine… I was dedicating about one hour every day to this activity and I was well in the lead (93 contributions for me, 31 contributions for the guy on the second place and pretty much that was the whole top, since the other people only made occasional posts, none of them breaking in the two digits range of contributions). But (coincidentally or not) right after an argument that I had via PMs with (one of) the officials, because she deleted a whole section of wiki that I created, the very next day they decided to change the rules of the contest as in number of contributions was no longer the official criteria, but a totally subjective judgement of their own; you can see said posts that changed the rules mid-contest here (or print screen version of it, in case something happens with the original post) as well as instituting a full-fledged censorship over all wiki contributions, where no new content went live without it being manually revised and approved by a censor/moderator first.
I found this moderation policy totally against the very core principle of a wiki (which is defined as "a website or database developed collaboratively by a community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content") and the action of changing the contest rules in the middle of the game (especially when there were only two people involved in the contest and one was in lead by a large margin) totally unfair so I withdrawn from the contest, since by now it was already obvious to me that they want to give the prize to the other guy, so keep going forward would have meant only loosing more of my time fighting a lost battle. Now I don’t comment if the new rules are better or worse than the old ones, but I just think that they should have thought (better) before the contest, not change them in the middle of it, when people were already competing by said rules; that was completely unprofessional and unethical to do.
Just as I found it completely unprofessional and unethical than when I followed their own suggestion to complain if we have have any problem with the rule changes (quoting: “Given that I know all the contributors I am sure there will be no problems with this but if there is let me know”) and I did that (quite politely I would say, considering the situation), instead of some explanations or apologies, I was basically shown the finger (quoting: “One of the advantages of being a player is that I get to say things like this, if you don’t like what we’re doing or how we’re doing it just move along. No big deal.”) and got the thread locked so I can’t replay further more and defend my point of view.
Later edit: Just as I expected, they awarded the prize to the other guy (or print screen version of it, in case something happens with the original post), without even mentioning the many contributions that I made to their wiki. The fun fact though is that after winning the prize, the guy stopped making any contributions to the wiki, as you can see from here (last contribution being on February 14th) or from here (where I'm still clearly leading the top contributors list, even after one month after my last contribution).
P.S.: At the time of posting this artcile, I said that "if there will be any reaction to the problem I raised here (changing the rules in the middle of the event, in retaliation to an argument we had in private), it will not address this issue, but just represent a typical ad-hominem (fallacious) attack that people usually do when they want to distract attention from the topic at hand?"... Curious if I was right and what was the level of the discussion they started? Feel free to check it out here and see for yourself if I was right nor not.
1. Despite being quite a bit emotionally involved, in this thread, I tried to keep myself out of any personal comments and just state the facts; if you want to read the full article (where I didn't removed the subjective parts), you can do it so here.
2. Please be noted that before posting this thread I asked permission from forum moderators and I was granted said permission.
It all started with this announcement (or print screen version of it, in case something happens with the original post) of a contest for most wiki contributions in a given time interval. From the very moment I saw it, I knew that’s just the kind of contest that would suit me; it’s not only that I always loved contributing to wikis (having spent a few hundred hours on Wikipedia alone for example), but also the fact that the winning criteria (number of contributions) really suited someone like me (a perfectionist, OCD person, who pays attention to details and is good on spotting and fixing various small issues).
So, without any further hesitation, I start working – gathered all info I could from other sources (like entropedia, entropiaplanets, forums, etc), start comparing them against already existing info in Monria’s wiki, then update any missing/lost info, while at the same time try to get some consistency against various wiki sections (starting from having same sections in all similar pages to using the same color palette on all pages). Now, to be honest, I would have tried to contribute to the wiki anyway (just like I posted quite a lot on forums where there was no reward), even without a contest, just because I like to try to help and get involved in community projects, but I would have done it at a relaxed pace, not sacrificing my game time for it.
I created whole wiki sections from scratch, I had pages where I added a lot of content (and here are a few such examples), and I also had small contributions, where I only did some minor, but never useless, corrections (like adding a new ore / enmatter drop location). I won’t deny it, I may have slightly inflated my contributions count (as in if I would have three different updates to a page, I would have done them one by one, not all three in a single go), but each and every edit made sense of its own and improved the wiki (and since the software keeps revisions of each single edit, there’s no need for anyone to trust my word, but they can see for themselves what all of my contributions were about).
And everything was going just fine… I was dedicating about one hour every day to this activity and I was well in the lead (93 contributions for me, 31 contributions for the guy on the second place and pretty much that was the whole top, since the other people only made occasional posts, none of them breaking in the two digits range of contributions). But (coincidentally or not) right after an argument that I had via PMs with (one of) the officials, because she deleted a whole section of wiki that I created, the very next day they decided to change the rules of the contest as in number of contributions was no longer the official criteria, but a totally subjective judgement of their own; you can see said posts that changed the rules mid-contest here (or print screen version of it, in case something happens with the original post) as well as instituting a full-fledged censorship over all wiki contributions, where no new content went live without it being manually revised and approved by a censor/moderator first.
I found this moderation policy totally against the very core principle of a wiki (which is defined as "a website or database developed collaboratively by a community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content") and the action of changing the contest rules in the middle of the game (especially when there were only two people involved in the contest and one was in lead by a large margin) totally unfair so I withdrawn from the contest, since by now it was already obvious to me that they want to give the prize to the other guy, so keep going forward would have meant only loosing more of my time fighting a lost battle. Now I don’t comment if the new rules are better or worse than the old ones, but I just think that they should have thought (better) before the contest, not change them in the middle of it, when people were already competing by said rules; that was completely unprofessional and unethical to do.
Just as I found it completely unprofessional and unethical than when I followed their own suggestion to complain if we have have any problem with the rule changes (quoting: “Given that I know all the contributors I am sure there will be no problems with this but if there is let me know”) and I did that (quite politely I would say, considering the situation), instead of some explanations or apologies, I was basically shown the finger (quoting: “One of the advantages of being a player is that I get to say things like this, if you don’t like what we’re doing or how we’re doing it just move along. No big deal.”) and got the thread locked so I can’t replay further more and defend my point of view.
Later edit: Just as I expected, they awarded the prize to the other guy (or print screen version of it, in case something happens with the original post), without even mentioning the many contributions that I made to their wiki. The fun fact though is that after winning the prize, the guy stopped making any contributions to the wiki, as you can see from here (last contribution being on February 14th) or from here (where I'm still clearly leading the top contributors list, even after one month after my last contribution).
P.S.: At the time of posting this artcile, I said that "if there will be any reaction to the problem I raised here (changing the rules in the middle of the event, in retaliation to an argument we had in private), it will not address this issue, but just represent a typical ad-hominem (fallacious) attack that people usually do when they want to distract attention from the topic at hand?"... Curious if I was right and what was the level of the discussion they started? Feel free to check it out here and see for yourself if I was right nor not.
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