User:Shadowcrest/Reference

Preface: I don't know about this particular community's feelings about Wikia and NIWA are, since I don't really contribute here. However, before reading this, I ask you to take a third person standpoint: pretend that you have no idea who Piratehunter or I are, pretend that you know nothing about NIWA, and so on; act as though you are a completely neutral third party observer who has no bias about the situation.

This log is actually about an argument I had / am having with RAN about the re-location of SmashWiki to a server independent of Wikia, one owned by NIWA. NIWA is discussing the possibility of hosting SmashWiki and covering all the costs. However, the reason I am discussing in detail this log is not really related to RAN or our argument at all; you'll notice he comments once or twice here and there, but I am not writing this to ask for your opinions on a possible move to NIWA; I am here specifically to discuss Piratehunter's comments in SmashWiki's IRC channel and in a private session with him(/her?). As far as I am aware, given my own experiences, my own assumptions (I do not claim to know what is going on in the minds of RAN/Piratehunter), and what I understand of Piratehunter's comments, this is how the conversation progressed:

1. RAN and I privately discussed the content of the NIWA move. This section is not shown here because I do not believe it to be relevant; we were purely discussing why I was considering attempting to bring the wiki and its contributors to NIWA, and as I stated in the above paragraph, this is not why I am posting the log. I know why I support the move, and RAN has his own reasons to oppose the move. These are not related to the interaction between Piratehunter and myself, which is the focus of this log.
2. RAN then asked me to continue the discussion in a public channel, which I agreed to. As Piratehunter will confirm in a later comment (in the black section.), RAN asked Piratehunter to support him in this argument against me, which is why he(/she?) even got involved in the first place.
3. RAN then basically went afk (says he was helping someone with something), which explains his noticeable absence during this ordeal. Piratehunter and I continued to discuss during this time; this section is what is detailed below.

All comments are used with permission. I have tried to keep the editing of the log to a minimum: I removed timestamps for readability, and I may have moved comments around to keep the arguments in a complete train of thought so that they are easier to follow, but no comments have been taken out of context or directly edited. I will try to color-code specific sections or points to make my arguments easier to follow; the comments from IRC are indented and also prefixed with a <name> showing who made the comment, and my commentary on the same-colored section will be just beneath the log comments and not prefixed by any name-tags (I hope that all makes sense- if it doesn't, just try to follow along, you should be able to get the gist.) Shadowcrest 15:55, April 10, 2010 (UTC)

---

<RAN1> Salad: Seriously, don't consider moving to NIWA.

<RAN1> There are better ways to do this.

<Piratehunter> Why exactly are you thinking about hoining NIWA?

<Piratehunter> joining*

<Salad> because wikia sucks

<Salad> and RAN, what better ways would you suggest

<Piratehunter> Is that your argument?

<Piratehunter> hat Wikia sucks?

<Piratehunter> That*

<Salad> and yours would be...?

<Salad> Not only do they complicate just running the wiki, they force loads of unnecessary bullshit down our throats

<Salad> and their moral standards are pretty questionable at best

<Piratehunter> Oh no, I personally can't stand Wikia either

This red section forms the basis of the entire argument. Here, I listed why I believe the community of SmashWiki should redirect their efforts to a non-Wikia wiki:
1. They complicate wiki matters, such as bureaucrats being unable to demote other bureaucrats, being unable to promote bots to perform tasks, and the lack of access to checkuser to quickly resolve sockpuppeting. These are basically unarguable; Wikia restricts admin/bureaucrat access to all of these funcationalities. That's just a fact, you can't really dispute it.
2. Wikia has forced a lot of undesirable changes upon us editors. To name but a few examples:

• The entire Monaco skin. Many users I've interacted with across 3 separate wikis believe that Monaco is not only unattractive but a drain on computer resources. It is a drain on resources-- that's a fact. Monaco is much harder on computer resources than Monobook. As always, the visual appeal of Monaco is subjective and naturally varies from one user to the next, but as I mentioned earlier, 3 separate wikis all in general disliked the Monaco skin and wanted to switch the wiki default to Monobook. Again, Wikia did not allow this, forcing numerous contributors to deal with a skin they taxed computer resources and was visually unattractive. Though it is true that registered editors could select their own alternate skin (nearly always Monobook) or edit their own Monaco skin so that is less of an eyesore, most of the traffic on wikis comes from unregistered IPs that may not even contribute, and therefore these unregistered contributers/viewers of the site were forced to use Monaco until they registered an account. As I recall, one of Wikia's decisions for designing and forcing the skin on people was that "advertisers wanted the various wikis to be uniform so that the advertisements were more effective," or something to that effect. Though my recollection may be slightly off, I am positive the Monaco skin was designed at least in part so that Wikia could make more of a profit off advertising.
• The rich text editor. This was honestly an absolute joke. Not only did it generally fail at simplying code (which is, to the best of my knowledge, its intended purpose), it actually routinely ruined tables and other code for those experienced editors who actually knew what they were doing. A single editor compiled 13 reasons in a single post why the rich text editor sucked, and more than one code-savvy editor who really knew what they were talking about confirmed that unless Wikia completely rewrote the entire program from scratch, it was always going to be buggy. In order to disable the rich-text editor-- since it can't be disabled by each user personally, according to Wikia-- one either had to register an account and switch to Monobook (my explanation of why this is a piss-poor 'solution' is found in the above paragraph about Monaco), or the wiki in question would have to have a discussion, come to a consensus, and notify Wikia and request that it be disabled. This again is a restriction of the rights of the community to run their own wiki.
  

3. Wikia has undoubtedly questionable morals and values in multiple respects. An example from my own experience would be the sale of the formerly-independently-owned site GuildWiki. The company who produced Guild Wars, ArenaNet, wanted to host their own wiki so that they could link to it from in-game. They contacted GuildWiki's former owner, Gravewit, and negotiated with him about the transfer of ownership. However, no such sale occured, because GuildWiki was previously licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA; for those of you who don't know what that means, the "NC" stands for non-commercial-- no profit was to be made off the contributions. This meant that by selling GuildWiki to ArenaNet, Gravewit would be making a profit off the contributions of others, which violated the NC clause of the site's copyright and would therefore be illegal. ArenaNet had to start their own wiki from scratch, GuildWarsWiki (or GWW). For a time, all was well in the land of GuildWiki... until Wikia came along. Gravewit sold the site to Wikia without even bothering to notify the community, and made over $50,000 USD on the sale. This naturally outraged many who believed their hard work had been used to make a profit for someone else, and many (understandably) left GuildWiki(a) for GWW. You may ask, what was Wikia's justification for the sale? Their lawyers said that it was perfectly legal, since Wikia was buying a domain name from Gravewit, not a community website. Legally, this holds water, but many (myself included) spotted the gaping lack of morality in the sale.

Anyway, now that I have flooded your screen with tl;dr, a short summary of this red section would be that I presented the baseline for my wanting to move away from Wikia. This is important to note for future sections, where I am accused of presenting no argument.

<Salad> brb

[INFO] Disconnecting from IRC. Click close again to exit now.

[INFO] Channel view for ``#wikia-smashbros opened.

-->| YOU (Salad) have joined #wikia-smashbros

=-= Mode #wikia-smashbros +v Salad by ChanServ

This orange section really has no relevance to the conversation as a whole, I just didn't want to be accused of doctoring the logs so I included it. I restarted my computer, as I was trying to uninstall a program.

<Piratehunter> WB

<Piratehunter> but

<Piratehunter> like I was saying

<Piratehunter> Wikia is probably the very best example of failed communism in this day and time

<Piratehunter> to say the least

<Piratehunter> know what I mean?

<Piratehunter> And I'll tell ya, the biggest problem with Wikia, is what I preach everyday on IRC (ask RAN): the Community should elect staff

<Piratehunter> simple as that

<Salad> I don't agree, but regardless, what is your point?

<Piratehunter> My point is that, despite how eccentric your dislike of Wikia is...

<Piratehunter> You actually dislike it for a decent reason

<Piratehunter> NIWA, has a sort of problem with that

<Salad> still not following

<Piratehunter> NIWA really, from a third person standpoint, can't seem to clarify their actual reason for hating Wikia

<Piratehunter> All they say Is that they hate Wikia, and then give some vague umbreela phrase for why

<Salad> http://www.niwanetwork.org/forums/index.php?topic=98.0

<Piratehunter> umbrella*

<Salad> looks pretty detailed to me.

<Piratehunter> That's not what I mean

<Salad> a bit of incendiary rhetoric thrown in here and there, I suppose

<Salad> but point looks pretty clear.

<Piratehunter> Oh the point is definately clear

<Piratehunter> the matter is, that they are constantly building their reason for why they hate wikia

<Piratehunter> in other words

<Piratehunter> They are basically still trying to find the reasons they hate it

<Piratehunter> Which I don't think would suit you (but of course I dont know you personally)

<Piratehunter> I just know that you actually are able to list why you dont like Wikia

<Piratehunter> whereas they can't unless they think about it for a while

<Piratehunter> know what I'm saying?

<Salad> Not really.

<Piratehunter> all-in-all, You know why you hate Wikia, NIWA doesn't

<Salad> If they're able to elaborate on why wikia is a piece of shit, what does it matter if it takes them a while to come up with it

<Salad> and/or what is the problem with updating it to reflect wikia's progressive failures

<Piratehunter> It's the fact that they have to think on it

<Piratehunter> I have no doubt that you could literally list every reason you hate Wikia, right now

<Piratehunter> hey would actually have to think about why

<Piratehunter> they*

Here, I believe is where Piratehunter began presenting his/her reasons why I shouldn't persuade the SmashWiki community to move to NIWA. I will now do my best to detail his/her arguments as I understand them, and why I do not believe these points are valid.

According to Piratehunter, NIWA's dislike of Wikia is, while justified (because Wikia is a shitty company, no doubt about it), misguided for the following reasons (which are why I apparently shouldn't endorse NIWA):
1. While the points I outlined in the red section above about why Wikia sucks are valid, NIWA's points about the same topic are not because it, as an organization, can not/have not clearly outlined why it is opposed to Wikia.
2. My arguments in the red section above about why Wikia sucks are valid because I have the arguments readily available; NIWA's arguments on the same topics are invalid because it would require thought for them to come up with the reasons I have essentially memorized at this point.
3. NIWA is constantly finding new reasons to oppose Wikia; this (supposedly) demonstrates a lack of stability in their arguments.

However, as you may have guessed, I strongly disagree with these 2 arguments of Piratehunter's, since they are not logically sound, as I will detail below. Please note that I never got around to listing these detailed explanations in IRC; though I had these reasons in my mind when I initiated the private conversation afterwards, these were never explicitly stated in SmashWiki channel.
1. Wikia sucks; neither I nor Piratehunter dispute this fact. Fine. However, moving on is where the logical issues occur. Piratehunter claimed that NIWA has not outlined its position on why it opposes Wikia; this is not true. As I noted in the log, this forum post by a NIWA staff member (I believe?), pretty clearly outlines their reasons. A brief skim of the post generated 5 independent ideas on why Wikia's ownership of a number of gaming wikis is inappropriate; that hardly qualifies as NIWA "[not being able to] clarify their actual reason for hating Wikia" or just "[giving] some vague umbrella phrase for why [they hate Wikia]" in my opinion. Therefore, I believe Piratehunter's point #1 is incorrect and invalid, based on the reasons I just presented.
2. I most certainly do not agree that just because I am able to recite offhand why I oppose Wikia makes my opinion valid. Why does stopping and thinking about an issue make the opinion of the person/organization invalid? I would even go so far as to say it makes it more valid, since they are honestly examining their motives to try and explain why they are just, as opposed to someone just spouting their argument from memory. Just because I memorized my argument doesn't make it infallible; I hope to clarify this with a couple real-life applications of Piratehunter's argument that having to think about something disqualifies it as a valid stance.

A. Take any great work of literature. Do you really think the author just sat down and wrote some crap without thinking about what he/she was going to write about first? Of course not. 999/1000 times, I guarantee the author premeditated on their point, and it was this careful analyzation of ideas, and not some spontaneous invention of thoughts, that made the work great.

B. A scientist and a hobo are having a discussion about what makes an apple fall when you throw it into the air. The scientist has data and experiments to support his well-thought-out position that gravity is what makes the apple fall. However, according to the type of thinking Piratehunter employed here, the hobo's memorized position that the fairies, jealous of other floating objects, angrily threw the apple to the ground when they spotted it, is the correct hypothesis. I hope we can all understand why I feel that Piratehunter's point #2 is not valid.

3. I again strongly disagree with Piratehunter's idea that because NIWA has updated their reasoning over time their position is unstable. On the contrary, I believe this makes it more stable. For example, when you create a resume for a job application during the summer while you're still in high school, the resume will probably be fairly short, as you will likely have little life or work experience. Does it make sense, then, to use this same resume 15 years later, after you've graduated from a prestigious medical school and earned numerous degrees? Of course not. As time has gone on, there have undoubtedly been actions by Wikia that NIWA has not agreed with or supported, and as such, they should accordingly update their position to include these incidents. Keeping a static, unchanging position would be folly.

To summarize the conversation thus far, I provided my own position in the red section above; Piratehunter provided his/her position in this light green section, and I have provided my counterpoints in this section as well.

<Piratehunter> Of course I (if all goes completely as planned) plan to find a way to fix alot of those probs

<Salad> who are you tbh

<Salad> also RAN1 why have you been silent

<Piratehunter> Real quick: are you a b'crat or admin?

<Salad> both

<RAN1> Helping out other people at the moment.

<Salad> well yeah, after I pinged you I was invited to play cod

<Piratehunter> ok so b'crat

<Salad> which I'll probably begin in a few minutes, though I'll respond periodically

<--| RAN1 has left #wikia-smashbros

If I were to title this section, it would be titled "Intermission", because really it's just a semi-irrelevant bridge from one serious section to the next. In this section, Piratehunter notes that s/he has an idea on how to fix Wikia's influence, which may be interesting on its own but is not relevant to the discussion on this page; I ask RAN why he has been gone for the entire conversation, to which he replies that he is busy; my friend asked me if I wanted to play Call of Duty with him, so I was gave a warning that I would be semi-afk for a while. Piratehunter inquired about my user rights on SmashWiki, which include Adminstrator and Bureaucrat. ...moving on.

<Piratehunter> Can I ask you something?

<Salad> feel free

<Piratehunter> Would you like to help me out with attempting to bring some sort of "revolution"?

<Piratehunter> just curious

<Piratehunter> actually nvrmind you'll be at NIWA by that time I suppose

<Piratehunter> :S

<Piratehunter> Idk

<Piratehunter> whatever

<Piratehunter> no offense, but if you wanna run away from Wikia, with your only reason being "Wikia is a bitch" feel free

<Piratehunter> Wikia doesn't actually need that type of selfishness by any means anyway

<Piratehunter> if you actually knew how to correctly portray the type of leadership a Wiki requires you would leave all that up to the Community\

<Piratehunter> Instead of just joining NIWA, because you want to

<Piratehunter> The world (and the Wiki community) doesn't stand still for you... that's vanity

<Piratehunter> And if you want to run away from Wikia because you think it's some type of Dictatorship, think about this: What is a dictatorship? It's a group, run an d told what to do by a single person

<Piratehunter> where the group itself has no sayso in the matter

<Piratehunter> If Wikia is a dictatorship, it's because of Wiki Despots such as you

<Piratehunter> If you want to change that you need to let the Community decide what happens

<Piratehunter> not make the decision yourself

<Piratehunter> wanna see the post?

<Piratehunter> disregard that last message, wrong tab

<Piratehunter> Just think about that...

<Piratehunter> Gute Nacht! :)

<--| Piratehunter has left #wikia-smashbros

Honestly, many of the comments made by Piratehunter in this section pissed me off. Not only were many of them inaccurate due to the shoddy reporting of my comments by RAN (which I'm not even convinced he read- it's that off), a number of Piratehunter's remarks came across as very rude and self-righteous, an attitude that I don't believe was warranted at this point and definitely not an attitude I expected. Below I will attempt to describe what issues I had with many of these comments.

1. "no offense, but if you wanna run away from Wikia, with your only reason being "Wikia is a bitch" feel free" Well, attempting to convince a group to relocate themselves is hardly an action I'd call running away, but that isn't even what I thought was the problem with this line; as I outlined in the red and light green sections above, my reasons are pretty solid and justified. They have yet to be refuted, at the very least.
2. "Wikia doesn't actually need that type of selfishness by any means anyway" I honestly have no idea what Piratehunter was even trying to insinuate with this comment, because I have no clue how trying to get a community to move is selfish in the slightest.
3. "if you actually knew how to correctly portray the type of leadership a Wiki requires you would leave all that up to the Community" This line is why I'm positive Piratehunter doesn't know what s/he's talking about, because as I made clear in my very first post on the topic (third paragraph), I intend to seek community input before deciding anything.
4. "The world (and the Wiki community) doesn't stand still for you... that's vanity" I missed the part where I said the world caters to my every whim, so this is just yet another unsubstantiated personal attack.
5. "If Wikia is a dictatorship, it's because of Wiki Despots such as you [...] if you want to change that you need to let the Community decide what happens." Right. As I made quite plain from the very beginning. (See #3 in this section.)

So yeah, I'm going to freely admit that after I returned from CoD and read these messages, I was pretty pissed off, leading to my inappropriately angry comments in the next section. HOWEVER, I would like to point out none of the comments in this section did anything to refute any of my points, instead mostly (mis)characterizing me as a vain, selfish dictator who is running from Wikia. (If you don't understand why these personal attacks do not invalidate my arguments, I advise you to peruse the information contained in this page.)

Note: Here begins the section that was in a private conversation between Piratehunter and myself; I did it via pm because s/he left the channel after making his/her parthian comments while I was playing CoD.

<Salad> willing to talk?

<Piratehunter> depends I suppose

<Piratehunter> wont take to awful long I hope

<Piratehunter> Lol

<Piratehunter> I will have to go in a bit

<Salad> well, I was just wondering where the hell you get off pulling crap about my leadership skills out of your ass and using it like it's an argument

<Salad> how long do you think that'll take to answer?

<Piratehunter> yeah see ya

<Salad> that's what I thought.

<Piratehunter> your trolling

<Salad> you resorted to ad hominems instead of using actual logic

<Salad> and by the way, rather than listen to RAN's distorted version of the truth, you might want to actually read my posts

<Salad> because I made it pretty clear I was going to go with what the community wanted

<Piratehunter> when you want to be mature and stand up for your Wiki do it

<Piratehunter> dont bug me about why you cant

<Piratehunter> I've seen SW administration at it's worse

<Salad> nice red herring

<Piratehunter> I am much better at being a leader than you people

<Salad> I cleaned up the administration as best I could

<Piratehunter> not perticularily you

<Salad> if you knew what you were talking about, you'd know that that's actually why I got involved at smashwiki: shitty administration

<Piratehunter> What did I just say

<Piratehunter> ?

<Salad> you just admitted that your point had no relevance?

<Salad> gj, I guess

<Piratehunter> I dont recal that

<Salad> I am asking you where you got your bs about my "poor leading skills"; commenting that SW administration is bad reflects nothing on me, especially since you're saying that I'm not one of the bad ones

<Piratehunter> Th fact that you believe you have the power to take your entire Wiki into NIWA tells me that

<Piratehunter> I'm afraid you don't

<Piratehunter> not technically

<Piratehunter> if you want to be a dictator go ahead

<Salad> did you not read my lines above

<Salad> I explicitly stated I would see what the community wanted

<Salad> that makes 3 times now

<Salad> so, once again, your ad hominems which were fallacious to begin with are now completely false also

<Piratehunter> Well when you decide to stop being a "baby about this jazz, tell me otherwise I have a wiki to run myself"

<Salad> when you decide to stop pretending like you weren't a complete and total douchebag to me for no reason and admit that your argument is far from watertight, feel free

<Piratehunter> I have better things to do than argue with a person who names himself after a popular vegan dish

<Salad> dude

<Salad> are you 12?

<Piratehunter> right there we go

<Piratehunter> Im definately 12

<Salad> PLEASE take http:# //www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html to heart, you'll learn quite a bit

<Piratehunter> because only a 12 year old would argue with you

<Salad> no, seriously

<Salad> did you finish high school or whatever equivalent they have in germany?

<Salad> you have continued to spout ridiculous bs this entire conversation, and rather than attempt to back yourself up you just insult my name as though that makes you right

<Piratehunter> I am a 21 year old highschool english/german teacher and a quantum mechanics student

<Salad> that's lovely

<Salad> perhaps you should re-take a logic class

<Piratehunter> Im afraid you should be the one to rethink the point of logistics my good sir

<Piratehunter> and kindly stop using terms such as "bs"

<Salad> no, I'm really not.

<Salad> you have failed to back up a single line of your own

<Salad> instead resorting to insulting my username? lol.

<Piratehunter> and you have not?

<Salad> did I once insult your username?

<Salad> I think not.

<Piratehunter> I was refering to backing up your "points"

<Salad> sure I have.

<Salad> I was trying before you acted like a dick and pulled a parthian exit, kind of like you're trying now

<Piratehunter> I really have no further use for discussing civic options for an international Encyclopedic index with an irrelevant illogistic vagabond such as yourself

<Salad> Your entire point seems to resolve around me arbitrarily deciding that the wiki must move without asking for any community input

<Piratehunter> I asked you to stop speaking until you decide to be civil

<Piratehunter> until then i will returen such favors

<Salad> I have stated 3 separate times that that is untrue

<Salad> and yet you still call me a dictator as though that magically makes you right.

<Piratehunter> I'm afraid I am far from a dictator

<Piratehunter> I am a marxist

<Salad> I'm afraid that that was not my point at all.

<Piratehunter> Im afraid it was

<Salad> I am saying your comments about me have not only been rude, they've been inaccurate

<Salad> this discussion is not about your leadership skills or whatever in any way

<Salad> it's about your comments about my leadership

<Salad> please note the distinct difference between the two

<Salad> one is about you, and one isn't

<Piratehunter> you certainly have a strange way of veiwing the world

<Piratehunter> why are you talking to me exactly?

<Piratehunter> I told you my opinion and left

<Piratehunter> you need to stop making an idiot of yourself while you still can retain the functionality of your perafrontal cortex

<Piratehunter> which i am utterly astounded at the fact that it seems to eeven function on it's own accord

<Piratehunter> I do not converse with uncivil vagabonds, and that is why I have asked you to leave me be

<Salad> do you mind if I use the comments in #wikia-smashbros and in this pm to craft a lengthy argument detailing exactly why I believe I am right and you aren't

<Salad> I promise I'll be civil and whatnot.

<Piratehunter> No

<Piratehunter> well then

<Salad> no you don't mind, or no you don't want me to

<Piratehunter> please proceed

<Salad> thanks.

<Piratehunter> after an apology

<Piratehunter> from each of us

<Salad> ...very well

<Piratehunter> I am personally sorry if i came across as rude to you

<Salad> I apologize for rather rudely harassing you via pm after you commented in the channel

<Piratehunter> Thank you now what is it you wanted to show?

<Piratehunter> but please no links :S

<Salad> I wanted to use these discussions, take a while and write a detailed response, and then civilly continue the discussion at a later time

<Piratehunter> my ping is apparently off the fritz

<Piratehunter> do not ever tell me to be civil, Salad

<Piratehunter> I am civil so long as the latter conversor is civil

<Salad> I was implying nothing of the sort, but if you say so

<Piratehunter> Symbiotic etiquette if you will

<Piratehunter> I really actually have no idea why i am here in the first place...

<Piratehunter> :S

<Salad> why you are where?

<Piratehunter> Talking to you in the first place

<Piratehunter> (no offense to you)

<Piratehunter> I literally have no idea

<Salad> well I assume RAN told you some stuff and wanted you for backup

<Salad> or something of the sort

<Piratehunter> yeah basically

This unpleasant exchange is what lead me to write this tidal wave of text that you almost assuredly tl;dr'd. I won't really be commenting on this section very much; due to the high frequency of personal attacks, which are all of a fallacious nature and were probably covered in the blue section, there's not really much to comment on, other than the key bit of this entire event: nothing in this section refuted my argument. There were personal attacks, claiming that I'm a dictator who rules the wiki with my iron fists or whatever; even if these claims were true, it still does not change the fact that my arguments from other sections are valid and justified. There were irrelevant claims that Piratehunter made, such as "I'm a Marxist" and what I suppose was intended to be a vocabulary display to impress or intimidate me, which not only failed to achieve their purpose but also had no relevance to my arguments presented earlier.