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Maxim's Rant Time: Bulbapedia is Dead

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by
Maxim Posthumus
, 15th January 2009 at 09:15 AM (2158 Views)
I have a very good day today. That's time for a rant! But a very serious one, this time.

It's something that most people keep taboo. I hate taboos. But some facts must be unveiled. Everything here is practically opinion, you can argue and flame me like a dead horse but at least listen to me.

The Bulbapedia has lost its quality as an informative place. Now, it's a place centered around user community and their relations, while its informative purposes are currently on the background.

I remember I joined Bulbapedia because I felt it's a place with big potential. It needed improvements, extra informations, it needed to be built. My contributions consist mainly of international names, details about characters and mistake-correcting. I have corrected many mistakes on the Pedia. I was of course criticized because of being too harsh when someone put a blatant lie on the Pedia. Well, as a purist and a truth-defender I just can't stand false statements. You can hear me criticizing different sites (mostly Serebii.net) for misinformation a lot but never without a reason.

Of course, criticizing for being to harsh is understandable. Maybe I really go over the top someone, maybe I really deserved that month-long ban long ago. But more recently, I noticed that no one has been really looking at my contributions. Which is sad. I contributed a lot to improve Bulbapedia's quality but the only thing the people care about is my behaviour.

Then, there were those admin nominations. My nomination has been neglected because of my harshness (despite that there was a better reason to do so - I did no longer contribute as much as I did in the past). Well, I don't care... I probably would be a lazy admin after all. Though I admit that I would love to edit protected pages.

I'm not upset that I didn't become an admin. But those nominations have proven that Bulbapedia is not a quality Pedia anymore, instead it has become a CAFÉ where people talk with each other, smile to each other and talk nicely. But it's a very high-class café with a strict but pointless etiquette. That "etiquette" has been recently standardized and named "Code of Conduct".

The recent validation of the CoC is tragical to the further development of Bulbapedia. Because of it, the Pedia has OFFICIALLY became a café for snobs where only thing that matters is user's behavior. No one cares about contributions anymore. Because it's a café, not a Pedia!

And least but not least, there is one more problem which makes it impossible to improve Bulbapedia. It's called "bias". Recently, I got into an edit war with one of the admins just because that admin was biased against me. But it is ME who was right. (tell me, how can an in-game Trainer class be named after a real-life club while there is a club in the game under the same name which is OLDER). A situation where admins revert a GOOD EDIT just because they're biased against the contributor (despite the fact the contributor is right) is just comical. And it proves that it's just a friend-meeting café without any informative value. What do I blame for it? Admin Nominations!

R.I.P. REAL Bulbapedia. You will be missed.

Congratulations you came this far, I'm ready for your opposition in the comments. But please, if your only comment is "STFU, troll" then go away. It's my HONEST opinion about current situation of Bulbapedia, not any SPAM or trolling. It's really sad that when you say anything negative, you will be flamed for being a "troll". People simply hate uncomfortable truth...

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Comments

  1. Trainer-c's Avatar
    Well, if the Bulbapedia is dead, then I suppose you will cease contributing and head of to SerebiiForums or something. :P

    While I can see you point about cliques forming within the Bulbapedia community the CoC is not to blame, in fact, the CoC is supposed to help prevent the mistreatment of users, be they particularly well-liked or not.

    I have never agreed with the admin nomination system. People are only going to nominate and vote for people they "like" regardless of factors like quality of edits, time with the 'Pedia, overall contributions to the improvement of Bulbapedia.
    The forum doesn't choose mods by this system, so I really don't see why the Bulbapedia should.

    It would help your cause to be less dramatic in putting forth your concerns about the state of the Bulbapedia.

    It would also serve you well to follow the CoC. As it currently stands, you are a rule-breaker complaining about a system that punishes you. Not exactly a sympathetic position.
  2. Maxim Posthumus's Avatar
    I wouldn't care about Bulbapedia so much if it wasn't one of the capital sources of Pokemon Fandom. The Bulbapedia has many errors and it is very sad that admins are preventing me from correcting them just because "they don't like me". Of course, those admins are from that nomination system. This proves that the nomination system granted powers to incompetent people.

    In my opinion, CoC IS to be blamed for Bulbapedia's downfall because it actually allows to penalise "bad behavior", which is just ridiculous, as the Bulbapedia is supposed to be an information place, not a talking place. CoC actually helps the admin cliques (because those cliques form within admins too) to eliminate "uncomfortable" people. I'm not saying that Pedia should allow to say ANYTHING to other users, insults, threats etc. But I am SURE that the CoC will be abused by admins and will generally distract them from contributions. The Bulbapedia will lose some really valuable contributors!

    I didn't type my rant to justify my rule-breaking. I'm simply ashamed of current state of Bulbapedia, which really is not too green.
  3. Trainer-c's Avatar
    So by your opinion, there were no problems with the Bulbapedia before the CoC was instated?

    All the CoC does is provide guidelines for users to be civil to one another. If you are not being mean or rude, the CoC has no effect on you.

    The Bulbapedia has always had rules against "bad behavior" blanking pages, Purposely posting misinformation, Vandalism, userspace/talkpage/archive abuse all of that is "bad behavior" and is not allowed on the 'Pedia. So the CoC is no great revolution that has fundamentally changed the Bulbapedia. Nor is it some fantastic weapon that admins can abuse to whatever means.
  4. Archaic's Avatar
    Just as a tip, if there are significant errors in the Bulbapedia, and you feel that the admins are stopping you from fixing them, whinging about it in a blog isn't going to get the issue noticed and acted upon.

    Instead, post in the Bulbapedia forum, and give evidence to back up your claims. Focusing first on the factual errors in the articles first before you try to make people go off on an admin witch hunt, because screaming from the rooftops about bias without first providing evidence for your position never endears people to you. Then, let the people at the top deal with it. The executive staff can't be everywhere at once, we can't see everything that happens. When factual inaccuracies creep in, or when a staff member does genuinely overstep their bounds, we do take action, but we can't unless users make us aware of the issues.

    I would just like to say one thing about the admin nominations however. Contrary to what you seem to believe, while they do influence our opinion of who to make an admin and who not to, we don't admin someone just because of a popularity contest. The admin nominations allow us to gauge the popularity of people who may be interested in the position, that's true, but that's useful only so far as telling us if someone who we think has the required skills is liked enough by the community to be able to do their job effectively. If someone was up there who we thought they would be utter crap at being an admin, but they had 50 endorsements and were amazingly well liked by some significant clique on the 'pedia, that would make PRACTICALLY NO DIFFERENCE to their chances, and they still would not get hired.
    Updated 16th January 2009 at 09:51 PM by Archaic
  5. evkl's Avatar
    Yeah, reinforcing what others have said, do you really think "play nice" is ruining Bulbapedia?

    If you see it as a pushback against your confrontational style, maybe you're right in that. I want everybody to get along. It isn't snobbish of me, I don't think, to expect that we can all get along. But maybe I'm an elitist idiot.