User blog:LaviBookman/The State of the Wiki

Some of you might agree with me. Some of you probably would want me to burn in hell for saying so. Some of you might not give a crap about what I say. But I'm writing this anyways because I want to express my views as the guy who put in a request to Wikia so that this wiki could be made for the rest of you to enjoy. There is no tl;dr version of this, simply because if you don't care, you probably wouldn't care to read it anyways. I'm going to be blunt and to the point about this: this wiki is a complete fiasco.

My goal for this wiki was to create a friendly atmosphere in which Naruto content can be shared and critiqued to be improved to top-notch stuff. On the verge of the Naruto Fanon Wiki's second anniversary of its creation, which is on June 9th, 2007, it has been agreed that the wiki has suffered from overpowered, unchecked material, weak infrastructure in which to regulate the content of the pages, and has been submitted to two coordinated attacks by members of third-party sites, including GameFAQs and 4chan, the latter having continued said vandalism for two consecutive days.

I do recognize that everyone here is a human, and that humans make mistakes. But making mistakes is a poor excuse for placing content on a page without a thought as to how it would be received on the Internet and leaving it there without reviewing it at a later time to see what should remain or be removed based on after-thought and the comments made by the community about the said article. If there is a ton that needs to be revised due to its length, then just take the majority of the article down and edit it off the webs. I'm looking into adding an "Under Construction" template to indicate if an article is under major revisions or not.

I find it hard to deny that the administration itself has nothing to blame. Rather, much of the problem rests upon them. An administrator putting up ridiculously overpowered articles and leaving them there will lead others to think that it is okay to make, and follow suit. Excluding my own articles from personal bias, I have severe doubt that there are anything more than a couple hundred exceptional articles. Throughout my time with the current administration, I honestly find it to be inefficient, disorganized, unwilling to assert authority over others and a lack of responsibility when it comes to administrative cooperation.

Do not get me wrong for attacking the administration: I am also to blame for this. When I first created this wiki, I had high expectations and expected people to pour in rather quickly. I was sorely disappointed, and I eventually gave up on the wiki, handing the reins to the few people that genuinely showed interest in helping out without second thoughts. Afterwards, I just abandoned the wiki without looking over my shoulder to see if it was still standing. When I was alerted to the contents of the articles, I made a hasty return with the intention to set things straight, but the damage has already been done, and extensive damage, at that. It will take nothing short than an enormous correction-or-deletion drive in order to place the wiki at the standards that I originally imagined it to be.

This wiki needs a ton of work: policies need to be implemented, unnecessary articles left-over from the early years be removed, a continuous system of awards for outstanding articles by established, et cetera. Even then, the administration needs to be involved in all of this, but it is like an architect without his tools: he can't design that house that he envisioned if there is nothing being done to advance to that goal.

U.S. President Barack Obama has emphasized the need for change: change in the White House and how it is run. This cannot be any further from the truth in regards to what this wiki needs. We cannot let things run as it is because, frankly, it is not working. We need to change the wiki for the better, and we need to change the wiki now.