User blog:Angel Emfrbl/Happy Birthday the OP wikia...

So a few days ago on the chat someone asked if I could do a anniversary blog post. To be honest I don't know what to write about. So I've come to the conclusion the best way to ask about the birth of the wikia is to talk about the time before.

The wikia was created on this day about 8 years ago. But for me, it was "born" later when the "founders" came from wikipedia to the wikia in search of the promised land.

But the time before that... Lets talk about this.

At the time of the great wiki migration, there was a lot of hassle going down on the wikipedia website. For 2 years or so, the One Piece pages had been plodding along, slowly adding more content and expanding on things. We had no direction and no "rules" governing us.

Then, out of the blue there One Piece suddenly fell under the ruling of the Anime/manga project on wikipedia. Now this was 'not a new thing, its just all of a sudden everyone in that project decided that all Japanese cartoon animation and comics should abide to one set format of working.

What rubbed a lot of anime fans the wrong way was we had no warning, and wikipedia had a habit of making random pages you've worked on for weeks go under the "delete hammer". This gave you just one week to "save" the page. For smaller series, this was fine, but for large series like Dragonball, Bleach, Naruto and One Piece, this was not a practical thing. So you'd instantly go into panic mode because suddenly your had to re-read dozens of manga chapters to find that 1 important source to save the page. And to make matters worst, when it came to newer chapters we had literally no source since the series chapters were yet in a format that was easy to get a serial code.

But worst still is the ruling at the time favoured localized versions... Enter One Piece and its major issues with 4Kids. "Zolo" was taken as being the instant favoured name just because 4Kids made it the name he went by. We argued for the sake of those not familiar with the 4Kids versions, the manga was the default name we all should use and that was what we want to use. This lead to a long, lengthy discussion, that lasted weeks and involved many, many editors. And each time "Zolo" won, those who supported "Zoro" pushed for the change. But the thing was, the reason "Zolo" kept winning was every time the vote went ahead, dozens of editors who had nothing to do with the editing of the OP pages were the ones that caused it to win. As someone pointed out, the way wikipedia votes on issues means random strangers who know nothing on the subject matter can vote. And all you need is the wrong person to gather up all his "mates" on wikipedia and suddenly all you've thought for is lost to common stupidity.

So this went on and on and on and on. Finally, out of the blue those still supporting the fight for "Zoro", and were regulars to the OP pages got told where to go to escape the trap we were all stuck in. And remember, this was not a isolated event, these events occurred for over two years. We weren't the only ones to have the same problem and a lot of the early anime/manga wikias were formed because people got pissed off with wikipedia dictating what to do and what not to do. The Pokemon series had dozens of pages laid out, I believe those two are gone. They had a page for every pokemon at the time this was occurring I believe.

I'm going to say it now because I don't know where to put it. Greg also didn't help at this point... You know the idiot from Arlong Park forums who knows everything OP related and has a army of fans sucking up to him just because he has access to things no one else can easily get to. ¬_¬

At some point in the midst of this, either before or after the move, an entire page got put up for delete because "it is a blatant copy of my website". So this is one of many episodes with Greg and why anyone who has been around for a while will know why certain editors get really angry with the jerk at times. The page in question was a general terminology list, which over half its content was mostly written by me and I can ensure everyone I don't copy Greg nor would I stoop to that level. Neverless, this page went without warning, not even a week to save it. Why? Because wikipedia does not like the idea of copy and pasting a website onto its pages. Even though as I stated, it was not, that you can only write information a certain way and the person whom the blame of this didn't even supply a website page as proof of copying.

This started my log dislike for the guy; its not nice to have fingers pointed at you or to be accused of something your not doing, then to face punishment for it without any proof of the concept. I believe on the chat there is about 5 incidents that I know of where Greg was a problem. Look, if you respect Greg thats fine, but don't suck up to anyone as a God, because the guy has been a ignorant annoying bastard to us as well over the years, even in the wikias early days. And lets not forget, he did at one point openingly attack folks for being wikia editors, I think this was in 2008/9. Ironically he won "member of the year" despite this, though me and a few of the others did not think that he should have been allowed as we were Arlong Park forum members, and he "bullied" us.

Anyway, skipping back to the wikia. In the end several wayward strangers came to the wikia. Maybe we were wary of what had traversed and anxious about the events at wikipedia. But we slowly began the building of the wikia as you see it today, making decisions like "thou shall not worship any dub except the original" and all that stuff. The most amusing event was the banning of the founders, causing us to meet up on wikipedia again to talk to each other and ask WTF is going on while one of the others tried to get hold of the greater wikia staff to unban us.

Apparently, I was banned for "hating DBZ", which is weird because I don't hate DragonballZ... Don't like it... But certainly don't hate it. I was shown the log of the events on the chat the other day, I remember having a conversation about why I'm not impressed with the series now, and I do remember the DBZ reason now. Didn't a few days ago, but I do now. :-/

At the time of this and why there was a little panic, the situation at wikipedia was getting worst and more and more pages were being put under the delete template. In the end we had a panic moment and those of us who were working to save the information on the wikipedia pages had to do a copy and paste of entire sections of page, often without event thinking to sort it. It was only when we'd "saved" the content did we relax and sort.

Finally, we began to do things correctly, sourcing information as we went along. It involved reading a lot of manga, watching a lot of chapters and in-wiki fighting over what we didn't like about each other and how we did things. But thats the way things went. :-/

At the time, there was still a strong knee-jerk reaction towards wikipedia and 4Kids dub, because that dub was a hot topic still in those days. Since there was so few of us, decisions were made between 2 or 3 people, hence why I said a few years ago, some issues were out of date.

Along the way, due to arguments we had to for our own guidelines of "can" and "can't" do. We established things like the order of naming (manga -> SBS -> Databooks -> etc -> etc ) and all this. Over time, editors have come and gone and I'm shocked I'm still the only founder around, and honestly? Its actually lonely at times, because I can talk about the picture I saw, but they also saw different things. So my version of the story is but a fragment of the whole issue. But its enough to get some to have an idea of the events of the early days.

But most of all, it was formed with one thing in mind; that you can't just simplify or force everything into one common format, this doesn't work. Not every series is able to fit the wikipedia template, nor should it be forced to. That the most dedicated editors were the fans of the series, and that we shouldn't be forced to comply with people who may not even be fans of the OP series.

Look, the wikia was founded by some hurt editors from wikipedia, over time most of them left and moved onto other things. We were betrayed by the community, in our eyes and we had nothing but a common cause between us. Say what you want, but there was nothing more heart breaking for me personally then to work on something for weeks and to loose it because some random idiot like Greg thought you were copying his website. This was the weakness of wikipedia, its big flaws were what drove us away from it.

I think the only victory we had on the issue of "Zolo versus Zoro", btw, was when the loophole was pulled up that if you ran a google search and it threw up more support results, "Zoro" was the most popular name and therefore should be used. Still lost, but at that point I think there was someones ego or pride getting in the way. Its been so long since I looked at wikipedia though...

I had a boycott until 2010. I ended up breaking the boycott because lazy Vocaloid fans refused to do anything about their broken Vocaloid page. Causing me to just fix the page for them. Ironically, to add to the tall tales of woe, the first thing wikipedia did was undo my edit since the edit remove thousands of chunks of text (which were pointless, unsourced and worthless about telling the person what Vocaloid actually was).

As for my history with this wikia? I had been a regular up until 2009, for 3 years I'd been here. In 2009 I became a lurking, making less and less editing. Reason was that in the old days, I editing new chapters and added information, as well as source hunted.... But now others were doing that instead. And beating me to do it. Now I rarely edit at all. :-/

Am I upset? No, you can see the history of the wikia, why it was formed. If I was upset, I'd not still visit at all. The Wikia still does what it was set up to do, even when the founders are gone... The long-term editing team has undergone changes and the regulars are not people I always know from back when I was a regular.

Believe me though, I'm stubborn and quick tempered, so you didn't want to be a regular when I went off on a fury driven editing comment-spree. Just as well I got made redundant. :-D