User talk:McJeff

Re: Hi

Hi McJeff, thanks for introducing yourself. I'll happily open a dialogue and respond to your points. I absolutely don't mean to come across as rude, but as you can imagine I do have strong feelings on some of these subjects.

I didn't say all the staff and all the rules at GTA Wikia (I'll call it that for the sake of clarity) were awful, but those I've had experience with have been inexperienced, unsympathetic, and somewhat arrogant. I particularly refer to WikisEditor, but also those staff that supported him even though he had been blatantly copying content despite being told by Wikia to stop, and even supporting him after he had been demoted. I cannot believe that any decent wiki administrator would say that he should still be treated as staff even though he had his rights forced off him by Wikia because of his gross misconduct. I'm sure you can see that this smacks of staff thinking they're better than everyone else.

The policy "Competence is Required" is purely draconian. How dare your staff suggest that inexperienced users have any less right to edit than some mediawiki whizz-kid. Although it's on Wikipedia, it is NOT policy there - simply an essay by someone suggesting one way they think things could be done.

I'm a little confused that you say we don't have users over here "hu rite lyk dis", because I did run the GTA Wikia for years and we had all manner of people. However our policy was to help them grow, show them how to do it right, manage expectations and correct anything that was done. If people add useful content, it can always be fixed up by other users. If people add irrelevant and useless content, it will be removed anyway. If a user repeatedly adds useless content, then they'll be dealt with for that reason, not because of their bad spelling.

What goes on over at the GTA Wikia is none of my business, but it really breaks my heart to see the site I created, and spent five years building up from nothing, being twisted into an elitist society run by staff who think they are better than the users they're supposed to be helping out.

As for Gregallz5 - I'm not supporting or defending him or anything like that. Like I said, what goes on at GTA Wikia is nothing to do with me. He clearly doesn't like you guys (for whatever reason) and he's blocked over there (for whatever reason). You can block/ban who you like for whatever reason you want, whether it's bad spelling or nazi propaganda. But he's not banned from this site, so he's fine to edit here, that is all that my opinion on the matter was. However, he has since used his account here to argue and swear at The Tom, which is something that I'm not prepared to allow on this wiki, so he has been blocked for 1 day because of that. I'm also keeping an eye on the multiple accounts. I'll deal with him for any problems he causes here, but what you do to him has no bearing on what happens here. I hope you don't think that I'm trying to get him unblocked from your site or anything.

The main reason that people here don't like the staff at the GTA Wikia is because you are going against the community. The entire community agreed by consensus to move here. Any site can move host, it happens all the time. Wikia were entitled to run a copy (before the licencing breaches), but because we had been using the gta.wikia.com domain, most of the traffic still goes to that copy instead of the real site which moved. Your site only exists because Wikia kept the site running after we left, banned half the staff, demoted the rest.

The site moved, that is a fact. The community moved, that is a fact. The people who BUILT the wiki are all over here. The traffic only goes to the old location because Wikia won't redirect it. Why do you support that copy of the site? The excuse that you're stopping it from being damaged is lame - it's more likely that at least some of the staff just wanted the authority and power of a position, or that they wanted to take over the more active site rather than support the community that built it.

I don't know if you can understand what it's like seeing something you spent years building and years making popular ripped apart and taken over by other people? The 4 bureaucrats at GTA Wikia have 5469 edits in TOTAL between them. Here, A-Dust has 28,000 just himself; ZS has 27,000; and I have 25,000 between me and my bot. Of course, most of these edits were made over at Wikia, so the site you are running is built on our hard work.

Our issue is that you still support that site, against the consensus of the community, against all the people who built it. I'm sure most of your staff members would make good staff members here, and your editors would ALL be welcome here (even the screw-ups). Why can't we finish the job, leave Wikia, and all contribute together again? That's all I want. gboyers ^talk 21:54, 2 September 2011 (BST)

I can't help but comment on the recent happenings at the GTA Wikia. Dealing with questionable offences by staff members the way you did undermines confidence in the whole system and completely precludes their ability to lead other users. Bunny showed a very reasonable attitude, but you went straight to a very public vote, without even warning or discussing it. You should know that no rule is perfect, and there are always ifs and buts and exceptions; and you always have to think about the wider implications of your actions, not just blocking people indiscriminately - even staff - for minor disagreements. I am really, truly horrified at the way the GTA Wikia is being run.

I also refer you to this comment where you state that you demoted Spaceeinstein as per a community vote. It's clear that you find the community votes on the community noticeboard binding. Then you must believe that the vote to leave Wikia was also binding. The whole community got a chance to vote, and there was a HUGE majority in favour of leaving, so the wiki moved here. Since this community vote is binding, then you must understand that the community has moved here, and should not still be maintained at Wikia? gboyers ^talk 00:31, 3 September 2011 (BST)