User:Penstubal/On Community

A few days ago, our wiki has seen a great user leave our beloved wiki. He will be dearly missed. He has made a prodigious amount of change on the wiki and his contributions will go down in our wiki's history as great. He will go down as an extraordinary user who has made users chuckle and who put a smile on many people's faces, the faces of people who have approached their wiki, have read our articles, and have been contributing to our wiki.

Recently, there has been a growth of division on the wiki and there has been a lack of enthusiasm, a lack of empathy for each other and a lot of fights have happened. The wiki's more divided than ever before, possibly on a level greater than when TS was up for demotion in April 2015. We fight often and everyone is trying to go work on their own, ignoring other users, and there have been lots of insults between users here.

I'm reminding everyone on this wiki: we all came here to this wiki by choice to find a place where we can express and share our creativity and where we can show our love for the game that we came here for and so we can make new friends. We are here to work together and make this place better for everyone. Discrimination is not acceptable here and we don't discriminate against users here, we came here to unite regardless of race, sex, age, nationality and sexual orientation. We came here with the desire to edit and with the desire to have a good time.

Is that going away? Are we forgetting the purpose of this wiki?

"Hi there, I'm Gary The Gadget Guy and I'm an inventor for the EPF. Welcome to the biggest website about Club Penguin: The Club Penguin Fanon Wiki! Here you can make absolutely anything fictional from characters, to even countries! So I'm here to get you started off... " (Source: Club Penguin Fanon Wiki:About)

The wiki is more divided than ever and there are stupid fights. We are now in a year where the game we all came here for, Club Penguin, is in decline and it's a game we can all agree is getting worse and worse. Club Penguin as we all used to know it when we have joined does not exist anymore. It's a part of the gluttonous Disney corporation and it's merely a promotion for other Disney products now. Club Penguin Fanon Wiki is not getting any new users, and there have been multiple attempts before to advertise it and get it back into shape. They failed.

What's the point of fighting then? We need to stop those fights and instead unite together to enjoy the wiki. What's the point of trying to get new users when we have a problem with our current users, when there's a fight every few days between them?

I'm also addressing the lack of consensus on this wiki, which is a problem. Our very great bureaucrat, who we all admire and I also admire, despite our past fights over literally a video game, CK has introduced a consensus system on our Vice Presidential discussion page. Today, he informed me it's not going as planned. And I see why.

The idea for the consensus democracy is that the winner is the side with best arguments. It's not saying "I am for this dude", it's "I am for this dude because he is ...", then people should respond to that: contest that opinion, debate, and so on and so forth.

We need the wiki to unite and the current system we have will not get that done. We need to stop fighting, cooperate, talk together. And we need to try, get agreements that work best for both sides, but we also need to remember that not everything in life can go perfect and that not everyone can be completely satisfied. People here fight a lot, cry when they don't get their goal. I request, for the sake of the wiki, get over that and look forward to the future. Get over the defeat and try to become a better person.

We need to heal our wiki. Our wiki is very divided and people don't feel welcome here anymore, like Mr Cow 2 and Brant(?). People are quitting because one user quit. I am not disputing Fooly's contributions: he has been a great friend of mine and a few years back we worked on a lot of great stories, the Fanon Character Specials, and I will never forget the great times we had together. He is truly a great user and he will be missed.

So what do we do? Move on. Move forward. Life needs to continue. We need to make new plans and prepare for the future. Tough times are possibly ahead of us, but tough times are also behind us. We are no longer in old Fanon: this is a new Fanon with a brand new future awaiting it.

TL;DR: This is a plea for unity. Let us all unite together. What will we do one day if suddenly our director Seahorseruler announces "Wiki closes tonight"? Will this be it? Will this really be the state of inter-user relations on the wiki on the day our wiki's closure would be announced? I suggest we all unite together, work together and prepare for the future. Fanon is stronger when it is together and it is weaker when it is divided.

United we stand. Divided we fall.

Comments

Please comment here and not on the talk page.

• Some thoughts on the matter, listed because I'm too lazy to formulate a paragraph to express it:

• I do not believe we're more divided than we were when TS was getting demoted, considering that almost the entire network was involved with it, as well as the majority of staffers voting against the proposal, users threatening to or quitting outright due to the drama and flamewars being fanned by it, as well as the long and drawn out recovery process following it
• I do believe the times are indeed changing, and yes, the game is dying, but we have to either persist or adapt. While I do believe consensus democracy can benefit us by at least giving us communication, that alone is not the solution to our problems.
• I don't think Mr Cow left solely because of Fooly quitting, I don't think that's what he would've wanted. While he may have been a contributing factor, I do think there are other factors involved. Besides that, he's on temporary leave.
• I do believe that we need to heal, but it involves more than just communication to, the other factors of which I do not know at this time.

What the future holds is not by any means clear, but I do think we should try and make the most of it. -Wonderweez ^{(Talk · Contribs)} 23:12, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

• 1. There was a lot of arguments and fights at that time and there was a lot of hatred, that's what I was talking about.
• 2. We need to adapt to the fact that we are not getting many new users any time soon: but the fact that there's a lot of division and fights non the wiki is different and it can be fixed with the entire wiki coming together. Consensus is a great idea in my opinion and it could work very well because it will bring people closer together and people get to discuss topics.
• 3. I have that same impression. Let's not discuss him right now because I don't think he will feel comfortable checking out this comment section. Respects to him.
• 4. Communication is a major factor in my opinion, expressed why in my post. --Penstubal ^{(Talk) (Edits)} 23:18, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

• Well first of all, the fights are not that bad, at least it's not a network-wide war. It's true, the lack of enthusiasm seems to be growing, even I think I'm starting to lose my mojo. But Penstubal is right. We can't let Fanon die this way (if it does). Even I feel unwelcome and beat up sometimes, but it doesn't stop me from editing. We all have to cooperate, even when things get hard. Get up when you fall down. --Wikipenguino (talk • contribs • articles) The randomness has arrived! 02:04, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
• I quit Club Penguin a while ago due to its lack of being the same as it was back in the golden age of CP, around 2008 - 2011. I really want Club Penguin to have its own special place in my heart due to it being my childhood to early teenhood game, and this wiki is the only way I can keep it there. My characters, Zeno and Dev, are based on my two CP accounts, and these two characters are basically what keeps CP alive in my mind for me, since they are basically what reminds me of my time playing Club Penguin, and giving them background stories and personalities is really fun for me. While I don't tell many people in real life that I'm on this wiki, I always go to it when I feel down. Maybe when I get in a fight with a family member or a friend, I'll go on this wiki knowing that there are actual real people that, though they live in different regions, have the same interests as I do. When drama sparks on this wiki (and I have been involved in it a few times), it honestly confuses me. We're starting drama over fanfictions. FAN FREAKIN' FICTIONS! I mean, I kind of get it if it's drama about someone leaving, like TS, but if it's about the fanon articles, which my drama with ol' Mcdonalds was, it's just kind of annoying. Mc and I argued about a SpongeBob parody. Seriously. Alright, I'm done typing now. I honestly feel like I should've let this out in a place that more people will see (although many people might see this), but this is probably the best place to let it out. --There's a puffle lickin' my birthday cake! (Let's chat!) 02:50, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

• Same with me, all of my puffle's names are based on me ol' canon penguin's puffle. I got to keep their names somewhere, since I threw them away for a stupid alien puffle and I can't log in anymore. Penguinpuffdude I'm in the garage, with my Mabel detector... 01:50, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

• Calling it worse than TS's controversies is a bit too much. Honestly it's not even that bad considering we've worried about user activity four years ago and we're still going today. I don't know what's happening in the IRC channels, but there really hasn't been any fanon-related drama in quite a long time. The activity isn't particularly that bad, either; both Wikipenguino and PPD are pretty passionate with their work and I think both are on the right track. ULSK12 • Talk • Contribs • BATCHIRIMINAAAAAA 15:15, 19 November 2016 (UTC)