User:AuronFtw/sigh

:/
Looking back on PvX, we've had to deal with a lot of bullshit. We had a bunch of hosting changes, sysop team changes, and our entire voting system has gone through a few shifts. But the one thing we kept constant was our philosophy - build quality could not be compromised, no matter the cost. We implemented decently elitist policies to back that vision. We implemented build masters to enforce that vision. We accepted trolling and personal attacks as legitimate methods to enforce minimum levels of competency. Given all that's happened, I'm not terribly displeased with how things turned out.

But... what if we had it wrong? What if the community is what matters, in the end? We've gone through and burned out more sysops and build masters than other wikis of similar size. GWiki had roughly the same group of folks policing everything, and they kept at it for 2/3 years until the wikia merge, and a number of them went right on policing GWW. The environment was friendly enough to keep them around - even if there was a hard case here or there, the community had their backs. On PvX, the sysops were often cornered and outnumbered and basically bullied into removing votes or deleting builds they wouldn't normally have done. Sometimes they were simply out-trolled and stopped paying attention to a certain build talk page. The friendly bond between user and sysop that we knew from GuildWiki had disappeared.

Does PvX have to be so different? Is it impossible, due to fundamental differences in the goals of each wiki, to maintain a "friendly enough" environment to keep users around for longer, to keep people interested in the project?

Some people grow up, get jobs, and quit playing games. Shit happens. But PvX loses most of its contributors. They aren't all quitting Guild Wars, they aren't all moving on. They're simply being forced out or leaving due to disinterest/arguments/drama/etc. Yeah, some of them are ass terrible and suck at the game. But would it have been impossible to... I dunno, quarantine them to their own section of the wiki, and keep the community thriving? Was there a way to make them happy, while maintaining our focus on build quality?

Was there a way to avoid turning a site devoted to build creating, hosting and discussing into the Mos Eisley of Guild Wars fansites?

If no, would it have been worth it to take a less strict stance on build quality in favor of a more friendly "working environment" for build theorycrafting and discussion? I'm not talking about jumping from one extreme to the other, but would it have been worth it to lower the standard of quality a bit in order to foster a more friendly community?

Shout out on the talk page. - Auron 14:52, August 9, 2010 (UTC)