User blog:Cooksey.michael/Featured Wikian: SJenson

Hello there, my fellow Wikians! Michael here, from Community Development. Hope you're all having a fabulous week so far!

Lots to talk about today, so let's get started, shall we? First, I want to share my excitement about the new and improved Featured Wikan page! Thanks to my colleague Mark, we now have a beautiful, clean page to feature all of our past Featured Wikians. There's also a new page (with a handy button!) where you can go to nominate your peers to be featured in this series, too. I am so happy to have had Mark's help in creating the new page to honor all of you and your contributions to the community - I do hope you like the new page as much as I do. We're also lucky to have a talented team of designers here at Wikia, and we owe the lovely graphics on the new pages to our colleage Megan in Design.

Next, of course, I'd like to introduce you all to the wonderful Mr. SJenson, from the Despicable Me community! SJenson received several nominations to be featured here, and I'm so pleased to be able to share our conversation here with all of you. In addition to being so well loved and respected by his peers, SJenson is a seasoned Wikia pro! Check out his tips for new Wikians, below, if you're just getting started yourself.

Meet SJenson!



1. Tell us a little bit about yourself...

I'm currently a student who is from Malaysia, just a guy who enjoys drawing, and doing "crazy puzzle" stuffs. I usually spend time surfing the internet. By the way, my real name is Samuel.

2. How did you first discover Wikia?

Honestly, I don't know exactly how and when was the very first time I visited Wikia. As far as I can remember, in July 2010, I was a fan of an anime series, but I was quite confused about the story, so I decided to look it up on the web. Thanks to Google, I found Wikia. Surprisingly, the wiki was full of useful information and it explained almost everything. At the same time, I started contributing to the wiki. However, I had only a little knowledge about Wikia and did not find anything special yet, so I lost interest in it five months later. I came back to Wikia three years later, right after I finished watching Despicable Me 2.

3. Which wikis do you spend the most time on -- and which is your main wiki?

I usually spend the most time on Despicable Me Wiki, which is also my "main wiki". I'm trying to concentrate more on the wikis of movies produced by Illumination Entertainment (other than Despicable Me Wiki), as they need to be revamped.

'''4. What do you like about Wikia? What keeps you coming back?'''

What I mostly like about Wikia is the community. I learnt a lot of things from the other users, such as cultures, bloodlines, and backgrounds. Plus, it's fun to write templates and codes, and customise wikis via CSS, so it's almost impossible for me to leave Wikia for now.

5. How has Wikia inspired you or supported your passion?

Wikia gave me the opportunity to learn coding, which is one of my interests. It also helped me to improve my management skills, slightly, I'd say.

6. What would your top 5 tips for new folks on a wiki be?

i) Don't be shy, feel free to help us out.

ii) Be creative and imaginative.

iii) Share your ideas and suggestions with us.

iv) If you have any questions, just ask.

v) Have fun editing!

7. What would you like to see that isn't on Wikia already?

HTML5 maybe? I hope Wikia can implement this feature in the future.

8. What makes the Despicable Me community so unique?

The hyped-up Minion lovers who are willing to show their support when needed! Without them, we wouldn't be able to shape Despicable Me wiki like it is now. It was a memorable teamwork!

9. Tell us about your interest in the Dr Suess community - are you a big fan of Dr Suess Books?

I'm not really interested in Dr. Seuss. We thought it would be a good idea to link all the Illumination Entertainment movies wikis together, including the movies based on Dr. Seuss' books.

'''10. What would we be surprised to learn about you? Any interesting facts, talents, or interests you can tell us about?'''

It's pretty hard to answer, most people don't find anything really special about me. I guess I can just say that I love Minions and I enjoy solving puzzles (maths is no exception).