User blog comment:Neo Bahamut/Criticism is Not an Insult/@comment-1038387-20140501122739/@comment-1216259-20140501132222

"What wiki is this about?"

Wasn't sure whether or not I should specify, but since you asked, & I don't like to hide things, the Bleach Wiki.

"It's a long wall of text that could definitely do with a better introduction."

Really? I try to make my introductions as brief as possible. Prefer to get straight to the point. I actually thought that one was rather long & meandering.

There was a lot of text. I tend to use more words than is probably necessary.

"I definitely agree that you shouldn't take a wiki's word for it, and if possible, check with the cited source. And always cite a source when you make an absolute, non-obvious statement (so not, "X has black hair", but things like "X is 5 foot 8" or "X was raised a methodist but later became presbyterian" need a source)"

Yeah, I have a semi-related problem with the fact that the forum, the answers wiki, the talk pages, & so on all have this weird preference to cite the main page. The Answers Wiki has a button for "researching the answer" which links you back to the main Wiki. This doesn't appear to be so that you can find where something happened, as most answers, even from the admins, tend to be something like "Gin is dead" & then the question is filed away. In article discussions, a common rebuttal to proposed changes, when there's nothing in the manga that obviously proves the change wrong, is that they can't be done because they are against the site's policies. I know less about what goes on in the forum, because it doesn't make much sense to browse a forum that you can't post in.

Now, when I answer questions on Anime Answers, I usually say, "This happens in this episode," & then if there's a lot of debate about it, I add, "this is what some people think it means, this is what other people think it means." But I'm not against directly citing Wikis, really, I often quote explanations directly from Wikipedia. I don't really know how to explain how I decide whether or not it's justifiable to Wikiquote. It just kind of feels appropriate to the situation.

"Is it a continuity mistake or a retcon? Or an out-of-continuity joke?"

Not sure if this is rhetorical, but in this case, there was mention of an small fact that was easy to miss, & someone mentioned the Wiki page. The page was indeed right, but it's a pretty tricky situation for a critic to be in if they have to be right or else they're being insulting.

"As for bias and speculation, it's really hard to be unbiased. We all perceive things in our own way."

Yeah. It's big points in my book if a Wiki is willing to say that there is more than 1 probable explanation of a thing. I would say that there are points in plots that genuinely go unanswered for a long time, so if you have direct answers for everything, clearly some of those are just opinions dressed up as facts. If you clearly label speculation, then it's only really a problem if you're listing every inane wild guess that anyone's ever had. But who actually does that?

Oh yeah, another unfortunate habit that I have is using "you" as though it were a 3rd person pronoun.

"On one of my wikis, we had this horrible shipping page that really needed a cleanup. I worked hard, tried to be as neutral as possible... and then one of the creators of the franchise calmly told me how far off I was. People have a tendency to read between the lines, but there's only white space there."

Relationship/shipping pages are definitely tricky. I have mixed opinions on them.