User blog comment:Ciencia Al Poder/Portable Infoboxes, the first step into Wikia taking control over our content/@comment-83.34.56.97-20170525220819

I was expecting my block to end in 2 weeks and say anything I had to say from my account, but staff apparently decided to apply an infinite block 10 days ago with no reason¿?

There's not much to say since others have summarized it pretty well, but just to share my point of view:


 * 1) "The decision to convert WikiDex to Portable Infoboxes does not represent a change in how we approach conversion with other communities". Actually, all examples that I've seen where PI were "discussed" on communities with staff, the staff tried to push the change and aggressively dismiss every argument against PI. RSWiki were actually threatened to not approve their custom JavaScript if they don't use PI. Most communities don't know how to build infoboxes or the conversion didn't make them look worse (or even improved the look) so there wasn't major fuss and this is expected in the vast majority of wikis.
 * 2) Community discussion happened on WikiDex forum, not on a user talkpage, so it was visible for all users and all users were allowed to participate. It wasn't hidden in any way.
 * 3) A Vanguard member started to spam several user talkpages by sending massive messages to random users on the wiki. This was not acceptable (never has been on our wiki) and thus their edits were bot-reverted, and the Vanguard member warned to not do it again in the future. This is not how to seek a "broader community discussion". Staff could've asked us for permission first, but they decided to pass over the local administration.
 * 4) We gave actionable feedback about infoboxes by providing a new system that would had minimal cost for wikia and a huge gain in appearance for the community with minimal impact on the appearance of the wiki.
 * 5) FishTank said "alternatives to PI and Mercury won't be taken into account", and "this is not a negotiation", "this is not an option". What's the "broader discussion" wikia was trying to seek on our community?
 * 6) There were MAJOR stylistic and structural problems with Portable Infoboxes when they were implemented, and nobody from the staff cared to fix them, that's why they were reverted. In fact there are still issues that need staff attention after 3 weeks.
 * 7) FishTank already said PI are not as flexible as it initially seemed, and several customizations to make them look like before are being discouraged by him.
 * 8) Our actions and attitudes are the result of the actions and attitudes of wikia staff and the company in the recent years. We were collaborative before, but wikia started pushing us several unwanted changes and the relation became more of a "we change things without listening your community" / "we don't care about the errors you report" / "this isn't going to change" and we decided this was a clear moment to say "no more forced changes here".
 * 9) "WikiDex admins typically do not allow new users to edit important content like infoboxes" false - Many of our infoboxes are not edit protected, it was Fishtank who immediately all infoboxes when they were converted. There aren't many protected pages and there are several users editing anonymously without problem.
 * 10) "We investigated these accounts and discovered that they were operated by Ciencia". False. I designed the bots, but I didn't run them, so it's impossible to discover that I were running them. In fact, I was even editing when they were running.
 * 11) I'm not surprised at all, because there's no possible defense from me against this. Wikia staff can run a bot to vandalize a wiki and say it was me, and I can't demonstrate it wasn't me. ToU already say they can ban anyone for any reason or no reason at all
 * 12) "The accounts and their actions led to a temporary ban from the platform." I was told so, but the fact is that my ban is permanent, changed on May 15th.
 * 13) "and proved that they are willing to vandalize in order to make a point." This wasn't to "make a point". This was done to restore the previous templates, it wasn't vandalism. Vandalism is to insert spam on pages, or to make the wiki look bad, and several pages were looking really bad with those infoboxes, so the change to the old templates were a fix.

I have now more free time for other things, which is great. Don't expect me to come here to follow the decadence of this site, nor to expand this drama. Thank you all for your sympathy and best of luck for everybody that have to live with this new "modernized wikia".

~ Ciencia Al Poder