Admin Forum:Someone one my wiki uses horrible grammar, and I want them to stop without banning them.

On my wiki, someone is making fanfictions with horrible grammar and spelling. It gets really hard to skim through their work and fix it. I want my wiki to have good content, but I don't want to ban this guy for just bad grammar. I left him a message, but he didn't respond. What do I do? MissingNo. here! Talk with me! 03:26, March 25, 2012 (UTC)
 * Bump. MissingNo. here! Talk with me! 16:42, March 26, 2012 (UTC)
 * I would advise talking to him in a more stricter tone, warning him that he must improve his grammar or he will get a block. That should work. If he doesn't follow that, then I know you'll be against this, but I would then start off by giving him a block of maybe 1-3 days, and if he still continues, maybe a block of 2 weeks, and slowly work your way up from there. EpicWikipedian 17:01, March 26, 2012 (UTC)


 * What is the main reason that you think you need to fix grammar in someone else's fan fiction? What I would do is make a template with a notice saying something like: "The grammar and spelling in this article is not reflective of the standards of this wiki." You could also set up a policy to move poor quality fan fiction to a user sub-page.
 * From my experience, writers with bad grammar will only rarely improve because it isn't their priority. If it was, they wouldn't be so bad in the first place. Sometimes it's better just to move junk to user sub-pages and forget about it. Fixing bad grammar and spelling can easily become a thankless full-time job. -- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 27 Mar 2012 12:48 PM Pacific


 * If you're wiki is not a fanon, or fanfic wiki, then he has to move it to his own userpage, or make a account on fanfiction and make it there, and send a link on his userpage. If it is NOT fanfiction, tell him to do that, or he will get a block, work with a 1 day block, then 3 days, 2 weeks, and work your way up to a perm block, like Epic Wikipedian said. Zimfan:D 21:43, March 27, 2012 (UTC)

Hey all. Since I’m also an administrator on Star Wars Fanon, I wanted to bring in a different perspective to this thread. Too often, fanon/fan fic wiki admins can fall into the trap of treating their wiki the same as one that is geared towards encyclopedic content. The first thing you want to remember is that your wiki isn’t an encyclopedia of information, it’s a repository of creation. Knowing that, you need to devise a better approach than the typical warn and block system; Star Wars Fanon isn’t going to treat policies the same as Wookieepedia, for example.

Something really important you want to avoid, and Fandyllic I don’t want to seem like I’m being too critical here since I’m just using your comment as an example, is thinking that poor writing is junk. It’s not junk, it’s a first step. Writing has a learning curve; not everyone is going to be at the same level at the same time, and they’re not going to get better at the same rate or in the same way. “Follow this policy to the letter the next time you make an edit” isn’t going to work when people are engaged in creative writing. You shouldn’t try to enforce standardized quality control.

Writers who aren’t as good as others yet can’t be expected to improve with warnings and blocks. Moving things to user subpages isn’t going get anyone to improve, it's just going to move their content to a different namespace. Creativity and quality creative writing has to be nurtured through both positive reinforcement and critical feedback, not hit with a banhammer.

If you see someone with bad spelling and grammar, help them. You don’t have to fix it, but you can give advice. You can suggest a spell checker, you can suggest proofreading, you can suggest tips and tricks for better writing, etc. Help them, don’t ban them. Good writing takes time to improve, and if you embrace the fan fiction concept and avoid the encyclopedic concept then you don’t need to worry about quality controls and site-wide standards. People will improve at their own pace, and you’ll get better writers out of it. Adding things like "Keep it up!" or "Great effort so far!" can go a long way too.

One thing I’ve always liked to point out is how I started off in writing. The first time I ever started creative writing was on a Star Wars role-playing website. This is my first written RP post ever:


 * Jedi Padawan Ussej Bac has seen the struggle on the rooftops. Gathering his courage, he grips his lightsaber from his belt, a vein bulging from his hands.


 * "Sith..."


 * He runs to the elevator and rides the seemengly endless ride to the top of the building. He runs over to the seemingly helpless and beautiful young girl who is on the other side of the roof. In the distance, the rumbling of thunder can be heard.


 * Another Jedi is jumping infront of a bullet. Bac extends a hand to the beautiful young woman


 * "Are you alright, ma'am?"

I have a hard time looking at that without cringing. Compared to my level of writing now, that post is personally appalling to me&mdash;but that's only because I'm very self-critical when it comes to my writing, a trait that I developed over time. The thing I remember is that without that post, I would never be writing at the level I’m at now. If someone had deleted it, banned me, warned me, cast it aside as “junk,” etc., I wouldn’t be at the level of writing I’m at now. Thankfully I was in a creative and collaborative environment where all levels of quality were embraced and nurtured. Without that post and without that environment letting me get better, I wouldn’t have become a Star Wars Fanon administrator, and I would not be working for Wikia right now.

Not everyone is going to become a wiki admin or Wikia employee, and I'm not saying all of this to toot my own horn. I'm just giving you an example of my advice where it's worked in practice, and that example happens to be me.

Embrace all levels of quality, even if you think it’s terrible, and you’ll have a much more collaborative wiki that will, in the longterm, generate much better content. Don’t avoid that for the short-term feeling of standardized quality.

If you have any other questions about fanon/fan fic wikis, feel free to let me know. I’d be happy to answer them. - Brandon Rhea (talk)  21:56, March 27, 2012 (UTC)


 * Not to be too critical... ;-), but your example is parsecs beyond in quality to what many fanons get as far as contributions. You have mostly proper spelling, words arranged in paragraphs, proper use of case, ...
 * I also administrate WoWRP and I am extremely liberal with the quality of fanon I allow there. However, it also does not experience really horrible grammar and spelling, but I've seen it at several other fanons.
 * I think you want to change the OP's perspective, but I'm trying to present options. You'll notice I did not suggest ban/block at all. You really need to give some examples from your fanon of an author who when from truly awful to downright decent through encouragement and constant fixing before I can really buy into your plan.
 * Lastly, you can't really compare Star Wars, a humongous cultural phenomenon, to every fanon out there. -- Fandyllic (talk &middot; contr) 27 Mar 2012 5:06 PM Pacific

You can’t compare Star Wars to everything, but the subject isn’t all that important. There are certain universal truths involved in writing, and one of them is that trying to slap some sort of standardized quality control onto someone limits their ability to grow at their own pace and in their own way. You need flexibility to be able to come into your and feel comfortable in your own skin as a writer.

One thing to remember about Star Wars Fanon too is that it was the first fan fiction wiki on Wikia, so it’s had more time (about 6.5 years now) to get to the point where it’s at now. Even so, the number of contributors is actually much lower than it could and should be&mdash;and I contend that some of our policies are too strict and that’s one of the reasons. I’ve seen users scared off by policies that don’t need to be there. For example, we mandate the use of American English spelling over English English spelling. Why do we do that? Who cares so long as it’s English? We had one guy about a year ago, for example, leave on pretty bitter terms because of that, and it could have been avoided.

The early days of Star Wars Fanon were also...well, horrendous on many levels. The typical age of users at the time was probably 13 or 14, and there was a lot of immaturity. The quality that you ascribe to Star Wars Fanon now wasn’t there. We even had what was called the “Vandal Wars” where users went into “combat” against some pretty bad vandalism that was going on. The wiki users tried to set up a government with political parties, etc. It was a nightmare. Thankfully, it was before my time.

So as a reaction to that, when new admins like me came on board, we cracked down pretty hard on that nonsense. We also, however, cracked down on what we saw as poor quality. Not just spelling and grammar, but we were also pretty rude to the quality of a story and outright ridiculed some people. Many users left over that; some have still written on the wiki recently about the elitism of that time, and they’re not wrong. It was wrong for us to do that, because we tried to force subjective standards onto people.

We may have proper spelling, words arranged in paragraphs, proper use of case, etc, but in cracking down on that, warning and blocking people, etc., we lost an active and vibrant community. The most we do as a community now are Featured Article and Good Article voting, Quotes of the Week, and policy proposals. Collaboration and interaction are nearly non-existent in any sort of meaningful way, and that’s something I’ve been working on in the last few months to try to finally fix. It can and needs to be turned around.

That said, the collaborative community isn’t dead, even if it’s nearly non-existent. The few people who were able to put up with that hardline philosophy and become active and remain active have shown great improvements. My original fan fic novel is so bad I won’t even post it on the wiki, but the users on the wiki like Atarumaster88, Solus, and Squishy Vic, amongst others, made me so much better. Ataru and Solus, particularly, were brutal in tearing my work apart, but they also gave me positive reinforcement. Ataru would often say things that I’ll paraphrase as “this is terrible, but you have talent and can do better.” I blame credit Ataru, in particular, for my improvements.

Then there’s Ataru himself. The first draft of his book, Force Exile I: Fugitive, is supposedly so terrible he won’t even release it either. That’s the difference between him and me; my original terrible version is still on the internet. I’m pretty sure he’s erased all traces of the existence of his. However, through the critical feedback, positive reinforcement, and time afforded to him by others, both on and off the wiki, he’s now one of the most prolific and best authors on Star Wars Fanon. He has something like a dozen short stories and is on his fifth out of six Force Exile novels. Each one has gotten better; I even reviewed Force Exile I two or three years after he first released it, and my review got him to go back and revise things. There were issues I pointed out with dialogue and romance in the book, and he’s improved on that since then, despite him having been working on his fourth book at the time.

Squishy Vic, like me, started out mainly writing fanon articles, and we both were...not that great at it. However, as we worked together and as he received feedback from other users, he also improved. The first draft of his fan fiction novel compared to the final draft is like night and day.

Then there are other users, like Darth Wylind, I'm the Chosen One, Nightmare975, and Jedi Master 76 who didn’t start off all that great but are now so much better thanks to the collaboration and feedback they were able to be part of&mdash;both in terms of fanon and fan fiction. JM76, for example, wrote a scene in a fan fic novel of his which was basically a carbon copy of the pencil magic trick scene with the Joker from The Dark Knight. He was eviscerated for that, and now his stories are all the better for it.

Speaking of evisceration, one of our administrators, Goodwood, recently received a scathing review of his most recent novel, and that review came from Ataru. That story, Impact Events, was given a fairly negative review in terms of the storyline. Ataru said in the review that it wasn’t done to discourage or attack the author, but because Ataru felt the story was sub-standard compared to Goodwood’s previous outings and that Goodwood can and has done better. That was a very critical review, but with positive reinforcement. Goodwood has said he plans to revise the work, and given the reviews Ataru has given to me before then I can say that Impact Events will most likely be a hell of a lot better for it.

Now, when it comes to fanon articles instead of just fan fiction authors, there was one user in particular who is a good example of this. The user’s name was Darthtyler, and he was absurdly ridiculed in so many unjustifiable ways for the center piece of his fanon: a Force sensitive battle droid. I don’t like that concept, but some of the things I and others said weren’t fair. The writing of those articles were often poor; spelling and grammar were major issues, for example. However, despite the unfair attacks by me and others, Tyler had a group of friends on the wiki and they gave each other much needed positive reinforcement. So the criticism on the one side and the positive reinforcement on the other was able to come together and make his later entries on the wiki a million times better.

Then there’s the role-playing website I mentioned in my previous post. I won’t lie about my standing on that website; I started off as a member, and I now own and run that website. In my 7 years there (<--- major nerd), I’ve seen people improve in ways that defy words. There are people who started off terrible, like me, and now come up with these epic ideas and write in such a great way that sometimes I’m blown away by it. The collaborative atmosphere of that website helped me and others tremendously. It’s not a wiki, but in many respects a role-playing website and a fanon/fan fiction wiki aren’t that different. They’re just different formats with the same endgame: creative writing in a community space.

So, given more time I could probably write a whole book on this subject, but for now those are the best examples that immediately come to mind. These are people, myself included, who didn’t start off all that good. Some of us, myself included, started off terrible. Through an atmosphere that nurtured creativity and improvement at a pace that can fit the learning curve of the individual users, we’re all where we are now.

To me it defies logic that a wiki like Star Wars Fanon or any other wiki that emulates it works, but against all odds it does. The current set up of treating it with standardized quality control creates a pretty leveled off stream of activity, with users going in and out, but no real growth. That’s why I push this idea here so hard, because once a wiki can embrace that then they can attract more people. More people are going to go into anything with lower barriers, but if you’re waiting there to help them then they’re not just going to screw around. Not everyone will get better&mdash;writing isn’t for everyone&mdash;but many of them will. Giving them the space to write at their comfort level while also offering feedback and encouragement will, at the very least, let virtually everyone on the wiki who enjoys writing have fun being on the wiki.

For a fanon/fan fic wiki, that’s what should matter at the end of the day. Grammar should be the secondary priority. - Brandon Rhea (talk)  01:50, March 28, 2012 (UTC)