Thread:Pecoes/@comment-3012125-20120705033315/@comment-3508190-20120705152708

When Aleroth contacted me, I did a little research on him. It turned out that he has been editing wikis for all of two months. He has a paltry 300 edits to his name - only a third of them in the article namespace. That's not exactly the kind of history that would inspire confidence, that he knows what it takes to start and admin a great wiki. Worse: He was blocked on the wiki where he had made most of his edits. Here is the notice by one of the admins, that explains the block. That message is as clear as it gets. It was not at all clear to Aleroth. It still isn't. Other people might have tried to sweep the nasty things that happened there under the rug. Not Aleroth. He proudly told me how great the work was he did at the Dragon Age wiki. Which is how I came across the block notice in the first place by the way.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We're still in our very first conversation where I asked him: "Why should I entrust my wiki to you and who are you anyway?" His response was that the message wall is a bad place to discuss such things. That was a litle weird but whatever. He told me to meet him in the chat room here at Community Central. Only: He was not there. I had other things to do, so I didn't mind taking the occasional glance at the chat window. But still: I was getting a little annoyed. Half an hour later he showed up. Without apology and without explanation. Instead he told me we should discuss this in another chat room at another wiki. I sighed, switched over and landed... in an empty chat room. I had to wait for him again. So I had enough time to wonder why Aleroth would prefer an empty chat. Because Aleroth wants no witnesses? Does he not know that chats are logged? Probably not. He's a noob after all. But I was pushing that suspicion away from me. He was already irritating me, but I was still trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"So", he asked, "what would you like to know?" I wanted to say: "Really? You shoo me around Wikia in search of a private chat room and now you've forgotten the questions we came to discuss?". But what I said was: "Would you like me to copypaste the questions from my message wall?" Now, other people probably would have recognized that as a rhethorical question. Not Aleroth. He made me go back to my wall and copypaste the questions. I was seething.

His response to the first question "Why should I entrust my wiki to you?" came surprisingly quick. It was a well-prepared, well-written, well-sounding list of bullet points. He had surely written those ahead of time and simply copypasted them. You've probably read the same list, haven't you? It sounded quite reasonable, didn't it? I may have had a qestion or two, but I did not get around to commit them to writing. He decided the question was conclusively and fully answered and that it was time to move on to the next question: "What else do you want to know?"

Never mind, I thought. Let's get to the core: "Who are you anyway?" Given his thin Wikia history I was expecting a very compelling answer. Like, oh I don't know, that he works for Bioware or something... Instead He rattled down the profile I had already seen on his user page. He did not fail to mention all the wikis that he had founded, as if they were household names. He also gave himself a bunch of "titles": Artist, Scientist, Philosopher... I was stunned. That was it? "So you're bascially someone who founds lots of wikis?"

To his credit: He somehow sensed that I wasn't impressed, so he asked what would impress me. "Experience, credentials, connections, that kind of stuff". That triggered him to talk about his achievements as an admin at the Dragon Age wiki. He said he had done what other admin-maniacs who love to go around blocking people could not. He had smooth-talked a troll who was vandalizing the wiki into submission. I wanted to interrupt him and say "That's very nice, but if that's your only achievement as an admin, that's still a very short list - nice as it may be." But he couldn't stop himself. He needed to say more. He added that he had pulled the troll over to "his" side and that he was working for him now. I don't recall his exact choice of words, but I think he said that troll was "in his pocket" now.

My alarm bells were ringing. I repeated his words back at him and he took the bait. He told me that this troll person was his "slave" now and that he was his "master". I'm not kidding. Those were his exact words. As you can probably imagine the conversation took a turn for the worse at this point. I'll spare you the details. It was not a long conversation anyway.

I ended the chat rather abruptly with the statement "This conversation is going nowhere. I fail to see why I should entrust my wiki to you and I see no chance whatsoever for you to change my mind. Have a nice day!"

Other people may have understood that last statement as a refusal to talk about the subject any further. Not Aleroth. He came up with the brilliant plan to ask you to "mediate" between him and me. I told him not to drag you into this, but he did not listen. He somehow thinks I haven't properly understood him. I sure have. It's all about power-games for him. That's why he got blocked at the Dragon Age wiki. Because he manipulated people. Because he doesn't take no for an answer. And because he wanted to usurp the wiki. And now he's come up with this brilliant idea of the supermegawiki that incorporates god-knows-how-many others with him at the helm. That must be his personal "Take over the world!" plan or something. What a creep.

And unfortunately he did manage to drag you into this. So here I am wasting your time with a long story about somebody who deserves to be ignored and forgotten and will surely get himself permanently banned from Wikia in no time at all.