User blog:Medievaldog/Confessions of a Wikia felon

Hello, I am MsD, and I joined Wikia on October 26, 2011, to communicate with members of the LEGO Universe community. I wanted a picture of my character in the LEGO Universe MMO taken by a specific user and I used the site to contact them. More than seven years later, I have amassed more than 10.5k edits across Wikia on my primary account, despite not editing with it since 2014.

But that's only a fraction of the story. I have also created dozens upon dozens of duplicate accounts, more than I can care to remember. I created a list years ago but it was incomplete and I couldn't begin to look for it given that I've edited on what may very well be hundreds of wikis in my time. I created my first dupe barely a month after I first joined Wikia. Then I made another. Then another. And another. Et cetera, for months and months.

Some dupes I remember creating and using but haven't remembered their names since I stopped using them. I created some dupes to circumvent chat blocks, to make edits that didn't exactly fit my main account's "personality," to influence community discussions, because I didn't remember the passwords of my other dupes, as legitimate second accounts, as "legitimate" third accounts, as "legitimate" fourth accounts, and some I used to spam chats. Some I created just because I thought the name was cool. And yet, some, such as this one, I create because I do my bi-monthly login into Wikia and discover that all my usable dupes have been blocked either locally or globally.

I made a lot of enemies. People I knew from Wikia block me when I follow them on social media to this day. I've gotten blocked from nearly every wiki I've cared about, usually multiple times. I have tried to assimilate into some communities which I used to be a part of and have gotten rejected. My primary account and a large portion of my duplicate accounts are globally disabled, and some of my more modern dupes are globally blocked despite never having done much with them after their creation. I've had arguments with countless administrators both globally and locally many times, and I've had several times as many arguments with everyday users across all of Wikia.

I also did good. I created articles on multiple wikis, even on my duplicate accounts. More than half my primary account's global edits are mainspace. I edited pages for hours on end, day after day, for years. I was constructive with the communities at times; I genuinely cared about many of them. I maintained my own niche wiki, the Yoshi Wiki, and maintained many smaller others.

Wikia also did good for me. I am still a part of the community of the former LEGO Message Boards Wiki to this day, which has relocated to other sites. I am friends with many people on social media, I would even consider myself close with a few. I often talk with others in the LMBW community's Discord channel about how much this platform changed my life. I was part of a community where I belonged, where I made an impact. I made friends. I learned how to write. I learned the value of knowledge and of creating a product after countless hours of work. I grew up on this website and it's shaped who I am.

Sometimes you've just gotta be a felon. Even when you try not to, your felonious nature shows through before long. One day you're writing articles and uploading helpful images and the next you're wrecking someone's userpage and copy-pasting MediaWiki:BadWords into chat. It's just how it is for us felons.

Felt like sharing.