User blog:Brandon Rhea/Rant on Star Wars Fanon

The following is a compilation of my thoughts about Star Wars Fanon. I can't help it if you're offended.

Content
Star Wars Fanon is a great idea that’s gone horribly awry. I am very much in favor of the ability of Star Wars fans to come to a place where they can use their imaginations to come up with their own stories, whether they fit with canon or not being up to them. If I said I was against this I would clearly be a hypocrite. I have been writing fan fiction since late 2004. I was an abysmal writer when I started and have vastly improved since then. Article writing on Star Wars Fanon contributed to this, as did tips from other authors such as Victor Dorantes and Atarumaster88.

But enough about me, I want to know more about you! Just kidding, because I’m really here to rant for quite a few paragraphs. I will not give you a “tl;dr” version. If you want to know what’s said here, read it. If you don’t want to read it, then don’t read it. Putting all of this out there is more for my benefit than anyone else’s. It allows me to state my opinion on things I’ve wanted to state my opinion on for awhile. So, without further adieu, here we go.

Let’s face it: the majority of articles on Star Wars Fanon are filled with utter nonsense. If you deleted all of the crappy articles and left only the good and decent ones, you’d be left with only a few hundred articles....if that. This is the downside to Star Wars Fanon and having a place for imaginative thoughts: people don’t restrain their imagination. In their minds, having Jedi and Sith act like Superman, Jesus and/or God is perfectly acceptable, when in reality it’s not. This is not to say that you can’t come up with new and interesting story elements, but there are restraints on things that can happen in the Star Wars universe and some of them should not be challenged.

I’m going to echo and summarize here someone who I think has gotten this opinion absolutely right, and that person is MPK. Too much here is about great galactic heroes who are insanely powerful and follow a typical Mary Sue plotline. The same goes for dark side users who just end up ruling the galaxy. Almost every story here boils down to the same thing and it’s as if there’s no desire to create complex heroes and villains anymore.

Nicholas Meyer, the director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country said it best:

"There’s a distinction to be made between heroes and gods, which I think we sometimes get confused about. [...] let me explain my theory of heroism. If a man jumps into a raging torrent to save a drowning child, he performs a heroic act. If the same man jumps into the same torrent to save the same child, but does so with a ball and chain attached to his leg, he’s not less heroic: he’s more heroic. If you look at the heroes of antiquity and myth, they all have flaws. It’s something that they have to overcome; their flaws are something that they have to act in spite of. The challenge is not to defy your fate, but to endure it. That is heroic."

- Nicholas Meyer

Meyer continued with his explanations of heroism by discussing heroic flaws:

"The flaw is always the same. The hero always thinks he knows the answer, and ultimate he learns that he doesn’t. [...] There is always a point in Greek plays, known as the “peripatea”, where the hero learns that everything he knew is wrong. And it’s no accident that in at least two of my movies there comes a point where the hero says, “I now nothing”. H.G. Wells says it in Time After Time; Kirk says it in Star Trek II. It’s when you begin to realize that you know nothing that you’re ready to learn something. When you’ve had the shit kicked out of you, you’re ready to start over, and with a little humility. As I was writing [The Wrath of Khan], I was certainly getting to that “I know nothing” point."

- Nicholas Meyer

Not only do too many characters have no flaws, but some of them are just simply clichés and are boring. People seem to have this idea that when characters are “uber-powerful” and “epically awesome” it makes them interesting and “cool”. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s the opposite: characters who are loved by everyone, have no flaws and win everything they do are totally and completely dull and boring. I would much prefer to read about a tragic hero than to read about a Mary Sue. Tragic heroes have heart to them; Mary Sues have explosions and “pwnage”.

To quote MPK directly, these types of articles are “the worst offenders of the assault on creativity”. Not only is it an insult to creativity, but I believe it’s an insult to the people of this site that truly are creative. These people include Victor Dorantes, Atarumaster88, MPK, Jedi Master 76, Solus and others. Frankly, I don’t appreciate being stereotyped as an immature twelve year old writer just because I choose to write here. It’s an unfair stereotype brought about because of idiotic bias and a lack of creativity.

Another issue with so many of these articles comes from a lack of a simple grasp of the English language. Ninety-five percent of the people who write here come from a family where English is the primary language, if not the only language that is known. Are our schools so bad that when people come here they write articles and can’t spell basic words? Are people becoming so caught up in online life that they have to write on talk pages as if they’re thirteen year old girls talking about their middle school dance date on AOL Instant Messenger? I don’t think so.

Community
The spelling and grammar issues raised in the Content section brings me to another point of contention: where is our community? Everyone is all self-absorbed here, leaving the Administrators (aka, the ones who actually do their jobs, but that’s another point) to have to tag articles for clean up in regards to fanonification, spelling, grammar, etc. Why is no one else helping with this? I think I know the answer to this question. It dates back to when this site was in complete and total chaos and no one wanted anyone to touch anything that didn’t belong to them. This created an atmosphere of “what’s mine is mine, now get back in your corner”. Ever since then, there has not been community involvement in actually improving the quality and content of this website, and it has suffered because of it ever since.

Regardless, the community only seems to come together when they’re voting on policies of voting on Good Articles. Lending your voice in policy matters and helping articles reach Good article status is nice and all, but none of that matters when the vast majority of the website is completely lacking in quality. If the members of this website want it to continue in the years ahead, they need to start coming together more and actually help improve it. Having tunnel vision and only focusing on your own articles, however good or bad they may be, just doesn’t cut it in my opinion. This is not a jab at anyone in particular, because not every single person needs to be involved, but the majority of people do, in my opinion, and this site will continue to be at the receiving end of bad jokes for a long time to come if it’s not done.

I also feel that a more moderate approach needs to be taken in terms of dealing with policy breaches and poor content. Right now, there are two main schools of thought: delete everything that consensus (aka, eight people, since our “community” is laughable) says should be deleted for being crap, and leave everything because this is a place where imaginations should just be able to roam free. Both of these schools of thought are wrong. You can’t just let everything that’s a piece of garbage stay here and justify it with “imagination” excuses, nor can you just delete everything right off the bat. We were all new once and new people need some time to get the hang of things, but in the end if they’re not doing that after warnings are given then content should be deleted for policy violations, not before.

Finally when it comes to the community, there is a general negativity towards other users, particularly new users, when it comes to people’s opinions. While I indulge in the occasional teasing of other members (for lulz, to be honest), I don’t go around and insult new members or be overly blunt with them. While there is nothing wrong with being to the point, there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed and too many people cross it. While someone who is handing out warnings obviously understands policies, they need to get it through their heads that the new member doesn’t understand them yet, so please do us all a favor and get off your high horse long enough to realize that. As for being negative towards other more established members, it goes without saying that while joking is fine the insults need to stop.

Administrators
There are some SWF Administrators who are sort of active, but not really. Those would be Gnosis is knowledge and C3PO the Dragon Slayer. Aside from the few things they delete here and there, if I didn’t know any better, then I quite honestly wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them and regular users. Yell at me all you want for this, guys, but all I’m doing is summing up the majority opinion around here.



Now, one thing that really annoys me harkens back to the lack of community involvement. Because average users are not involved in welcoming new users, helping them with policies, cleaning up articles or anything else that really needs to get done around here, it makes Administrators stand out more than they should. It makes them seem like they’re actually the authority figures or leaders of this site. We as Administrators are not supposed to be this way. We are not meant to be able to assert authority over anyone. We’re supposed to be the same as normal users, only entrusted with the ability to have certain Administrative tools; nothing more, nothing less. Without community involvement like I said before, we’re going to keep looking like the dictators of this Wiki.

There is a problem on the horizon in terms of the Administrators. We have a big problem: there really is not much fresh blood or untapped potential. There is really no way to determine this either. On a Wiki such as Wookieepedia, there is so much community involvement that you’d be able to tell who would and would not make a good Administrator. On here, because everyone is just so self-absorbed in their own articles, there’s no way to find this unless someone randomly decides “hey, I’m going to become involved today”. Until the community aspect is changed, I don’t see anymore good Administrators stepping up to the plate. That poses a very big problem for later on. Thankfully, however, our current group of administrators is doing a good job maintaining this website, so given time we should be able to turn this around.

GA and FA mentality
There is a line of thought with certain members in regards to good articles and featured articles that never ceases to annoy me. This is the idea that they are awards that you get for working on your article for a long time, or for putting in a lot of content. Users will be shocked when they receive a list of line by line complaints about an article, as if they're offended that someone took the time to point out that their article is, in fact, not the Second Coming of Jesus. Why should you be shocked? This isn’t an awards show. We can’t keep saying “hmm, well, the article is long and there’s some nice pictures, so you can be a good article” because the user put time into it.

Newsflash: if your article sucks it should not be given the honor of being a good article or a featured article. Let me repeat a word for you: HONOR. This is not an award, it’s an honor. If your article deserves it then it will be honored with it. We’re not giving you a medal and a high five to congratulate you for spending a month writing a Mary Sue. Just because you nominate something twelve different times and don’t fix complaints doesn’t mean that we’re going to give you the honor because you appear to be determined. Just because you are active in the community doesn’t mean you should get it. There are standards and we should be following them. Stop voting for your friends. Stop voting for articles you’ve never read. If you want to vote, give it a fair vote after reading it and impartially reviewing it.



In terms of standards, I no longer want to hear people complaining that there is something wrong with the current voting process because we don’t allow nonsense Mary Sue articles to be given this honor. If your character, for example, doesn't have a single flaw, you shouldn’t be given the honor. If you fail the Mary Sue litmus test, you shouldn’t be given this honor. If you defy all logic, you will never be given this honor. Accept that fact now and save yourself some trouble later.

There’s also another mentality with good articles that I feel is a problem. As of right now, though to a lesser extent than what it used to be, it seems that most people are only interested in using good article nominations as a stepping stone for featured article status. While it obviously is the first step in becoming a featured article, who’s to say that all good article nominations have to be destined for featured article quality? Why not nominate articles that are, plain and simple, of good article status and nothing else? I assure you, they’re around here. I’m writing this now because I once promoted my article Ophuchi Sanctuary to good article status. I don’t mean to call someone who obviously didn’t mean any harm out, but Unit 8311 said this in his support vote:

"[It] will probably need expansion for FA [status], but otherwise it’s good."

- Unit 8311


 * Caveat: Since writing this rant, the Ophuchi Sanctuary article has been significantly expanded and successfully promoted to featured article status. However, at the time it was nominated for good article status, it was not of featured article quality.

Obviously Unit isn’t the problem here. The problem is that this has been the mentality for a long time. We need to begin using good article status not just as the first step to featured article status, but also as a way to recognize any article that happens to fit good article standards. We could have a lot more good articles than we do now if we changed this mentality to the one I’ve suggested here, and I think it would be very beneficial for us to do so.

Hell, we could begin a search in the “dreaded” Random page function and find articles that are potential candidates for good article status. It doesn’t matter who the author is: anyone can nominate any article for good article status. We obviously wouldn’t be able to do anything in terms of changing the story of the article, but we can correct spelling, grammar, formatting any anything else that it needs for good article status. I myself might begin doing this. I would encourage other users to do the same.

To end this section, I want to quote Atarumaster88 on something: “Never write anything for the sake of popularity or awards. Write what you want because you want to.” However, to add to that, don’t think that just because you want to write what you want and it's of a decent sized length we’re going to make your articles Good Articles or Featured Articles if they’re riddled with nonsense.

Tightly wound
"WIKIS ARE NOT FOR DISCUSSION!! THEY ARE SERIOUS BUSINESS!!"

- Sctn2labor mocking what he was told at Wookieepedia

No explanation needed. This is the internet. Lighten the f*** up and stop acting like what happens on Star Wars Fanon is an increasingly important matter of national security. The Bush administration received a national security intelligence estimate in August 2001 titled "Osama Bin Laden determined to attack within the United States" and they didn't take it seriously, so why are you taking the internetz so seriously? XD

Future of SWF
This website really needs to consider where it’s headed in the future. Honestly, I don’t believe it’s going to last for much longer, and here’s why. First, we seem to have exhausted our supply of obviously capable people who can step up and become Administrators, Council of Seers members, etc. The Administrators are not held together tightly. When Squishy Vic stepped down as an Administrator, there was a lot that was thrown just onto my shoulders because he and I were the most active Administrators. That led me to a question I hated asking: what happens if I step down? I'm happy to say, though, that some of our other Administrators such as CurrentBigThing have started to step up again, and we've elected two new ones who are very active as well. This really takes that question off of the table.

We need to create a better community. We can’t just keep staying in our own “Articles by” categories and only think about ourselves. The only way we can see who can step up and take these positions later is through community work. We can’t judge potential Administrators by their ability to write articles and we can’t judge them just by the opinions they give. If we can’t see them in action, we won’t be able to create a well thought out opinion about them.

One of my earlier suggestions for this, which I suggested to a few people over IRC, was a simple one but it was shot down by the people on IRC, so I doubted I'd propose it. However, I did anyway. My idea is to remove everything from the Categorization Policy other than the parts that require a category and the explanation as to how to categorize. I don’t believe we should be telling people that they will have their articles deleted or that they will be banned if their articles are lacking categories. Look at Wookieepedia, for example. On that Wiki, if an article is uncategorized then a Recent Changes lurker will add the category to it. That’s something simple that I believe could help with a more community oriented Wiki here. I'm thankful to say that this policy adjustment was adopted, and I've also passed other policy changes such as restricting .GIF images in articles and have proposed a No Joke Articles Policy to help remove nonsense from the Wiki. I've also started ongoing administrative elections and High Priest elections. I'm happy to say that Darth tom and Drewton have been elected as administrators. Many other policies have been adopted as well.

And for now, that’s a wrap.