Hey there and sorry for the delay. So, it makes more than one year that my first interview with AES came out and,
Have a Fishy Stick !
i'm quite surprised actually that this project is still running and, as popular, and maybe more than it was in it's beginning. Anyway, today, i'm interviewing one of the longest-serving user on the TES, been here since 2011, and is also one of our bureaucrats. He came here, hoping to make this place a great wiki, and, maybe, one of the best wikia existing. I don't think he could ever have imagined that this same wikia he first came on, would become what it is today. We do owe him a damn lot indeed. So, to show my own gratitude, I decided to interview him, and, for those who are new here, please, take 5 minutes to read the interview of the Kangor father of this wikia, Timeoin
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: For those who aren’t familiar with your Contributions, tell us a bit about some of the things you do here. 1. Some of the things I do here? That is actually a really tough question to answer, really. It really depends on the day. Some days, I do a bit of everything, really. Some days I go and find a bunch of pages that need categories added to them. Sometimes I go and find references for pages that need it - I do whatever I can to help out the wiki. I'm on here far from as often as I'd like, but I do what I can. The wiki's given me a lot - so I do what I can to help others in return :) (I'm glad you didn't ask me what I'm working on - because I once did a tasklist of things to do, and then started another one before that was even finished, I have that many things to do eventually :P)
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: In your words, what does it mean to be a bureaucrat here? 2. I actually kind of answered that one partly above. A Bureaucrat really isn't all that different from anyone else here. I'm just another editor really - anyone can do all those things that I talked about above. (And some people do do those, which is awesome!)
Honestly though - there are very few actual differences between a bureaucrat and an editor. I can remove spam/other pages needing to be deleted, that's about the only real difference. Other than that, the only thing I really try and do as bureaucrat is to make sure that there IS no major differences between staff and bureaucrats. I do everything I can to make sure that what we do is as open as possible, and that everyone can have their say as to what the community does. (For instance, the popularity of the CT thread).
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: How did you first discovered The Elder Scrolls universe ? 3. An odd story actually. There was an online comic called Ctrl-Alt-Delete. One of the characters was talking about a game on there at the time called Morrowind. (Which was a few years old at that point in time). About 6 months later, I was at Harvey Norman, and I saw it in the bargain bin, and not knowing anything other than that the fictional character liked it, purchased the game.
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: How did you discover this wikia and what made you decide to contribute here? 4. Indirectly, through other wikis on wikia such as Wookiepedia. Found a link here for some reason, saw it was a real mess, and started fixing it :) (It was that or do my uni work - so no contest really :P)
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: Do you have any advice or words of wisdom for anyone who is interested in becoming an active contributor here? 5. There are probably two main pieces of advice that I can give: Firstly - get involved, and start editing. If you see something is wrong - fix it - or ask someone, if you don't know how to do so yourself :) The second piece of advice fits in with that a little bit - and that is to get involved in the community here. Whether thats on the forums, on talk pages, or the chat - just get involved. If you're here, you're probably interested in the series itself (unless you stumbled here by accident - in which case - welcome!) - but you know what - we're all interested in the same thing - so you're going to make some really great friends here. I know I certainly have :)The Elder Scrolls Wikia: What was your reaction when you played to Skyrim for the first time ? 6. Idk - for me the reaction was kind of dulled a bit by my job as admin. I was trying to experience literally EVERYTHING, so I could add it all to the wiki later on in the day. It made it somewhat difficult to fully enjoy it as I should have. (It happened anyway though - the game itself is incredibly detailed both in gameplay, lore, and obviously, the graphics themselves).
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: What is your opinion of TESO ? 7. ESO? I'm a little bit mixed on my feeling of this one. I want it to be a massive success. (I don't know if you remember or not, but there was that big April fools day joke that backfired majorly? (Sorry about that, folks!). Idk - when you play the game, you can tell that they've tried to pay as much attention to lore as they can, whilst still being an MMO. That said - at times, the characters DO feel a bit one-dimensional. (Being an MMO, there are characters with literally one, or no lines. And then there's the whole subscription thing - I actually stopped playing the game altogether cause of that. (NA server literally ALWAYS went down at the same time of day, and it was prime gametime for Australians like myself. (9 or 10pm AEST - until well after midnight). I'd just get my kids to sleep in time for servers to end.
- The Elder Scrolls Wikia:
Could you describe to us the TES when you first came here ?
- 8. How much time do you have? :P Nah, it was a complete and utter shambles when I FIRST arrived here. Bear in mind - this was literally nothing like what it is today. At the time - there was a massive total of 600 pages, across the entire site. (We have almost 30,000 now, by contrast). The only editors here were the occasional vandal who stumbled here, and an admin who literally logged in once a month, just to keep his "admin" status. Needless to say - we are a long way from those days.
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: What is your best TES related memory? My best memory though - well, I'll lead on from the last sentence. Since starting when I did, we then merged with the Skyrim wiki (which was a wiki, as you might imagine, about Skyrim). We had some lore pages - they had some people editing, so it was a good match :). The downside though, was the editors from that other site would occasionally drop by to berate us for existing at all. The reason I included all of this - probably my best memory here was the week Skyrim came out. The reason why - we actually not only, as a community and site, proved why we should be here (Not to mention that we had more Skyrim information than the official elder scrolls website, even up to launch day), but we actually went out and broke Wikia records in terms of pageviews. Like ... COMPLETELY smashed it. (40 million in the one week). Definitely a highlight - because the whole community put in a lot of hard work to get the site to the point where that was possible.
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: What is it you really like here ?
- 9. Probably the easiest question to answer - the community is what I like here. I said above somewhere that you find a lot of people here who like the same thing - and that's really why I keep coming back from day to day. I try to let you guys come up with your own solutions and suggestions for things as much as possible - because, in a weird way, I'm kinda like the "father" here, like you said at the very very start. So its good to see what my metaphorical children come up with to make the site better and better. That metaphor got away from me a bit, but I hope you understand what I mean - basically, you guys make things better, and think of things I would never have thought of. CONSTANTLY. So that's why I keep coming back. (That, and I'm somewhat stubborn - I'll probably keep coming back until literally every single link goes where its supposed to - so its fairly safe to say I'll be here for a while!)
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: : Has the work you do on here helped you in real life at all?
- 10. Yes and no - It has, in the sense that no matter how bad things get in Real Life (Just recently had a really, really rough patch), there's always this place to come back to and lose myself in for a bit. And no because - well, unfortunately, one cannot edit wiki's for a living, unless you're lucky enough to be Wikia Staff or something.
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: What would you like to improve here ? 11. Oh gosh. There are literally so many things. We're still early days really - I am pretty bad at organisation - I start improving one aspect of the wiki, and then I'll get distracted by something else, and then something else again, and so on. The end result is that I think I've had at least a dozen "to do lists", and have never actually completely finished ANY of them. But we're still new, really. Plenty of time yet - I see this as a long-term thing. Its probably BETTER that there is still a lot of stuff left to do and add - or else all our editors would get extremely bored. (It's the reason I didnt join the other site back at the start - literally couldn't think of where to begin).
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: : You have a child dont you ? How did it affect your activity here ? 12. I actually have two children now. Ethan and Lilah. (If you remember the question above about how i came across the TES series - they're named after two of the main characters in that. As for my activity - it really does affect it. (Well, that, and having a full time job). Then again - the fact that it took me a week or two to actually answer these should have proven that! :)
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: What do you think of the TESWikia situation actually ? 13. Depends what you mean by situation. See, you have to remember - I'm Grandpa/Father Timeoin. I've been here a very long time. I have a somewhat longer-view of the wiki than you might. (Side note - have you ever read the Dune series? Kinda like Leto really, but different in that im not a tyrannical worm - but the long-view of time here, and moving forward and constantly improving is definitely the same). Aaaanyways - yeah, the issues that we have been having recently are similar to ones that we've had in the past, with other editors. What's that line from the best tv series ever, Battlestar Galactica? "All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again?" - It's that, basically. People edit for a period of time, then, unfortunately, either life or conflict/dispute over something happens, and regrettably, the editor leaves. We don't WANT them to leave, obviously, but leave they do. The only difference being - they've contributed to making the wiki a better place while they were here. Whether that be actual editing, or just strengthening the community via the bonds of friendship - the wiki and the community is just that little bit stronger. That's how I see it anyway. (I try not to get tooo bogged down in editing conflicts if I can avoid it - because, being here as long as I have, my voice carried more weight than I want it too. I would much rather that folks make up their own minds about things as much as possible, and me only step in where its needed. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't. I'm not perfect either - which is why I prefer to not play "god" with decision making. We all love this awesome series, so we are all clearly intelligent, rational, people - so as a general rule, we can be relied upon to come to reasonable, sensible decisions. (Case in point - the bot vote currently).
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: : We've been trough some kind of crisis recently. Do you think it's over ? 14. Um... I hope so? There are signs to say that it might be - Lets just say that I'm cautiously optimistic. Either way - it's may now, and Tamriel Unlimited is released in June (or July? One of them), so pretty soon we'll have a raft of new editors here, more than likely. This is both a boon and a curse - a boon because there are a lot of people eager to share what they know, and at the same time, a curse in some ways too, because it can upset some established editors, particularly when the newbies are still learning the ins and outs of the wiki. (Accidentally moving pages, for example ... not that I did that as a newbie :P)
The Elder Scrolls Wikia: : What would you like to improve here ? 15. I think you asked this one already. lol. I'll do this one as a less generalized answer this time. One thing I'd really like to see here would be the introduction of sub-boards. As someone whose used proper forums in the past (and moderated a few, too) - it really does constrict what we can actually do with them, as we can't put resolved threads in a sub-board. (That same discussion topic also had the suggestion of a FAQ page for games - which is a great idea, IMHO. One other thing I would change though - would be the ESO pages themselves. We're struggling a bit at the momment with pages for things that aren't on the Aldmeri Dominion side of things - so any help anyone can give there would be greatly appreciated. It's pretty difficult to work out if characters are spelt wrong, for instance, if there is no page for said characters :) Other than that - the rest of it is coming along in time. (The "Guilds" pages was a great idea, for example - now there's a specific group editors can join if they'd like to help out with a particular game - seriously brilliant idea. Anyways - sorry about rambling a bit in this interview - I've had very little sleep, and I ramble a bit when that happens Timeoin•Say G'Day•View my work 12:10, May 6, 2015 (UTC)
Once again, thanks to Timeoin for giving us a few moments of his time. We'll meet again in two weeks for our next interview. if you have any idea of interviews i should do or any comments, feel free to leave a comment !