User blog:C.Syde65/A year as a Sims wiki editor!
A year as a Sims wiki editor! Indeed when I first joined, I had literally no wiki editing experience. And because of it, people were unsure of my gameplay experience, especially before I got an account, people would often undo my edits, without so much as researching to check whether the information I added was correct. Fortunately because of my natural editing skills, and my past experience with Microsoft Office, I was able to transform from a newbie editor into a marginally okay one in less than a month - still I had a long way before I got really good, or at least good. When I first joined, I soon learned that there was a lot more to editing the wiki, than just hitting "edit" and "publish". There were other tools such as "history" and "undo". When I saw my first edit being undone, my first assumption was that someone must have browsed the wiki content for the previous revision - my guess was sort of correct, but I didn't realise undoing a revision would be that simple. Less than two months after joining, I made a request for rollback rights. I chose to apply at a time, when I didn't care whether or not my request was approved, but to my best of luck, my request was approved. It was a few more months before I had the courage to apply for admin rights. My calculation was that if I saw another user being nominated for the position for making positive contributions, the sort that I myself had done or could have done, then I would automatically select myself as a follow up candidate. It was when I got reprimanded for jumping into an issue that "didn't concern" me, that I'd sensed my error. This was not potential future admin treatment in my opinion. Complicating the matter, I began to get rather hyped up and nervous, and started to make arguments, and do things that would only hurt my chances of becoming an administrator, even more. My nomination was declined a few days later, by which time I had already abandoned hope, and started to build strategies, to ensure that I would not continue to make any more "avoidable mistakes". It would not be easy. It took me several more months before my frequent mistakes began to die out. I had also founded a test wiki in September, so that I could practice editing without changing any serious content, and so that I could spend more time editing there and less here. I would also work on improving my skills in areas that I wouldn't have been able to work on otherwise. I may have made many mistakes when editing, but nonetheless it was worth it to join the wiki and become an editor. I've had a great year as an editor, and I look forward to an even better year soon! |