User:Ghost Jam

My Story
I joined the wiki not long after it's creation. I had just started college and was killing time in the campus computer lab. I don't exactly remember why, but I was looking through the Mario article on Wikipedia when I ran across a link the then newly born MarioWiki. So, I signed up.

See, at that time, the only active contributors were me, A Link to the Past, Steve (who admittedly wasn't around much) and Geno Kirby (whom I miss).

Problem is, I had a roommate at the time. I created the account Jelly Soup, as that is the name I normally use online. Due to issues at school, I didn't use the account for several weeks. But my roommate did. By the time I got back here, my roomy had started a fight with Link (who is rather overzealous about wiki-matters*). Seeing that I would never be able to work with the guy under that name, I made this account. By this time, a few more people had joined (partly due to me advertising on a few private message boards), but no serious editing was going on (apart from what me and Link did).


 * Wanted to expand on this. This isn't particularly relevant to this story, so you can safely skip past this paragraph if so desired. It occurs to me that the marked sentence reads like an insult and I don't intent it as one. A Link to the Past (otherwise known as New Age Retro Hippie on Wikipedia) is an amazing, talented editor who is passionate about the archiving process and has shown a proficiency for improving articles. His passion, sadly, has a habit of boiling over into attacks, flamewars and the occasional bout of sockpuppeting. It's that boiling point that eventually saw him banned from MarioWiki.

Thinking back, I think our main problems came from trying to move too far too fast. Link has extensive wiki experience and was applying it to try and build the Great Wall of the Marioverse with a toothpick. At this point in the wikis life, there wasn't enough people or content to establish things like policy and feature articles. Link left shortly after.

During this time, I was more into reverting edits by spambots (which was major problem #1 at the time). With the absence of Link, the only major contributors were me and Geno Kirby, the latter of which focused on correcting random data and sorting out messes.

After a few...days? Weeks? I don't remember. Anyway, after a time, I eventually got engrossed in a few projects of my own:


 * Trying to fix multiple redirects/links to the same places (which major problem #2 at the time).
 * Trying to integrate categories into the wiki. I think this one was more successful. It's funny to think how it started, looking at the category tree now.

As time went on, we had more and more bots attacking the wiki, adding adverts and just being general pains. At the time, Steve didn't want to restrict editing to registered users only, as doing so might put people off of the wiki and we were starving for members. Eventually, I was made MarioWiki's second Sysops (and first active one. AgentSeethrough had departed long before hand, having made a grand total of three edits, I think).

As more and more active users joined and school got busier and busier, I realized it wasn't necessary for me to play watchdog anymore. We had people like Wayoshi, Paper Gorge and Sun of Suns (not necessarily in that order) to keep watch. The wiki was capable, finally, of standing on it's own two feet. So, I let other members handle the big stuff. These days, I use my sysops powers for house cleaning (page deletions, page moves, blocking idiots, etc.). It takes time and tends to be a rather tedious process, but I do enjoy doing it.

I remember taking a few months off for school and family. Coming back was a trip, seeing how much had changed (read: improved) in just under four some-odd months.

Around a year or so later, in the middle of being at a new university and being bogged down by general life problems, I decided to quietly retire from my position as sysops. A year and a few months later, I dropped in again and seen the wiki had improved once again in a small period of time. I'm now hanging about as a general editor and opinion giver.

And so...here we are.

Current Goals

 * Keep the to be deleted page as clean as possible.
 * Run through Special Pages lists periodically to clean up smaller messes.
 * Foster discussion on proposals.
 * End fights and revert-wars as quickly and effectively as possible.

Stats

 * Joined MarioWiki on the 27th of September, 2005, at 12:46 (EST)(this is estimated).
 * Promoted to Sysops on the 23rd of November, 2005, at 18:12 (EST).
 * Retired on the 16th of January, 2010, at 01:41:18 PM (PST).
 * Promoted to Retired Wiki Staff on the 7th of June, 2012, at 01:23:23 AM (PST)(this is estimated).
 * Promoted to Syops & NIWA Representative on the 8th of September, 2013, at 2:24:16 PM (EST)(this is estimated).
 * Promoted to Retired Wiki Staff on 8/15/2019.