User blog comment:Undoniel/Multiple corrections from Stuart Vandal, Official Handbook writer./@comment-1713281-20130726151414

''Hmm. There were no comments when I started writing this. Hopefully this will sum up the points here.''

Stuart Vandal? I had hoped to never see that name again.

So let's clear up a few things here. While he has a bit of particular scorn about our site in general, Mr. Vandal's posts are displeased with all Wiki-format sites that allow any Tom, Dick or Harry to add info. Which is understandable. It does lead to bad info, and we've seen our fair share of it here. Secondly, I notice that a number of things pointed out as being "wrong" are things that were also bumbled in official works, like the Handbooks and comic issues, and that Mr. Vandal seems to fault fan-sites for using them without somehow knowing that the official product got them wrong. But those are thing that could be said about any site.

Concerning our site in particulat, I'm just going to run down a little of our history with Mr. Vandal.

Firstly, Stuart Vandal is not just some random wise man that came to here to help correct mistakes before being thrown out for upsetting status quo, as his references to our site make it seem. Stuart Vandal was an administrator on our site during it's infancy, as seen here at a rudimentary incarnation of our [| Admin page]. (You'll notice that his user account has 0 edits; this is due to deleted contributions, which drop the number, and a bug from the site switching to the Wikia domain, which bugged some user names. A number of his edits have been stored under this account.) His tenure on the admin team was short lived, however; from what Jamie has stated, he and Stuart did not see eye to eye on how to deal with users plagiarizing content, and Mr. Vandal was asked to step down.

After he stepped down, the site had a blunder that, to this day, Stuart Vandal, and the majority of the staff of the Unofficial Appendix to the Marvel Universe, despise us for: plagiarism. Our site was admittedly terrible with plagiarism when it started out; it was perpetuated by our users, and either condoned or unacknowledged by our administrators. One of the biggest victims of that plagiarism was the Appendix, which users pilfered for pictures and entire pages of copy/pasted text. When they confronted us about it, we either brushed it off, or didn't react swiftly enough for their tastes (depending on who you ask), and that put the nail in the coffin.

Now our site would come to realize that this was an incredibly terrible error, and we changed our tune on it. But, and I'm sure any administrator you ask will agree, botching a working relationship with the men who basically write and re-write Marvel's canon was a stupid thing to do. We've extended the olive branch before, but the bridge is still smoldering at this point.

Either way, back in March of 2010, Mr. Vandal returned, though he likely will never admit it, as noted pain in the ass Lokiofmidgaard. Again, he attempted to point out mistakes on our site before, as he puts it "...realising just how unethical some of the marvel.wikia.com moderators were", and leaving in September of 2011. Such incidents as the "Administrators promoting illegal comic downloads" incidents he references occurred during this run on the site.

What Mr. Vandal fails to mention is that his ways of "pointing out mistakes" were often blanking massive portions of pages, even user pages and sandboxes, and berating users he believed guilty of plagiarism, many of whom would never contribute again. Never once did he provide a source to correct a name, or offer up something to replace a section of work he claimed was plagiarized. And anyone who disagreed with Mr. Vandal's ways was reported to Jamie or Nathan for more disciplinary action. When we failed to keep up to the standards he had for us, Mr. Vandal again left, and hasn't been back.

To comment on his specific critiques:
 * You can call Nausiated's postings in the above-linked blog about downloading old Timely and Atlas posting in order to document their stories on the site whatever you choose, but I personally feel that his book report metaphor is accurate here.


 * We've never been rude to Mr. Vandal. In fact, fw have been nothing but understanding with Mr. Vandal. The admin staff was very wary of offending a handbook writer, and all his handbook writer friends, a second time, so we made leaps and bounds to try and accommodate Mr. Vandal and his expectations.


 * On the front that we pose as an official Marvel website. We have never claimed that. We often point out to new users that we are not officially tied to Marvel in any way. And the disclaimer and copyright notices that Mr. Vandal claims we don't have is in fact right here, and has been, in that current incarnation, since 2006. I will admit that it is not really linked anywhere, but a simply search for "Disclaimers" on our site brought it back with no problem. Maybe it's just one of "Things people keep getting wrong" that Mr. Vandal likes to talk about so much.


 * Finally, on the front of incorrect info. We all know it exists. But we all know that we have made strides as a site in recent months to find sourcing for all info listed on our pages. With 110,000 pages and counting, that will take a while, but we're getting there. What Mr. Vandal really seems to be unaware of is that we are but volunteers. We are everyday fans that make a choice to try and build this site on a daily basis. We all have real lives that take time from the site. We don't have the money or resources to simply pull a back issue from nowhere to research a page, as Mr. Vandal no doubt does, given his position. The majority of the staff at the Appendix seem to have this attitude, and it's somewhat frustrating to see our entire site mocked by a jilted user simply because we don't have the same amount of resources and time to put into our research that the professional, paid Marvel employees do.