User blog:Nausiated/Stuart Vandal

The internet is a magical place where we all get to share ideas, speak our mine, and give our opinion on any number of subjects. However, with this amazing bit of freedom comes those people who are negative, egotistical, and arrogant who think that their word is infallible, but at the end of the day is really a load of you-know-what.

Case in point, the wiki has been targeted by a gentleman who calls himself Stuart Savage. Savage, is apparently a freelance writer for Marvel who contributes to the Official Marvel Handbook. If your sitting there in awe over that statement, please stop, because this guy is a real piece of work who thinks because of this distinction he can crap all over what we do here at the Wiki.

From what I have learned the guy actually used to be on here contributing on two separate occasions. The first time around he actually was an admin, but due to disagreements he was removed as an admin and because he is one of those sour grape types decided to blow off because he didn't understand how an open source and democratic site worked.. Like any wiki site... He returned most recently as Lokiofmidguard and proceeded to toss his weight around with aggressive re-edits conflicts with others, and tossing around his much vaunted "I work freelance for Marvel" horse puckey that he though would make regular users and admins cower at his "position". This second time was in a clash with yours truly, and when my conduct was met with punishment that he felt was unwarranted he did the ol' internet 1-2 by claiming he would never contribute here again and left (good riddance).

But as these things guy, a guy like this won't let a battle go after he has been butt-hurt like that on the internet. Because -- as we all know -- being insulted on the internet. We're talking end of the world stuff -- never be able to show your face in public sort of stuff (note my sarcasm). So like any mature individual he's taken on a campaign where he has gone onto every message board where his measly title of "freelancer for Marvel" carries some weight for the vapid individuals who believe such titles weigh any sort of merit, to trash talk the wiki.

Now here is the thing: Every single complaint he has made is either hypocritical, or without any sort of fact checking.

He regularly uses these message boards to point out "mistakes" that are either semantic in nature (for example us listing Moon Boy instead of Moon-Boy, even though the character has been named both ways) to spelling, grammar, and factual errors. Which as far as I'm concerned is calling the pot and the kettle. This later complaint is hardly worth merit considering the Official Marvel Handbooks are always rife with quite the plethora of factual (and we're not talking about prior to retcon) errors, spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors. Not only in the official handbooks but also on Marvel's official wiki (which is also open source and relies on fan contributions).

For example, I have a copy of the A-Z hardcover Vol 2 in hand. For example, the entry on the Caretakers misspells Frank Robbins name in the art credits, the Cerebro/Cerebra and Chameleon profiles repeat sentances or entire paragraphs. There are spelling errors, factual errors, and the like. Needless to say the official Marvel sources are not without their errors both factual and gramatical.

His other argument is that we don't reference our sources *all the time*... Well that's quite the critique given that the official Marvel Handbook sources ALSO don't reference the sources either. Yes, the Unofficial Appendix keeps track of all these things, but again it is also grossly out of date in a number of places, because surprise surprise (!!) it's not an open source site that relies on a webmaster to update the rather ancient HTML code that they use to maintain it. I'm not faulting the format that they have chosen, all I'm saying is that at the end of the day a specific person has to go onto the site and maintain it, and unless they are doing it every day, it's not getting done on a timely basis (which, this is the internet, updating every day is what is timely, not months after the fact).

We're also accused of plagiarizing. Which admittedly, yes, there has been plagiarism on the site. As an admin and someone who regularly contributes to the site I have come across many, many pages that have either ripped off the information off Wikipedia or the Unofficial Handbook. But there is only so much the admins can do to keep track of this stuff, as soon as we are aware of it we deal with it. This is a drawback of an open source website, so of course you are going to people who don't know any better, copying material from another website and publishing it here. But being critical with how quickly we deal with it when you are (a) not reporting it or (b) not removing it yourself (we are open source might I remind everyone) is like getting mad at Facebook because someone posted a picture of a big infected penis and Facebook didn't take it down for a week because you never reported it.

Then there is his claims that we boast that we are an official Marvel website. We aren't, we never made this claim. In fact since 2006 we have stated that we are completely a fan run site. We're a fan site, pure and simple. If you think we're associated with Marvel in any official capacity then my friend you are sorely mistaken.

At the end of the day, this Stuart Vandal character is just a bitter individual. Unhappy that he got turfed from this site on two occasions and is not welcome back. So in some sort of half-arsed internet revenge he trash talks us to any message board that puts up with him. In other wards, a huge case of sour grapes and he can go hang himself for all I care. Because really, what sort of mature individual wastes his time talking smack about another website? Right, none.

In fact, I am giving this pathetic waste of skin just what he is seeking by even addressing the bull that he is spouting about this wiki to the internet at large. However the whole purpose of my blog post is to address how some of you might feel about this wiki, and all I have to say is that Mr. Savage is nothing more than a Rabble Rouser, a buffoon who is akin to a 60s Human Torch villain during the height of the Cold War.

We should never let one guys case of sour grapes diminish what we do here and the work that goes on, which as far as I'm concerned is pretty good. Yes, we're open source and that means we have to do with a lot of people plagiarizing information, not referencing material, or no representing facts properly -- but I don't think that this is done out of laziness, or purposeful intent, but rather a lack of understanding. Again, pointing out that we're an open source wiki, that means that we're dealing with fans of all ages who want to contribute and their understanding of contributing information depends on their age and education level. Instead of crapping on this behavior it needs to be corrected -- and when you tell people "hey you need to do it this way" they usually understand and apologize and do it the right way (there are a rare few like the subject of this lengthy blog post who cry bloody murder like a baby throwing a temper tantrum, but thankfully they are the rare few).

The other thing is that we're pretty high up there in the Wikia world. With over 500 contributors daily and 30,000 readers, we are the 6th largest Wiki.

So at the end of the day, Stuart Vandal can go spin, because the one sided and completely hypocritical rants of one curmudgeon certainly does not have the impact on the day-to-day operations of this site. We do good work here, it's not perfect, there are flaws, but that's those are the adverse challenges of an open source reference site where anyone can contribute. We should be proud of the work we do here and we should not have to worry about some grumpy little troll has to say.

The smallest dogs bark the loudest. This guy wants to take us down by comparing us to his meager accomplishments. I say let him. We are united, we are strong, we are a community. Which is a lot more than we can say about this lone dissenter who has nothing better to do than nit pick at our work while waiting for the next freelance gig, when he could be contributing as well and being a productive member of our community. He chose to be the arrogant know-it-all that he is, let him stew in his own juices.

That's all I got to say.

PS: Also be very very proud of me for not going all Marvel MAX Brian Michael Bendis and putting the f-word in every other sentence, because I got to tell you when talking about this waste of skin, it was sorely tempting.