User blog:NocturnBros/Leaving + Everything wrong with the Death Battle Wiki

This is something that I didn't want to see happening, but alas, my time here is over. For the record, I am only quitting as an active user. I'm still going to update the leaderboard, and post comments whenever a new battle comes out. But that's about it.

I've been an active user here for well over a year, and I've noticed many changes. Some of those changes were good, some of them weren't. As an experienced user who has been present during some of the wiki's biggest moments of crisis and glory, I am going to expose the things that I think are aggravating about this wiki's current state.

1- On DEATH BATTLE ideas.
This is something that has been an issue for quite a long time, and I actually made a blog post about it when I was still a relatively new user.

I haven't posted any ideas on the comments since god knows when, but I've been paying attention to other people's activities. And there's some pretty infuriating stuff to discuss.

Originally, people posted ideas that they wanted to see as Death Battle episodes (most of the time). Now, most ideas are just bit-sized debate posts, EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE A FORUM SECTION THAT BARELY ANYONE USES DEDICATED TO DEBATING MATCH-UPS. As of me writing this blog post, 75% of the comments in Scrooge vs Shovel Knight follow this format:

User1 asks: "Who could Character1 fight?"

User2 replies with either Character2 or No one.

User 1 posts thumbnail for Character1 vs Character 2, along with the following questions:

"Who wins?"

"Agree or disagree?" (I assume this means "Do you think this match-up should happen, or not?")

"Thoughts on the thumbnail?"

"DB, OMM or DBX?"

"Who do you prefer?"

Some of these are nice discussion topics, I'll give you that. This formula would have been pretty useful for the old DBW. This kind of comment became stale very quickly, and as time progressed, the match-ups that these comments presented became... Shittier.

This brings me to the next problem:

2- Connections, and lack thereof.
This also relates very closely to the previous issue. DEATH BATTLE's main premise is to pit fictional characters against each other. Normally, said characters have either a rivalry (such as Mario vs. Sonic, or Batman vs. Spider-Man) or a set of connections (like Darth Vader vs. Doctor Doom, Doctor Eggman vs. Doctor Wily). However, some people think Ben and the other members of SA pick their match-ups solely due to their connections.

I used to be one of those people. But then, Season 3 happened. We started to get some really bizarre ideas, connection-wise. Agent Carolina vs. The Meta? Deadpool vs. Pinkie Pie? That's when I noticed that Ben and the others don't actually give two shits about connections.

They do match-ups that they like.

And that is perfectly fine.

As someone who is working on a VS show, I know it's pretty tough to choose a seasonal line-up. It is not easy to find the balance between highly requested fights, fair fights, fights with good connections, and fights that the team wants to do.

With that out of the way, let's go back to the Wiki's comments. I am not going to call out any match-up, or anyone who makes up said match-ups. And this is probably the biggest issue for most people. Seriously, I've gotten complaints about this everywhere. Even real life friends. That problem is what I like to call:

"Connection Hipsters"
Before you say anything, this term applies to two different types of users. Those obsessed with connections, and those who make up match-ups with the absolute worst connections ever. I know this part is going to hit pretty close to home for some users that I'm friends with, and I'm sorry about it, but you're being a part of the problem.

The first type of Connection Hipsters that we need to talk about is the Connection Hipster who needs as many connections as humanly possible when choosing a match-up. I know this type of CH pretty well, as I used to be one of them. I am sure you've seen them. They post ideas that have, like, a thousand connections, regardless of the match-up's fairness and possibility to produce as a real episode (an aspect that a ton of people tend to ignore). Now, these ideas aren't necessarily bad, per se. But the attitude of some of the users who post this kind of match-ups can be very toxic.

An idea doesn't need to have five hundred connections to be considered good, and just because you prefer a different idea, doesn't mean you have the right to call the more popular match-up "overrated" (a word that I constantly see being misused, not just here, but all across the Internet).

This kind of CH, however, is still much better than the other one. There's people who ditch the concept of connections altogether, or even making up connections that aren't real, just to make their match-ups sound better. This also brings me back to an issue that has been resolved already, but is worth mentioning.

Opponent Charts
This became a trend when the ever-so-controversial Mewtwo VS Shadow episode was announced. Ben Singer posted a chart on Twitter where he compared the connections between some of Mewtwo's opponents. This quickly became a trend on the Wiki, but a lot of these charts were... awful. They ignored connections for the opponents that they didn't want to see, and actively tried to count pointless things as connections (such as year and medium of origin). 90% of these charts were rigged in one way or another, but thankfully, people eventually stopped making them.

"But then what do you want, match-ups with a lot of connections, or match-ups with no connections?"

Don't get me wrong, I think connections are important to an extent, but they do not need to be the sole focus of an idea, or you'll get stuff like "Mewtwo VS Hulk". The match-up has a lot of connections, but that's not a fight that you would want to see as an official Death Battle, right?

I rest my case.

And now, to the most important point of all:

3- The Users.
What's a Wiki without users? ̶C̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶P̶r̶o̶f̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶W̶i̶k̶i̶  Nothing. So what happens when a lot of users leave the Wiki? There's less discussion. You should be able to tell that much.

When I joined the Wiki, it was still kind of a mini-community. There weren't as many users as in the Fanon Wiki, but the ones that frequented this Wiki were pretty cool people, also note that Anonymous Contributors were still allowed back then, and they were the main source of trolling and spamming. Then the admins forced all users to log in, which was a good choice, but it resulted in the Wiki being mostly deserted for some weeks. Luckily, more people started coming, and that's when I met some of my best online friends, such as McGasher, Bowserdude, MagicRock, AdamGregory03, Timefreezer4, Thegreatjman, MickySR2112, and many others.

Big controversies didn't start happening until Season 3 of Death Battle started airing. A lot of users left the wiki due to the repeated subparity of the new episodes. During that time, the community started to fall apart, with many users having a very immature and negative attitude. It became even worse by the time that Tracer vs Scout aired.

Most users from back when I joined had left, but to compensate, several new users started to appear. Now, some of these users are pretty nice people, but quite a number of them started the trends that I mentioned earlier. I will not call out those users, because that's distasteful, but you know who you are, and what you have done.

That was also when I started to care less about the wiki and the show. Yes, I still edited often, and took care of trolls, but my activity was much less abundant.

I have nothing against the new users that joined back then, but I feel like you are mostly to blame for the Wiki's current problems. Your comments are repetitive, and they are affecting the quality of the Wiki.

As I was writing this, several veteran users started calling out these problems, and that's good.

4- Closing Arguments, and how to improve.
As you can see, the problems with the wiki are very abundant, and although they're not extremely grave, they've still damaged the Wiki to a point where even veteran users don't want to spend time in it.

If you ask me, the solution is very simple. All users should make sure that their comments follow a certain standard of quality, which doesn't need to be too high. You just need to avoid making such repetitive comments, and stop trying to force your opinions down people's throats. There's also a minority of extremely rude users that haven't contributed much to the Wiki's discussions, and they've just blatantly attacked users, characters, and series without using any good arguments.

5- A farewell
Needless to say, I've pointed out many problems in this blog, but I don't want you to think I'm leaving on a negative note. I've enjoyed my time as one of the Wiki's users, and I've met many fantastic people who have helped me out a great deal. I will now proceed to name some of my favourite users that I've met during my time here:

(in no particular order) If you aren't in this list, it doesn't mean you're a bad user, it's possible that I just haven't talked to you a enough to know you, or maybe I simply forgot to add you.
 * AdamGregory03
 * TheDigger1
 * Chesknight
 * Yoshirocks92
 * Timefreezer4
 * MickySR2112
 * Cosmo6252
 * Ditto132
 * DeathBattleMike
 * Faxinnh
 * McGasher
 * Ganime
 * UTF (formerly UltramanTopFan)
 * Ultimate Mega Gamer
 * MMYP999
 * Savage Samurai
 * CallMeKnuckles
 * Bowserdude
 * MagicRock
 * Dhdfan100
 * ArgentinianDeadpool
 * FEVG620
 * Malcolm Neil
 * BowserRulesAll
 * The Ancient One G1
 * Silverboy300
 * Superbuting
 * Thegreatjman
 * Strunton
 * Quauntonaut
 * Brobuscus101
 * JustAGravityFallsFan

So yeah, I hope this post helps people realize their mistakes, and maybe someday, when I return, the Wiki will have changed for the better.

Good luck and goodbye, my friends.