Weird Gloop elections/2023/Candidates

This election has ended. Results can be found at Weird Gloop elections/2023/Results.

This page contains candidate presentations for the 2023 Weird Gloop board elections.

For each wiki where the number of candidates and number of board seats are equal, there will be a simple up-or-down vote on each candidate to approve them as board members. For each wiki where there are more candidates than board seats, there will be a ranked-choice method (specifically, the Schulze method) poll to select three of the eligible candidates to represent the wiki.

Voting will begin on February 26th through the SecurePoll extension, and ends on March 12th. Please ask the candidates additional questions in the sections below. If you have questions you wish to ask all candidates, please put them in all relevant sections.

RuneScape Wiki

There are 3 candidates for 3 positions.

BlackHawk

BlackHawk ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	Hey, I'm BlackHawk! I've been playing RuneScape for many years and enjoy being part of the wiki community. I have been on the board this past year and contributed towards the plan to put funding in place for the wiki going forwards. I'd like to remain on the board to see this through.
Wiki work	I've been editing the wiki since 2020 and am an admin on the RuneScape wiki. I've been involved in several projects including replacing old image maps to interactive maps, creating the data submission gadget, farming plant infobox improvements, and more!
Other work	I'm a full time software engineer for a small but growing company working on Reinsurance software. In free time I also enjoy game development and learning new technological skills.

Questions from the community

Question - Hey BlackHawk! Thanks for your work. Could you give some examples of how you've personally contributed towards the board's decisions over the last year? jayden 20:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

This last year has been relatively quiet, however the ongoing feature was the negotiation of the new contract with Jagex. There were points of contention that I brought up for Cook to go back to Jagex to negotiate for a better and more suiting deal.  BlackHawk (Talk)    07:35, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Perhaps the most important decisions the Gloop board will need to make in the next year are those related to budgetary tradeoffs. Specifically, the board will need to find a compromise between the various good things the wikis could do with more money (beyond funding the two sysadmins), and the user-experience cost of running ads to generate that money.

With as much specificity as possible, what is your philosophy on those tradeoffs? Are there situations where you think it could be worth having a more prominent ad placement (i.e. sidebar or sitenotice instead of footer) if it meant we could fund more projects or employees (and if so, what sorts of projects/employees)? ʞooɔ 00:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

It really sucks that we haven't been paying our sysadmins a fair wage for the amazing work they do. I dislike ads as much as the next person but it's already seen that donations alone is not bringing in enough cashflow to pay the sysadmins alone. We don't really have a clear projection of how much the single footer ad is going to bring in, however if it's not enough, I don't think a second footer ad would be a terrible thing as there is already one there. Failing this a sidebar ad would be my next approach. I'd like to try to avoid a header ad as much as possible as this is the one that could negatively impact user experience. The things that we can do with the additional revenue will allow us to do things such as enhancing the maps with path finding tools, our own archival tools, creating more advanced calculators, 3d models on wiki pages, and further optimisation of the existing set up. If funds allowed it, a third FTE would be a great help with creating those tools and I think the trade off between that and potentially another ad is well worth it in the long run.  BlackHawk (Talk)    07:35, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - As you know, the wikis are ever-evolving and sometimes we need to rethink how things run in order to keep up with that. The recent push for wiki ads is evidence of that. Are you confident that you are prepared to adapt to these changes as they occur, no matter how fundamental they are? Finally, do you have any long-term goals that you wish to enact while on the board? Kosmiklove (talk) 17:10, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

You're right, the need to run ads are evidence of ever-evolving wikis, as will be how we spend the income. As page views fluctuate due to in game events, etc. so will the ad revenue and so we'll have to prioritise how the funds are spent, be it on employing more heads or developing new tools. We don't want to to go on a hiring spree and then not be able to pay up after all. I am confident I am prepared to adapt to these situations. As for long term goals, I'd really like to keep our promise of transparency to the community. I feel that this has been an important point throughout starting to run ads and would like to see this honoured.  BlackHawk (Talk)    13:11, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - I have noticed you made some edits to the RuneScape Classic Wiki last year, and this has made me wonder: to what extent will you be taking the interests of the RSC wiki into account in your decisions? Given that the RuneScape Classic Wiki is not represented on the Weird Gloop Board and there are no neutral candidates to vote on, this would help in deciding who to vote for. Zorak Plorak^Talk the RuneScape Classic lover 14:35, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Funnily enough, my few edits on RSC Wiki were to clear off the search digest. However, to answer your question, I believe all members of the board - regardless of which wiki they represent - have a responsibility to advocate for all wikis as they all sit under the Weird Gloop umbrella.  BlackHawk (Talk)    09:52, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - These questions I'm gonna ask everyone: What is your vision for the wiki during the upcoming term? What are some major tasks you're planning to complete as a board member?   Nayfaan
talk
contributions  02:53, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I would love to see progress towards some of our wishlist items, such as our own archival tools (this is a big one). It might be a good idea to put out a fresh survey to the community to gather a community wishlist of things we could work on too.  BlackHawk (Talk)    09:52, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

CraftyElk

CraftyElk ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	Hello, I'm CraftyElk, and I'm running because I feel strongly about financial transparency and management of public funds. Now that the wiki will have real funds coming in from advertising, I hope to provide oversight over both the tradeoff between income and ad quality and the disbursement of funds.
Wiki work	I only edit the RS3 wiki, and I was involved in the update history project and the rewrite of the list of significant updates for returning players. I also touch up quest guides here and there.
Other work	I have a lot of unofficial experience helping to prepare quarterly financial statements for a public company. I was a member on the board of a local library and the board of my previous condominium. Professionally, I was the lead sysadmin for a university scientific high-performance cluster and later a sysadmin for a Big Tech Company, and am currently a PhD student studying Computer Science.

Questions from the community

Question - Hey! Nice to see a non-admin wanting to get more involved in the management of the wikis. How much financial transparency do you think should be provided to the wiki community, and the broader community, following the deployment of ads on the wikis? jayden 20:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Would you be interested in creating a first draft of your proposed mechanism/processes for financial transparency? ʞooɔ 21:04, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

To answer both questions, my idea is roughly how US nonprofits already disclose their financials. This is a very rough sketch, and I can elaborate more if needed, but I'm envisioning:

• Annual comprehensive statements roughly modeled after the Form 990 (See WMF's 990 here). It primarily discloses what you'd think a tax document would disclose: income from various sources, expenses (by program and for compensation of key employees), key employees and what they do, assets, liabilities, etc.
• Audited financial statements you'd see out of any entity (balance sheet, cash flow, and statement of activities).
• Quarterly (maybe monthly) breakdown of functional expenses, especially: payroll, infrastructure, payment processing, professional services (accountants and lawyers), grants if we decide to give out any, etc.

More specifically, I'm imagining a page (probably here on meta wiki) that documents all of the above and updated quarterly/monthly. We don't have to track spending down to the penny, but I would like to see us get close to that. I'm unsure as to UK requirements around audited financials, but we should start to prepare and publish documents in the vein of what I have described above.

If possible, I would like to see the same disclosure for income. I'm fully aware that Jagex doesn't want us to disclose how much they pay Weird Gloop, so the tradeoff may have to be that we take the money and don't break down income by source (if total income is 100, and ads paid 80, patreon paid 10, then it's kinda obvious Jagex paid 10). I'd try to push for as much transparency as we can in this area), but I'm fully aware and prepared to compromise. I would, however, like to see us to publish CPM, impression numbers, experiments we ran regarding above/below the fold, and what exactly is the tradeoff we chose between all the factors. CraftyElk (talk) 21:58, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

This seems generally reasonable, thanks! ʞooɔ 22:53, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - You mentioned you'd be willing to compromise between financial transparency and contracts above. What would your approach look like if you had to choose between funding from Jagex and financial transparency? What would your primary concerns be in either direction in navigating such a decision? bad_fetus^Talk 23:19, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

My perspective is that it's a tradeoff between less ads and more transparency: every dollar Jagex pays us is a dollar we don't have to raise from ads, allowing us to serve fewer ads, thus improving user experience. I can't say anything without concrete numbers about both ad revenue and Jagex payments, but with a rough guess about how much Jagex is currently paying (I'm don't know the real number so I can say I'm guessing 40-50k USD p.a. max), I personally would veer to the side of taking the money and thus serving fewer ads (by double digit percentages), but in the process being unable to break down income by source.

Here's a hypothetical decision process with made-up numbers: we target 300-400k USD p.a. revenue. Jagex pays $50k, so we can serve 12.5% fewer ads in exchange for not disclosing revenue by source. Is 12.5% fewer ads worth the decrease in transparency? I think reasonable people can disagree, but personally I lean on the side that it's worth it. What's the number where it stops being worth it? I don't really know, and if you really pressed me for a number I'm afraid I can't give one.

It would have to heavily depend on what our ad situation ends up looking like (is it the difference between above-the-fold and below-the-fold? how much will they pay now that we run ads? what's the general impression amongst the userbase of the ads?), and all of those may change my decision either way. I think that transparency around spending is much more important that transparency around revenue, so I'm more willing to trade off revenue transparency in exchange for fewer ads.

I realise that this is not that helpful of an answer, but I hope that this provides some insight into how I think about the problem. CraftyElk (talk) 23:37, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I want to add that I'm purely talking about not breaking down revenue by source; I don't really see a scenario where we don't disclose total revenue from all sources. CraftyElk (talk) 23:49, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Perhaps the most important decisions the Gloop board will need to make in the next year are those related to budgetary tradeoffs. Specifically, the board will need to find a compromise between the various good things the wikis could do with more money (beyond funding the two sysadmins), and the user-experience cost of running ads to generate that money.

With as much specificity as possible, what is your philosophy on those tradeoffs? Are there situations where you think it could be worth having a more prominent ad placement (i.e. sidebar or sitenotice instead of footer) if it meant we could fund more projects or employees (and if so, what sorts of projects/employees)? ʞooɔ 00:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

I would like to say that I really dislike ads. There are very few things that would convince me to push for more instead of less ads. In principle, I'm not opposed to the notion of providing funding for other projects, but in practice I find it difficult to imagine of a scenario where such funding is warranted. That is to say, it would depend on the project, and the project better be good. Maybe it's just a failure of my imagination on how the wiki could be better.

I think of these things as lying on some sort of efficiency frontier. Let's use a hypothetical with made-up numbers: suppose we hire a third full-time dev to make an Awesome New Feature That Will Revolutionise The Wiki. This increases the funding requirement by 50%, thus necessitating 50% more ads. Is the Awesome New Feature so Awesome that it increases user experience more than the decrease brought by 50% more ads? I'm having trouble imagining a project where this is true. Scale that down, 10% increase for a part-timer, thus 10% more ads; I will readily admit that such a feature exists, even if I can't picture it.

All this is to say that it depends on the merit of the project itself. I'm not opposed to the idea in principle, but we're optimising in a high-dimensional search space that is user experience, and I think that ads is such a negative that not many things would outweigh it. CraftyElk (talk) 01:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

I also wanted to add that all these axes are highly non-linear; 10% more ads is not necessarily 10% worse, etc. I think the local optima lies with fewer ads and maintaining status quo, but there may be a higher optima somewhere else where experience outweighs the ads. CraftyElk (talk) 01:36, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - As you know, the wikis are ever-evolving and sometimes we need to rethink how things run in order to keep up with that. The recent push for wiki ads is evidence of that. Are you confident that you are prepared to adapt to these changes as they occur, no matter how fundamental they are? Finally, do you have any long-term goals that you wish to enact while on the board? Kosmiklove (talk) 17:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to adapt to changes in wiki operation. My long-term goal is mainly to set up wiki financials for the long-term: managing long-term cash flows, building up healthy reserves, and setting up the aforementioned reporting and transparency procedures. I also want to push for more experimentation around how we serve ads to optimise for user experience since CPM is much lower that what I thought it would be. CraftyElk (talk) 03:29, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - These questions I'm gonna ask everyone: What is your vision for the wiki during the upcoming term? What are some major tasks you're planning to complete as a board member?   Nayfaan
talk
contributions  02:56, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I actually put together a preliminary to-do list for the upcoming board term at User:CraftyElk/board_todo. I foresee myself taking a more executive role and working to "professionalise" Weird Gloop, so to speak. The major things are: US incorporation, developing processes for periodic reports, negotiating employment contracts with our employees, strengthening the financial health of the company, and resolving+documenting the legal headaches of an international presence. CraftyElk (talk) 00:41, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Nex Undique

Nex Undique ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	Hey, I’m Nex Undique and I am running for a seat on the Board. I have had some ideas before about certain features I think would be helpful for Weird Gloop wikis to have, and now that we're able to get funding to complete some of these items, I'd like to have a seat on the Board to make sure that there is an active voice on these matters. In connection with this, I will also have thoughts on how to balance ads with our needs while still keeping everyone happy.
Wiki work	I’ve been editing Weird Gloop wikis for 13+ years and am both an admin on the RuneScape Wiki and a bureaucrat on the RuneScape Classic Wiki, and I'm currently on the Board. I have been involved in a lot of different projects during my time editing so I know how the wikis operate. I also think I am generally seen as someone who is easy to talk to and a welcoming guy, and eager to get people involved in editing if I can.
Other work	While I have no experience with British corporate governance other than previously being on the Board, one of the duties of my real-life job involves advising American companies on corporate governance matters.

Questions from the community

Question - Hey Nex. You mention having thoughts on balancing ads while keeping everyone happy - would you mind sharing some of them publicly? jayden 20:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if I have any concrete thoughts right now. I think we first need to see how much revenue we can generate from some minimalist ads, and see what we can do with that. I certainly don't like ads, but I think if one or two ads allow us to add beneficial features to the Wikis, and allow us to pay the necessary people to ensure that we can operate consistently, that's a fair trade. I'll go into more detail with Cook's question below, but I really can't elaborate because the facts aren't in yet. My opinion should be clear, however, and please let me know if it is not. Nex Undique^(talk) 06:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Question You mentioned that you "have had some ideas before about certain features I think would be helpful for Weird Gloop wikis to have"; can you elaborate on what these ideas are? CraftyElk (talk) 20:44, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I think the one I'm most eager to have is hosting our own archives. I'm pretty passionate about making sure everything is cited correctly and old materials are archived, and our singular reliance on WebCite for such a long time has been pretty catastrophic. WebCite's been down for a long time, with no expectation of coming back, and now there's an incredible number of dead citation links in our wikis. We have archive.today, but who knows if it will still be up in five years. There's also archive.org, but my understanding is that if a website requests not to be on it (like RuneScape.com was for decades), even the already-archived pages won't be available to link to. The only way I'd feel truly comfortable is if we could do it ourselves. There's also several other items that I think would be a great benefit as well, like a 3D model viewer, a better .mp4 player, porting an extension like ProveIt, etc. We've been able to do a lot with our current means, but there's many great things we could attempt with funds to develop them. Nex Undique^(talk) 06:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Perhaps the most important decisions the Gloop board will need to make in the next year are those related to budgetary tradeoffs. Specifically, the board will need to find a compromise between the various good things the wikis could do with more money (beyond funding the two sysadmins), and the user-experience cost of running ads to generate that money.

With as much specificity as possible, what is your philosophy on those tradeoffs? Are there situations where you think it could be worth having a more prominent ad placement (i.e. sidebar or sitenotice instead of footer) if it meant we could fund more projects or employees (and if so, what sorts of projects/employees)? ʞooɔ 00:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

See my answer to Jayden's question above for a short overview. To go into more detail, my priority of the placement of ads is 1. footer, 2. sidebar, 3. sitenotice. I honestly can't see myself supporting an ad in such a prominent place as the sitenotice, but I think if there was an ad there for a short period of time, and it could really allow us to bring great value to the Wikis, it could be a fair trade under the right circumstances. Nex Undique^(talk) 06:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - As you know, the wikis are ever-evolving and sometimes we need to rethink how things run in order to keep up with that. The recent push for wiki ads is evidence of that. Are you confident that you are prepared to adapt to these changes as they occur, no matter how fundamental they are? Finally, do you have any long-term goals that you wish to enact while on the board? Kosmiklove (talk) 17:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I am. I've understood the need for change when it finally came time to leave Fandom (which was previously a taboo topic, having been rejected on the forums several times), so knowing that the wiki needs to adapt to new circumstances is not completely foreign to me. For a few long-term goals, please see my answer to CraftyElk above, but in short, archives, better extensions, and certain editing tools would be nice to have on the Wiki. Nex Undique^(talk) 03:49, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - I know that you are an avid editor of the RuneScape Classic Wiki as well as the RuneScape Wiki. Yet, given that the RuneScape Classic Wiki is (currently) not directly represented on the Weird Gloop Board, you are a candidate for the RuneScape Wiki. This makes me wonder: To what extent will you be taking the interests of the RSC wiki into account in your decisions? This would help in deciding who to vote for. Zorak Plorak^Talk the RuneScape Classic lover 14:40, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

In short, completely, especially because the RSC wiki is pretty near and dear to me. I understand why we have people running for positions to "represent" a certain wiki, but honestly, I'm not sure it always means much, especially because no wiki has competing interests. I'll always strive to make sure that every wiki feels represented because I can't think of a way that doing so could hurt WG. However, anyone from any wiki can always air their thoughts in any public Discord channel so that board members can see it (or ask questions on upcoming board meeting threads), so there's always representation of some kind, so I wouldn't really worry about this as a voting criteria (but of course, you do you). Nex Undique^(talk) 04:59, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - These questions I'm gonna ask everyone: What is your vision for the wiki during the upcoming term? What are some major tasks you're planning to complete as a board member?   Nayfaan
talk
contributions  02:58, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

See above (like my answer to CraftyElk) but essentially, greater funding will allow us to better the wiki for both editors and users, and there are certain projects I'd like to see progress on. Nex Undique^(talk) 04:59, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Ioticonfo (withdrawn)

Ioticonfo ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	As a long-time player of RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, I am an active editor and user on both wikis. I have a lot of ideas about how to improve the wiki for both editors and viewers, and I believe a position on the board is a good way to voice those ideas and advocate for a better wiki long-term. Although I have had some unorthodox ideas about the wiki, I intend to be conciliatory and seek consensus if I am elected to the board, and balance respecting tradition with breaking new ground. I believe I can help to bring over beneficial practices from the Old School wiki that could be implemented in the RuneScape wiki, and promote collaboration between the wikis for the benefit of Weird Gloop and the RuneScape community broadly. However, I am not naive about the fact that I am a relative newcomer, and I will defer to more experienced editors and board members when it is appropriate. I am humbled to have the opportunity to serve on the board, and I hope that you will consider my candidacy with an open mind.
Wiki work	As an editor, I have been primarily concerned with more minor fixes, such as rewriting prose for clarity and efficiency, adding trivia and references, and providing fixes to factual or semantic errors. However, I have also spent time developing new ways to display and present certain data on wiki pages. I have been heavily involved with the community, specifically over the issues of consolidating or splitting certain pages, and have advocated honestly and fastidiously for my positions, even if they have not been ultimately adopted. Although my overall body of work is more focused on the Old School wiki, I have shifted my play and edit habits over the past year towards RuneScape and the RuneScape wiki in a significant way, and I plan to increase my relative and absolute contributions to the RuneScape wiki.
Other work	Although my professional experience is limited, I have a bevy of experience in volunteer positions through organizations such as the Boy Scouts and Science Olympiad. I also interned in research at Carnegie Mellon University and did software work for the United States Air Force. Outside of that, I enjoy playing the game on a semi-regular basis and sharing my ideas with the community on Reddit and the Wiki Discord.

Questions from the community

Question - Could you elaborate on your ideas for a better wiki long-term and how do you believe being a board member would help implement these ideas?  BlackHawk (Talk)    21:58, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Perhaps the most important decisions the Gloop board will need to make in the next year are those related to budgetary tradeoffs. Specifically, the board will need to find a compromise between the various good things the wikis could do with more money (beyond funding the two sysadmins), and the user-experience cost of running ads to generate that money.

With as much specificity as possible, what is your philosophy on those tradeoffs? Are there situations where you think it could be worth having a more prominent ad placement (i.e. sidebar or sitenotice instead of footer) if it meant we could fund more projects or employees (and if so, what sorts of projects/employees)? ʞooɔ 00:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - I'm afraid I don't really know you since I haven't been actively editing the wiki in the last year or two, and yet I see that you are running for the RuneScape wiki, but that the large majority of your contributions seem to be in the OSRS wiki (826 edits for OSRS compared to 74 edits for RS3). In fact, you seem much more active in OSRS. Can you justify why you are applying to represent the RS3 wiki as opposed to the OSRS wiki? What are you bringing to the table that allows you to represent the RS3 wiki in particular? Gau Cho (talk) 22:10, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello! Ioticonfo withdrew their nomination today. ʞooɔ 18:36, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

OSRS Wiki

There are 4 candidates for 3 positions.

BigDiesel2m

BigDiesel2m ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	Hey, I'm Dan and I am once again running for the board as a representative of the OldSchool Wiki. As a board member I will continue to make sure that the board stays connected with the wiki userbase and the RuneScape community at large through clear communication and announcements. This was most notable during the recent discourse around advertising on the wikis, where I was heavily involved in the funding plan, the announcement on the community forums, and in the responses to various concerns brought up by commenters. I want to ensure that as Weird Gloop grows as a company in the next year it remains accountable to and communicative with the editors, wiki readers, and RuneScape community beyond.
Wiki work	My most notable projects on the wikis have been in collaboration with other people, from established editors to niche activity experts without even a wiki account. I have worked to expand the wiki through programs like OSWF and various Discord group collaborations, and I plan to be involved in further projects in this vein such as the proposed Guide userspace.
Other work	As a member of the board I have been very involved in our general communication with the community, both in relaying people's concerns to the board meetings and in making sure the board is clear in relaying its goals to the community at large. Most recently I helped with the large funding discussion, where I contributed to the initial funding plan, worked on the announcement post with other members of the board, and was one of the most active board members in responding to community concerns both on the forum thread and reddit. As the board continues to make increasingly important decisions for the future of the wikis, I want to make sure these decisions are made with the community's best interests at heart and are relayed to the community in the best way possible.

Questions from the community

Question - Hey Dan! You briefly mention Weird Gloop growing as a company in the next year. Do you just mean financially, or are you talking about something else? Where do you see the company in a year from now? jayden 20:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm mostly referring to financial growth, now that it's pretty clear we're going to running ads and hiring at least two full-time employees. In the last few years of me being on the board, our financial decisions were usually like "we have a couple thousand dollars left near the end of the year, should we earmark it for a merch project, give a small bonus to the sysadmins, or keep it for a small rainy day fund?" Now those same sort of questions will have to deal with an order of magnitude more money, and that's both an exciting and daunting prospect. A year from now I hope the sites are in a stable state, the sysadmins are happy as our full-time employees, and hopefully we've been able to do some interesting/exciting things with the increased funds besides just maintaining the status quo. BigDiesel2m (talk) 18:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Perhaps the most important decisions the Gloop board will need to make in the next year are those related to budgetary tradeoffs. Specifically, the board will need to find a compromise between the various good things the wikis could do with more money (beyond funding the two sysadmins), and the user-experience cost of running ads to generate that money.

With as much specificity as possible, what is your philosophy on those tradeoffs? Are there situations where you think it could be worth having a more prominent ad placement (i.e. sidebar or sitenotice instead of footer) if it meant we could fund more projects or employees (and if so, what sorts of projects/employees)? ʞooɔ 00:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not a huge fan of ads, but I think I'm more willing to explore advertisement options that give us the flexibility to explore interesting new things to do with more money. Whether we use that money for techfest-like meetups, hiring more employees, or more out-there ideas we haven't tried yet, I think there's a good argument to be made that the benefits of increased funding can offset something like one more ad on the wiki's sidebar, for example. I also haven't enjoyed the tight budget constraints we were in for the last four years, and I wouldn't want to focus so much on minimizing the impact of the ads that we end up effectively in the same position, besides being able to properly pay our sysadmins. (of course that would still be a big improvement, but I consider being able to pay our sysadmins a reasonable wage a sort of bare minimum for us at this point)

There's one way of thinking about the wiki's funding situation that's a bit capitalistic in nature, which is basically that if the wiki isn't making money off of its existence, some other party is. Pre-fork this other party was obviously Wikia/Fandom, which made millions of dollars off advertisements placed on the RuneScape Wikis. Since the fork the wikis haven't been running any ads, but rather than our value being wasted, I'd argue the main beneficiary of that setup was Jagex, which was effectively getting that value in defensive advertising by not having any competing ads on the wikis. In both cases, almost all the value that the wikis were producing was being funneled away from the wikis into the pockets of some larger company, rather than being used to benefit the wikis or pay its employees. That's not to say we need to maximize the amount of money we extract through advertising or other means, but in a general sense I think the value of the wikis should be used more to benefit wiki-people rather than corporate suits at some other company. BigDiesel2m (talk) 18:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - You mention taking a key role in communicating on behalf of the board to the community and vice versa. Have there been times when this communication has been difficult, problematic or fallen short of being representative? cqm ^talk 07:48, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

At times it's been difficult to balance how open we want to be with the wider community with our natural incentives to keep certain details close to our chest. Probably the clearest example of this is in our funding situation the last four years, where we've been intentionally vague about how much money we receive from Jagex as well as how much of that money we spent each year. In that case we were limited by our contract and relationship with Jagex in revealing their contribution, and we were incentivized to obfuscate how much of that money we had left over at the end of the year to avoid contract changes that would make our budget even tighter going forward.

Throughout all of that, the wiki community at large was pretty much left in the dark about our money situation, which was both a problem in a general sense and something we had to address when we recently floated the idea of running ads to fund the wikis. There were a lot of misconceptions about our previous funding situation as well as reasonable concerns about the company's previous lack of financial transparency, so answering those sorts of questions presented an interesting challenge. Looking back on this answer I don't know if you would have preferred a more concrete example of a difficult bit of communication and how I handled it, but hopefully that gives a bit of insight on some of the communications challenges we've dealt with on the board in the last few years. BigDiesel2m (talk) 18:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - As you know, the wikis are ever-evolving and sometimes we need to rethink how things run in order to keep up with that. The recent push for wiki ads is evidence of that. Are you confident that you are prepared to adapt to these changes as they occur, no matter how fundamental they are? Finally, do you have any long-term goals that you wish to enact while on the board? Kosmiklove (talk) 19:38, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I am confident in my ability to adapt to changes as they come, as evidenced by my involvement in said push for (and responses regarding) ads on the wiki. As for long-term goals on the board, right now I'm hesitant to lock in any major targets while Weird Gloop's funding, finances, organizational setup, and employment situation are all in a bit of flux. In a couple months I think we'll have a better sense of what our status looks like and what sort of projects we want to (and are able to) tackle. Speaking broadly though, I want to make sure the board is more in-touch with the community and more forthcoming with our finances than we were in the past. In my opinion, now that we're dealing with more money and especially with some of it being funded directly by the community, increased transparency is a must. BigDiesel2m (talk) 06:35, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Over the past year, I have noticed that you are not only an avid editor of the OSRS Wiki, you definitely do a bit of work on the RSC wiki as well. Yet, given that the RuneScape Classic Wiki is (currently) not directly represented on the Weird Gloop Board, you are a candidate for the OldSchool RuneScape Wiki. To what extent does a vote on you for the OSRS board also translate in more representation for the RSC wiki on the board? Zorak Plorak^Talk the RuneScape Classic lover 14:44, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Even though the RSC Wiki doesn't have an official seat on the board, I think it's historically been decently represented (with more than half of last year's board members also being admins on RSCW). Personally, while my role on the board these last few years has been as "OSRS Wiki Liaison", when there was significant activity on RSCW I also made sure to include notes on that in my presentations to the board. You can also see evidence of the board giving consideration to RSCW in our recent funding discussion, where from the start we established that we weren't intending to put ads on RSCW. That might be a minor example, but hopefully it might assuage any fears you may have of RSCW being ignored in the board's decision making.

Moving forward, I think any general improvements to the wikis as a whole will benefit RSCW, just like they have in the past as we've upgraded and updated all the wikis' infrastructure over time. If there's any specific concerns from the RSCW community I encourage people to leave comments on the board meeting threads, attend meetings if possible, or reach out to me or other board members to talk. If you don't think the board has done a good job of representing the interests of RSCW in the past, maybe it's worth having a discussion about whether RSCW should have a dedicated board seat in future iterations of the board. I know back when RSCW was forked over it wasn't particularly active so it was never discussed to create a board seat for it, but in the last few years there's been an uptick in activity so maybe it's something to consider. BigDiesel2m (talk) 08:15, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Omnes Ferant

Omnes Ferant ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	Hi everyone, I'm Omnes Ferant, and I've been editing the wiki for a few years now. I want to join the board to be a strong advocate for the community, especially as the wiki begins to make changes to ensure its financial security. My goal is to help the wiki maintain and grow both the community it has created and the strong positive relationship it has cultivated with the playerbase at large. I believe that clear and honest communication on the part of the wiki will play a crucial role in preserving its good standing with the community. I'm not afraid to receive pushback on my ideas, and I think that engaged and respectful discussion both internal to the board and with the broader editing community, especially regarding the wiki’s financial decisions, will only help the wiki continue to prosper.
Wiki work	I got my start with the wiki back in 2013. After a few years' hiatus, I became active again in 2019 and really began editing in force in 2020. I tend to focus my attention on the OS and RSC wikis. While I enjoy doing a lot of smaller cleanup work for both wikis, there are some more substantial projects I have been involved in as well. With the OS wiki, I've focused heavily on revamping (with citations!) and improving the quality of the various lore articles present throughout the site. I've also tried my hand at a bit of Lua work by helping to build a few different modules. On the RSC wiki, I've mostly worked on the wiki's archival functionality. I particularly enjoyed my work archiving the 2003 and 2005 versions of the original official bestiary as well as many of the stories from the long defunct Tales from the Tavern.
Other work	I'm currently a graduate student in Classics, and I do a lot of work in the digital humanities (DH) space. Over the past two years I've been tasked with leading and mentoring small groups of students that want to work on the DH projects I am involved in, something that has taught me not only how to collaborate in a team but also how to present my viewpoint in a thought out, clear, and empathetic manner. These projects often involve what can be considered "archival" work and are also constructed with a strong consideration towards the potential use cases of other academics.

Questions from the community

Question - Hey there! You say you are not afraid to receive pushback on your ideas, but how will you ensure that your voice is heard during meetings and discussions that other people may have other strong opinions on? jayden 20:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Hey! While I think consistent engagement on my part will be crucial to making my voice heard during board meetings and discussions, I’d like to stress that making sure my voice is heard doesn’t just mean being willing to propose new ideas. I think it’s equally important to ask questions of the other board members to probe how members have arrived at the strong opinions they hold. Ultimately, what I want to ensure is that the board has a strong rationale behind the decisions it makes, and one that can be appropriately presented to the community. Additionally, I recognize that, although I’ve been active among the editors for the past few years now, I have not previously held any leadership position within the wiki and that I will be entering the board as something of an outsider. As a result, I think it’s especially incumbent on me to take the time - through discussions with the other board members - to learn reasons behind the board’s previous decisions so that I can best help to guide the wiki in the coming year. --Omnes Ferant (talk) 21:59, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Perhaps the most important decisions the Gloop board will need to make in the next year are those related to budgetary tradeoffs. Specifically, the board will need to find a compromise between the various good things the wikis could do with more money (beyond funding the two sysadmins), and the user-experience cost of running ads to generate that money.

With as much specificity as possible, what is your philosophy on those tradeoffs? Are there situations where you think it could be worth having a more prominent ad placement (i.e. sidebar or sitenotice instead of footer) if it meant we could fund more projects or employees (and if so, what sorts of projects/employees)? ʞooɔ 00:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Put simply, I am pretty skeptical of any proposal that would require us to worsen the user experience with more (or more intrusive) ads in order to fund additional projects. This is not to say that I am opposed to using ads to raise money for additional projects on principle, but I think any such decision would need to demonstrate a substantial amount of benefit for users and would need to be undertaken with a high degree of direct communication and consultation with the community.

To take the Tech Projects (2022) document as an example, none of the projects stand out to me as clear-cut cases where I would support increasing ads in order to fund/complete the project. While there are certainly features that I would personally like to see implemented (selfishly I would love the "Reldo" archive tool and a proper solution to the Discord issue), I don't think the benefits to readers or editors would likely be enough to justify an increase in ads. Of course, I would have to see specific cost analyses of these projects before finalizing my opinion.

However, one particular concern that I have is the slow build-up of maintenance costs that often comes with the addition of new features. In my experience, new features will generally lead to higher maintenance costs over the long term. Thus I am particularly skeptical of arguments that claim any changes to ads will be temporary, only lasting long enough to generate the revenue required to complete a project. If budgeting for a project does not take a long enough view and account for these continued costs, the wiki could be forced to permanently run more (or more intrusive) ads.

One thing I will note is that revenue projection is always tricky business, and there may be times where the wiki ends up with an excess of cash such that the board would feel comfortable funding a project. In such circumstances I would have fewer reservations about using ad money to fund new projects (although see my above comments about increasing maintenance costs).

Essentially, in my view it seems that there are two potential ways for the wiki to approach the use of ads for revenue generation: (1) We should attempt to maintain the minimum level of user disruption needed to fully fund our two sysadmins and other necessary costs. If costs are ultimately lower than expected - or revenue higher than expected - and the wiki has funds it feels it can safely spend elsewhere, then there can be conversations about funding additional projects. (2) We allow ourselves to run ads at a level explicitly beyond what is required for the wiki to function in order to provide additional services that we do not currently offer. For the most part, I lean pretty strongly towards the first option, but to be clear, if there are specific projects that would not require us to greatly detract from the user experience and clearly have a large level of community buy-in, then I would be more amenable to funding those projects. My expectation though is that this will be a high bar to reach. --Omnes Ferant (talk) 04:35, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - As you know, the wikis are ever-evolving and sometimes we need to rethink how things run in order to keep up with that. The recent push for wiki ads is evidence of that. Are you confident that you are prepared to adapt to these changes as they occur, no matter how fundamental they are? Finally, do you have any long-term goals that you wish to enact while on the board? Kosmiklove (talk) 19:38, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I am certainly ready and willing to adapt to the changes that the wiki may face. For example, Cook’s recent scratch notes on fundraising have made clear to me that we will likely need to rely on more than just a footer ad to fully fund the sysadmins. I would like to explore some of the other options that Cook has laid out, but Cook’s writeup has caused me to reassess my ideas on what the minimum level of disruption would be for funding the wikis.

Regarding long-term goals, I’m very interested in improving the OS wiki’s documentation and presentation around what I see as the “soft” side of the game, i.e. lore and lore-adjacent materials. To that end, as I mentioned in my reply to Cook, I’d like to see more discussions surrounding the creation of our own archival tools. --Omnes Ferant (talk) 06:53, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Over the past year I've seen a lot of your activity on the RSC Wiki. However, given that the RuneScape Classic Wiki is (currently) not directly represented on the Weird Gloop Board, you are a candidate for the OSRS Wiki. How much will you pay attention to the interests of the RSC wiki in your decisions? This would help in deciding who to vote for. Zorak Plorak^Talk the RuneScape Classic lover 14:48, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

While the board seat I am running for is specifically designated as an Old School seat, I do very much intend to keep the interests and perspective of the RSC Wiki in mind. The recent uptick in activity on the RSC Wiki has only increased the importance of communication between the board and the RSC Wiki. In particular, I would not want the RSC Wiki’s perspective to be completely shut out of conversations surrounding the potential funding of new projects. Given my activity on the RSC Wiki, I hope that I can be a medium through which the RSC Wiki community feels comfortable communicating with the board. --Omnes Ferant (talk) 21:26, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Riblet15

Riblet15 ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	I don't like ads. My motivation for being on the board is to represent active editors in Weird Gloop's business decisions. I take a lot of pride in the quality of our wikis and value our ability to reliably present uninterrupted content. I see ads as a necessary choice, and not one being made impulsively. We've been burned before by a host who only prioritized profit. As a member of the board I will always push for the best, sustainable user experience. For me this means providing adequate salaries for our sysadmins, since they're a critical piece for our standard of quality. Ultimately, I respect and value their work more than Jagex ever realistically could. I will oppose intrusive ads that harm the user experience, and make sure our funding targets match the necessary level of support without being superfluous. I don't worry that our current leadership is leaning the wrong way - but with me on the board, I will push to keep it this way.
Wiki work	I joined the wiki in 2009 and became active on the old school wiki in mid 2017. Historically I have focused on completeness of content coverage by improving infoboxes and running research tools like MOID, with technical work in modules and CSS. More recently my attention has been on transcripts, which still have a significant gap in coverage compared to typical wiki standards. So far I've put extensive effort into standardization and readability with edits across 2000 pages; my stretch goal for 2023 is to have a transcript for every quest (65/156 still redlinks). I have been a member of the board in all four years since its inception. I have served as the official notetaker multiple times and regularly clarify points during meetings to improve the meeting notes. I also request statements of justification for any spending of gloop funds and do occasional administrative tasks to improve the meta wiki. I am currently active on the Discord, and aim to make our community an inviting place for newer editors to learn more about fixing errors and using wiki tech.
Other work	I work full time as a software engineer, which involves a significant amount of collaboration within a team. This has given me experience in explaining my approach for working through technical challenges, while still understanding the perspectives of others. This technical background has also made it easier to take the lead on the old school wiki modules and make a larger impact on the experience of the users of our site.

Questions from the community

Question - Perhaps the most important decisions the Gloop board will need to make in the next year are those related to budgetary tradeoffs. Specifically, the board will need to find a compromise between the various good things the wikis could do with more money (beyond funding the two sysadmins), and the user-experience cost of running ads to generate that money.

With as much specificity as possible, what is your philosophy on those tradeoffs? Are there situations where you think it could be worth having a more prominent ad placement (i.e. sidebar or sitenotice instead of footer) if it meant we could fund more projects or employees (and if so, what sorts of projects/employees)? ʞooɔ 00:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

My default position will always be that we keep the ads minimal, and only push for more when we have concrete proposals on features and projects that require more funding. We've never had properly dedicated full time employees working for the wikis, so I think it's worth first evaluating how much additional developer time the current sysadmins have on top of their current workload.

Our decisions should be based on actual data. I have some experience attempting to estimate the cost of technical work, but little experience converting the nebulous "impact of ads on the user experience" into dollars. I think we'll get a better sense of the numbers pretty soon after launching ads, but right now it's hard to know which projects are reasonable within budget.

For me the obvious highest priority features are site-critical improvements, such as anything regarding security, reliability, or latency. The 2021 techfest was a great example of an easy win where additional funding enabled a necessary, long-delayed migration. There's no shortage of cool features that feel almost attainable with gloopdollar - a wiki archival service we can trust, automatic handling of game updates for maps/moid/crowdsourcing, in-page model viewer(???). There's definitely a world where I can see us prioritizing features like these, but nobody really knows yet how far we will get with minimal, unintrusive ads. Riblet15 (talk) 06:43, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - As you know, the wikis are ever-evolving and sometimes we need to rethink how things run in order to keep up with that. The recent push for wiki ads is evidence of that. Are you confident that you are prepared to adapt to these changes as they occur, no matter how fundamental they are? Do you have any long-term goals that you wish to enact while on the board? Finally, you say you don't like ads and oppose intrusive ads, but so far the testing points to a very non-intrusive, clean way to provide the funding needed. Knowing this, does this make you more open to the idea of ads as a funding source? Kosmiklove (talk) 19:38, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

My threshold for increasing ads is probably higher than other board members, but I'm supportive of our current plan to fund sysadmins with minimal ads. The discussions about funding have been ongoing for several years, and I've slowly been persuaded that Jagex funding isn't actually sustainable: even if we negotiated with them to fund our sysadmins in full, I'm convinced someone at Jagex would question the expense yearly and we'd have no guarantee it would continue.

While it's true that the business of the wiki changes over time, I value the board's position and willingness to think through decisions in a way that is truly best for our readers and editors. With ads putting us in new territory with regard to funding, my goal is to keep our focus on the readers and editors, even as we hire employees and prioritize features. Riblet15 (talk) 06:43, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - I know you've loved editing the RuneScape Classic Wiki, and this has made me wonder: to what extent will you be taking the interests of the RSC wiki into account in your decisions? Given that the RuneScape Classic Wiki is not represented on the Weird Gloop Board and there are no neutral candidates to vote on, this would help in deciding who to vote for. Zorak Plorak^Talk the RuneScape Classic lover 14:56, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I think the classic wiki is a valuable resource for historical reference and a small dedicated community, and its size and popularity means it takes way fewer resources to maintain. Thankfully with regard to the board, any financial decision I can imagine that improves the experience on the flagship wikis naturally benefits classic (e.g. latency improvements, security upgrades). I would strongly question the net benefit to WG if a change was harmful to classic wiki.

The week we spent modernizing RSC wiki in 2020 is probably still my favorite editing project since joining the wikis. I can't imagine ever making a decision that would intentionally degrade the Classic wiki, both because I want to see the wiki thrive, and because realistically Classic wiki is too small to have a financial impact on WG. Riblet15 (talk) 22:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Spineweilder

Spineweilder ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	"This is me. I am amazing." - Zemouregal, Notes (k-z) I am submitting my nomination for the Old School RuneScape Wiki. The nomination guidelines state that I should summarize about what I do here, but given the many years and work I've done here, that should hopefully be unnecessary even to non-OSRS editors. (I mean, have you seen those editor stats Cook posts occasionally?) Anyway, having been in the first iteration of the board, I found myself not doing much in terms of board stuff that you'd expect a board to be doing. Thus, I decided to sit out the next several elections (well, I actually forgot to submit the nomination for the second election, but let's look past that). This year is different. I feel that with all my years involved my input will be quite handy and likely expected from my peers, as important decisions will need to be made for the future of the wikis and myself.
Wiki work	I've lead the Old School RuneScape Wiki since late 2013 and am its most significant contributor. If you arrive on any page on the wiki, there is a good chance I've edited it at some point. Prior to that, I was involved in a lot of imagework image work on the RuneScape Wiki up until late 2015 or so, after then which I fully transitioned to Old School. I found the wiki very lacking when I got deep into OSRS, especially for exclusive content. I took the initiative to improve things and with the help of the >5 editors, got the wiki in a somewhat satisfactory state in regards to popular content at the time. Overall this was a large undertaking as we were mostly low levelled in-game and also did not have tools to read caches or generate rendered images. This changed as the game's popularity started to grow more, when we got more help as some RSW admins grew interested in Old School, and even had occasional assistance from players who worked on third-party clients. I feel confident that the part I've played for this wiki, the work I continue to put in, and the quality I strive for is one of the reasons why the Old School Wiki is phenomenally successful as it is now.
Other work	In stark contrast to most other editors, I don't have much experience in any sort of relevant work outside the wikis; the most relevant worth mentioning is half a year's time temporarily managing an entire department for a grocery store, whilst the real department head was on leave. My experiences managing editors on the wiki translated somewhat well to that.

Questions from the community

Question - This nomination doesn't come across very professional and you've not completed the presentation correctly. What guarantees can you provide that you'll take the board position seriously?  BlackHawk (Talk)    19:18, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I do apologise for the appearance of a hasty nomination, which upon retrospect was not doing anyone any favours, especially with how haughty I came across; I am aware of the seriousness of this year's election and intend to see this through properly, and I've found the time to fully complete the presentation. -- Spine^Talk 04:08, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - One of the principles of the wiki is that edit volume does not necessarily translate to weight of opinion; with that in mind, can you elaborate on why you decided to run for a position on the board, and what you hope to achieve by doing so? CraftyElk (talk) 20:51, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Edit volume doesn't translate to weight of opinion, that is true, but editing experience certainly holds some weight, especially so in the unique position I'm in. I've said in the past when we left FANDOM that I heavily disliked the necessity of the corporate-esque aspect of running the wikis, and so opted to let others do that while I kept to my strong suits in the community-facing aspect. Things have changed quite a bit, especially the past few months, and I feel now is an appropriate time to involve myself more in that aspect. -- Spine^Talk 04:08, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Hey Spine, I have two questions. My first is - could you explain what input you think you'd give that would be useful to the board this next year? And second, could you clarify what you mean by "important decisions will need to be made for the future of the wikis and myself"? Were you contemplating retiring? jayden 20:55, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

The skills and experience I've acquired from my involvement on the wikis over the past decade would certainly find use here, though I can't immediately think of specifics off the top of my head. As for the second... no, I'm not contemplating leaving. In contrast and in short, Weird Gloop's future is my future. -- Spine^Talk 04:08, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

"Weird Gloop's future is my future." What does this mean? -Towelcat (talk) 17:09, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

It means to look at Christine's response below, where I answer that same question! -- Spine^Talk 20:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Can you tell us a bit about your wiki work and other relevant work? We should assume that some voters don't edit the OSRS wiki and/or don't frequent the meta channels in the Discord server.

You also mention that when you were previously on the Board, you weren't doing things that you expected Board members to be doing. What did you expect the Board to be doing and what was your actual experience like? If you didn’t like that before, what makes this year different? Nex Undique^(talk) 21:56, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I've found the time to fully complete the presentation, which alongside the other responses should hopefully answer your questions. -- Spine^Talk 04:08, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. While that responds to my first question, but I still had two other questions I'd like answered when you have a chance. Nex Undique^(talk) 05:57, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Though I had this weird vision of all of us wearing suits and discussing our next steps going forward in some fancy Weird Gloop HQ, I didn't feel like everyone else outside of Cook/Gaz were making much of an impact at the time, and most of the decisions were left for them to have the final say on. Perhaps it still feels like that to other past board members, but this year feels like more is at stake with the ad funding and I would prefer a balance between keeping the OSRS community from being overly annoyed with ads and ensuring we're taking good care of our own. -- Spine^Talk 20:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Your whole nominations at time of writing can be summarised as "I nominated myself because I think others expect me to". There's no discernable substance present at all. Why should editors have confidence in someone who lacked the ideas to write a complete nomination and expect them to have better ideas as a board member? cqm ^talk 07:46, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

In retrospect my nomination was to mildly put it, quite horrible and definitely unbecoming of me. I've found the time to fully complete the presentation, which should hopefully convey my commitment to seeing this through properly. -- Spine^Talk 04:08, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Questions - Hi Spine, kindly requesting you respond to each of the q's below, as I have noticed some questions above only being partially answered.

1. Can you elaborate specifically on what you mean by "important decisions will need to be made for the future of the wikis and myself"? Particularly the emphasized part.
2. What is your perspective on how decisions that the board makes has a direct impact on you individually?
3. Given the way your nomination statement was phrased, how can you assure voters that opinions you express in board meetings are not self-serving and are in the best interest in the community as a whole?

Thanks. Christine 16:06, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

1: Cat also asked this, and Jayden is probably wondering what it meant, but I'll answer for all of you here. In short, but how we go forward in this operation will determine whether I'd like to stay on board. Like, if some worst case scenario happened, say FANDOM offered a big chunk of money up front to purchase Weird Gloop, like a fat stack that would make you actually consider the offer. Would I stick around if something like that happened? Probably not. Again, that's a worse case scenario and none of us probably would dare give that thought the time of day; but I'm still here, hoping that my voice is loud enough so that kind of thought would never be entertained.

2. I've mentioned in a previous answer that I disliked the corporate side of the wikis, and how our relationship with Jagex has made that a necessity. This made things difficult for those on the board, especially during the numerous times I've acted "unprofessional" and unbecoming of someone like myself behind the scenes. My perspective changed as the seriousness of that relationship became more apparent to me over the years; I do still dislike the necessity of how we do things this way, but I also needed to "be real" and move on forward.

3. My initial nomination was very bad. Quite horrible. But my hope is that the completed presentation and my responses to everyone convey that I'm here, in short, to make sure we don't become even a fraction of FANDOM. -- Spine^Talk 20:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - As you know, the wikis are ever-evolving and sometimes we need to rethink how things run in order to keep up with that. The recent push for wiki ads is evidence of that. Are you confident that you are prepared to adapt to these changes as they occur, no matter how fundamental they are? Finally, do you have any long-term goals that you wish to enact while on the board? Kosmiklove (talk) 19:38, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I would say if I'm to do that on my own, no. But definitely more if I am doing so with a group of like-minded people. No long-term goals immediately come to mind, but I would like to be more involved with the board for the next year or two, depending on how well things go. -- Spine^Talk 20:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - In the past, you have leaked confidential pre-release information from Jagex both on accident and on purpose, which led to some calls to remove your access to pre-release info entirely. As a member of the board, you will have access to more sensitive information that could lead to serious consequences for WeirdGloop if leaked. Going forward, what do you plan to do differently to avoid leaking confidential information?

For context: There is a small group of OSW editors who are sometimes given access to pre-release information from Jagex in order to make update days smoother. This includes things such as creating skeletons of content pages, preparing navboxes to help early readers, and making tools for events like OSRS's Leagues. Spine plays a hugely helpful role in these updates, doing almost all of the heavy lifting to get content pages ready for update day. - Andmcadams (talk) 20:39, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I subtly alluded to this in Christine's response, but it was really a combination of being overly excited (which is definitely a bad excuse and like I've said above, very unprofessional and unbecoming of me), and it never really occurring to me the seriousness of our relationship with Jagex. It was not until I was told that the board considered to revoke access that it dawned on me that I needed to take those sort of things seriously; it was a harsh lesson to learn, and I've moved past that "being too excited about [thing] and being stupid about [thing] in a public server" phase. -- Spine^Talk 20:52, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - Perhaps the most important decisions the Gloop board will need to make in the next year are those related to budgetary tradeoffs. Specifically, the board will need to find a compromise between the various good things the wikis could do with more money (beyond funding the two sysadmins), and the user-experience cost of running ads to generate that money.

With as much specificity as possible, what is your philosophy on those tradeoffs? Are there situations where you think it could be worth having a more prominent ad placement (i.e. sidebar or sitenotice instead of footer) if it meant we could fund more projects or employees (and if so, what sorts of projects/employees)? ʞooɔ 13:27, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Questions - when you say that the future of the wikis is also "your future" you seem to mean that you want to avoid WG "becoming like Fandom" (I assume you mean in terms of having intrusive ads?) or WG being bought out, and that you would not want to continue editing the wikis if these things were to happen. It seems to me that a potential sale of Weird Gloop is no more likely this year than it has been any other year and that all board candidates and most of the wider community are pushing for a moderate ad experience - though I'd be interested in your perspective if you think differently to me on this and have concerns that these scenarios could realistically come to pass?

You also say that things have changed in the last few months and this has prompted you to become involved in the board again, so perhaps you mean that the future of the wikis and yourself is affected by the change in our funding situation? If so I think responding to Cook's question on your views on funding/ad trade off and your opinion on potential valid uses for funding would probably clear this up.

You said that you've led the Old School RuneScape Wiki since late 2013 - what do you mean by saying that you have "led" the wiki? I'm not sure what you mean by this when you have also said that you dislike the "corporate aspect" of running the wikis.

You are clearly an active and valued osrs editor but I'm not getting a clear idea from your responses so far of what this experience means you will advocate for based on your understanding of the community. In your original board nomination in 2018 it seems that your main reason for running was to try and address a perceived lack of respect towards OSRS admins. I'm not sure if I recall much being done at the board level to address this so I'm wondering if this still something that you think needs to be addressed? Or do you think there are now different things that you think the OSRS community needs from the board? If so what would they be?

Having looked back at the 2018 presentations it stands out to me that one idea you gave for extra funding was "stipends for editors". I also noted that you self-described yourself as OSRS wiki's 'most significant contributor" which doesn't sit well with me. I feel strongly that SAOW is one of the most fundamental policies of the wikis and feel strongly that paying some editors for their work based on a perception of them being a more "valuable" editor would be a problematic use of funding. Can you please clarify your thoughts on this?

You wrote that during your last stint as a board member you found yourself not doing much - how do you plan to be more involved in board work this time around? You also mentioned that last time it felt like most of the decision making was done by Cook/Gaz - do you think this has been addressed by subsequent changes to how the board operates or would you advocate for further improvements in diffusion of responsibilities across the board members? Isobel talk page 02:03, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - The latest questions towards you were asked over a week ago and remain unanswered. How can you asure us that you have the time to sit on the board, attend meetings, and provide meaningful input?  BlackHawk (Talk)   User:BlackHawk 14:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

RuneScape Wiki (Portuguese)

There is 1 candidate for 1 position.

Toktom

Toktom ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	Hello Wikians and Wiki editors from around the globe, I'm Toktom an Administrator at the PT-BR Wiki. I'm nominating myself to continue serving on the Board as the PT-BR Wiki Liaison position due to my previously experience as a Board Member. I believe that my efforts made a difference for the Brazilian Wiki community, therefore, motivating me to continue with this responsibility.
Wiki work	I have being editing the PT-BR Wiki since May 2020, became an admin in October 2020, and I have been serving as the PT-BR Liaison since the beginning of the 2021. The responsibilities that I have taken were mostly with regard to putting the PT-BR Wiki in the rails (regarding the technicals necessities), and in general administration, as well as representing the PT-BR Wiki interests.
Other work	Unfortunately, I don't have any other experiences that can be shared.

Questions from the community

Question - Perhaps the most important decisions the Gloop board will need to make in the next year are those related to budgetary tradeoffs. Specifically, the board will need to find a compromise between the various good things the wikis could do with more money (beyond funding the two sysadmins), and the user-experience cost of running ads to generate that money.

With as much specificity as possible, what is your philosophy on those tradeoffs? Are there situations where you think it could be worth having a more prominent ad placement (i.e. sidebar or sitenotice instead of footer) if it meant we could fund more projects or employees (and if so, what sorts of projects/employees)? ʞooɔ 00:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, it's a great question indeed, so let me point out my opinion on this matter in a straight way. Regarding the ad placement, it's important to add the ads without disturbing much of the user experience. Thus, if placing it on the sidebar would bring not only more money to the wiki but as well more financial stability, it should be done. Especially if the user experience is preserved! After all, the wiki needs to stay functional as always! About what we could do with more money, well, it's important to try to hire companies to help us with the bureaucracy that comes with managing the wikis. Having more professional help would make us avoid doing rushed decisions, or in some cases mistakes. Not only that, but with more money, we could hire more tech guys to make the wiki an even better place. Or to help us reduce our technical expenses or even make the wiki more automated. At the moment it is hard to say exactly what could be achieved in terms of projects, but possibilities are out there, we just need to figure it out as a community — and of course, discuss it to see the viability. I hope I've answered your question properly. TOKTOM 13:12, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Question - As you know, the wikis are ever-evolving and sometimes we need to rethink how things run in order to keep up with that. The recent push for wiki ads is evidence of that. Are you confident that you are prepared to adapt to these changes as they occur, no matter how fundamental they are? Finally, do you have any long-term goals that you wish to enact while on the board? (Also, thank you for representing the PT-BR Wiki!) Kosmiklove (talk) 19:38, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I'm confident and believe that adaptability is indeed a key feature for managing the wikis, especially since it embraces a large community! Regarding the long-term goals that I have, they are mostly based on the PT-BR Wiki interests, and most of them focus on technical goals. Those technical goals are not board dependent, however being a board member allows having a better communication line between the wikis. Besides that, I greatly desire is to improve even further the partnership between the wikis, as well as protect the PT-BR interests and stability. TOKTOM 16:15, 23 February 2023 (UTC)