Weird Gloop elections/2022/Candidates

This page contains candidate presentations for the 2022 Weird Gloop board elections.

Just like last year, we have the same number of candidates as we have available board seats, so per the guidance from last year, we will do an up-or-down vote on each candidate. If any candidate fails to reach a majority*, then we will have a contingency election for those spots, likely canvassing for additional candidates.

Voting will begin on January 29th through the SecurePoll extension, and ends on February 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.

*here, a majority is defined as yes_votes > no_votes

RuneScape Wiki

There are 3 candidates for 3 positions.

Elessar2

Elessar2 ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	Hi everyone, I’m Elessar2 a Swiss admin on the RuneScape wiki and am once again nominating myself to serve on the board. I’ve served on the board the past 2 years as chairperson, where my job is to organize and run the meetings, post the announcements, and keep track of the action items. I’d like to continue working behind the scenes on our relationship with Jagex, and the future of Weird Gloop and the wikis going forward, especially from a financial standpoint. Hopefully a lot of positive change is coming in the near future!
Wiki work	I’m primarily active on the RuneScape 3 wiki where I primarily work on modules and templates. I also do a lot of gadget and css work, including the hit calculator, the events gadget, portables integration etc. I also occasionally do work on the PTBR wiki, mostly porting over modules and gadgets as well as css work. I have done some css/js work by proxy on the OS wiki as well as occasional help on module work. I’ve done some work on back end stuff including a large amount of work on the Kartographer (interactive maps) extension primarily in preparation for advanced maps. In the past I also coordinated the one small wiki favor (OSWF) project. Currently I am doing ongoing work in converting old dungeon maps to the new advanced maps as well es cleaning up and completing pages on the Help and RuneScape namespaces (help & policy pages).
Other work	My day job is as an architect (the construction kind) in Switzerland (covers the duties of a general contractor), and I’m also a volunteer firefighter. Additionally I’m a captain (OF-3) in the Swiss Army (Combat Engineers) and I’m active in a number of clubs. Over the years I’ve also developed and maintained (including sysadmin duties) a number of small business/club websites (including e-commerce).

Questions from the community

Question - Hi Elessar, you have been on the board since 2020. I'd like to ask what the most notable thing you think that you and the board has done since that time? If I also might ask, how much time have you been able to dedicate to the board (given that you do seem to live quite a busy life)? jayden 14:59, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Early 2020 we passed a number of resolutions which lay the basis of how the company runs, and more recently we've had a number of conversations on how elections are run, which didn't end in any resolutions or changes to the articles of association (as they weren't necessary) but it fleshed out what to do when we have equal or too few candidates. We also approved the funding for the work to upgrade to gcp and 1.36. Time wise I do tend to lead a fairly busy life but I think I've always been able to make enough time for board duties. Sometimes (specifically certain military training things) I can be unavailable for about a week, but if I know there's a wiki thing coming I can make arrangements. Elessar2 (talk) 14:30, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Question - If you had free rein to implement whatever decision/project/idea of yours (within reason of course), what would that be? Tzar ❯ Talk 20:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd love to do an app/wep app version of the events gadget that has even more things (vis wax, other timers etc), drag and drop interface for customisation, push notifications etc would be a really cool thing to have and it could also have a world map. I also think there's a lot of room for improvement in general for the mobile site in general, especially dark mode. Elessar2 (talk) 09:10, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

BlackHawk

BlackHawk ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	Hey, I'm BlackHawk! I've been playing RuneScape for many years, have been an avid editor of the RuneScape Wiki since April 2020, and became an admin August 2020. I enjoy giving back to the community that I have taken so much from over the years, and that is why I am running for a board position.
Wiki work	Since joining the wiki community as an editor, almost 2 years ago I have made a huge dent in converting legacy png map images to interactive maps. My first major project was the addition of the data submission gadget, allowing wiki users to submit drop quantities to any configured drop table to estimate more accurate drop rates. More recently I have also created several databoxes, spearheaded the conversion of various location infoboxes to a single infobox with supporting databoxes, and begun to improve farming plant pages.
Other work	I work full time as a software engineer and in my previous job lead a small team focusing on third party integrations. This involved a lot of teamwork, from collaborating with team members to consulting clients. This experience has allowed me to be more active in the tecnhical side of the wiki alongside the user facing areas.

Questions from the community

Question - Hey BlackHawk, what unique qualities do you think you could bring to the board as a member? Obviously it's not like Weird Gloop is a Fortune 500 company raking in the cash which requires a lot of financial decisions, but it's interesting to hear how you think you'd be able to fit in and provide something different that maybe the boards' of yesteryear did not have jayden 14:59, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

I believe that my best assets are a cool head and a knack for problem solving. The can be seen both on and off wiki - I have had to come up with several modifications to the data submission gadget and the supporting display modules over their lifetime to anable the user to have a smooth experience submitting their data, and off wiki, my new job involves a lot of consulting so requires always keeping the client happy with the best solution that's programatically possible. And to top it all off, every day with a first born is a new challenge!  BlackHawk (Talk)    07:21, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Question - If you had free rein to implement whatever decision/project/idea of yours (within reason of course), what would that be? Tzar ❯ Talk 20:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

I think something a lot of people who deal with images on the wiki would love is a model viewer, but unfortunately that is far beyond my skills to create. In all seriousness though, I think something I'd like to try to work on is the relationship between RS3 Jmods and the wiki. I've always been jealous of the relationship the OSW guys have with the JMods and would love to try to cultivate the same relationship our side too.  BlackHawk (Talk)    08:29, 1 February 2022 (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. For the most part, I think many are all things that the Board is aware of and pursuing (like hosting our own archives), but I would like to have a seat on the Board to make sure that there is an active voice on these matters if certain members choose not to run again.
Wiki work	I’ve been editing Weird Gloop wikis for 12+ years and am both an admin on the RuneScape Wiki and a bureaucrat on the RuneScape Classic Wiki. 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, eager to get people involved in editing if I can.
Other work	I have not served on a Board before and I have no experience with British corporate governance, but one of the duties of my job involves advising American companies on corporate governance matters.

Questions from the community

Question - You mention you have ideas to propose to the board. What would be the most pressing of those to you and, if different, the most ambitious? cqm ^talk 09:20, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Most pressing as of now would be hosting our own archives. Not that I have any doubt that archive.is is going away any time soon, but I had the same attitude towards WebCite and because of our singular reliance on that medium for so many years, most of our old archived material is dead and not likely to come back soon. I don't like that we're reliant on other projects for something so integral to our community, and I think there should be movement towards a back-up solution. Plus, I'd love to be able to archive all forum posts, videos, maybe all tweets, etc. A lot of interesting things have been lost over the years (if anyone's saved RuneScape podcasts, let me know). Great thing is, I know this is on the Board's radar.

That's not very ambitious though. I would say the most ambitious would be (once we get the funds for it) some type of grant program akin to the one WikiMedia has. I think this could be a good way to get great technically-skilled people involved in the wiki while crossing a bunch of "wants" off of our wishlist. Better .mp4 player, 3D model viewer, any editing tools that might come to mind, you name it. It could drum up a lot of interest from the greater community while giving us things we're looking for. Nex Undique^(talk) 06:30, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Question - If you had free rein to implement whatever decision/project/idea of yours (within reason of course), what would that be? Tzar ❯ Talk 20:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

See above for two long-term projects I'd like to implement. Nex Undique^(talk) 06:30, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

OSRS Wiki

There are 3 candidates for 3 positions.

BigDiesel2m

BigDiesel2m ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	Hi I'm Dan, and I've been editing the wiki for almost five years now. For the last two of those years, I have served as one of OSW's representatives on the board, holding the position of OSW Liaison. Through that liaison role and as a board member in general I've made it my goal to connect the editors of the wiki and the members of the board, by keeping the board informed about everyday work on the wiki as well as reaching out to editors for specific board requests.
Wiki work	I don't consider myself an expert at any one thing on the wiki, but I've done a little bit of just about everything. I most enjoy collaborating with others on large projects, but most edits I find myself doing are minor touches and small improvements here and there. During 2021 I took a step back from editing the wiki due to health issues, but in the last month I've been getting back into the swing of things and I'm hoping to get back to my old cadence of edits. When I wasn't as active on the wiki I still maintained a connection with the community and took my board responsibilities seriously, and I think I can balance all those things as I get back into editing more.
Other work	Over the last ten years I've been involved in a number of hobby communities, helping edit wikis, developing other shared resources, or supporting community events. This has varied from running clubs during my time at college to my recent work on the RS Wikis. Beyond my hobbies, prior to the pandemic I volunteered and later worked at my local library for their youth services program, most notably with their summer programs aimed at community support and engagement.

Questions from the community

Question - If you had free rein to implement whatever decision/project/idea of yours (within reason of course), what would that be? Tzar ❯ Talk 20:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

If I was asked this question a year ago, my focus then would have been on the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.35, as well as our move to a better host/database solution. At the time, I felt those upgrades were moving quite slowly, especially with how important they were in terms of the wiki's stability and security. I was quite happy when both those technical upgrades were implemented in 2021, and I don't see anything similar on the horizon (at least in terms of important infrastructure improvements).

If I had free rein to implement any idea of mine, I think I'd like us to have a more robust archival system, focused mostly on tweets and other references, but also including things like old game data or even defunct fansites. Right now we rely on third-party archival sites for most of our references, but those have some issues, and I'd be curious to see if we could do something better in-house. BigDiesel2m (talk) 00:54, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Andmcadams

Andmcadams ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	I'm Andrew, and I have only been editing the Old School wiki for a couple of years now. I want to join the board so that I can help steer Weird Gloop in a direction that benefits all users of the wikis and brings in new editors.
Wiki work	I got hooked on the wiki as a result of OSWFs and made tons of small edits before gradually moving towards more bot-oriented and module focused edits. I've also helped run and coordinate quite a few OSWFs, including creating plugins specifically for them. More recently I have also written code to crowdsource and parse information about the game for the wiki to use to improve articles.
Other work	I work as a software engineer and do a decent amount of development work in my free time as well. Outside of that, I've done volunteer work with various mycology groups over the years. I enjoy giving people a reason to get excited about topics that they previously would not have paid attention to.

Questions from the community

Question - What benefits do you believe you can implement from a position on the board? cqm ^talk 09:23, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Something I want to investigate is if we can effectively complete some of the larger scale technical tasks that have been stuck in development hell similarly to the MW migration/upgrade, which was handled with TechFest. Not necessarily on the same scale as TechFest, but perhaps these tasks could see completion if we approach them with a coordinated effort rather than the current approach of relying on individuals to tackle them. For example, an OSW DPS calculator, which has been punted several times since I've started editing, might have enough value-add to justify spending a small amount of money on them if a decent proposal is made. - Andmcadams (talk) 21:02, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Question - If you had free rein to implement whatever decision/project/idea of yours (within reason of course), what would that be? Tzar ❯ Talk 20:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

I would want to increase the number of integrations that we have with the RuneLite client. Recently, we created a RuneLite plugin called WikiSync on OSW. It syncs data about your player to a server, which the wiki then fetches to personalize pages. The most salient example is probably the League tasks page, which shows you which tasks you have completed, but it also works similarly to how the RuneMetrics integration on RSW works with quest requirements. Sitting at over 100k downloads in under a month, it appears that the benefit of WikiSync to players is significant, even with its limited usage on wiki right now. However, I think it would be helpful to players if we could also display crowdsourced info about open worlds for various bosses/skilling or distractions+diversions (imagine live Shooting stars locations on the page). There are some unfortunate real world factors that make this a bit hard to do in practice, especially data moderation and getting people to opt-in, but I think they would be incredibly useful for players visiting the wiki if we could figure out how to do it properly. - Andmcadams (talk) 21:02, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Riblet15

Riblet15 ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	I am running for the board as a representative of the active editors in the business decisions of Weird Gloop. I will ensure that Weird Gloop serves our community to the best of our ability and spends our funding in ways that benefit the readers and editors of the wikis. I aim to keep a proper record of the decisions made during board discussions and make sure we have justification for Weird Gloop expenses. As a member of the board I will continue to ensure OSW is equitably represented.
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 infobox templates and running research tools like MOID. More recently my attention has been on reducing technical debt in modules and CSS, with the aim to make our system more maintainable and accessible for new editors. I have been a member of the board in all three 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 ask questions about the technical aspects of wiki editing, such as modules, templates, and our API.
Other work	I currently 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 - I feel like you're quite a vocal member of the wiki community when it comes to decisions. Could you describe a previous board decision or a discussion where you were on the minority side of the argument? jayden 14:59, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

The only reason the board - and Weird Gloop as a whole - really need to exist is for managing the finances that keep the wiki running. In this regard, the most important board conversations focus on the repercussions of our current funding situation, and how to plan alternate strategies to mitigate risk. In previous discussions I've possibly been the most idealist with respect to the user experience, with a strong aversion to adjusting the wikis to an advertisement-based funding model. I strongly value the fact that our relationship with Jagex allows us to present free, uninterrupted content. Riblet15 (talk) 09:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Question - If you had free rein to implement whatever decision/project/idea of yours (within reason of course), what would that be? Tzar ❯ Talk 20:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

As a personal dream project, I would love the wiki to have complete coverage of all historical entities, including pages for old scenery. We would want tools like MOID, but with options to select old cache revisions and instantly dump entity defs and renders, along with easy tools to generate pages to farm out the work to new editors. However, I realize this coverage only interests the minutest fraction of our readers.

In contrast, the optimal quest guide is the most popular content on the wiki. If I were put in charge of a whole team, I think we could expand our WikiSync integration into a whole recommendation system. The wiki would have tools describing exactly what quests to start and offer suggested training methods to reach goals personalized to the player state. The user could save goals to their account, or leave the decision to our our state of the art end-to-end artificial intelligence machine learning blockchain algorithms. Riblet15 (talk) 09:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

RuneScape Wiki (Portuguese)

There is 1 candidate for 1 position.

Toktom

Toktom ^{Talk • Contribs • Meta contribs}

Statement	Hello world, I'm Toktom an Administrator at the PT-BR Wiki and 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 (after Crowborn having to leave the board due to personal reasons).
Wiki work	I have being editing the PT-BR Wiki since May 2020 and became and PT-BR admin at October 2020 being responsable of helping put the PT-BR Wiki in the rails by importing modules and templates resulting in making editing the Wiki be easier then usual as well as making it more optimized and automated (due to that technical work).
Other work

Questions from the community

Question - what would you like to see achieved on the pt-br wiki over the next year and what can the board do to support that? cqm ^talk 09:21, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

PT-BR's growth (since early 2020) allowed it to get out of the darkness it was in, resulting on more views and new editors for the Wiki. The main idea is to focus on that continuous growth and increasing the guides (and general informations) on editing the PT-BR Wiki for the general public that still are reluctant to the idea. Therefore, the board is essential to support this growth, as PT-BR suffers from a huge content gap and needs everyone's support (mainly related to technical stuff) to continue with this expasion. TOKTOM 21:33, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Question - If you had free rein to implement whatever decision/project/idea of yours (within reason of course), what would that be? Tzar ❯ Talk 20:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for that question, it's a good one. Well, if I remember correctly this idea has already been discarded due to the difficulties of implementing it, but it would be great to see a centralized "file storage" system (it's a dream of mine), where it would be enough to add the redirection to the file (without having to upload the file to PT-BR), and avoiding having the same image replicated between wikis, therefore having one for both. Of course, in the scenarios where it's feasible, for example NPC's (example: Zaros.png) and objects (example: Bread.png) or detailed objects images (example: Bread detail.png). TOKTOM 21:33, 31 January 2022 (UTC)