User blog:OofBigGina/The Mod Race Poster Experiment

Hey guys, its TAC!

Today I decided to conduct an experiment to gather information about the candidates running for the 2020 Fall Mod Election, Ak-Elfs and Garfield. I support both candidates, and I first started making posters for Ak-Elfs since he is my first choice, but I decided to create a fake poster. Something that would tick people off. I wanted to see how people reacted and handled the situation.

This is not biased.

The poster had a lot of opiniated points and false facts, immediately I got reactions. The first was from Ak-Elfs, he said "This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me." Ok. Then here comes the good part, GarfieldMN replies with this statement. "RETORT: The wiki was boring at some point, but I didn’t leave in my first month or two, soon AK will become bored of the wiki, and I like Garfield as much as Big Nate, I never said that I liked Garfield better than Big Nate. Not the best coder? I AM A PROGRAMMER ON MY ROBOTICS TEAM. Doesn’t bring anything new to the table? WHAT DO YOU THINK AK WILL DO TO “BRING SOMETHING NEW TO THE TABLE.”

Ok so there's a lot to cover about Garfield's comment, which was a riposte. The first part of his comment I really liked. He stayed calm and gave facts and the truth. He said he never said the things which I had said, which props to him, Garfield succeeded the first part of my experiment. But then the second part comes in, and I am going to be critical and picky about what was commented, so don't get worked up about this, but he used caps lock at the part when I said "not the best coder" about Garfield. "I AM A PROGRAMMER ON MY ROBOTICS TEAM."

You have to be careful when you use caps lock, because people will interpret it the way they see it. One user will just say, "oh he's proving his point," which is what I was thinking, but there's gonna be people who see caps lock as SCREAMING and that the person is acting emotional. He did the same thing with the "Doesn’t bring anything new to the table? WHAT DO YOU THINK AK WILL DO TO “BRING SOMETHING NEW TO THE TABLE!" I like the question, and I think that is something Ak-Elfs really needs to consider if he wants to win this mod race and get my vote, at the same time, I feel like if Garfield had not used caps lock, then his comment would've sounded a lot nicer and more of just wanting to know.

Again, I'm being critical, but I want to know how our future staff team is going to handle things that target them or handling drama, because there will be drama on this wiki, so do we want a user that's possibly going to create more drama? Overall, I think Garfield did a good job with this comment, its just the caps lock. Like I said before there's going to be some users who might get angry through that and create more drama, and we want all users to feel safe and happy on this wiki.

I'm probably overthinking this but I just want to get as much information as possible as a resource to help us voters decide who would be best at mod.

Then Ak-Elfs posts 2 short comments, one being "Chill man" and "DO i legit go around screaming when I can't take constructive criticism." I like the first comment, he stayed calm during the situation, which is a good attribute for a mod.

The second comment I think Ak proved a good points that he's not going to scream when criticism is givin' against him. However I just feel like something was unanswered here. It was the fact that one reason Garfield was upset is because he felt like Ak has nothing to bring to the table, and when I think about it, that is true. Garfield has created lots of fun competitions for us while AK has created none. The thing is though, Ak-Elfs has been on this wiki for 2 months. He is still learning all the different factors on this wiki, but he has shown to be a quick learner, and around 3 months is around the time you have a really good grasp of the wiki, so I think Ak is qualified in that way. My point is, I think Garfield has had more time to prove that he can be creative, but I also can't think of anything new Ak can bring to the wiki.

I really like Garfield's next comment. "No, but information here is inaccurate or misleading." This is one of the things I was looking for, a mod who can point out something and say, "hey this is wrong, try not to buy into it." We need someone who can point out wrong information and try to bring the truth and fix the situation, so I really like Garfield's comment there.

I'm going to skip down DarthPigious's comment next. He posts a link and I click on it and it says "Two can play at that game, TAC!" I like how Garfield supporters are trying to respectively prove me wrong, and I think competition like this is really great. We saw it happen in Big Nate where Nate and Gina were running for treasurer or something like that, and Gina put a poster why Nate shouldn't be treasurer, and that immediately brought the fight in Nate, and now they are both working hard to get themselves elected. So I think that happening here is good.



Darth gives some solid points about Garfield. Okay. But all the points he gave about Ak-Elfs traced to one point he gave, "1 month of activity." Yes that's true, but do you think the other points he gave is because of that 1 month of activity. Certainly he won't know everyone personally because he's only been on 1 month, he hasn't hosted many contests because he's only been on 1 month. Certainly Ak-Elfs should do better about this, but I think time is a huge factor on those points. Btw these points is not going against Garfield, I am just assessing what happened.

But the last point ticked me off. He called being Gen 3 a pro and Gen 4 a con. Sure there's more experience being a Gen 3 user, but why should time you've been on the wiki be a pro or a con. It shouldn't be how long you've been on the wiki that should determine the right mod, but rather the values and the characteristics that a user will bring, regardless if you are a new user or have been on since the wiki was created?

'This is the conclusion of my experiment. I hope you guys use this as a resource to help decide who you want to vote for on November. Might do some future experiments.'