Forum:Inquiry of Administrator Appledash

This is an inquiry against Bureaucrat Appledash.

The work she has done for the wiki throughout the years is commendable, and commands respect. However, an able administrator is more than just their edits. They serve the community they were elected to represent, and when they no longer present the wiki in a adequate manner, an inquiry is necessary. For Icy, the reasons behind this are as follows:

It is the duty of the editors and the community to decide when an administrator no longer is fit to hold the role, though regrettably so. This is not a personal slight, nor a rash decision. These issues have persisted over a long period of time, and are not changing. I ask the community to consider this.
 * Immature handling of the Dovewing debacle
 * As at the time, the sole head of the official wwiki twitter
 * Refusal to listen to the community at large, the wiki’s audience
 * Blockage of all those who disagreed
 * Behavior unfitting of an administrator
 * Violation of the tenants of a wiki, which is the definition of consensus
 * Concentration of power over an extended period of time; projects should be lead by different people
 * A lead in every project; leader of three
 * Failure to improve and change over time, despite community members raising valid concerns several times in the past
 * Does not assume good faith with users new and old, a vital tenant of our policy
 * Frequently has confrontations with other staff in public areas such as chat, presenting a disunified wiki
 * Especially important because admins are supposed to portray good character and be looked up to, and act accordingly
 * Which also validates complaints about the wiki to the public community, though those concerns are never acknowledged
 * Presents unprofessionality on a common basis
 * Comes off as cold and uncaring to users
 * Shows bias to certain users over others
 * Instills fear in the community, preventing true consensus of opinion from being reached
 * Has bouts of inactivity, and refuses to delegate

06:31, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

Due to my own bias as one of Icy's best friends, I will not be making a post in regards to this, as I cannot in good faith make a bias-less statement at present. I would like to ask, however, if this is a question of rights and lead spots, or just one? I'm unsure of your wording. ​

Both, I apologize if I came off as unclear.

07:04, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

"Refusal to listen to the community at large, the wiki's audience" I identify with this greatly. I feel as if nothing I have to say is taken seriously and in the past year I feel that I have been mistreated by Appledash. I've felt as if my opinion doesn't matter, and truthfully, that is part of why I have stopped being as active as I have been. She does not deserve these rights.

I don't know if I'm allowed to put my input, just strike through if not. They do come off as cold, I did ask them a question recently and the way she handled it came off as cold and rude, making me feel as if I did something wrong when I didn't know about the thing in general since I was new to it. —  Ellie  Fear breeds a desire  for simplicity   08:24, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

While I agree she can do better at being more professional and empathetic in certain situations, Icy has done an amazing job contributing to the wiki and its community. She works harder than anyone I know to keep the wiki a well-oiled machine. I know I am one of Icy's friends and that may be considered a bias, but I genuinely believes she has the best intentions in mind. She truly cares about this wiki and everyone on it. I understand some situations have been handled poorly by Icy but I don't think she has given us enough reason to question her rights 14:05, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

Before I give my two cents, I would like to say that Icy has indeed done an incredible amount of work for the wiki, and that cannot be ignored. However, the whole Dovewing debacle and her behavior as a whole has led me to believe that she isn't fit to be an administrator anymore. She has shown bias towards other users, and have been cold and indifferent towards others. While I am not the subject of said indifference or bias, this is not a good attribute of an admin. An admin does not show bias nor do they mistreat others based on personal bias. Her concentration of power is also a concern, seeing as the wiki as a whole is supposed to make a decision, not just one person. And the Dovewing debacle is a whole other story--her handling of the situation was poor. Blocking everyone who disagrees is immature and while I admit I may have been a bit immature in said situation too, she is the face of the wiki on Twitter and also an admin. This behavior raked the wiki's reputation through the mud, and just another reason why I believe Icy is no longer fit to be an admin.

Okay. I know my name is not known by most of you guys. I joined this Wiki (I had a different account - yes, the admins here know) in May 2012, and while I am no longer active, I do often check up on this Wiki in my spare time. However, I just happened to see this while scrolling through the Wiki Activity, and I honestly feel obligated to post something. Even though I am by no means active enough to fully understand what is going on, I feel as if this inquiry is a bit of a stretch. I am going to be honest. When I first joined this Wiki, I did not get along well with Jayce. I was angry at a lot of things Jayce was saying.. and I even made a VoNC against them (they were a rollback at the time, but I am uncertain as to if that role is used anymore?). But I made the VoNC out of personal frustration, and thus, I had no evidence to support anything I was saying. Obviously, the VoNC caused a rift for a long time. Icy and I have never always gotten along. I respect her as a person, but I do not know enough of the situation to state my opinion. However, if this is truly what you believe is best, there needs to be actual instances provided for users to look at (you can link edits, for example) so they can have a better grasp on the situation at hand. -- PyroNacht

Pyro has a point. Where is the proof, Patch? You cannot just make all of those claims with no concrete evidence supporting any of it. The users of this wiki deserve to be exposed to the truth, and based on the evidence they should be able to come up with their own opinions. 17:51, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

Icy has had her ups and downs. She can come off as cold sometimes, and I agree that she handled the Dovewing situation poorly. Although, I will say that I'm a fairly newish person to the wiki that hasn't been around for even a year, and is not active. I really don't interact with Icy that much to have an opinion on her. For now, I'm staying neutral on this.

19:03, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to preface this with something everyone may already know, but still worth noting; I'm incredibly close to Icy. I have known her almost half my life and I joined this wiki around the same time as her. If that makes my statement, biased, then so be it, but I've spent the past day going through this in my head and trying to set aside my personal feelings to give a more professional opinion. Truthfully, I can't help but still massively disagree with this even without my bias.

Icy has her moments, I won't sugarcoat anything. She's incredibly headstrong and blunt, and she's not a cushy person at times. She can come across as cold to some users, and if people have a problem with that, they need to address it with her. Patch and Jay, your statements here feel incredibly personal. I know you stated it's not personal, but are you honestly positive it's not? If this was a more Wiki-orientated concerned, there could be more leg room to work with, but the fact you're going for all her lead positions and requesting she be demoted from all ends, leads me to suspect there's some grudges here that are outside the Wiki. I mean in no attempt to attack you, but a lot of these negative statements feel like it's more personal than Wiki related. Icy is not the only admin holding lead positions in projects, as Jayce and Spooky are leads in multiple as well. She really puts her all into this Wiki, and honestly always has. She's constantly leading things that while she doesn't have to lead, she does anyways. She puts forth a lot of work and does her best to keep everything organized here, and I don't think she should be faulted for having a position recognizing the efforts she puts in. She does all the forums for PCA, she gets votes gathered, she runs the charart contest for everyone, she's on here every day.

Her past two weeks had spotty activity, yeah. But she managed to take a break while not neglecting her duties. She is not perfect, she's human like the rest of us. I fully believe, even without my bias, that she runs the Wiki to the best of her ability, and I feel like she shoulders a lot of it even when she shouldn't. She does take on a lot around the Wiki, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if her brief hiatuses are to relax since she sometimes seems to overwork herself. (That's more of a personal observation, however, and might not even be correct.)

With no disrespect to you Patch, or anyone agreeing. But I think it's important to sort out what's personal here and what's not. The Dovewing issue? That's grounds for actually discussing. I think blocking was a bit extreme, Twitter has a mute function, but my opinion is some of those people were resorting to make dupe accounts to harass the Twitter. That's very valid reasons for a block and I can definitely understand why after awhile, Icy just shut everyone out when she was getting hundreds of @s and messages harassing her over a cat's eye colour. But regardless, that's something that can be worth discussing on her leadership. Her appearing cold, instigating fights, things like that are personal. While image is important when you're staff, I believe it's better if people come to together to discuss these things personally and privately before throwing a hammer down. I know for a fact if this was me, I'd rather have a more private intervention to discuss this rather than have me right away be threatened of my rights.

Personal grudges need to be settled. Anything outside of the Wiki is grounds for questioning. Patch, if you have concrete proof and evidence of her misusing conduct on this Wiki, it should be brought up. You need to figure out what's personal here and what's not, and this goes to everyone. My stance will be Icy's side, but I do want to get a better picture of what everyone's feeling here. Everyone talks about how they feel Icy's hurt them or been a bad lead, but I want to know why and how. Provide evidence, express what's wrong. I know I haven't been around here long enough recently, but I really advise everyone to heavily consider what they have an issue with. Are you upset about how she runs the Wiki? Did she hurt you in some way? Be clear and concrete.

I want to be able to see every side in a conflict to help come to a conclusion. Right now, I don't see this side. If these are personal issues, they need to be dealt with as such, and any issues in questioning her leadership need to be brought up here. It's always worth discussing, but differentiating the two will be incredibly important. Demoting someone because you think they're mean or you don't like them is not professional or even viable to me. If you can come back with better explanations and proof, I'll happily listen and take it into consideration, but all you've done is list vague reasons why you don't think Icy should be an admin, and describe vague situations. I want a bridge to be able to be built here, no matter the outcome. There seems to be a lot of deep rooted issues here, and if you have a problem with Icy, please bring it up further and reflect on if it should be something brought up privately because it's personal, or if it should be publicly discussed as criticism.

If you think my statement is biased, you are free to go ahead and strike it out. I want to be a level-headed figure in this, and I really urge you to present your argument a bit better since, for the life of me I can't see a reason why she should be demoted like this. A lot of things you've brought up are things that can be discussed and worked on, or they're simply in the past and need to be moved on from. This feels personal, and personal grudges need to be settled and figured out. It's good you brought up a concern you have, and I applaud you for speaking up. However, knowing your intent is important. Going straight for all her rights with no concrete evidence to back up why you want her demoted leaves suspicion.

I'm unsure how to end this huge wall of text, but I think there's a lot that can be worked out here besides just straight up stripping her of everything. The more personal and bias side of me really thinks this is utterly cruel, whereas the mediator side of me is just... confused. You do bring up good points, but a lot again are 1) in the past 2) are grounds for discussion and can be worked out calmly or 3) just ... really personal issues. —

Thank you for pointing this out.

1.) I am not the sole head of the Wwiki twitter. Spooky and Cloudy run it with me as well.

2.) Immature handling...? I apologize if I blocked people on the Twitter, except I did apologize for that and concluded the discussion. The new result will be that it will probably be changed when The broken Code comes out.

3.) What about my activity? I have been active fairly often for around a year. My activity over the last two weeks has not been spotty - I do not understand this.

4.) I have been trying my best to work around. Can you please give me examples on the Wiki on which I have been acting immaturely, preferably in the recent months?

20:42, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

While I do like Icy as a person and don't deny the sheer amount of work she's contributed, and really does want what is best for the wiki, having seen some of what has been listed makes it hard for me to disagree. For example, she does come off as a tad condescending to me here, which I don't really appreciate and makes me feel not valued as an editor. Though I don't know if that was intentional. While Icy is a lead in many projects, with all due respect, that may be too much power. As she is a lead in every project and a leader in three, nobody else has that, which makes me believe she intends to keep the power for her own gain and keep herself in charge, something similar to a dictatorship. Mind you I can be totally wrong in this, that is just what it is coming across as. If someone needs me to elaborate, just ask.

21:35, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

Jus so it’s known, I’m not going to issue much of a statement, out of wanting to not be overly biased as an admin. Just wanted to say. 21:44, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

Regardless of the validity/invalidity of the complaints presented in this forum, the initial proposal is, in my honest opinion, incredibly poorly presented. No links to diffs/pages/logs whatsoever are provided and it's impossibly to verify or make an objective judgment of the instances you refer to. Furthermore, many of the bullet points are either (a) completely subjective (b) completely unrelated to inadequate behavior (project/Twitter leadership, for instance) or (c) redundant/duplicates, in what appears to be an effort to artificially inflate the list of complaints. Frankly, the entire thread seems to be based on a very personal agenda rather than a widespread opinion held by the community. Providing links to several instances would be a good way to show this is more than a personal tirade. 1358 (Talk)  21:50, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

ok I really can't help but to comment on this lol. No I'm not active, nor do I plan to be, but that doesn't mean I can't provide my statement on leadership of a website that I used to be staff of. Icy has been here longer than most, and has put in countless hours towards this site and the people who contribute to it. She's never been the type to let people walk all over her, which is how she ended up in the position that she is in now. She's blunt, she's brazen, but she's undoubtedly committed to this community and to the Warriors franchise.

Comparing Icy to a dictator is kind of unnecessary in my opinion. She hasn't finessed her way into these leadership positions for her own malicious intent. She's worked in the projects that she leads for years, so why shouldn't she deserve to have influence over the way that they're run? Sure, she can have harsh remarks, but she always has. She's a good worker and a good editor, and it shows through all the articles and projects she has polished over the many years.

I know I'm Icy's friend, so feel free to strike this out in the future, but my unbiased opinion is that Icy has proven herself to be a strong contributer. She's stayed when many others have quit, including myself, and wanting to strip away everything that she's worked for just because of her unbridled personality is a little disheartening to me, let alone to her. The way she handled the Twitter fiasco could've been better, everyone knows this, she knows this, but it happened and it's over. I would be frustrated too if the social media masses were coming after me due to something that I could not control and I would probably do something similar just to quiet the discourse. You can't put a label on her entire leadership because of one poorly handled incident when she has done a successful job at handling many other issues in the past.

Like Echo said, if you have a personal problem with the way that Icy has interacted with you, bring it up with her. Her personal interactions don't discredit her strong leadership that she has imposed throughout the years, and I know well that Icy would not be rude and dismissive just because she can be on a regular basis. I've seen her work ethic, and I've seen the help that she has given to many users in the past. She cares about this site, and if she didn't, she wouldn't still be here because this isn't the first time that her contributions have come under fire. 21:58 Sat Dec 22

Appledash is a great leader! You shouldn't do this because of what they did in the past! This is wrong, they are not immature, to me, no offense, but this is  immature, to do this to some one.

Appledash is a great mentor to me, and I will not stand by and do nothing. This is very disrespectful. I looked up to some of you, but this is how you treat one another?! I have lost a lot of respect for someone who is trying to do this.

-Texaswild

Sorry this took a while. I spent a majority of the day reflecting. I don't know Icy very well; I've only interacted with her a few times on the wiki, and all of those moments were respectful. I did, however, interact with Icy once outside the wiki, and that interaction really solidified my take on her. This most likely can be considered bias, but it's the basis and foundation of my thoughts of her.

Without going into too many details, Icy approached me with her personal email about a concern. That really hit hard with me. It's a common Internet safety concern to keep as much personal information about yourself hidden and to not share publicly. Information such as name, age, methods of contact...it's the reason why so many of us have alternative emails to share files and such. But when Icy contacted me with her personal email when I was fully aware she had an alternative one, it struck me. I, most likely like a lot of you, have been on the Internet for a long time. I don't share my personal email with hardly anyone, so when Icy did...it blew me away. I saw it as a sign of respect. Sure, you could chalk it up to the severity of the situation (and maybe that was her reasoning idk), but I saw as a sign of trust. An outreaching hand to listen to what I had to say. And it still blows me away to this day. How can you trust someone like that for your first interaction to share your personal email?

Keep in mind, this was of the first real interactions I've had with Icy, so it really left an impression on me. In addition, her emails were courteous, reverent, and concise. The entire experience was full on administrative-mode, and she behaved exactly like an admin should. She did not belittle me or make me feel insignificant or anything. She, most importantly, listened to what I had to say, which is what I believe is most important of an admin.

Sure, Icy can come off as distant or inconsiderate, but I feel that's always been...Icy. It's her job as an admin to sometimes be the "bad guy" and I can't fault her for that. I can't speak for myself as I have never interacted with her in that situation, though. I was under the assumption the Dovewing situation was resolved, as we as the wiki had come to an agreement, and Icy is no longer the sole owner of the twitter account.

Icy has always had the best interest of the wiki in her heart, and everything she had done for the wiki have proven that in my mind. She wants to see it improve and be better, and you can easily tell he cares for this place a lot. She earned my respect a while ago, and if more conclusive evidence is put forward, then I'll be willing to reconsider. 22:54, December 22, 2018 (UTC)

I just wanted to point out a few things:


 * 1) I don't think the "concentration of power" argument is valid, because she was nominated by the community to take on those positions.
 * 2) Patch's main post lacks evidence and I agree is presented poorly.
 * 3) However, the argument that the con side brings up ("she has always been this way" "this is just how her personality is" etc.) is also not valid. Just because she has always been this way doesn't mean that those traits are beneficial for her role as an admin.
 * 4) Regardless of the truthfulness of Patch's arguments, I don't think removing Icy's rights is an appropriate way to address these problems. Attitude problems can be fixed without these measures.

For now, that's all I have to say.

I've looked for evidence to provide, but anything I could have shown is deleted and I can't find anything that remains. If some of you don't believe me, that's fine, I wouldn't blame you with my lack of evidence. The main evidence I can point to is the Dovewing situation, which you all should be aware of. On address to her activity, she just about completely disappeared in 2017. Knowing her and being her friend shouldn't count as your arguments, in my opinion at least, and the handful of you who haven't been around in a long time; new things have been happening since your days of activity, how should you know what's going on now? This goes to the people who barely do any work here as well. People tried once to get Icy to change the way she handles things, but that didn't work so. 01:30, January 3, 2019 (UTC)