Look, I can understand how you guys must be feeling. You've made that very clear. Angry. Betrayed. Frustrated. Neglected. Disappointed. Resentful. And you have every right to feel that way. I won't make any excuses here, so please don't take any of the elaboration below as such. I plan to make a separate post later on (when I'm in a better frame of mind EDIT: posted
here) because I feel that the community deserves to know the personal reasons behind what has happened over the previous 2.5 years.
And before I go on, to address the most important point here; yes of course I'll transfer the domain ownership and whatever else you guys may need from what I have. I've already contacted Dillion directly about that.
Maybe this was never as clear to anyone as I'd believed, but it was certainly 100% clear to Josh (Axiomist) even from the point when WiKirby was nothing but a twinkle in his eye; I was never going to have any kind of active presence as an editor on the wiki itself. From day one, my role was purely one of technical support and consultancy, on the basis that I considered Josh a good friend and wanted to help his project succeed in the long term. He understood that I had no interest in Kirby games, having never layed them, and would never be in a position to patrol edits or get involved in the community as such. Josh himself started from a similar position, although he cultivated an interest in the series and began to play and learn the games. The reason Josh founded WiKirby wasn't due to a passion for the games themselves. What he saw was a lack of any open, independant wiki for this series of games, and he wanted to create a place where that community could take root and grow.
Perhaps this is crass, but I'll say it anyway. When Josh died, I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly holding the "keys" to WiKirby. I thought deeply about what to do; but of course there was only one conclusion. Despite any obstacles, the wiki must stay online, and I was the only one there to take on the burden. Since that moment I've sunk at least $1500 of my own money into the site, paying the server bills and domain renewals, as well as large chunks of my time in previous years working on the server-side. I bought two new domains to try and combat the fact that we couldn't get control of the original .info domain name, redirecting them all to .com way in advance of the original domain expiring, to ensure there was no negative impact in terms of search engine referrals. I ensured that there was a full and comprehensive backup in placed in case we ever needed disaster recovery, and have maintained the infrastructure supporting that until today.
Yes, there were suggestions that others might consider taking over running WiKirby (either one or two, I don't recall exactly), and yes, I did reject tese offers at the time. I won't go into my reasons behind that, as to do so would require me to speak on Josh's behalf. You can ask me about that privately if you want, but please show some discretion. Suffice it to say, had the current setup been proposed to me, I would have gladly handed everything over without any reservations.
Josh and I had shared an uncertainty over how extensive and long-lasting a community a Kirby wiki could expect to attract. The nature of the games, IMO, is such that they appeal to younger plaers, and have less of a series continuity or story-based pull than other Nintendo franchises. That could make for a tough demographic out of which to build a strong, lasting community of wiki editors. After Josh was gone, I have to admit to having taken a somewhat fatalistic view of what I perceived as a lack of strong growth and an absence of regular, good-quality editors who kept up their activity. I had hoped that things would snowball by themselves, and my position solely as a custodian and platform-facilitator would be sufficient. But as time went on, that seemed not to be the case, and it became clear to me that in losing its community leader, a key component of Wikirby was now missing.
At this point I have to say, Vellidragon you (aside from me) are the only other reason that WiKirby still exists. I've expressed this to you via email before, but let me say publicly that your tenacity and enthusiasm as WiKirby's only day-to-day admin has been essential, and is truly appreciated. I know the position all too well, having served a short yet exhausing six-month stint as Zelda Wiki's only active staff member. Fortunately, others stepped in before I was completely overwhelmed and could no longer keep my head above water. So I, too, have felt the resentment towards and absentee owner; I can understand the difficulties of such a relationship from both sides.
So there you have my actions and intentions from my point of view. Make of that what you will, but as I said at the start there are no excuses contained there, and none should be inferred from what I wrote. Perhaps I wasn't the best person to take over running wiKirby in the long term, but at the critical point I was the ONLY person who could do so. I did all I could to keep WiKirby alive; it's alive today, so I feel that in that small way (at least) I succeeded. I hope Josh would understand.
All that remains for me to say is:
I'm sorry. I apologies for my shortcomings and the ways in which I failed the community though what I wasn't able to offer. I hope, given time, that some of you can forgive me.
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