Huzzah! The big 100K! Only took me, like... 4.5 years I guess. I can't remember when it was exactly that I got into wiki'ing, but I know I at least started becoming active on the site as a whole at around the summer of 2009. And oh, what a summer that was...

Anywhoo this here 100K is mere chump change compared to the truly dedicated wiki editors out there, and we have in fact of course just had @hailinel post up a blog celebrating his recently surmounted 200,000 wiki points. Talk about timing. So... er, yeah, in comparison my 100K quickly begins to shrivel and recede away when placed into the big picture. But damn it all, I at least consider this a success, and by gum am I going to sleep soundly tonight with roughly about 30% less tears.

What I Wiki

Unlike the most prominent of wiki editors on the site, I'm a little more... focussed. Though most I notice are doing God's work and are scouring the wiki and editing whatever they can.

Users such as @bobafettjm and @saturdaynightspecials in particular I see everywhere. Myself, I tend to gravitate more closely to Resident Evil pages. It's a franchise that was (once) very dear to my heart, and the original PS1 trilogy practically defined my childhood. I was so obsessed with 'em during my pre-teens that I would even imitate the tank controls in real life... Which is as weird as it sounds.

In any case, it's a series that I've found is tethered to me whether I like it not. In some cases I'm happy that I've managed to retain so much information regarding select games of the series, as it's helped pay dividends with regards to then editing their pages. However you of course have the more... modern day Resident Evil games... and, well, that's where this strange devotion suddenly doesn't seem quite as beneficial.

Nonetheless, it's still managed to leave me spiking right up as the top and basically primary editor for the Resident Evil 6 page... Even when it's a game I may despise with every fibre of my being, I'll still uphold the law of neutralness regarding the wiki and will translate what I've played into cold, hard information. I guess in that case I didn't suffer through that game for nuttin'. Mostly anywhoo, as it's not quite as filled out as most Resident Evil pages that have my stamp on it; there's still no Story segment nor an exceedingly long list of enemies and boss battles bios for example. But hey dat gameplay segment's s'alright.

As such, the myriad of Resident Evil-related pages will thusly have my contributions on there somewhere anywhoo, if I'm not actually already the top editor. I've also spent many an hour creating the oh so many minor Resident Evil character pages that I'm sure many wouldn't even recognise to begin with. Dario Rosso anyone???..

Part of why I primarily stick to what I know is because while you can do research and watch videos ect., it still won't quite the match the act of actually playing the thing for yourself writing up a wiki page with that particular perspective in mind. I'll do some research to joggle my memory sure, but I primarily prefer to write in-depth for games I myself have invested some time in already. It's why I would consider my wiki'ing to be of a somewhat comparatively short reach. It's not like I exclusively only stick to Resident Evil, though, and there are plenty of other pages I've helped contribute to. The Uncharted series is one such franchise I'm also invested enough in that you're going to find a lot of my handywork all over 'em, for better or worse. My dedication to the Resident Evil series also sees to it that I've I've stuck myself to The Evil Within page like glue.

That said, I do also like to search far and wide for the opportunity to do some smaller contributions; fixing the formatting, removing all instances of second-person, removing video game title italics, and I do what I can should I spot some dodgy grammar. Though make no mistake, I am certainly no grammatical connoisseur myself, but as you would expect there's a lot of pages on here that are just terrible. Trying to make some sense and remove all of the dumb jokes from the Tales of Symphonia character pages in particular was a helluva chore...

Besides Resident Evil, I would say my other ''specialisation'' is voice actors and actresses. Given that my ultimate dream in life would to in fact become a voice actor, I'm instead doing the next best thing by stalking the many denizens of the career. I've gotten to the point now where I can call out a good many voice actors/actresses by ear, though it also helps how you've got the same handful appearing in games over and over and over an-

There's a lot of 'em out there that are a little more obscure, so I like to go out of my way to make sure that as many voice actors I can find are represented on here. Or in the case of a few of my faves, such as Roger Craig Smith, will even write up a little bit of their history and how they even got in the biz in the first place.

Why I Wiki

To be quite frank, I live both a rather pointless and fruitless existence -- neither point nor fruit do I have going on over here. I have little in the way of talent or skills to speak of either, and I'm reluctant to even call what I live as a ''life''. I'm far from the only one who's surrounded in misery, though, so I don't want to spin my 'sob story', especially when I know many on here have got it much, much worse.

Point is, fooling around with the wiki actually makes me feel productive. I enjoy being apart of a (very slow-moving) initiative to building what should hopefully become the greatest and grandest video game wiki of them all. Plus, I enjoy writing, and while I'm not especially good at it... working on the wiki is a good way to sorta brute force my writing ability up a few notches each time. Even if that also means I'm sure I've gained many a wiki point from correcting my own mistakes... Sometimes my motivation can be a little fleeting, but there are still moments to this day were before I know it I've just spent like 6-hours straight writing up minor Resident Evil character bios.

So, yeah, I find that editing the wiki to be quite gratifying. But it can also be the most frustrating thing ever, given how damn broken it can be sometimes. The complete lack of exposure on the site certainly doesn't help, either. It's not like I'm in it for TEH GLORY or anything, but given how damn important this thing is supposed to be, a little wink and a nod on the site that this thing even exists would certainly help inspire others to assist. Plus there's little things, like how we still can't bleedin' delete images off of pages.

Nonetheless, the drive still exists if only because again it feels like I'm contributing towards something. And for now, that's all that's necessary. But yo seriously why in the fuck do I specifically hafta head into a Person page's Credits category to add games they've worked on rather than being able to add 'em via the main article??

Who I Wiki...?

Barry Burton.

er, wait what

And That's That

So then, a big ole congrats to me, I guess. This blog has now officially served its purpose for providing a bit of autofellatio, so all that's left is to bring it to a close. Though again, my own contributions are but a dot when compared to certain other users.

Plus points aren't everything. The users that scour far and wide and do all of the less glamorous editing via sorting out Releases and simply messing around with grammar and the like are the ones that are putting in the real effort. They are the underground troopers, hidden from sight but still highly vital in the war effort... you could say. Point is it's an even more thankless position to dedicate yourself to editing just about everything the wiki has to offer, even in small doses. I spent a solid 2 hours or so just continually adding People pages for The Evil Within, and there's the odd few times where I've been going around fixing classifications--primarily for voice actors--from 'unclassified' too. I don't do it that often, but I've done it enough to know it can be fucking gruelling work.

Anywhoo, here's to another 100K points in the near future!

Er, actually 100K points is quite a lot... here's to another 75K? Nah, nah, more like 50K, that sounds like a less intimidating goal; there are only so many Resident Evil pages after all! And on that note, here's to another 5K or so eventual points from the inevitable Resident Evil 7 page, I suppose

outro music sure why the hell not