User blog:Drek'TharSuperSword/10th YEAR on the wiki! And PvZ's 13th anniversary

Well this is it ladies and gentlemen, we finally have a winner. If you can call it that... Someone finally managed to actually stay active and maintain this place for 10 years! And it just so happens to land on the same day as PvZ's 13th anniversary. If PvZ were a person, it would've been able to create social media accounts now.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of me on the wiki. It's been a long ride and I really wasn't expecting to reach this far the first time I made this account back in 2012. I've seen so many members, staff and even friends come and go over the course of 10 years. I've watched the speculations of what the future PvZ games might look like when PvZ1 was the only thing we have, the moments leading to PvZ2's launch, the wiki revamp in 2013, the creation of the discord server, even things like the drama that surrounds the community and how Fandom tried to fix what ain't broke.

The first edits I made are pretty terrible btw. I honestly wouldn't suggest to read them, because you will cringe at how terrible they are.

Fun fact: while I'm probably the only wiki staff member to remain as one after 10 years, I was actually the last of the 2012 users who got admin/crat privileges. I remember having a hard time getting them and even ragequitting at one point when I realized I wasn't able to get the amount of edits required to get them (back then you need at least 1k edits for admin, 2k for crat). Honestly it was pretty cringe and I really shouldn't have done that. Everyone seems to think that having admin or crat privileges is cool but in reality it's actually not much different, other than of course being able to access certain things that are off-limits to regular uses like editing fully protected pages.

Also, the fact that I joined on the same day as PvZ's anniversary is just a coincidence. Back when I created this account, I wasn't even aware of that, and I only realized it when PopCap started doing the Birthdayz event on their games.

I sometimes wonder if I could hit 20. Given how I'm 21 now I feel like it might consume too much time in the future so there's a chance I might not but who knows? (and yes, I DID create this account when I was 11 so I was underaged at the time lol)

Oh yeah, because I keep seeing a lot of people trying to be extremely active here, I will give you some advice if you're willing to stay for this long on a Fandom community:

1. Don't apply for a staff member whenever possible, especially discord mod. It can get extremely frustrating to deal with community drama, which could end up making you ill due to psychological stress. Also, being a staff means that you need to be active in order to prevent demotion, which might become a burden if you suddenly need to work on something that takes most of your time consistently such as thesis or work.
   1. If you ever need to have something added or changed on a fully-protected page, deal with certain users, delete certain contents like spam discussion posts or other administrative things, don't be afraid to ask a content mod, admin or crat. If the content is worthy of adding, then they will gladly add them. The thing is, such things help them stay active, so contrary to popular belief, the common stereotype of "wiki staff is bad" really doesn't apply in reality.
   2. If you still need to apply for a staff member anyway, just be prepared to deal with community issues, and there's plenty of them, so it's not just dramas. Things like reverting vandalism, fixing up templates and the wiki layout, or deleting spam comments and posts, will be something you'll eventually have to do.
2. Related to the above, stay away from drama whenever possible. If you get caught in the collateral damage, it's gonna be a pain in the ass to deal with. Don't interact with them, don't get involved and don't try to poke around. Remember, curiosity kills the cat.
3. Please stop posting nonsensical content on the forums. Seriously. We're tired of it and it will greatly reduce your chance of being accepted as staff if we catch you do that.
4. Stubs, unfinished pages, and red links are good sources of edits. If you know anything about the content or find that it's missing some images, just add them.
5. Don't fully trust anyone, not even your friends. There has been various instances where people, including staff members, have gone rogue or been exposed doing something in violation of the rules, such as the Napalm Rosalina incident from 2014 or WinterMagnet from 2015. We're all just strangers on the internet after all, and you can never be sure that people are gonna consistently do the right thing.

With that said I hope you can learn how to avoid getting stressed out or depressed while in here.

I apologize if this comes out as a bit awkward, but hey, I didn't have any template for this beforehand so I just ended up winging it. Have a good day.