No Statute of Limitations

It's been a long time since I've contributed a significant wiki article to this site. I can't really remember the last time, although I guess during the run up to Skyrim I did several little fact dumps to see what was true and what was just rumor. 
 
When this place was founded, I wrote an article about Star Raiders that I like to repeatedly mention was added to a list by GB's Jeff; I guess he and I had a similar passion for the game when growing up and he was happy to see someone else with a scary level of knowledge on that old game. I wrote it out of a similar passion, and this was when just about anything worked on the site as long as it wasn't destructive or hateful. I gave the same level of energy on several other articles, often with the expert knowledge of people who knew better than I did what things were about. Gave me a spread of articles I was proud of, almost like I'd infused a bit of myself into the world at large.
 
I realize that eventually, though, a site has to settle on a certain style, and many of my articles are apparently not quite up to standards. 
 
To be honest, I'm not sure why I wrote all of these articles. I guess I was happy that there was a website that seemed to have enough personality to distance itself from a bland wikia, and I liked the idea that fellow gamers could see and comment on what I'd written. Gave me a bit of pride that what I wrote might matter to someone else, and that I could distinguish myself by writing them, both in points and in general recognition. But I knew from the beginning that what I was doing was adding to a database that wasn't really mine, and (was it years ago?) I noticed that there were tipping points about where the site was headed, things that might eventually affect the tone and scope of what was written.
 
It's been a few months since I was really active on this site, and that's because I've been working formally in what is imprecisely called "the gaming industry", and all my efforts have been concentrated there. When I get home, I just pull up Skyrim or Heroes of Might and Magic, just zone out for a few hours, and go to bed. I just finished a 12 day work-week, with plenty of overtime to round it out, and I've come to realize that even an office job can wear you down if you don't get enough of a breather.
 
When I logged in here after that absence, I got a note that a bunch of my articles are causing problems for the editors here. It's a bit demoralizing to see that stuff you enjoyed writing and enjoyed sharing are apparently causing people grief now, especially since the grief has spread back to me in a way. I guess this is something that comes with an age I'm not fully a part of, as others are quick to remind me: you can write something a long time ago and it's preserved, possibly until the heat death of the universe when the last of the human arks carrying The Archives of All Knowledge and Porn Sites grows cold. You are responsible for everything, ever, that you have ever done, and as long as someone bothers to keep a record, it's attached to you and seems as new as the day your wrote it, even if it was written years and years ago.
 
In the section of the industry in which I'm currently working, people working on the game do not get in-game credit for their work. There is no list of credits that you can click on, and many of the contributors are only visible if they make themselves visible. I can't tell you how many times I've ignored credit scrolls in games unless I'd beaten the game, and I would often watch them just to see if they put little zingers at the end, or check to see if I'd properly guessed on a voice actor. It's different when you're actually doing one of those jobs, or many of those jobs at once, and you know that you won't be able to point at it and prove that you were part of it. You know you were, your colleagues know, and people who trust you will believe you did what you did, but there's something satisfying about having your name on a project that can't quite be measured in dollars.
 
Yet as part of the nature of a collaborative medium, whether it's a wiki page, a mass-market game, or a film, you know that it's rare to be able to say something and not have it be changed by the time it's shown to others. Just about the only way to do this is to write your own stuff, make your own stuff, and publish it on your own. When contributing to anything collaborative, there are waves of changes that can dilute, but also sharpen, what you're trying to say, and sometimes the changes are so huge that you don't recognize what comes out the other side. It's best not to be too invested in it, but it's hard not to be, even if it's more an emotional attachment to the effort you put into it than anything concrete having to do with HOW you wrote it, or what you wrote about.
 
When I was younger I was adrift, and found myself hanging out with film students. Their interest in films mirrored mine (I never even knew you could take a degree in filmmaking, as worthless as that degree might seem to some of you, and I was a bit jealous that they'd figured out how), and I actually several of them in various ways during their assignments. At one point, though, I felt the director was making a huge mistake with one of his decisions, I voiced that opinion, and the director happened to hear it. Naturally, the next day I was told that my help wasn't needed anymore.
 
It's been a long time since I wrote most of the articles for this website, and I remember telling myself that while I was injecting a bit of personality into what I was writing, that I shouldn't get too attached, otherwise I'd be setting myself up for disappointment should the site suddenly close, the database get destroyed, that sort of thing. In effect I was avoiding the same mistake I'd made with those budding filmmakers years before. What I wasn't expecting was that side-effect of digital sharing that I mentioned earlier, that what I wrote then was also written now, right now, and it's fresh in the minds of any readers that happen to see it on any given day.
 
So I guess the analogy to films doesn't really fit; even with most video games there's some point where you give up and move on. Wikis however, are constantly being updated and changed. It's like an eternal rough draft, always up for revisions, never complete, and you're never allowed to say "that was me, then.  I probably wouldn't have done that now," because it's still there, masquerading as a current work, ready to be read, even if it now comes across as anachronistic, out of sync with the tone the collective site is apparently trying to convey.

Once I achieved a certain point level I decided I'd reached the limit of my contributions, and might put in a bit of energy here and there but it wasn't really necessary anymore. I'd made my mark, and like some people spend hours figuring out what profile picture they're going to show to the world, I felt like I'd made a statement about myself through what games I chose to talk about, and I learned about my own tastes by looking back on what I had focused on.  I've continued to contribute blogs, because I like talking about games, and some seem to appreciate my weird angle on things. 
 
But because I chose to write wiki articles, I am permanently connected to them as long as I have an account here. I take full responsibility for what I wrote, of course, although I can't really say I remember most of it anymore, nor do I remember there being readily-accessible, detailed style rules back when I wrote most of it, though my being unable to keep up with the constantly changing forums may have something to do with that. I do remember checking with individuals as I wrote, asking if what I was writing was appropriate. Those that responded seemed to enjoy what I wrote; no one told me to stop back when they were actually published despite getting general feedback and occasional recognition. I do have to remind myself though that like with writing in a wiki, editing a wiki is a collaborative process, and the taste and rules-sense of a few people may not match up with those of others, or with the group as a whole.
 
I do hope, though, that people will take into account the fact that I've not really written anything substantial for the wiki in quite a while: it's disturbing to receive a formally written letter about something that was contributed a while ago causing problems as if I'd written it yesterday, especially since I've done my level best not to feel personally attached to what I wrote. It was a gift to this site and to the community here, really-- as lumpy and unseemly as this gift might seem.

The disconnect between now and then is nearly palpable to me, but as many of you know, I've become a bit of a fossil. I wonder if I'll ever get used to the idea of having a permanent, digital paper trail that never blurs with age.