4. The Wiki Cap

NOT

one

a lot

NOT

Impatient



Entitled



Taking quantity over quality



Too focused on the Cap itself (unless you have incredible amounts of dedication and "stubbornness")



Staying uninterested in the Wiki itself and the community within it



And last but not least: Giving up

US

Welcome to the final part of the Tf2 wiki guide where I will talk about the infamous, sparkly and highly sought after Wiki Cap. To you who haven't heard of it before, it is basically a cosmetic item handed out to those who are regarded as valuable members of the tf2 wiki team. (It is also the only cosmetic item with the Community quality - as far as I know of).The process that determines who gets it is a sort of nomination based voting system:You can nominate others you find qualified for the Wiki Cap and once they have been nominated the admins or mods have to agree to the nomination. If the nomination reaches 5 yes votes it will go through and the player will be awarded with the cap, if it reaches 5 no votes it will be declined for the time being. You can nominate the same person again and again, but it is better to wait a month or two before re-nominating someone.You can read more about it here Now I have my own two cents I want to shareIt is no secret that a lot of people come to the wiki in order to get the Wiki Cap, but seeing as how the only guide thus far is about 4 years old, it might give a false sense of progression. So let me set some things straight.There is no set amount of edits required to get the Wiki Cap.You can easily get hundreds of edits creating stuff like redirects and translating 8 year old patch notes, but we value what each edit has done instead of the amount. Don't forget that no matter if you translate a 200k byte page or change a single letter in sentence - both counts asedit. So if you expect to get the Wiki Cap by casually translating small pages, making redirects and fixing small grammatical errors for 2 weeks then I am sorry to disappoint you.Tl;dr - It is not about the amount of edits, but what the amount of edits represent/have been used for.Going for the Wiki Cap with no interest in the Wiki itself is hard.You know that feeling of getting dragged along to do something you do not really want to do at all? Like playing sports when you'd rather just stay at home and study or game all day? Yeah, the wiki works in the same way. It takes HUGE dedication and a lot of time to really get going and if you are not up for the ride then I am afraid you need to be really stubborn or else you are gonna burn out in a matter of weeks at most. You are of course welcome to make an account and do some small changes you think are necessary and leave again - noone says you have to work towards a Wiki Cap (or anything for that matter), but if you are only there for the cap, then I wish you nothing but good luck getting that far.Tl;dr - Working on the wiki for the Cap alone is tiredsome and will burn you out if you do not enjoy working the wiki in the first place.Do not feel entitled.You may sit there and think you are qualified for the Cap, but until someone nominates you, it is all but in your head. You can improve your chances by being proactive in the community and joining in on some conversations (getting yourself known around these parts), but please refrain from going on long drawn out rants and get impatient for no reason - I can tell you right now: That won't improve your chances in the slightest.Tl;dr - As it is stated on the nomination page: "The Wiki Cap is not a right. It is a privilege and reward for useful contributions."It takes time.It takesof time. To put it into perspective: I got my Wiki Cap in about 7-8 months and that is actually quite fast. If you expect to use less than half a year then you better have a lot of spare time or a lot of creative, innovative and crazy changes ready for the Wiki. Again: There are no time limit, no minimum/maximum edit count and no real "set-in-stone" way to get it, you just have to be a good asset to the team, and you can take all the breaks you want to - your edits do not go anywhere.Don't give upDoing anything for the first time is hard. Life is a journey on which you do nothing, but learn how little you actually know. But even though you might feel disappointed or unknowledgeable you shouldn't throw a towel in the ring because someone gave you some constructive advice. If every goal you ever set in life got completed without trouble and without hardships, it would be meaningless; a goal is only a goal because we have to challenge ourselves and focus hard to reach it; what is quest without a journey? So - if you are interested in working with us then just remember: Everything will make sense eventually and you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggsSo in conclusion, the way toget a Wiki Cap is by being:Lastly I just want to acknowledge all the controversy surrounding the Wiki Cap and, by extension, the Wiki itself.For the uninformed here is the short version:Back in 2014 some users discovered and reported a devistating bug (a bug that could've ruined the economy of Tf2) that basically made it possible for Giftapults to be used as keys on Crates. In the good ol' days Valve gave out a free, untradable unusual hat of your choosing (before it got replaced by the Finder's Fee in 2015) and one of the players choose a Sunbeam Wiki Cap. That led to a debate between him and the tf2 wiki and long story short he ended up having to rechoose his chosen Unusal and he got a Burning Flames Max's Severed Head instead.I wasn't around back then, but the incident seemed to have left a bad taste in everyone's mouth and to this day you can't mention the Wiki Cap on r/tf2 without someone bringing it up. I can see both sides of the argument, but I hope you can understand that the Wiki Cap means a lot to us. We give it out to people we want to represent our community, our strides and our work effort, and I guess it was too much to watch someone else get it, albeit different, just for what it symbolizes and means to. You might not agree with the decision, and that's fine, but it is what it is.Now what I can't understand is the rumors that the admins or mods are some kind of evil, patronising and stigmatizing group of individuals who do nothing but berate you - I can tell from my experience that it is a complete and utter lie. I have been with the wiki for some time now and I have never witnessed or been a victim of any sort of descrimination or unfair treatment - even when I was at my worst! I am almost certain that people whining about unfair treatment probably did something aggresive to deserve a harsher choice of words, or were so riled up that they took things harsher than they should. I still chat to a lot of the Wiki workers and I promise you nothing, but good friendships/relationships and karma if you decide to join us.