 What if I told you that bad writing is good for the SCP Wiki? New people who are introduced to the Wiki are almost invariably introduced via bad articles. SCP 173, SCP 682, and the gamut of series 1 articles are all very, very bad, and they're also the ones most likely to get linked to for new writers. And when we look at the daily in and out of new articles on the Wiki, we see a lot of articles that fit the mold of those early, terrible series 1 articles. Recently I've come to realize something. These articles are kind of what keeps the site alive. See, the most appealing thing about the SCP Wiki is that it has a low barrier of entry. Once you figure out how to do an application, you're in, and you can write an article that will be judged by the community. If it's a bad article, it'll get judged properly, and you'll learn, hopefully, from your mistakes. But if these introductory articles were the most elite and best written articles on the site, I'd get the inclination that a lot of new writers would simply get turned off to the idea of trying to write for the Wiki at all. And that goes back to the biggest problem with any community, engagement. It's the same reason I ask people to comment in the discussion below or why other channels that actually have social media will say, you know, check us out on Twitter or check us out on Tumblr, because having an audience that's engaged with your content rather than just a passive viewer of the content is infinitely more desirable. And how does that translate over to the SCP Wiki? Well, bad writers, good writers, whatever, can come to the SCP Wiki, see these articles that are incredibly popular, and think to themselves that they can do those things. They're wrong, because, you know, there's a whole history of the site they don't understand. It's been around for 10 years, and standards have changed, but it gets them through the door. Then this is something that I, when I was Wiki staffed in Comprehend, I always say, you can never be a good writer until you're a bad writer. It always takes practice to become amazing at something. And even without natural talent, you can still become very, very good, or even amazing at a thing if you practice enough. This is why making sure people are taking feedback the right way is something I try to focus in hard on. As long as someone is willing to listen to your feedback, and your feedback is good, they can improve themselves. As long as an author, they don't go, well, the only reason my article is downvoted is because no one was reading it, or the only reason my article is downvoted is because the prevailing people in power just don't like it. Essentially, as long as they're not making excuses for when their content was bad, they're going to become better. And eventually, they'll end up with an article that sticks to the site. And I really do feel that these bad articles are what pull these people in in the first place. Because if you look at SCP-173, I don't care who you are, you realize, without a shadow of a doubt, anyone could write that. It is important to remember, they're poorly written. And because they're poorly written, I feel that people see the SCP Wiki as something that they can gain entry into no matter how good or how bad they are at writing. So the solution to our problem is to stop looking so derisively at the bad articles. I'll tell you this right now, every time we get an influx of new people in the Wiki, there's a fair portion of the community that feel as though their space is being violated. And those people will complain about the bad writing or they'll complain about how many new people are coming in who have no idea what the basic standards of the Wiki are. This is something I talk about when I give feedback. I think I've talked about this in the How to Not Seek Feedback series. If you treat everyone the same, you're never going to find the author who can improve. Of course, that's just my opinion, but I'm always going to hold to the idea that you can never be good at something until you're bad at it. Engage with the community, leave a comment down below. Like the video and subscribe. And hey, share it with your friends.