 So first of all, what is an 001 proposal? If you go to the SCP wiki and you look at a 173 or a 682 or a 343 Or an article that's actually good You'll find that everything is numbered, right? And if you look at if you think about it if everything is numbered there had to be a first one you go back Go back one go back one go back one eventually you get to the 001s But the SCP wiki saw this coming and to preserve immersion and probably just to give them all an opportunity You know early on the wiki there was maybe a dozen two dozen writers give them all an opportunity if they wanted to write something It was kind of set up so that the 001s none of them are canon or if they are canon They are there exists in their own sort of thing the premise is that The 001 the true. Oh one cannot be Known to everyone so the easiest way to keep it secret is to have a bunch of them and never be sure which one Is the right one? That's the premise. That's how we can have so many proposals and early on on the SCP wiki Most though not all of the SCP 001s represented sort of the pinnacle of writing for whoever it was that wrote it and Part of that is in included in the name like a proposal a proposal isn't just Like given a random name. It's giving you know doctor say doctor Actus's proposal for DJ cactus and And over time This worked But Not I'm not even gonna say recently. This is something that's happened somewhere about the halfway mark probably close Maybe not the halfway mark. Maybe about the three-quarters mark in the life of the wiki what happened was is that It stopped being as prestigious as it used to be I'm not saying there isn't some person everyone every author Well, not every author but most authors on the SCP wiki good bad indifferent new old whatever Want to write an 01? There's a sense that it gives some level of you know Achievement like you do that and you finally made it Unfortunately because of that fact and because the wiki has been going on for 12 almost 13 years now There's a lot of substandard ones now I'm not going to name any ones in particular today. I may at some point go over some of the SCP 01s. I actually have an old old episode from early on in the channel's Lifespan when I was still doing it as in sort of a podcast format and I go over some of my favorite. Oh ones there The one that I remember the most is probably Kate McTeres's which is Anything that you put an 01 Slot becomes objective truth and for memory serves. That's exactly that's the premise of it But that's not the point of what we're talking about today We're talking about today is the slow decline of quality and prestige now An article no longer really it never did to be fair But an article doesn't have to be an 001 to be successful or wildly popular or to get eyeballs on it in fact one could argue that unless it's any good like There's this in inextricable mixture of quality and visibility right on the scp wiki and There's one side that says Visibility is 100% the only thing that really matters and then there's another side that says quality is the only thing that matters There's some Variation there like some guys over here that say quality may not be the only thing that matters But it should be or over here that says, you know Visibility is the only thing you should push for ever and that's normal because that's how Media is created like in real life. We talk about real life. This is real life, but regardless The problem we run into is Assuming that just by virtue of being an 01 somehow you've got more visibility Which is Patently untrue basically You'll hear people talk about it like I gotta write an 01 to get you know, but and there was a time There was a time When writing an 01 got you such increased visibility that it was definitely worth doing However, there are as of this video's creation and I counted and it's possible that I missed one or added an extra one here But there are 41 001 proposals right So many and some of them are very long so many in fact you probably couldn't read them all in a day You might be able to maybe not depends on your quote your level of reading aptitude, but so many you probably couldn't read them all in one day And that says something about whether or not like how prestigious can it be if there are 41 of them at this point? And you're like, well, there's thousands of SCPs. Yeah, and there's nothing really that separates an 001 these days from an SCP There's this concept and you'll get you'll see this in the comments on certain 01 proposals There's this idea that it has to be Something no one can really ever truly define what that something is. It's just a feeling does this feel like an 01 and Some people say like this doesn't feel epic enough or this doesn't feel important enough or this doesn't feel appropriate for the 01 slot But 001's don't tend to reach while I mean they do sometimes and they sometimes don't they don't tend to reach the wild popularity that you Can get off of a regular slot sometimes It's all about shareability not about visibility at this point. Those are again mixed concepts Obviously the more shareable something is the more visible it becomes because the more shareable it is the more it is shared And therefore visible As writers on the scp wiki though There's this like weird idea that you know, I wrote an 01 so I've I have arrived but and This was probably I don't know when this what year this was It's probably two or three years ago is when I finally realized that the quality standards on the scp wiki had dipped considerably One of my very very favorite writers probably the best writer on the wiki that I've seen I think it's fair to argue that maybe maybe not and it's hard to say Everyone's get different tastes. One of my favorite writers on the wiki is a guy called Kalenin now Kalenin Wrote an 01 proposal that was sort of an event You know, he built a lot of hype up to it and it was it was this, you know series released over a week I think it was a whole week. He wrote an article or he posted an article every day My thing was and this is me speaking about someone who I see as one of the best writers on the wiki It was only okay. I'd say maybe very good You know, like, well, what do you mean? Very good. Isn't that what you're aiming? No, you're not At the time anyway, I expected an 01 to be this thing that just blew me away, right? He didn't do that and this was he built a lot of hype up to it, too So the fact that it didn't blow me away also was disappointing in that sort of sense It was a good article It was pretty good But when I was in my brain I'm like, when did we start accepting the things that were just kind of okay in the 01 slot? And that's when I started to realize that the quality standards on the SCP wiki Haven't okay. I said this earlier that they have had dipped and that's what I realized I don't think that's exactly true It's just that Lower quality was sort of becoming more acceptable from your better writers and a lot of really great writers on the SCP wiki not only disagree with me on that but like Angrily disagree with me on that point and they should you know hold yourself to a higher standard. That's fine Me on the other hand. I looked at it and realized that what that meant is that you could write pretty much anything Get it to stick on the wiki and it's pretty true after a certain amount of time Ultimately I Think this is symptomatic of a bigger problem on the wiki and that's the slow Decline is it a problem though? This is the thing There is a slow decline of the quality of works posted. I think it's not much. It's very minor and And there's still stuff posted today. That's as good as it's ever been like I think and this is that this is back on the olden days sort of talk. This is the problem of time and perspective right The people who were around I'm sure at the beginning of the site probably think the stuff that was written then was best But I feel like in 2014 or 2015 like the quality level sort of no, that's not true Probably closer to 2016 or 2017. I feel like the quality level peaked and It's not gone down precipitously since then But I don't feel like it has been angling up Or if it has it's a very very shallow climb And I don't think that's a bad thing So you say things like this and people just because of their own preconceived notions of what the things mean It's like when you say that the scp wiki is a site for hobbyists or amateurs And they attach meaning to the word hobbyist or amateur that makes them feel inferior When all I'm saying is the truth you don't get paid to write on the wiki You literally can't get paid to write on the wiki. It's against the rules to get paid to write for the wiki so So like it's an amateur site in that sense the quality is you know up down whatever So when I talk about it as a mod moderate level of quality on average I'm not speaking about specific authors, which gives sort of some people sort of an out What I am talking about Is the idea that even the best authors Have started to turn in less than Their best works some of not all and not all the time You know some of them will turn in something that's kind of average and they'll turn in something that's amazing because they can because the site has Exploded in popularity and because there are so many mediocre writers who are getting better Let me be clear who are getting better and may become Amazing writers in the future, but because there are so many mediocre writers getting their stuff up Other better authors and some people have accused me of doing this Have lowered their quality levels because they don't need it to be particularly good in order to get it to survive I don't know if I've consciously done that And I don't know if anyone else is consciously doing that But it is happening And oh one proposals the fact that there's 41 of them is just a Symptom of that problem, right? And the fact that the ones that come out are Sometimes average at best, but they still survive Being in an oh one slot doesn't mean anything other than what you meaning you give it If you want to have an oh one slot could you think it's important? Then it's important to you and to a few other people Everyone's like, oh my god, it's so amazing. But is it really like it's just another you could have put that in a regular slot Probably would have got more visibility at this point. Nobody's Most people are not well, it's not not like I'll say most A lot of people are not scrolling down to the bottom of the oh one page to read your proposal now To be fair, there's only 35 on that page. There's six joke proposals And this is speaking as somebody who wrote one of those joke proposals, but Um I don't know now and now I see an oh one. I just kind of skip it. I don't even bother reading anymore Like unless it's by someone I know who has asked me to read it And I don't know. Maybe I'm just sad about my rate Maybe this is more about me than it is about anyone else, but it just feels sad that I'm not longer no longer excited by them Anyway, that's it Thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed the video Please hit the subscribe button and then hit the notification bell next to that So you're notified when I upload new videos and I'm talking directly to you lucas hit the subscribe button Then head on over to patreon.com Ford slash D samarian and pledge at any level like everybody here on the screen already has including Dr. J redacted Synderiki Who will both pledge at $100 I'll get this right one day It's it's almost like I do this in literally every video and you would think I would get it right, but I don't And morgan who has pledged at $40 It's nice to know that I'm not alone out here and I will see you all again on tuesday with a dank memes video