Thread:Algorithmz/@comment-188432-20170217214223/@comment-188432-20170218231235

Having powers is massively overrated.

The amount of stuff you can do without rights dwarfs what you can do with powers. Seriously, check out Help:User rights if you haven't done so in a while. All you need tp effect massive change at Fandom is one of the following:
 * an admin on an established wiki who's willing to use their rights to introduce your changes
 * a test wiki you founded (like this one!) where you naturally have admin rights

Either situation is going to let you can demonstrate CSS, JS -- whatever ya want. Then, other people can come take a look at your work and incorporate it into their own designs. Staff members can drop by and consider the wider applicability of what you've done.

I've contributed to hundreds of communities and probably looked at thousands more. And every day I see things that I know come from CSS I introduced at Tardis years before I was actually an admin. I just passed my code to the then-admins and had them copy and paste it. I didn't need to be an admin to radically transform the way Tardis looked, and then the way that a lot of other wikis looked. And then after a while of showing people I knew what I was doing, they got tired of doing the cutting-and-pasting. And I applied to be an admin through the local processes, saying, basically, "It'll save you from doing all that cutting-and-pasting." And they agreed. Point is: demonstrate your worth, and people will eventually say, "Of course you should be given additional rights."

Looking even further back to the early 2000s, contributors at Memory Alpha, before MA was even a Fandom wiki, had tremendous impact on a lot of the original Fandom wikis. And they weren't even trying. It just came out of a natural fascination people had with the work they were doing.

Rights do not have a direct relationship to impact.

Moreover, people will see quality more than they will see quantity. There are a ton of people whom we admit into various volunteer programs who have much fewer edits than me or other members of staff. Why? Because we go to their wikis and they knock our socks off with how amazing their work is.

Oh! Here's a thought: consider finding a wiki whose content you really enjoy. Amidst all your other editing on "meta wikis" like Community, take some time to try to improve this other wiki. It'll genuinely help your work in localisation and portability and all these other meta topics if you have a solid track record editing a "normal" wiki about a particular fandom.