It is now 5 years to the day that I joined ESB (January 25, 2020). It honestly doesn't feel right to me at all that it has been that long since 2020, but hey, time goes by very quickly. This site means a lot to me for obvious reasons, so I simply have to reflect and review what I have been through these 5 years on this wiki.
Social contributions and early editing beginnings[]
My main motivation for joining ESB has been to discuss SpongeBob SquarePants with a variety of people, given that it is my favorite cartoon, and I really wanted to open up more with people who love the show to the same extent as I do. Most of my earliest contributions (from February to April 2020) have been on message walls and forums, since I wanted to get involved in interacting with other users, and bring a few things to the table, whether that be discussing episode opinions, playing forum games, or being in other threads that would go into absurd randomness. As for that last part, these are key examples. It is really funny to me how some of these threads blew up and became their own series of threads over time. Some other message wall threads I was commonly on were other users' marathons of the series. I enjoyed having these discussions with these users a lot, especially considering most of the users I met through these threads I still interact with today, and nowadays we have regular casual discussions on Discord.
A lot of my other interactions in 2020 came through the forums. Forums are obviously no longer used now because of the UCP implementation that took place on this wiki in October 2020, but back when they existed, there was a lot to do on there. These featured more various discussions of SpongeBob and other topics with a wide variety of people, and various games centered around episodes. The main thing in the forums that I was involved in were the Hurt and Heals. If you don't know what Hurt and Heals are, these were a popular forum game from 2017 to 2020, that essentially had users vote for which episodes they wanted to win, through removing ("hurt") or adding ("heal") HP for certain episodes. I participated in some pretty big ones, such as one that featured every Post-Movie episode, and one that featured fan-favorite episodes after prior wide votings. I even made some of my own Hurt and Heals, the most notable being my series featuring episodes whose number ended with a certain digit, which consisted of three rounds. These games obviously faded out after UCP happened, but I still have very strong memories of being involved in these.
As for the editing side of the wiki, while I was highly involved in it during my first few months, most of my edits were fairly minor, the majority of which came on episode or music articles, mainly to help with simple fixes or organization of said articles. The entire airdate situation with seasons 1 and 2 happened in late February 2020, where it was discovered that many of the airdates that we've previously known for certain season 1 and 2 episodes were actually incorrect, which is one of the main things that hugely interested me, and partially inspired me to get more involved with editing.
Becoming more active with editing and the rise to user rights[]
I joined the wiki a month and a half before the COVID-19 pandemic really kicked in, obviously not knowing at the time how huge a deal it would become. As a result, I spent much more time online than I expected throughout 2020, and thus I became increasingly active on the wiki. This led to me becoming much more involved in the editing scope, particularly since late April. This ranged from me creating articles that warranted a page, addressing major formatting issues on articles, and making substantial updates to various pages. Around this time, I was also focused on reverting and reporting vandalism. I wasn't on the wiki's Discord server at the time, so I sent in a variety of reports to administrators on their message walls, while continuing to communicate with users.
Around this time was when I also first noticed that episode galleries were a key aspect that needed more help. I saw other users updating these in HD around this time, so I was aiming to help out when I noticed that "Lame and Fortune"'s gallery had only 55 images, which was nowhere near the modern standard of 200. As a result, I attempted to revamp this one, although due to the inexperience I had with obtaining copies of episodes, as well as resources to use at the time, it wasn't my best one, and it would later get redone again. I would get much better at galleries later on, but I'll mention that later.
I originally joined the wiki with not really having any intentions of holding user rights, but that was largely in part that when I joined, I didn't think I would find myself being as active on the wiki as I would be a few months later. It was around June when I first considered gaining user rights, but I wasn't ready to request just yet. I was further encouraged the month after, between being messaged about the subject, as well as people generally saying the wiki could use more help. And I realized the extent of that help needed, as two key crew resignations happened in the span of a few hours on July 26. As a result, I felt like it was the right time to step up, so I decided to request for rollback the day after. I ended up getting promoted five days later, and it was definitely a thrill to first join the ESB crew. I continued to push on for more substantial edits around this time, such as continuing to revert vandalism, expanding pages, and other general fixes. I had a particular focus on event pages in late August and early September.
At this time, I felt ready to request for assistant. My main motive was that certain templates which were protected at the time needed to be consistently updated, as well as being able to meditate edit wars. I was definitely pretty happy and felt grateful for the overwhelming support I received, and I ended up getting promoted to assistant on September 5. I will admit that I was a bit over-eager with the role at first, such as wanting to take action on page requests, even though I wasn't supposed to. Although a proposal did pass shortly after, which would allow me to do so.
At this time, I was also doing a marathon of the series, which I started in late August and would finish in early November, which matched up when season 13 premiered. Starting at season 3 and up to season 11, I discussed my episode opinions on message threads, which I had quite a bit of fun with as well. I watched through season 12 after the UCP update happened, so I discussed my opinions on that season through Discord. I also did season review blogs after I finished watching through every season, but I have since deleted them due to my opinions from the 2020 rewatch being outdated.
I continued to press on with editing while having the assistant role, and it was around this time that I was really realizing my enjoyment of editing on this wiki, being a key help to the community, since I was just thoroughly invested in this show, and wanting to make sure information is in place and well-documented. With the new role, I was more focused on high maintenance matters, such as updating the database pages, and implementing various proposals, including leading the way for placing in the redesigns for multiple icons, tables, and templates; those being made by Theremind Lover. At the time of that proposal (December 2020), I hit the 30,000-edit mark, perhaps a further indication of my insane activity (and perhaps, addiction) on this site throughout that year.
Becoming an administrator[]
In December 2020, when hitting the 30,000 edit milestone, I was encouraged to go for the administrator role, which I have given serious thought into, but I wanted to wait until I felt the time was right to request. After continuing to help carry out various proposals and making other general edits, I felt ready to request for administrator at the beginning of March 2021. By that time, I served as an assistant for almost six months, and by then I really felt like I got down the ins and outs of editing, and had an idea of what to do in situations of trouble happening on the wiki. Also, this was around the time that mass vandal attacks were happening, which was an extra motivator for me, aside from me just wanting to continue to help the wiki in general. Much like with the assistant request, I was extremely grateful to see the overwhelming support from the wide community, and it was definitely a crazy feeling for me to get promoted within that week.
In my first few weeks as an administrator, I felt like getting further into some of the bigger aspects around ESB. I started doing high-quality episode galleries the following month (April 2021), with my first one being "Sold!" I went around redoing episode galleries that either needed more images so that they would fit the 200-episode standard, or those that were in low resolution or image quality. However, some of the first galleries I did were also for newer episodes, such as "Plankton's Intern," "Kooky Cooks," "Under the Small Top," and "Pat the Dog;" all of these I have done soon after they premiered. There's also quite a few I did before their U.S. premiere, such as "Hiccup Plague," "Pat Hearts Squid," "Patrick's Tantrum," and "C.H.U.M.S." I found it to be tons of fun to do these, and pretty satisfying to further help the wiki. I always considered episode galleries to be one of this wiki's strongest aspects, mainly due to how they are organized and how high quality they have become.
Along with that, I was continuing to work on production music/original music pages throughout the year, as well as focusing on some of the major merchandise, such as making a page for Monopoly SpongeBob SquarePants Meme Edition, as well as more major areas around the wiki, such as setting up and monitoring the April 2021 user rights review. Further major edits I would make in the following month include working on synopses for the newer episodes; "Patrick's Tantrum" and "Kooky Cooks" being my first ones. I also sought after expanding various articles that I was able to as well, such as SpongeBob DocuPants. Some of the bigger proposals and requests I found myself carrying out around this time too, such as cleanup for the language lists, and separating Patrick's parents in The Patrick Star Show into their respective pages.
Spin-off coverage and further advancements[]
With spin-offs arising in 2021 between Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years and The Patrick Star Show, I've really gotten invested into watching both spin-offs and helping out with covering content on them. I've done galleries for every episode in Kamp Korals second batch, and most of the first half of The Patrick Star Show's first season. I have also since done a few from Kamp Koral batches 3 and 4. Another notable thing in relation to the spin-offs I've worked on is the credits pages. For a while now, I've been diligently doing these for all three shows in the franchise.
And as for synopses, myself, along with a few other users, have been doing these over time. The spin-offs have been in a clear need of having their articles developed, so a guide has since been created, and it has been expanded over time. I've also been making sure to organize categories for the spin-offs, especially the image category ones. Back to episode galleries, I have done 62 galleries across the franchise in 2021, and another 50 in 2022. Other users were also getting into the gallery-doing field around this time, and that's pretty neat to see. I used VLC to do my galleries in 2021 and most of 2022, but warnings came by due to VLC messing up the coloring. Either way I couldn't use VLC after July 2022 since it just wouldn't work for me anymore. For the rest of 2022, I used other media players to experiment, and finally found a viable solution in MPC to start off 2023. So while my rate of galleries in 2023 and 2024 wasn't as fast as the previous 2 years, they really felt like my best ones by this point.
There are several other notable things I feel are worth bringing up between late 2021 and late 2023. I have some fond memories of live-watching a few episode premieres in the ESB Discord server, in particular with "SpongeBob's Road to Christmas" and "The Big Bad Bubble Bass"/"Sea-Man Sponge Haters Club." By April 2022, I felt ready to request for bureaucrat, having been an administrator for a year, passing the 40,000 edit milestone, and I felt like by this point, my stance on the wiki was high enough between all the work I have done to warrant requesting. It got unanimously supported, and it's safe to say I felt massively appreciated here. Since then, I have addressed various other things, such as categories for video files, and I have continued to make sure the wiki is up to date generally. Throughout 2023 and 2024, along with episode galleries, I placed my focus towards DVD bonus features and crew member pages, the former area is particularly underdeveloped on the wiki.
SpongeBob 25th Anniversary Celebration[]
2024 was a year I was anxiously awaiting for a while, due to that year being the 25th anniversary of SpongeBob, so big things would be happening this year on the wiki. One of my main contributions for the 25th anniversary is marathoning the series (again), but with a little twist I have added. I ended up watching all of seasons 1-13, as well as the first three movies, in a random order, forming my schedule by using a generator. I started this marathon as soon as 2024 started, on January 1. I did episode reviews in the process again, discussing my opinions on a Discord friend server after finishing a batch of episodes.
This marathon ended up taking 76 days, with March 16 being the final day. The culmination of this marathon was my massive series review I did to showcase my ranking of the entire series, and to give my thorough analysis on each season of the show. This blog was easily the work I poured the most effort into, mainly since I really love the show, and wanted to contribute to the anniversary in my own way.
The wiki's main plan for the anniversary was the return of SpongeCup EpisodePants, originally held in 2019 for the show's 20th anniversary. With a new generation of users and over 100 individual episodes having been released since the last tournament, it seemed like an interesting opportunity. After some discussions about the format, it would be confirmed. 64 episodes featured in the final tournament, with the top 32 episodes from the 2019 tournament qualifying, and the other 32 episodes determined by qualifier rounds; 16 episodes from the rest of the 2019 tournament, and 16 episodes from season 12 and onwards. I held votes for these to decide which ones would advance, to which the results can be seen here. The tournament began on May 1, marking 25 years since the first episodes premiered. In the lead-up to the tournament, I held the draw for the group stage, organizing the episodes into their respective groups. The group stage lasted 36 days total, ending on June 6. The knockout round began the following day, with 32 episodes remaining.
After several rounds, the tournament came down to "Krusty Krab Training Video" and "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout," with the final lasting one week, beginning on July 10 and concluding on July 17, the show's "other" anniversary date, since that's when it started airing regularly. "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout" ended up winning the tournament. I found the SpongeCup to be tons of fun to run, and I was really happy with being able to host and experience it. And for the heck of it, I also did a table of the final standings of the tournament.
As new content from the franchise released during the year, I've continued to get involved in building said articles. This included galleries for recent episodes across the franchise, such as "Hysterical History," "Sandy's Country Christmas," and "Unidentified Flailing Octopus" for the main series, as well as a few episodes in Kamp Koral season 2, and one Patrick Star Show episode. Along with that, I've continued to work on a few credits pages and more episode synopses across the shows. The last big thing I feel like discussing here is the creation of the wiki's Bluesky account. I made a proposal for it, considering that: the wiki's social media accounts were inactive, I'm not a fan of how Twitter is right now, and Bluesky is growing rapidly in terms of casual users. I mainly use the account to advertise new episodes, and bring up other events related to the franchise, depending on the significance. Further things might happen with it this year, who knows.
Something that I feel fully confident in saying is that my experience on ESB is definitely one of my favorite things about the last 5 years. The 2020s decade has been admittedly mixed in several aspects, but joining this wiki and continuing to keep going with it is one of the biggest positives for me, no doubt. This site has majorly benefitted me in a lot of areas. A huge thanks to this community for these 5 years, and I will for sure be around for more.