This is Shwartz (or Reginald if you'd prefer a name that's standard as opposed to a typo I made years ago), and I'm sorry for not talking to you about it before taking action. I thought that since you hadn't made any more edits that you were gone from the wiki. There's been countless instances of users making edits (including starting big projects) and then abandoning the wiki within days.
So what happened: I saw a tweet poking fun at the Master Shake page, specifically the "Personality" section, and I honestly felt like maybe I'd made a mistake in keeping the psychoanalysis the way it was until today. I guess you could say I panicked and then rationalized it and then acted on the fear of what others would think. The person who issued the tweet clarified that they were joking and didn't mean any harm by it, but I'd already issued the revision at that point.
Before I go any further, you are not in trouble. The edit summary was written by me, and it was my way of saying "I'd rather talk this out." I said to start a topic in the Discussions tab which is what you've done, so yes, you did this right. I want the discussion here because I don't want the discussion getting buried on my message wall.
Let's talk about the March revision and today's revision. That's the language I will use when referring to the version you wrote versus the version that was revised from an older edit. (Even though it's mostly old content, I did add a new paragraph here and a new heading there.)
The main problem with the March revision is that it's written like a video essay--a good one, I mean. On a wiki such as this, it's sort of a balancing act between writing a page that is unbiased, supported by facts, and intelligent but also realizing that we're writing articles about a "funny show about fast food items." Now, it is true that a wiki article shouldn't be biased (throwing in opinions about the writing quality and passing judgement on what the characters should've done from a moral high ground) or dumbed down or suffering from various mistakes from typos to factual errors. At the same time, the March revision is a little too elaborate. The sentence structure of the March revision has a lot of compound-complex sentences and interjections. (By interjections, I mean non-essential grammatical clauses separated by commas, if you'll pardon the textbook terminology.)
The other important thing is that the March revision speaks a little too objectively. It's almost as if the page is afraid to come out and say Shake abuses Meatwad and harasses women. You are correct that bad people with severe mental illness are, to at least some degree, the victim of circumstance, eg, a psychopath does not choose to be made without guilt, and a person with Narcissistic personality disorder did not choose to suffer from that condition. However, I think that's a pretty high level concept. A lot (though certainly not all) of the users on the wiki might be as young as 13 and too young to understand this application of psychology. I also really am not sure an "average Joe" (if you'll pardon the cliche) would be able to wrap their head around some of these concepts, and we typically try to keep the wiki accessible to as many people as possible including groups that are not college educated. (Please note that even though the ratings for ATHF suggest users be older than 13, these ratings are not enforceable. I will block editors under the age of 13, but beyond that, it's out of my hands.)
I also want to say that yes, the summary from the March revision is true to Shake's character, but it doesn't really exemplify the show very well. The show is wacky with tropes like hair-brained schemes, monsters of the week, black humor, discussions of bodily functions as comedy, etc; but the summary is written in a "matter-of-fact" manner. Also (and maybe this is not what you want to hear right now), the March revision is a downer in terms of tone, but the show is an "off the wall" surreal sitcom. It doesn't really suit the cartoon to present Shake's character as this complicated and layered.
There's also the fact that, I just don't think co-creators Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro (or any writers or crewmembers) intended and planned out Shake's elaborate mental health history. I'm not saying we can't analyze the show at a higher level. Don't get it twisted. I love analyzing fictional cartoons. However, I don't think the characters intended Shake to be viewed as such a "flawed human" type of character. They just wrote Shake as abusive to Meatwad (just to list one example of Shake's abhorrent behavior) because it was funny to them.
I think the page would be best if we kept parts of today's revision's "Personality" section as an "overview" subsection of a "Character Biography" section and added the March revision's "Personality" section as an in-depth "Personality and Mental Illness" subsection of the same "Character Biography" section. We can revise certain sentences to simplify the sentence structure later, but I'd like to expedite the process of putting the psychoanalytic section back on the page.
This is a long message, so I'd like to once more clarify you didn't break any rules, and I do NOT plan to block you from editing the wiki in the foreseeable future. That's all I want to say. I don't want to drag this message out any longer.
