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Starting a Wiki Project


LordStoneheart

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Hello.

For a class, I have to do a blogging and/or wiki project.

I've chosen to take a wiki already made about one of favorite book series and clean it up. No one has added to it substantially but me since late 2010. I mean to make it as great as this wiki, in style and amount of content.

Its a bit of a stretch because the series its on is not as big or extensive as asoiaf. But a few quick questions.

Is every named character in the wiki of ice and fire given an article?

If there's nearly nothing to be said about them but they show up in the main plot, should I include them?

And what about copyright status for making a synopsis of the book? From my understanding by other articles and things, GRRM has no problem and likes the Westeros.org website/community. Or maybe just the creators... But certainly he knows there exist extensive synopses of his work the wiki. And for other authors, other wikis do the same. Where do the copyright laws stand here?

Any advice on making a great wiki is welcome.

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Sounds like a great project. Is it about A Song of Ice and Fire or another series?

About your questions:

On our wiki we try to give each character his own page. But for a new wiki I would start with the "major" characters. When the wiki gets larger you go the minor character and then to the characters that may only appear once.

A review of a book usually contains a summary / synopsis as well. Nothing wrong with that; you are allowed to discuss a book or tv series. That includes quoting from it.

For quotes the trick is to see where it could infringe on the copyright. For instance on this wiki we took the position that we cannot quote the complete text of a song. The argument behind is was that Martin might want to publish the songs. It we would include all the complete text of his songs on the wiki it might hurt sales. (This does not apply for songs of which the books only include a few lines; they are very very unlikely to be published)

Begin with the main page. What do you want on it? This also forces you think about how to organize the wiki: categories, persons, regions, wars/event.

Check other wikis to see what they are doing. I learned a lot from our French sister wiki and the Lord of the Rings wiki.

What really is a challenge is to attract more users to you wiki. It helps if the site is known by other fans or has a name that is likely to be found by google and the like. I think wikia advices to change the main page to a name that is likely to come up higher in the internet search engines.

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Its for a series called Abarat.

The Cliver Barker series? I can see that, Barker's gone many years between each volume. Though I heard recently that he's finished the next-to-last volume and has immediately started writing the last one.

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The Cliver Barker series? I can see that, Barker's gone many years between each volume. Though I heard recently that he's finished the next-to-last volume and has immediately started writing the last one.

FINISHED????????????

:drool: :drool: :drool: :drool: :drool:

where did you hear this?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Check other wikis to see what they are doing. I learned a lot from our French sister wiki and the Lord of the Rings wiki.

You really shouldn't use LOTR's wiki as a future reference. I'm a major contributor there and it is full of messy stuff. Me and few others have been working for years to recover all the damage that has been done to it, including organizing the hell out of it and we're still far from finishing.

As a true wiki reference you might want to look at the Star Wars wiki, Wookieepedia. It's massive and one the best wikis around. It is fully organized, with a large community and is constitued by several policies.

I have a few years of experience dealing with this sort of wikis and here's where I'd recommend you start:

  • Categorization (for images, for characters, for factions, for forum posts, for everything, it must have a decent hierarchy and good organization if you're to get anywhere)
  • Templates (start with the ones for utilities like the ones useful to make more complex templates, you can get several from Wikipedia or so, then you can start doing those more about the Wiki content itself [templates for organizations' structures, infoboxes and such)
  • Policies (what is allowed and what isn't, rules are very important to define what is incorrect, what isn't and what is really just vandalism in order to avoid conflicts)
  • Manual-of-style (how to properly right the article and how the formatting should be done)

After you get this stuff done, you should be good to start adding the real content articles.

P.S. You may need some skills in Javascript.

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A few rules about policies and categorization and the like is good. With it you have less chance that you need to rewrite articles, set up new hierarchies of categorizations and so on.

However it is an illusion that all of that can be created at the start AND will remain unchanged. There will be new users who have different ideas and your own ideas will probably change a bit as well. Therefore keep in mind not to overdo it. Besides too many rules and policies often discourage newbies from joining in. It is not for nothing that wikipedia suggests to Be bold.

For templates; yes if you have someone who is skilled in that it will require less work if you do a number of them at the start.

However most wiki communities do not have this skilled person when they start their wiki. This means you have to learn it. And it is really no fun to start with the most complex templates. Just begin when you think you need a template and keep it easy.

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I know that reply isn't exactly to me but it still reflects on myself in a way. So I'll just be more explicit.

A few rules about policies and categorization and the like is good. With it you have less chance that you need to rewrite articles, set up new hierarchies of categorizations and so on.

However it is an illusion that all of that can be created at the start AND will remain unchanged. There will be new users who have different ideas and your own ideas will probably change a bit as well. Therefore keep in mind not to overdo it. Besides too many rules and policies often discourage newbies from joining in. It is not for nothing that wikipedia suggests to Be bold.

I didn't say full categorization and a large list of rules was mandatory but a few at least are needed to set a background padron. People will eventually start creating their own, duplicates might appear so it's important to set at least some and then make a list and publish it somewhere where most can see which categories already exist. The list of background rules must be enforced (being listed in welcome templates perhaps) right away to new users so they know what is incorrect and what isn't in the Wiki. If the Wiki community grows then well you can just turn into consensus vote (this considering the community is mostly helpful and mature)

For templates; yes if you have someone who is skilled in that it will require less work if you do a number of them at the start.

However most wiki communities do not have this skilled person when they start their wiki. This means you have to learn it. And it is really no fun to start with the most complex templates. Just begin when you think you need a template and keep it easy.

At least a few set of Templates is mandatory at start, not as you go along otherwise that will just give you more work later on. You can start with the basic ones (utilities and such which I've mentioned before) then go for Infoboxes which are of outmost importance to readers as they resume most of the interesting facts of the article's subject. Then you should probably go for welcome templates, templates to mark articles for deletion or other sort of modifications that needs "eyes" from the administration. You should probably create a template to indicate that you're an admin on your profile quickly too. It's important for people who have questions, so they'd know where and/or who to ask for help.

All of these are of little difficulty and even I can help you with.

Anyway, do you think it would be possible if you could give us a link to this said Wiki?

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I do not disagree with these suggestions but the focus should be more on the content. Keep in mind that people come to a wiki for the content. They do not come there to read about policy and templates. Two example to clarify this:

For our wiki we agreed to use references. However if we would have deleted every article or paragraph that did not have references we would have very few pages. Therefore we only delete unreferenced material if it is challenged.

A lot of templates on the wiki use the generic Template:Infobox. Using this template in other templates if definitely more efficient. It is however a complex template. If you are not skilled with template this is not the one with which you want to start. Start with a simple template which can be used on its own.

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