(urth) Wiki draft proposal

[maru dubshinki]

On 5/9/06, Jesper Svedberg <jsvedberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a few thoughts on how the Wiki should be structured.
>
>  - There should be a bibliography on all stories and books with a
> synopsis and publishing history. A standardized format of structure of
> these articles should also be developed (for instance: 1. Title, 2.
> Publication data, 3. Synopsis, 4. Theories, 5. External links).

That's perfectly reasonable. I'd put the Reference/Publication data
after the synopsis and list of Dramatis Personae myself, snce that's
boring stuff, but that's a good start.

>  - There should be separate articles on important persons, objects and
> concepts that can be found in his works.

Absolutely.

>  - I don't think it's necessary to put these articles in different
> categories based on which work they appear in, it should be enough to
> create structure by linking the articles in a careful fashion (you could
> have an article called "Characters in TBotNS" filled with links the
> separate articles) and by clearly stating in the articles where the
> persons/objects appear.

Well, why not? Links are great, but there are some things categories
are just better at. See alsos can grow awfully long, you know.

>  - Theories and facts should be clearly separated. If there are
> theories about a subject, there should be a "Theories" section in the
> article with short descriptions of the theories and links to the
> separate articles.
>
>  - I don't think there really is a point in copying material that is
> already online (such as interviews and the mailing list archives) into
> the Wiki when one can easily link to the external locations. If there
> are entries in the mailing list archives that for instance discuss the
> identity of Dorcas, then one could link to these entries in the article
> on Dorcas.

Yes, we could use external links, but those have the problem of being
both more unreliable *and* harder to use than wikilinks. There are
more subtle reasons to prefer internal links to external links, but
they're hard to talk about.

>  - Beyond this there are an endless amount of subjects that could be
> included in a wiki. One could have articles on different themes in
> Wolfe's work (for instance Memory, Religion or Mythology), articles on
> authors that have influenced him and in what way, articles on writers
> that have been influenced by him, or anything else that might seem relevant.
>
>  - One thing that must be discussed is the problem of the sender. In
> Wikipedia, the articles are presented as facts and the sender is
> considered secondary, but if someone writes an article theorizing about
> a subject in the WolfeWiki, then it might be wise to clearly mark out
> who the writer/sender is.

I disagree. We can source it to emails, which should be enough, and
besides, theories should stand or fall on their own merit.

>  - I agree that it would probably be a good idea to give it a short and
> clear name. OTOH, i also think that it would be pretty cool to call it
> "Tracking Song", even it if could be somewhat confusing.

Hmm. Don't get it. Where's that from?

>  // Jesper

~maru