CrossWiki teams

[Tina]

Personally, for WikiBound, I'd like to finish creating page outlines and templates so people can actually have something consistent to create articles off of.

Just putting that out there. Haha.

[Nintendoguy1]

Personally, for WikiBound, I'd like to finish creating page outlines and templates so people can actually have something consistent to create articles off of.

Just putting that out there. Haha.

Yes, don't forget my suggestion

[HavocReaper48]

Attention peoples:

http://niwanetwork.org/wiki/index.php/Forum:CrossWiki_Team

Go.

Tina, start a forum about the templates and what you need on Wikibound so we know what exactly we're doing. Suggestions, etc.

[Maxite]

Is this only open to current NIWA members?

[HavocReaper48]

The topic was started on a NIWA Reform board in the evil admin access-only area, so, pretty much.

[Tina]

...Oh. I meant that I needed to get around to creating page outlines and templates myself, so the reform team could work with them. Better to do that before the team gets to mass page creations, so implementing templates wouldn't be another 500 edits. 'o'

What WikiBound really needs right now is articles (redlink killing), but in all honesty I would rather do templates myself. OTL

[Nintendoguy1]

Well, I signed up

[tacopill]

Not to step pm anyone's toes, but do you mind if i move the page? N Wiki currently doesn't have a forum extension like DK Wiki or SmashWiki, so the Forum: part is a little misleading.

It is free to go into the NintendoWiki namespace, like This page.

[HavocReaper48]

Oh uh, sorry about that, used to those two wikis' standards... go ahead.

Yeah. But you should add the namespace, in case something more serious is needed to be discussed (not everything should be on these forums )

[Toomai]

I'm not particularily interested in this, but I'll throw in some possible names.

BROOM (Brilliance Rangers Of Our Maintainers)
SALAD (Subspacial Ambassadors Leaping Across Dimensions)
SWEEP (Super Wiki Editors Editing Pages)
TWEED (Those Who Extend Editing Duties)

[tacopill]

Oh uh, sorry about that, used to those two wikis' standards... go ahead.

Yeah. But you should add the namespace, in case something more serious is needed to be discussed (not everything should be on these forums )

Thank you for the suggestion, but i am not a fan of in-wiki forums.

Also, check out This page.

Anyway, i moved the page.

[Nintendoguy1]

Oh uh, sorry about that, used to those two wikis' standards... go ahead.

Yeah. But you should add the namespace, in case something more serious is needed to be discussed (not everything should be on these forums )

Thank you for the suggestion, but i am not a fan of in-wiki forums.

Agreed, in-wiki forums clog up the recent changes with stuff that can be done on outside forums.

[HavocReaper48]

Just a suggestion, since it's what I'm used to...  Alright.

Anyway, we gotta spread the word and start making our mark. Let's get cracking.

Wikibound is our first request, so, let's go.

[SnorlaxMonster]

Was it really necessary to send an email about this? It just makes it seem like it is endorsed by NIWA, despite the contrary being stated all throughout this thread.

[Koroku]

The e-mail kinda pissed me off. Don't abuse the forums system.

[Maxite]

I was a little amused by the fact that I received an e-mail on this matter.

Also, the idea is still rather small-scale, IMO. Maybe it might be better to try and get the member wikis to advertise the program? A simple item put in the news "Inter-wiki editor group being formed to help other NIWA wikis in need..."

[Xizor]

So when NIWA is doing nothing, uninvolved in its members, it gets criticized for that apathy.

But when it gets involved in its members and their doing, and spreads information about new potential resources for its members, it's somehow domineering and "abusing" a system?

You people are impossible. @_@ See things for what they are, not for what you decide they mean. At no point did the email "endorse" this effort; it was merely informing everybody of a new opportunity to help at NIWA, or to be helped by NIWA. The members ARE NIWA - NIWA is nothing more than its members and what they create.

Good luck, Havoc. It would seem my attempts at assisting your efforts are in vain - let me know if there's anything you need from me in the future regarding this, as I will not be going out on a limb for it again just to face ludicrous backlash.

[HavocReaper48]

I wasn't informed about the emailing

Sheesh, it's INFORMATIVE, not ENDORSATIVE (if that's a word).

The e-mail kinda pissed me off. Don't abuse the forums system.

I did not send the emails nor did anyone here so don't direct it at people. It clearly says "The NIWA Community Forums Team", not "HavocReaper" at the end of the email.

Was it really necessary to send an email about this? It just makes it seem like it is endorsed by NIWA, despite the contrary being stated all throughout this thread.

"to support, to back, to give one's approval to..."
--Wikionary article on "Endorse"
The email did not approve or support the member gaining of the group, rather just informed people of the cause. And again, I did not know of the emails until I saw this now.

I mean, honestly, why not tell people about it? In any case this thing isn't supposed to be secretive. We need every member we can get. If anything the emailing saved members the time of advertising on the wikis themselves.

Maxite, I like that idea.

Xizor, sure thing.

[Xizor]

Guys, stop getting hung up over words like "endorse" or "support" or "suggest" - it doesn't matter. Nothing NIWA does is compulsory, enforced, or otherwise forcibly pushed on any member. Using the email system of the forums to inform members about this opportunity was not abusive or inappropriate.

I endorse this group as a viable option for a Wiki to get help. As such, if NIWA members use it, then how is that not "NIWA endorsing" it? Seriously. Let's get real here.

Can we just stop losing sight of what something aims to do, which in this case is help everybody, by distracting things with irrelevant declarations of what NIWA can and cannot do? It does what its members want, which means it can do anything so long as the members want it. I'm really worried that NIWA is going to get derailed if we keep focusing on things like that, which ultimately don't matter and are just ranting points. We need to prioritize.

As far as this team goes, I'd love to see Wikis taking advantage of this. If there are freelance editors with nothing better to do, then why not use them? Also, I think this topic should not be used to request help - we should keep that over at N-Wiki maybe? Otherwise, we should start a new topic dedicated SOLELY to asking for help, and discussing things therein, as this topic is too chaotic and has too many pages that don't pertain to Wikis asking for help.

[Adam]

For my part, I'm glad to see this going ahead, and I hope it turns out to be helpful and productive.

One observation I'd make though; the project page seems to set the team's aim mainly as reducing the number of stubs. I feel like that's not really an ideal area for such a team to focus on. In my experience, the growth of stubs into full articles is normally a gradual and incremental process, not a quick blitz attack. But more than that, de-stubbing usually requires extensive subject knowledge. These articles are stubs for a reason; because the majority of the experiences editors at a given wiki don't know enough about the subject to expand on them. That being the case, I don't see how a generalist team like this (whose primary strengths are enthusiasm/hard work and skill with wikicode) can hope to have better subject-specific knowledge than the wikis regular contributors?

It just seems to me like there could be more practical (but maybe less obvious) goals to set. For example, Zelda Wiki has an entire category of Articles needing attention, with subsections like reorganization, neutrality issues and addition of sources. These are the kind of things which can be done with even minimal knowledge of the subject.

Another example which comes to mind is the case of DKWiki; after their move from Wikia, I noticed a lot of their pages still link back to Wikia help guides, or use interwiki link prefixes which no longer work. Again, that's the kind of laborious cleanup which this team could excel at.

I don't want to come off as negative at all, just hoping to give you guys some food for thought on where you could best focus your efforts