From the open ID/anonymous thread

[melina]

On behalf of Michelle:

I’ve had a Fanlore account for pretty much all the time the wiki was up, but I’ve found I’m not editing as much as I want to. Or as much as I could. One of the reasons for this is my general laziness. I always plan to edit, but when I actually sit down to do so, my brain goes all blank and I fail to come up with a coherent thought. It’s most frustrating.

The other reason is one I would like to discuss here, because I feel a lot of people are struggling with it. Despite their general interest in the wiki, they don’t work on it. I’ve tried to come up with a few explanations why that is and would like to hear your thoughts on it. Basically, I think Fanlore’s problem is to engage people enough to care, sign up and edit. Only, the "engaging" isn’t happening for various reasons.

* Fanlore is still in beta. That in itself might make potential user reluctant to join in. A beta suggests a site that is unstable, that might just go away without further notice. There’s no stability here, you don’t want to make yourself feel at home in such a place. My question would be: Why is the wiki still in beta? Is it the code? Is it the policies? When will that change? And why is that not communicated somewhere?

* The Front Page. It’s boring. Actually, I think this calls for a capitalization: It’s BORING. The wiki has been up for over a year and nothing has happened on the front page. Okay, the link to the DW Comm was added, but that’s hardly a groundbreaking thing. And a very rudimentary news page was added as well, but it doesn’t actually give you any useful info. What about the policy change for fanwork titles? Why did that not go up there? Have you looked at a random wiki lately? Have you seen what’s going on on their front pages? Article of the day, author of the day, this day in history. There is *so* much you could do with a front page, even when a wiki is small. Fandom of the Day. Fannish Person of the Day. Author of the Day. And yet Fanlore totally disregards this opportunity. Why?

* In lieu with the front page is the problem of giving visitors the chance to discover content. A good front page would make that easier. It would give you lots of interesting links to click and in the best of possible worlds you would just dig yourself deeper and deeper into the wiki. Instead, the only way to discover content at the moment is by search, by recent changes and by random page.

* Communication. I think it isn’t happening enough. Or if it’s happening, it’s happening in the wrong places. The wiki committee members should be easier to find (at the moment: front page: beta: committee) and it should be made clear what the committee actually does. The OTW newsletters are kind of vague in that regard. I’m assuming the committee is doing something worthwile, but I have no facts to back that up.

* Users offer ideas, everyone likes them and still nothing happens. As evidenced here (http://fanlore.dreamwidth.org/7275.html). This conversation is from September and has had no visible results. I do think this user is hitting the target. The wiki needs something like "Add you favourite author day" or "Fill out a stub week". It would help give the wiki and the users a focus.

* I've had the same experience on a conversation leading nowehere on the issue page, where I asked about policies for images (http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlore_talk:Issues). The wiki is in desperate need of more eyecandy and I’m convinced it would help to give people a guideline where to put them. "We’re working on it", was the reply. That was in April.

* A minor problem with the DW comm: It would be helpful to see right away who is actually associated with the wiki. It’s nice that discussion happens there, but it would be good to know whether the discussion is happening with another user, with a gardener or with an admin.

Michelle
http://michelle.fancrone.net
http://fanlore.org/wiki/User:Michelle

Comments

Communication

[rodo]

What really gets to me is the lack of clear policies and categories. I know a lot of people have asked questions about it, and I feel as if nothing happens too. Granted, I'm rather impatient and nosy, but I think I would feel a lot better of there were updates on what the committee is working on and why they haven't come to a decision yet.

Re: Communication

[aethel]

Yes, this. I admit to being impatient as well.

Re: Communication

[rodo]

You're lucky then! I always look for rules and examples to make a decision when I'm not sure.

Re: Communication

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I don't think it's impatient when you want things to go visibly forward after more than a year. I realize that a wiki is a very organic thing, by its very nature, and progress might be mostly invisble. But I still feel that it lacks communication and clear statements.

Michelle (http://michelle.fancrone.net)

[grey_bard]

One thing that continues to confuse me is what the policy is on writing about yourself and writing about things you are involved in. Clearly, there has to be some way of making it clear what was written by outsiders and what was written by people involved.

I, myself, would like to write about myself and things I am involved in, but I don't want to seem to be biasing the record, and I wish there was some kind of official disclaimer / disclaimer tag we could add. Is there? I can't find one.

ETA: Yes, I know about user pages, but I meant, like. If you found a community and you are *writing* about that community...

[aethel]

I think the original idea was that articles would be written by the people involved; outsiders have been contributing more mainly because there aren't enough insiders editing the wiki. Within the existing structure, the best thing to do is add a note on the talk page about the limits/bias of your knowledge and get another pair of eyes on the article. You can also disclaim opinions on the article itself, like: "Some fans [i.e. this editor, grey-bard] feel X about Y." I've gone ahead and added things that were speculation on my part [with a note], hoping that someone else would see and add/modify it. I'm not sure if that's the right approach, though.

Should we create a "bias" template for articles that don't provide enough alternate viewpoints?

[grey_bard]

Bias has a bit of a negative connotation. Disclosure statement, perhaps?

[flourish]

I am a completely random person wandering in here, but: YES, you should.

The big thing that has prevented me from editing fanlore is the fear of being accused of being wanky/editing from my own perspective and trying to slant the narrative.

I don't know if that's something that has made other people reluctant to edit, but in the areas where I am knowledgeable (Harry Potter fandom, 1998-2004) I was a very active player. So much so that anything I write is naturally going to be biased in some way, and while I trust that other people will come along to edit that bias out, I'm also really nervous that someone is going to get all up in my face about it.

I mean, hell, I'm on the HPEF board, which makes me feel like I shouldn't write about any HPEF events - even though I know a lot about them and would be happy to spend the time doing so, at least as a first run-through.

A disclosure statement about bias would go a long way to making me feel like I could contribute and not end up in a firestorm of wankery.

[mrs_potatohead]

For what it's worth, I really, really want you to edit about what you know.

Please?

Mrs. Potato Head

[flourish]

Okay!

But I'll blame you if there's drama!

;)

[mrs_potatohead]

Blame away. But this seems to be, at least my impression, a relatively free drama arena. :-) Just the way I like it. It it was filled with angst and tiffs, I would be out of here in about two seconds.

MPH

[(Anonymous)]

I've written articles for a few things I'm heavily involved in (websites, lists and such). It is an awkward feeling, but on the other hand who better to provide factual information about my website than me? And to have a skeleton of info already there might invite others to join and edit in their view of things.

Of course, this approach is much easier where facts are concerned ("biographies" of lists, challenges, sites, awards and the like). I wouldn't dare to it for things more instubstantial (wank, fail, meta).

Michelle (http://michelle.fancrone.net)

[ratcreature]

I've had the same experience on a conversation leading nowehere on the issue page, where I asked about policies for images [...] We’re working on it", was the reply. That was in April.

I still have to hear anything about the questions for a policy for adult (both NSFW but also disturbing images) and that has been filed in "Fanlore:Issues" since the first week of beta way back in 2008 with a vague note about the wiki comittee looking into this...

[(Anonymous)]

Seems they're looking into it really closely:) I admit, stuff like that frustrates me. It leaves me with the impression that the committee isn't interested in solving issued. I'm pretty certain that's not the case, but again - this isn't communicated enough.

Michelle (http://michelle.fancrone.net)

[(Anonymous)]

LOL. I think the zines are a glorious exception in every way you look at it: quantity, quality and the sheer workload the editors put into them.

My original problem with images came from the question where to put them (assuming this would encourage users to upload and actually add them to their articles) and I think this would also benefit the zine pages. They are all using the same template. In the end, they should all have cover art added. Why aren't the templates modified in a fashion to include an image? Originally, my question concerned pages about websites (I wanted to add screenshots). I never got an answer whether pics should go in a template or even whether that was a good idea to begin with.

Michelle (http://michelle.fancrone.net)

[ratcreature]

Why aren't the templates modified in a fashion to include an image?
If a template is changed it has to be changed on all articles that use it. IIRC it was something like that new fields appear, but you don't see them in the source text, you can't fill things in, or something like that. So any changes to templates have to be considered carefully (and preferably after someone wrote a bot for repetitive mass edits). The other problem to stick covers in a template is that we have one page per zine series, so there are sometimes many images that have to be arranged according to how they look in the text, i.e. if there is much text (like a TOC) it might look okay to have them in the text, sometimes it looks better to have them all in a gallery at the bottom etc. Also some zines have front and back covers and interior art displayed so that all is very variable.

[(Anonymous)]

I admit I hadn't thought about the mass edit that would have to take place after a template change. That pretty much puts a dampener on things, but on the other hand there will and must be template changes in the future. Otherwise the wiki would be at a standstill.

I don't think a template is such a strict affair. The way I've seen it done on Fanlore is that people fill stuff in a leave stuff blank as they wish - and in some instances the templates don't really reflect what you want to say, so they aren't a tight fit. So, if we had a space for images, I don't see anyone forcing you to use it. I still think it would be helpful to have it - the info in the template gives you the most important information about a term at a glance and in many cases an image (screenshot, cover, artwork) is part of the package. The fact that zines especially come with a lot of covers, isn't much of a problem IMO. I pulled a random book from Wikipedia (turned out to be Anita Blake, because that's what I've been rereading recently) and it has a cover in the template and then has a gallery of covers for different editions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilty_Pleasures_(novel)

Michelle (http://michelle.fancrone.net)

[ratcreature]

I had always assumed that at some point someone would write or adapt a wikibot for fanlore and then mass edits could be done. But I don't know enough about wikis to write one. I'm just against retroactive template changes without automatization unless the need is really dire or the template not used more than a couple of dozen times at most.

I already thought it astonishing that the moving around in the wake of the naming scheme change wasn't somehow automated. I mean, surely it must be possible to cull the fandom information from the text of pages that have a template with a "fandom=" field and then move "blabla - author" to "blabla" if it is unique and to "blabla (fandom zine)" if it is not via some sort of bot, with only a few complicated cases remaining for manual intervention. I mean, wouldn't have thought that a hard flow chart of directions to follow for a computer.

[(Anonymous)]

I admit I didn't follow that whole affair closely, but it would make sense to automate such a change - the time saved could be used for more important stuff.

But what saddens me is not actually that images are/are not included in the template. It bugs me much more that this decision isn't even made. I had really hoped that by this post I would get a little more insight into how the committee is working. So far, I'm not feeling particularly enlightened:(

Michelle (http://michelle.fancrone.net)

[(Anonymous)]

Eyecandy is always good, if only to relieve all the text-heavy pages. And fanart is even better *winks*.

Characters and pairings, huh? I think websites, definitely (that was the first instance when I missed them), and maybe terms that have a logo (movie or tv show or even communities, cons ect).

Michelle (http://michelle.fancrone.net)

huh.

[sherrold]

I share your concerns. It's beginning sound like this stuff needs to be moved up a level -- maybe posting to the OTW blog, rather than here.

Re: huh.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I had hoped the committee would address a few of the issues here in the comments. I hope this will happen at some point!

Michelle (http://michelle.fancrone.net)

An example of communication issues

[facetofcathy]

I made a suggestion in this forum in September for a learn how to edit page to attract new editors who were unsure of their skills.

I just discovered through a random click around of pages there, that that suggestion was enacted back in October. No announcement happened here, on the Fanlore News page, and no pages anywhere link to the new Fanlore Sandbox. It is empty, as is its talk page.

I found the page via the Bug Tracker page, which seems to have started up in July, no announcement here, nor on the news page, but there is a link in the sidebar on Fanlore that I'd never noticed. There are 42 Bugs (the page will only display 30 for me, and does not paginate). N.B. Bugs includes suggestions for new features as well as more technical bug reports.

Also, +1 to the calls for more Fanlore detail on the OTW status reports.

Re: An example of communication issues

[(Anonymous)]

Umm, there is a sandbox? I never noticed that either and I can't even find it now that I'm actively searching for it. Go figure:(

There was a news bit added a few days ago and I hope they keep this up and update the page a little more regularly. Looking at the history of the News Page, I see that several people have edited there. Maybe it would be a good idea to find a volunteer who's responsible for the newspage. This way it wouldn't be just the "things someone needs to do at some point", but communicating changes and news would be the main focus of this one person's work.

Michelle (http://michelle.fancrone.net)