I love Fanlore!

[sherrold]

I'm very excited that there's a new committee and some new attention being paid to it, and I love the new ideas rolling out.

But.

Personally, I'm not really to start talking Fanlore up in my LJ/DW and encouraging other people to play. I don't think it's time to start weekly activities, yet, either.

I think it's foolish to start pulling a bunch of new volunteers in while there are some specific issues that need to be addressed, and specific processes that need to be put in place.  There are questions strewn through administrative talk pages all over the place. Let's get so many of those answered, and a FAQ going, first.

Otherwise, I fear it will be like the first flush of excitement all over again. A lot of enthusiasum, gradually eroded by the lack of clarity and answers.

Though, maybe an early volunteer task is, going through the old admin talk pages and rolling up the big open questions... I might even volunteer to work on that if I thought there was someone to read and start working through the list once we'd compiled it.

2nd early volunteer task, while I'm on a role: make a list of other fannish wikis, and steal (where appropriate) their good ideas (not their articles: cool features of their home pages, ideas for recognizing their volunteers, etc..

Comments

[meri_oddities]

As you know, there's a lot that needs to be done, but we're all committed to doing it.

We have a fairly substantial list that has been compiled from the bug list and from the old issues pages as well as some emails and LJ entries. We are starting to create policies and pages for what needs answers. As well as beginning to implement changes.

That said, we'd welcome any ideas and/or suggestions you'd like to send us. If you have some pet peeves that you'd like to see fixed, let us know. We don't want to miss any problems.

Also, anything you think is a good idea from other fannish wikis would be great to see, even if it's just a link directing us there. We're always in the market for good ideas. *g*

Thanks.

[lian]

I am SO cosigning this entry.

[stultiloquentia]

Agreed.

:-)

[elke_tanzer]

I'm also co-signing this, and also suggesting a reference to help get over/around/through some of the common pitfalls in growing a wiki:

http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Wikipatterns

This is a fabulous resource!

[(Anonymous)]

I've been reading it for hours!

Re: This is a fabulous resource!

[elke_tanzer]

Learning from other people's lessons learned is SO HELPFUL. :-) I'm glad you're enjoying!

[ellie]

I found it all very complicated so I did the simplest task, like making sure the People were sorted correctly (i.e. last name, first name) and changing the templates when the incorrect ones was used (i.e. FanProfile template when the UserProfile template should of been used or vica-versa).

Of course I hadn't done anything in a long time. I locked myself out (long boring story), but I am back. I think your suggestion is a solid one. The more procedures that you have in place the less people are left floundering. Clarity is always a good thing.

[meri_oddities]

If you're still interested in working on going through the old admin talk pages and making a list of everything you can find that needs to be done, we'd seriously appreciate it. We don't want to miss anything.

Let us know. You can email us at wiki [at] transformativeworks [dot] org or just reply to this post.

Thanks.

Just in case I'm misunderstanding...

[sherrold]

Is there an existing current effort to find outstanding issues?

Would it be okay if I asked for other volunteers to help with this?

Re: Just in case I'm misunderstanding...

[meri_oddities]

No. We have a list of some of the issues, but we're worried we don't have everything. The list was compiled on our internal wiki by one of the gardeners. Mostly from old meeting notes and from the bug list and issues page on the wiki.

Here and here

Yes, feel free to pull in whomever you'd like to help with this. We seriously appreciate the help. This will also make sure we don't miss anything.