more ideas about how to attract more fans to edit

[ratcreature]

I commented in that discussion linked here earlier with some thoughts I had about what would make contributing more attractive: I think that maybe a "focus on" feature would be nice. I think it is more fun to contribute when others are working on related articles at the same time (for example "focus on fandom X" or a genre or a fanactivity, like "focus on conventions" or costuming, even recurring popular kerfuffles that could be tracked through fandoms or whatever), because then there is more opportunity for discussion and feedback, talk about what article structure would best, and you learn interesting stuff from other fans in the process or can reminiscence about how kerfuffle such and so was on mailing list X, so then there is less of that feeling of toiling in the wilderness full of frustration. Also newbies wouldn't have such a steep learning curve because they'd co-edit with more familiar people, so they wouldn't have to know or find the code for templates or advanced formatting on their own, but would just have to say "it would be cool to have this as a table/have a gallery here/get an infobox/..." And even if you didn't know anyone personally you'd be still in a group. It would be easier for people familiar with the fanlore to remember to talk to newbies too, because there'd be a common topic.

Geocities Rescue links

[arduinna]

It's starting to get down to the wire on rescuing Geocities pages -- I think the purge has already started, given some pages I suddenly can't find -- and there's a staggering amount that hasn't been done yet.

So I thought maybe it would be good to have a post where people could at least leave links to Geocities pages, maybe with a very short description of what they are, so wiki editors would have a starting place. (Links to screencaps of existing pages would also be awesome, so those could be uploaded to Fanlore later, but that would be icing.)

That way, even if not everything gets done, we have a chance of being able to find these pages on the Wayback Machine later -- once we lose the links, we've lost our chance.

( This is what I'm already starting to see )

fun with subpages!

[aethel]

I've been flailing around Fanlore for some time now, trying to figure out what should be a subpage and what shouldn't, and I thought I'd collect some flailings here instead of continuing to pester people on the wiki:

( list of observations )

In conclusion: I just now found the Help:Subpages. I think it's time to update it! I'd like to see a list that clearly states what we're sure we're using subpages for, what we're sure we're NOT using subpages for, and what we're just not sure about yet. What say you?

GeoCities Rescue Project!

[francescacoppa]

Just to say that I'm thrilled at arduinna's call for folks to list links to (and maybe stub? screencap? fill out? add to?) GeoCities pages. We could really use all the help we can get, here!! I'm wondering if maybe this can be the first fanlore challenge as suggested by ratcreature earlier today--maybe folks can take a look over there and see if there's a page they're invested in documenting/saving?

Examples: some fan pages that have been stubbed or preserved in Fanlore as part of GeoCities Rescue:

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Nic
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Alassenya
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Jonquil
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sweet_Sorcery
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unovis
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Silver_Chipmunk
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Rabidsamfan

Any help anybody wants to give here is greatly greatly appreciated! (And if you know the owner/moderator of a GeoCities fanfiction site, please tell them to contact me: we can give them a beta account for their fic!)