Talk:Community portal/Archive 2011

Wiki Admins Needed / Policies and Standards Required

Can we make it a point not to just copy the entirety of the (largely shoddy) Compedia over to this? With a new wiki, we should take the opportunity to write good quality IC content, rather than just making a duplicate of the same crap that's available on an already existing website. Orphaea Imperium 06:43, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

This wiki was released before any ground rules were made, there are no admins to keep watch on things and users create their own templates and categories. If everyone does whatever they wish and copy paste from their wikies (I saw articles from the ImpWiki and Compedia) then pretty soon this place will be no better than the other failed wiki experiments. --Ryan Roche 06:47, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

Copying and pasting of good content should be okay - there are some decent character pages on both wikis, there are some good templates around, etc, but wanton copying for the sake of 'filling out the wiki' should be avoided. Orphaea Imperium 07:15, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

But that's exactly what's happening though. Already a number of articles on here display a clear lack of objectivity and are riddled with bias. Most of them also drift between IC and OOC with references to game mechanics, RL dates, and so forth. I thought the point here was that the Holocron was to be strictly IC, and the Compedia was notorious for mixing IC and OOC. I really hope some specific guidelines and rules will be set in place and actually enforced, otherwise more time will be spent cleaning up copied-and-pasted crap from Compedia and biased sources, rather than contributing actual quality content that could potentially make this a wiki of high quality that can be considered reliable. --Alex Tylger 14:01, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

Merged the two discussions on wiki admins into one to keep things easier to read. Also just sent an email to Vey / Dreighton / Fish on getting some admins and policies sorted out. Orphaea Imperium 14:11, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

One of the original purposes of this wiki was to give a new home to content of the (mostly abandoned) Compedia, so there is nothing wrong with bringing in content from there (or other sources, as far as there are no copyright concerns).

I am keeping an eye on the wiki atm and so far I am quite happy about what I see. Also I can not see at this point what anyone would need admin status for that he can not do just as well as a user. This wiki alerady has a team and a whole host of admins: Its users. I do take Wikipedia as a role model and I admit that it is not clear as of yet, if the SWC community will be able to live up to this model. But I also see no indication that it will not be able to do so and I don't want to destroy any chance for it from the start. Despite edit wars, cries over admin bias and emotional debates in the community, Wikipedia and its standards grew out of the basic principles that everyone has the equal opportunity to add, edit, move and delete. In short: It grew out of freedom and equal opportunities, combined with a software tool that makes it easy to revert true vandalism. If someone does not agree with the POV or quality of some articles, they can contribute material fromm other sources, rephrase the text or use the discussion page of the article to start a discussion on the matter in question. Wikipedia didn't get where they are by censoring content. Many articles on Wikipedia started out as horribly one-sided stubs. Still they were rarely deleted, and even more rarely by an admin. They were maintained and improved. By other users. You think an article is less than it could be? Improve it!

I also feel like the standards and policies I laid out on the community portal so far are good enough, in any case at this point. What more should there be then 1/ keep it IC 2/ use a NPOV? And if you find the standards lackingyou can just what we are doing now: Start a discussion.

We could possibly need more pages and more tools to help us with community functions, most notably some templates, as Wikipedia uses them, for marking articles that are too short or of low quality. But this should not be the job of any admin in a wiki, not even a team. It's the job of every singe user.

I have to add that I am absolutely delighted about what I see so far. No one abused his options to edit and post so far, in one situation where someone posted some insincere joke in an article, it was quickly removed by another user. And someone corrected my typo on the starting page. :)

So far it looks like people are using the wiki in a responsible and cooperative way. Different wikis are ... different. But they are best and strongest, if the users take charge of improving it. But this can not really happen, if we put a team in charge. We may need more moderators and admins at some point, but right now, the wiki needs freedom to grow more than anything else. I already have several offers for help and some of the people that posted in this discussion are clearly high on my list of people I may approach, should I see the need for more administration and moderation.

I said I'll keep an eye on the wiki, but I have only two eyes and only that much time. You and all other users have to help me.

Please do whatever it is that you want to do to improve the wiki. If someone puts OOC stuff in an article - (re)move it. If you know of an important opposing opinion - add it. If you think there is a mistake - fix it. All of you can change pages, suggest templates, add categories, make suggestions and convince people - please do so.

Orphaea, I was writing a reply to you, I think I no longer have to send it, I think this is the far more adequate way to discuss this.--Dreighton 16:55, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

Your comparison to Wikipedia isn't very good. For one, they do have processes where pages are deleted left right and center. They also do have bureaucrats that take care of reversions, moderate certain processes, handle templates, etc. They also have a hell of a lot more potential editors who might be inspired to rewrite an article.

The problem with bringing stuff from the other wikis is that a lot of it is trash (Compedia), or heavily biased biased (the Galactic Archives, for example, is unashamedly pro-Imperial in parts; Compedia varies depending on who wrote a page). Many of the pages are little more than copy-and-pasted versions of faction websites, which are now the articles that are being moved over here. For instance, look at pretty much everything Vip Fortuna has posted - it's either copy and pasted from Compedia, or it reads like a faction advertisement (at least one page even generously mentions pricing arrangements), or both. Yes, I could edit them, but I won't - one because I'm unqualified to write material on those factions, and two because rather than getting a bunch of terrible articles and then having to go through and edit or mark all of them for future editing, we should encourage original quality material in the first place. It's admins, or a wiki team, that could do that kind of moderation. If I tried telling people now, as a random person, what they should be looking to contribute I'd get mercilessly flamed regardless of how much what I say actually follows the few rules we have down.

Simply put: just because we're only starting out doesn't mean we need to encourage crap just for the sake of getting our article count up fast. Maintenance on random contributions will be more difficult than simply establishing some kind of framework in the first place. Orphaea Imperium 17:09, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

I agree with Alex, Orphaea and Ryan and have seen pretty much the same thing happen to Compedia 2.0 before it died out.

Some sort of administration team is required, as long as it does not kill the free development of the wiki.

I think it may also be a good idea to create subforum for the wiki and discuss various policies, standards and templates there.

--Xanyarr Chyakk 17:26, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

I have been on Wikipedia since 2004. I was even present when the German Wikimedia foundation was created. I was never deeply involved, but I think I have seen quite a bit of Wikipedia history from close up (German Wikipedia, of course). I know enough, that we are about to replicate some of the debates that shaped Wikipedia in the last few years, e.g the conflict between inclusionists and exclusionists. It may be easier to get straight form the start that I am a very dedicated Inclusionist. :)

Yes, rewriting is a real effort. But trying to replace this painful process with a traditional editing process is taking the true stength out of a wiki system. Of course you can also, technically, use a wiki system for group colaboration in a traditional editing process. If you say former wiki projects like Compedia failed it is, as I see it, more because they followed a closed rather than an open approach. And they were BY FAR more successful than any attempt we ever made in the Combine with more traditional editing processes (e.g. the newsletter). Compedia etc are far from flawless, but other, admin and team centered projects never realy made it off the ground.

Xanyarr, do we really need as separate forum? I would prefer to keep all of this in one place.--Dreighton 17:33, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

re: separate forum - I don't think we NEED a separate forum, I do believe however more people can potentially become aware of such discussions if they are to take place on forums, plus some people might feel more comfortable with forum style discussions... ;)

--Xanyarr Chyakk 19:06, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

There's a difference between having admins ensure certain standards are enforced and having admins crack down on anything except the most perfect of writing. But I'll concede the point for now, and go on with mercilessly tagging pages with OOC and NPOV notices. Orphaea Imperium 13:49, 23 February 2011 (GMT)

Thank you for this discussion in here. At first I was very attracted by the idea to have a common wiki about IC events/stories/etc. I was aware that since all that participate in this wiki write about their own things, most articles will be either biased and thus criticized/edited by their IC-enemies. I now can get very cheap and say that Orphaea used me as a negative example (in his eyes) for contributions to the wiki since we are on opposing sides in game. --Vip Fortuna 21:01, 24 February 2011 (GMT)

I don't think that is what motivated him, Vip. The issue is really that Compedia was a free for all where individuals and groups were free to write whatever they wanted, often heavily influenced by their IC perspective and bias. I believe that the Holocron should strive to be something greater than what Compedia was. Not just a collected archive of self-glorifying biographies and propaganda, but rather an objective source of information where the content is authored in such a manner that it can be seen as objective. That means having to step outside ones character and consider the material as a player, not a character. I am fully in agreement with Orph that the initial article regarding the TAR was filled with quite apparent bias as well as IC/OOC crossover. Since then, I see you've taken steps to modify some of the content and that's great. When it comes to the ORE article, I figure it was tagged because the "Descriptions" section, for example, is largely that faction's view of itself. It is not really an objective perspective in some ways, as the description reads more like faction propaganda than a wiki article. I figure if the descriptions section is to be included, it could be in the form of a quote with the clear marking that it was authored by the company to promote itself. In any case, I would advocate that we all strive to leave our characters at the door when working on the Holocron and maintain a level of professionalism and respect each other enough to maintain a mature level of discussion.--Alex Tylger 21:40, 24 February 2011 (GMT)

Thank you, Alex. Your comment is really appreciated. And I do know the articles need additional info. At the weekend I will add the history of what happened 15 months ago. --Vip Fortuna 22:31, 24 February 2011 (GMT)

You're welcome. I'll help flesh out the TAR article's earlier history. As someone who knew and worked with Choibacco, I got info regarding the circumstances of his break with Hapes. --Alex Tylger 22:36, 24 February 2011 (GMT)

Sub-Faction Pages

For sub-faction organisational units (e.g. Imperial Navy), should these be their own page and risk conflict between similar pages, or be subpages of the main faction page (e.g. Galactic Empire/Imperial Navy)? Or should pages of this type be avoided altogether and any relevant information incorporated into sections on the appropriate pages? Obviously we'd need to cap things at a certain limit, e.g. a page for the Imperial Navy might be appropriate, but for every Imperial military unit that has ever existed may be a bit excessive. Orphaea Imperium 07:23, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

My view is that we should follow the wikipedia rules for naming pages (thus Imperial Navy and Imperial Navy (Other Empire)). --Owen von Ismay 08:50, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

People aren't getting the hint nor read this page, they continue on creating pages with no extra throught, maybe I should post a Sim News asking not to do this. --Ryan Roche 16:32, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

Without rules somewhere clear for people to read, and clear guidelines, and admins to enforce them, any Sim News will be limited in effect. Couldn't hurt though, if it just said not to wantonly copy and paste stuff from elsewhere, and not to create article categories or anything like that until we've sorted things out. Orphaea Imperium 16:48, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

See above. But who is "we" in your last sentence? If it is "us, the users", I fully agree. ;)--Dreighton 16:58, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

As above, letting people create random pages with no structure, and ending up with Imperial Navy (Galactic Empire, New Republic/Navy and Other Faction#Navy around the place because we let everyone name things the way they wanted, rather than forming a consistent naming system (like on Wikipedia), will only make things messy and difficult to maintain. Orphaea Imperium 17:15, 22 February 2011 (GMT)

Have we corrected this? Horthon Gorthy 17:00, 15 March 2011 (GMT)

Faction Categories

Simple question - should we allow faction categories? E.g. Category: Galactic Empire. I'm of two minds about it - on one hand it does keep pages together, on the other hand unless the faction is one of the large ones likely to have numerous pages about it (Empire, NR, etc), most will see little use. Orphaea Imperium 13:46, 23 February 2011 (GMT)

As they are clearly useful for larger factions we should rather have those type of categories. And in those cases where they are not useful they don't hurt either. Or do they?--Dreighton 11:57, 25 February 2011 (GMT)

Template tweak

Can we get links to pages that you've visited, but don't exist yet, made a separate colour? As it is they're the same colour as body text, so if I click a link to create a page, but then forget to/accidentally close that tab/decide to do it later, the link blends in with the text and it's hard to pick up that a page actually needs to be created. Orphaea Imperium 13:42, 25 February 2011 (GMT)

Thanks for the heads up, I will do that. --Dreighton 10:18, 26 February 2011 (GMT)

This still seems to be a problem? Orphaea Imperium 09:10, 4 May 2011 (GMT)

Isn't the color of the link white then? - Kinsa Rha, 4.05.2011, 18:38 GMT

Can we change the lue of all templates to something more SWC-ish ? Veynom 14:17, 1 March 2011 (GMT)

Images

There seems to be a server error when MediaWiki tries to resize an uploaded image - 'Error creating thumbnail: /usr/bin/convert: Unrecognized option (-thumbnail).' Orphaea Imperium 14:02, 25 February 2011 (GMT)

I made a report on the bug tracker: http://bugs.swcombine.com/view.php?id=507 Orphaea Imperium 03:05, 26 February 2011 (GMT)

British or American?

I was just asked this - should the Holocron follow British or American English? I've been following British on the basis that many Euro people play and they seem to be more familiar with British spelling over American. Orphaea Imperium 03:57, 26 February 2011 (GMT)

I would say that either can be used, but an article should adhere to just one form for the sake of consistency.--Alex Tylger 04:01, 26 February 2011 (GMT)

I was thinking more for categories e.g. Category:Organisations vs Category:Organizations. Having multiple categories pop up with variations in spelling would be tedious. Orphaea Imperium 04:10, 26 February 2011 (GMT)

I gave it some thought and found it very difficult to decide this. If we follow the Wikipedia manual of style (which is something I suggest we stick to, as it is a lot easier to refer to an existing standrad for something like this than having to draft on on our own) we should allow all vareities of English, as long as it is consistent for any one article. On the other hand, the Combine clearly favours British - or as Khan would put it international - English over American English. Of course players and factions may use whatever they like for their websites, chats and DMs but the website itself and the rules are not US English. SO I would rather favour British over American English for the wiki as the norm.--Dreighton 10:23, 26 February 2011 (GMT)

Rewriting History

The Holocron is IC, but though much of SWC's history the line has been marginal at best, or ignored regularly. This makes it hard when adding historical documents, which often make reference to 'the game', 'factions' ,'NFGs', 'IRC', 'forum', 'ICQ', etc. - all terms that don't exist IC (or at least not in that context).

My question is - should we keep historical documents intact for posterity or rewrite them as minimally as possible for IC appropriateness (or do both)? Orphaea Imperium 01:01, 1 March 2011 (GMT)

In my opinion, since this is an IC wiki, it is acceptable to edit content that seems to be in a grey zone between IC and OOC, yet still has importance to the game's history. For the Allied Tion article I have quotes from the diplomatic talks, but I have every intention of editing them to some extent to make it more explicitly IC. --Alex Tylger 01:06, 1 March 2011 (GMT)

Maybe if we have the IC versions as Article but have the unedited versions as Article/Original? That way we have the IC version for actual use, but keep the original around for historical purposes. Orphaea Imperium 01:10, 1 March 2011 (GMT)

Alternatively we keep the rewritten version of the wiki and link to an off-site source with the original content. --Alex Tylger 01:12, 1 March 2011 (GMT)

After all the research I've done, I don't trust SWC hosting to remain accessible in the long term, let alone off-site sources. Orphaea Imperium 01:16, 1 March 2011 (GMT)

I share Orphea's concerns, all of them. I also appreciate the concern about keeping source material intact. I feel like we may need something like Wikisource, just to store all source material in unedited form. At the same time, it is probably impractical to have a seperate Wiki. I suggest we use a seperate namespace or a category for source material and articles can refer to these pages. Articles could then clip and edit source material for quoting or just refer to the source. Of course any edits should still be recognizable as an edit, perferrably by using brackets for edits. For occasional minor OOC refrences we should probably take a pragmatical approach. If there is a good way to edit them out or replace them easily to make it more IC, we should go for it, but sometimes it will be better to tolerate a bit of OOC for the sake of making things easier to comprehend. I would appreciate, if everyone could share his oppinion if we should rather use a category or a namespace for source material. I think a namespace would be more logical, but a category may be easier to handle.--Dreighton 08:26, 1 March 2011 (GMT)

I think Orph's original suggestion of an /Original page added to the main one would probably be best, along with a link/note leading readers to that particular area. Keeps things relatively organized and tidy. Weylin vi Cron 09:04, 1 March 2011 (GMT)

A namespace or second site effectively means maintaining two pages for one historical document with minimal linking. Using subpages keeps the related pages tied together, and then using something like Category: Original Documents (Meta) would keep all the subpages tied together as well. Orphaea Imperium 09:45, 1 March 2011 (GMT)

Rewriting History - Characters

A similar, but more sensitive issue - should we rewrite character backstories to follow what would be the expected path? For example, some older Imperials will have stories like 'rebels killed my family' (or vice versa), but given the current SWC timeline, that would make them teenagers when they were also Grand Admirals and the like. Do we let the inconsistencies stay to keep the stories intact, or should we go ahead and edit them for conformity? Orphaea Imperium 14:19, 1 March 2011 (GMT)

CGT Day/Time Variables

MediaWiki has several in-built variables, e.g. PAGENAME. Could we get some custom variables added, e.g. CGTDAY and CGTYEAR for the current SWC day/year respectively? It doesn't look that hard to add custom variables. Orphaea Imperium 03:07, 2 March 2011 (GMT)

Community Admins

At this point I just want to make it aware that no one gives about the rules we wanted people to follow in this wiki and as far as I'm concerned I'm not going to clean up after everyone's articles and add categories or fix OOC mistakes. I strongly recommend a group of community middles is created in order to literally take care of things and prevent people from 'doing whatever they want'. Who is going to select a featured article every month? And who is going to take care of "This week in history" in the following years? I'm sorry but this is just not going to work and that's my professional opinion. The situation is bad now already, why are there so many articles about the Empire? And a lot other pages which are all OOC, have we lost the ICness? At any rate I guess everyone is just going to take care of his/her own articles from now on, good luck to us all. --Ryan Roche 13:56, 4 March 2011 (GMT)

The reason that there's so many articles about the Empire is probably in part because the two administrators most involved are former Imperials adding old content (much of which, I should point out, is obscure or has otherwise been lost via other sources), and in part because the Empire has a reasonably well developed wiki of its own with a number of good and (relatively) neutral articles that can be brought over with minimal work. I could go and make pages for all the RA Supreme Commanders like I have the Emperors, I suppose, but I'm far more qualified to write about the Emperors than the SCs (and thus far more likely to return to fill them out when I get the time).

And I am seeing a general improvement in the standards, if not the writing. People seem generally to be uploading images and using templates and categories correctly, even if there are bias/OOC issues with content. With more articles being created and improved (as is slowly happening), and with the new main page design with a reasonably prominent link to the guide, I think people will get more easily familiar with what we expect and when they come to start writing they'll do it properly.

We're still in the relatively early stages (though a number of us have done a proportionally great deal of work towards it); of course we're going to have growing pains.

This doesn't all mean that I'm against community admins simply to keep things tidy (deleting pages, images, etc. as necessary rather than people blanking pages and making them untrackable / relying on Dreighton to do it all) - indeed, I think it should be an official team like the Art Team or Galaxy Team - but we've already been told that's not happening, and I can't see much that has significantly changed for the worse that would be convincing now. Orphaea Imperium 15:51, 4 March 2011 (GMT)

Thanks, Orphaea, that is already most of what I would have to say on the matter. About blanked pages: You can use the "to be deleted" category to mark pages for deletion. That would make it easy for me to check for them. (I carted the category [[1]], but I think it is not showing up correctly on the cetegories page, even if I don't really know why this is. In general pages should rarely be deleted, even if they are e.g. not following naming guide e lines. It would usually be a better idea to make a redirect, simply because there is a high chance a different user will create the page anew at some point. Actually a blanked page or a redirect is easier to track than a deleted page (even if this is possible, too). So if you find a page no longer needed, consider the possibility to make a redirect.--Dreighton 16:03, 4 March 2011 (GMT)

Which is fine if people other than the handful that keep an eye on things here know to do that... which they don't :-). Maybe we need to put it in the guide? Orphaea Imperium 16:16, 4 March 2011 (GMT)

How to Deal with GalMap change

this is a serious issue considering this is an IC only wiki. names of battles wont make sense because the locations have been renamed etc etc etc. any thoughts? Horthon Gorthy 19:36, 8 March 2011 (GMT)

There will be a retcon of biblical proportions. Orphaea Imperium 00:54, 9 March 2011 (GMT)

The best thing we can do right now is go on the current galaxy map and make note of the ID of a planet (or system in some cases, depending on how they're due to be split up) that was involved in the incident in question. Then save the ID somewhere and check its new name and location once the new gal map is released (alternatively where it is now if that particular spot's location has been finalized.) --Alex Tylger 00:57, 9 March 2011 (GMT)

I am less concerned about the name of battels no longer making sense. Most people IRL don't know where most of theses places are, anyway. Try it! Ask someone on the street to tell you where Waterloo is or Navarino :). It has been suggested to me - and I like the idea a lot - to fidn an IC reason for the drastic changes to the galaxy. Like some natural desaster that hit and reshaped the galaxy. Farfetched, I know, but it would work like an C code word to say: "And then the admins changed the galaxy map". "Again", as I would like to add. It's not the first time the galaxy map is drastically changed (we did the same when moving to Darkness), and it would only make sense to work these changes into the IC story of e.g. planets and systems.--Dreighton 22:16, 12 March 2011 (GMT)

Marked for Deletion

Ive created a template that puts things into a category for Drei to follow and then delete things :D Horthon Gorthy 17:30, 15 March 2011 (GMT)

SWC Wiki vs Wookieepedia

I've noticed quite a lot of pages recently have been using Wookieepedia citations and information about various planets and races. Is this considered an acceptable path to take considering that we have our own information about each race within the Combine? I would hate to think that we are becoming a clone of wookieepedia for our pages, especially when it isn't considered a validated source when we apply it to other areas of the Combine. I'd like to know what the thoughts are of this?--Dakha Rednax 10:39, 06 May 2011 (GMT)

My thoughts are such: The Guide says: "While SWC is derived from canon, the whole point of SWC is that it isn't canon and lacks all the heroes and much of the history we're familiar with in favour of our own characters and history. By all means refer to canon information where appropriate, or provide references to canon sources (e.g. Wookiepedia), but don't get canon information confused with SWC information."

It doesn't say we can't add it, it says to be careful and not to copy things that are not compliant to SWC timeline. So I ditch every mention of canon SW characters (like Thrawn in the Chiss article), and every mention of the happenings from the canon SW Empire period onwards.

I also do not repeat information that is already in SWC. I add information when it's missing from SWC (planets' orbital periods, common names for races, ancient history etc.)

My thought is: many newbies will refer to Holocron as the information source. The descriptions in SW Combine Database (Rules page) are sometimes confusing. No paragraphs in some of them, no order...; little information on the society and history of each race. So a newbie will probably type the name of the race into Google... and the first thing to pop up will be Wookieepedia. Some information there conflicts with Combine. And a newbie will try to use Thrawn in his Chiss character's background, for example, not knowing they don't go together.

So to prevent such situations, it's better to have the relevant information in the Holocron, this way the said newbie will find everything in one place and will not get confused (because he won't need to look into Wookieepedia, he won't probably even notice the differences/disrepancies/what call you).

Besides, I think adding such information makes it easier to roleplay, say, Twi'lek character. That's one of the reasons I try so hard to find example names.

-Kinsa Rha, 06.05.2011, 09:54 GMT

I realize why you've done it however some things are inconsistent with SWC. For example race descriptions, if I take the example of the Dug since it caught my notice playing a Dug myself you make mention of events surrounding Malastare. This is inconsistent with SWC history and no explanations appear to describe how one canon event transfers into SWC when different events occurred. Obviously if there is a correlation between the events made through the documentation of factions then I wouldn't see a problem with that but what I see as an overuse of wookieepedia to be used as just filler for the sake of creating a page, which I make my point again is not considered an appropriate source in other aspects of SWC's develop i.e. Races, Galaxy suggestions. This overuse will eventually create continuity errors and displacements with SWC own timeline which doesn't follow canon events.

Like I say, I'm curious to know what position we're going to take on this.--Dakha Rednax 12:29, 06 May 2011 (GMT)

I would like to echo Dakha's concerns and add a question - Does refer mean copy and paste entire passages from wookieepedia?

Unless one rewrites and adopts the canon information from wookiee simple copypasting creates a lot more issues than it solves. Each instance will have to be tracked, verified, corrected by multiple people who actually know what happened and until then it will be misinforming an unfortunate newbie and putting things into his mind that are contrary to the combine's and holocron's design and intention... --Xanyarr Chyakk 12:00, 6 May 2011 (GMT)

Give me a shout on my userspace's talk page or on the relevant pages' talk and I will fix the problem(s) myself. I mostly work on races and planets - I'd like to have all the races and their homeworlds well documented in the Holocron for the newbies' benefit (after all, I'm a newbie myself :D)

And I'm trying to adapt the info from my source, be it old Compedia or Wookiee, but I'm not a native speaker of English and I'm afraid of losing something important in the process of rewriting. So I prefer to copy/paste stuff with minimal ingerention. -- Kinsa Rha, 6.05.2011, 12:47 GMT

I've done some revisions of the Dug page and explained there some of the things I've had issues with. I think we need someone to revise pages that are referenced from wookieepedia. I'm happy to take on the task myself. Some things such as dates of when events happened shouldn't be included because we don't really go by BBY/ABY. I'm going to try and find out actual historical events in SWC and how the groups over those planets view the transition of canon to SWC events.Dakha Rednax, 10:40, 07 May 2011

I have no problem with your revisions or you taking on the task, quite the opposite. I don't know the exact year difference between Year 0 in our timeline and the Battle of Yavin, so I usually try to give vague dates, like "some five thousand years ago". - Kinsa Rha, 07.05.2011, 10:59 GMT

Family Categories

Do we need them? Do we want them? Oppinions, please! I have mixed feelings here. I understand that large families can be as big and as important as other groups that we will probably allow categories for, but I feel like other methods to deal with it will usually be more important, especially if the category is used to link individual members of the family. This could be done by linking between the individual articles for families with only a few members (two to maybe five or six) or by having a main article for the family, if the family is really big. Actually family trees do that extremely well in some cases on Wikipedia.--Dreighton 19:57, 19 May 2011 (GMT)

Some people like to explore wikis through categories from time to time. So I think that as long as categories are justified through a good amount of articles in them we should not prevent their creation. What however is a good amount of articles? I think 3-4 in case of families and noble houses should do the trick. Any family with two player characters or more should think about creating a family page with family trees and what not (though to help with that we might need an addon or two). --Xanyarr Chyakk 09:00, 20 May 2011 (GMT)

Relevance: PCs and NPCs

Should NPCs be allowed to have their own article? I think it may be helpful for users - especially new players - if we restricted articles on planets, ships, characters (and possibly other things?) to items that exist or existed in the SWC universe on a database level. E.g.: If you have an article on a person, this person has been a played character at some point. Opinions? --Dreighton 22:04, 29 June 2011 (GMT)

I think that for now such a restriction would be a good idea. People could still create pages for NPCs or other things in their personal user space and even link there, but I do agree that main namespace should be used for actual SWC subjects. --Xanyarr Chyakk 10:19, 30 June 2011 (GMT)

Redirects on user accounts and character accounts

Instead of undoing other people's work here, I thought I'd bring up two points.

The first is how user accounts are now being redirected to relevant character profiles. While I can see how that is useful in some ways, is it truly necessary? I'd say our user account on here is a means to contribute, but we're not assuming that our characters are writing this information on here, are we? I think it would possibly be better if people can retain seperate user account profiles for "advertising" what areas they might have insight in to.

The other concern I have is character names like Paul Cron, Jeff Corbin and Zara Sturm, being redirected to subsections of the Cron Conflict article (just an example.) While these characters were important in that particular event and possibly that event only, I do believe that this wiki allows for any character - no matter how little on their game events track record - to have their own character profile. For example, there was much more to Jeff Corbin than just the Cron Conflict, even though that is maybe what he is best known for in recent years and veterans just haven't gotten around to documenting his earlier endeavours. --Alex Tylger 05:14, 19 October 2011 (GMT)

Couldn't agree more about the Jeff Corbin bit, that edit surprised me and should be reverted. I thought the linked of the page was a good idea so you could see the character as the account page would not really offer much to the Holocron other than a blank page or a red link. --Ignatius Paak October 19.

On the first point, I have to agree with setting up a separate user account page to 'advertise' what sort of expertise or editing projects they have insight on. We might need a specific template that allows you to link the user account page with the character page like 'For more information on the character'. As there was a brief editing war a few days back, we might need something analogous to WikiProject here to formalize editing convention on areas such as astrography and history/characters (drawn from historians within the factions). The group or project would have enough standing to debate amongst themselves what is the more neutral and IC concerning articles in their area of the Holocron and the admins can therefore trust their decision. More importantly, the WikiProject analogue would give enough information for those picking up after some period of inactivity.

Since I'm handling the pages - Paul Cron, Jeff Corbin and Zara Sturm, I should explain why I did it. It appears to be common wiki convention to redirect to a subsection if the full article isn't available and the Cron Conflict appears to deal with all three characters and all three apparently died during or shortly afterwards. The redirect was supposed to be a temporary measure until someone sets up the proper page, break the redirect and adds a 'See Also' to the subsection of Cron Conflict. At this point in time, I'm focused on extracting information from the GNS broadcasts to supplement the Cron Conflict article with the usual propaganda being referred to as 'allegations' within the article. If there were sufficient information in addition to the GNS broadcasts to add to the actual character page, I will do so. Otherwise someone who knew any of the three characters can do so. Also there is no reversions for Jeff Corbin or Zara Sturm because there was no articles before I created the redirect. --Raith Starlight 15:15, 19 October 2011 (GMT)

Individual Ships

In preparing to write some articles, I was wondering how the community feels about individual ships and the sorts. I think there should be some sort of category called something to the effect of "Individual Ships" or "Noteable Ships." The former may be better than the latter. This would also save us from having the general "Spacecraft" category cluttered, as I feel it is best reserved for a list of articles on generic ship types.

I am not sure if we'd want to have articles on every average freighter and such that a person owns (not that there'd be much harm in that) but there may be vessels that warrant their own article. I see the Solitaire is already on here, which is a good example of an individual ship. Other ships would be modified vessel of particular significance, flagships, ships that took part in major red scenarios, etc.

It might also be appropriate if these do not utilize the generic template for vessels of their type, but rather a simplified template that includes Name, Class, Type, Modifications, Affiliation, Historical Events, etc.

Thoughts? --Alex Tylger 07:03, 2 November 2011 (GMT)

I like everything you suggested. I would perfer "Individual Ships" over "Noteable Ships" for the category, just to spare us discussions over which ships are noteable and which ones are not. For the template I want a field for "former names". Many ships are renamed, some quite often. This can be difficult, see this article, ist history and talk page as an example: Jormungand Gand. --Dreighton 09:22, 2 November 2011 (GMT)