[Wot-l] Greetings from A Wheel of Time Wiki

[Gherald]

On 10/31/05, Aaron Humphrey <alfvaen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Quite frankly, I was surprised to find the WOT Wiki on Wikicities,
> given its doctrine of avoiding redundancy.  I personally don't care
> about its continued separate existence, but I would rather not have to
> split off a separate Wiki for every series that requires more than a
> few dozen pages.
>
> Gherald seems to think that having multiple series sharing a Wiki,
> requiring disambiguation, is a drawback.  In my case, it's an
> advantage.  I envision a site where you can look up any fantasy name,
> and find out what work or works it's from.

"more than a few dozen" and a giant category that's 2 articles shy of
the 200 limit is a little different.  Of course you could create new
subcategories e.g. "Wheel of Time--Items", but I for one feel our
WoT-specific Category Index is nicer and easier to work with.

Regarding when a seperate wiki should be split off, I think fan demand
should be the guiding factor.  Take a look at 
http://harrypotter.wikicities.com if you haven't already... there may
be others.  The google search on the left is useful for cross-project
searches.  You might want to note this on your main page.

You'll notice that A Wheel of Time Wiki, while obviously remaining
confined to a single series, aims to be pretty all encompasing of that
series:

"We aspire to be a definitive unofficial source of plot summaries,
character information, FAQs, glossary of terms, theories, and perhaps
even fan fiction, parodies, etc."

Whereas your policy is more restrictive:

"This Wiki is primarily for collecting character and plot information
from science fiction and fantasy novels and series. It is not intended
to contain review information, and should remain neutral in regards to
perceived qualities of the books or likability of characters."

Both are obviously legitimate yet overlapping goals.  The question
becomes, how do we avoid this redundancy?

I find it unlikely that you would want to put on Concord everything
that is currently on the seperate Harry Potter and Wheel of Time Wikis
(or will potentially be at some point in the future), so I think
"splitting it off" is the way to go.  This is vaguely like how
Wikipedia splits things off to its Sister Projects, listed at the
bottom of their Main Page.  You could list Harry Potter and A Wheel of
Time Wiki as Sister Projects on your Main Page! (*nudge* *nudge*
*wink* *wink* )

> BTW, Gherald, I'd actually prefer continuing forward from FOH myself;
> it's redoing the synopses of books 1-4 that I'm not as keen on.  But
> I'm a bit mercurial, and I tend to wander from book to book and series
> to series as the whims take me.

Ok then, I'll start on latter chapters of TFoH where I'm currently
reading, and you can look those over with a big red pen once you reach
them.

Huzzah for cooperation!

-Gherald

PS: BTW, User Dairhenien has commented on our proposed layout and
plans to continue his work on TEotW.   Have you started work on its
Chapter 13?  Would you prefer that he work on some later part of the
series?  Please respond at
http://wot.wikicities.com/wiki/Wotwiki_talk:Chapter_summaries/example