Discussion on formatting & setting priorities

[GWOtaku]

(edit note: old thread altered to contain old discussion from the DBZ character thread)

[The Huntsman]

I think there are some accepted Wiki standards that we don't need to change. It just makes more work. Sometimes a good idea exists and you're just best going with that. Not every single character in history deserves a seperate article and some would be better served in a list format.

I respectfully disagree. If somebody can contribute enough information to warrant a page to be created for a character, then there is no reason for them not to. The only way that the Toon Zone Animation Wiki will succeed is if we allow people to have fun, and allowing them to contribute informative pages for their favorite characters is an excellent way of doing just that. We can’t get bogged down in attempting to become a clone of Wikipedia; we need to do our own thing and make this a wiki worthy of the Toon Zone name. That said, we are borrowing many of the rules and regulations that Wikipedia has used, but there will be areas where we take a different approach.

[HellCat]

I respectfully disagree. If somebody can contribute enough information to warrant a page to be created for a character, then there is no reason for them not to. The only way that the Toon Zone Animation Wiki will succeed is if we allow people to have fun, and allowing them to contribute informative pages for their favorite characters is an excellent way of doing just that. We can’t get bogged down in attempting to become a clone of Wikipedia; we need to do our own thing and make this a wiki worthy of the Toon Zone name. That said, we are borrowing many of the rules and regulations that Wikipedia has used, but there will be areas where we take a different approach.

Your belief seems to be fun at the expense of any form of structure or professionalism. Sometimes, brevity is better. What exactly are the criteria that determine if an article is good or not? You're basically saying I could write a bunch of gobeldygook and personal theory on a character and that this would be ok as it would create enough content to fill a seperate article.

[Jacob T. Paschal]

I don't think that's what he is saying. Basically, the article's should be an [organized] collection of all the facts one can gather from viatable sources.

[HellCat]

Telling people to just go out and have fun isn't a structured way to do this currently, especially not with the low number of existing contributors. It will lead to some areas being ignored, others getting too much focus and inconsistancies between style and tone.

I'm not trying to turn this into a Wikipedia clone. You're ignoring the fact you need a workable plan, sacraficing that factor simply to get ANY content added.

[Jacob T. Paschal]

Shouldn't people contribute what they can and when they can? Not even Wikipedia has all of it's articles complete or formatted in one specific way. I'd like to at least lay some ground work and see how other's wish to cultivate it.

[HellCat]

Shouldn't people contribute what they can and when they can? Not even Wikipedia has all of it's articles complete or formatted in one specific way. I'd like to at least lay some ground work and see how other's wish to cultivate it.

There's a difference between people contributing bit by bit and saying "Oh sure, go nuts. Bit characters? Sure, give em a whole article, even though more noteworthy characters don't have one yet!"

There's no point focussing the Wiki on 'fun' to the point that it shoots itself in the foot early on and creates both messes which need to be cleaned up and noteable holes which damage its credibility. If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right.

[The Huntsman]

Your belief seems to be fun at the expense of any form of structure or professionalism. Sometimes, brevity is better. What exactly are the criteria that determine if an article is good or not?

Facts. Facts based upon details that can be verified. A character’s abilities can be verified. A character’s history can be verified. A character’s relationships can be verified. And yes, a character’s personality can be verified as well, though I concede that such can be a bit trickier than the other details. Aren’t facts the basis of any good wiki? In the end, giving a character their own page doesn’t change that.

[HellCat]

It will when people notice that other, more paramount animation concepts lack any presence yet they can find a seperate article for a random bit character some contributor liked.

[The Huntsman]

Shouldn't people contribute what they can and when they can? Not even Wikipedia has all of it's articles complete or formatted in one specific way. I'd like to at least lay some ground work and see how other's wish to cultivate it.

You and I are speaking the same language. While users shouldn’t create an entire page for a character if they can only write a sentence or two, they should feel encouraged to contribute at their leisure. If they take the time to write up an entire page for a character that is full of valid information, then they should be entitled to contribute it. In regards to formatting, we are working to establish a unifying set of guidelines, but I prefer a “bend but not break” approach that will allow for contributors to discuss our guidelines and potentially disregard them if a situation warrants. After all, no set of guidelines can be absolute; there are always exceptions and some pages may need to be formatted differently.

There's a difference between people contributing bit by bit and saying "Oh sure, go nuts. Bit characters? Sure, give em a whole article, even though more noteworthy characters don't have one yet!"

For the record, users should not feel pressured to contribute to higher priority pages; we want people to contribute to them, don’t get me wrong, but people shouldn’t be scolded for contributing information for lesser known entities.

[HellCat]

I'm not trying to scold anyone. You're being needlessly defensive here. The fact is, from where I'm standing, you don't seem to have any clear plan for the Wiki's growth and style. You just keep throwing accusations at me and getting defensive when I criticise. I have experience with Wiki sites, including having run my own. I'm also degree level certified in academic writing, so believe me that I know what I'm talking about. You're being stubborn and refusing to acknowledge what I'm really saying. My concern is making sure this Wiki avoids simple mistakes early on so it can really take flight.

[The Huntsman]

I'm not trying to scold anyone. You're being needlessly defensive here. The fact is, from where I'm standing, you don't seem to have any clear plan for the Wiki's growth and style. You just keep throwing accusations at me and getting defensive when I criticise. I have experience with Wiki sites, including having run my own. I'm also degree level certified in academic writing, so believe me that I know what I'm talking about. You're being stubborn and refusing to acknowledge what I'm really saying. My concern is making sure this Wiki avoids simple mistakes early on so it can really take flight.

Perhaps I am being defensive, but if I recall, I received some choice words back when I created that page for Cadpig. There was nothing wrong with what I did and I believe that users should be encouraged to contribute information that they want to contribute, as long as their information is valid. If somebody decided to write an extremely detailed page for Boots from “Dora The Explorer”, then that would be their prerogative; it doesn’t matter whether or not you feel that there are other pages that deserve the attention more.

Is it a mistake to let users contribute the information that they want? That is what you appear to be fighting, sir. We are in the process of writing the rules and regulations; we will ensure that created pages meet a level of quality, and like any good wiki, those that don’t meet the level of quality will be marked as such and somebody will work to fix its faults. This is a community effort, and they key is community. I don’t know about you, but my experience tells me that a community isn’t going to rally behind an effort if they’re held at gunpoint and told to do things a certain way or risk ruining the entire project.

Wikipedia, despite its plethora of pages dictating policies and procedures, is more often than not a mess. We want organization. We want unification. But we don’t want a dictatorship. There is room to experiment and do things differently, as long as the information provided is valid.

[HellCat]

Perhaps I am being defensive, but if I recall, I received some choice words back when I created that page for Cadpig. There was nothing wrong with what I did and I believe that users should be encouraged to contribute information that they want to contribute, as long as their information is valid. If somebody decided to write an extremely detailed page for Boots from “Dora The Explorer”, then that would be their prerogative; it doesn’t matter whether or not you feel that there are other pages that deserve the attention more.

Is it a mistake to let users contribute the information that they want? That is what you appear to be fighting, sir. We are in the process of writing the rules and regulations; we will ensure that created pages meet a level of quality, and like any good wiki, those that don’t meet the level of quality will be marked as such and somebody will work to fix its faults. This is a community effort, and they key is community. I don’t know about you, but my experience tells me that a community isn’t going to rally behind an effort if they’re held at gunpoint and told to do things a certain way or risk ruining the entire project.

Wikipedia, despite its plethora of pages dictating policies and procedures is, more often than not, a mess. We want organization. We want unification. But we don’t want a dictatorship. There is room to experiment and do things differently, as long as the information provided is solid.

Please don't make this personal. Yes, I challenged you starting an article on Cadpig but please don't bring that back up purely to somehow turn this into a personal dispute with me. As one of the admins of the Wiki, you should set a better example.

What I'm 'fighting' is your constant insistance that this project is more about fun than it is about structure or informing people. You basically seem fine for people to do whatever they want on the Wiki so long as they're enjoying themselves. When I try and point out I tried a similar approach and it exposed several problems, you ignore me and basically insist my feedback isn't relavent. It creates the sense that you're not really listening to feedback and are just stubbornly pursuing this as you've seen fit.

I believe I was contributing to this project before you did. I also have relevent experience and qualifications which I've been trying to share in an authourative yet friendly manner. However, you keep blowing my concerns off and now as said are making this matter a tad too personal. I'm not an enemy, I'm trying to help and just wish you'd honestly listen instead of just shooting down my own knowledge.

[The Huntsman]

Please don't make this personal. Yes, I challenged you starting an article on Cadpig but please don't bring that back up purely to somehow turn this into a personal dispute with me. As one of the admins of the Wiki, you should set a better example.

I am not trying to make this personal. However, I do want to ensure that such will not happen to other users who contribute information for lesser known entities. If somebody did contribute such a page, I wouldn’t want anybody implying that they did anything wrong.

What I'm 'fighting' is your constant insistance that this project is more about fun than it is about structure or informing people. You basically seem fine for people to do whatever they want on the Wiki so long as they're enjoying themselves. When I try and point out I tried a similar approach and it exposed several problems, you ignore me and basically insist my feedback isn't relavent. It creates the sense that you're not really listening to feedback and are just stubbornly pursuing this as you've seen fit.

I respect your opinion and I have taken what you have said into consideration, but on this particular issue, I merely disagree. I may not have as much wiki experience as you have, but I have a lot of experience on information sites such as TV.com and TVRage.com and I have seen people, including myself, lose the flames of passion when they felt obligated to contribute information about animated works that they have no interest in. All I have said is that people should be allowed to contribute to the Toon Zone Animation Wiki at their leisure; to cite the example that I made earlier, if somebody wanted to contribute a page for Boots from “Dora The Explorer”, then it would be their prerogative. Sure, having a page for Boots and not Mickey Mouse might look weird to some people, but I’m sure a fan of Mickey Mouse will come along sooner or later and get his page written, too.

I believe I was contributing to this project before you did. I also have relevent experience and qualifications which I've been trying to share in an authourative yet friendly manner. However, you keep blowing my concerns off and now as said are making this matter a tad too personal. I'm not an enemy, I'm trying to help and just wish you'd honestly listen instead of just shooting down my own knowledge.

We value your experience. Truly. I just believe that we need to encourage people to contribute information without feeling that they made a mistake. We are going to place an emphasis on contributing to higher priority articles, but users should not feel obligated to go out of their way in order to do such. It’s all about desire.

[HellCat]

It's been shot down already, but I'm really not big on this 'so and so Guide' title for pages. I much prefer the Wiki standard of 'List of...'. It just sounds more professional and respectable. I really think this project is suffering from the view that it needs to solely be fun for the personal contributors, rather than creating a useful database maintained by the members of TZ. There really needs to be a merger between the two.

[Jacob T. Paschal]

I too like 'List of...' (I hadn't even noticed until now that this wasn't a 'List of...'), however it depends on what the mods want to do.

I'm going to see about drawing in more DB fans to contribute, if possible.

[GWOtaku]

It's been shot down already, but I'm really not big on this 'so and so Guide' title for pages. I much prefer the Wiki standard of 'List of...'. It just sounds more professional and respectable. I really think this project is suffering from the view that it needs to solely be fun for the personal contributors, rather than creating a useful database maintained by the members of TZ. There really needs to be a merger between the two.

I wouldn't say it was shot down, I was wondering about the merits of having lists in main articles and then having a "see also" link to episode guides that go a little deeper than the basic list. That said, I see the merits of "list of," and upon further thought I don't know that I much like the idea of making episode lists a mandatory, baseline aspect of a primary article. You don't need that to know the fundamental facts about a cartoon.

It won't be much trouble to convert the current episode guides to "list of" articles. I'm leaning toward doing just that once Comcast gets its act together and I have a stable connection tomorrow--ever since a week ago I've only been able to be online at work and at public terminals.

[The Huntsman]

It's been shot down already, but I'm really not big on this 'so and so Guide' title for pages. I much prefer the Wiki standard of 'List of...'. It just sounds more professional and respectable. I really think this project is suffering from the view that it needs to solely be fun for the personal contributors, rather than creating a useful database maintained by the members of TZ. There really needs to be a merger between the two.

“List of…” is fine if it’s actually used for a list. However, throwing “list of…” onto something that isn’t a list is just silly. This is not a list. I like the way that this looks and I believe that it’s far more informative than any “list of…” article could ever be.

[HellCat]

You're being far too strict with your definition of 'List'.

[The Huntsman]

You're being far too strict with your definition of 'List'.

Your concern has been noted and we will be sure to address the issue in the chat that we have scheduled, although it won’t take place until a few other pieces come together.