06-13-2010, 06:37 AM
Rafael Wrote:While I have no intention of building a BM wiki, I can perfectly see us write an article in a wiki-compatible format and then publish it on a number of different sites, beginning with Havard's blog, the Greyhawk wiki, etc.
A "Blackmoor Wiki" would be a ton of work. I don't think anyone here wants to go to the effort of building a bespoke Blackmoor encyclopedia. It would be a job that would take years to build.
But I do think this forum...as the leading Blackmoor community...is the best place to have a rallying point to pull in the "dissatisfied Wikipedians" who would be willing and able to go to a new wiki, where they can add Blackmoore articles and not fear the axe of notability. (You still need other axes, as people do dump uncitated stuff on all wikis and some of it is stuff they made up. But generally a bespoke wiki is not so much something that deletes more than it creates.)
Rafael Wrote:As to the original wikipedia, they lack a governing body.
I am very involved with another website, the martial arts board Bullshido, which is arguably the most important ressource for their topics on the internet, and their article too got deleted recently because some nazi thought it wasn't "notable".
Wikipedia does have a "government". But it is a multi-headed government. There is a kind of "pyramid of power" structure, where people get "promoted" after people see them making decisions that are good for Wikipedia as a whole. BOZ is one of the good guys, who gets D&D articles cleaned up and doesn't just oppose everything the deletionists complain about. He got a promotion and can now (temporarily) get articles "undeleted" so that the content can be recovered and moved elsewhere.
What needs to happen with Bullshido, is that "experts" in the field, need to use Wikipedia's own rules to "proove" the notability of the website.
One of the principles of Wikipedia is "no original research". This basically means that if you say something is great - on Wikipedia itself - that is irrelevant. The "local" claim, gets deleted and any article it underpins is then at risk of falling apart. (From a Blackmoor point of view, The Great Svenny could sign up to Wikipedia and add a ton of great information to that article and it would all fall under the "no original research axe" and vanish.)
Now a lot of people come to understand the "no original research" thing but then fail to realise that Wikipedia wants "secondary sources" rather than "primary sources". (This might be where your Bullshido article may have fallen down - I am just guessing.)
Primary sources are "horses mouth" sources, like the original Blackmoor books. They are not something that proves "notability" because anyone can write a book, sing a song, make a film or whatever. And if I write something, you can't "trust" me to decide on its importance. Basically, I am "biased" about my own stuff, from that point of view.
Notability is generally prooved by someone else writing about something, making a documentary about it, or something like that. This is where you get a "secondary source". So basically, what Blackmoor or Bullshido or whatever needs is people writing well researched stuff about the subject.
Now, there is a ton of stuff about D&D out there, so you would think there would be no problem. But this is where the deltionists can chip away at the secondary sources. Because we all know that for every great D&D resource, there are a ton of bad ones. (I've even seen a website out there that stole a ton of content from Beyond the Moons and passed it off as their own Spelljammer stuff.) So what you need is not just a "secondary source" but a "secondary source that stands up to scrutiny".
Here is where you need to do your research (on the secondary sources) and be prepared to challange tags put up by delitionists. The "tag and run" merchants generally tag lots of articles and then come back to get the undefended ones deleted. If Bullshido got deleted, it might just have been because nobody said anything. (I don't know anything about the subject, so the delitionsist who tagged it may actually have had a valid point in that case.)
The thing to do, when an article is tagged, is to look for the discussion of the problem. Tag and run deletionists generally can not be bothered to follow the etiquette and start a discussion. They also can't generally be bothered to ping earlier editors and ask them to come back and add citations. So if you see an article with a problem, make sure you do that stuff, so that the process is "fair".
Add in a discussion, make sure you say (in a non-rude way) that the article has been tagged with no explanation. Assume good faith. Go to the discussion page of the tagger and ask them to come and talk on the talk page. If the person generally thinks there is a problem, they will come and explain it. Maybe they don't understand the rules and will go back to start discussions on other articles they have tagged. If they are a tag and run merchant, your assumption of good faith will (over time) add up with similar activity by other "reasonable editors" and show them up as not willing to take part in improvement (and undermine their standing within the community). So it is well worth assuming that there is a genuine problem with the article and asking: "how do we fix this?" Edit warring with delitionists just doesn't work.
Check the history, see who added disputed paragraphs. These (well meaning people) are often giving fuel to the delitionists. Again, assume good faith. An uncitated paragraph about Blackmoor is an attempt to improve things. They probably don't realise their content needs underpinning via a secondary source. And ironically, these are the people who have the most to add, but are most likely to leave if their work gets deleted. If you find a source, then tell them that you have found the source, but invite them to check your work. They might then go back to other articles and improve their own citations.