An Tir Culture Wiki:Community Portal

Community discussions are held here.

Announcements

Wiki Work

Want to help, but don't know where to begin? Here are some good places to start:

• Pages that need more content
• Pages that need some cleanup
• Pages that need to be created
• Wiki Work (Read about this page in "Discussions" below).

An Tir Wiki Opens its Doors

29 Aug 2005. Somebody write that down. I know I wish I'd written down the day the Steps list was first created. --Elizabeth Braidwood 23:43, 29 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Discussions

Images Policy

There's a query about our images policy over in Talk:Riderless_Horse_Ceremony. Anybody have any comments? --Elizabeth Braidwood 13:47, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

Wiki Work

At Corvyn's suggestion (we had a great f2f talk at Investiture this past weekend; thanks to Sir Yusuf for introducing us), I'm going to post raw wiki data in a page called Wiki Work. This data needs to be distributed to the appropriate pages with the appropriate mark-up. Do as much as you can, when you can. If we all contribute bits, the work will get done. --Elizabeth Braidwood 13:47, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

Wiki/OP Connection

Corvyn also suggested that we build a connection between the OP and the Wiki -- essentially a button on the OP next to a person's entry that will create a default person page on the Wiki, complete with template. Just fill in the blanks. It was Corvyn's idea. Yusuf will be contacting Krenn and working with Quentin to set up the details. It's very cool. --Elizabeth Braidwood 13:47, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

Households

I was wondering also if it would be alright to create a new category for hosueholds because they seem to be quite a major factor in generating new intrest in the society. There are quite a few and have neat histories not to mention the fact htey some depth to the SCA culture. For instance, the Innars (I have no idea how to spell that lol), Wolfpack, Trubadors, Al-Cabila, my dads household the Darians etc etc--P. Darius Corvinus (Corvyn) 00:37, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

I think a household category is a great idea. Go for it. (It's spelled "Einars" -- after "Einar, known as Oak".) And I think Al Kabeelah is spelled with a K and an H somewhere in it. --Elizabeth Braidwood 13:47, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

House Elphinstone and Clan Carn should be added to household category when you build it.

You might also want to take a stab at writing a Household entry in Category:Glossary as well. --Elizabeth Braidwood

As a member of Ravenstead Household, I've talked to both our members and the SCA-household Yahoo list about the lack of a definition here. Thing is that households are not an official SCA designation, so there's no "official" information about them. I'm willing to help out with the "household" entries.  :) I'd like to see a "Households" category, too. --Hjordis Olvirsdottir

Templates

One thing I was noticing is incoherency a little. I think it would be swell if we put some collective effort into templates for various page types. Right now the only one I have found, although I havnt spent an increadable amount of time looking, is an event template and so all these different pages about similar topics are sorta chaotic. This could potentialy be daunting to new users or even just curious people looking for information.

Some examples of templates im talking about are like People, Events(done already Im pretty sure), Awards(for these ones we cant reprint what is already on the An Tir web site but would we be able to give at least summaries on them, also histories would be wicked(for example explaining the chains and spurs and belt of a knight)), Branches etc.

Tell me what you think :D --P. Darius Corvinus (Corvyn) 23:44, 14 May 2006 (EDT)

You can find a link to a list of Templates at the bottom of Wiki_Editing_Help. Not the most intuitively obvious place, I agree. Go ahead and add a link in a more obvious place. --Elizabeth Braidwood 13:47, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

Oh there they are but there are a few that are not there that would be good to have like People or Awards or Positions/Offices--P. Darius Corvinus (Corvyn) 02:56, 21 May 2006 (EDT)

New Members

I've been recruiting new members. Generally, they're people whose judgement I trust. They also tend to be good writers or very organized people. I've asked them to not broadcast the existance of the wiki just yet, but to feel free to tell a friend or two if they think they'll be interested in contributing.

At the moment, my list of invitees includes Briana the Bard from Seagirt, Yolande Chastellain, Laurin of Rosewood, Melissa Kendal, and Sister Guineth.

Oh, and I've sent notes to both the Crown and the Kingdom Seneschal letting them know we exist. It was only polite.

--Elizabeth Braidwood 15:32, 3 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Don't forget that nosy guy that set up the software. ;)

--Krenn

Yeah, well he just sorta barged in and made himself at home. (Feet off the coffee table please, Krenn? Thanks.) :-) Invite Jean-Louis in too, wouldja Krenn?

Add Kalhja to the list of people I've recruited. (Probably brutally mis-spelled...) She says she has to check with her soon-to-be-peer, but also that she's been talking about doing an An Tir History website for the last four years.

Ditto Sister Guineth the White, who has some terrific stories from early An Tir on her website. At the very least I'll make sure they're linked in to the site.

--Elizabeth Braidwood 15:08, 7 Aug 2005 (EDT)

When Should We Open Our Doors?

When should we announce the Wiki to the Kingdom and invite the entire populace to contribute? --Elizabeth Braidwood 15:32, 3 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Locking Down the Main Page

Should we restrict access to the Main page, or leave it open? --Elizabeth Braidwood

Aveloc R&D page

We know this is going to be a controversial issue, so I've gone ahead and asked Groa to write up her/Aveloc's side of the story. Does anyone have a recommendation as to who we should ask to write up the alternate view? In an ideal world, we'll be able to merge the two stories into a single article in a neutral voice. If that proves undoable, I propose we simply publish the two stories side-by-side and then stand back and carefully monitor any subsequent page changes.

As a starting point, I've created a personal page for Aveloc the Younger which contains pointers to an Aveloc R&D page as well as to pages for his two reigns.

--Elizabeth Braidwood 18:44, 3 Aug 2005 (EDT)

User identification

Do we want any kind of requirement that people create the accounts with their SCA names, and describe themselves on their user pages?

If we don't, I could envision "Joebob" coming along and editing some page, which gets reverted because nobody knows who they are, and it turns out to be some old duke that was putting in their own information. --Krenn

I think this is a terrific idea. Let's implement it as a community standard first. I'd rather not hardwire it into the site configuration unless necessary. --Elizabeth Braidwood 18:09, 29 Aug 2005 (EDT)

What goes where?

Thanks to everyone inovled in putting this together. I had thought about putting more of this kind of stuff on Cunnan but it feels better for a Kingdom to have its own. One thing I saw happen with Cunnan that I think would be good to think about early is how to not reinvent content that is elsewhere, or would make more sense elsewhere. E.g., I would propose that we promote a community standard that SCA level stuff that isn't specific to An Tir go on Cunnan, and that historical stuff go on Wikipedia. It is easy to link to a Wikipedia article, just put in [[wikipedia:chess]] for wikipedia:chess or [[wikipedia:chess|chess]] for chess. There doesn't seem to be a similar setup for Cunnan ... yet. So you would have to use [http://cunnan.sca.org.au/wiki/Chess chess] to link to chess. --IasonVorax 11:11, 30 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Interesting suggestion (re "SCA stuff that isn't specific to An Tir should go on Cunnan"). Cunnan is certainly extensive, but while exploring it I've found a definite Lochacian slant. If it were more generically SCA and more tolerant of differences in rite and language, I think I would be more interested. I can certainly get behind the proposal that historical stuff go on or be linked from Wikipedia. --Elizabeth Braidwood 23:21, 30 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I think much of that Lochac slant comes from the fact that they started it and were the bulk of the early contributors. Anyone who finds such a slant can fix it or mark it with {{rpov}} (the regional point of view tag). Otherwise if each Kingdome does its own version of how the SCA as a whole works, that will dilute a lot of energy 18 ways. Part of what makes Wikipedia a success is that it is very clear about what it is not. -- IasonVorax

It should be possible to implement our own quickwords. I'll poke around in the guts to see how to do it. --Krenn

Moving Old An Tir Handbook Material to Wiki?

I'm thinking that the old An Tir Handbook material that currently lives on the main An Tir website should be relocated to the wiki where it can be kept more up-to-date. That is, of course, if we can contact the original authors and get their permission to move their work to the public domain.

Whaddaya think?

Along those same lines, I'm wondering about the advisability of similarly moving/duplicating the Champions' List here to encourage ongoing maintenance. (I keep envisioning Sir Historic Fighter coming across the list late some night and noticing that the details aren't quite right. On the wiki, he'd be able to make the update. On the website he can't.) --Elizabeth Braidwood 16:02, 2 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I like the idea of using the wiki for maintenance items in general, but that list is a bad example. It's already fed from a backend program that culls the information from the OP database and generates the pages we see on the site. The practical upshot is that it's maintenance, like most of the OP site, is already trivial once the information itself is in the OP database. -- Quentin Martel

Yup, I realize that the page is fed from the OP database. Actually I was thinking of wiki-izing the Champions' lists in terms of using the wiki information to feed the OP. The Champion list is over 20 years out-of-date... hold on. It's in reverse chronological order. Okay, now it's not a wiki issue and this discussion should be taken elsewhere. --Elizabeth Braidwood 18:15, 2 Sep 2005 (EDT)

New Wiki Queries

I've had a couple of terrific queries about using the wiki. One has some terrific stories about early An Tirian events to share and the other was asking about using the wiki as a Laurel skills reference. I believe both are novice users, so keep your eyes open and offer assistance where you can, eh? --Elizabeth Braidwood

E.B. Goes on Vacation

I'm back. And I can see interest has tapered off. (No worries, it was expected.) Stand by for awareness-raising and interest-inflation... --Elizabeth Braidwood 13:22, 26 Oct 2005 (EDT) [Gad zooks! I've forgotten basic wiki-coding already!]

Wikispammers

It looks like the wikispammers have discovered this wiki. I just cleaned their mess off a bunch of pages. They are using style="overflow:auto; height: 1px;" to hide their spam. I don't know much about the nuts and bolts of MediaWiki... is there some way to prevent that code from being used? Anyway, I guess we will all need to keep a sharp eye on the Recent Changes to catch these folks. I'm sure they probably change IP addresses frequently, so I don't know if IP banning would do much good... Wenyeva atte grene 23:31, 30 Nov 2005 (EST)

As discussed on the Talk:How Things Work Around Here page, I can probably implement CAPTCHA for anonymous edits, and for account registration. That should stop the completely automated spambots. --Krenn 00:35, 1 Dec 2005 (EST)

Admin request? Page deletion

I'm not sure where to request this, but the page Rivers Region could maybe be deleted as now there is a Rivers Region category in the Branch category instead. Wenyeva atte grene 00:18, 1 Dec 2005 (EST)

Done. Good point, we should create a "DeleteMe" tag... hold on, that sounds familiar. (It didn't pop up in my memory until I typed it.) Yup, we already have one, albeit really, really hidden -- sorry. See: Templates --Elizabeth Braidwood 16:15, 5 Dec 2005 (EST)

Ah, ok, cool. Thanks! -- Wenyeva atte grene 20:46, 5 Dec 2005 (EST)