Topic on Forum:Wiki Talk

As another measure to set ourselves apart from TV Tropes, we should take steps to advertise the more interesting and underappreciated articles on our wiki.

Similar to the feature implemented on The Final Fantasy Wiki, although I believe new articles should be featured every day. These articles shouldn't merely be the overdosed tropes and popular works, but instead the less-appreciated pages that contain a wealth of information for tropers and authors alike. Articles like Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness, The "Unicorn In The Garden" Rule, and Post Modernism.

Technically implementing this is not hard at all.

However, I'm not sure what vetting criteria we need for deciding "featured articles", and I need some firmer guidelines for how we establish that before I add that.

For the moment, it could just be pages that one of the three of us (Brent, Geth, me) picks, until we get a system in place.

The old "Guide to the Virtue Universe" wiki for City of Heroes took nominations for their "featured article" through an automated system on their front page. As I understood it, the Virtue Wwiki admins vetted the suggestions and put the ones they approved on the wiki's front page. (I got the feeling they did that manually, though.)

Anyway, I like the idea of allowing nominations from the user base along with our own choices. I'm sure we have or can get something that can handle that task. As for displaying -- well, I'm sure I'm only repeating what Geth probably already has in mind, but I think we should set up some kind of automated system that takes the top page off a queue of some sort every midnight. We then stock up that queue every month or so -- making our own choices if the nominees are thin on the ground that month.

As for criteria, well, off the top of my head I'd say the following as a minimum:

• Well-written -- not riddled with spelling, grammar and usage errors; likewise properly marked up.
• Insightful, or at least not a gushing fan page for some show or concept.
• Entertaining. Theoretically all our pages are entertaining, but let's just be sure. <grin>
• Preferably something that diverges from the original TVT content or differs from what they have for pages created after the fork, but that's not always going to be possible at least in the beginning.
• No self-nominees ("I think this page for my fic is great! Please make it a featured article!").

What else? We don't want a huge list of criteria, but there's certainly room for a couple other requirements if we need them.

Technically speaking, I was going to have a section on the front page take a random article from a category called "Featured Articles" and display a blurb about the article with a link to the article in question (like how Wikipedia does it).

I can handle the templating/coding needed, so all anyone who wants to add a featured article would have to do is add the category to a page for a potential featured article, and I can set it to randomize the selection.

We still need to firm up the vetting procedure, but the technical side of things should be simple enough.

Ah, yeah, when I said "display the page" I did in fact mean a blurb and a link.

As for vetting, well, my first few ideas for criteria are up there. Let me know what you think. When we get around to creating whatever special page will be used to look at the queue and approve individual pages, the final set of criteria should probably be right on it for reference.

Edit: Just in case it can be of any help, here's a link to the Featured Article FAQ/page on the Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe. An interesting feature of the display on the front page of the wiki is that it rotates through all the pages currently in its "live" list, changing every few seconds. Nobody's updated the list since the game was shut down though.

Don't worry Looney Toons, I'll nominate Drunkard's Walk for you :3

I like this idea but in practice it takes a lot of time with a small userbase. On smaller wikis, this is the kind of thing that never gets updated.

If it was just easy enough so that we could copy-paste the first paragraph, it would be great -- but so many tropes don't have excellent first paragraphs, but instead have rambling ones. Though I suppose they wouldn't be nominees then ~.~

Well then, until it's self-perpetuating with user nominations, it'd be up to us to pick the initial entries. And it'd probably be up to us to summarize for the display anyway because yeah, no guarantee of perfect cold opens.

In re: self-nomination, I'm actually rethinking that. If the page is good enough, it shouldn't matter who nominated it. All that guideline would really do is spur sockpuppets for those who want to flog something, and there's no guarantee we would be able to match an ATT-username to the author of a given page or work anyway.

And while I'd be thrilled to see Drunkard's Walk up there at some point, I suggest we stay away from self-promotion in this feature for at least a few months lest our look of legitimacy suffer.

I guess we can introduce it as a Featured Article of the Week and turn it into a daily thing once it gains some steam.

That sounds good.

So... what's the status on this idea? Are we going to go ahead with it, or is it dead in the water?

As soon as someone that knows how to implement this feature finds the time and the willpower to do so, they will.

Already ahead of you gentlemen.

All I need is a list of proposed articles (they can be generic stuff for now) you guy want to see, and I'll doll up something for you.

Cool. If I get time tonight, I'll whip up a short list of pages and capsule descriptions, but in the mean time I think the ones in QuestionableSanity's original post should go in right away.

K. I'll whip up some templatage on my test wiki and port it over here when ready.

And done! Just look on the front page.

Let me know what you think or submit further suggestions for featured articles.

Very nice.

Although, I would switch the positions of the main page section around, so that "Featured Article" is where "About this Wiki" currently is; I believe the section with content that is updated the most frequently should be in the most eye-catching position. This has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I like to see my own suggested content front and center, to the detriment of everyone else.

Actually, you have a point there. Will move things around.

Scratch that, had bad effects with the tabbered sections when I did that.

Oh, looks great! Give me a bit to come up with a list of pages. I'll put'em in this thread unless you want me to email them to you or something.

If it's a long list, email. If not, here is fine.

I think it'll be emailed... it's already about 20 pages.

If I had your dedication, the new new logo would have been finished by now.

Maybe I should rephrase that -- I have a list of more than 20 pages to go in the queue, not 20 pages of suggestions.

Got it, all I need to do is cook up some more blurbs and update the template.

Expect to see all this done sometime tomorrow, given the size of the list.