Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Trent Shipley tship...@deru.com wrote: The host or its agents cannot serve on any board of directors since that would be a conflict of interest. Eh? Interlocking boards of directors with conflicts of interest are the American Way! Seriously, though, I'd need some clarification. I have and I do serve on boards, but I don't think they create any conflict of interest. I am presently on the board of Lutheran Social Services, one of the largest social services non-profits around. There's no conflict there, I'm quite sure. Conflicts of interest need to be disclosed for the sake of transparency, of course. What kind of boards did you have in mind? Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
If we are to grow we need an organizational plan for growth. We need a growth oriented revenue plan. ** This can wait awhile. ** Nonprofit?? underwriting or no underwriting? ** For profit? (I would be reluctant to contribute for free.) If it grows, I mostly care about it paying expenses, so if I'm hosting and whatever goes along with that (I have been paid to write for a living, too), I'd expect to be able to add non-intrusive advertising. As to what would happen to anything left over after hosting expenses, I'd be inclined to invite the users and managers vote on a charity related to the subject. We could also explore asking publishers to sponsor, but that's a long way off. And it is, of course, advertising. I've had some ideas about social media and book marketing kicking around for a while... but I'll leave that for later. For now, it's just going to be my problem to deal with the finances. I say problem because I'm sure cash flow will be negative for a while, of course. But it is appropriate to resolve those things early on if there's chance it will actually throw off cash. If not, shouting and tears inevitably follow. Nick I've thought about this quite a bit today. The community (as represented by a non-profit corporation when sufficiently mature) is responsible for the content of the wiki, marketing the site, and finding a host. Basically the community with virtual representation in the corporation is custodian of the site and its contents. The community, to avoid a conflict of interest, does not solicit advertising. They outsource technical management of the site to a donor host. The responsibilities of the host are detailed in a service level agreement and other contracts. The donor host is free to sell as much non-invasive advertising as they want on pretty much any topic. This may offset the cost of hosting the site. If the host makes a monster great profit donating hosting services, that is fine. The host must agree to public release of their gross revenues from hosting the site. That way when the host position comes up for periodic bid, RFP respondents can put together intelligent proposals. The host or its agents cannot serve on any board of directors since that would be a conflict of interest. Nick is the current host. He is also the de facto project leader. We should split up roles now so that Nick is lead host, technician, and evangelist and someone else is content leader and independent editor-in-chief. I'd like the role. Alberto would be good at it, though he doesn't have Nick or my grand vision for the project. If we have the mixed luck to grow at warp speed, we go to Google and *beg* them to buy out Nick as host. Otherwise, Nick shouldn't loose too much and could do OK. So for now, Nick hosts the site and can cover his expenses with non-invasive ads. The community doesn't advertise, but it is custodian of the wiki's contents. ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On 29 Dec 2009 at 19:19, Nick Arnett wrote: As long as it runs on Linux (that's the hosted environment) and we can reach consensus AND it isn't a CPU hog (important for costs), I'm fine with whatever. Memory and disk space seem to be non-issues for practical purposes. It should be fine, as long as you don't start playing around with some really advanced stuff (nested includes with auto re-formating, for example). The next major Foswiki release is getting a vastly improved cache handler for that anyway. AndrewC ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On 29 Dec 2009 at 22:44, Trent Shipley wrote: The Foswiki community is actually positioning the product as what I call an un-wiki. If you turn everything off it works like wikis were originally intended to work with no workflow model and two levels of heirarchy, administrators and participants (and administrators were supposed to mostly lurk). But they are really meant to be used with multiple roles, hierarchies of users, and workflow events like form approvals and change management -- an un-wiki designed for business. Un-Wiki? In it's origions as Twiki it considerably predates the Wikimedia Foundation, let alone Media Wiki. Hierarchy and Structure have allways been features of some wiki's, that hardly makes them un- wiki. It's unfortunate that the perception of Wikis these days seems to flow just from what Mediawiki has done, because it really doesn't reflect how wiki's have historically been developed and used. I've used Foswiki for game documentation both professionally and personally... AndrewC ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
Based on the discussion, I'm dumping MediaWiki and installing Foswiki... and it's not going entirely smoothly, but I'll get there. Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
Nick Arnett wrote: Seriously, though, the wiki gives everybody lotsa power... I'm not familiar enough with Media Wiki to see (a) what administrators might do via the web interface and (b) exactly how to create 'em. It's a php associative array, the docs tell me. I'm happy to keep the discussion here for now, to get it going. Any other experience wiki-ers here? The whole point of evil wiki admins is to punish and coerce. Unfortunately, it's a necessary job. But I suggest to keep it simple. There are _many_ wikis in the Web, another SF (Fantasy too?) wiki would die of starvation. I think a Brin wiki would be the best - but probably you should ask Him about what stuff could go there. And the evil wiki admins would have to keep a keen eye on copyright violations - wiki users have a nasty tendency to copy-and-paste without regard for the legitimacy of the material. Also, it should be acurately determined how deep we could go. For example, should we have a detailed description of every event and character? It could spur interest in buying books, but it could also feed unscrupulous Hollywood scriptwriters to steal and distort Brin's ideas into new awful movies. How much fanfic should be admitted? Logical inferences based on the books are ok? Natural extrapolations are ok? Or should we stick to canonical (and deutero-canonical, like Kevin Costner's movie) material? Alberto Monteiro ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On 28 Dec 2009 at 17:16, Nick Arnett wrote: I'm happy to keep the discussion here for now, to get it going. Any other experience wiki-ers here? Hi. I absolutely detest MediaWiki, though, so I won't be much use for this. (Fos/T Wiki, now...) AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
Nick Arnett wrote: For now, it's just going to be my problem to deal with the finances. I say problem because I'm sure cash flow will be negative for a while, of course. But it is appropriate to resolve those things early on if there's chance it will actually throw off cash. If not, shouting and tears inevitably follow. One thing that amazes me is how stupid internet advertising is. For example, why on Hell should a site or list dedicated to, say, Linux, include advertisings about Viagra? A Brin wiki could easily include non-invasive ads that would be totally apropos. The Alvin page would exhibit a random ad that would eventually offer Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore or Heaven's Reach. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
I've done a fair bit of wiki work over the last couple of years, using both Wikimedia Wikidot wikis. e.g. http://www.lgam.info Building up a wiki from scratch is a big job, and I think it would be a good idea to do a bit of research into existing science fiction related wikis to see if there are any existing ones that might be worth contributing to. I did a quick search and found the following, but I am sure there are 100's of others out there. http://www.modernscifi.com/tiki-index.php http://www.galaxiki.org/wiki/ http://scifi.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Apart from the wikis that I have created personally, I think the most interesting future related one that I have stumbled across so far is the accelerating future wiki. http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/wiki/Main_Page Regards, Wayne Eddy On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 11:16 AM, Nick Arnett nick.arn...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Trent Shipley tship...@deru.com wrote: Nick Arnett wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:58 AM, tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com wrote: I did not send the original to the list. Feel free to forward this to the list. I'm partial to MediaWiki. I have installed MediaWiki here: http://www.nickarnett.net/sfwiki/ We can create a domain name for it and point it there when we're ready to go public with it. I guess there's no real need for admins... POWER, I have been denied privilege and POWER!! Oh, the agony. What wouldja like? ;-) Seriously, though, the wiki gives everybody lotsa power... I'm not familiar enough with Media Wiki to see (a) what administrators might do via the web interface and (b) exactly how to create 'em. It's a php associative array, the docs tell me. I'm happy to keep the discussion here for now, to get it going. Any other experience wiki-ers here? Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On Dec 29, 2009, at 5:36 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote: For example, why on Hell should a site or list dedicated to, say, Linux, include advertisings about Viagra? Because someone, somewhere, has decided that we all need to see ads for Viagra every hour of the day, no matter where we are, and no matter how relevant they are to what we're doing at the moment. I suspect that that person works for the ad agency that's promoting Viagra. (And apparently they're determined enough to get those ads in front of us that they don't mind people going to what would be heroic lengths to defeat even the strongest email spam filters to get them into our email inboxes, as well.) We're going to shape the future of jurisprudence, the laws that sustain our whole society. Or shove somebody in there to strike down those God-awful excuses for laws the Republicans are passing. -- Toby Ziegler ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On Dec 29, 2009, at 9:43 AM, Bruce Bostwick wrote: On Dec 29, 2009, at 5:36 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote: For example, why on Hell should a site or list dedicated to, say, Linux, include advertisings about Viagra? Because someone, somewhere, has decided that we all need to see ads for Viagra every hour of the day, no matter where we are, and no matter how relevant they are to what we're doing at the moment. I suspect that that person works for the ad agency that's promoting Viagra. (And apparently they're determined enough to get those ads in front of us that they don't mind people going to what would be heroic lengths to defeat even the strongest email spam filters to get them into our email inboxes, as well.) Apparently, it takes about 12 million spam emails to generate one response. That's why you are offered the opportunity to purchase Viagra (or Cialis or Extenze or...) a couple of hundred times a day. The reason that you are offered that opportunity on a SciFi Wiki (or any other place where Viagra is nowhere even close to the topic of the site) is that web sites are desperate to monetize themselves. I hate web advertising mainly because it _could_ be targeted, but it isn't. But also because it is intentionally disruptive. Dave ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 9:50 AM, Dave Land dml...@gmail.com wrote: The reason that you are offered that opportunity on a SciFi Wiki (or any other place where Viagra is nowhere even close to the topic of the site) is that web sites are desperate to monetize themselves. I hate web advertising mainly because it _could_ be targeted, but it isn't. Google's advertising is targeted by subject. Their bots look at the page and try to show ads that are relevant. Of course, this fails badly sometimes. I've had some Google ads on the Brin-L archive pages, which kept including ads for Piper airplanes. This apparently is because the archiving software is called Pipermail. Google is smart enough to split the word apart and dumb enough to miss the context completely. Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On 29 Dec 2009 at 10:08, Nick Arnett wrote: Google's advertising is targeted by subject. Their bots look at the page and try to show ads that are relevant. Heh. Seriously, once it's up and running and has visitors? Use Project Wonderful. It's google adsense. AndrewC ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
I was expecting to find a dominant science fiction wiki, and I am surprised that it doesn't show up on the first page or two of Google. There do seem to be franchise based silos that are effective, Star Wars and Star Trek of course, but anything that's been on TV is a candidate. http://scifi.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page May be what I want, but it is hard to tell. It only has about 1300 articles and the last entry was made 15 December 2009, so it's not very active. I think that if Nick is as good at social networking as he says he is that we can do better. http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title=Main_Page Looks like an excellent site. It has over 4000 articles with entries as recently as 2009-12-28 and 2009-12-29. I get the impression it is a bit high-brow for a site dedicated to such low literature as SciFi. I still think there is room for one-stop shopping for science fiction and imaginaria synopses, reviews, literary criticism, and TRIVIA. Wayne Eddy wrote: I've done a fair bit of wiki work over the last couple of years, using both Wikimedia Wikidot wikis. e.g. http://www.lgam.info Building up a wiki from scratch is a big job, and I think it would be a good idea to do a bit of research into existing science fiction related wikis to see if there are any existing ones that might be worth contributing to. I did a quick search and found the following, but I am sure there are 100's of others out there. http://www.modernscifi.com/tiki-index.php http://www.galaxiki.org/wiki/ http://scifi.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Apart from the wikis that I have created personally, I think the most interesting future related one that I have stumbled across so far is the accelerating future wiki. http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/wiki/Main_Page Regards, Wayne Eddy On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 11:16 AM, Nick Arnett nick.arn...@gmail.com mailto:nick.arn...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Trent Shipley tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com wrote: Nick Arnett wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:58 AM, tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com wrote: I did not send the original to the list. Feel free to forward this to the list. I'm partial to MediaWiki. I have installed MediaWiki here: http://www.nickarnett.net/sfwiki/ We can create a domain name for it and point it there when we're ready to go public with it. I guess there's no real need for admins... POWER, I have been denied privilege and POWER!! Oh, the agony. What wouldja like? ;-) Seriously, though, the wiki gives everybody lotsa power... I'm not familiar enough with Media Wiki to see (a) what administrators might do via the web interface and (b) exactly how to create 'em. It's a php associative array, the docs tell me. I'm happy to keep the discussion here for now, to get it going. Any other experience wiki-ers here? Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
Alberto Monteiro wrote: Nick Arnett wrote: Seriously, though, the wiki gives everybody lotsa power... I'm not familiar enough with Media Wiki to see (a) what administrators might do via the web interface and (b) exactly how to create 'em. It's a php associative array, the docs tell me. I'm happy to keep the discussion here for now, to get it going. Any other experience wiki-ers here? The whole point of evil wiki admins is to punish and coerce. Unfortunately, it's a necessary job. But I suggest to keep it simple. There are _many_ wikis in the Web, another SF (Fantasy too?) wiki would die of starvation I am just not finding a big sci-fi wiki out there already fulfilling my vision. There are big *literature* wiki's out there, so one option might be to have sci-fi be a little fish in a much larger pond. I am really interested in a Brin--sci-fi--imaginaria evolution. I think a Brin wiki would be the best - but probably you should ask Him about what stuff could go there. And the evil wiki admins would have to keep a keen eye on copyright violations - wiki users have a nasty tendency to copy-and-paste without regard for the legitimacy of the material. Also, it should be acurately determined how deep we could go. For example, should we have a detailed description of every event and character? It could spur interest in buying books, but it could also feed unscrupulous Hollywood scriptwriters to steal and distort Brin's ideas into new awful movies. The trivia is there in the sources. The itch that got this discussion going was the Wikipedia content NAZI's wanting to get rid of our most excellent uplift universe trivia. Trivia down to the most trivial level is in. What good is Uplift, or Star Trek, or Zina, or Buffy without trivia! How much fanfic should be admitted? Logical inferences based on the books are ok? Natural extrapolations are ok? Or should we stick to canonical (and deutero-canonical, like Kevin Costner's movie) material? Alberto Monteiro NO fanfic (unless we do the Brin-and-only-Brin option). Fanfic is as bad as outright copying material. It opens a whole can of bad IP juju. (If we do fan fiction all of it goes in. You want to encourage creativity. A wiki may not be the best way to produce fan fiction, like if an editor hates your dark, depressing ending or interpretation...) Seriously, I have done the Uplift fan fiction thing. I did it a lot. I had fun with it. Now I am burned out. I'm just not too interested in that project. ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
Andrew Crystall wrote: On 28 Dec 2009 at 17:16, Nick Arnett wrote: I'm happy to keep the discussion here for now, to get it going. Any other experience wiki-ers here? Hi. I absolutely detest MediaWiki, though, so I won't be much use for this. (Fos/T Wiki, now...) AndrewC Dawn Falcon ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com Why? We can change no problem. There's no content on it yet. Nick has said that whatever we choose has to use MySQL on the back end. ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Trent Shipley tship...@deru.com wrote: Why? We can change no problem. There's no content on it yet. Nick has said that whatever we choose has to use MySQL on the back end. That is correct, except that MySQL isn't even absolutely required... it's just that I know it very well, which makes it more appealing to me. And my two cents on content - I totally agree about no fan fiction... that's not the kind of content a wiki is for, in my opinion. Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
Nick Arnett wrote: On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Trent Shipley tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com wrote: Why? We can change no problem. There's no content on it yet. Nick has said that whatever we choose has to use MySQL on the back end. That is correct, except that MySQL isn't even absolutely required... it's just that I know it very well, which makes it more appealing to me. And my two cents on content - I totally agree about no fan fiction... that's not the kind of content a wiki is for, in my opinion. Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com So the back end needs to be both a real database and a free database. That lets you use MySQL or Postgresql. ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On 29 Dec 2009 at 16:11, Trent Shipley wrote: Any other experience wiki-ers here? Hi. I absolutely detest MediaWiki, though, so I won't be much use for this. (Fos/T Wiki, now...) Why? We can change no problem. There's no content on it yet. Nick has said that whatever we choose has to use MySQL on the back end. Well, Foswiki is flat-file, heh. It scales better than you think from that though. Honestly, if we're going to be doing anything involving access permissions (and a scifi lit wiki sounds like we are), then I'm recommend not using Mediawiki, you tend to end up doing some nasty hacks. Foswiki is a hierarchial wiki with proper access permissions and so on. It also uses a different markup language to Mediawiki, and one which I greatly prefer, although I admit if you've only learned mediawiki there is a small learning curve. You can also do some fairly good tricks with the markup in creating apps and specially formatted pages. I've used it professionally and I also use it for my own documentation needs. AndrewC ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 6:20 PM, Andrew Crystall dawnfal...@upliftwar.comwrote: On 29 Dec 2009 at 16:11, Trent Shipley wrote: Any other experience wiki-ers here? Hi. I absolutely detest MediaWiki, though, so I won't be much use for this. (Fos/T Wiki, now...) Why? We can change no problem. There's no content on it yet. Nick has said that whatever we choose has to use MySQL on the back end. Well, Foswiki is flat-file, heh. It scales better than you think from that though. Honestly, if we're going to be doing anything involving access permissions (and a scifi lit wiki sounds like we are), then I'm recommend not using Mediawiki, you tend to end up doing some nasty hacks. Foswiki is a hierarchial wiki with proper access permissions and so on. It also uses a different markup language to Mediawiki, and one which I greatly prefer, although I admit if you've only learned mediawiki there is a small learning curve. You can also do some fairly good tricks with the markup in creating apps and specially formatted pages. As long as it runs on Linux (that's the hosted environment) and we can reach consensus AND it isn't a CPU hog (important for costs), I'm fine with whatever. Memory and disk space seem to be non-issues for practical purposes. Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
Nick Arnett wrote: On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 6:20 PM, Andrew Crystall dawnfal...@upliftwar.com mailto:dawnfal...@upliftwar.com wrote: On 29 Dec 2009 at 16:11, Trent Shipley wrote: Any other experience wiki-ers here? Hi. I absolutely detest MediaWiki, though, so I won't be much use for this. (Fos/T Wiki, now...) Why? We can change no problem. There's no content on it yet. Nick has said that whatever we choose has to use MySQL on the back end. Well, Foswiki is flat-file, heh. It scales better than you think from that though. Honestly, if we're going to be doing anything involving access permissions (and a scifi lit wiki sounds like we are), then I'm recommend not using Mediawiki, you tend to end up doing some nasty hacks. Foswiki is a hierarchial wiki with proper access permissions and so on. It also uses a different markup language to Mediawiki, and one which I greatly prefer, although I admit if you've only learned mediawiki there is a small learning curve. You can also do some fairly good tricks with the markup in creating apps and specially formatted pages. As long as it runs on Linux (that's the hosted environment) and we can reach consensus AND it isn't a CPU hog (important for costs), I'm fine with whatever. Memory and disk space seem to be non-issues for practical purposes. Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com Andrew seems to be saying that Foswiki is a dreamboat to administer. That is in keeping with Foswiki's marketing position. http://foswiki.org/Community/DescriptionsOfFoswiki Foswiki is a structured wiki with tools that enable users without programming skills to build powerful yet simple applications to process information and support workflows. The Foswiki community is actually positioning the product as what I call an un-wiki. If you turn everything off it works like wikis were originally intended to work with no workflow model and two levels of heirarchy, administrators and participants (and administrators were supposed to mostly lurk). But they are really meant to be used with multiple roles, hierarchies of users, and workflow events like form approvals and change management -- an un-wiki designed for business. ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
Nick Arnett wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:58 AM, tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com wrote: I did not send the original to the list. Feel free to forward this to the list. I'm partial to MediaWiki. I have installed MediaWiki here: http://www.nickarnett.net/sfwiki/ We can create a domain name for it and point it there when we're ready to go public with it. I guess there's no real need for admins... POWER, I have been denied privilege and POWER!! Oh, the agony. But really we should have this discussion using the Wiki's tools, or a mail list associated with the wiki. I have some admin and policy stuff I want to talk about. I await Nick's further instructions on whether he wants to move this topic or keep it here on brin-l for a while. Some have talked about a super-genre of fiction called imaginaria that would include SciFi, Fantasy, Horror, Super Heroes, etc. it's a wiki, so anybody can sign up and do any of the editorial functions. If there are configuration changes needed on the back end, I can do those, of course. Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Trent Shipley tship...@deru.com wrote: Nick Arnett wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:58 AM, tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com wrote: I did not send the original to the list. Feel free to forward this to the list. I'm partial to MediaWiki. I have installed MediaWiki here: http://www.nickarnett.net/sfwiki/ We can create a domain name for it and point it there when we're ready to go public with it. I guess there's no real need for admins... POWER, I have been denied privilege and POWER!! Oh, the agony. What wouldja like? ;-) Seriously, though, the wiki gives everybody lotsa power... I'm not familiar enough with Media Wiki to see (a) what administrators might do via the web interface and (b) exactly how to create 'em. It's a php associative array, the docs tell me. I'm happy to keep the discussion here for now, to get it going. Any other experience wiki-ers here? Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
Nick Arnett wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Trent Shipley tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com wrote: Nick Arnett wrote: On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:58 AM, tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com mailto:tship...@deru.com wrote: I did not send the original to the list. Feel free to forward this to the list. I'm partial to MediaWiki. I have installed MediaWiki here: http://www.nickarnett.net/sfwiki/ We can create a domain name for it and point it there when we're ready to go public with it. I guess there's no real need for admins... POWER, I have been denied privilege and POWER!! Oh, the agony. What wouldja like? ;-) Seriously, though, the wiki gives everybody lotsa power... I'm not familiar enough with Media Wiki to see (a) what administrators might do via the web interface and (b) exactly how to create 'em. It's a php associative array, the docs tell me. I'm happy to keep the discussion here for now, to get it going. Any other experience wiki-ers here Nick I didn't set up my own Mediawiki, but I had my ISP do it. http://www.belfryenterprises.com/redgalaxy/index.php/Main_Page I had some legitimate activity on it before I required users to register to make changes. I had HUGE problems with vandalism, but hardly random vandalism. It was all in the cause of porn sites and aphrodisiac catalogs trying to improve their search order on GOOGLE. At the time Mediawiki recommended using its CAPTCHA plug-in. The next problem is marketing. Who do we want to tell about the site and when do we want to tell them. Then what are we marketing. Suggested content has included these. David Brin Uplift fiction (He would probably let us get away with fan fic) Science Fiction Literature. Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (NOT what DB would want, but often grouped together and often read and appreciated by the same geeks.) Imaginaria (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Super Heroes, etc.) I am in favor of a business plan that starts with a Science Fiction focus seeded with a David Brin project. The plan is to grow to encompass imaginaria. Besides what genre we cover, there is the issue of kind of content we want to include. I am in favor of a literary encyclopedia. It would include: * Synopses * Reviews * Literary Criticism. Note that these are fundamentally external discourses about what someone else wrote. It would explicitly exclude: * Writing from a perspective inside a given creator's universe. (That violates the IP owner's rights) * Extending someone else's universe (also an IP nightmare). * New world building * Fan fiction * New fiction. Note that these are fundamentally internal discourses about what the contributor or someone else wrote. As for spoilers ... if you do not want to encounter spoilers why are you reading a literary encyclopedia? The whole wiki is one huge spoiler. Contributing roles: We need article authors. We need various kinds of editors. ** Here it would be useful to have MA's and PhD's in literature and pop culture who like science fiction. Maybe they do research in the area and have to stay current anyway. We need mediators and arbitrators: ** Edit wars ** Controversial subjects, eg. Ayn Rand. Race war science fiction, etc. We need police to find malicious vandalism and unauthorized use of the site for criminal or commercial purposes. We need technical admins. If we are successful we will need layers of admins. If we are to grow we need an organizational plan for growth. We need a growth oriented revenue plan. ** This can wait awhile. ** Nonprofit?? underwriting or no underwriting? ** For profit? (I would be reluctant to contribute for free.) ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 6:16 PM, Trent Shipley tship...@deru.com wrote: I had HUGE problems with vandalism, but hardly random vandalism. It was all in the cause of porn sites and aphrodisiac catalogs trying to improve their search order on GOOGLE. At the time Mediawiki recommended using its CAPTCHA plug-in. Just installed ReCaptcha... but it doesn't seem to be working yet. I'll get that going. The next problem is marketing. Who do we want to tell about the site and when do we want to tell them. Then what are we marketing. Suggested content has included these. David Brin Uplift fiction (He would probably let us get away with fan fic) Science Fiction Literature. Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (NOT what DB would want, but often grouped together and often read and appreciated by the same geeks.) Imaginaria (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Super Heroes, etc.) I am in favor of a business plan that starts with a Science Fiction focus seeded with a David Brin project. The plan is to grow to encompass imaginaria. Sounds fine to me. I know a little bit about social networking and marketing. Okay, a lot. And the Brin-L gang certainly knows a thing or two about all things Brin. The other stuff I'm not copying sounds fine to me. If we are to grow we need an organizational plan for growth. We need a growth oriented revenue plan. ** This can wait awhile. ** Nonprofit?? underwriting or no underwriting? ** For profit? (I would be reluctant to contribute for free.) If it grows, I mostly care about it paying expenses, so if I'm hosting and whatever goes along with that (I have been paid to write for a living, too), I'd expect to be able to add non-intrusive advertising. As to what would happen to anything left over after hosting expenses, I'd be inclined to invite the users and managers vote on a charity related to the subject. We could also explore asking publishers to sponsor, but that's a long way off. And it is, of course, advertising. I've had some ideas about social media and book marketing kicking around for a while... but I'll leave that for later. For now, it's just going to be my problem to deal with the finances. I say problem because I'm sure cash flow will be negative for a while, of course. But it is appropriate to resolve those things early on if there's chance it will actually throw off cash. If not, shouting and tears inevitably follow. Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: SciFi and Fantasy(?) Wiki
On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Nick Arnett nick.arn...@gmail.com wrote: Just installed ReCaptcha... but it doesn't seem to be working yet. I'll get that going. Actually, it is working... I just didn't realize the conditions under which it triggers. Nick ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
