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This user was a top ten contributor on Fan History during a thirty day period. For this Fan History thanks the user!

For the month of December 2007.

This user was a top ten contributor on Fan History during a one week period. For this Fan History thanks the user!

[edit] E-mail

pokes* Did you get a copy of that e-mail or check out User:Laura/Happy_Holidays recently? Once I get the okay from you and Heather, will start sending it out. Ran past MediaMiner.Org, FanWorks.Org and Hector who are all okay with the current version. Fixed the formatting issues on the one that you probably received. --Laura 10:13, 14 December 2007 (CST)

[edit] Help with talk page

As I've sworn off certain pages because of er... well, bias reasons, can you possibly take a look at Talk:Organization for Transformative Works‎ and reply if necessary? --Laura 17:04, 27 December 2007 (CST)

[edit] LJ comment

http://paraka.livejournal.com/137046.html?view=725590#t725590 was a comment I made that I thought you might find interesting. --Laura 15:39, 1 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] X-Men

Can you take a look at this and Talk:X-men and let me know your opinion? Should those changes be rolled back or are they appropiate? --Laura 11:06, 2 January 2008 (CST)

I believe the changes should be rolled back, because I smell shipping wank at play.--Sidewinder 11:46, 2 January 2008 (CST)

OH GOD NO. I don't ship ANY ship at all whatsoever that has any kind of mention. I just want the articles to make sense without focusing on any one particular ship. Thus the Remy/Rogue page and the Pairings page, instead of putting it on the main article. That way the article doesn't read like an ad for Remy/Rogue fic, and focuses on the history.--Frito 11:55, 2 January 2008 (CST)

Ok, that makes sense. Creating a separate page for pairings is probably a good idea in a fandom with a large cast of characters where there is going to be a lot of pairings. It just looked a little off when info is removed *first* from a main page without being moved to a separate page (or without first discussing on the talk page whether it would be a good idea to do so or not.) --Sidewinder 11:58, 2 January 2008 (CST)

Sorry. I was working in about eleven tabs at once, so it was hard to keep track and I was a little heated at coming in to find the page to be about 90% Remy/Rogue shipping without ANY mention of the approximately NINE BILLION other ships. (I have no particular opinion either way about Remy/Rogue, it was just annoying to my sense of fairness)--Frito 12:00, 2 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] Policy update

Deletion_requests has been updated. If you have any problems with the page, either edit it to fix them or let me know. I'm feeling rather flexible with whatever policy but I like the ability to be able to respond to requests faster, rather than waiting for a VfD which seems like it could drag out and lead to wank, where as a simple deletion request is much simpler to go boom! and gone. --Laura 15:58, 3 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] Fanhistory.com:Philosophy

Fanhistory.com:Philosophy, the text which explains the differences as I see them from how Fan History approaches the telling of fandom history from say the direction that fandomwiki.net is likely to take. Does this make sense to you? In the wording and the way that philosophy is actualized on Fan History? --Laura 20:01, 5 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] Fan History: Bias revisited

Hey. Had a conversation last night with some one that pointed out that one of the external criticisms was that it is very easy to view Fan History as a personal monograph that too heavily reflects my own personal bias. For me, this seems like a perfectly valid criticism and has some elements of truthfulness. It isn't helped by my own frequent use of the term my when describing Fan History and with other administrators seemingly going to me for the final word on the changes that they want to do. This issue was then discussed with another person regarding the validity. The following suggestions were made and looking for feedback on them so I can figure out how to behave and to help improve the quality of the histories on Fan History by making it more accessible to others:

On wiki issues 1. Get rid of timelines and other lists. They aren't history. Use paragraph structure as that is a history, as opposed to be being a list of facts. 2. Stop using the templates linked on Help:Contents. Remove all the blank sections. Allow contributions to develop more organically. 3. Remove references to me as the final go to person for decisions made on Fan History on the main page, all about pages and help pages. 4. Remove the philosophy of wiki page. Remove statements regarding bias. Make the about page much flatter and factual, with out any statement regarding purpose, audience, who can edit. Should not need to be stated.

Contributor issues 5. For me to stop personally editing much, stepping back from the wiki for a month or two, allowing the current administrators and others to become more active with out the fear of me sitting on the sidelines, waiting to impose my philosophical mindset on the history being presented. 6. Paying for advertisements on external sites in order to get contributors outside the narrow audience that Fan History currently is receiving. 7. Using an account not tied into my personal accounts to promote wiki inside of fandom that administrators have shared access to. Have other administrators use them and actively promote the wiki as where I've already been doing but removing the personal tie ins that I tend to have. Assign administrators specifically to promote the wiki as part of their role of admins. 8. Approaching people affiliated with other philosophical mindsets for the wiki and offering to pay them to become active contributors on the wiki and do lots of edits in order to give clear voice to alternative perspectives in fandom.

Anyway, thoughts on any and all of the above? What should be implemented? How should it be implemented? If implemented, what would you be willing to do in order to accomplish these tasks? --Laura 08:48, 8 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] sidewinder's response

Hmm. Lots to address there that may take some thinking time. A few quick thoughts & reactions from the top of my head:

1. I like the timelines. I think timelines are useful. There are instances where working on timelines has really helped illustrate the development of a fandom. That said, perhaps timelines could be moved to separate *articles* and only referenced to in the main articles on a fandom as necessary (ie: "'My Chemical Romance' communities on LiveJournal sprung up significantly in Year X; see timeline")? That could also help in fandoms with very, very long timelines where the sheer volume of information can make it hard to see the forest for the trees. And yeah, encouraging people to write more in summary on such articles--but I don't see getting rid of that information. --Sidewinder 10:11, 8 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah. Some of that could and should move. The length is a bit annoying. One of the ways to resolve that, for those articles, would be to move that stuff to its own heading like say Internet History, subheading LiveJournal. Writing non-list with a see timeline of LiveJournal communities. And that stuff could be bulleted into a timeline, as you seem to be suggesting: * In 2004, My Chemical Romance LiveJournal community creation peaked.

I was actually thinking that creating a separate database - or at least, separate page entirely - for a "fandom timeline" that could be linked to with page anchors could be a good way to resolve this. Some pages are going to have fandoms that are well-documented and some are not. That way, they can just put in a citation link to the anchor on the timeline if they need to cite a specific event. For others, such as my Hurricane_Islandheart page, there's no specific timeline yet available, and most of my own old interactions have vanished from the web; even the Way Back Machine couldn't find a good copy of The Ultimate Mozenrath Site, for example. That way, the main article pages aren't cluttered with a timeline, but the events can still be cited without having a broken link or a page that could disappear at any time. --Lady Macbeth 11:43, 8 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah, that's basically what I think. Separated as need be, but the more I think about it the more timelining seems absolutely a critical aspect of history. When did certain fannish activities begin to take place? Which events in the canon/release of an album/creation of a new website may have contributed to this? This is all very much part of history and while more effort probably should go into writing summaries/paragraphs to describe it, the research/timelining/basic documenting really needs to be done first. --Sidewinder 12:49, 8 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah, I find timelines really useful, too, and I vote to keep them in some form, as a separate link-to page or whatever. --ScrewTheDaisies 13:12, 8 January 2008 (CST)

Another vote in favor of timelines; I really like Lady Macbeth's idea of consolidating all the timelines into one central timeline with anchors people can link to as needed. --HectorRashbaum 13:33, 8 January 2008 (CST)

A single central timeline...mmm...I don't know, yes and no. Helpful in some cases where there's repetition over different articles (ie, a community is created that focuses on multiple fandoms instead of a single one, and important to many of them). But I'm trying to visualize what a single, massive timeline would look like, and...oy. That to me would be hard to look at if looking for stuff just on one fandom, wouldn't it? And there sort of *is* an overall timeline in place in the sense of the entries for various dates. I still tend to think that timelines need to be kept more fandom specific, although perhaps, say, certain genres or groups of fandoms may need timelines for the events that have cross-fandom impact (ie, ebandom).--Sidewinder 15:41, 8 January 2008 (CST)

Some of that comes down to a contributor issue in getting contributors to do that. Not certain how to do that other than to plug, plug, get people familiar with wiki editing to do that. --Laura 11:22, 8 January 2008 (CST)

2. I like templates. But maybe it's my scientific background, again; I'm used to a very structured approach to information and I think it's helpful in encouraging new people to add information if they might not otherwise know where to start or be intimidated writing a new article from scratch. Yeah, there are times when all sections might not fit, but I think it's better to have them there than not, and only remove them on a case-by-case basis. --Sidewinder 10:11, 8 January 2008 (CST)

I come from an educational background. Education is about structure. I like them and feel that, by modeling (one of those educational terms and methods of educating people), we're likely to get more contributors. But at the same time, is that my own bias towards that methodology speaking? So much self doubt. --Laura 11:22, 8 January 2008 (CST)

In Art Therapy, we talk about freedom within structure. Many clients require structure in order to get started, but they need to be told that they are free to expand within or beyond the structure if it suits the purpose of their art. We may start someone off with three colors of paint, for example, but they are free to use fewer than that, or to mix them and get new colors. I see the Templates as having a similar purpose - the Template is good to get them started, but they should be encouraged to add to or delete from the template as is necessary for their article. (If it's short, and they know it could use more, they can always put the Stub tag in.) --Lady Macbeth 11:43, 8 January 2008 (CST)

A note could easily be added to the template page explaining that using the template is not necessary, but they are provided as an easy starting point and can be adapted/added to/deleted from as best needed for a given entry or fandom. --Sidewinder 12:49, 8 January 2008 (CST)

I like and don't like the templates. Maybe some of them are a little too structured? They can feel constricting. But on the other hand, starting with a completely blank page can be scary. --ScrewTheDaisies 13:12, 8 January 2008 (CST)

I agree with this, pretty much. Too much in the template and it can be daunting - if I had to leave a bunch of categories blank I'd probably just not create the page right then. But I think there definitely needs to be some structure there. --HectorRashbaum 13:33, 8 January 2008 (CST)

So who wants to take a whack at the templates to make them more contributor friendly? --Laura 14:47, 8 January 2008 (CST)

3. Taking a step back, yeah, might be a good idea for a while beyond dealing with technical details that arise. Uncertain how I feel on removing the philosophy as again, I think it helps point toward the approach being taken and how it may be different from, say, the wiki being created by OTW or any other organization (because otherwise a casual visitor might wonder "Why is this wiki different/needed vs. any other one?) I can certainly help with promotions and the like. Encouraging other perspectives...could get tricky/messy/wanky beyond a certain point. I mean, as long as alternative perspectives are given fair time and it's not an issue of someone coming in and rewriting a piece that already exists to change the viewpoint...that's where it could get funky (and perhaps why having multiple wikis with different goals/approaches/philosophies is not necessarily a BAD thing...)--Sidewinder 10:11, 8 January 2008 (CST)

re: Backing off: I'm seriously contemplating going on vacation again. ... Just not until mid to late February. (And the wiki did fine while I was away and less obsessively involved.) I'd just gotten a lot of comments and suggestions for help pages needed, explanations needed, etc. which was why I was I was creating a lot of that recently. The help page, in the past month, has been expanded and reorganized a lot. I think it could pretty much stand as it is at this point and remove the draft statements, lock them up so that only sysops can edit them, etc.

Lot of the other issues regarding modding, you, User:Jae and others are handling quite well. The stuff regarding organization isn't something I really need to comment on because the wiki structure and purpose has become really well... We can see where it is going and what works in a way that wasn't necessarily as apparent before. It has grown. The mods that we have, including you, can handle almost all of that and do it well. (It is just a perception issue that I'm doing it all. I'm doing most of the spamming and writing of help pages these days. And doing some content filler to help plug pages. I'm mostly just making lists and stubs otherwise.)

And yeah, having another wiki is not necessarily a bad thing. Different perspectives, different user bases, different goals. Fan History is clearly like x and is moving more towards Y. Another wiki could be more like A and move towards B. Neither is necessarily wrong. (Though this could launch a whole debate on relativism that I'm not certain I want to engage in mentally with myself here. Some of the OTW stuff comes down to that vaguely personal view of they are claiming to speak for all of fandom. I'm in fandom. They should be reaching out to people in fandom who they are claiming to represent. They didn't. Ego tweaked. --Laura 11:22, 8 January 2008 (CST)

From an archivist and history standpoint, I see having multiple sources as a benefit. Part of the reason I archive my fanworks on many sites today, and part of the reason I'm glad I did it in the past, is because after The Ultimate Mozenrath Site went down, I was absolutely certain I'd lost all of my old work; I'd had a computer crash, and hadn't backed up my fics. Thankfully, the Library of Agrabah had gone out and mined almost all of the sites that had Aladdin fan fiction on them, and a copy of my work was saved that way. I have always touted multiple sources, even if they think they're competing with each other, since then. Also, competition breeds improvement - it forces you to keep raising the bar and thinking toward innovation. That was one of the reasons as managing editor that I kept sporking critics of our campus newspaper to start their own. I may have come off as being just a sarcastic bitch, but it would have been good for our paper and the campus as a whole. --Lady Macbeth 11:43, 8 January 2008 (CST)

True. And Fan History has improved as a result of external criticism. Good things happened as a result. --Laura 14:47, 8 January 2008 (CST)

I think Fan History is set up to present alternative perspectives. I think the fact that Fan History doesn't is more an issue of perception, rather than reality. The major issue comes in with how some perspectives, which are academic and philosophical rather than a matter of history, are integrated. I can't see putting Category: Real Person Fic (RPF) back. Organizationally, it felt like a nightmare. It could be done to present that philosophical perspective of two types of fandoms RPF and FPF. Just a total nightmare to have two organizational methods superimposed. --Laura 11:22, 8 January 2008 (CST)

I don't think you have to have more than one organizational method imposed in order to present alternative perspectives. Any perspective can be presented through any method of organization - people just have to learn how to think about what they're doing. --Lady Macbeth 11:43, 8 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] B4B

Thanks for acting so quickly on updating the B4B page. You are very professional and efficient although you did remove some of my inserts. I think, for the most part however, you were fair and balanced. Well done!

I think that anyone would have to admit the original article was far from neutral. I think it's better now, although I don't have the time at the moment to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. I shall endeavor to do so at a later time. --Psycheout 06:08, 22 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Randomness from me

I just figured I'd comment here rather than e-mail. :-D Redid my user page to make it all pretty. Also, Fan History now has over 101,420 total pages. :-D --Laura 14:32, 22 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Wikiindex's People Index

If you haven't, might be a thought to create a page about yourself here. -Laura 08:01, 23 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Smeg

Did your toolbar disappear? -Laura

[edit] Categories

Heya Sidewinder. How exactly are you working categories? Just need to know so that I can continue on my crusade to streamline, delete unnecessary ones and clean the people categories, and a lot of that ties into the ones you're currently working on. So, how are you doing it? Lemme know if you can! SLWatson 11:57, 24 April 2008 (EDT)

I'm basically trying to follow the guidelines in Fanhistory.com:Categories. For example, this morning I was making sure that the video game articles were in both Category:Video game fandoms and a category for the specific game (as per rule 2:Fandom articles should always be in a segment fandom category and category of their own name. See examples. . Because even if there may only be one article in the fandom-specific category for now, it leaves room for other articles/sub-categories specific to that fandom to be added later.) Does that help?--Sidewinder 12:09, 24 April 2008 (EDT)

Okay, hey thanks! Just getting my bearings. SLWatson 12:41, 24 April 2008 (EDT)

No worries, and thanks for jumping in and getting involved. Also always feel free to ask User:Laura or me if you have any questions. I know the category thing, it's been something that's been a bit of an issue for a while trying to figure out the best approach. So I may not always have the right info, either. But I try to stick to what's laid out in the guidelines :)--Sidewinder 12:47, 24 April 2008 (EDT)

From here on, you got the lead on categories. I'm just gonna try to keep to cleanup, catching stuff and otherwise organizing. I'm still confused about the whole category setup, and you're experienced. So, it's all you; I'll follow your lead. :-P SLWatson 14:29, 25 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Site Map

Worked on cleaning out Category:Main the main category a bit, and created the beginnings of a site map. --Laura 21:51, 24 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] E-mail e-mail

I sent you off another e-mail re: Fan History. CCed Heidi and Heather. Want your feedback before I take any action. :) --Laura 13:25, 28 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Site downtime

If you see any problems with things being down, pop me an e-mail? I've reopened last night's ticket over this because it didn't go away. (I thought it had this morning... but then I went to open your talk page and I got smacked with it.) Sort of discussing it here in addition to the tickets. --Laura 08:24, 30 April 2008 (EDT)

And most recent update: The server suggested that the errors might be a result of blocking IP addresses. So the list, which I had not touched in almost a year, was removed. --Laura 08:35, 30 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Encyclopedia Dramatica

So I created articles about the major players as I sort of understand it in the Rescue Rangers fandom. The issue that came up is the ED article. Is it something that should be cited on those pages?

Good argument: Some of the fandom kerfluffling took place over there. While mocking and highly biased and full of LULZ, there are bits of truth to what is written in the article. Information can be extracted. Better source than no source.

Not so good argument: Article is highly biased, written for LULZ, could lead people to question Fan History's citations, bring more wiki drama.

Thoughts? For this instance and future instances where encyclopediadramatica might come up as a possible source? --Laura 18:31, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] 'Nother Category Question

Heya Sidewinder. I've pretty much left the categories alone (except for cleanup) since your system seems to be working. Now, a question: Where would full-length animated features fall under... Cartoons or Movies? Thanks! SLWatson 10:07, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

I would cross-categorize them under both cartoons and movies. Cover all the bases. --Sidewinder 11:48, 25 May 2008 (EDT)

Okay, thanks. SLWatson 14:52, 25 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Re: a deletion

I see you deleted the page for "I'mpeckable". This writer is in the Thunderbirds fandom (among others), and IIRC, the page was created with all of her works (22 of them) intact. Does this mean someone went in and blanked that portion of her page? I'm not disputing the deletion, just trying to understand how the material was taken out - short of reinstating the page. And if it was removed, that would be vandalism, yes? And require a ban of whoever did it? Just trying to wrap my head around it. Thanks. --Tikatu 12:13, 26 May 2008 (EDT)

I believe the person e-mailed me and I passed it along to User:Sidewinder. (And they e-mailed us under another name.) It was, I believe, a deletion request on the part of the author. For some of those requests, we try to handle them with discretion and not necessarily say why the articles were deleted. I believe, in this case, that's why.... Special:Undelete, if you go there and put their name in, they don't have any additional changes beyond the one of the bot creation.

Related to that, it might be worth plugging Category:Thunderbirds fans some places in case there are other authors who feel the same regarding a page about them existing on Fan history. --Laura 22:24, 26 May 2008 (EDT)

Thanks for the explanation, Laura. I appreciate it. I have been plugging the wiki as a whole around the various sites; I'll use the link to the actual Category:Thunderbird fans so people can find their pages with greater ease. --Tikatu 00:24, 27 May 2008 (EDT)

Yep, it was a requested deletion received via email, fitting proper request etiquette, so was handled appropriately.--Sidewinder 01:09, 27 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] color issues

I've copied my userboxes from my wiki page to my social profile page and noticed a distinct difference in color for the livejournal and iragent boxes. Any idea why, and what could be done about it? --Tikatu 17:43, 24 June 2008 (CDT)

ETA: I'm getting this error message when I edit the social profile page - Fatal error: Call to a member function getID() on a non-object in /home/fandomin/public_html/includes/Skin.php on line 1062 - Should I send this on to Jae?

--Sidewinder 02:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rescue Ranger fandom

Sidewinder, I'm sorry to bother you, but I need some advice on how to handle an article. SLWatson helped me in the past, but I haven't had a reply from them for a few weeks now, so I don't know who else to ask. Since July 08 I've been trying to resolve the neutrality dispute that's been affecting the CDRR LGBTI thread. I've been asking for help on that Talk page, and the main CDRR Talk page, but nobody wants to help. I don't understand what their dispute is (other than the fact that they don't like LGBTI content for 'moral' reasons), and people have even gone in and written a lot of content about me, some of which is wrong. I'd like to resolve this issue, but without their help, I don't know where to begin in re-writing the article (so as to avoid their 'neutral point-of-view' complaint). I've tried my hardest to be nice and genuine, but they're just ignoring me, and if I try to make any changes myself, I fear that they'll just undo them and complain in the talk page. What's the best way to handle this situation? --Soda 00:13, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Soda,

Give me a couple of days to catch up better on the history of the disputes and issues with the article as it currently stands and then I'll see if I have any advice or think it's time to remove the POV tag. I know you've been working on the article for some time but I haven't had the chance to follow things fully. If others have not been willing to engage you in balancing the article but you've tried your best to bring them into the issue, as I believe you have, I see no reason to continue to leave the tag there after this extended period of time.

But I'll spend some time on the matter this week and see if there is anything I'd suggest of if it's time to just do some admin work (and potentially lock the article to avoid it being a victim of edit wars instead of constructive editing.--Sidewinder 02:20, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Sidewinder. I appreciate that. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. --Soda 00:34, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ryan Ross

There's an edit for Ryan Ross of Panic at the Disco fame. I have no idea if it should stay, go, or be edited for facts only. Could you please take a look and make a decision? Thanks. --Tikatu 22:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I edited the additions slightly to be more in line with proper wiki content and threw in some "citations needed" tags.--Sidewinder 22:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Russet Noon

Not certain what to do regarding the person who put in private information. :/ You and Tikatu are the people who handle rule enforcement so if she deserves a ban and we should have given her one, please feel free to comment on her talk page, the talk page for the article (so people can more easily make the connection) and ban her. The private attack in the middle of an irrelevant section just pisses me off. On a page about that individual would make sense. Where she put it? No. And the address and phone numbers... Do we need to revisit Help:People and Help:Rules to make sure our policy is clear? Or more clear in that regards? --Laura 03:37, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bias statement update

Hey. I've been thinking about this and we haven't really talked about our bias statements. Do you think it is a good idea, after you've made your promised edits, to amend yours to include Russet Noon and related articles? It seems better to error on the side of caution and have you promise to not be involved in content editing those articles to avoid the perception of bias. I've talked to one of the other people on our admin team who isn't active and they've said they can pinch hit to update so it isn't like if you weren't editing that we wouldn't have an admin who couldn't update.

That's what I'm thinking. I already said earlier today I was going to edit in certain content (which is little more than publicly posted/viewable screencaptures and their sources). But after that, since I have been accused by User:Artistic revolution of being a biased party in all of this, I am fine with stepping back and just engaging in the talk page discussions while the matter is aired out. I still maintain that I have no personal investment in this matter, but since I have been accused of having bias I'm perfectly willing to let other mods handle edits related to Russet Noon for the time being for the best of the wiki.--Sidewinder 23:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that stepping back at this time is a good idea, Sidewinder. Avoid the suspicion of bias (though, for the record, I know you were going about the edits in as unbiased a way as was possible). --Tikatu 23:28, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't quite know how the article could have been more neutral. That's kind of where I'm confused... but on the other hand, I've seen people use negative sources and negative sources from people to dogpile when they couldn't get or wouldn't get primary source material. So in that regards, I really understand the position that she's coming from. Given that, I felt like you and other contributors did a pretty good job of things. If you haven't edited your bias statement, let me know when you do. I'll pester some of our non-active admin support people to ask them get try to get their opinions on policy implementation if this goes on much longer. --Laura 23:57, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I've updated it for now. I may add a few more screencaps to the Russet Noon category for general useage (it's hard for an image to be biased, isn't it?), but I'll leave it up to other admins, for the time being, to integrate them (or not) into the articles. But I'll be following the talk pages and may have some things to add there later on.--Sidewinder 00:11, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Screencaps are love. (If you could get the ones from her MySpace page?) I don't think the act of capping is in itself biased, especially in terms of primary source documents. I don't think it would conflict with a bias statement.

I'm just... having a moment of resentfulness. You know I support you and think what you did wasn't biased. We've had that discussion on the admin list. The perception of bias, however unfounded, is the issue. It isn't the issue of actual bias. We've worked so hard and so long in the past couple of months on trying to be viewed as being fair in terms of how we cover things. Yes, yes. We occasionally screw up or don't do as good of a job of it as we could. We've talked about those times and how we could improve. This is a case where I'd rather have people know that if they think an admin has totally pooched the dog in regards to info about them, that admin will back up and protect the integrity of what we worked for by not contributing to making a bad situation worse. And we've got several admins so we can do that on occasion. This isn't Fan History tossing you under a bus but us trying to make sure that if others face this problem, they will feel comfortable dealing with Fan History. --Laura 01:58, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm cool. As we said on the admin list, it's not like I have anything to hide in this matter so I was fine with having my IP address(es) and whatever put out there to prove my location/identity/lack of sockpuppetry. I need to pull myself away from the matter a bit anyway just to get back to other tasks, but will keep watching the talk pages and be available to consult with and/or address any major issues that develop with this particular matter until there is some sort of resolution.--Sidewinder 02:31, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Ditto to getting other stuff done. Thursday, I've got a baseball game to see. (Go Cubs. Boo Phillies. Yay! National league! Need to upload pics.) And I need to pester emufarmers regarding bottage. :( Our newest one ran into hiccups and we need to figure out if it is the programmer or the site. I'm also a bit behind on work and cleaning. :( And getting exercise. (wii fit! how I have missed you!) *babbles* I can't foresee anything much else needing to be done as it feels like it has pretty much wound down and her newest comment are really worth replying to until she has the license because it is just same old, same old. There are only so many ways to say the same thing. --Laura 03:06, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I've got the screencap covered. Just have to stitch it together. --Tikatu 03:10, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll take a look at the article myself, see what might need any additions, but probably not too closely until tomorrow.--DarkAngelFan06 03:21, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd also appreciate your opinion (and Tikatu's) on how you think active admins should handle it in terms of their own biases. No accusations have been made but is it better to error on the side of over caution here? Or just leave well enough alone as User:Artistic revolution hasn't accused us of bias. --Laura 22:32, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with your or Tikatu's continued involvement in the matter at this point. Neither have you have done much but patrol the edits to remove content that had violated the wiki rules. Just my 2 cents.--Sidewinder 23:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how much I could add to the article other than patrol the edits as I have been doing. Twilight is something that my kids are into, not me. But if I can do more, I'm willing. --Tikatu 23:28, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Geocities Preservation Project

I just wanted to run this past you for your thoughts. In light of Geocities closing, the following were my ideas on how to preserve some of this history:

Search http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Fan+Fiction+site%3Ageocities.com&fp=RgodfiivdiU and datamine TITLE, URL, DESCRIPTION. Put that into a table. Add a fandom field and then put in the fandom the archive is from. Have a bot use http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Template:Fan_fiction_archive as a base (with some modifications including a template saying this is part of a save our history on Geocities project) to create articles about each of those "archives."
Search http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Fansite%3Ageocities.com&fp=RgodfiivdiU and datamine TITLE, URL, DESCRIPTION. Put that into a table. Add a fandom field and then put in the fandom the archive is from. Have a bot use http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Template:Fansite as a base (with some modifications including a template saying this is part of a save our history on Geocities project) to create articles about each of those "fansites."
Manually datamine Geocities for information regarding fan fiction that is archived there. Get TITLE, AUTHOR, FANDOM, DATE PUBLISHED, SUMMARY, ARCHIVE NAME, ARCHIVE URL. (This is slow and tedious. And not everything I find is easy to put into that format.) Use http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Template:Story as a base and create an article about every story.
Spend time going through Geocities looking for definitions of fandom terms, dating them and putting them in the wiki. http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Slash_(term) is an example where some of that has been done. ([User:Betsyb|Betsyb]] has been working on that.)

Is this workable? Or something that is worthwhile to do that you can think of? Is there anything else, besides physically saving the pages, that we can do? Is there anything we can do in terms of working with other wikis, other fan projects, with fans to help preserve this information? We can't really develop a big list of anything fast because this information is... well, it isn't easily formatable because anyone can set up their site how they wanted to and getting any sort of easily mined information is hard. (I can send you a copy of the STORY index I have if you want to add to it or know of people who might want to add to it.) --Laura 13:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Revisiting

I adore my current bot developer but I don't think we can count on him to do the Google scrape, mostly because there are some natural language issues that he has indicated he doesn't know well enough in order to address. He also doesn't seem to think that the results would be worth it... and considering the amount of garbage that Betsyb has reported when screencapping, I'm inclined to believe him. :/ What this leaves is the story collection information. (I've got a collection of about 2,000 links for that. It isn't that big, considering everything on Geocities but it is still a great sight better than nothing. It also leaves us getting historical information and other bits like Star Trek history that you've been doing. That just takes a lot of time. :/

Betsyb has been putting all the screencaps in Category:Fan fiction archives on Geocities images. These really need to be sorted better. She's going for speed, not information gathering and some of the caps are pretty bad. :( My fear is that she does all that capping work, and then those images never get used and we totally ignore the category. I'm just not certain what else we can do at this point, you know? Do you have any thoughts on the subject? Or am I just busy being really pessimistic with out cause? (Have I mentioned that the Geocities issue, now that I want to preserve it, makes me feel stressed out?) --Laura 14:37, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] MediaWest flyers

Category:MediaWest 2009 flyers contains a few hand outs. I can e-mail you the full file. Any particular topics you want? Do those work? Should I make some more? Really wish I could attend. I really enjoyed hanging out with you. :( --Laura 18:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Nome

I appreciate what you did with Nome. That is exactly how I wanted it to look but how did you do it? I have looked at and cant' see how you managed to get that image in or how you got the list of issues to file that way? I would appreciate any pointers as I would like to add as much information as I can for the fanzine section. I have collecting for a long time and think I can add some value to this section. Janet

Hi Janet. If you follow this link, you can see what I changed in the wiki text/code to make those fixes. Basically, when you want a series of items to appear in list form, either put an extra carriage return between them, or you can also begin each like with a "*" like this:

Item 1
Item 2
Item 3

For inserting images, make sure the image file you are referring to matches the image file name exactly, down to capitalization (Nome.JPG vs Nome.jpg). Otherwise the link won't work.

Hope that helps! And let me know if you have any other questions about wiki coding.--Sidewinder 11:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] BNFs

Heads up of sorts. We're getting some traffic to the BNF article. I'm not entirely why the interest in it as I'm not looking at the link, but thought you might want to know. If there are any ways to improve the article, it would be very much appreciated. --Laura 12:17, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Stories vs. fan-fiction categories?

I'm a bit confused by this categorization scheme, especially as, in the example case of A-Team, what is being listed under Category:A-Team stories looks like it should be under Category:A-Team fan fiction. Help?--Sidewinder 15:33, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Er. (This whole thing currently is a great big damned mess because the source wiki code for the stories pages is NOT what I wanted.) Stories is for individual stories. Fan fiction is a broader category for organizing around fan fiction archives, fan fiction awards, individual stories, fan fiction authors, etc. If that makes sense? --Laura 15:36, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

So, where should articles on individual fan-fiction stories be located?--Sidewinder 20:17, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

In the story category? which is the linked either top level for a fandom or as a subcategory of fan fiction? --Laura 21:35, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

...OK. But there may be some old fan-fiction categories then that need their main index page revised, then. because like in the A-Team example (and a few others I looked at), originally the "stories" category was created to be for "articles about events within A-Team fandom, convention appearances, etc" (mmm, it looks like it was User:Susanmgarrett who put that in some fandom categories). So if it was a non-administrator who did that, then I just have to look where to make that change in the category pages.--Sidewinder 00:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Er. Stories like fandom lore? Personal accounts of things in fandom? Yeah. I don't think an admin would do that and name it stories because well. Yeah. Anything I can do to help fix that structure. (Also, modified the template some so that it should be easier to edit story pages. I just can only add about 200 at a shot. This is frustrating. Sorry about clogging up recentchanges.) --Laura 00:53, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wanted categories

You know, while the extension that allows mass creation of articles might not make articles that are easily editable for people? It does make mass category creation for wanted categories easy peasy. I cleared through about a thousand of them. It might effect some fandoms you're interested. It mostly tackled music fandoms and episode categories. --Laura 14:26, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wanted categories redux

Yay! :D Just wanted to let you know that we've mostly cleared out Special:Wantedcategories in terms of episode categories and music genres. Category:Television episodes topped out with over 2,826 television shows. (Factor in sports, cartoons, anime and probably about closer to 2,875.) Category:Music genres and Category:Music fandoms by genre are also complete. It added 575 music genres. That's a lot of wanted categories cleared. Still have a few more but massively happy. :D --Laura 13:34, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Geocities

The_Ultimate_Tekken_Fanfiction_Archive_(Geocities) is our most popular article with (Geocities) in the title.

The following also have views:
5 views

4 views

3 views

If you have time maybe to get screencaps for those or add any additional information, that would be appreciated. :D --Laura 13:22, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Will work on it later today!--Sidewinder 13:24, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

ss

Awesome. You rock. :) Not entirely certain why those articles are the popular ones because they don't have much in common. Really broad cross section of fandom: Zorro, Bon Jovi, CSI: Miami, JAG, Lord of the Rings, Simon and Simon, Anime, Stargate... --Laura 13:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Edits by User:Harold Roxby

I've added to the discussion at this page: Lady Pauline Daniella Daniels II. I don't think the editor gets what you said, and there are too many references to canon, with far too many internal links. I'm tempted to just roll everything back, and start it from scratch, using the character template. What's your opinion here? --Tikatu 19:15, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that's the right thing to do in this case. Using the template really makes it much simpler for all involved - and much clearer as far as how pages should look and what content to include. The user can easily also create pages for individual fan-fiction stories using Template:Story, afterall, and detailed summaries of fanfics don't belong on a character info page.--Sidewinder 11:26, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] FanFox

Try adding your link to http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Fanhistory.com/Geocities_list then restart the sidebar and pick any link. Fill in the info. After you're done you have to delete the link from the list. --Illyism 17:01, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] DMOZ

hm. The categories are not showing up. Or rather, they appear to be the same category across the board. --Laura 13:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm confused... (Please send email explaining what you mean...?) --Sidewinder 13:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Category clean up

I'm doing some re-organizing of categories to make patterns more consistent. I wanted to give you a heads up on that. I will probably upload images showing this and to the blog to give an idea of how this is working, especially when I finish doing a certain category. I'm hoping this will make it easier to figure out what is going on. So far, I've cleaned out Category:Fan fiction archives. I'm now sort of working on Category:Sports, which is another big mess. The goal is mostly to clean out the obvious problems and yeah, go for consistency. --Laura 15:11, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Makes sense. Is there any problem with the work I'm doing right now on Twilight re: categories?--Sidewinder 15:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see anything particularly problematic. :) Because our Twilight category is relatively "new," I think it has fewer problems than other categories like Harry Potter. The pattern is pretty established and we're good with following it. My goal for today is to tree out Category:Harry Potter to show how this works on a fandom level. (And then how those categories work around the whole tree though that will take a lot more work.) I just am in the mood to do some house cleaning. --Laura 15:26, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, I'm commenting on talk pages as I do this. Any feedback for organization you can provide on those would be appreciated. :) Even if we don't implement those suggestions right away. --Laura 15:27, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Fan History Wiki copyright change

Fanhistory.com:License upgrade If you could sign that, it would be great. Trying to track down a few of our errant admins. As soon as we get you and another admin or two, we'll just flip over. --Laura 18:24, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

User talk:Sidewinder