Talk: Eberron Wiki

Would it be worth making the frontpage a bit more attractive? Perhaps along the lines of wikipedia, with recent articles, features etc.? --Soeren 09:28, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Sounds a good idea. You can also look at some other wikis, such as wowwiki: for ideas. Angela (talk) 11:01, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Switching to the new parser

Hi,

We are currently making preparations for the next wiki software upgrade. While we expect this to have little or no effect on most wikis, it may cause some pages on this wiki to render poorly. To help reduce or eliminate these issues, please see the Central Forums for more details.

Thanks - sannse (talk) 10:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Point of the wiki

The whole point of this website is to provide facts of eberron right? So why do we have several pages dedicated to someone's campaign? It's just my opinion but I think they need to be removed as they provide no real facts to this site.

I agree. Or at least separate "fact" (canon Eberron) from customized Eberron campaign material, in style mark-up and categories. --Soeren 06:18, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, if you look back at the page from 2005, you will see that the 'mission statement' of Eberron Wiki was always to be a 'fanon wiki', rather than a 'canon wiki'. I don't think you can go around deleting artcles on this wiki, when it was specifically set up to attract them.

I would agree with the need for a place to put canon information about Eberron, and a wiki would be a logical place to create an Eberron encyclopedia*, but you are effectively asking for something new that this wiki was not set up to do. Calling for the deletion of articles that comply with the original mission statement may not be the best way to get the original editors to stay onboard with the project.

* = This has actually been done with Forgotten Realms Wiki, The Great Library of Greyhawk and Spelljammer Wiki. They are all encyclopedic wikis where fanon content is not desired.

I am currently of the opinion that every D&D campaign setting needs two wikis - one for canon and another for fanon. It may be possible to get the two things to co-exist on the same wiki, but I personally think that fanon-edits would pollute canon and that editors that champion the two causes would end up with a well-intentioned edit war over encyclopedic content.

However, if you would like to get the 'mission statement' of this wiki changed, I think you would need to bring this up in the main community section. I think you would need to contact all the active editiors on their discussion pages and get them to come and give their comments. This is far to big a change to propose on the talk page of the front door. David Shepheard 20:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

A random second suggestion... you could also use namespaces to separate canon and fanon. for example, the main namespace could be for canon only, but with a second namespace for articles such as Fanon:Diran Bastiaan. Just ask staff if that's what the community wants -- sannse (talk) 15:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Seperate namespaces seems like a good idea to me, and a good way to seperate. Soeren Staun (sstaunb) 22:40, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

What would be the best way to move forward with this topic? If we're not to discuss it on "the front door", where should we discuss it? (I'm asking since the page hasn't been edited for a while, and the discussion seems to have died.) Soeren Staun (sstaunb) 18:35, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay Soeren Staun. It isn't so much that I think this should not be discussed on a talk page, but that I do not think that people are going to think to look here. I was going to suggest that the forum was used (and that Wikia should be asked to put a wiki-wide message on all user talk pages requesting comment) but it looks like a Wikia staff member (called JSharp has turned off the forum).

Anyway, I just looked at the Community Portal page and found that it redirects to a 'mission statement' that says (among other things) that this wiki is meant to offer a picture of Eberron and provide a reference of Eberron material. So I think that putting canon up here would fit in with what was originally intended.

I have my doubts about mixing fanon with canon (as I think they have conflicting needs), but Sannse's suggestion (of shunting it over to a fanon namespace) is probably the best way to attempt this.

BTW: I have attempted to get the Jhubert (the local bureaucrat) to join in with this conversation. David Shepheard 23:52, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

While I haven't read the discussion above (sorry, not enough time), I'll try to throw my few cents in. As a matter of personal preference, I believe that canon takes precedence over fanon in the wiki world, in that more Eberron players and DMs, when searching the web for information, will want to find official information.

That said, nothing stands in the way of hosting both canon and fanon material at Wikia. We could have Fanon namespace at this wiki or we could have an eberronfanon wiki made in a matter of seconds. The key issue here is for the reader to know exactly what he's reading at the moment, IMO.

--TOR 18:53, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

My personal vote would be to have two wikis, but two wikis that work together.

I would vote for this wiki to be moved (lock stock and barrel) to eberronfanon.wikia.com and for it to be reorganised to that visitors have a variety of ways to search for various types of fan content. As fanon is associated with individual authors, I think that the users of a fanon wiki should somehow be incorporated into the index system (and given the same sort of status that commercial authors would be given elsewhere). In other words if I like the work of a particlar author, I should be able to navigate to similar articles that they have written.

At the same time I would vote for this URL to be given over to a wiki that uses Forgotten Realms Wiki as a template for an Eberron encyclopedia. I have spoken to the admins at FR Wiki and they are a friendly lot. If they are OK with the idea, I would propose that their entire set of templates be ported across to this wiki and then edited here to 'Eberronise' them.

Having said that, I know next to nothing about Eberron, and am currently struggling to get Spelljammer Wiki kicked into shape. So I don't think I will be able to spend a great deal of time here. David Shepheard 19:35, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

Personally I like the wiki being both canon and fanon, though if we need to work on one before the other canon should come first. Taking the fanon out entirely would make this wiki a lot less fun for me to work on myself, but I think we should strive for accurate information and quality in our pages. Jorda75 Oct. 15 2009

Cross-indexing and References

Since I'm assuming that any Game-rule information (i.e. racial bonuses/traits) is copyrighted and therefore cannot be presented here(in the wiki), may I suggest indexing information where to find pertinent information and where it is printed? For instance what sourcebooks feature shifter game rules information. HidaAtarasi 05:22, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Game rules aren't necessarily copyrighted, unless they're declared "Product Identity". That's the normal way at least in OGL, but in this situation we got the license text in the Eberron Campaign Setting (3.5E) saying:

This WIZARDS OF THE COAST game product contains no Open Game Content. 
No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without written permission.

So if you wanna go by the rules, NOTHING from the Eberron Campaign can be printed here without written permission. *SStaunB* 18:21, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

That does not really relate to the establishment of a canon encyclopedia. The OGL applies to game rules released under that system. As Eberron is not Open Game Content, Eberron Wiki is in the position of any other wiki that explores a topic. I would say that copying and pasting would be out of order, but research and documentation would not.

I think that Forgotten Realms Wiki could make a good model for this wiki to follow. I would suggest removal of game stats would create an encyclopedia of content that supports the WotC material (rather than replacing the need to buy their gamebooks). David Shepheard 00:08, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it would be effective but the only problem is sifting though almost 900 articles to make sure this site is somewhat following that rule, if more of us were active then it could go by a lot faster.Crimsonshade 06:13, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I think I saw another wiki where they got a bot to tag all the pages with some sort of category and then the editors slowly worked through the pages and pulled the tag off as they got to them. Maybe we could get Wikia to do that sort of thing. David Shepheard 17:21, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

Forum

It looks to me as though this wiki never had a proper wiki-forum... I can add one if you like? -- sannse (talk) 17:08, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

That would be great Sannse. It might help this community build up. Seeing as there isn't anything at the moment, maybe you could add the PHBBB forum (rather than the old-style forum). David Shepheard 16:55, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

The PHPBB forums aren't being added to more wikis at the moment I'm afraid, there are too many problems with them so they have mostly been phased out (just remaining where communities are already using them). I've added the wiki-style forums though... I hope they work for you! -- sannse (talk) 16:02, October 15, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help Sannse! David Shepheard 02:26, November 3, 2009 (UTC)

This wiki has been abandoned by its only bureaucrat

With all the above issues, I decided to try to contact the local wiki admin. I've had no response from User:Jhubert in over a month.

I'm sad to say that it looks like this wiki has been abandoned by Jhubert.

We have a sysop (User:TOR) who is also Wikia staff and I have requested that they come to this page and help decide who the new bureaucrat should be. I think that convention is to offer this sort of thing to existing sysops first, but I've never had to deal with an abandoned wiki before, so I may well be wrong.

I've also dug into the user list and found that this wiki has 7 highly active users (with more than 100 edits each). I'm going to list them all (and their current post counts) here as they may be good candidates to be elected to help run the wiki:

• User:RFrenchJr (1,031 edits)
• User:Zeth_Korrenheim (968 edits)
• User:The_Bard (380 edits)
• User:Crimsonshade (374 edits)
• User:Jorda75 (339 edits)
• User:Elrodian (190 edits - but no user page)
• User:Fantasyfan1987 (181 edits)

I'm going to invite everyone on that list (as well as TOR) to this page to join in the discussion. David Shepheard 18:12, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking action on this, David! While being a 'crat is no big deal (traditionally, all decisions are made by wiki communities anyway and then only enacted by bureaucrats), we do need one here to keep the admin count at a reasonable minimum.

I would advise that a new bureaucrat be chosen and made responsible for setting up a proper (yet still simple) sysop voting procedure for the future.

Since I haven't been involved with this wiki for quite some time now, I'm going to wait for the people here to have their say over who should be made a bureaucrat. I will be hanging around to observe the discussion and flip the switch when things are decided. ;) --TOR 18:53, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

Hello all, it's great to see that the Eberron Wiki community has sprung up again. Indeed for a while it seemed I was the only one adding content, for that reason I kinda burned out from adding content and busied myself with other things. Seeing a new group of individuals who want to make this thing work is very refreshing. I haven't taken the time to parse through all the above talking points, but I plan to and probably by tomorrow come up with some responses. I'd like to see who is looking over the wiki and we can go from there as to deciding who should be the 'crat. RFrenchJr 31:27, October 14th, 2009

I do agree that we need someone to help smooth out most of this site and I'm willing to help when time permits. I would have deleted a lot of the fanon stuff awhile ago if I knew how, but since I don't I've been waiting for someone to kinda pick that up. Crimsonshade 05:47, October 21, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to TOR, RFrenchJr and Crimsonshade for your respective responses. And thanks also for all the work you have done in the past.

I'm still not sure where this wiki is logically heading, Crimsonshade, but if it does switch to canon, it might be better to move the fanon (instead of deleting it). David Shepheard 02:36, November 3, 2009 (UTC)

Or split into two namespaces, it can be done. I have created scripts that modify categories for mediawikis if needed, and I'll gladly share. User:Sstaunb 22:30, January 30, 2010 (UTC)

Not much 4th ed material...

Hello, is anybody out there!?

Hello, I'm looking for Eberron enthusiasts to help me maintain this wiki as I am currently the only user keeping this place alive right now. Anyone is welcome so please drop a message if you're interested.

I recently deleted the talk page here as the messages were from the old users back in 2009, so if you're looking for old messages I'm afraid they're gone, sorry.