User talk:MasterWill

Hi Bill, What happened to the Arrowsreach Wiki? I'm surprised you aren't doing all this page-of-links and festival planning on it, rather than an summary-style wiki like Cunnan. -Cian Gillebhrath 16:53, 20 Mar 2006 (CST)

I thought that by creating Arrowsreach centric wiki pages on Cunnan that cross references into other pages on Cunnan I would be able to encourage more of our members to use and contribute to Cunnan as a whole. For example, I am amazed that Mistress Margie has not been introduced to Cunnan as she would be an avid user if she could get over her initial fear for the complex and arcane computer arts. Cunnan is also incredably handy and useful, and I can see such "group centric" use increasing as more and more people find out about it, at that point we should create a seperate category for Lochac group pages rather than splitting it off into a seperate wiki. --MasterWill 00:26, 21 Mar 2006 (CST)

This is adresses to everyone in general: Is it possible to have a subwiki? What I'm thinking is a change in page colour, indicating that certain content related to a limited group, and a small automated disclaimer, that not all the info on such pages will be totally intellegible to people outside the group. The Krae Glas hall hire directory (happy to make it the melbourne hall hire directory if we got entries) seems one such thing to me, and st monicas occasionally has such things (eg festival planning), although it is easier with our smaller group to get people to read emails, than visit a wiki. Maybe technically, I'm talking a second wiki, but one open to all lochac groups, that uses the same software as cunnan, and meshes seamlessly with it? It is one of the constant conflicts we have, and I too would like to have somewhere I don't feel worried about havign the two concepts of useage warring against each other. Tiff

• This is sort of why I wrote to you Will. Cunnan has pages that supposedly define its purpose (i.e. Cunnan:What isn't Cunnan?, Cunnan:What is Cunnan?) but I suspect they were written a while ago by the St Monicans who set Cunnan up. However, the "rules" have been pretty well followed so far. The regular editors have been trying hard to delocalise the content of the entries, and not limit them to solely SCA details. The one exception has been the KraeGlas hall hire directory, but since that was written by Monicans and their locals, it is easy to ignore.

IIRC it was previously decided that Cunnan's pages weren't going to be substitute webpages for branches, nor was Cunnan going to be a repository for documents like newsletters, manuals etc. The servers have shifted from St Mon's to Del's machines.

While I think its great that you are encouraging Arrowreachians to use and contribute to Cunnan (especially Margie.... we need stuff on period theatre added), I am just worried that the recent edits will set a precedent that contradicts the existing norms. Tiff's idea is good. Having a distinctly separate area for SCA (and other groups) to have their own pages with their own styles would be better, but I fear that it will hard to manage as the server may not have the resources, and it will be harder for us to moderate. A separate wiki for Lochac groups might be the best way to go on that.

- Cian Gillebhrath 17:03, 21 Mar 2006 (CST)

Having a second "area" within one wiki would be tricky the software we're using really isn't setup to handle that. What might be an option is to have a second wiki, a Lochac wiki, setup. Someone would need to ask Del, it's his server. A couple of changes to the interwiki link scheme and we'd have [[Lochac:some page]] and [[Cunnan:some page]] working to "pass" users between the two.

I'm not volunteering to approach Del about this but I'd support and help anyone who did.

- Tobin 17:39, 21 Mar 2006 (CST)

Before I started contributing to the Cunnan I went looking for Cunnan:Policies and guidelines on content, and I came to conclusion that what I intended to add was acceptable. Now that you have pointed out the other policy pages (i.e. Cunnan:What isn't Cunnan?, Cunnan:What is Cunnan?) I have found quite a lot of pages that seem to break the Cunnan:What isn't Cunnan? rules, for example, the Holy Roman Emperor and Guard pages have very little to do with re-enactment and read more like an encyclopaedia entries. The Cunnan:FAQ states that the local intrest pages have not been deleted because they don't conflict with what anyone else wants to write. There is a need for local pages, and dividing the wiki seems like such a waste of time and ends up reducing it's overall value. So to clear this up, we could create a page template that has a different background colour for local pages. --MasterWill 17:57, 21 Mar 2006 (CST)

The point in the FAQ about articles that only concern a small group was more for regional/local point of view type things not for event planning, etc. If we allow one instance of this then we have to be prepared for all groups involved in the SCA to start using the site as a place to jot down notes for running events and organising who's doing the cooking on a particular day at a particular camp. Cleaning up after the events are over would be a real pain, and I don't think that a record of what a household had for lunch at last years Rowany is the sort of thing we want to have to keep track of. I'm also not sure Del would be keen on us hosting these kinds of things for groups that have nothing to do with Lochac.

I don't think that dividing the wiki would reduce it's overall value. I think it would help better define what the wiki is for and the interwiki linking I mentioned is an easy and clear way to get users moving between the two sites. If we were really keen we could abuse the wiki software's ability to have links related pages in other "languages" to make the relationship even stronger.

Altering the site's CSS to have a different background is easy but getting the software to use it is a problem. I understand the code but I refuse to make changes like that since they make upgrading a real pain. You could do it by placing the content of the entire page within a table with a coloured background but that'll break when you start adding right aligned images, etc.

If people really insist on using Cunnan in this way then I'll suggest they move the pages out of the article namespace and into [[Cunnan: page name ]]. - Tobin 18:27, 21 Mar 2006 (CST)

• I'm afraid the arrangements of the policies pages are just a classic victim of this being a wiki -- disorganisation. If someone has time, they might get them structured better and put meaningful links on other pages.

As for the encyclopaedic nature of some pages, I suspect what is meant is that editors shouldn't include everything that is ever known on a page about a subject. Just keypoints that explain what the topic is on about and items that may be relevant to it. Some editors like to write a lot (cf. User:Anton). I as a moderator chicken out of editting those pages, partially because of the individual style in which they are written (hard to edit! easier to rewrite which takes time!). But I do personally feel that some pages say too much for Cunnan.

As for Guard, IMHO it does contain entries for senses of the word that doesn't really add to anything you would find in a dictionary. But since the author is so good at writing pages, I left it alone in the hope that he/she would expand those entries further at a later date with more medieval-centric data. I also mean to add links to pages for certain guards e.g. NVG, Mead Guard.

But a page that is mainly a list of links really needs to justify why it doesn't deserve to be chopped down. The list of Other re-enactment sites is a classic (but messy) example. The key thing that saves it (for now) is that all the links are for one topic.

- Cian Gillebhrath 20:50, 21 Mar 2006 (CST)