What is this wiki for?

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There's been discussion recently on what exactly this wiki is supposed to be, and the consensus seems to be that having the wiki defined properly is necessary to maintaining it properly.

That being said, this wiki is (choose all that apply):


Other talking points:

  • should the wiki be part of our interaction (like the Suocialism page), or just describe it as it goes by a la Wikipedia (neutrally, that is - i.e. Urine_Day's page)? does it matter?
  • who's in charge?
  • (add whatever else you want here i guess)


--Muffpub 2 21 00:55, 8 May 2005 (EDT)


  • all of the above but very clearly separated. perhaps we should set up a page title prefix system or something to help separate mofi, mofirc, creative, or random stuff.

like... Mofi:London_meetup random:Philco_Computer etc. --Muffpub 2 21 23:09, 7 May 2005 (EDT)

  • Both, with a silly namespace and a serious one all of the above, but appropriately separated--Richer 23:28, 7 May 2005 (EDT)
  • Let me get back to you. --tracicle 00:47, 8 May 2005 (EDT)
  • Wrong question. Ask "whom is this wiki for?" The "what" will answer itself. — fuyugare 01:13, 8 May 2005 (EDT)
  • I'm with Richer - I think it's fine to have the silly/random/community building stuff, but it should be appropriated separated from the utility aspects. I've been editting some of the in-jokes stuff, and there were a couple of initial in-joke entries I had to add explanations to, because they almost didn't make sense to me, let alone a new mofi person trying to understand our in-jokes. (The Infinite number of petes_best is an in-joke, actually, now with a short explanation. If that isn't long enough to make sense, let me know.) - jb 10:31, 8 May 2005 (EDT)

A few random thoughts:

  • One thing I'd like to respectfully ask is that once content is added, it's not deleted without some indicator that it's been removed. It screws with the history of the wiki and makes things a little confusing. My example of this is on fuyu's guidelines:talk page, where Kimberly has removed her comment so now it looks like fuyu is agreeing with me, whereas he was actually agreeing with Kimberly's comment which was quite different to mine.
  • And above, I think Richer is right. The wiki can literally be whatever we want it to be; the key is keeping things well-defined and labelled so that anyone, whether old or new, can tell the useful content from the chatty stuff. I'm going to have a tidy-up of some stuff that's obviously extraneous right now (the new Wiki Ponies page, for example, because we already have a page for Wiki-related bugs). I hadn't considered my role in the wiki very well and had hoped that simply hosting it on the MoFi server would be sufficient. But I plan on taking a more active role. Fuyu's VfD pages will be useful, I think, and I'll link to the Wikipedia VfD pages so everyone can get an idea of how the system works, because that makes the wiki far more democratic and once we have some sort of procedure for adding and removing pages, the wiki will run much more smoothly.
  • Now, there's some stuff that I, personally, don't believe belongs on the wiki. And no offense to rolypolyman, who is both cool and talented, but stuff like the Philco thing should realistically be hosted elsewhere and linked to on the wiki as a personal project. I didn't intend for the wiki to be used as a catchall for stuff that has no home in that respect. But anyone who disagrees is welcome to speak up, as always, because I'm only a participant here the majority of the time. Maybe a good middle ground would be that they could be hosted here, but must be linked to the user pages as opposed to being given their own wikipage, much like fuyu linked his guidelines and scripts off his userpage. That way ownership is symbolically retained and everyone knows to whom to attribute the content. --tracicle 16:32, 8 May 2005 (EDT)
  • I guess I should also add that I don't think it's fair to arbitrarily edit other monkeys' pages for content/typos/grammar etc. I don't know of a solution though, except that if it's a minor typo then you could call it out on the talk page for that article, and if it needs major restructuring it could go to VfD. And I would like to stress that VfD is not just about deletion (we should make a new name for it), but about ensuring that content fits into a fairly loose set of guidelines. And now I think I'm out of stuff to say. --tracicle 20:35, 8 May 2005 (EDT)
    • The wikipedia etiquette is that you shouln't change comments already made in talk pages (except your own, and then using strikethrough) and never change the stuff in a user's non-talk namespace (e.g.: you shouldn't change my user page. Also, we could use RFC (request for comments) or something instead of VfD. I don't think we need every part of the wikipedia process. So RFC would have the power to call for deletion, or just be an informal poll of opinions. --Richer 23:24, 9 May 2005 (EDT)
    • I definitely agree with the idea that you shouldn't change anyone else's comments on a talk page (or a page that is clearly about discussion, like this one), but doesn't not editting the informational pages sort of take away some of the purpose of a wiki (not just that everyone can edit, but that something collectively editted will become better than just what one person writes)? I wouldn't be offended if people editted my contributions (for instance, my currently rather hurried and not very clear explanation of cockpunch), and if I thought they had taken out something important, I could always restore it from the history page. The magic of this system is that things are not lost when editted, and content can always be restored. But leaving the more useful pages without editting would leave them really messy and interfeer with their purpose. - jb 23:48, 9 May 2005 (EDT)
You're right, jb. I don't quite know what I had in mind when I wrote that, but obviously it's hardly collaborative if you can't add to content. So far a lot of the content on the wiki is individual works, but things like the in-jokes, genial's computer support page (if he doesn't mind) or, well, most stuff should be free for expansion. (I'm overly cautious about editing other people's pages, but that's just me.) I like Richer's suggestion of RfC instead of VfD -- it doesn't sound so harsh and allows for other options than deletion, which is the main thing. --tracicle 02:58, 10 May 2005 (EDT)
    • I'm going to cut and paste something I wrote on the VfD (or whatever its kinder gentler name is) earlier today, as I think it pretty accurately sums up where I'm coming from.
"I think the fact that something is created by a monkey is enough reason to include it on the wiki. There is tremendous potential for this wiki to evolve into a space for creative, interrelated projects, and perhaps a light touch, even on seemingly nonsensical or "graffitoed" entries, will be rewarding in ways that we cannot currently predict."

In other words, I think some of this stuff that seems kind of useless now (the Bob page, etc) may well turn into something interesting later on if we resist the urge to can everything we don't understand. My advice: let it sit for awhile, see what happens, if nothing results than consider it abandoned, and take steps to junk it then. --Nickdanger 01:30, 20 May 2005 (EDT)

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