[Egwene]

I am trying to get access in order to contribute to the wiki but have not yet had any response. Ok, ok, it's only been a few days and people have a life outside Malaz but the thought occurred that maybe it is not a current project anymore. Anyone know???

Also, has SE given any indication as to whether the promised official one is anywhere on the horizon?

[Ozymandiac]

There is another Malazan wiki as well, over here. Both encyclopedias have their own ways of working and have their own pros and cons. I used to favor the encyclopediamalazica, but it is not as easy to join as the wikia, which seems to be an obstacle for people making spontaneous contributions. This is why I switched to the wikia whenever I feel the need to write Malazan stuff.

I just check the encyc.malazica and it seems its last entry was May 1 2013. The wikia is a lot more active with several entries this week (none by me, mind you), but that might be because it is behind in information and has some catching up to do, though I doubt that.

This post has been edited by Ozymandiac: 20 January 2014 - 08:31 PM

[HoosierDaddy]

You have to receive access to the Encyclopediamalazica in order to edit.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

"Receive access", eh? Sounds kinky. Where do I sign up?

[HoosierDaddy]

PM an admin, I think Imperial Historian gave me access to it back in the day.

[Imperial Historian]

The wiki is run by hetan, who is hardly around any more and I used to, but not for a while (and I'm currently travelling round the world with limited internet access). Its not been particularly active for a while. If someone wants to take over more responsibility for the wiki let me know!

Egwene I'll try and approve your access later.

Re the other wiki, I don't think anyone would mind if you grabbed content from malazica for it. Malazica was initially envisioned as a private project, eventually leading to publication as a book, hence the approval process, but that project is probably not going to happen anymore.

Edit: so I just logged on and no one had approved access for 9 months, please pm me of you want to take over responsibility for the wiki, or I'm afraid it will die

[D'rek]

Imperial Historian, on 20 January 2014 - 09:32 PM, said:

The wiki is run by hetan, who is hardly around any more and I used to, but not for a while (and I'm currently travelling round the world with limited internet access). Its not been particularly active for a while. If someone wants to take over more responsibility for the wiki let me know!

Egwene I'll try and approve your access later.

Re the other wiki, I don't think anyone would mind if you grabbed content from malazica for it. Malazica was initially envisioned as a private project, eventually leading to publication as a book, hence the approval process, but that project is probably not going to happen anymore.

Edit: so I just logged on and no one had approved access for 9 months, please pm me of you want to take over responsibility for the wiki, or I'm afraid it will die

No one has posted in the sub-forum for it since March, either. I guess the two go hand-in-hand, can't have interest without access.

IH, if you are looking for someone to take it over and the other interested applicants brainz' are eaten by Abyss, let me know I could probably handle it. At the very least, I promise I could make sure anyone looking for access is vetted and given access in a timely manner.

[Egwene]

Thanks for all the replies.

Quote

There is another Malazan wiki as well, over here. Both encyclopedias have their own ways of working and have their own pros and cons. I used to favor the encyclopediamalazica, but it is not as easy to join as the wikia, which seems to be an obstacle for people making spontaneous contributions. This is why I switched to the wikia whenever I feel the need to write Malazan stuff

Thank you for the link. Totally agree with the observation about spontaneous contributions. Maybe our Encyclopedia would work better if all forum members had automatic access to edit. Just add a few 'report' buttons in case of abuse and get people to put disputed sections into brackets. I think you'd get a lot more interest at that point. Comparing the two sites, I probably prefer the simple layout of ours so would love to see it revived.

I would also like to suggest that there should be one big general spoiler warning on the front page but no 'hidden' text, further warnings etc. elsewhere (and the usual government health warning that one uses all the info at ones own risk, lol)

Anyone not familiar with it, take a look at the WoT encyclopedia - very easy to use and pretty extensive!

Quote

IH, if you are looking for someone to take it over and the other interested applicants brainz' are eaten by Abyss, let me know I could probably handle it. At the very least, I promise I could make sure anyone looking for access is vetted and given access in a timely manner.

I'll second your nomination, D'rek

[Egwene]

Thank you for approving my access, Imperial historian. I would love to contribute, but don't have enough time at present to take on overall responsibility. Look forward to working with whoever does take it on :-)

Having taken a look at the editing features, I guess it isn't really set-up for general access so let me toss out a few ideas...

How about giving the whole project a fresh start by setting up a new WikiMaz forum board. Considering that the encyclopaedia is one of the main links on the home page, it could do with a higher profile. It totally disappears at the bottom of the board amongst the user groups. As the main series is finished I think more people will come forward as they won't be worried about spoilers. We could set up info 'collection threads' on the new board where everyone can chip in and then transfer the info over in one go. I am sure that if the wiki had it's own board on the forum it would attract more contributors.

What do you think?

[Jade Raven]

Imperial Historian, on 20 January 2014 - 09:32 PM, said:

Re the other wiki, I don't think anyone would mind if you grabbed content from malazica for it. Malazica was initially envisioned as a private project, eventually leading to publication as a book, hence the approval process, but that project is probably not going to happen any more.

Hi Everyone, I was just over here and about to send a PM to Imperial Historian about this very topic. I'm one of the Admins over on the so-called 'other wiki' and I've just come into some time to actually do a bit contributing now. I was going to ask permission to wholesale grab all the excellent info that's already on Malazica (the PB wiki), but I'll take the above post as permission granted - thanks IH. Until anyone objects anyway.

Other things I wanted to talk about was a bit of a co-operation of interests, you guys have an active forum and we don't, we have a (mostly) active wiki and well you went 9 months without an edit in a semi-closed wiki. I wouldn't mind some sort of official endorsement post to point a few potential new contributors our way (malazan.wikia.com). We could definitely use a couple of regular or semi-regular contributors, or helpers to pull info across wikis.

I like your idea Egwene about having an actual wiki forum board and it being more visible would be nice too.
Pre-Edit: Ok, I just reloaded the main page after having logged in on another tab to write this and I see the wiki sub-forum there at the bottom now. Invisible if you're not logged in. Putting it in the General Book Forum section would help with visibility. I would like to use it for the Wikia wiki if I can manage to attract a few people from this board across as contributors.

I also thought that if (a big if) we get all your great info transferred over then you might replace that "Encyclopedia" link up in the banner with a link over to us. Now that you have contributors again (two!) that might not sit to well them. But if no-one steps up to manage your PB wiki then I'd like it to be considered. I just had another idea; add a new link called "FAQ" that links to FAQ's page on your wiki, while having "Encyclopedia" link to malazan.wikia.com. You could get rid of the sub-forum FAQ & Wiki redirect that way.

Anyway, about the Wikia Malazan wiki. I think it's got a lot going for it in the presentation department, and the ease of access department too. Doing some of that more advanced formatting can be a fiddly though I have to admit, but help can be found for that. Regarding the spoiler issue Egwene, that's one I've got my eye on changing to something more similar to what you describe, got a hundred other things first though. I take a lot of the overall design/organisation/layout cues from Wookieepedia by the way.

Also, at some time in the middle-distant future I've got no objections to bringing all the info back and setting up the wiki on this site, so long as it still uses the same MediaWiki software as the base and remains open access. If fact long term I'd prefer it, in the mean time though I think it's best to keep it hosted on Wikia.


So TL;DR? Diverge the PB wiki towards a FAQ/Reader's guide, while plugging the Wikia wiki as the encyclopedia. Promote the current encyclopedia user group into a higher position sub-forum and let me/others use it to talk about our Wikia wiki projects. Interlinking all-around.

Thoughts?

[Jade Raven]

Also, regarding appearances of the wiki. When you look at the site it probably looks this: http://tinypic.com/r/jux2fa/5

But when I'm logged in it looks like this: http://tinypic.com/r/r9qrd1/5

You need to sign up and choose Monobook in you appearance preferences if you want to use it.

[Egwene]

Hi Jade-Raven,

I don't mind contributing here or there. Guess what I am after when all is said and done is a comprehensive Malazan wiki. The whole thing came to my attention when I was trying to figure out what Nep Furrow was on about at the end of tCG. I thought the wiki would have a translation - alas, that is when I realised that it was nowhere near complete. Hence my posts here.

It would be good to have a few admin guys involved in this discussion so that actual decisions can be made. I am not sure who is who on here so anyone passing by... HELP!!!

... and I still don't know what NF said that provoked such a reaction from the others!!!

[Ozymandiac]

Egwene, on 23 January 2014 - 01:45 PM, said:

The whole thing came to my attention when I was trying to figure out what Nep Furrow was on about at the end of tCG.

I assume you're referring to this piece?

Quote

'Heard she's retiring us,' ventured Sinter. 'Priest's paying us out – a damned fortune for each and every one of us.'
'Where'en ne faareden? Eh? War bit ana dem?'
'To the families if they got any, Nep. That's how it's done. Stand or fall, you still get paid.'
'G'han nered pah vreem!'
Sinter made a startled sound, and beside her Kisswhere leaned forward to shoot Nep Furrow a shocked look.
'Really, Nep?' Kisswhere asked.
'Nepel!'
'Gods below,' Sinter whispered. 'I never …'

There's a topic about this over here, check the excellent post made by Amphibian.

[Egwene]

Thanks for that link, Ozymandiac!

[Kruppe's snacky cakes]

As an occasional user of both Malazan wikis, I've noticed that I can sometimes find information in one that doesn't exist in the other. So I wouldn't mind seeing some sort of merger of the two, such that there is not a net loss of information...rather than one simply going away.

[Imperial Historian]

I´m not around to take the lead on this, but I´ve raised it with the other admins, someone should pop in and comment.

In general I am in favour of a switch to an openaccess encylopedia, we looked at wikia early on but discounted it due to the adverts, but personally I´m not a big fan of the pbwiki software.

If someone is interested in merging the wikis, I think all the pbwiki pages can be exported in some form, but I don´t know how easy that will be to import into wikia or other software.

I have sporadic internet access, but will try and help as I can.

[Abyss]

I have the requisite obsidian knife and virgin llamas, but someone with more actual technical knowledge will have to propose something practical before i start slicing throats and chanting to the many-angled ones for this.

- Abyss, SO helpful, so VERY helpful...

[Ozymandiac]

As Abyss said: I am in favour of merging, but lack any knowledge on how to achieve that...

[Silencer]

For what it's worth, I'm getting in touch with Hetan'a'Mal on this one. The Encyclopedia was their pet project, and last I heard they were still interested in pursuing it. So before we do anything else I'll see what they want to do, if they're still interested.

[Jade Raven]

I'm not sure that technically merging (ie; importing/exporting) would be desirable, or even possible to do. It could stuff up the Wikia wiki quite badly. I was thinking more of a diversion of encyclopedic effort over to Wikia. Hopefully this would be accompanied with better highlighting of the wiki in this forum as discussed above. The PB wiki would stay on for a good while yet with its FAQ section and as parts of it are slowly copied over. I have already copied over all the chapter summaries that I could find (it's a damn labyrinth in there, I kept finding new places where you guys were storing them). Copying the article information will take much, much longer as we already have our own articles that they need to be merged with - ideally into an article style rather than a bunch of quotes.

Also, I was looking back in the old wiki forum threads the other day and, based what I saw there D'rek should probably get adminship of the PB wiki, it'll still need an admin in any eventuality. If you're reading this Imperial Historian you should do it.

And I know you guys don't like the ads on Wikia, but if you sign up (free and easy), you can use the monobook layout, like I do, that doesn't (seem to) show ads.