[Malaclypse]

OK, so I'm just gonna say it...

I'm so glad I kicked you lot out of my wiki when I did! How you have managed to lose information baffles me.

In any case, I have saved my wiki more or less as it was before the rot started and Hetan and I could deign to help out.

So, will you have us or not?

This post has been edited by Malaclypse: 18 September 2014 - 09:40 AM

[Malaclypse]

I take it back, at least in part - looks OK so far apart from the colour scheme - also it seems a bit formalized - I like the feel of a working wiki, with prominent links to works in progress with collaboration going on

Anyway, I think we could help

[Malaclypse]

do you have an approval process for editing entries? this is a must for me

'Words from the Authors' is a dead link? what happened there? also, this:

Quote

Art is both reflective of reality and reactionary to it. We’re seeing, I think, the insipid rise of fascism in the world right now, both on an individual, social community scale and nationally and internationally. Drawbridges are up and fear strides the night. And to paraphrase Yoda, we all know where this will lead.
Someone once told me (and I don’t even know if its true) that historically, the genre of fantasy reaches its peak during times of world strife, stress, and war. As an expression of escapism? Could be. A measure of the desire to turn away, at least for little while? Maybe. Of course, in most fantasy novels, evil wears no disguise, and the good are never ugly and always win in the end. So it might be that fantasy reaches through, to some inner need for clarity, to a world less confusing and in its way less frightening.
Mind you, if that’s the case, then I’m in trouble, cause my fantasy novels explore a world of disguised evil, the ugly good and the beautiful bad, and victories that prove anything but.
Oops.
pax malazica
steven erikson

Ian Cameron Esslemont: I (and Steve) both believe that Malaz is vastly different from the general popular fantasy series of the genre. We deliberately set out to achieve this goal of convention challenge, contravention, and reversal. It is deliberately anti-heroic in a genre heretofore reserved for heroic indulgences all this because we have faith in the intelligence and discrimination of genre readers to recognize when they are not being talked (or written) down to. In many ways the entire series is an extended critical study of the genre itself how it works, why it works, how far can it be pushed to evolve? But all that is sub-textual and academic; foremost the books must and do remain a damn hair-raising read. If that falls down then it will all fall down (and deservedly so).(Malazanempire Interview (2005))

Steven Erikson: One of the things that always fascinated me in my readings of recorded people's histories has been the strange notion of time, especially the way it's sometimes compressed, other times stretched out. There's a history of the Goths I once read that does this again and again; as do a few versions of the Norse creation myth. As a writer of fiction, I realised this was exceedingly useful, particularly in the way it could mislead. Yeah, I'm a mean bastard, ain't I just. Anyway, The Malazan Book of the Fallen is a compiled history, warts and all. It's not above brazen manipulation of events and facts, because, well, that's the nature of the beast. By this, do I mean it as a way of squirming out of things? No, you'd all never let me get off that easily. I just love the feel of an uncertain history, as all histories are. If none of you had any questions, then I'd be worried.(Q and A with malazanempire No 1 (2003))

There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, to the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one’s own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage along a foul, tortured path -- made foul and tortured by our own indifference -- is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come. I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us -- each of us, my friends -- to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrendered the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing -- all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.
The Apocryphal
Teachings of Tanno Spiritwalker Kimloc
The Decade in Ehrlitan

has to be somewhere easy to find, imo.

This post has been edited by Malaclypse: 18 September 2014 - 12:10 PM

[Malaclypse]

Galayn Lord is dead as well

Barghast has had TONS of quotes taken out! as has Forkrul Assail!

okok, maybe this was a bad idea, forget I asked.

This post has been edited by Malaclypse: 18 September 2014 - 12:16 PM

[Kanubis]

Do you know that thing where you try and think about the scale of the universe and your brain just kind of shrieks and hides? I get the same thing whenever I think about helping with the wiki. There's Just. So. Much.

[Malaclypse]

Entire cults, bonafide cults, were removed from the list - The Cold Dream - the Y'Ghatan cult to Scalissara, the Dessim'al, and there's more - explain to me how this makes sense...

ETA: I'll let you know when I've extracted everything that's been added (and admirably done I might add) and offer you the result, and with a strict approval process in place, we will have something to talk about.

This post has been edited by Malaclypse: 18 September 2014 - 12:37 PM

[D'rek]

IIRC, it was Hetan/Eloth who started the big push for "everything must be properly notarized using some academic notation system or something and if you can't reference it properly don't bother" in the first place. I stopped helping then but I imagine that is part of why things that were more speculation that fact might have been removed?

[Malaclypse]

wow, I live with Hetan and I'm confident that she would never instruct anybody to remove quotes and whole pages under any circumstances. But it is what it is - I'm happy with my secure wiki thank you very much so best of luck to you.

[D'rek]

Malaclypse, on 18 September 2014 - 03:07 PM, said:

wow, I live with Hetan and I'm confident that she would never instruct anybody to remove quotes and whole pages under any circumstances. But it is what it is - I'm happy with my secure wiki thank you very much so best of luck to you.

Probably not directly, no, but indirectly from that conversation onwards? Maybe. I'd link you to it but I haven't contributed to the wiki since and have no idea where to look for it... besides it probably got deleted like the rest

[Malaclypse]

I've since spoken with her about it and...well, never mind

I think you have a fundamental problem with your approach, to put it mildly.

An Encyclopedia is a be-all-end-all resource - it is meant to answer all of the questions that can be answered. You cannot be concerned about spoilers in a fucking encyclopedia!

Hell! Steve encouraged me to write new material for it, fleshing out Barghast history for example, remnant tribes on islands we haven't seen on-screen, etc.

We differ on this fundamental issue - there can be no reconciliation until you agree that I'm right - sorry but that's the way it has to be.

This post has been edited by Malaclypse: 19 September 2014 - 05:37 AM

[Malaclypse]

Kanubis, on 18 September 2014 - 12:23 PM, said:

Do you know that thing where you try and think about the scale of the universe and your brain just kind of shrieks and hides? I get the same thing whenever I think about helping with the wiki. There's Just. So. Much.

I don't get that feeling - I boil it down to simple tasks that are individually easy but eventually amount to something more than the sum of its parts - the wiki you see now is still mostly the result of my work, by volume - I never stepped far out of the grunt work phase because there is just so much of it to be done. What is frustrating is that people have gone in and deleted stuff which I cannot understand.

[Hetan]

The only issue I had with the wiki was not so much the referencing which has always been pretty decent, thanks to Mal's insistence, but more to do with putting the references in bold down the left hand side of the page, making any headers disappear into a wall of bold text - as with this page -

The other problem is the wiki is clumsy to use - as has been pointed out before. I'm perfectly happy with stuff being copied and pasted elsewhere, but I don't think that is what has happened here - I don't think stuff has been removed.
I've looked at some of the things and yes there are links to empty pages, some of them should be there I agree. But I think those are some of the oldest pages so it may be the links have been moved around with the wiki updates. We don't pay for it so we can't complain.

[Malaclypse]

This is such a sweet way to disagree with my wife, it's weird but I like it.

For me, this encyclopedia is linked on our homepage and it looks like and is a mess in my opinion.

I think that you (Hetan) and Vaiski and I have been vindicated by the fact that so much has been lost by throwing it open to the masses and we should make it better because IT IS FUCKING LINKED AT THE TOP OF EVERY MALAZAN-EMPIRE SCREEN YOU COME TO and it should be better than what it is.

This post has been edited by Malaclypse: 19 September 2014 - 08:38 AM

[Malaclypse]

Even considering all the stuff that has been added, which I can deal with, I would suggest changing the link to our private wiki right now but of course I must have the right to approve or disapprove of any edits. It has denigrated into such a fucking mess!

[Jade Raven]

So I just found out that forum update email notifications started going into my spam folder about a month ago. Damn it!

I'm just going to point out that there are two active wikis and I have no fucking idea which one you are talking about Mal.

[Malaclypse]

I'm talking about the one linked at the top of your screen on any malazanempire page. People are talking about a wikia wiki which I don't think I've seen so I'm curious about that.

This post has been edited by Malaclypse: 29 September 2014 - 09:24 AM

[Jade Raven]

malazan.wikia.com
Maybe my signature block is too subtle.

Also, to pre-empt you, if you sign up for an account (free) you don't have to see ads.

This is what the website looks like to me:

Spoiler

This post has been edited by Jade Raven: 01 October 2014 - 12:45 AM

[Malaclypse]

Yeah, I think it looks good and should definitely replace the version that is STILL gracing every page you come to on this site. I also think that the information is not as accessible as the sidebar system on all previous iterations of the malazan encyclopedia wiki. Clean that up and I think it's a winner I still think you need strict editorial control because some daft bastard is going to go in there, see something s/he had rather not known because of their nonsensical aversion to spoilers and delete stuff - this must not be possible in an information-gathering project.

[Silencer]

You know, Mal, I'm almost tempted to not change anything just to annoy you.

Especially seeing as you apparently lack basic reading comprehension skills regarding opinions you disagree with Re: spoilers!

[D'rek]

Malaclypse, on 02 October 2014 - 08:28 PM, said:

Yeah, I think it looks good and should definitely replace the version that is STILL gracing every page you come to on this site. I also think that the information is not as accessible as the sidebar system on all previous iterations of the malazan encyclopedia wiki. Clean that up and I think it's a winner I still think you need strict editorial control because some daft bastard is going to go in there, see something s/he had rather not known because of their nonsensical aversion to spoilers and delete stuff - this must not be possible in an information-gathering project.

In most open wikis, even if some random person wanders by and deletes stuff, any other random person can come by, check the edit history and reverse the changes, too!