Talk:IFWiki origins

Okay. I believe Nick Montfort plans to add more to this page, but here are my thoughts and please forgive me if I make too much about this.

It's my belief that the IF Community wastes a lot of time. There are probably dozens of websites and personal pages that have varying levels of content regarding interactive fiction. Some of the owners of these sites are excellent at keeping them fresh and up to date. Eventually though, it seems that all sites tend to grow mold or content simply disappears.

I also believe that wikis are perfectly suited to many of the types if information that a hobby like interactive fiction contains.

It's because of these two thoughts that we have this website.

It would be nice to build content into the wiki, but I would also ask people to seriously consider what information they maintain on their own websites and determine if that infomation couldn't be better supported on ifwiki.

In the past I had created iflibrary.org/.com and one of the major issues with people using it was that it was more or less "owned" by me. It didn't really feel "public". It was also security driven so that the burden of maintenance was on me or people that happened to register.

So here is a solid pledge. The ifwiki.org is not to be considered an entity of David Cornelson. It is owned by everyone that has an interest in interactive fiction. It is public information. I refuse to be the sole or final judge of how content is designed, styled, or managed. I accept a role as an IF Community member and will work with others as a team to create a useful tool for interactive fiction research.

--David Cornelson 21:10, 1 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)