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)

Here are a few general thoughts:

What will this wiki do that Wikipedia doesn't do, and that existing IF sites don't do? Will walkthroughs and detailed discussion of games be included, and if so, how will spoilers be indicated? Should there be a "neutral point of view" as on Wikipedia, or some standard more suitable to making critical judgments about particular pieces of IF or aspects of IF? Will authors be allowed to enter information about their own games, or will that be prohibited, as it would be on Wikipedia? Is there any reason to have a "glossary" that is separate from the other "articles"?

And a few more personal thoughts, related to ifwiki and my own writing:

I'm not sure how collaboratively-written articles, free for anyone to edit, will be useful for the type of writing I've done or the type of writing others have done. My "Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction" is an essay I wrote, presenting my own explorations and arguments, just as Graham Nelson's "The Craft of Adventure" presents Graham's particular perspective. I'd be glad to have it mirrored or republished intact anywhere, but the proper way for someone to build on it or respond to it would be to write another article, not to edit it wiki-style. So I wouldn't think to offer it all as raw material for a wiki.

Now, if we wanted to say something along the lines of "let's everyone detail the way that Shade works, or the way Varicella works, and what we think the allusions/meanings/effects on the interactor are at every step," that might be different, and might lead to an interesting accumulation of discussion. It would be something not supported by other sites, and something probably not appropriate for the shorter-form articles in Wikipedia.

A final note:

I think we should consider who the readership (and the writership) for ifwiki is supposed to be. Even if we're wrong, it's better to have some idea than no idea. Will it be the IF community, adept at searching the Web, communicating constantly on USENET and ifMUD, familar with many of the games we'll document, and perhaps not crying out for a resource like this, whatever this resource is going to be? Will it be students in middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities who are trying to figure out which IF pieces they might study, how they might understand them better, and how they might fit them into broader cultural contexts - which the IF community might not be so concerned about? Will the readership consist of IF nostalgics who might be "recruited" into the IF community? Or a new crop of geeks, outside an academic setting, who might be recruited to play and author IF?

--Nm 21:56, 1 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I think we want to categorize opinions, but not promote any single opinion. So on a craft page, we might link to the various essays that discuss craft.

I would like to see content moved to ifwiki from other sites. Barring that, we may very well duplicate it and reference it.

I guess making it public now is okay. I had hoped to have more content to make it seem more legitimate, but then again, the quicker people have access, the more they might feel inclined to help build it.

I think pages for authors and games are fine. I think reviews should be somewhere else, but they don't have to be. As long as the review is a title (not just 'review') and linked as an opinion piece, then it should be fine.

For the most part, this could be the hub for all IF content. The ifwiki doesn't need to contain it all, but it could certainly link to it all.

--David Cornelson 22:10, 1 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)