First, I want to apologize for the lateness of this report. Those of you who read Farrin’s recent Consul report will find this familliar, as competitive Speech and Debate has left me with little free time of late (as in the weekend of November 21-22 will be my second weekend off since the last weekend of September). Between coaching my college and high school teams, it’s been a busy few months. But, the wiki waits for no man (even when you try to put that to a debate, the wiki always wins).

Updates

The biggest change for the wiki moving forward is the one alluded to in the title of this report: The clan prospectus pages are going to be a-changin’. One of my goals as Wiki Tribune has been to try and make the wiki itself a bit more intuitive for newer members to navigate. My desire was to (eventually) implement table of content style Clan category pages, rewriting and condensing the guides for the wiki, etc. Recently, Locke over in CNS came to me with a request: He wanted to move his current clan page that is mostly history to a Naga Sadow History page and replace his clan page with the current Prospectus article. My initial response was to deny that particular request, as I want things to be uniform across all the clans. If all the clans save one had Prospectus pages, that could be a bit confusing to that clan’s newer members. Locke’s request did, however, dovetail quite nicely with my goal of a more intuitive and approachable wiki, so I went to the rest of the Consuls with the idea to shift all the clan pages to a similar set up. With support for it strong across the board, it was decided that everyone will be making the switch.

As such, all clans will have their current clan pages moved to a “Clan _____ History” page, while the Prospectus will be replacing their clan page. Given that, especially for new members, the Prospectus that outlines the fictional reality of the clan would likely be more important for a member than the wall’o’history that serves as the clan pages now, it seems like this will be a change that makes the info that members need more all the easier to find. Additionally, it clears up the “What the heck is a Prospectus?” question that many people have. Additionally, the wiki staff will be able to assist the clans if they want to combine some elements on their current clan pages with content on their current prospectus pages.

As part and parcel of this change, I’ve decided to go ahead and pull the trigger on another quick change on the “intuitiveness is good” front. Back in the ye olde days of the Brotherhood, unit pages used to have the unit type in them. For example, “Clan Plagueis” instead of “Plagueis”. That all began to change with the declanning of the units of the Brotherhood several years ago, with units shedding the unit type from their page titles because of the newly implemented fluidity in status resulting from the possibility of being a clan or house. New policy, however, has done away with the possibility of being a clan or house (now, everyone is a clan and maybe you can have houses, or not) and so we can expect more stability in house vs clan status. With that reality, I’ve decided to also return the unit names into unit wiki pages. I think this will limit some confusion on a lot of levels. Most of the units in the Brotherhood share names with notable Star Wars characters (Naga Sadow, Marka Ragnos, Qel-Droma, Plagueis, Odan-Urr, Hoth, etc) so adding the clan or house designation to those articles should keep confusion to a minimum. Additionally, it also better matches the naming conventions for things like clans or houses on other wiki systems (like Clan Ordo and House Alde).

I hope to have both of these changes rolled out in the next week or so. Also, there won’t be a specific need to go through and update links to the newly renamed or moved pages across all the articles on the wiki as the system will leave redirects behind to ensure that all the old link still function. If anyone would like to give any of their journeyman types looking to get their JM4 promotion requirement for a clan project out of the way, feel free to point them in the staff’s direction if you would like them to assist in any updates or information moves between your current clan articles and prospectus articles.

WotM & Featured Article

Another month, another Wikipedian of the Month and Featured Article.

This month, our Wikipedian of the Month isn’t somebody that performed a slew of edits or the like. Making improvements on the wiki by bringing good proposals to the attention of the staff that then can result in more widespread adoption for the wiki as a whole is often times more important than performing a number of maintenance edits. In that spirit, I’ve named Locke Sonjie as November’s WOTM for his contributions as outlined above.

Today I’m also highlighting a featured article, but this one will be featured for both November and December, for two reasons: First, I’m a bit late on my report and I want to feature this article for at least the full 30 days. Second, this article is longer than… well, suffice it to say it’s long. So, for the next month and a half, the featured article will be Atyiru Caesura Entar. Everyone go congratulate the Shadow Lady and marvel at how much she can write.

Projects

• Clan Pages: Lead: Selika. This project should be a quick one, with the bulk of the work happening within the next seven days.
• Accessibility: Lead: V’yr. The first phase of this project which will consist of developing the magazine style table of contents system for our Clan category pages. Once a tentative plan is in place for a standardized system, we’ll be working with the Clans to make sure their specific concerns aren’t steamrolled by the march of progress. Work will also be proceeding on a redesign of the wiki’s front page to meet the same goals for the overall wiki itself. V’yr’s been a bit distracted by the massive mountain of HRLD work, so I think we can excuse him. A mockup of how the Clan page table of contents may be formatted can be seen here.
• Tutorial/Policy Organization: Lead: Andrelious. Right now our wiki has a lot of duplicated and, often times, contradictory data when it comes to policies for such things as character page creation. With the help of the staff, I will be looking towards taking the current information and condensing it into single articles, as well as placing all the disparate pages together into specific categories. Additionally, development of the Manual of Style document will be part of this project.
• Archivist: Back burner for now. I feel that making the wiki easier to learn, navigate, and use is a higher priority at the moment than recording event plots. That isn’t to say that clans and their members can’t take some of this project on for themselves, as that sort of work is often a really great option for Dark Jedi Knight promotion requirements. hint hint
  

Wiki Tip of the Month

After last month’s tip about article creation, this month will focus on the second most common question I get asked about the wiki. With many of our members exploring character changes, changing their dossier names from “Renegade4Life” to something a bit more story driven as they explore the Brotherhood, or just adding last names when they initially thought they didn’t need one coughDracaryis Sunstridercough, I very often get asked how to rename a page. I can understand why many people can’t find the function they’re looking for, and that’s because the wiki doesn’t “rename” pages. Instead, it “moves” them.

The move function can be found in the drop down menu at the upper right side of the wiki pages:

Once you click that, you’ll be taken to the following menu:

On this page you can select what the new page title for your page will be as well as specify a reason for the move. Also, the “Leave a redirect behind” option is always checked by default, so that any links to your old page title will then redirect to your new one. When it comes to moving pages in regards to character changes, however, I always recommend leaving the old page alone and starting a new one if you are scrapping a current character and creating a brand new one. That character is still a person, still interacted with other members and their characters, and might come back in some capacity in the future (NPC, villain, or you might return to it as a primary character down the road). Use the move function sparingly, and only if you really need it.

Final Words

Just another reminder that the wiki staff as a whole is always here to give you a hand with wiki questions. If you’re looking for a wiki article approval for your promotion requirements, send your email to the entire staff to increase your chances of getting a speedy response. Hit us up on telegram (many of us are on their often), and even if the staffer you catch doesn’t know the answer they’ll track me down and make sure you get an answer. We’re there to help you guys out, so don’t hesitate!