User:Axiomist/Wiki Philosophies

ZELDA WIKI.ORG WIKI PHILOSOPHIES

MERGING
Many articles are destined to be permanent stubs. One time use items that had little impact on the story are good candidates to be merged to other similar natured articles. The reasons "Mergists" have become such are:
 * 1) It reduces wiki chaos and eases navigation for researchers on a specific topic. (This may tie into a philosophy of wikis existing for the end user and not the editors)
 * 2) Quality should come before quantity. Mergists see the opposition of merging as "Article Count Padding", and would rather see X thorough articles than 12X stubs.
 * 3) Merged content does not mean it is permanently merged. There may be an instance when "Splitting" would be necessary to maintain a smooth article read.

INLINE REDIRECTS
Q: What is an inline redirect? A: An inline redirect is the coined term for a pipelink that goes to a redirect page, then to the target article. At the target article a small note will appear in the upper left hand corner notifying you which page you were redirected from. The case can be made that all pipelinks should follow the format of Town Flower. The sole reason is to not have the end-user see the redirect notification. However, the opposing side has its reasons to believe inline redirects are acceptable: 1.) Structuring the redirects in that format limits article structure, in the case of the Decorations article, the chosen format of the merger was to section content in groups of "Flowers", "Flags", "Statues" to shorten the Table of Contents. An anti-Inline Redirectist would sacrifice the shorter table of contents and have each item as its own article section. 2.) A larger flood of edits would be needed to maintain this philosophy. If the "Decorations" article were ever renamed to Zunari's Wares, then every page linking to each of the items would need to be changed to Town Flower. On the other hand, accepting Inline Redirects would keep all of the pipelinks as the simple Town Flower. Our resident bot will take care of the double redirects a move would create, when prompted to go by its master.

HAUNTED
Inexplicable things occur on your wiki. Pages disappear, Errors are invisible in 'Page Previews', 'Preview' randomly saves pages in embarrassing states, HDDs groan when you click 'edit', Edit Conflicts happen when you finally decide to work on a stale article, the wheel on FireFox is just spinning and spinning instead of loading the smallest articles, Comments you feel most confident with are completely ignored, 'Random Page' shows you the same few ungodly pages again and again, and probably more.

INDIE WIKIS
It's clear that the Wikia network is becoming a dominant force in the greater WikiSphere. Naturally there are Pros and Cons to this. Some of the pros are that wikis will be free for everyone to have hosted, so even obscure content will survive as a wiki on the Wikia network. This of course leads to some Cons: 1.) McDonalds-ification of wikis. Wikia supports few differences in their layout and actually has a rule against undermining advertisements. 2.) With little vested interest in the stability of the Wikia site, its staff may feel elite in that their wiki will be hosted tomorrow regardless of what they do today. Independent wiki staff wear many hats in order to keep their wiki functioning and stakeholders determined to maintain the server costs. This leads to Indie Wiki Staff being more: a.) tolerant to its users, instead of Staff Elitism. b.) innovative and willing to try new ideas, instead of StatusQuoism. c.) outgoing with other wikis and sites to garner support for the project. Wikia wikis will are more likely to fall into Isolationism. d.) careful with content and staff actions to avoid rampant vandalism or the loss of beneficial supporters. 3.) Smaller Wikia sites have been noted to maintain the virtues moreso than very popular Wikias.

EDIT WARS
Like it or not Edit Warring is going to happen every once in awhile, a page could be locked; but this merely turns it into a comment war. Two conflicting stances have emerged on Edit Wars. Wiki Pacifism
 * Edit wars are frowned upon and warriors should be banned
 * Edit wars disrupt everyone visiting the Recent Changes
 * Edit warriors are unlikely to reach conclusion among themselves and should cease immediately and reach out for a mediator

Wiki Warriorism
 * Wikis are meant to be the battlefield for competing points of view
 * Disruption from the Edit War is a necessary evil to ensure the best edit wins
 * There is no rule against Edit Warring, therefore it is acceptable conduct

NEUTRALITY
The encyclopedic nature of a wiki calls for neutrality. It has been noticed by many various wikians that there are actually varying degrees of neutrality; as well as varying levels of acceptance and user skills of writing neutrally. Primary content will be a documentation of the facts. With sources in place, the facts will stand on their own. Little to no 'neutrality' author skills are required for such. Secondary content such as Theories and Trivia will very likely require neutrality author skills. Trivia requires the author to consider what is a noteworthy trivial fact to include against what is a speculative conjecture with an unobvious attempt to slant the readers point of view. (such as statements that dismiss the entire article)

Theories will require a more advanced skill of the author to write in a neutral point of view. Zelda Wiki.org asks editors to structure theories as follows: Briefly describe the theory in a paragraph, avoid repeating the facts from the Main body of the article. The paragraphed section is meant to assume the reader knows those facts before reading the proposed theory. Long winded Essayism in this section will be trimmed to conciseness. Bear in mind that this format is not a rule but a guideline to maintain the acceptance of theories in Zelda Wiki articles. The opposite side of the argument is to be either briefly stated or simply labeled as something along the lines of "Opposition"
 * Bullet list of facts supporting the theory
 * Use facts that tie into the article body but are not in the article
 * Consider this as an associated facts section
 * Pretty much the same standards for both sections, so its time for some negative sounding caveats
 * Avoid making conjectures,
 * Don't work on sections if you intend to slant them to seem weaker than your point of view
 * Just work on the section you agree with and that alone makes your case stronger
 * Source as many things as possible

REFERENCING
At Zelda Wiki.org we pride ourselves on the inclusion of references. Some have asked if we've gone too far, and if there even is such a threshold. Citationist: User believes as many statements as possible should be referenced. Even things that are clearly visible in the game could be sourced to written text in Official Guides. Uncitationist: User believes only the controversial points should be referenced.