This month’s report is really all about one thing: accessibility. One of the things I’ve focused on since taking the job of Wiki Tribune last year is making the wiki easier for new (and old) members to navigate and use. With that in mind, I’ve tried to focus on three major areas: visual engagement, standardization, and intuitiveness. With most all of the top level changes resulting from the timeline shift having been completed, over the last month we’ve started to focus far more on the subject of general accessibility, and if you’ve looked at the recent changes page you might have noticed a whole mess of edits. With that in mind, let’s break everything down.

Categorization Updates

The categorization system on the wiki is currently going through one of the biggest changes since Windos’s category restructure proposal, but it’s something that the large majority of users probably won’t notice right away. In most ways, the new categorization updates look to maintain the standards of that prior update (with the notable exception of allowing categories to have more than one parent), instead looking less at how the categories are arranged and more what those categories are. This new project is as much about intuitiveness as it is about standardization as there are many category names on the wiki that are easy for us veterans to understand while being less clear to newer joins. We’ve use terms like a Clan’s dominion where references to a Clan’s territories could be far easier to grasp. We also use field specific terms like Order of Battle that the lay person may not be familiar with either. These are things that those of us that have been in the Brotherhood for a while now don’t question since we all know what those things are while new folks may experience that moment of confusion as they’re looking through content.

Additionally, some of the largest and most important category trees on the entire wiki are, of course, the Clan categories. This part of the project focuses on standardization in the service of intuitive navigation so to speak. All the clans use similar but slightly different category structures, which can make it harder for new members and long tenured outsiders to find information within them. A standardized Clan category structure will be implemented for all of these category trees as well in order to make things easier to navigate. Additionally, there are a good number of non-intuitive category names within the Clans. The biggest example of this were the clan member categories: it probably took a knowledgeable member of Tarentum to explain the difference between the Tarenti and Tarentae categories, and the same with the Disciples of Sadow and the Sons & Daughters of Sadow. As part of the revamp, all names of Clan member categories have been changed to the “Unit Name members” format (for example: Arcona members). Additionally, unlike the prior practice, all Clan members should be categorized there (including title holders), while the title holder categories are now subcategories of the Clan members categories.

There are a large number of other changes, many that are a result of Possessions moving much of the item tracking done in the past off of the wiki and onto the site proper, that the staff and I will be working on. Members can take a look at the new category guide that we’ll be working from here.

Standardization of Clan Content

This was actually something I’d been mulling over for a while now, and finally decided to pull the trigger on by starting with some templates. The wiki is all about balancing creativity against the standardization of an encyclopedia, and creeping Clan website-ism is a part of that. The wiki is a tool for the entire Brotherhood, and the content and signage (things like maintenance templates) should reflect that. As such, a number of Clan-specific templates have gone the way of the Dodo to be replaced with wiki wide versions that mirror our other maintenance templates (which are of course modeled from Wookieepedia). The new templates, however, mirror the functionality of the old Clan ones, and can be varied to categorize and label themselves in Clan specific ways. Additionally, the replaced templates are the first templates on the wiki to use content from The Force Awakens, so there’s that right? The new templates are Template:Clanimprove and Template:Historic

Moving forward, the staff and I will be looking to work with the Clan leaders when it comes to other content on the wiki that will fall victim to the standardization bat. The idea here isn’t to eliminate Clan content, but just to make sure it’s being presented consistently to the members in a useful and intuitive manner. All too often a group of members or leaders will build a wiki structure, be it categories, a page, or a navigation template, that was a fun project and is useful for those people that know what it is and where it’s located on the wiki. For people that aren't in the know, or when the members driving that particular construct leave or lose interest, we see these orphaned, non-updated pages. The best example of this was the Current Events pages/templates that each Clan had in their clan category. Most of them were either not updated or had simply morphed into another list of clan leaders/content much like the Clan navigation templates. As such, they’ve also been sent to the bin, which brings us to the next part of Project: Accessibility...

Clan Category Table of Contents

I’ve been looking to do this for many months, and we’re finally making some progress in getting this done. The old Current Events templates have been removed, but since nature abhors a vacuum, a new table of contents for Clan categories will be replacing them. This project is greatly influenced by the revamp to the main page of the wiki (even though it technically preceded it, don’t ask how that works) in it’s attempt to present content in a more visually engaging and easier to navigate way compared to just a list of subcategories. The major categories will be included, along with blurbs to help explain those categories to the members so they actually know what’s contained within. The general idea is inspired by the table of contents of a magazine, like this one, in that it isn’t simply a list of article titles but instead offers a glimpse at what can be found on each of those pages, or, in our case, categories. The alpha version, created by Xolarin, can be seen here. It is my hope to have them finalized and implemented within the next week or two.

Featured Articles & Wikipedian of the Month

This month’s featured article is Korroth. This one is a fine example of what a character article can be: well formatted, good use of images, and no long lists of trivia/other info at the end. A solid approach to article structure that can serve as a guide for anyone looking to create their own.

As for our Wikipedian of the Month, I want to highlight the work done by Xolarin since he joined the staff. My years in the Brotherhood have often taught me that the biggest thing that can kill a project is lack of momentum, and Xolarin has brought the needed dose of it to the Clan categories project since he came on board. It’s nice to see something I’ve talked about for a while, yet always had to back burner in the face of other projects, finally coming to fruition. Don’t let anyone say that the new members of our club are ever less than those that have been around the bend a few times, Xolarin will put lie to that every time.

Projects

• Wiki Competition: Lead: Selika & Entire Staff. The staff and I are looking at running a major, wiki focused competition. The staff changeover and other project work pushed this back, but expect another update mid-month. I’m currently in the early stages of competition drafting.
• Legends Dungeon: Lead: Selika. Sorting, sorting, and more sorting. There’s a lot of work here, so this is probably a long term project more than any other we’ve worked on.
• Archivist: Lead: Laren Uscot. Even with the new canon changes, the stories of the Brotherhood still need to be updated. Depending on how far we go with old events in the area of bringing them in line with new canon, this project’s responsibilities are somewhat in flux.
• Accessibility: Lead: Selika. This is now going to be focusing on category standardization and content standardization as outlined above.

Wiki Tip of the Month

The increase in the number of members having outside artists commission images of their characters lead me to create Template:Copyrighted Com for use with commissioned artwork. Compared to 2013, however, the use of these images has exploded on the scene in more recent times, but I don’t see many uploaders making use of this tag. Template:Fairuse is all well and good, but the template for copyrighted commissions ensures credit, since in these cases it’s possible, and will even support links to the artist’s page. Making sure to add the fair use tag to any image at least covers the bases, but if you can use the template to tag images with their commission artist’s information, do it!

#AskTheWiki

Q&A’s are apparently what all the cool kids are doing now, so I figured I’d try out a section in my report shamelessly ripping off what they’re all doing…

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Nero askes: Why is the rum gone?

… next question!

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Xolarin asks: Why is the alignment of divs and spans such a perpetual pain in the rump?

Because if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be doing web design (or web design adjacent work). I’m convinced that making your design layouts do what you want them to do is much like being a new person playing Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy. Sure, you know you want to swing your lightsaber a certain way, but getting the game to cooperate via your mouse and keyboard inputs seems like an incredibly painful way of doing so.

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Ernordeth asks: Have you thought of running competitions associated with the wiki and making the DSS more accessible?

A very good question with two different answers: yes and no.

This is actually two different questions that have two different answers. I want to run more competitions, and as mentioned above I’m looking to run a major, multi-event Wiki based competition in the near future. However, on the subject of making the the Dark Side Scroll more accessible via competitions, I’m not inclined to award them directly for competitions. You may find yourself asking why, and that’s a good question. The short version is that the DSS isn’t a competition award. The long version is that because it’s not a competition award, our system doesn’t treat it as such. Journeymen don’t get promotion credit for getting a competition award when they win one, for example. As such, I’ll be looking to hand out crescents like all the rest of the competitions once we get there.

As far as the DSS goes, however, there are at least two of them awarded on a monthly basis, one for the WOTM and the other for the featured article, with some months awarding more if there are several authors on a featured article or co-WOTMs. Now, if there are competitions for creating a wiki article, many of those go on to be featured articles and net their authors a DSS as well. Additionally, and I mean no disrespect to any that have nabbed either of the two above mentioned awards during my tenure, but as often as not the competition isn’t all that fierce for them. I’ve handed out plenty of WOTM awards to members of the staff, and I’d rather be giving them out to non-staff members but haven’t had the opportunities present themselves. Additionally, if you think there’s a potential featured article out there (even if it’s yours, I don’t mind self promotion much), make sure to bring it to my attention. There are many opportunities each month to get these awards, but often not much in the way of competition.

Final Words

Just another reminder that the wiki staff as a whole is always here to give you a hand with wiki questions. Hit us up on telegram (many of us are on there often/always/too much), 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!