A new month means it’s time for a new wiki report. This month I’ll go over staff appointments, highlight our Wikipedian of the Month and Featured Article, and then go on and on about new policies and ongoing projects. All that and a wiki tip of the month? It’s like Christmas in July, right?

New Staff

I received a number of quality applications for positions on the wiki staff, and in the end selected two from the assembled candidates to join the staff. First is V’yr Vorsa, who will be taking the lead on the Wiki Accessibility project specifically where the Clan content is concerned. V’yr has done some excellent work on Odan-Urr’s clan wiki presence is concerned, so he was a natural choice for the job. The second new staffer Andrelious J. Mimosa-Inahj who brings an enyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars military content to the table, and who helped spearhead the Arconan military wiki project. In addition to standard staff shenanigans, he’ll be taking point on Brotherhood military content updates on the wiki.

Just because you weren’t selected (or, as I heard from a few people, didn’t think you were ready to apply) doesn’t mean that you can’t help out here and there around the wiki. The best way to gain experience and skill on the wiki is by doing, so don’t be too reticent to dive in and get your hands dirty. Mediawiki was created to allow collaborative, user generated information sources to thrive. On staff or just as a regular wiki user, there’s always things to do around every corner.

WotM & Featured Article

It’s a new month, so it’s time to announce a new Wikipedian of the Month and Featured Article.

Following on from what I mentioned above (the part about how everyone can contribute) this month’s WotM has been a user that hasn’t made a massive number of edits, but many of those edits have consisted of updates to staff lists and various clan changes even if they’re outside of his home in Naga Sadow. This month’s WotM is Krataa (currently editing on the wiki under the username Darkblade). The wiki strives to be an up to date resource for members to be able to find information on the Brotherhood and making these kind of house keeping updates is crucial to that. Clan summits and the members of the wiki staff won’t always get to this things right away, so anyone that is willing to pick up a hammer and help out building the wiki is always welcome!

This month’s Featured Article is a bit of a throwback, as we haven’t featured a Prospectus article since 2008. That being said, however, highlighting the Arcona Prospectus as the featured article this month is probably a long time coming. It’s a great resource that achieves a good balance of information, not dumping a wall of text on history that is covered in other articles and instead focusing on the structure and setting of Arcona. It really is an article that sets a standard in the field (and I know from personal experience that Plagueis used it as the model when they set about updating their clan prospectus in 2013). So, once again, Arcona is leading the way.

Wiki Policy Updates

Continuing on the road of general policy updates and clarifications, the staff and I have discussed a pair of issues that have come up of late on the wiki: the tense used in articles and naming conventions (specifically, who should have primacy when we have naming conflicts). After examining various concerns, we reached a consensus that seemed to be the best option on both issues. Both of these also has lead me to decide that we need to implement our own “manual of style” for our wiki as opposed to defaulting to the version of the document held on the Star Wars Wiki, as we have different requirements for ours. Additionally, even where they agree, we should probably have that information contained on our own wiki as opposed to directing members to an outside resource. Both of these policy updates will get fully specified, official language when they are included in the new Manual of Style as the staff and I hammer out the details this next month. The quick and dirty short version, however, follows:

• Tense: The Dark Jedi Brotherhood Wiki will default to using present tense when describing current realities and situations (such as “Selika Roh is” as opposed to “Selika Roh was”), while events and situations in the past will use past tense. I know I’ve seen some article users start to default to using the past tense in articles mirroring Wookieepedia, but that use of tense is in use there because the events that Wookieepedia documents happened “A long, long time ago”. In a nutshell, as it says on Wookieepedia: “Writing in-universe articles in past tense properly relates the timeline of that universe with our own perspective”. The Dark Brotherhood’s perspective on that timeline is different, as the universe in which we play does have a “current” state and is actively moving forward along that timeline. As a club, we are perceiving events that take place in the present as opposed everything in our club happening in the past. Wookieepedia’s stance on tense makes sense given what that resource is, but the reasoning behind that choice doesn’t apply to our reality. So, in short, your current character is, not was. As most articles on the wiki already use this format, it should not be something that impacts more than a very few articles and users.

• Name Primacy: Recently I received a request from a member who shared a name with a planet formerly used as a part of a Clan’s canon to be able to use the main name for his article instead of having to put a modifier on the end (i.e. “Article Name (Character)”). In this case, with the planet not having been in active use for many years, it was an easy request to grant. However, it got me and the staff thinking that we should have a formal policy on which articles get the right to the “main” name in the event of a conflict. As such, it was decided that a member name would always be given primacy when a conflict exists save when the conflict is a major element of DJB or Clan canon that is currently in use. Major elements basically boil down to planets and the like, and the decision was made with an eye towards what most people would be searching for on the wiki in the event of a conflict. If, for example, we had a character that decided to name themselves “Judecca”, it would be more likely that the majority of users on the wiki would be searching for the main planet in use by CSP than they would an individual member article. Also, because of possible changes to how the wiki handles ship names, active ships in use by the DJB or the clans will always have supremacy. Personal ship names (because I have no doubt that possessions will soon be a thing, darn it!) will then have supremacy over any ships that were formerly in use by the DJB or the clans.

Projects

• Accessibility: V’yr is going to be taking the lead on 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.

• Tutorial/Policy Organization: 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: Andrelious will be working up making sure all our various Order of Battle documents are up to date in addition to working on a proposed change to our vessel article naming conventions. Archiving history information on the Dark Crusade and related competitions will be taking a back seat to that on the archiving front, and the archiving project will be playing second or third banana to the prior outlined policies in general. 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

This month’s wiki tip is less about showing people a neat trick to accomplish a specific thing and more about teaching a man to fish, so to speak. Over the years working as a staff member on this wiki and others, I’ve often gotten questions from people about how this or that nifty bit of formatting in an article was accomplished. Wiki coding is a lot like CSS or especially HTML before it, in that whatever code wizardry is producing the cool thing that you’re looking at is usually right there in the code for you to untangle and repurpose for your own use. In almost any situation (save for a very few things), the secrets of how to make the wiki code roll over and do the tricks you want are there on whatever page you’re looking at as inspiration. In addition, by digging into those pages to discover how that particular bit of formatting was pulled off, you’re likely to become a better, more skilled wiki editor yourself as you tear things apart and understand how they work to enable you to not only duplicate but also adapt things to accomplish other needs later on down the road. Now, this is not to say that the staff and I do not welcome questions, nor are we not eager to help out. Don’t hesitate to drop us an email or pester us on the various chat programs we inhabit. On the other hand, don’t allow your perceived lack of expertise prevent you from donning your own Indiana Jones hat and engaging in some wiki code archeology. Everyone has to start somewhere, and the show preview button means you can engage in a lot of trial and error without anyone getting all judgemental about your mistakes.

Final Words

Apparently, long wiki reports are going to be my new normal. When I said that my last report was longer than I’d intended, I guess I was making unrealistic expectations of my relationship with brevity. As policy documents get updated and changes are made, I’ll be trying to release mini-updates during the course of the month as well. Perhaps that will make monthly reports shorter? I promise nothing, though. I expect that as long as the staff and I are working on major project initiatives the reports will continue to be mountainous walls of text, though someday I hope we can go back to short and sweet ones. Look at the bright side, at least I don’t do report fictions, right?