The trouble is it is an uphill battle against the deletionists; people that want to remove anything from Wikipedia that didn't fit with their often narrow view of what should be in an encyclopedia. I have locked horns with people on personal crusades (often self admitted) to remove content of a certain type. There are the anti-porn crusaders that want to delete all articles regarding porn actresses and I have lost a few battles with them. There was also the guy that took it upon himself to delete all articles on D&D because, well, we were never really clear on that, but he had a single mindedness of it that spoke of some personal hatred (as someone that has a psych degree and spent a few years working as professional psychologist I am comfortable to make that claim). He was ultimately banned from Wikipedia because he was a dick.
But now the deletionists are at it again. I lost an article I spent a lot of time on last month and now another one is up. Frankly I don't have the desire to fight them anymore.
The article in question is the one on Glasya, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasya
So instead I am looking for other places for D&D related articles. Wikipedia was a great resource for pop culture but it's effectiveness is soon going to ground to a halt by factions within the site itself.
There are a few other D&D-related Wikis out there. Here are the ones I know off and have contributed to in the past.
- Canonfire's The Greyhawk Wiki, http://www.canonfire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
- The Forgotten Realms Wiki at Wikia, http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
- The original Dungeons and Dragons wiki at Wikia, http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
- The new Dungeons and Dragons wiki at dnd-wiki.org, http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
- The Eberon Wiki, http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Eberron_Wiki (Thanks to migellito for this.)
- and an extra one I like, Monsterpedia, http://www.monstropedia.org/monster/Main_Page
- and the Same Universe wiki, http://www.thesameuniversewiki.org/MainPage.ashx
I am sure there are more. It would be nice to have a couple places to go for research.
In the mean-time as D&D articles get deleted I'll try to find new homes for them elsewhere.
Sad about Wikipedia. That;s one of the problems with the wiki model. They really should lock the material down, and ask specialists to moderate particular pages.
ReplyDeleteLove your blog header by the way, one of my favorite Todd Lockwood B&W illustrations.
a. Thank you for your hard work on Wikipedia while you were able to do it. Knowledge is an awesome cause, but it seems there is always someone wanting to turn the heat up to 451.
ReplyDeleteb. Thanks for those DnD wiki links - awesome!
c. Here is wiki I use a lot while running my OD&D Eberron:
http://eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Eberron_Wiki
This is unfortunate. I do, however, like the term "deletionists". Or perhaps they are "delitists".
ReplyDeleteKudos to you for your efforts at Wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia, as an organization, should have a flat, no-exceptions policy on biographical entries.
No person should be removed from an encyclopedia.