Subject: (urth) Wiki draft proposal

From: maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 19:38:16 +0000

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think any wiki we
start on Wolfe's work should be categorized tripartitely:

One section should be for Urth ML emails. This would make it much
easier to reference assertions and theories, especially since it seems
that a number of messages are primary sources, not merely secondary
sources. And of course, if they are hosted on the wiki itself, one
could run a bot or some sort of bot to auto-link phrases to their
pages. (Now that I think of it, one could compile a list of words,
phrases, and subjects from the mass of texts).  I'm not too sure about
the copyright status, however: I'm pretty sure the list owner can
allow them to be posted on a wiki (since he already has the right to
so post them in a publicly accessible archive), but I don't know how
that factors into reditributions and licensing. So having a separate
section would allow us to segregate non-Free content from the Free
content.

The second section would be articles. Straightforward factual articles
on Wolfe, relevant authors, his books and short stories, etc.  Think
like what Wikipedia currently has.  I guess we could import Wikipedia
policies wholesale for this section: verifiable, NPOV, no personal
attacks, etc.  This section we could grab straight from Wikipedia.
About all we'd have to do is add a GFDL notice (assuming we decide to
go with a non-GFDL license, or cross-license) and perhaps swap out
internal Wikipedia links for interwiki links.  Of course, these
articles would link (perhaps in the relevant sections) to the third
section... which is the section of interest to us all:

The third section would be distilled discussions and theories.  The
idea is to condense all the verbiage and back and forth into a single
page of pros and cons (ie. the evidence that, say, Thecla is the
hermaphrodite lover of the Autarch would be presented on its own page,
perhaps titled "Theclas as hermaphrodite"; the evidence for it would
be presented, linking to the relevant emails, with textual citations
and such, and then the opposed side. Talk pages can be used to hammer
out the list, or it can be done on-list.)

Categories could be very useful for sections two and three.  An
off-the-cuff example: A top-level category could be Authors, with Gene
Wolfe in it, and then Books and Short Stories in the Wolfe cat, books
being divided into Short Sun, New Sun, Peace, Soldier etc. categories.
Then one has the articles on the individual novels. If a character
appears in all the books, and so doesn't fit into a single book's
category, they would go in the New Sun category, but minor characters
could go into only one book's category (ie. Triskele would go into the
New Sun cat, but the serving boy at the restaurant in SotT would be in
the Shadow of the Torturer cat (if that's the right book)).

Now, no doubt someone will suggest that the wiki host the various
Wolfe interviews and miscellany available online.  I won't address
these: technically those are copyright violations (at least, I haven't
seen any under any sort of Free license), and so it would be
unconscionable for me to advise Ranjit to set up a wiki and work to
populate it with stuff that exposes him, the hoster, to legal
retribution. Now, perhaps he doesn't mind the risk, or perhaps Wolfe
has made known an intention not to prosecute any fans, but it's up to
Ranjit, not me, or us, for that matter.

We also need a name. Lupinepedia, Wolfepedia, the Wolfe Wiki, the urth
Wiki, just plain Urth.net... are all possible names. Now, the perfect
name would be short, clever, clear, and be easily compressed (ie names
based on Urth or Wolfe are good, as they make it easy to refer to, and
they also make interwiki links from, say, Wikipedia, easy to do, so
they look like [[w:c:Wolfe:Article|Article]] or
[[Urth:Article|Article]] instead of something much longer). Just some
thoughts.

We also need to decide on licensing. Using the GFDL is a possibility
but there are severe drawbacks that may more than counterwiegh the
ease of using Wikipedia articles as a base: it's long, complex,
cumbersome, unclear, and there are some bad features. I'll provide
some links for further reading, if you want to know more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License#Criticisms_of_the_GFDL
http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:Why_Wikitravel_isn%27t_GFDL
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml

There are quite a few possibilities w/r/t Free license. We could use 
a modified BSD license (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_license), a
Creative Commons license (I like the Attribution-SA myself:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/), or a public domain
license (no rights reserved, essentially).  My personal preference
would be to go with PD; it's simple, it's definitely Free, and it's
not like we really need the protections of copyleft- who'll steal our
content?  And of course, if we decide to merge with Wikipedia some
day, PD interoperates well with GFDL.

Ok. So those are my thoughts on the subject. Look forward to hearing
your comments and criticism.

~maru
"A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the
balances are correct."

---

From: Jesper Svedberg <jsvedberg at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 22:17:59 +0000

I have a few thoughts on how the Wiki should be structured.

  - There should be a bibliography on all stories and books with a 
synopsis and publishing history. A standardized format of structure of 
these articles should also be developed (for instance: 1. Title, 2. 
Publication data, 3. Synopsis, 4. Theories, 5. External links).

  - There should be separate articles on important persons, objects and 
concepts that can be found in his works.

  - I don't think it's necessary to put these articles in different 
categories based on which work they appear in, it should be enough to 
create structure by linking the articles in a careful fashion (you could 
have an article called "Characters in TBotNS" filled with links the 
separate articles) and by clearly stating in the articles where the 
persons/objects appear.

  - Theories and facts should be clearly separated. If there are 
theories about a subject, there should be a "Theories" section in the 
article with short descriptions of the theories and links to the 
separate articles.

  - I don't think there really is a point in copying material that is 
already online (such as interviews and the mailing list archives) into 
the Wiki when one can easily link to the external locations. If there 
are entries in the mailing list archives that for instance discuss the 
identity of Dorcas, then one could link to these entries in the article 
on Dorcas.

  - Beyond this there are an endless amount of subjects that could be 
included in a wiki. One could have articles on different themes in 
Wolfe's work (for instance Memory, Religion or Mythology), articles on 
authors that have influenced him and in what way, articles on writers 
that have been influenced by him, or anything else that might seem relevant.

  - One thing that must be discussed is the problem of the sender. In 
Wikipedia, the articles are presented as facts and the sender is 
considered secondary, but if someone writes an article theorizing about 
a subject in the WolfeWiki, then it might be wise to clearly mark out 
who the writer/sender is.

  - I agree that it would probably be a good idea to give it a short and 
clear name. OTOH, i also think that it would be pretty cool to call it 
"Tracking Song", even it if could be somewhat confusing.

   // Jesper

maru dubshinki skrev:
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>

---

From: maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 01:39:38 +0000

> Publication data, 3. Synopsis, 4. Theories, 5. External links).

That's perfectly reasonable. I'd put the Reference/Publication data
after the synopsis and list of Dramatis Personae myself, snce that's
boring stuff, but that's a good start.

> concepts that can be found in his works.

Absolutely.

> separate articles) and by clearly stating in the articles where the

Well, why not? Links are great, but there are some things categories
are just better at. See alsos can grow awfully long, you know.

> identity of Dorcas, then one could link to these entries in the article

Yes, we could use external links, but those have the problem of being
both more unreliable *and* harder to use than wikilinks. There are
more subtle reasons to prefer internal links to external links, but
they're hard to talk about.

> who the writer/sender is.

I disagree. We can source it to emails, which should be enough, and
besides, theories should stand or fall on their own merit.

> "Tracking Song", even it if could be somewhat confusing.

Hmm. Don't get it. Where's that from?

~maru

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 06:58:24 +0000

>article with short descriptions of the theories and links to the

What is fictive fact and what is theory -- and who decides? Is it a fact
that Weer is dead, or that Dorcas is Severian's grandmother? These two cases
are not that controversial; consensus is that they are facts, but that is
only a consensus. Did Weer really have constructed such an edifice as his
Memory House, or did it exist only in his head? It's been argued both ways.
Fact or theory?

[snip]
>who the writer/sender is.

At the very least. I've seen some theories on this List better aired in an
outhouse. I've made posts I wish I could take back -- but I can't. It's one
thing to think out loud in public in a relatively small forum such as this,
but it's a very different thing to have such thoughts presented with a
presumption of authority or even credibility to a larger audience. I don't
know that much about Wikipedia, but if Whomever's opinions are presented
there as facts, then it is useless as an authority, and I could never in
good conscience cite it as such. Democracy is a wonderful ideal, but not all
opinions are equal.

-Roy

---

From: Jesper Svedberg <jsvedberg at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 07:25:17 +0000

[I tried to send this mail last night, but I'm sending it again since it 
doesn't seem to have arrived yet.]

   // Jesper

---

From: Jesper Svedberg <jsvedberg at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 09:18:59 +0000

Hm, you seem to have recieved my original mail, but I didn't get a copy. 
Strange. Anyway, I apologize for the double posting.

> are just better at. See alsos can grow awfully long, you know.

OK, after looking around Wikipedia I see that they have a pretty nice 
system for categories. Putting a [[Category:The Soldier Series]] in the 
the article on Hypereides is good way of doing it, but when you 
initially mentioned categories I thought you wanted to separate the 
articles in different directories (such as 
http://www.wolfewiki.org/wiki/soldier/Hypereides), and that I think 
would be a bad idea.

> they're hard to talk about.

Well, the Wikipedia seems to manage. When it comes to the mailing list 
archives, you could copy it to the wiki (or preferably to a parallell 
wiki (I think the mailing list should be clearly separated from the 
general wiki in a way that allows for no confusion as to what belongs 
where), but it seems a lot of work for very little gain. To link to a 
mail you still have to search for it and either copy the wiki name for 
it (I suppose one would have to give the mailing list postings 
individual ID numbers) or the URL and then paste it in one's article. 
Maybe it is much easier to search in another wiki to find the posting 
and the copy the ID number, but it doesn't seem like that great a 
difference to me.

> besides, theories should stand or fall on their own merit.

If all theorizing intially takes place here on the list then this isn't 
a problem, but what if people start writing directly for the wiki? I'm 
just saying that at least I would be interested in knowing who's behind 
the theories.

> Hmm. Don't get it. Where's that from?

It's the name of a novella in _The Island of Doctor Death and Other 
Stories and Other Stories_.

   // Jesper

---

From: Jesper Svedberg <jsvedberg at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 09:31:45 +0000

> good conscience cite it as such. Democracy is a wonderful ideal, but not all

This is what I'm talking about when I want to separate theory from fact. 
You are right that in some (perhaps many) cases, it isn't clear where 
the line goes between speculation and what can be agreed upon as being a 
fact, but considering how wild some of the theories here are it's at 
least worth trying to keep these two things apart. Maybe it isn't 
interesting who created a theory, but it's at least interesting to make 
clear that this is one person's idea of how to interpret the text.

   // Jesper

---

From: Daniel D Jones <ddjones at riddlemaster.org>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 11:31:20 +0000

On Wednesday 10 May 2006 05:31, Jesper Svedberg wrote:
> > At the very least. I've seen some theories on this List better aired in
> > an outhouse. I've made posts I wish I could take back -- but I can't.
> > It's one thing to think out loud in public in a relatively small forum
> > such as this, but it's a very different thing to have such thoughts
> > presented with a presumption of authority or even credibility to a larger
> > audience. I don't know that much about Wikipedia, but if Whomever's
> > opinions are presented there as facts, then it is useless as an
> > authority, and I could never in good conscience cite it as such.
> > Democracy is a wonderful ideal, but not all opinions are equal.
>

This is one of the advantages of a Wiki.  If you read something presented as 
fact that you feel isn't proven, just do a quick edit to insert a few "Some 
people think..." and "It can be argued that..." type statements.

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 23:42:25 +0000

Onomastipedia?

On 5/12/06, Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On May 9, 2006, at 12:38 PM, maru dubshinki wrote:
>
> > Wiki, just plain Urth.net... are all possible names.
>
> A punny name based on a two-bit word Wolfe uses in Shadow of the
> Torturer:
>
> Urticate
>
> Sometimes, after reading a contentious thread in this list, I feel
> like I've been urticated.

-- 
I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
                        -- St Teresa of Avila
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer

---

From: Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 01:25:43 +0000

Urticate

---

From: Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 01:51:41 +0000

>> like I've been urticated.

I retract my suggestion in favor of Dan'l's

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 23:36:56 +0000

Why, thank you!

---

From: JWillard <aldenweer at charter.net>
Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 08:55:37 +0000

>"A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the
How about theoubliette-wiki?  (OED says: "A secret dungeon, access to 
which was gained only through a trapdoor above...") It seems we've all 
fallen into this particular oubliette.  And Wolfe mentions its 
etymological significance as "a place of forgetting" - which seems 
appropriately ironic for a venture trying  to do the opposite.  And who 
else would get it?

Maru, you've asked about what kind of licensing we want.  If you think 
public domain is all right (I agree, I don't think lots of people will 
be interested in what we're doing) then, fine.  It sounds like Wikia 
wants a large audience to establish a wiki, and I don't know that we can 
provide that.

I was wondering if we could do something like the portals at wikipedia: 
instead of Ancient Greece Portal, we could have an Urth Portal, Whorl 
Portal, Latro Portal, etc.  It seems to me that, optimally, any one of 
these areas is begging for a tremendous amount of information, because I 
think, ultimately, we're talking about having a page for every Wolfe 
character, every Wolfe creature, flower, building, etc., every key 
concept (White Fountain, fuligin, etc.), and every theory (Severian's 
lineage; Thecla as Secret Protagonist; Severian Clones, etc.) - and 
that's just Urth.  I'm sure people will want  the same for The Wizard 
Knight, Peace, Fifth Head of Cerberus, etc.  (I do.)  If  I'm just 
reiterating something you've already proposed, I apologize.  But it 
seems to me we're talking about a potentially massive amount of stuff 
and will need to be laid out to accomodate that.  It seems to me the 
main page of the entire wiki should focus on Wolfe:  links to categories 
like biography, influences (I'd like to see more on connections between 
his work and Nabokov's, for example), bibliography, etc. and to the 
portals for the different books/series?  I don't know:  I'm tired and 
I'm probably just babbling a bunch of obvious things.

Jason

---

From: Anjruu at aol.com <anjruu at aol.com>
Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 12:53:47 +0000

Hi. I was wondering if it might be possible to compile a dictionary-esque  of 
all the esoteric words used by Wolfe in his various books on the wiki.  
Actually, a compilation of interesting and esoteric words would be fun,  regardless 
of their connection to Wolfe's works. I am not sure if this would be  
feasible, even desirable, because dictionary.com would have many of them, but I  
think even just putting together the choices would be an adventure. People could  
submit in proposals via the mailing list. 
 
-Anjruu
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From: Thomas Bitterman <tom at bitterman.net>
Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 20:15:54 +0000

> like I've been urticated.
Lectern of the Anagnosts?

enamel

---

From: mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 20:34:19 +0000

> >> Wiki, just plain Urth.net... are all possible names.

Man bytes Wolfe?

emily

---

From: Joe Smulkstis <jismulkstis at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 01:27:27 +0000

"And who else would get it?"

Possibly the BTK killer and others like him.

I suggest avoiding obscurity and going for "WolfeWiki" or 
"GeneWolfeWiki".  It might be more easily located by people 
interested in Gene Wolfe, and that would be a good thing.

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 02:18:10 +0000

The man has a point.

---

From: maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 06:14:14 +0000

On 5/14/06, Anjruu at aol.com <Anjruu at aol.com> wrote:
>
>  Hi. I was wondering if it might be possible to compile a dictionary-esque
> of all the esoteric words used by Wolfe in his various books on the wiki.
> Actually, a compilation of interesting and esoteric words would be fun,
> regardless of their connection to Wolfe's works. I am not sure if this would
> be feasible, even desirable, because dictionary.com would have many of
> them, but I think even just putting together the choices would be an
> adventure. People could submit in proposals via the mailing list.
>  -Anjruu
>

You'll definitely want to look into Castle of the Otter, then, if you
haven't already. A lot of those words generalize to other books.

~maru
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From: maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 07:20:31 +0000

> Memory House, or did it exist only in his head? It's been argued both

There are always going to be boundary problems, Roy. I don't think they're
serious enough to really be an impediment.

[snip]
> good conscience cite it as such. Democracy is a wonderful ideal, but not

Well, why would we bother summarizing such posts into a wiki article if they
were so truly excreable?

-Roy
~maru
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From: maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 07:26:20 +0000

> Strange. Anyway, I apologize for the double posting.

Perhaps you sent it straight to me?

> http://www.wolfewiki.org/wiki/soldier/Hypereides), and that I think

Oh, no, no. That's a rather restrictive hierarchy- categories on Wikipedia
and as I was thinking of them resemble more directed graphs (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_graph) than strict single inheritance
hierarchies.

> and the copy the ID number, but it doesn't seem like that great a

You could well be right. I've never seen a similar scheme proposed or
carried out, so empirical data is a wee bit lacking. No way but to try?

> just saying that at least I would be interested in knowing who's behind

Well, that's an interesting problem. All wikis should be blessed by such
problems. But most discussion would ideally take place on the Talk pages, so
I guess one would then start citing talk pages? (Which would be a bad thing
on Wikipedia, where one is supposed to eschew self-references, but I don't
that is such a good guidelines for us.)

> Stories and Other Stories_.

D'oh. I should've gotten that.

// Jesper

~maru
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From: maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 07:28:02 +0000

> like I've been urticated.

Unfortunately, that's already taken. See the rather nice urticator.net

~maru
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From: maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 07:30:53 +0000

> appropriately ironic for a venture trying to do the opposite. And who

I don't really like that one. The meanings certainly are nice, but the word
is too damn  long.

> wants a large audience to establish a wiki, and I don't know that we can

Alright, so that's two people for public domain.

> I'm probably just babbling a bunch of obvious things.

Of course we can do Portals- I believe they are a  general Mediawiki
feature. But they require a lot of content to be really useful, and so it's
a bit premature IMO to discuss'em.

~maru
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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 18:17:31 +0000

maru wrote:
>>Well, why would we bother summarizing such posts into a wiki article if
they were so truly excreable?<<

Different people have differing thresholds of credulity. <g>

Is that how it's going to be done -- summarizing posts? Let me spell out my
concerns, which are primarily related to this list's archives.

Most posts have a narrow focus. Some people try harder than others; some
people have done their homework and some have not. The wheel is constantly
being reinvented. The sheer volume of the list archives is daunting to
consume, and few of us have eidetic memories. I read the archives before I
ever posted, but they were much smaller seven years ago. Trying to separate
the wheat from the chaff is very difficult, and it's not all the fault of
the search engine; it's the nature of the posts. Even trying to follow the
thread of a single subject line is often fruitless, because what started off
as topic A often devolves to topics D and E, which have little or nothing to
do with A.

There have been many thousands of posts made which contain a lot of
redundant verbiage. I don't see any practical way to sift out what may be
worth repeating (in regards to the Urth List) in another forum, but if it
isn't filtered some way then all you have is what already exists -- the
chaos that is the archives.

Who's going to do the summarizing? It seems to me that it would require a
hell of a lot of time and work. Are summarized theories harvested from the
archives going to do justice to the originals, and will the respective
authors be consulted beforehand?

-Roy

---

From: maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 07:16:03 +0000

> Different people have differing thresholds of credulity. <g>

Heh. Well, one lamentable process we could always import from
Wikipedia is deletion.

> concerns, which are primarily related to this list's archives.

I'd say so, yeah. The posts/archives are the most comprehensive source
I can imagine, short of a complete electronic copy of Wolfe's corpus,
or possibly all the critical literature on Wolfe combined, and they
certainly are more acessible.

> as topic A often devolves to topics D and E, which have little or nothing to

All good arguments for a wiki. Articles and pages can remain focussed,
and can summarize, as threads and posting just cannot.

> chaos that is the archives.

Any practical way? Mm. It won't be easy, but what's the alternative?
The longer we wait, the worse the problem gets. And waiting for an AI
to be developed to sort everything out for us is a wee bit
impraticable.

> authors be consulted beforehand?

I suppose I'll have to do the summarizing... :(  Along with the others
who have expressed support. But I don't think it's as bad as you
think. There's a lot of repetition, one can steer clear of off-topic
threads (which cuts down on bulk considerably) the Internet is fast
(and the archives can be downloaded), and if you're scanning for
evidence for and against one particular theory, one can move fast.
Besides, it only takes a little work each day. No hurry. Not like once
Wolfe is dead, we can't continue to discuss or work on the wiki. I
have yet to see a finished wiki...
As for authors- it'd be nice to consult them. They know what they
meant best, usually. But that seems problematic in some cases (does
anyone know where Mantis got off to, for example?), and so probably
shouldn't be a requirement.

~maru

---

From: Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 01:47:21 +0000

The domain names lupiverse.com and lupiverse.net do not appear to be  
registered at this time.  Does the community have an interest in  
grabbing one or both?