Wiki

Matthew King · 03 Jul 2006, 17:22 · from 2006-July.txt.gz

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From: automatthew at gmail.com (Matthew King)
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006 12:22:19 -0500
Subject: (urth) Wiki
In-Reply-To: <15616792.1151939768350.JavaMail.root at elwamui-royal.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <15616792.1151939768350.JavaMail.root at elwamui-royal.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <10343642-385F-421B-8050-65B5FF45CA13 at gmail.com>

On Jul 3, 2006, at 10:16 AM, Adam Stephanides wrote:

> As somebody who at one time did a fair amount of posting to the  
> list, I'm not thrilled with the idea of all my posts being thrust  
> willy-nilly into the public domain. I'm even less thrilled with the  
> idea that anybody would be able to edit my posts. I doubt I'm the  
> only one who feels this way. Of course, if the plan is just to  
> summarize the discussions on the list, that's different.

In this situation, perhaps a wiki should treat the Urth archives as  
an established body of secondary sources, a nascent critical apparatus.

>
> In general it's still not clear to me what the advantages are of a  
> wiki over, say, an FAQ or FAQs combined with a message board. In  
> fact, I would think a priori that a wiki would be a poor format for  
> dealing with Wolfe, about whose work there is so little agreement.

If we excluded controversial topics as first-class citizens, a wiki  
would be very useful in collecting and distilling information about  
some of the Wolfe obscurities.  As a collaborative lexicon and  
concordance alone, I would find such a wiki valuable enough to spend  
substantial time gardening and contributing.

Contentious theories could be (by consensus) relegated to articles  
with titles like Blue as Ushas, Neighbors as Trees, Phaedria as the  
Sister, Able is a Jerk, and so on.

Thus the first-class article on Phaedria would be eponymous, and  
could include vital stats, page references, and quotations, as well  
as a section linking to all the second-class articles.  These would,  
by their titles, be recognizable as speculation.

On the administrative side, I would prefer to have a Wolfe-wiki that  
does not allow anonymous editing of all articles.  Wiki-spam has  
become ridiculously common.

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