Wiki

So, did the idea of a Lupine Wiki fall apart or what? I'm asking because I recently bought several Wolfe short story collections. (I'm currently reading the last story in "The Island of Doctor Death...") I'd love to be able to go to a Wiki and see some commentary on the stories after I finish them. I get the feeling that I'm missing important things in several of them.

Or what. Nobody belled the cat.

Doubtless you are, module some appropriate definition of the word "important." I suspect that most actually- important things (as opposed to clever references, etc.) will become clear with rereading. At least, for that book. --Dan'l

No, I'm still interested. It's just that I've been having Internet access problems (so I've got ~90! Urth.net email to catch up on), my other projects on Wikipedia proper have been slowly piling up, and my job has gotten more demanding, physical-presence-wise. I'm working to resolve the first two, but I don't know how quickly I can free up my time to work on a Wolfe wiki. I have a bit of a business trip coming up this weekend, which is even more problematic, but assuming you guys can decide on a license and a name (and all goes well on my end), I can probably start importing Wikipedia articles within a week or two. I don't really think a comittee is needed- I just think that we need to make some decisions. If it were up to me, I'd simply say "Public domain" and "Wolfe Wiki", since the first can be legally changed later (public domain is compatible with all licenses, but it is one way...) and the latter is an obvious place holder, so no one really minds us changing it- I mean, look at Wookieepedia, originally they were the "Star Wars Wiki". Nobody complains about such a change. ~maru

I mean, look at Wookieepedia, originally they were the "Star Wars Wiki". Nobody complains about such a change. ~maru Um...'Wolfopedia'anyone? ;) Ian

I'd say just take the bull by the horns and start doing it. I've been tempted to do so myself but I really didn't want to step on anyone's toes by highjacking their idea. The only problem I see is importing stuff from the mailing list. I don't recall seeing anything about the copyright of stuff sent to the list when joining the list, which means that an individual's post almost certainly belongs to them. It seems to me that you'll need their explicit permission to import anything anyone else has written if you want to stay strictly legal.

Hi everyone, Some days are good days. I have in my hot little hands an advance reading copy of Soldier of Sidon just begging me to read it. This means other than certain home duties, all writing projects will be laid aside, all books on my 'list' will remain half finished and food will be eaten at maximum speed for efficiency. Sleep will be kept to a minimum. Hold all my calls. regards Don

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 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. But I could well be wrong; it might help if I could see an example of a wiki which successfully does what you're expecting from a Wolfe wiki. --Adam

It's been pointed out that you would need permission to copy anyone's post. If you're not comfortable with your writing being posted under whatever license is in effect, then don't contribute to the wiki. If someone else decides to copy your statements over, then point it out and it will be quickly removed.

A FAQ is a list of Frequently Asked Questions. A wiki is a particular type of web page that allows group editing from a browser. In otherwords, a FAQ is a description of the type of content. A wiki is a description of the method used to generate the content. They're orthogonal to one another. A FAQ can be a wiki, a wiki can be a FAQ, or not. Essentially, you can think of what's being discussed as a group edited FAQ.

A wiki would be an excellent choice for precisely that reason. A wiki allows anyone to add to the discussion. A standard web page FAQ, edited by only one person, would present only one point of view. A wiki can cover as many as necessary, in whatever detail you feel like covering.

I'll see what I can dig up.

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

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.

Yes; or, by the nature of wikis he could remove it himself. But here's the thing. This puts the burden of monitoring the wiki -- the whole thing, or at least every article about a subject he's ever posted about -- to see if someone's quoted one of his posts, because if they do and he doesn't protest promptly, he's lost protection of his copyright -- especially given that, since the project has been announced to him in this forum, he's been put on notice that his posts might be copied to said Wiki. This is (to my mind as someone who, on the one hand, cares a great deal about the copyright of my own work, but on the other, has contributed significantly to several Wikiim on the Web) not an acceptable approach. When I create content for a Wiki, it is with the explicit understanding that it falls under whatever sort of creative-commons policy that Wiki has established. But Adam and I and many others (I suspect this would include some very significant posters no longer active on the forum, like Alice/Alga and Michael/Mantis) wrote our posts with the understanding that the would be placed in a searchable, but not editable, archive. To port them to an editable form such as a Wiki is, I think, a violation of our rights. If I may suggest a compromise? I would be willing for anything I have posted to this forum to be placed on such a Wiki, provided that it was done so in a protected form, with my name clearly attached to my words, and said words put in place substantively unchanged (i.e., I wouldn't mind fixes to typoes and grammar, nor slight edits to clarify context). In other words: there would have to be a template for porting text from the Moonmilk archives, that would not permit editing once it was included and approved. I would be willing to hazard that most people in my position would agree -- Adam, how do you feel about this proposal?

You got that right. My feelings, exactly. -Roy

It's vastly different subject matter but a chain of events just led me to the Wikipedia article for a Rock band called Tool. Take a look at that article, particularly section 3, called "Arguments about genre and categorization." I don't see why articles on various aspects of Wolfe's work couldn't be similarly laid out. http://tinyurl.com/kdqjr

Hrrm. I assume that if one treats the mailing list as a set of secondary sources, and then implements the no-editing template idea, then one could just cite the relevant post, summarise its contents and perhaps use an unalterable quote when needed. This might just make the wiki into a navigatable index of the mailing list, but I'm not sure that that wouldn't be a bad thing to have. -Iorwerth

That would certainly meet my objections as far as editing is concerned. There's still the question of copyright. I'm not aware of the ins and outs of various licenses, but I presume there could be some general provision that any copyrighted material remains the property of its owner(s). (It seems to me you would need something like this anyway.) But while thinking about this, I realized that I'm not sure what is being proposed. Are we talking about importing the archives wholesale? Or simply quoting portions of messages? Or both? --Adam

I wasn't doubting that articles could be written on controversial issues. Rather, I was concerned that such articles might either devolve into "editing wars" or become long and shapeless as everyone tries to add their own viewpoint. And while the article you cite seems to have avoided these problems, I think the danger would be greater for an article about, say, the "Green is Urth" theory (to mention an debate in which I was personally involved). --Adam

Wikipedia has for the most part survived such conflicts. I think the way it does this is by sticking to policies that require authors to keep their viewpoints neutral, and forgo the use of Wikipedia for original research. If the Wolfe wiki were developed around these kinds of principals I think it could work. It wouldn't conflict with this list, which is more of a place for people's own opinions and original research. There shouldn't be any issues with intellectual property being edited, because authors should not post things that aren't sort of established. If it is an opinion of some group, but isn't accepted as fact, it shouldn't be posted as such. I think if you lay down some ground rules for what an article in your wiki should or should not be, then users will respect them.

To those who have read their ARC Soldier of Sidon - did Wolfe recapture the tone of the earlier Soldier stories? Could someone read them one after the other without noticing a shift in style with the third book?

I felt the style of the third book was more in keeping with the last section of book 2 than with what preceded that section.

Delurking briefly. Imo there are substantial differences in style between the first two Soldier books and the third. Latro, in Mist and Arete, almost seems to be channeling Severian when he writes. The sentences are long and complex, with lots of thoughts and followup observations set off by semi-colons, and there are many lyrical touches throughout both books. Latro, in Sidon, writes in much leaner, declarative, sentences with very few adjectives, and the book seems closer in style to The Wizard Knight than anything else in the Wolfe canon. That being said, however, I think Sidon is the most accessible of the three works. It's certainly the shortest and can be read in a long evening, and someone who hasn't sampled the series yet might even start with it, then go back and read the first two installments. Rex