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Eric: And now, for the five people still reading, some talk about encyclopedias
Hey all!
So, Comixpedia's webcomics encyclopedia is go. It's in the extreme early stages, of course, but we're up to 110 entries imported from Wikipedia (under the auspices of the Free Documentation License) and some original work to boot. A good number of people have jumped in, and more are coming all the time.
And I'm a little amazed. It's still rough, sure -- but remember, we didn't start talking about this until September second. Here it is, one week later, and it exists and is growing, quickly.
There's still stuff to do. A name needs to be settled on. A logo needs to be prepared. The front page needs to be designed both for people who are looking to contribute and for people who are coming for information. We need to start putting the word out. We need to start recruiting more help.
And we need to reach out to the other Wikis out there. The Comic Genesis Wiki project, started to facilitate similar goals for the expansive Comic Genesis/Keenspace community is an obvious first step -- clearly, they should be able to draw off of our work and we the same for them. However, they're operating under Creative Commons, and we're under GNU FDL, and I'm not entirely sure how the two interact with one another. (If we alter and derive from their text, the new text needs to be released under the same Creative Commons license, for example. But we need to use the FDL to continue drawing off of Wikipedia.)
But these seem like resolvable issues, really. My suspicion is that the folks at CGWiki will want to pitch in, and I know we'll want to help support them. I think the same is likely to be true of things like the Achewood Wiki, which is under the FDL, so we can definitely cross information back and forth as needed. The amazing thing is, this is a project that really can cross all the different cliques and communities. This is something that could be of benefit to Penny Arcade fans, PvP fans, Scott McCloud fans, Keenspotters, Blank Labelites, Modern Talsians, Webcomicsnationalities, Drunk Ducakises, BuzzComixii.... you know. The whole nine yards. Everybody. It's like Babylon 5, only in convenient wiki form.
It's astounding to me, though. Every so often, I have to remember how new technology like this really is. When I was 18 years old, the internet was text-only and a project like this would be impossible. Not that there were webcomics at that time. Today, not only is this project possible... there's nothing stopping people from just up and doing it. "Hey, that is a good idea. Right! I've created it!" "Cool! I've imported the first five entries!" "Cool! Hey, here's some templates we can use!" "Cool! Hey, here's a list of categories we should flesh out...."
Astounding, really. We do in fact live in the twenty-first century, and there really are some dramatic changes.
Head on over, have a look, and pitch in. This belongs as much to you as anyone. And there's lots to do for everyone.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at September 7, 2005 11:26 AM
Comments
Comment from: ANT Link posted at September 7, 2005 11:46 AM
Things like this prove that the internet is still filled with possibilities and opportunities for anyone with a good idea and a few gigs of server space. I'm truly looking forward to seeing how this project grows and develops in the coming months and years, and if maybe, just maybe, the webcomics community will now have a common meeting ground to just be fans instead of anti-fan.
Can't wait to see where this goes.
Comment from: Wistful Dreamer posted at September 7, 2005 11:53 AM
so is there going to be a long list of webcomics with wiki entries (or red links if none exist yet), or is it not so "main menu"-ish?
Comment from: William_G posted at September 7, 2005 12:15 PM
It's like Babylon 5, only in convenient wiki form.
Heh... nerd.
...
...
Kosh was cool. :D
Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at September 7, 2005 12:30 PM
We're going to need, if nothing else, to clean up tags for entries that would have Wikipedia entries but not on this wiki. The entry for Websnark, for example - I really doubt there will be a webcomics wiki entry for the word "kudos," but it currently looks like it's awaiting one.
Comment from: Nich posted at September 7, 2005 12:35 PM
Wistful: There is already such a thing, though it really ought to be linked somewhere from the index page IMO.
Comment from: Eric Burns posted at September 7, 2005 12:39 PM
32 -- yeah, you're right.
Probably, we need a 'stub' tag to tag entries that need that kind of 'dewikipedia' treatment, so that folks who want to pitch in can go through and make those changes as needed.
Comment from: Wednesday posted at September 7, 2005 12:53 PM
When I was 18 years old, the internet was text-only and a project like this would be impossible.
I'm not convinced. I believe that it would have been technically possible (if expensive, resource-intensive, kludgy and time-consuming) to implement a wikilike resource within USENET. And, yes, a) oh, good luck doing THAT before the Great Renaming, let alone afterwards, with or without alt.*, b) BOY, would that have been a monster of a robomoderation project, c) yeah, I know, USENET Isn't The Internet, and d) gosh, you'd really want to restrict that to a few institutions for all kinds of reasons, wouldn't you.
I'm just saying. You could. It just would have sucked.
Comment from: larksilver posted at September 7, 2005 12:53 PM
holy cow. This is terrific! Good going, all! I'll wander over this evening and see if there's anything useful this ol' gal can offer (hey, it's doubtful, but worth checking anyway, right?).
Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at September 7, 2005 1:22 PM
Well, I just created my first wiki article. As a Microsoft Word user I was inconfident that cutting-and-pasting from the existing Wikipedia article for Arthur, King of Time and Space would preserve the existing formatting (bullets and so forth), so I composed from scratch. As the creator of Arthur, King of Time and Space I was compelled by modesty only to write two sentences; and, since it's false modesty, to settle down to watch the entry from now on and see how, or if, it grows.
Comment from: Alexander Danner posted at September 7, 2005 1:37 PM
What you're doing here is great! I do plan to get involved, but right now I'm still buried in my own massive indexing project (related, but complementary). More on that next week.
In the meantime, I'm watching this thing grow, and loving it!
I think one thing you could use, though, are some editing ettiquette guidelines. For instance, my PST co-creator now has a stub, which was entered by someone else. My comic is mentioned, but not marked for inclusion, nor is there an external link. Is it acceptable for me to go in and make those changes, so long as I'm not writing the definitions?
Comment from: Eric Burns posted at September 7, 2005 1:43 PM
Alexander -- this isn't Wikipedia. Go ahead and add your comic if you want. And certainly, you can edit things.
Comment from: Alexander Danner posted at September 7, 2005 2:13 PM
Thanks, Eric, I'll do that! And while I'm at it, I'll make some non-ego-based additions as well.
Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at September 7, 2005 6:41 PM
Well, I did my tiny little touch - I altered the Websnark entry a bit. Mostly just reorganization, but I did add a bit.
Comment from: Jeff Smith posted at September 7, 2005 7:01 PM
I'm getting this error from the wiki:
Your IP address is listed as an open proxy in the [http://www.sorbs.net SORBS] DNSBL. You cannot create an account
Anyone else have this? Know how to fix? I read over a bunch of stuff on the SORBS site but all it did was confuse me.
Comment from: vark posted at September 7, 2005 8:24 PM
I just want to point out that this sort of thing is a sign of the coming singularity. In the old days, it might have taken several years to get a project this far along. Here and now, it takes a week.
With a billion people online, lots of little communities of interest are building projects in a week, unpaid collaborations, for wuffie and self-amusement. It's the kind of economy cory doctorow talks about in www.craphound.com/down Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Between google and wikis and such, information is getting assembled and organized, in aprocess that feeds on itself. The rate of change will keep speeding up,
until one day soon the curve just goes straight up and high weirdness kicks in. If I were less lazy I'd track dowent hat link to instapundit's interview with kurtzwiel on his latest book, the singularity is near. /rant.
Comment from: David Morgan-Mar posted at September 8, 2005 6:15 AM
Cool. Many times I've lamented the rather poorly structured and incomplete article on Irregular Webcomic! in Wikipedia, but have avoided editing it myself for obvious reasons. Now I can make an article that really reflects what I think the strip is about. :-)
Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at September 8, 2005 8:38 AM
I'm getting this error from the wiki:
Your IP address is listed as an open proxy in the [http://www.sorbs.net SORBS] DNSBL. You cannot create an account
Anyone else have this? Know how to fix? I read over a bunch of stuff on the SORBS site but all it did was confuse me.
I got that error too, when I was creating an entry, but the entry's still there. I don't know why I'd get that error when I was creating an entry instead of a user account. Were you creating an entry or a user acoount?
Comment from: Jeff Smith posted at September 8, 2005 1:30 PM
Creating a user account. I also get the error when trying to edit any page (before it lets me type anything).
Comment from: lucastds posted at September 8, 2005 5:00 PM
Even if this wikipedia, I would be a little apprehensive about artists editing their own pages all the time. Some sense of modesty must be kept in this project, no? I added my comic to the list (along with about 10 other comics). We'll see if it's written about... it certainly won't be by me.
Comment from: TheNintenGenius posted at September 8, 2005 5:11 PM
The one advantage I can see with artists editing pages about themselves or their own material is that they can offer insight that a reader potentially can't and maybe even clear up misconceptions.
On the flipside, one great disadvantage I can see is potential for abuse, where an artist can take out anything in an article simply because they don't agree with it or consider it to cast them in a negative light (such as Sean Howard's repeated edits of the article on himself at Wikipedia, which have had the net result of gutting a very informative and balanced page simply because he felt certain aspects of the article "weren't important" or didn't reflect well on himself.)
Comment from: lucastds posted at September 8, 2005 8:15 PM
I think Eric edited his entry so it read "Burns's" instead of "Burns'"
;)
Comment from: Aerin posted at September 8, 2005 8:20 PM
The other problem with artists editing their own comic's page, as Eric has brought up before, is the lack of distance. Sometimes, especially with a story comic, it's easy to forget what you've already published and what you haven't. It would be pretty easy for an author to inadvertently add information that they haven't yet revealed to the readers.
Artists can definitely do their own bio pages, though, and they probably should.
Comment from: TheNintenGenius posted at September 11, 2005 10:51 PM
On a side note, have I mentioned that I was kind of dumbstruck/scared shitless that the really not-all-that-great writeup I did on megaGAMERZ 3133t for the WebcomicsWiki actually got mention in one of that site's news posts?
If anything, this is going to make me a lot more careful about what I write (already made some edits to make the article sound a lot less dull than it was previously). Not that the newspost was necessarily negative in any respect, it's that, well, apparently some people are paying attention.
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