• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

Wikis as resources - and for TL background

M

Max Sinister

Well-known member
Location
The Chaos Timeline
If you know about me, you may know that I'm also an admin (Don't be afraid) at the AltHist Fandom wiki (ex-Wikia) here.

Why I'm so deep into it? I'm a programmer, and I like wikis. And I like how you can use them to organize your TL material in a way that's harder to do if you have nothing but one or several forum threads. (Even when you have forum threadmarks.)

Forum threads are pretty linear, but this chaotic world isn't. That's why I consider wikis to be better suited for this task.

Not everyone's a fan of wikis, and you don't have to join just because I say so. Although I wonder why this wiki is listed under Foes of AH.com.

Because some TLs there are simply bad? True, but that's the same in about every AH community on the web, except maybe on some small site with hand-picked editors/TLs.

What's your opinion?
 
Max Sinister said:
Guess you meant this sentence, "Although I wonder why this wiki is listed under Foes of AH.com."?

I'm not mad at anybody, I just wonder... why? If it's so bad it deserves to be mentioned together with Conservapedia and the "n-Chanistans", I'd like an explanation.

But I guess a possible explanation is now in the mists of time... how appropriate.
Click to expand...
Its because it was a refuge for Fascists and Racists banned from the Zoo. I'm sure you guys have cleaned up since but yeah. That was the fate of most other sites back in the day.
 
Last edited:
Max Sinister said:
Guess you meant this sentence, "Although I wonder why this wiki is listed under Foes of AH.com."?

I'm not mad at anybody, I just wonder... why? If it's so bad it deserves to be mentioned together with Conservapedia and the "n-Chanistans", I'd like an explanation.

But I guess a possible explanation is now in the mists of time... how appropriate.
Click to expand...
At least it is mentioned :(
 
I like the idea of a wiki as a way to organize a collaborative project but I dislike the idea of a wiki as an in-universe work. The wiki structure itself is historically and culturally contingent- it is built on Silicon Valley optimism and on the technologies of the web as we know it- and a wiki just doesn't fit in worlds which have not had those same conditions and cultures arise.
 
JesterBL said:
I like the idea of a wiki as a way to organize a collaborative project but I dislike the idea of a wiki as an in-universe work. The wiki structure itself is historically and culturally contingent- it is built on Silicon Valley optimism and on the technologies of the web as we know it- and a wiki just doesn't fit in worlds which have not had those same conditions and cultures arise.
Click to expand...
I think that's true to some extent - on the other hand, in worlds where the political and technological climate does allow it, I think something like a wiki is a pretty likely response to the known flaws of more centralized encyclopedias.

(Which gives me an amusing mental image - in the same way that authoritarian regimes often hold elections for political legitimacy, I can easily imagine an authoritarian state setting up an 'independent' 'wiki' for informational legitimacy, successfully or not. Oh, did your edits get rejected? I guess the people are wise enough to reject your 'facts' in favor of true reality.)
 
Wolfram said:
I think that's true to some extent - on the other hand, in worlds where the political and technological climate does allow it, I think something like a wiki is a pretty likely response to the known flaws of more centralized encyclopedias.
Click to expand...

I mean I think a wiki is a very specific style of open decentralized encyclopedia- even the founders themselves dabbled in a number of different formats which all could have become the dominant format in an ATL.

Wolfram said:
(Which gives me an amusing mental image - in the same way that authoritarian regimes often hold elections for political legitimacy, I can easily imagine an authoritarian state setting up an 'independent' 'wiki' for informational legitimacy, successfully or not. Oh, did your edits get rejected? I guess the people are wise enough to reject your 'facts' in favor of true reality.)
Click to expand...

This would be a great riff on the idea of a wikibox TL.
 
Wolfram said:
(Which gives me an amusing mental image - in the same way that authoritarian regimes often hold elections for political legitimacy, I can easily imagine an authoritarian state setting up an 'independent' 'wiki' for informational legitimacy, successfully or not. Oh, did your edits get rejected? I guess the people are wise enough to reject your 'facts' in favor of true reality.)
Click to expand...

Hm, China (eg) has copied many big websites, but Wikipedia? Maybe this really is anathema to them.
 
Max Sinister said:
Because some TLs there are simply bad? True, but that's the same in about every AH community on the web, except maybe on some small site with hand-picked editors/TLs.
Click to expand...
Even bad timelines have good and unique ideas, in my opinion, and a Wiki is definitely a good organizational tool if it still fits with a timeline where you're planning to do a Wikibox oriented story

For me, though, I'd be better off using this site for my storage
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top