GuildWiki talk:Lyssian Archives

← Moved from GuildWiki talk:Community Portal

This all started with User:PanSola's random musings of what to do for April Fools 2009, something to do with Lyssa and Illusion. Then the train of thought split, grew, merged and evolved until it was no longer about April Fools.

Summary

Create a new namespace, the "Lyssian Archives" (abbreviated "LA"), that allows all forms of collaborative creative writing that is in-universe with the Guild Wars world. The reason why it's proposed to be named after Lyssa is because she is the goddess for inspiration and creativity.

Basic rules

• Should be in-universe.
• Should allow everyone to collaboratively edit/evolve it.

You can always keep/fork a version in your own userspace.

Examples include

• Parody (models: Uncyclopedia, Unnews etc)
• Fan Fiction
• Made-up skills/items (must be in-universe, so things like Lyssa's Cookie of Bemusement won't belong due to out-of-universe references)

Pros	Cons/Concerns
Channel the creative/excess energy of people who aren't working on main articles into something that can be considered still Guild Wars related. Increases a dimension for our wiki, adds more meaning to it	May further distract people from the "main" articles, and our mission to document the game We have a past precedence of a separate namespace for subjective articles of a different nature, which ended up as a separate wiki instead. This idea might just repeat history. Quality control of articles would in fact be significantly worse than the old Build: namespace.

Specific rules

Articles for the LA namespace should first be created in usernamespaces, with a Template:Open edit at the top that welcomes everyone to edit it (and places it in a category). Articles that are deemed to have reached a certain degree of completion can then be moved to the LA namespace, while crappy articles stay with the original author (unless the author disowns it, in which case someone else can "adopt" the article, or it can be put up for deletion). This way we "protect" the LA namespace from having lots of stubby articles that might potentially be good ideas but never get anywhere. If an article is to be removed from the LA namespace (assume it's not outright vandalism or inappropriate content), instead of deletion, it'll just be moved back into the user namespace (under the original author, or whoever wants to adopt it). No rigid process to "vet" an article, just let the community work it out on the discussion page. Also, as a general rule, romance is ok, sexual/vulgar stuff is not (this should be true throughout the wiki, and not a specific policy targeted at LA stuff, only emphasized due to greater potential breaches).

Please add pros/cons/concerns, comments, suggestions, questions etc. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 05:56, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I like this idea... No, love it and will probably increce our userbase. I'd try the Ascalon Archives as a name though, as not everyone is as devout in following Lyssa as you RT | Talk 06:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Blasphemy, for Lyssa is the greatest of deities. I fully support this idea Zulu Inuoe 06:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... This is very interesting. I think you got the pro's and con's dead on... can't come up with any more to add to that yet. I don't mind the name Lyssian Archives, but RT may have a point. And it could be mixed up with Lions Arch :P. Maybe we could all come up with different ideas for naming conventions. I know when you mention the split off to separate namespaces, PvX is included in that. What else falls into that category? Perhaps this could bring me back into my old fanfic days, when I used to write Diablo 2 stories :D -- Sk8 (T/C) 06:08, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind the name either, I just think that some newer players might RT | Talk 06:15, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Isk8: I'm thinking just one single new namespace for all the creative stuff. We can use categories to sub-divide them. As for existing namespaces, those in active usage include the project namespace ("GuildWiki:") and the Template namespace. Our "Help:" namespace isn't really used much. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 06:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Rational for Lyssa: she's the diety for creativity and inspiration. Ascalon is pretty random, and would confuse new users who only bought Nightfall d-: -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 06:19, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I like the way you think RT | Talk 06:22, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Tyrian Archives of teh Lulz? Nice idea, btw :) --- -- (s)talkpage 06:23, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks (-: I like to think, so it's really nice to know the way I think is being liked (-: -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 06:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking we needed more fanfic on GuildWiki, this would be good, you should create GuildWiki:Lyssian Archives as a discusion page for the idea RT | Talk 06:28, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

things above this line was before the move

---

Talk

Support RT | Talk 06:31, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Lyssan archives sounds just as confusing, would have to add disclaimers about content and explanations, why not something simple like Fan Fiction namespace?-- 07:07, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

"The reason why it's proposed to be named after Lyssa is because she is the goddess for inspiration and creativity." Although Fan Fiction might work, I suppose... --- -- (s)talkpage 07:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I understood that, it was confusing to me until I actually read this, a random article in this namespace on RC would be even more confusing.-- 07:12, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that calling the namespace "Fan Fiction" is 1. boring and 2. potentially limiting on a subconscious level for the creative mind. One can argue all Guild Wars related creative writing is fan fiction, on the other hand, when one say "fan fiction", some people think of only the narrative story subset of creative writing, and not parodies or skills. Of course, I am super biased when our Mistress Lyssa is involved.-User:PanSola (talk to the ) 07:31, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

You like Lyssa too much. What do you think she is, some sort of goddess? (oh wait...)

Naming confusions aside, I think the idea itself is a lot of fun. A lot bigger in scope then the Humor category... and has a lot of potential. Potential for abuse as well, I can see lots of situations where some users might differ in opinion on what constitutes "in universe" and so on. But with kinks like that worked out, especially considering the section wouldn't need as much organization or standards as, say, the Build namespace, it's unlikely any huge problems could arise from it all.

I'm going to say coming to a concencius on the name of the thing is the biggest hurdle that needs to be faced. :D (lots of users wouldn't know that Lyssa is the goddess of creativity, so that might be confusing as well, even if it's a great name.) -- Jïörüjï Ðērākō.>.cнаt^ 09:06, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

After thinking about it, and with the posted definition of Lyssa being the goddess of creativity and inspiration, I think it fits quite well. -- Sk8 (T/C) 12:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't really know about having this or not, but firstly maybe we should come up with a different name, because otherwise people won't know what we're talking about when we say LA (we have a choice to not make overlapping acronyms like ANet did, so how about we take our chance?) --Gimmethegepgun 15:43, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

absolutely no

just absolutely no. I am not trying to offend you, PanSola - in fact, your fan fiction is awesome, and I enjoy reading through it. But what this idea will make GuildWiki is into something of a playground, and, in the extreme, absolute chaos. This will bring all the little kids hounding with their stories, finally finding a place to publish their (most-likely) terrible work for the GuildWiki world to look at. Vandals can't wait to put up the Gaile/Zhed story, as well as possibly other stories, tonnes of trolling and pervertedness. I estimate that there will be absolutely no more than half of the content in the namespace that would be worth keeping. Everyone and their dog will come here, the namespace will be flooded (I mean *hundreds*, likely *thousands* of entries), and people will be likely to submit more than just one story. The massive size of the namespace will mean that it will be nearly impossible to policy-regulate it, and once that happens, GuildWiki's overall reputation as a policy-regulated database will decline. If we spread the word a lot, the namespace will be flooded; if we somehow restrain it, we might as well just keep fan fiction to user namespace. Finally, you can't rate or vet fan fiction like you can do with builds - you can only (try to) regulate them and remove the trolling/vandalism/inappropriate ones.

All in all, it's a great idea and would bring a good touch of colour, as to speak, to this wiki, but too many people will just see it as "fan fiction" (heck, I just glanced at the project page and the only thing that came to my mind was "fan fiction") and the issues that it brings makes it impossible to present this in a good-looking, solid package. If we really want to get some fan-fiction-esque colour into this wiki, I suggest putting up a sort of community portal, where people can link to their storylines/whatever in their userspaces - this is much easier to regulate, easier to navigate through than "Category:Humor", people can discuss which ones they like best, and will probably draw out some good stuff from the community.

Good night, good bye. — Nova — (contribs) 02:25, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Nova's concerns are quite valid and they reflect pretty much all of my concerns over this idea. And I think that having a sort of community portal for it is a good solution. TBH, if we were to carry something like a whole namespace out, it would become worse than the Builds namespace. We would have no way of regulating and judging worthy content versus garbage and vandals would run rampant. Keeping it in userspace is a better idea. —♥Jedi♥Rogue♥ 03:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Not offended at all (-: Thanks for the feedback. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 05:34, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

/agree with nova. While it would be fun, it would be hell to regulate. Better to keep it in userspace where at least we don't have anons posting horribly inappropriate stuff (have you even glanced at that disgusting thing some random anon keeps putting on Gwen-related pages? *Retch*)Entrea [T] 05:41, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe that just because there is the potential for abuse, means that an idea should be completely shot down. You will always have those few people who want to ruin something for everyone, that is inevitable. But think of it like drinking and driving... there will always be people out there who will abuse that, but you don't see alcohol being banned anytime soon. But I do agree that it would be difficult to maintain. -Getting off to bed now. -- Sk8 (T/C) 05:45, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Entrea: I'd rather the anon create new articles, so we can just delete them outright and not even have them in the article history. I'm not sure the *namespace* thing would make much of a difference for that particular issue. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 05:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess. But the problem is, it's not like banning alchohol because people drink and drive. This is like selling alchohol at a racetrack with signs outside that say "no speed limit". It's just inviting abuse. Of course, I suppose we could just scrap the namespace if we turned out to be correct. Therefore, changing to "dont care"Entrea [T] 06:05, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Can't it be made in a way that only the members could contribute? --Powersurge360 06:37, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Right now anons can edit anything a registered user can, anons can edit user namespaces if they wanted to. I am currently not convinced that this idea would attract more inappropriate content. I am concerned about the more general concept of article quality control. Maybe we can look at how Uncyclopedia run their system. (to clarify, Uncyc has LOTS of inappropriate content, I'm just interested in their quality control management) -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 06:47, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Pansola, Entropy is a sysop at Encyclopedia Dramatica isn't she? Perhaps she could shed some light on the matter. --Xasxas256 07:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

No clue. By default I wouldn't assume they are the same person, I'll ask. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 07:25, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Slightly off-topic note, Pan... you can delete entries from page history too. Just delete the page and restore all edits except for the ones in question. -- Jïörüjï Ðērākō.>.cнаt^ 09:03, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I used to do that for alleged alpha-leak info on this wiki, and caused quite an uproar when I did that. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 09:05, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

If you delete the gwen vandalism, I'll cry!!!—♥Jedi♥Rogue♥ 19:40, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes, I wonder about your sanity. Lord Belar 19:58, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely no. GuildWiki is bad enough playground as it is now. Yeah, I'm really lenient about it, but I think this would just be too much. (T/C) 04:16, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to have to vote no as well. The main purpose of GuildWiki has always been to document the game, right? The content here shouldn't be subjective, unless it relates to playing the game (walkthroughs, etc.). That's why there was never a Guild: namespace here, and was one of the reasons the Build: namespace got wiped. From the standpoint of how much it benefits the user, the Builds were much more useful than this would ever be, in my opinion.

It's a good idea, and something like this would probably be very popular, but I don't think GuildWiki is the place for it. I mean, we have this bolded notice whenever you edit a page: "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it." Not to mention the CC by-nc-sa license - I doubt most fan authors would like those terms, especially the permanent license to freely distribute it to anyone.

The Lyssian Archives are a good idea, certainly (I'd probably peruse them myself from time to time), but I feel they would work best as their own site, in a non-wiki format, with a different license. —Dr Ishmael 17:00, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

Can I.P.'s vote on polls? If not then a system similar to Newground's, where a submission first goes through a vetting procedure, after a number of votes its score needs to be above a certain point or it is inmediately deleted. Afterwards it can be voted on, but it will stay no matter the score(yes, I see a small flaw in this: the first group of people are the ones that decide wether it stays or goes, but that shouldn't be a problem). Have an administrator and just people browsing slap delete tags on anything abusive, and you've got yourself a clean ship. Also, I would like you to keep in mind that comedy is a personal opinion, and the majority of personal opinion = what's funny to the community; The way it should be As for abuse itself, why would it draw any more abuse than the normal wiki does? Also, the fact that it is in a humorous section makes this abuse far less impacting until it is removed than say for example, those edits in Gwen's article as Entra pointed out which constantly plague the back of my mind Zulu Inuoe 08:06, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

IPs can vote on polls. And I neither see how it'll "bring" abuse. --- -- (s)talkpage 08:13, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I could see that vetting easily turning into what pvx is now, that slum is hardly an effective judge of character tbh.

Everyone would have a different opinion on what is appropriate, the best way to manage would probaly just be a policy that forbids any vulgar language or sexual themes, and whatever else, theres plenty of patrolers like me that just scan RC that could enforce it.-- 08:20, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

That is, imo, better than vetting. /sign --- -- (s)talkpage 08:22, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Before going live, I think some policies should be established RT | Talk 08:33, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

How about this proposal: Articles for the LA namespace should first be created in usernamespaces, with a Template:Open edit at the top that welcomes everyone to edit it (and places it in a category). Articles that are deemed to have reached a certain degree of completion can then be moved to the LA namespace, while crappy articles stay with the original author (unless the author disowns it, in which case someone else can "adopt" the article, or it can be put up for deletion). This way we "protect" the LA namespace from having lots of stubby articles that might potentially be good ideas but never get anywhere. If an article is to be removed from the LA namespace (assume it's not outright vandalism or inappropriate content), instead of deletion, it'll just be moved back into the user namespace (under the original author, or whoever wants to adopt it). No rigid process to "vet" an article, just let the community work it out on the discussion page. Also, as a general rule, romance is ok, sexual/vulgar stuff is not (this should be true throughout the wiki, and not a specific policy targeted at LA stuff, only emphasized due to greater potential breaches). -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 09:02, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

What about...

Category:GuildWiki humor? — Poki#3 , 10:29, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Among other things, this would exclude the ones that are not humorous. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 19:44, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Have you read some fanfics already out there? The vast majority is stupid enough to be humorous. What makes you think this will be any different? Grinchy[슴Mc슴]Diddles 16:57, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Of Varied Opinions

As much fun as I think this has the potential to be, there are definitely way too many problems with it to incorporate it successfully into the wiki. Regulating this would be like holding a stop sign to a 12-car pile up, vandals would swarm in here like vultures over a corpse, and newbies would begin to trust these fictional stories rather than the GWiki factional articles. GWiki is not a pre-school classroom: it is a database intended for the documentation of the game, not for the perversion of its people, places, and events. This sounds like something an entirely new wiki would be dedicated to, like PvX or GW2. Srry m8s, but I'm going to have to vote with a solid "NO!". If people want to do this, that's part of why we have userspace. I don't think the wiki should sanction this officially. --MarinBloodbane 13:42, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Why would vandals have any interested in this over the main space? From my understanding of the vandal mentality, I would have expected them to completely ignore the new namespace, and just vandalize main articles (typical vandal) and/or user articles (vandals that target users). -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 08:09, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

No.

This will hugely distract from the focus of this site, which is to provide users with information regarding the game and its components. Adding something like this would attract large numbers of kids stuffing the site with their [in general] uniformed, poorly written, promiscuous garbage. While I do enjoy some fan-fiction, this is definitely NOT the site to do it on. This is the site in which players to come to get hard facts, not made up stories laced with ideas that have never been incorporated into the game.

I really do like fan fiction by the way. Just not here. If I want to read about MhenloXAidan bed scenes [which I don't], I'll go to fanfiction.net.

Really, the whole discussion ended when Entropy said no. Since she's really the only bcrat on the wiki, what she says goes.Entrea [Talk] 01:00, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Works for me Zulu Inuoe 01:32, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree on principle with "if the only bcrat says no, then it's a no". -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 07:57, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Huh, fanfiction.net hosts that kind of stuff? -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 08:02, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

And worse. They may have changed their policies since then, but I poked around there a few years ago when I was hugely into anime, and at that time you could've found the equivalent of Zhed x Tahlkora, or Oink x Onyx, or... I should probably stop there. >.> —Dr Ishmael 15:55, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Why this would never work (NSFW)

Grinchy[슴Mc슴]Diddles 17:02, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand what this rush of fear is. Right now lots of users already write creative stuff on their own user namespace. I haven't seen ppl worried about users posting NSFW stuff in usernamespace before. Why do you think this would attract the immaturity that so far only rarely appeared as vandalism of the main namespace articles? -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 20:16, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with PanSola here. If the Open Edit template is used, then the LA section basically serves three purposes:

• Gives users looking to "relax" Guild Wars-style a place to chill out that is much more fleshed-out than, say, the humor category
• In theory brings all of the (quality) work that already exists to a single place, so people can look for them without searching the namespaces
• Encourages creative writing (especially collaborative) by providing a place for recognition of such works

By contrast, the Open Edit category would serve as a filter--while I think the problems people are worried about will exist, it will be in this category rather than the actual Archives. If all of the LA articles must first come from the very namespaces in which they reside right now, then I don't think there is any significant likelihood of consistent abuse. It would take far less effort to edit a "real" page, and would be much higher profile. Indeed, I would suggest that sexual content is much less likely than stories being constantly Bel-Aired. The question is then whether we think we'll have enough people interested that such vandalism will be quickly and consistently reverted, presumably causing vandals to give up to a manageable extent as they have in the main wiki. --Hashmir 21:32, 26 April 2008 (UTC)