Okay everyone, I have a wiki, and it's going to be awesome! But it's not quite ready for public consumption yet.
What's the Plan
Get a new wiki up, independently hosted, so we don't have to deal with advertising. Keep the wiki code as close to possible to the original site's syntax, while adding features like a GUI editor. Import most of TV Tropes' content into the new format.
Why we're doing this
TV Tropes used to be a site where discussion of all types of media was welcomed, but in the past few months, they have instituted a censorship regime with little-to-no community input. Since we believe that wikis are a digital commons, we would like to develop a trope and media wiki where the community that uses it determines its content -- not owners and advertising companies.
Who the Developers are
* I'm Brent "Vorticity" Laabs, a meteorologist and Perl hacker from Southern California. Available at brent@allthetropes.org
* Evan "JabberWokky" Edwards, a wiki software developer living in Nashville. His email is jw@timewarp.org
We're both avid tabletop gamers, and both have experience in managing non-profit wiki projects.
What has been done
We considered several different wiki software packages before deciding, including MediaWiki, Foswiki, and PmWiki. We chose Click Wiki as our wiki software of choice for a few reasons:
* Because it's a half-wiki, half-CMS software, it can handle our data as x-wiki/pmwiki rather than just using its own internal data types. This means that the page syntax will remain similar (but see changes below).
* The ability to switch between a GUI and wikicode representations, with no direct editing of HTML.
* The fact that we're choosing a modern wiki system rather than an older one means we won't get left behind technologically.
* It's Evan's baby, and he uses it for his job, so we can expect regular software updates.
We've registered four different domain names: allthetropes.org, storywiki.org, tropeswiki.org, and tropewiki.org. We still need to decide the title.
Decided as allthetropes.org by vote here -- looks like I got outvoted. A good start for a community, I should think.
Evan has written the Pmwiki composer and decomposer, and has been implementing some of the features like folders. We're still in alpha testing, and I do mean alpha, but things are starting to shape up well.
I have been handling the data import, which has to do with converting to a slightly different syntax, and reorganizing the page content automatically.
What's Changing (technical)
Note that this is not an exhaustive list:
* Page organization. Since the new software supports proper hierarchical namespaces, I've reorganized the content go from Characters/WorkName to "Work Type/Work Name/Characters". There's a lot of magic going into finding the right work namespace, but at the very least links will update even if it get moved into the wrong namespace.
* Link syntax. Okay, I want to say that I like CamelCase. It's fun to make WikiWords all over the place. But it has problems, such as the inability to have unicode in page titles or properly space things without dirty hacks. Add to this that TV Tropes uses four different linking syntaxes (CamelCase, [[SquareBrackets], {{curly brackets}}, and [[SquaresWith/{{Curlies}}]) -- and that macros like [[folder] also use the same syntax -- and you realize that it's kind of a nightmare of brackets. So everything will be replaced with a unified link syntax.
* Spoiler coding. Spoilers are so common that they should probably be Huffman coded down.
* Table syntax. Current tables will break. Exactly 153 pages out of the 180,000 some trope pages use tables, so it's really not worth changing.
* Inline notes are collapsed into a single syntax, [[note: label] text [[/note]. Again, having three different syntaxes was just confusing.
What's not changing
* Formatting like bullet points, macros like [[AC:], headers, etc. will all stay the same.
* Indexing, bullets, folders, etc. should all work more or less as you remember them.
New features
* Full page histories (but not from the old site, sorry!)
* GUI editor+wikicode editor
* Page tagging
* User-level javascript (which Evan still needs to fully explain to me)
* A complete lack of advertising (more of a bugfix than a feature, really)
* More as I think of them...
What can you do to help
Right now, the biggest thing we need is alpha testers. That is, people who know what development software looks and acts like, and aren't put off by the unpredictable results. People who can write bug reports. If you want to do that, please drop me an email.
The community side has been more or less ignored by us up until this post, as we ironed out technical issues, but we have a long way to go. Good ideas on the wiki policies are a must, and anyone willing to take a stab a writing them would be greatly appreciated. We have a temporary development wiki for policies, so anyone wanting to be in on that can drop me an email or a forum message.
Roadmap
Once we get to a beta test stage, more or less anyone who asks to be a part of the community will be invited to edit. It should happen within a couple of weeks.
We'll start out with a closed-beta test. Once we get enough users that it looks like we'll be able to resist vandalism, we'll transition to an open beta. How long we'll be beta -- well, Google Mail proved you can do it for years on end. But we'll probably settle for a criterion like "bug reports down to less than one per week."
Content will also need to be changed to reflect the community's new identity and values. Values like openness, tolerance, and a sense of humor should be encouraged, and we hope to attract anyone willing to build insightful content about media and popular culture. The site will also need to be cleaned of most references calling it TV Tropes, as we don't want to infringe trademark.
If things are successful enough, we'll probably start soliciting donations, but we have enough cash and bandwidth to run things for now.
If things are super-successful, I could do another 501(c)3 incorporation (a non-profit in the United States), to handle all of the donation revenue and stuff. I think that we'd have a legitimate shot as a educational organization that provides literary criticism. But that's way, way down the road.
-- ∇×V
What's the Plan
Get a new wiki up, independently hosted, so we don't have to deal with advertising. Keep the wiki code as close to possible to the original site's syntax, while adding features like a GUI editor. Import most of TV Tropes' content into the new format.
Why we're doing this
TV Tropes used to be a site where discussion of all types of media was welcomed, but in the past few months, they have instituted a censorship regime with little-to-no community input. Since we believe that wikis are a digital commons, we would like to develop a trope and media wiki where the community that uses it determines its content -- not owners and advertising companies.
Who the Developers are
* I'm Brent "Vorticity" Laabs, a meteorologist and Perl hacker from Southern California. Available at brent@allthetropes.org
* Evan "JabberWokky" Edwards, a wiki software developer living in Nashville. His email is jw@timewarp.org
We're both avid tabletop gamers, and both have experience in managing non-profit wiki projects.
What has been done
We considered several different wiki software packages before deciding, including MediaWiki, Foswiki, and PmWiki. We chose Click Wiki as our wiki software of choice for a few reasons:
* Because it's a half-wiki, half-CMS software, it can handle our data as x-wiki/pmwiki rather than just using its own internal data types. This means that the page syntax will remain similar (but see changes below).
* The ability to switch between a GUI and wikicode representations, with no direct editing of HTML.
* The fact that we're choosing a modern wiki system rather than an older one means we won't get left behind technologically.
* It's Evan's baby, and he uses it for his job, so we can expect regular software updates.
We've registered four different domain names: allthetropes.org, storywiki.org, tropeswiki.org, and tropewiki.org. We still need to decide the title.
Decided as allthetropes.org by vote here -- looks like I got outvoted. A good start for a community, I should think.
Evan has written the Pmwiki composer and decomposer, and has been implementing some of the features like folders. We're still in alpha testing, and I do mean alpha, but things are starting to shape up well.
I have been handling the data import, which has to do with converting to a slightly different syntax, and reorganizing the page content automatically.
What's Changing (technical)
Note that this is not an exhaustive list:
* Page organization. Since the new software supports proper hierarchical namespaces, I've reorganized the content go from Characters/WorkName to "Work Type/Work Name/Characters". There's a lot of magic going into finding the right work namespace, but at the very least links will update even if it get moved into the wrong namespace.
* Link syntax. Okay, I want to say that I like CamelCase. It's fun to make WikiWords all over the place. But it has problems, such as the inability to have unicode in page titles or properly space things without dirty hacks. Add to this that TV Tropes uses four different linking syntaxes (CamelCase, [[SquareBrackets], {{curly brackets}}, and [[SquaresWith/{{Curlies}}]) -- and that macros like [[folder] also use the same syntax -- and you realize that it's kind of a nightmare of brackets. So everything will be replaced with a unified link syntax.
* Spoiler coding. Spoilers are so common that they should probably be Huffman coded down.
* Table syntax. Current tables will break. Exactly 153 pages out of the 180,000 some trope pages use tables, so it's really not worth changing.
* Inline notes are collapsed into a single syntax, [[note: label] text [[/note]. Again, having three different syntaxes was just confusing.
What's not changing
* Formatting like bullet points, macros like [[AC:], headers, etc. will all stay the same.
* Indexing, bullets, folders, etc. should all work more or less as you remember them.
New features
* Full page histories (but not from the old site, sorry!)
* GUI editor+wikicode editor
* Page tagging
* User-level javascript (which Evan still needs to fully explain to me)
* A complete lack of advertising (more of a bugfix than a feature, really)
* More as I think of them...
What can you do to help
Right now, the biggest thing we need is alpha testers. That is, people who know what development software looks and acts like, and aren't put off by the unpredictable results. People who can write bug reports. If you want to do that, please drop me an email.
The community side has been more or less ignored by us up until this post, as we ironed out technical issues, but we have a long way to go. Good ideas on the wiki policies are a must, and anyone willing to take a stab a writing them would be greatly appreciated. We have a temporary development wiki for policies, so anyone wanting to be in on that can drop me an email or a forum message.
Roadmap
Once we get to a beta test stage, more or less anyone who asks to be a part of the community will be invited to edit. It should happen within a couple of weeks.
We'll start out with a closed-beta test. Once we get enough users that it looks like we'll be able to resist vandalism, we'll transition to an open beta. How long we'll be beta -- well, Google Mail proved you can do it for years on end. But we'll probably settle for a criterion like "bug reports down to less than one per week."
Content will also need to be changed to reflect the community's new identity and values. Values like openness, tolerance, and a sense of humor should be encouraged, and we hope to attract anyone willing to build insightful content about media and popular culture. The site will also need to be cleaned of most references calling it TV Tropes, as we don't want to infringe trademark.
If things are successful enough, we'll probably start soliciting donations, but we have enough cash and bandwidth to run things for now.
If things are super-successful, I could do another 501(c)3 incorporation (a non-profit in the United States), to handle all of the donation revenue and stuff. I think that we'd have a legitimate shot as a educational organization that provides literary criticism. But that's way, way down the road.
-- ∇×V