Lit Wookieepedia, the Star Wars wiki

Indeed, and one that makes the hard calls like separating the multimedia project and TCW, since it is obvious that we don't need to try to mash them together anymore.

 

Would not be in favor of that. That'd diminish the authors, reference writers, etc. who DID do what they could to slot TCW into the existing (pre-reboot) narrative, and they did a pretty good job if you ask me.

 

All of that just rang hollow to me. Pablo in TERC made it obvious their hands were completely tied. Ahsoka just doesn't fit. Mandalore in TCW makes so much more sense as Kalevala.

 

Try as people might, and they have, whatever new Star Wars wikis that have sprung up since 2014 haven't really been able to gain any traction. And its not like Wookieepedia has abandoned the EU. A good amount of my time, and that of other users, is still dedicated to working on EU articles, something that is a lot easier now that there are far fewer sources being released that take place in that continuity.

 

No thanks. Significant portions of the Guide to Warfare deal with the show. Several stories were done to reconcile Maul and Ventress' conflicting backstories. I'd hate to just say that stuff doesn't count.

 

I can't bring myself to accept TERC, TEA, and TEGtW, because of their vain attempts at TCW reconciliation. The only reason I even have TERC is because my brother and sister-in-law got it for me for Christmas, not realizing I had fundamental problems with some aspects of Star Wars at the time.

 

Besides shoving most of the original CW project into a space of 4 weeks (really?), I’d argue that TCW didn’t wreck everything nearly as bad as everyone says. To my knowledge, sources like Fact File are still doing some patch work, though it would help if these were more easily available.

Then again, the deaths Gallia and Piell can’t be reconciled, and Dark Disciple would’ve further muddied the waters.

 

To be fair, the Tartakovsky miniseries had a big timeskip toward the end. The new series takes place within it.

 

Oh hey there, glad someone else noticed! It's basically exactly as it looks like - I am the only one left who can and will add SWTOR information more than one article or image at a time. Coincidentally, TOR is also the only Star Wars product I am still interested in - and it has literally thousands of subjects to write about!

Problem is, I had a conflict with one of the Wook administrators many years before, which ended in me being banned for a really stupid reason. But because rules are rules, other admins will enforce them as well, banning a person who makes nothing but 100% productive edits on sight. Unfortunately for me, I still have this itch that needs scratching, so I have to go to... creative length to add information that nobody else will. I have a huge backlog of both articles and images to be posted and occasionally, when I feel the stars are right, I try to get as many of them in as I can before inevitably being permanently banned again.

I have created hundreds upon hundreds of TOR articles - only it won't be obvious, because by now they are spread between over a dozen different accounts. If you open the page's history, find the first edit and click on the contribution link for the creator, you will usually find that he was blocked on the very same day. So if you pick any TOR article created in past 5 years and it was not by Cade Calrayn, chances are 98,5% of the time it was me. Without gratitude, without reward, without even time to go back and correct my own mistakes I occasionally make. All because I can't bear sitting on this mountain of information that will permanently go away on the day the game will shut down. Thank god I don't have such strong conviction about stuff from books and comics anymore!

 

There are some problems with that.

1. Wookieepedia is so ubiquitous with Star Wars at this point that any offshoot would feel lesser by comparison.

2. Anyone who is active on Wookiepedia is likely to stick with it as opposed to jumping ship to another wiki.

3. Even if you managed to get it up and running, it would just make both sites slower in updating as contributors are halved.

4. You will eventually completely run out of things to write about due to the absense of new Legends content, giving the site an in-built end date where the whole thing will basically become a static archive.

 

They once thought of doing that. It never really got anywhere

 

So what works were already basically done by the time the reboot hit and were accordingly moved from the old continuity to the new? I know of Heir to the Jedi and Dark Disciple at least.

 

Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir is another off the top of my head. The unfinished CW arcs that were released also kind of fall in that pile.

 

It's the name. "Wookieepedia" is catchy and perfect. "Legendspedia"? "Canonpedia"? Ew.

 

The one good thing about the end of the true EU is that the potential is there for everything to be fully compiled into one good Wiki or similar central information repository. A wiki dedicated entirely to the 1976-2014 stories could eventually cover everything in the works from that time. The real trick would be to endure that the contributors don't go overboard with deleting valid material and changing other contributors information more often than they do.

1) Wookieepedia itself feels lesser compared to what it was in the recent past. At a new , EU-only wiki would be able to start with a fresher culture.

2) A lot of us who were active on there (or who helped others) have already jumped ship or simply deserted it, and rightly so. If the comments in this thread and elsewhere are any indicator, there seems to be widespread support for a better version of Wookieepedia.

3) Given the quality of some Wookieepedia admins and contributors, that isn't a bad thing. As for contentious updates or situations where there is debate about whether an edit should take place, perhaps a voting or similar consensus system could be instituted.

4) A static archive is a good thing to have, and a desirable end goal. One single, as complete as possible repository containing every bot of information from all of the works of the EU. Of course, this does assume that there won't eventually be more EU works...

 

Wookieepedia has basically become an elitist club at this point, with no interest in accepting anyone else, which has left passionate people like me with nowhere to go. They haven't shown any interest in answering any of the questions and/or concerns I have with their decisions.

 

Then go and make it. @SheaHublin

If support is as widespread as you claim, then you will have no trouble in doing it, and doing it successfully. I wish you the best in this endeavor.

 

Funny that you mention CadeCalrayn- he was the clown that deleted the article on the 6th Dignitary in ROTJ on the most incorrect grounds shortly after it got uploaded.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Unidentified_Imperial_Advisor_(blue_robe)

... in spite of him being right there in the film and multiple photographs being available. That was the point that I realized it just wasn't worth contributing over there any longer. It's good that you've stuck with it, and you really have done a great service in preserving a lot of information that might otherwise be lost or overlooked. I just hope you have it all in a nice pdf or Word doc (or even a series of forum posts) with screenshots in case somebody over there acts randomly- that way it could still be shared among the greater community.

 

While I might not agree with your reasoning, I wouldn’t want to see this fail out of hand, so just quick suggestion. Please, don’t let Wikia host it. As you’re likely aware, it’s monetized to the extream and care more about money than the user experience.

 

Wampapedia?

 

It's how established the site itself is. Not only does it appear at the top of most google listings, but even casual fans are aware of its existence. Any competing wiki site would be facing an uphill battle trying to acquire members and gain visibility.

 

Glad you mentioned this, since I think it's something that can use some clarification. That sort of mindset, IMO, is bred mostly from a misunderstanding of the Canon/Legends tab system combined with Wookieepedia's institutionalized predilection towards blaming FANDOM (previously Wikia) for problems.

The tab system was created largely by a user named Cade Calrayn (who seems to be getting name dropped here in the last few posts!). He was the most technically-inclined user on Wookieepedia for a very long time. He insisted that the way he set up the tabs was the only way that it could be done. Since then the community has come to realize that that's not really true, as evidenced by the fact that the tab system was recently significantly improved in the mobile web view of the site (which, I should note, is where the vast majority of mobile engagement comes from, not the app).

Cade's way of setting up the tabs proved to be a problem in mobile. Though mobile web is fixed, there's still the lingering app issue where you can't click the Canon or Legends tab. The reason for this is that the tabs are, essentially, glorified images with a fancy templated background. Those images are hyperlinked.

On FANDOM apps, the useful of hyperlinking an image applies to like 0.00000000001% of situations. As a result, that functionality is not built in. Although app users would certainly love to see that functionality built in (myself included), there's no widespread need for it across FANDOM in order to justify devoting engineering resources to it. App users are, as of now, a small portion of the overall mobile audience on FANDOM.

Conversely, Wookieepedia has almost 4 years now to figure out another system, rather than relying on an engineering organization with finite resources to build something that only affects a fraction of overall users.

There's a solution out there, I'm sure, but odds are it's going to be one that Wookieepedia comes up with. Alternatively, Wookieepedia can also seek help from FANDOM's Community Technical team to try to come up with new solutions. Since there are alternatives to waiting for engineering resources.

This is also not true.

Over the last year we have been able to significantly overhaul the ad system on FANDOM. All told, 30% of advertisements have been slashed on every FANDOM wiki page. That's a massive reduction that has led to better site performance and engagement, which we'll be talking about soon on Community Central.

Those same efforts are now being directed towards mobile. Where, yes, the advertisements are really bad, which we are well aware of.

One thing that we talked about over the last year on Community Central was direct advertisements vs programmatic advertisements. Direct advertisements are where FANDOM works directly with clients to create ads. This ensures that there are proper quality controls in place on the ads. The more direct ads there are, the fewer indirect ads we can weed out and lower the overall number of ads on the site.

Programmatic ads come through ad exchanges, which are third parties. We have rules in place about what kinds of ads can be used from ad exchanges. When ads violate those rules, we cut off those ad providers.

Mobile is trickier because it's more difficult to find the source of an advertisements. But the more direct ads we start to use on mobile this year, the more programmatic and low-performing ads we can weed out.

This has been a big success on desktop already and there's no reason for me to suspect that mobile won't be the same.

 

I tend to agree. I think it's gotten better over the last year or so, and slowly but surely there's some gradual changes being made, but there's still a long way to go.

I'm pretty well-established in the community and there are even discussions or areas of the site that I have no interest in going to because I know the kinds of attitudes that I'll be met with. Whether it's "canon sucks!" or "this is the way we do things, stop trying to change it!" or (and this one is my personal favorite since it applies to me) "you work for FANDOM so you can't be trusted!" there's always something in certain corners.

 

It could be done- and if or when a truly concerted attempt at a Wook replacement is next made, we'll need all the support we can get. Of course, it would likely be EU only. I thank you for you support

And, to clarify, there aren't any actual such plans, as of yet. Right now, it's just a hope of a better world shared among a few EU fans and some elements that are very dissatisfied with the way things are run over at was once a great Wiki.

Oh my, yes, and a technical horror show in terms of usability and clean presentation. I often use older versions of it from before 2015 preserved in the Internet Archives. Having a clean and functional site, one that looks and works just as it did even a few years ago, would be a top concern of any attempt to create a successful EU wiki.

 

I have asked numerous questions over the years about several of their decisions on Talk Pages, which are already notorious for being ignored in general, and almost no one has ever responded and if by some miracle they have then they have pretty much just said no.