We're Back!

It has been a long time but BrickWiki has been migrated to a new server.

You can get there temporarily by going to: http://greenhouse.siteorchard.com/clients/brickwiki/wiki/Main_Page

Thanks to Jeramy Spurgeon for doing the install!

Hopefully we will get Brickwiki.org pointing to the new server soon.

It Lives!

After disappearing for a while a back-up was found and has been put online as read-only. We have a chance to resurrect this project if the will and the skill is out there.

If you can assist in scraping the data and moving to a new host please send me an email - ted(dot)godwin(at)gmail and we can try to get this going again. Even if all you can do is commit to helping edit if we get it running again let us know.

Still Plugging Away

The start of the New Year has been a bit slow on BW but recently ever-reliable editor Claude has been updating articles at a steady pace.

NPOV
Claude has been especially brave, tackling what is sometimes a sensitive issue: NPOV. While obviously BW will have a pro-LEGO® products bias we are supposed to be creating articles with a Neutral Point Of View. Many times new BW authors want to describe MOCs or themes or websites they or their friends have created using words like best, awesome, etc. These and other biases (both positive and negative) should be avoided or replaced with factual, balanced information.

BW is not a place to have arguments or debates but, in my opinion, a place to record the results of (and occasionally history of) these debates. Thanks to Claude and the rest of team for making so many articles better.

-Ted

Prototypes and Websites and staying current

It is time to rethink some of the organization and categories on BrickWiki in light of the changing nature of the online world.

Websites
This category used to contain a lot of articles on LEGO Users Groups. In an age where almost every organization and business has a website it seemed ludicrous to fill the category with every website out there.

I have changed that by removing LUGs from websites and re-purposing an old, inactive category: LUGs as a sub-category of acronyms. This allows people to find LUGs and LTCs by either looking up their name in Fan Groups or by their acronyms in LUGs.


Prototypes
This category has puzzled me for a while. Given that LEGO can be used to build anything are we really saying that BW should host articles on anything that can be built? In an age where we can use Google and Wikipedia to look up such information I see no reason to spend time collecting non-LEGO information on BW.

I have marked the page for deletion and you can object or agree on the talk page. I will try to give it some time before starting to delete but if you have something to say please speak up now.

Updating Templates

There has been some discussion around updating the template for LUGs.

If anyone has ideas on how a new template should look now would be a good time to share. Here in the comments or on the discussion page.

Lights, Camera Action!

With the release of the fourth Bionicle Movie and the included preview for The Adventures of Clutch Powers it seemed an appropriate time to create a new category for movies. I dumped it in the Miscellaneous category but if you can think of a better category...

Correcting Titles and the Move Form

So, I have done a lot of correcting of titles to match our convention on article titles. This usually entails creating redirects from alternate capitalizations, acronyms or terms. It often requires that I cut and paste the content of a "bad" title to the correct title.

I have been doing this on and off for a year.

Imagine my surprise when I recently clicked on the MOVE tab at the top of an article I was working on. I discovered that to move an article AND at the same time make the current title a redirect, all I had to do was fill in this little form.

OK, you can laugh. I know I did.

Now I just have to incorporate this into my How To BrickWiki presentation at the upcoming BrickCon in Seattle which will also hopefully be integrated into the Help:Editing section.

Comics and Silliness

I noticed a while ago (before our recent outage - ouch) that There were a lot of Webcomics featuring LEGO that did not have articles. Well, I took another run at adding some more to the mix.

As usual this results in a lot of quick stubs but I figure it's better to have a stub than nothing at all. Have a look and make sure your favorite LEGO-related Webcomic is there. If it isn't copy another stub (like Astounding Pizza-Man), make some minor changes and voila! If your favorite comic is already there maybe you could add some more - remember to stay NPOV even if you are a fan!

BW Back Up

No word on what happened but BW appears to be back online.

Now I just wish I had made a list of the edits/articles I have been thining about for the last two weeks. :)

Server Issues

As you may have noticed there has been an issue with the server that hosts BW. Attempts have been made to contact V. but so far, no responses. Hopefully he is just on vacation.

NOTE: As I now know that somebody reads this besides Lar++ and myself I will update the blog when BW is back online.

Thanks for looking,

Ted

What is an Admin?

[A reminder that what follows is editorial opinion and not official policy of BW]

Recently a new contributor to BW asked for Admin status. Included in the request was the note that he had made 100 edits. I looked at some of the edits and new articles created and was left with several questions.

Where did the idea come from that 100 edits qualify someone to be an admin?

Given that a large number of those edits were simply adding gobbledegook to the contributor's User page or stubs not properly categorized, what sort of quality of edit would be accepted for such a policy?

Why would someone want to be an admin for a wiki they had been contributing to for only a short time?

Heck, why would anyone want to be an admin? OK, that is a little personal because I was asked last year if I wanted to do it and I am too lazy to add admin duties to my BW contributions.

I would like to see someone offered a position as an admin only after they have shown they are capable of mature, regular and quality contributions to BW. That may make me an elitist and perhaps turn off some potential contributors - a dangerous approach when there are currently so few regular contributors - but I would rather BW maintains and improves it's quality.

Lower standards are not the answer to our recruitment efforts.

Back on Track

Apologies for my absence. I was finishing a Masters Certificate in Project Management (completed) and took some time to catch up with other things in my life.

Glad to be back!

Onward!
So what is the plan now, you might ask. Good question.

Last summer there was something of a discussion about promoting BW. Time to update the "plan". OK, time to actually create and follow any "plan".

If you have any thoughts chime in here or on the project page.

Lots of editing from Claude

Thanks to Claude for working his way through another batch of minor edits! Thanks to his diligence articles on Fright Knights, Rocket Racers, Intermodal and more are getting better.

It is not just the big articles that make BW better but also it is improving articles by editing for grammar, NPOV and my favorite, improved linkages between articles.

Keep it up!

New Category: Webcomics

I have been meaning to do this one for a while so I created Category:Webcomics (under Publications). I know there are more out there so please add them directly or leave titles and URL's in the comments here!

I hope the utility of the new category is obvious. The proliferation of webcomics featuring LEGO and the difference between other types of publications seemed a natural division.

Of course when it came to The Brick Testament it was a bit hard to decide if it should move to the new sub-category. The online version shares many attributes of a webcomic, ie: sequential panels, narrative but it is non-fiction in the sense that Brendan does not make up the stories.

Solution to Set List Controversy?

Sorry to toot my own horn but I think I may have come up with a way to avoid the long-list syndrome when including Set Lists in articles. Using a table that contains links to both the articles on the hosting sites and a direct link into the theme/subtheme category on that site makes it easy for a user to find the info but avoids having to scroll down for pages of unlinked, undescriptive text.

The Set Lists article now includes a section on including the version I used in an article. Some copy and paste and some quick editing for theme or subtheme and you have a nice neat little chart.

Here's the text if you are in too much of a hurry to copy the example from the article:

==Set Lists==
Set Lists by [[theme]], [[subtheme]] and year of release are available using the following [[:category:resources| resources]].
{|border=1 cellpadding=10 cellspacing=0 style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #999999 solid; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-valign="center" align="center" bgcolor="gold"
|'''[[BrickSet]]: [http://www.brickset.com/search.aspx?Theme=Pirates Pirates]'''||'''[[Peeron]]: [http://www.peeron.com/inv/theme/LEGO/SYSTEM/Pirate Pirates]'''||'''[[Bricklink]]: [http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=S&catString=61 Pirates]'''
|}

Big Holes in BW

Now here is a reason that BW may not have been embraced by some: I just found that there was no Eurobricks article! Obviously I quickly put up a stub but if I was a member of one of the biggest AFOL communities going and found that my community was not even listed... well I can see how some would be offended.

BTW - major apologies on behalf of anyone involved with BW to anyone on EB (even though the two communities overlap). Please help us to correct the oversight by providing information.

I have been contributing to BW for a couple of years now and I just noticed the problem today. Maybe we can have a challenge to find the most egregious, lame, ridiculous omissions thus far. I know it will be harder to find a mistake bigger than missing EB but try to look with a newcomers perspective. What we expect to be there may not be there, yet.

Reply to this blog post with your nominations!

Working again & new article

Server

Woo hoo! The server issues have been fixed (for now) but the meta-question remains: do we need a move?

That said, we need to keep plowing ahead to make this the best LEGO-Wiki possible.

New Article

I added a new stub: Soldiers fort standard based on Nelson's "discovery" on Forbidden Cove.

Two Visions For Change

After yesterdays post it seems clear there are two possible directions should it be decided to migrate BW to a new server.

Transfer - move BW as a whole and intact to some other wiki service.

Takeover - move the BW community (what there is) to Brickipedia and re-shape it with contributions and content from BW.

I see them both as taking a lot of effort. Transfer requires a lot of effort and expertise at the beginning. Takeover requires slightly less initial expertise but would require much more sustained effort over a longer period of time.

My preference is clearly for the transfer option as I see several wiki hosting options that appear to be as reliable as Wikia. Lar++ obviously favours the takeover route and the comfort of an existing service. In reality the direction we take may come down to whether we have anyone willing to make the transfer happen.

But before we go too far down this path, do we have consensus on the need to move?

Venkatesh, Tim, anyone?

Saving BrickWiki

This was supposed to be a blog that would aid in the recruitment, retention and training of contributors to the best LEGO-related wiki on the internet today. It came out of this discussion on BW. Instead I have to start with an effort to save it's very existence.

Today I tried again to access the site and it says it "could not process your edit due to a loss of session data." It has said this every time I have tried to edit since before BrickCon which was a month ago now.

The following is what I was trying to post and I will post here what I was trying to add to the Community Portal page:

==Save BrickWiki==
I don't know if this is the best use for this page but I would like to start a discussion or even a project to save Brickwiki.
I do not mean to be pointing fingers or dump on anyone but this wiki needs help badly. Formerly active and dedicated people have had to move on life just as I will have to someday but today, right now, I would like to make this work.

===Obstacles to Survival===
Currently BrickWiki server issues are inhibiting the ability to recruit and retain contributors. Any plan to boost the number of people contributing is pointless until we can establish a reliable and timely server solution.

===Options===
There are several Wiki hosting sites that might be able to integrate BW into their systems.

:see:''' [[wikipedia:Comparison of wiki farms| Comparison of Wiki Farms]]'''

===Authority===
I am just a guy who has tried to contribute to this site and recruit some new contributors. I honestly have no idea who "owns" this site and can make this happen. This needs to happen quickly if there is to be any chance to revive the best LEGO-related wiki out there.

Thank you for your consideration.

~~~~