Talk:PPC Wiki

Use this page to discuss design and content changes to the |main page. For general wiki discussion, please visit the Community Portal.

A suggestion: Under the heading of latest mission releases there are a number of missions, but there was no real indication of how old these missions were. I'd like to suggest to add the date the missions are posted (to this list) between comment brackets (!--). Indemaat 12:26, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I like that suggestion. I'd also like to know if there's a set number of missions to be displayed, so that as each new one is added the last one drops off. As it stands, the list is getting a bit long and taking over the front page. Is it time for a clearing of the section, or should I just delete the bottom few? If there should be a set number, how many do people think we should have? I'd say five or six would be enough to give people the latest missions without overloading. Thoughts? Anamia 15:36, June 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think perhaps a flexible minimum limit of 5. Say, nothing older than 30 days, unless we have fewer than 5 that are less than 30 days old. That would allow missions to stay a reasonable amount of time, even during times like these where we have a lot of missions in a short period, and keep it from completely emptying out in times like around finals when we do not have a lot of missions.

I'd like to raise the query: what is wrong with using the Facemaker to make pictures of our Agents? If "portrait style" is what is wanted, which as I understand it is primarily the face, how does it violate that? And why should it matter exactly what image is used by somebody to portray their own characters?

Sorry if this sounds a bit sharp, but I prefer the Facemaker above all else for making images of my characters because I can make them look exactly the way I want them to, and my hackles have been raised by this sudden blanket ban.--Cassie5squared 20:10, June 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, the please-don't-use-Facemaker thing has been there for a really long time. The reason is that the ultra-closeup doesn't give as much information about the agent's appearance as a more zoomed-out image. Plus, even as a portrait, Facemaker is really limited. Artistically speaking, a good portrait at least shows the whole head, and often includes the chest and shoulders. Facemaker cuts everything off, like you're standing way, way too close to them. >.<
 * It would be okay to have the Facemaker pictures on your pages, since you really want to keep them, but it would be better if there were a full body picture as the primary image, so we can get the full picture. ~Neshomeh 21:09, June 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I know it's not my place to say, but I think she meant the sudden "Stop using the Facemaker" message in red on the main page, which makes it sound like it's been banned entirely. Sorry. KGarrett 21:11, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * That's because it has been banned entirely, what with people ignoring the original message which was also of a "Don't do that" nature. Just politely worded. JulyFlame 21:14, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * To clarify--would it still be OK to use Facemaker, if there were also a more zoomed-out shot of the agent on the page? Or would that be too many images and too much storage space to worry about?--Chaoticidealism 21:25, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * As I understand, Facemaker only has one view function, and cannot 'zoom' out. --JulyFlame 21:27, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * If you've got a Facemaker image up and want to keep it, that's fine, but adding more is not (as I read it). Also, it would be better to have an additional, non-Facemaker image that shows more of the agent as the primary image on the page. More than one image in an article is just fine. (I will add, however, that unused images should be marked for deletion.) ~Neshomeh 21:41, June 1, 2010 (UTC)

Two years?
And six months. Could the "The Wiki Has Been Online For Two Years!" please be changed? --Elemarth 19:42, June 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * I assume we'll change it when we hit the three-year mark. There's nothing wrong with it at the moment. ~Neshomeh 00:09, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Mini lists
People are always asking where to find lists of various types of minis, would it be alright to put the lists on the wiki? Maybe an Adoption page for each type of fiction, like a TV mini list page, a book mini list page, a movie mini list page, a comic mini list page, and a video game mini list page? Did I forget any? The list for minis that are already popular enough to have their own page, like mini Balrogs, could be added to the bottom of their page and just linked to the main page. I know not every person who has been maintaining the lists would want to re-list here, but it would be handy for newer missions and mini types, and maybe we could make a link on the appropriate page to where the lists that aren't on the wiki are located. I think this would be especially good for mini types that there aren't very many of them out there (like my mini-Wraith from the other day).

Issues
I've been noticing several things on here, that I want to address fully, rather than blasting on one or two pages.

For one, there's been a focus on narrowing the content that is present, rather than improving the general quality and content here. The wiki isn't intended to be limited. It's supposed to be a PPC treatment on a variety of characters, continua, ideas, and fandom terminology. It is supposed to be humorous and informational. A great deal of articles lately seem to be only focusing on the second, and then having humorous bits poorly tacked on as though they were a second thought, and barely making any sense with the whole article. If someone writes a thorough enough article, or works on making a set of articles related to some continua, it deserves to be here, rather than tossed off because of some sort of ill-begot idea that it should be relevant to all other pages.

Eliminating red links or pages that aren't linked elsewhere is lazy. Instead, there should be a focus on making the content here more easily visible on other pages, or creating them, rather than scrubbing them over and going 'Nope, weren't here".

For two, I want to suggest that we begin a revamp of the various pages here; we've been talking a great deal lately about 'not judging the writer for what's been written', and with that in mind, there are more than a few pages on here that are condescending, if not outright insulting. One, for example, is Fandom, where, for the portion for "Bad Fandom", we can see things like 'saying character X is a lesbian is stupid' and 'elves are immune to the cold is dumb' directly through the wiki links. Statements like 'This is what creators think the vast majority of fanon looks like sometimes. And they are absolutely right.' are also inappropriate, and insulting.

The Mary Sue page also needs revamping, with this sort of thing in mind; we say we're not sexist, so why are we doing things like propagating that being gay or being insecure and thus being made sympathetic (to the extreme of being out of character) is emasculating?

These aren't the only pages that have problems, these are just the ones I can think of right off the top of my head at the moment.

With that in mind, the FAQ pages should also probably be fixed, because right now as it is, they have a 'we are superior' mindset where the questions are whiny and the answers are smug; while they might be amusing for us to read, it also does not do us any favors.

A third thing I'd like to suggest is that we consider eliminating the Badfic Authors category (and the pages within) and the Slain Mary Sues category (again, including the pages within, except perhaps TOS ones). The first because of the whole 'judge the works by analysis, not the people who write them' thing, and the second because they are not our characters, and it is not our place to be writing all that up. -posted by July at 11:17, November 9, 2011 (UTC) I respectfully dissent. I was under the impression that the PPC wiki was intended to cover things the PPC has actually covered in missions, on the board, on the chat, or in other material. Thus, eliminating redlinks might be needed when links to pages that are about things that we haven't covered yet appear. To continue an allegory that was made to me, and to several others on the wiki, the Wiki is like the PPC's library: for the PPC's things. If the PPC hasn't covered it, it isn't ours yet. In my mind, this may mean not adding agent pages before they appear in a published work (as Neshomeh and I cleaned up massively last year), or it may mean not adding pages for continua and terminiology that have no missions, agents, or other materials directly associated. This does not 'narrow' content so much as prevent 'content that doesn't actually have to do with us yet.' There are other wikis for those things in the meantime: we're all here for the PPC, and what it's covered.
 * I have to agree with the last paragraph of this in particular. Picking out selected badfic authors makes it look like we're picking on them, to an extent, so we can point and laugh; even if they wrote Legendaries, that's still no reason for us to go "look at this person and the rubbish they came out with", because that has an implication of "aren't they stupid?" as well. And I've never understood why we need to have pages for Mary Sues. We get enough information about a Sue from the mission it dies/gets recruited in, and we don't write pages for slashwraiths or causes of crossovers or any other kinds of missions. The Mary Sue pages just reinforce the image everyone else has of us as Sue-hunters and nothing else. Cassie5squared 12:01, November 9, 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, while I do think the Badfic Authors catagory is superfluous, against PPC protocol on not picking on authors, and probably should be eliminated, I do not think the Slain Mary Sues catagory is. While yes, they are not our characters, most of the content on them is criticism of what happens in their badfic, and transcriptions of their charge lists from the missions that cover them. No information is (or should be! And if it is, this should be corrected!) any more offensive than what is covered in the missions, and as to the argument that they're not our characters and that we shouldn't write about or list them... there are plenty of missions that write more dialogue, actions, and drama concerning the Mary Sue being slain. How can it be that if actually writing more about a Mary Sue in the course of a mission is ok, but writing a transcription of their deeds is not? And what about linking to missions? Those write about characters that aren't ours, either. Should we not link to them either?

In regards to the wiki not being funny enough, I think that it's a community effort. If anybody doesn't feel a joke is funny, or if it irks them, they are free to change it, write more content, and be more funny. It can't be the responsibility of one writer to represent the PPC's humor, and if it is somehow that now by nature of the limited number of people editing the wiki... then that should be fixed! More editors! Stat!

Though I do agree the Mary Sue page needs to be a bit cleaned up. It reads currently as a lot of pasted quotations from various board/journal posts (is it?) and could stand to be focused a little: perhaps quoting those great huge essay blocks of text rather than just pasting them down.

Aster Corbett 13:30, November 9, 2011 (UTC)