This page is for discussing issues that affect the Lyorn Records Wiki as a whole. This is a good place for discussion of stylistic, formatting, and categorization of the information in the wiki.
Vallista is here! Work to be done
As always, a new book brings new exciting characters, events, and a ton of needed editing work.
Please make sure to place spoiler warnings where appropriate.
I'll be updating the Meta:Dramatis Personae page as soon as I've finished my first readthrough.
I can already see much work being needed for Devera, and a new article for Precipice Manor.
No doubt, much more will get added to this list as I get farther into the story...
--Majikjon
Stuff still left to do from Hawk:
- Expand pages for relevant characters. In this case, special attention should probably be paid to Vlad (as always), Kragar, Loiosh, Khaavren, Sara, Brimford and his familiars, The Demon, Crithnak's sister, Terion, and of course Daymar. Maybe also some additions to Kiera, Morrolan, Sethra and Aliera would be appropriate.
- Some other characters who need new pages: Deragar, Asyavn, Farthia, Poletra, Illitra, Lady Radfall (et al).
- Items/Event that need new pages: Hawk's Egg, Enchanted Euphonium, Wand of Ucerics, enchanted lockpick, (et al.)
Again, lots more stuff, especially some of the now-outdated speculation pages, need modification as well. I would recommend not actually deleting the old speculations, but using strikethrough where appropriate.
Majikjon 18:13, March 30, 2011 (UTC) Updated by Steve the Younger, October 8, 2014.
- Update from Majikjon
- Yes, I am still alive; just been busy with life things lately. I approve of all of the above suggestions. Some other pages that may need updating in light of recent revelations: Godslayer, Jhereg Council, Jhereg Organization, Left Hand of the Jhereg, Psychics, Third Floor Relic, Dragaeran Empire (especially the section on Imperial Law), Kieron's Watch, Adrilankha, Cawti, Vlad Norathar, Iceflame, and Familiar.
- I will be doing my share of this when I can, but my first priority is getting the Meta:Dramatis Personae page back up to date. --Majikjon
- And definitely Meta:Narrators and Inconsistencies, ... and its source, my own "Look who's talking!" section on Cracks and Shards.
- Mark Mandel, proprietor, Cracks and Shards 21:11, May 2, 2011 (UTC)
Hyperlink interface
Earlier today I replied to a(n anonymous) comment in Talk:Dzur#colors, and appended a rant to the end of the post. But that issue really belongs here, if anywhere, so I'm taking the rant off that page and pasting it here -- everything in this section after this paragraph, through To Chaos with it.) -- exactly as it wound up there. (Mark Mandel, proprietor, Cracks and Shards 01:56, January 23, 2011 (UTC))
Am I the only one who finds this wiki's interface for adding links a PITA? On other sites, in other interfaces, I select some text that I've typed or pasted, click on it, click the hyperlink icon, enter the URL, click OK, and I'm done. Here, when I enter the URL it overwrites the selected text in the link window and I have to either
- type the text in again by hand or
* cancel the link window, copy the text, paste it to something like Notepad, click the hyperlink icon, copy the URL again, paste it, switch back to Notepad, copy the damn text from there, switch back to the link window, and click OK
It is not "OK" with me, and I wind up using the wikisource interface instead.
And that's not even mentioning the absolute mess that happened when I tried to edit this entry. I gave up: copied the preview piecemeal to Notepad, canceled the edit, and started again.
Mark Mandel, proprietor, Cracks and Shards 23:35, January 22, 2011 (UTC) (PS: The preview now shows lost indentation and so on. I have a life to get on with. To Chaos with it.)
- No, you are not alone. The WYSIWYG editor they have implemented also irks me, and I use the source editor for virtually all my editing, also. I'd complain about it, but this is a case of where you get what you pay for, and Wikia is hosting this site for free. (Well, rather, they host it so they can make money from the advertising and don't have to develop the content themselves to justify it--but I see that as a necessary evil. In the end, I think the benefit of this site to the fan community makes this a worthwhile bargain for us.) You just can't expect the interface to be everything you'd necessarily want if you were designing and hosting it yourself. --Majikjon
Vandalism
While procrastinating after reading a chunk of Iorich, I just fixed some anonymous vandalism on Surrender of debts and Vlad Taltos ; the latter defacement may have been unintentional, but the former certainly was not. A community to-do: check on recent anonymous edits. -- Mark Mandel, proprietor, Cracks and Shards 20:15, May 9, 2010 (UTC)
- This comes up from time to time. It's actually a lot less of a problem than it once was. Unfortunately, the only real solution to this type of stuff is constant vigilance. Thanks for helping with this. --Majikjon 18:19, May 11, 2010 (UTC)
Iorich is here! Work to be done
I'm not sure how many other people are still contributing to the wiki, (me! Steve R) 13:53, July 13, 2010 (UTC)) but I thought I'd compile a public list with some suggestions for articles that need revision, creation, or redirection now that we have a whole new book's worth of material to integrate into the site. If no one else uses it, it at least gives me a to-do list.
Need to expand the page on the Tirma Massacre(did some Steve R)Need a page on the Iorich Conspiracy(did this Steve R)- Virtually every major character page should be brought up to date with current events. This includes: Aliera, Morrolan, Sethra Lavode, Kragar, Daymar, Cawti, Norathar, Zerika the Fourth, Devera, and others.
The page on The Empire could probably use a great deal of expansion based on what we have learned of Dragaeran legal codes and practices.- Several Organization pages could stand updating based on new information: Kelly's Movement, Left Hand of the Jhereg, Iorich
- Lots of new dirt on locations in and around Adrilankha, especially Imperial Palace, House of the Iorich, Iorich Wing, Imperial Prisons, et al.
- New Character pages need to be made for those introduced in Iorich.
New Character names need to be added and cited in the Meta:Dramatis Personae page.(This is done.)
Probably lots more stuff, especially some of the now-outdated speculation pages, need modification as well. I would recommend not actually deleting the old speculations. A "strike-through" of any now-defunct theories would seem best to me to preserve the ideas that people floated previously, while acknowledging that those ideas are no longer viable given the new information.
As always, I'm open to any suggestions or contributions from anyone at any time. Happy editing! --Majikjon 19:58, January 7, 2010 (UTC)
"Role of the Cycle" sections in House pages
I hadn't seen these sections before. While they all seem reasonable, I know there's nothing like them in the canon, generally speaking. They should either be attributed -- e.g. "Steve said so here [link]" -- or moved to Speculation. --Mark Mandel 03:43, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
- These were put in a while ago. They may predate the "Speculation" convention, or at least the way it has come to be enforced. One of these, the change from Vallista to Jhereg, is based directly on comments taken from Paarfi in The Phoenix Guards. The others are loose interpretations based on the characteristics of each House, and therefore should be properly regarded as light speculation. As a complement to the "Role of the House" segments in each of the Book pages in the Vlad series, I think these sections make sense, but there's certainly no denying that (with the one exception noted) they are not based on any textual evidence. I am not entirely convinced this needs to change, especially since not all House pages have corresponding Speculation pages yet, anyway. I am open to suggestions for the best way to handle this, however, since it is somewhat in conflict with the division between speculative and textually supported material that is pervasive through the rest of the site. Comments? --Majikjon 00:26, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
- I, too, feel vaguely uneasy about the Speculative nature of those sections in the House articles. They seem reasonable, but some speculation always does... If we're voting, I vote to move to Speculation:{Housename}, and retitled "Probable Role &c" --Davdi 19:45, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
- Would it be better, perhaps, to roll all these into a single speculation article on Cycle Turnings? I'm not certain each little segment merits its own full speculation page for each of the Houses if taken individually. Also; do the Jhereg/Vallista articles deserve special attention, given that in this case, there is textev to support at leat parts of each piece? --Majikjon 21:49, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
- Good idea. I second Majikjon's suggestion. --Mark Mandel 22:38, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
- ... and I have now implemented it, as Speculation:Cycle Turnings. That made a lot of redundancy, as each section on a House's own page talked about the preceding and following Houses. I've cut out a lot of that, but the page can still use more work than I can give it now. Note especially that the sourced turnover should be marked as such in some way. I'm also pretty sure that years ago a reader on the mailing list posted gya's (her, I think) own speculations on the subject and Steve said that most of them were right on the mark. --Mark Mandel 00:30, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Entry Page Revamp
The recent shenanigans with the nav bar have gotten me to examining how some of the other wikia out there present themselves, and one thing I have noticed is that the main entry page to Lyorn Records is, well, rather matter-of-fact.
While this is not automatically a bad thing, I've been thinking it might be nice to run a "featured article" every now and then, like many of the other wikia do. I've also been a bit bothered for quite a while about the fact that the main page categories have become buried a layer deep. There really ought to be at least some of the main ones listed prominently on the main page.
There is also some potential for improving the formatting and presentation of the main page, to, perhaps, better organize and present much of the information in the wiki. Does anyone else have any thoughts here? Anyone care to take a stab at some fresh approaches to the main entry page? --Majikjon 05:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- All good points. When the wiki started I looked briefly into figuring out a way to do an automatic "quote of the day" feature on the main page (ie, "They Might Be Giants" wiki has... er... had one), but it seemed a bit complicated for an idiot like me. But maybe someone else could do it. I think possibly making "Vlad Taltos", "Books," "Characters", "Events", and "Places" more obvious on the first page would help. Though the Personae and the Loci are brilliant 'quick glance' options. A featured article and a featured speculation page would be nice. - attjen
I have created the beginnings of a revamped Welcome Page in the Sandbox page. I welcome comments and (hopefully constructive) criticism. I will probably be tweaking this a bit whether or not I hear anything. Let me know what you think. --Majikjon 19:45, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Okay, new entry page is up. Please let me know if you have any issues with it. Really, it's a rather modest change; a new graphic, some restructuring of text, and the reintroduction of the categories in a handy navbar near the top. Note also the "Featured Article" and "Quote of the Week". No idea how to automate these features yet, so I'll probably just be adjusting them manually until I can dig up a method for making them cycle by themselves. --Majikjon 01:47, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Favicon
I've created a new favicon (the little picture up by the URL in your browser's address bar) that I think might work better than our current one. See the new one File:Favicon-2.ico. And no, there's no malicious code in it. If you click on the link, it will also show in the address bar of your browser so you can see how it looks. Comments? --Majikjon 04:37, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
This Page
Rook had mentioned a page like this on his talk page a long time ago... But I sort of unilaterally went ahead and just made it. If anyone else has any suggestions, comments or criticism about this, I contend that this page is the perfect place to talk about it. --Majikjon 02:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
The Admin Category
I think this works, but once again, creating it was a unilateral move on my part, so if anybody has a better idea I'm all ears. --Majikjon 02:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Narrators and Inconsistencies
Should this page be moved to the Meta namespace?
- To the right: It's clearly a Meta article
- To the left: It's not like this topic will ever need a non-meta article to go along with it, so it's really not in the way of anything where it is.
--Majikjon 18:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
- True, yet consider: There's no non-meta page for some other meta pages — to wit, the Meta:Dramatis Personae & Meta:Dramatis Loci.
- --Davdi 00:15, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
- A point I considered, but since I'm to blame for both of those pages as well, I figured it was worth discussing. :-) --Majikjon 01:15, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Stubs
transplanted from Talk:Aliera e'Kieron
Well, maybe I am not entirely clear on just what a "stub" is. I thought it was an article about a Dragaera character that was not complete vis-a-vis the information or actions of that character within the Khaavren/Vlad/Brokedown books.
By that definition, Aliera did a bunch of other stuff that is not mentioned in the article. But is a long article that has lots of information, even though it may not be complete, not a stub? If not, then fine.
For instance, Lysek may reappear in the future in Brust's work. Maybe there will be a shoe covered in rotten lettuce, and no one else will do. But that does not mean the Lysek article I wrote is a stub...
Kragar 20:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, according to Wikipedia's page on stubs:
A Wikipedia stub is a short article in need of expansion.
Now to me, a Lyorn Records stub means the article contains only one or two very broad descriptive sentences; and even then, there are some minor characters or topics where even this is sufficient. While Aliera is clearly not one of these, the fact that her article at least touches on a number of events in her life, and mentions enough detail to start to get a feel for her character, means this is not really a "stub", even if there is plenty of room for expansion.
To the left, I've been working on this site since about 3 months into its existence, and back in the early days the articles were ALL pretty much stubs. (The Vlad article was only a single 4-sentence paragraph at the time...) It may well be time to reasses what qualifies as a stub... Though I would hasten to point to other character pages that are in far more dire need of expansion than Aliera's... Most notably, Lar, Piro, Daymar, Fentor, et al. --Majikjon 21:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, then what are we waiting for? Let's get to work!
Kragar 00:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)