Wiki Character Pages

Aelysia

Aetolia's wiki seems horribly underused. Now, I've recently been playing a chat-based roleplaying game based on the new World of Darkness setting and there were a lot of interesting things going on with their wiki. Particularly, character wiki pages were a great way to convey a bit of history, quirks, and goals that were generic/broad enough that did not break the OOC/IC barrier (stuff on wiki is assumed to be knowledge available to the general populace). Wiki pages mostly followed a pre-formatted style and just really appealed to the roleplaying niche that I feel is one of Aetolia's greatest strengths (at least when compared to other IRE games).

Anyway, I believe that doing something similar on Aetolia's wiki might just draw more people there which hopefully would come with a few benefits as well:

1. The wiki would see a lot more traffic. People might also be more interested in actually working on other parts of the wiki as well. 
2. It would be an excellent way to establish your character's reputation and history that in-game sources do not really allow at the moment. Any information put on a wiki would by definition be considered IC knowledge available through rumors/chronicles/etcetera, so there would be no OOC-IC issues.
3. It would be so much easier to give other people reasons to just come roleplay with you. It really is a clever thing, but more on that in a bit.
4. It would be a great way to strengthening communities/guilds/etcetera. Packs, guilds, orders, and so on, would have their own player-managed wikis, which hopefully would be awesome and make everyone not playing the game want to be part of it.
5. Characters would come alive a bit better. There is a lot of Aetolia-inspired artwork out there, and this would be a chance to show it off for a lot of people. Not to mention that these wiki pages could help set a tone for your character.
6. Being able to write down a bit about your character for others to read can be really inspiring. I know I'd be super proud to write down just a bit about stuff that my character has done, even if it's the sort of things no one would care about in game. It's important to me, so being able to write a paragraph about it makes me feel like I am able to show off a particular aspect of my character. It would just make me feel like Aetolia is an awesome hobby.
   

So. How would this be done? Well, first of all, I think there need to be a pre-formatted wiki template where people just are able to fill in the blanks. Wiki gurus could always tinker with their pages to get that special, shiny, awesome feeling, but the rest of us need to be able to put up information in an easy and smooth manner. Secondly, to encourage people actually doing this, create a task that gives some minor credit reward for making your own character wiki, and possibly another task for updating it with new information. This would by no means be mandatory at all.

What would the wikis look like? Now, I am basing this format on other character wikis I've seen when playing roleplaying games, they seem fairly tried and tested but there might be parts that don't suit Aetolia so well, or parts that need to be added. A page would potentially be divided into the following sections:

Theme: A basic colour theme (background and text) that corresponds to the city your character belongs to. Black/red for Spinesreach, white/gold for Enorian, bright green/dark green for Eleusis, blue/silver for Spinesreach, and a generic grey/black for unaligned. Or something entirely different, but I feel that it really is good to have an identifying theme based on cities, as they really are the organizations that everything else is built around in Aetolia.

Portrait: The default portrait should probably be one that is based on your character's race/gender (not sure if we have male/female portraits of all playable races in Aetolia, but I think it's one of those things that could be arranged for fairly easily.

Basic information: Age/Apparent age, height, weight, build, profession, guild/guildrank, house/houserank, city/cityrank, order/orderrank, title, etcetera.

Description/Appearance: Your character's description goes here. Possibly their preferred styles of clothing (she is usually seen in crude, tribal outfits, except for the rare occasions when she attends guild ceremonies, etc)

History/Deeds: Can put your character's history/background here, as well as include various achievements over the course of your career as an Aetolian.

Homes/businesses: Basically, where your character lives. A short blurb about haven, houses, rented apartments, or other places your character considers theirs (inns, shops, whatever).

Pets: Some character owns pretty remarkable pets. Who wouldn't want to know a bit about Illidan's giant toad, Benedicto's wartortoise, or Aarbrok's monstrum pet?

Role playing hooks: This here is something I found on other wikis that I really think is amazing. So, your character is investigating rumors about Lanu Du: write up a blurb about it and other people doing the same has an opportunity to approach you. Are you looking to start up a new family clan: write up a blurb and maybe your long lost cousins/uncles/grand-grand-grand-grandchildren start contacting you again. Are you particularly interested in discussiong various techniques of fencing/swordplay: well, write up a blurb and whoever is looking for a reason to RP with you might pick you up on it.

Contacts/Allies: A bit of brief information about organizations/people that are important to your character.

Quotes: This section is really fun too, as it allows people to leave a quote about your character on your wiki page. Friends, foes, and family all have a piece to say about your character, and now they finally can. If a particular quote is not desired, the owner of a character is free to remove it without any need for explanations. Quotes would not be allowed to be altered or modified in any way except to fix spelling/grammar issues.

Obviously, personal attacks and the like would not be tolerated (it's not tolerated on the forums or the rest of the wiki anyway), also, all information posted would be considered IC-knowledge and people would have to be aware of that. Just to give a few examples of what character wikis might look like elsewhere, which probably explains what I mean a bit better:

Hope White

Marissa Collins

Simon Jeffrey

So. Feel free to offer any feedback. Is all of this good/bad/redundant?

EDIT:

I'm putting a cat here so people will be happy after reading the thread even if they don't agree with the suggestions.

Lin

Although I agree with several of your points, there actually were once character pages on the wiki. They were ultimately removed by the Celani Trigru as noted by this post. The pages were fun but deemed unfitting for the wiki's theme.

Aelysia

Oh, alright. So... I went through that thread. This is the post:

Trigru said:

Sup, fools. Supposedly, I'm the official curator of the Official Aetolia Wiki! So as such, yeah, I'm thinking we're going to vamoose with the official character bios. It was a cute idea but many excellent points were made in that they're problematic at best.

I'm a bit confused because I didn't see a lot of points raised against character wiki pages being problematic. Xavin asked if there was a specific format that should be followed, Areka made a post that they shouldn't be allowed without stricter regulation (which I completely agree with, there need to be a set list of rules people have to adhere to), Alexina posted about personal attacks not being cool, and then Arbre said she didn't think the character wikis should be allowed at all. Did I miss something about which points were problematic (except from the personal attacks, which obviously has no place neither on forums or wikis)? I don't know, there just seems to be there are so many possible upsides to having some place for this sort of information and it is obviously working in other roleplaying settings.

Areka

It would need to be moderated/each one approved in order to work well, since before they were straddling the line between what could be useful and either the aggressive, passive/aggressive or wildly inaccurate and masturbatory versions that crop up with the Ankyrean Archives - and while we have THAT wiki to showcase things on, the official wiki is what is publicly endorsed by IRE. So, with the mix of issues and the additional work it would put upon our already busy and overloaded administrative team, it just wasn't really an appropriate use of the wiki/time. 

Lin

Another point is that we're pretty stringent on OOC/IC separation here in Aetolia. Some of the things that appear in the character pages are things that are better found out in-game.

There may, on rare occasion, be a page devoted to a player character, but these will only be those who have had a true historical significance (Sahmie Rhashye for instance), and in this case the article will always be limited to their involvement in the game's story.

Minarael

I'd agree with that, Lin, but we already have really detailed bio's on characters in a thread on the forum. So that point is kind of completely invalid. 

That said, I don't really have enough faith in the population of any IRE game to handle that sort of full bio accessible in an OOC area not being used in inappropriate ways.

Moirean

I don't really ever go to the wiki. AA left a bad taste in my mouth for Aetolian wiki stuff.

Teani

The forums posts can't be edited by everyone though, to remove or add information in the same way that the wiki pages can be. The trolls that began adding insulting/degrading information, or outing other people in some way on the AA is what made that place bad. On the forums, posts can be buried and the one editing is always named.

Lin

Uhh, AA wasn't ruined by trolls. AA was created by and for trolls because we were all young and stupid and I suppose it was funny at the time.

It goes without saying that tomfoolery won't be tolerated on the official wiki. It's held to the same standards as the game itself.

Aishia

I used to think the AA was the most interesting thing about Aetolia. Every time I met someone new I'd go on there and see if they had a page.

Amberlea

Write a background!

I like the wiki idea, though, and would love to put stuff on there, but if it's not going to happen you can get the chance with a background, which will show up in your honors so people you meet will know to look.

Aishia

I mean in all seriouslyness character bios should not be on the wiki.

Aelysia

I am a bit confounded by that. There are tons of more or less in-depth bios/information about characters available on the forums (see the 'Character Breakdown' thread for a prime example). If IC-OOC separation really is the main objection against this, then why is there so much IC information available OOCly already? And there already is character backgrounds available in game (which can be viewed without ever interacting to the person), so... I guess I am not sure why it is fine to have the information available from so many other sources but not on a wiki. Is there something that is particularly bad about wiki information? I thought the point was for people to be able to go there and find things out that are considered public knowledge?

To me, it just does not seem all that odd to think that some basic information could be available about people, particularly if the information could be used to invite people into roleplay with your character.

/scratch head

Lin

Okay, let me explain this from a wiki administrator point of view.

On one hand, I really wish we could put up character bios, because back when it was Ankyrean Archives, maybe 10% of the people who tossed a bio up would actually get hooked and contribute to the wiki. Anything that gets people wanting to help is cool in my book.

On the other hand, there are usually no standards for these things and even when you set them up (templates, etc.), unfortunately, a lot of people don't think to look around and see if they've been established, and so they'll create a brand new page with no wikification: links, categories, references, etc. Players also tend to be -very- fond of their characters (I know I am) and upload tons of images that have to be moderated and categorized. It can be a pain. At this point, I feel like that's more work for me and other administrators to do while everyone else is actually working on the wiki.

Aishia

Basically it's pretty much a given that the stuff on the forums is self indulgent and etc, wheras the wiki is an OFFICIAL SOURCE OF INFORMATION.

Xavin

And it's not just the self-indulgence that makes it problematic. See, there's a lot of, shall we say, toxicity that can come from those sorts of pages, especially when people decide they are going to be jerks in the name of the funny. See stuff on AnkyreanArchives for examples.

Eleanor

Character bios made by someone else tend to be either overly dry, or in some way inappropriate. Not good for wiki.

Character bios made by the player tend to be either a bit on the dry side, or wank. Very difficult to regulate and very subjective to rule on. Not something the existing wiki team wants to deal with.

Damariel

Everything that has been said above as regards our policy on character bios is more or less absolutely correct. Allowing player-written material on player characters sets a very dangerous precedent. We have multiple threads, and even a forum for roleplaying logs, where you can show off exactly what makes your character so interesting and unique. Our wiki's purpose is not for showcasing characters; it's for showcasing information about the game and its lore.

Haven

Besides, if we're really so inclined to make character wiki's we can do so easily enough. (Revive AA or even start a new wiki site. There are many services to choose from. Wikia.com is free!)

Rivas

NPC character information, not PC, would be the closest thing that I could reasonably justify thinking "yeah, that belongs on there". Like Dam said, it's about info on the game and its lore, and the players also tend to rotate in/out of the game far too frequently to be considered a stable enough presence in the "game lore".

Iosyne

Rivas said:

NPC character information, not PC, would be the closest thing that I could reasonably justify thinking "yeah, that belongs on there". Like Dam said, it's about info on the game and its lore, and the players also tend to rotate in/out of the game far too frequently to be considered a stable enough presence in the "game lore".

@Rivas that's a great idea. I'm still mostly without a reliable internet connection so maybe I'll work on some NPC pages in the meantime. 

Lin

Rivas said:

NPC character information, not PC, would be the closest thing that I could reasonably justify thinking "yeah, that belongs on there". Like Dam said, it's about info on the game and its lore, and the players also tend to rotate in/out of the game far too frequently to be considered a stable enough presence in the "game lore".

Totally agreed, and actually I think one of the God-types put up an NPC page or two already.

Carivah

While I do think there are advantages to having player bios in an easy, wiki-able format, I see the problem and distinction between the forums and the wiki. In forum posts, all our names are by our posts, so it's clear that we're expressing ourselves and our own opinions, etc. The wiki is an official representation in what should be a neutral voice.

There could be advantages to a second, player-run wiki, but that'd just spread the updates and information out so that neither the official wiki nor the player-wiki is useful anymore, when there's already so much content to be filled in on the official as it is. And if it's only for us to post player pages, the forum does that job already just fine.