Editing Forum:What does Wotc think?

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|I was wondering if any of the admins/mods knew what Wotc thought of the wiki? Have any of you been contacted by staff members or inquired about the wiki's status? Does Wotc have an official stance on the matter?

Just been kind of anxious lately about whether we were on good terms with them or if they would ever endorse what we are doing. How easily could they shut us down?

Lots of question, I know, but I don't think I've ever heard anything on the matter before.
|--[[User:Eli the Tanner|Eli the Tanner]] ([[User talk:Eli the Tanner|talk]]) 00:36, October 1, 2012 (UTC)
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Just my thoughts, not that I have any inside or expert knowledge. Wikia's been around a long while and has stacks of wikis related to a large number of franchises, and it's fairly well known. I'm sure few if any owners of those franchises are worried, else this wiki and many others wouldn't be here now. This is just another fan-site like Candlekeep and others and that compile lore. As long as we keep out copied material, it should all be good with WotC and so on.

Some of the big and well-maintained wikis are actually used by authors for their research, who even thank that wiki in their novels and so on. I think that would be a good status to aim for.|[[User:BadCatMan|BadCatMan]] ([[User talk:BadCatMan|talk]]) 09:07, October 1, 2012 (UTC)}}

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It would be very cool to have some recognition, but it is also nice to be in the middle... meaning, as BadCat stated, we are here and no one has yelled at us :) If we just keep the info correct and non-plagiarized... oh, and have fun... which IS most important... Personally, I can't believe how much Realmslore I have learned while working on this wiki... and I have been reading about the ''Realms'' since 1992!!! All in all, I think the editors and admins are doing a great job on this site, so maybe someone will notice, and maybe not :)|[[User:Darkwynters|Darkwynters]] ([[User talk:Darkwynters|talk]]) 17:37, October 1, 2012 (UTC)}}

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We've never had any contact from any Hasbro or WotC staff members, just freelancers who are or were under contract with WotC and/or Paizo Publishing (artists, writers, etc.) who wanted to tell us their stance on copyright issues or help them promote their work. I have in the past had very brief conversations with Ed Greenwood and Paul Kemp on social networks, sent a few messages to Brian James and I know someone talked with Todd Lockwood at some point.

As for recognition, according to our Google rankings, we're the no. 1 stop for Realms-related referencing and many of the smaller fansites thank us on their main pages, however the general consensus at Candlekeep is that we're not good enough.
|[[User:Hashimashadoo|hash]]<sup>[[User talk:Hashimashadoo|talk]]</sup> 13:31, October 4, 2012 (UTC)}}

{{Forum post|Not good enough? Compared to what? Are there other online Forgotten Realms encyclopaedias out there? :) Well, compared to some other wikias (I use Memory Alpha, Memory Beta, and Wookiepedia as the high standards), FRW still needs a lot of clean-up, formatting, consistency, more information and extra features. But compared to some others, such as the Eberron Wiki, we're doing damn fine. :)
|[[User:BadCatMan|BadCatMan]] ([[User talk:BadCatMan|talk]]) 01:01, October 5, 2012 (UTC)}}

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On the official recognition side of things, it's funny, but Wizards have not made any mention, as hash says. There was talk around the start of 4th edition that Wizards would be putting together their own wiki, which would have been community-driven and seen the (much wider) audience at the Wizards site contributing, but this never happened to my knowledge.

I have had a few dealings with a number of Wizards-related people, such as [[Erik Scott de Bie]] who was very nice and supportive of the wiki, and community members such as Markus Taylor who has kindly given us permission for all of his non-commissioned maps to be used here (they are technically fanon I suppose but still).

The issue of the community finding the wiki "not good enough" is subjective. The wiki will never be "good enough" unless we can fit in every piece of lore, fact-check and reference it all, which I think is somewhat far-fetched, given how much there is.

The main issue is that despite the sheer amount of content (11,000+ "proper" articles) it is not of high enough quality to be relied upon even slightly. This comes down to referencing, in my opinion.

For example, what classes and level is Drizzt? The correct answer is "it depends". The correct answer would be "let's list every canon source of Drizzt's classes and levels, reference each one, and state the differences (like 2e happened 100 years prior to 4e hence he's going to have changed a bit)".

If you come across even one instance of this, where you're not sure you can rely on a piece of information because (a) it doesn't refer to the source material and (b) anyone could have edited the page, you begin to doubt everything on here.

Example: take a look at [[Bane]]. Practically every piece of information in the article can be traced back to the source. There is no scope for argument about the information, and it also collates information from all editions into a single article, so the reader can either use the information as-is, or trace back to the relevant source(s) and continue from there. In my opinion that's exactly the point of the wiki.

Compare this to [[Kozah's Needle]]. I'm not singling out anyone who has contributed to this article by the way. It says "Kozah's Needle can unleash electricity" but how do I know that for sure? The only way to be sure is to read about it in the source material, and there is no way to find out where I should be reading.

Unfortunately the wiki is 90% this stuff, and 10% nicely referenced articles. The issue is that proper referencing is ''hard''. People (especially casual or one-time contributors) would prefer to just dump information on the wiki than to link it back to the sources. This is a shame.

Anyway, this is really long, so, in conclusion, in my opinion, the wiki has turned around its image in the community by solid referencing and nicely complete articles, but there is still a long way to go and there will always be a long way to go. However, every time we end up with a complete, referenced article, there is a little bit less distance to cover.|
[[User:Fw190a8]] 13:18, October 5, 2012 (UTC)
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FW, & Hash, thanks for the insight :) Actually, FW take a look at the [[Drizzt Do'Urden]] infobox... Cronje made some adjustments... and I added in Drizzt's levels based on edition... I think it looks pretty cool... But you are correct... sourced material is MOST important :)|[[User:Darkwynters|Darkwynters]] ([[User talk:Darkwynters|talk]]) 17:33, October 5, 2012 (UTC)}}

{{Forum post|Yes, referenced articles, neat enough formating, a Realms focus and no copied material are what we need.

But wow, this place has gotten damned busy lately. :D And here I thought this would be a quiet gig.
|[[User:BadCatMan|BadCatMan]] ([[User talk:BadCatMan|talk]]) 05:32, October 6, 2012 (UTC)}}

{{Forum post|On the referencing problem, I note we have rather more complicated referencing system than other wikias I've seen. Some have simple in-line referencing systems, with generic citation templates one can plug basic details in, or even straight written-out links, even just the title. Some have footnote systems that just use one of those templates or a link to the title. But FRW has both footnotes and individual citation templates unique to every medium, source and edition, and requests page numbers as well. Although it presents an immensely professional-looking set of references, I wonder if it can be very daunting to new users to work out, who then may skip it and hope someone else sorts it out. It's a steep learning curve. I know I had a hard time figuring out the code, and that was after working on another wikia for a year-and-a-half.

The response from Candlekeep is a bit rich, IMO. After hunting about for sources, I keep winding up there and stumbling across unreferenced information and outright homebrewed creations that aren't clearly distinguished. I'm not sure I can trust it as a reference work at all. (Of course, as a fan-site, it has a different purpose.)
|[[User:BadCatMan|BadCatMan]] ([[User talk:BadCatMan|talk]]) 01:20, October 7, 2012 (UTC)}}

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I think a lot of this comes down to what we want the wiki to be. Personally I think it is important for it to act as a reference guide to the source material. Other wikis are not necessarily there for that purpose, and, as you point out, aren't as rigorously referenced.

As such, I would rather the wiki had a small amount of solidly referenced material than a whole wealth of stuff that I'm not sure I can rely on, as it might be fanon, homebrew, or simply a misinterpretation of the source, and I have no way of checking. Other opinions might vary.

I agree it can be daunting to understand the referencing system. Two points here: the correct way to deal with the "dauntingness" of it is to provide adequate help, which might be something we can improve upon, rather than to simplify and risk inaccuracy. Second, editing a wiki is daunting anyway. Remove referencing from the equation and you have dozens of individual topics like sections, images, use of templates, wikilinking, etc, that would still be daunting. I'd argue that if someone is willing to take the time to learn these, this person will find it trivial to understand the referencing system.

The anonymous contributors tend to have two main functions. One is to provide simple grammatical and typographical corrections, which are invaluable. The other is to add whole chunks of unsourced info (most likely in good faith) which will then need to be reverted.

The registered contributors range from the casual to the hardcore, but none so far have said "I am not going to use the referencing system because it is against my religion" or any other kind of excuse!

In conclusion then, I think we have established a need for a detailed referencing system and have implemented one. That doesn't mean it can't improve, of course!|
[[User:Fw190a8|Fw190a8]] 13:59, October 7, 2012 (UTC)}}
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 In conclusion then, I think we have established a need for a detailed referencing system and have implemented one. That doesn't mean it can't improve, of course!|
 [[User:Fw190a8|Fw190a8]] 13:59, October 7, 2012 (UTC)}}
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-I did forget to mention that the WotC FR wiki was made but it's a wiki in name only. Just a collection of links to forum threads and FR content from the 3.5 archives, etc. Nothing like what we have.
-http://community.wizards.com/wiki/Forgotten_Realms
-|[[User:Hashimashadoo|hash]]<sup>[[User talk:Hashimashadoo|talk]]</sup> 14:29, October 31, 2012 (UTC)}}