DwarfWiki Launches News Posted by John Hoare on 8th January 2006, 23:12 DwarfWiki! I like that name. Anyway, it may look like a way of us ODers (HA HA LIKE SOME DRUGS) getting others to do our work. And it may look like a way of making sure we never have to finish G&T’s rather sad-looking Episodes section. This is because both of these are exactly the case. But there is a wider purpose – I mean, just imagine what it could turn into. Wouldn’t it be fantastic? For those of you who don’t know what a Wiki is – it’s a set of webpages, but ones that anyone can edit. There’s not much on there at the moment beyond the basic structure (and a few of our pet shows) – so find an episode or topic you like, and get stuck in writing or adding to the damn thing. Unlike some other sites on the net, we never try and blackmail you into making financial contributions (erm, but then, with a grand total of seven minor updates in November, we’d find it hard to anyway) – but I’d really appreciate you having a crack at a few things on the Wiki if you find the time. And can spell “the”.
A suggestion: there are already several Red Dwarf articles on Wikipedia, so you could consider just stealing them for your own wiki to start with. I actually wrote a lot of the “Red Dwarf ships” article on there myself (but it’s been edited since then, I think, and someone else has added a section on the “Enlightenment”), so it’s okay for you to steal my stuff, just so you know. That is not an invitation for you to break into my house and burgle it, incidentally.
Never in a million years would we copy and paste anything from anywhere else. Even though you’ve given your permission, the people who have edited the page since haven’t, and it’s impossible to credit everyone who’s worked on the page properly. If you’re happy for us to use stuff *you’ve* written, fill it in yourself!
Well, we *have* got permission to copy what we like from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
I was actually wondering last night whether we should lift some Wikipedia stuff. But I thought it might be an idea to wait until anyone doing it has a chance to go through the existing Wikipedia articles properly and add stuff, rather than just copying it straight away.
I’ve just made an enormous contribution to the Ships section. The articles I wrote that haven’t been edited by someone else I just transplanted directly onto DwarfWiki, and the ones that have been edited I transplanted and then edited again to make it my own work. A bit of a cheat, yeah, but you shouldn’t be complaining. I’ve just doubled the size of DwarfWiki. By the way, who the hell put in the empty links? As far as I know, there was never a character called “Debs Rimmer” on the show. Nor was there a ship called “Wildflower”. I’ve fixed them for you, but I thought I’d embarrass you first.
And I didn’t put in anything slick or shiny like pictures or headings or whatever. I couldn’t be bothered. Someone else can do it.
Excellent stuff! Like I said, we shouldn’t be worried about copying some stuff from Wikipedia. It’s just nobody had really got round to doing it yet. The ships stuff especially is exactly the kind of thing we need.
> By the way, who the hell put in the empty links? As far as I know, there was never a character called “Debs Rimmer” on the show. Nor was there a ship called “Wildflower”. They were both me – the last one was a stupid spazz-brained mashup of Ace’s ship (Wildfire) and Last Human’s Mayflower.
