DwarfWiki: The Return News Posted by John Hoare on 16th October 2006, 21:08 So, DwarfWiki, then. It’s been pretty much abandoned. Left to languish on a rarely-updated Observation Dome, and then shunted to the sidelines of the newly-relaunched G&T, fuck-all has been done on it recently. Let’s fix that, shall we? We reckon that what’s really needed to kickstart the whole thing is a bit of structure. So, whilst you can feel obviously free to contribute to what you like to the thing (after all, that is the point of a wiki), the focus for the next couple of weeks will be on The End – both the episode capsule, but also the various things mentioned in that show – characters, and other things in the Red Dwarf Universe. This also extends to first episodes of other shows – Laying The Foundations, Vile Vole Pie, Cadets, How The Band Got Together, and so on. After the two weeks, we’ll have a look and see where we are – it might be that we should go onto Future Echoes, and second episodes of other shows. You’ll need to register for a DwarfWiki account (seperate to the account for the main site, I’m afraid) to participate – this was less to stop abuse, and more to stop the spam problems. If you’re contributing to a Wiki for the first time, then remember that the writing should be fairly formal, and be objective. The complete opposite to normal G&T writing, in other words. (Incidentally, you’ll note that we changed the default skin of the wiki back to the standard MediaWiki one. This is partly because we’re very lazy and couldn’t be arsed doing a new template to fit in with the new G&T – but also, we reckoned that using the standard template made the thing more familiar to people, and so the thing would be updated more.) If you have any problems or questions, then ask away here. Let’s try and bash this thing into some sort of shape again…
Well, I suppose your intelligence must be superior to all of ours combined if none of us can work out how to do something based on instructions that are freely available online, but you can by yourself, eh?
What, you doubt the awesome intellect of someone who came here just to leave a snide comment? Why, you should know that one of the hallmarks of genius is hiding behind witless insults. Speaking of RD and Teh Wiki, has anyone ever checked out the proper Wikipedia entries for Red Dwarf and its cast members? I can list ’em here, if you like. I mean, are those entries accurate?
I try with the main Dwarf entry, I really do, but it’s hard when it’s so constantly edited by idiots who change established facts to nonsense. It’ll never make featured article, because it’s such a mess – and it can’t be locked down and seriously changed until people stop dropping in and adding rubbish to it. Just have a look at the edit history, you’ll see what I mean… Why, just yesterday I had to revert an edit someone had made where they’d changed the word “series” to “season”…
My condolences. And what about the cast members’ Wikis? Anyone know about those? I’d offer, only I really don’t know enough about the cast members to change those around for the better. (No, not even my Chris Barrie knowledge is sufficient to merit becoming guardian of his Wikipedia page; I shame fangirls everywhere =P .)
It *is* empty, but I’m not sure I know enough about Chris Barrie. I guess I can try, tho’, and the other Carrotists can edit the hell out of it as cricumstances warrant ^_^’ .
The sad thing is Kirk, I thought you might say that… and then I thought even you wouldn’t be that cretinous. It was a group decision. We could easily have designed a new template, but thought that it was better to keep the standard one and make the Wiki more familiar. But never mind. You keep thinking to yourself that we can’t cope without you, if it makes you feel any better. And you wonder why we’re not working with you any more.
“it’s so constantly edited by idiots who change established facts to nonsense.” Then maybe we should be looking at what’s just around the corner: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article1886649.ece “The launch of Citizendium.org, which begins testing in the next few days, is the latest chapter in the bitter public feud between Mr Sanger and Jimmy Wales, with whom he conceived Wikipedia in 2001. And it comes as Wikipedia is still reeling from the revelation of embarrassing errors and the activities of malicious hackers. Mr Sanger has begun signing up academics furious at the mistakes and generalisations they find on Wikipedia’s articles on their specialist subjects, and vowed to give these experts a special role to shape articles on Citizendium.org. “This is merely a sensible community: one where the people who have made it their life’s work to study certain areas are given a certain appropriate authority,” Mr Sanger says. “Think of it as having village elders wandering the bazaar and occasionally dispensing advice and reining in the wayward.” “
I was looking at that recently, actually – but I must admit, it hadn’t crossed my mind in relation to Red Dwarf. Hmmm…
John – I don’t know you or Kirk but was your previous comment really serious? If so, shouldn’t squabbles like this be kept private? I don’t mind on the whole but it must be pretty shitty for Kirk to see that written here where everyone else can see it.
Such squabbles should remain private, yes. And on G&T we made a great point of keeping them private. Unfortunately, Kirk keeps bringing them out into the open, as with his first comment. He brought the shittiness on himself. Nevertheless, I wasn’t planning to make any further comment on the matter.
Quite. It was fairly shitty for us to see his original comment, and it’s a shame that he still feels the need to draw attention to himself in that way. We do have the right to defend ourselves, though.
Well, that’s the point. We don’t discuss it because – well, yeah, it should be private. I don’t really want to air our dirty laundry in public. Now, can we drop this please? It’s honestly not that interesting! Concentrate on something fruitful, like DwarfWiki…
Like how I’ll try and compose a reasonably useful Wiki article about Chris Barrie in a few days. Tho’ I’ll probably be asking you all for some fact checking/revision/me-pestering-you-to-tell-me-what-you-think before it actually goes up. What about the other cast members, tho’? I can’t say I know very much about Chris, but I know even less about the rest…
I can tell you a few things about meself if you like. Brutal. I was a presenter (or at least pretending to be one) on ‘Ghostwatch’ with Sarah Greene and Michael Parkinson on Hallowe’en in 1992. That was brutal, man. People thought it was real! If I’d been watching it I’d have been ‘get outta town, as if!’ I wrote (or at least I think I did, I’m on the front at least) ‘The Log’ which, as the title suggests, was a piece of crap, but a piece of brutal crap giving advice about life and the human race and that. It’s totally brutal, none of your crypto-fascist baloney.
Oh, and I was also in that Ricky and Bianca Eastenders special as some totally believable gangster-type. Brutal.