WikiLore planning and discussion

[FreelanceWizard]

This is a thread for discussing the WikiLore project (first suggested in this thread). All interested parties are welcome to post.

 

The way I see it, the key action items are:

1. Create a new namespace on the wiki
   
2. Install FlaggedRevs or ApprovedRevs to provide the option of a vetting/approval process while still benefitting from the free-for-all that is a wiki
   
3. Create speculation and disambiguation templates
   
4. Come up with some basic rules such as citations, marking speculation, etc. and create templates to assist in this process
   
5. Define basic formatting rules/style guide
   
6. Lore hunters to self-identify, as well as volunteers to specialize in wikiwork and promotion of the project
   

Thoughts? Ideas? Who wants in?

[Olofantur]

Heya,

 

I'd be happy to put in time reviewing and adding my own information, the OS&R have done a few internal "lore information gatherings" about what we can dig up in the game on certain topics.

 

For Speculation, do you think there could be a custom spoiler tag that could be used?

 

Looking forward to working on this. :cactuar:

[FreelanceWizard]

Yeah, we could probably do an expand-y style tag pair, or maybe something that wraps the text in a different color div. Are we thinking we want to hide speculation by default or just make it obvious?

[Olofantur]

Yeah, we could probably do an expand-y style tag pair, or maybe something that wraps the text in a different color div. Are we thinking we want to hide speculation by default or just make it obvious?

 

I'd hide it by default, like spoilers I think it might be a bit too tempting to skim over it otherwise.

[Maril]

I want in! As stated before, willing to help out where I can but lore hunting /writing things down is probably more an area where I can be useful, as I am by no means savvy with wiki editing, I /barely/ got the templates put on for my characters wikipages I can also assist in brainstorming for topics (I already have a long list).

I would have to read some guides. I probably should regardless.

[Random Encounter]

Likiwise, I'd gladly put in time reviewing and adding information for this project. My template building skills however, are rusty at best.

[Sounsyy]

While my primary focus is to my own endeavor at the moment, as discussed, I'm more than willing to help out as I can. As either a reviewer or contributor. Also any lore information or links gleaned while researching my own project I'm more than happy to translate over into the new RPC wiki as well. Just lemme know how I can help! ^^

[Erik Mynhier]

I would love in on various topics, Sultansworn, House of Fortemps, Ala Mhigo are all topics I have collected info on.

[ArmachiA]

I could be a contributor, or a whip cracker. Whatever is needed

[Olofantur]

A few possible things? [the obvious ones at least]

 

Citations to other wiki's [not including the one we're setting up, but excluding any speculation on the linked to page.] is not considered authoritative and should count as speculation, unless you point to the source that the same wiki pointed to and that source can be validated.

 

Perhaps a "All submissions require at least one screen shot of in-game text pertinent to the article or link to an official square page providing the same information." [actually it might be better to just say "picture" since with the new art book coming along that might have some source material.]

 

Should there be some multistep validation before the information shows up to all users? 2 people required to both be able to validate the information before it goes live? [i suppose this depends on how you want to take submissions and do updating, if you wanted to have a discussion on each page and then have a 'reviewer' sign off on it before its hosted, or if you want to do some kind of vote system...]

 

I'm guessing we should also create tags for Patch data [this data gathered before X.X ect.] since NPC dialogue has and will continue to change as the game goes on.

 

And what about 1.0 information the people would like to reference back to? Would those belong on sub pages to avoid confusion on things a casual reader might stumble into? Or just another patch tag?

 

Just some early morning thoughts.

[Nyorai]

I would love to assist with this project yet must admit I am extremely lacking in the ways of the wiki, citations, format (wiki language) etc. Terrible in fact. BUT I'd love to help anywhere I can. Lore digging, screenshots, hell I've even gone back myself and watched all the cut scenes from 1.0.

 

This is a great idea by the way and I can't wait to see it to fruition!

[Melkire]

And what about 1.0 information the people would like to reference back to? Would those belong on sub pages to avoid confusion on things a casual reader might stumble into? Or just another patch tag?

 

 

I feel that 1.0 lore ought to be segregated somehow (patch tag works, though I'd personally prefer something more discriminating), and notices/disclaimers of some sort thrown up as headers on those pages. 1.0 lore exists in this dubious "is it or is it not still canon?" headspace that is at times contradicted by 2.0 information.

 

As a player from 2.0 and onward, I must say that I am often flummoxed when I'm presented with 1.0 lore that doesn't jive with what I've actually been seeing/reading/experiencing with ARR.

 

Case in point: linkpearls are supposed to be these huge things roughly the size of baseballs? At least they are going by what I've seen a few times in RP from people I presumed to be 1.0 players... but everything in the MSQ of 2.0 says they're small enough to fit into your ear (see: Minfilia and how she reaches for her ear every time she calls the PC). Maybe the larger size is a holdover from people's experience with FFXI? I wouldn't know, and I don't have a resource to turn to that tells me what's from where, which is correct for ARR, and why.

[FreelanceWizard]

Just slipping in here to say that, yes, I'm following this thread. I'm intentionally not posting because this is a community effort, and I don't want to bias anything by stating opinions one way or another on these key elements (except my basic opinions that the layout and style need to be consistent and we need to use templates to help achieve that, which I'll write once the specifics are hammered out).

[Olofantur]

And what about 1.0 information the people would like to reference back to? Would those belong on sub pages to avoid confusion on things a casual reader might stumble into? Or just another patch tag?

 

 

I feel that 1.0 lore ought to be segregated somehow (patch tag works, though I'd personally prefer something more discriminating), and notices/disclaimers of some sort thrown up as headers on those pages. 1.0 lore exists in this dubious "is it or is it not still canon?" headspace that is at times contradicted by 2.0 information.

 

As a player from 2.0 and onward, I must say that I am often flummoxed when I'm presented with 1.0 lore that doesn't jive with what I've actually been seeing/reading/experiencing with ARR.

 

Case in point: linkpearls are supposed to be these huge things roughly the size of baseballs? At least they are going by what I've seen a few times in RP from people I presumed to be 1.0 players... but everything in the MSQ of 2.0 says they're small enough to fit into your ear (see: Minfilia and how she reaches for her ear every time she calls the PC). Maybe the larger size is a holdover from people's experience with FFXI? I wouldn't know, and I don't have a resource to turn to that tells me what's from where, which is correct for ARR, and why.

 

Really the size of baseballs? huh I wonder who thought that... The one thats handed over to you by Momo in the Ul'dah starting quests fits in your ear, although it also "glows" when someone is trying to contact you, and your character holds it out and it talks to you, so I can't imagine it being that big, i've always RP'ed it as small. Anyways a bit off track.

 

I agree that perhaps a link to "To see discussions about the 1.0 version of this article please click here" would be nice, or [depending on how the template system turns out] a separate tab.

 

And you should post Freelance, maybe its just me but I don't tend to do the "oh this persons an admin that means I agree thing." but then i'm pretty anti-authority anyways.

 

Side note,

What are the thoughts of making a 1.0 vs 2.0 page as well for this lore wiki? like a page to show interesting differences between the two [maybe a comparison of terrain/maps/monsters and the like?]

[Maril]

I definitely think that 1.0 lore needs to be filtered out somehow, or at the very least be sectioned so that it's very apparent that it is dated lore. Some of it might still be valid (or even fill in voids), but I imagine there is a lot of changes to - and this IS 2.0 we are playing, so naturally that should be the focus. 

 

In terms of spoilers, I think a big fat disclaimer on the "front page" of the wiki should be all there is on it. Because at the end of the day, there's a lot of things that could be spoiled, but in order to explain something or involve somethings history (ie. garleans) you kind of have to spoil it. I think it would be a waste of time if we have to sit and hide individual things that are spoilers, might as well just let people know what to expect and be done with it. 

 

As for validation, I would say having two people sign off on it would be a-okay, but perhaps lower it to just one if there are screenshots in the sources? That way you essentially just need to have one person validate that the screenshots are valid and not of someones cat. 

 

One thing came to mind, how about proofreading and such? Despite being pretty fluent in English, I still make some grammatical errors. Is it something to think about when validating something or should we just let people fix the errors as they get discovered?

[Jariana]

Side note,

What are the thoughts of making a 1.0 vs 2.0 page as well for this lore wiki? like a page to show interesting differences between the two [maybe a comparison of terrain/maps/monsters and the like?]

 

Please do this?  Pretty please?! *bounces up and down in glee*

 

*ahem* So yeah, I'm a bit of a lore fan (addict) in any game I get associated with, just because I really like teasing out those little tidbits that story writers sometimes tuck away here and there.  I would be more than happy to help contribute to something like this, however, since I've only been playing here for a couple of months, my experience with the world at large isn't near as broad as others.  But I will say, one of the big things that has always fascinated me was the differences between the 1.0 and 2.0 versions.  Especially since I obviously wasn't involved in the history of 1.0 myself, but since my character is older bit older than five, she was (even if she wasn't a Carteneau survivor.)

 

So I'd be more than happy to help out anyway I can, even with just the little snippets here and there I've run into and collected.

[Olofantur]

I definitely think that 1.0 lore needs to be filtered out somehow, or at the very least be sectioned so that it's very apparent that it is dated lore. Some of it might still be valid (or even fill in voids), but I imagine there is a lot of changes to - and this IS 2.0 we are playing, so naturally that should be the focus. 

 

I can dig that, I just think things like map comparisons would be pretty cool even for people fresh with 2.0 the whole character looking over a vista and recalling when there used to be a river or somesuch.

 

In terms of spoilers, I think a big fat disclaimer on the "front page" of the wiki should be all there is on it. Because at the end of the day, there's a lot of things that could be spoiled, but in order to explain something or involve somethings history (ie. garleans) you kind of have to spoil it. I think it would be a waste of time if we have to sit and hide individual things that are spoilers, might as well just let people know what to expect and be done with it. 

 

Yeah a big cover would be nessicary for "spoilers ahead!" but what about with stuff thats based on content cleared? like Nael Van Darnus, do we want to just have his page filled out? or do we want to spoiler tag stuff like

the Nael Deus Darnus thing

 

 

As for validation, I would say having two people sign off on it would be a-okay, but perhaps lower it to just one if there are screenshots in the sources? That way you essentially just need to have one person validate that the screenshots are valid and not of someones cat. 

I like that idea, save on effort I think..

 

One thing came to mind, how about proofreading and such? Despite being pretty fluent in English, I still make some grammatical errors. Is it something to think about when validating something or should we just let people fix the errors as they get discovered?

 

I'm quite obviously not the best at spelling, and grammer, my ESL aside, so perhaps we could have a log of recently updated pages, and people practiced and proof reading could go over the edited sections once a month or somesuch? I'm not sure how best to organize that review system..

 

Please do this?  Pretty please?! *bounces up and down in glee*

 

*ahem* So yeah, I'm a bit of a lore fan (addict) in any game I get associated with, just because I really like teasing out those little tidbits that story writers sometimes tuck away here and there.  I would be more than happy to help contribute to something like this, however, since I've only been playing here for a couple of months, my experience with the world at large isn't near as broad as others.  But I will say, one of the big things that has always fascinated me was the differences between the 1.0 and 2.0 versions.  Especially since I obviously wasn't involved in the history of 1.0 myself, but since my character is older bit older than five, she was (even if she wasn't a Carteneau survivor.)

 

So I'd be more than happy to help out anyway I can, even with just the little snippets here and there I've run into and collected.

 

Hrm, have you taken a look at

http://www.ffxivmaps.com/old.html

and

http://www.finalfantasyxivcutscenes.com/

 

they're quite handy.

[Erik Mynhier]

I am against segregation of 1.0 lore unless it can be proven to have been retconed. To segregate the lore by version number will open a can of worms that will be dumped on us every time there is an expansion. By separating 1.0 from 2.0, do we follow suit in a few months when we hit 3.0? Just throw it out all together. We are only playing 2.0 now because we are, we will be in 3.0 before you know it, and 4.0 in a little over a year.

 

I think the problem with 1.0 lore is it is hard to come by and in many cases is second hand from players who were in 1.0. That does not invalidate the data, on the contrary, lore from 1.0 could enhance a wiki. I know one of the mods on the SE lore board in passing. Let me get with him and the others and see if they would mind compiling the lore from 1.0. That way we can have a central official source.

[Olofantur]

I am against segregation of 1.0 lore unless it can be proven to have been retconed. To segregate the lore by version number will open a can of worms that will be dumped on us every time there is an expansion. By separating 1.0 from 2.0, do we follow suit in a few months when we hit 3.0? Just throw it out all together. We are only playing 2.0 now because we are, we will be in 3.0 before you know it, and 4.0 in a little over a year.

 

I think the problem with 1.0 lore is it is hard to come by and in many cases is second hand from players who were in 1.0. That does not invalidate the data, on the contrary, lore from 1.0 could enhance a wiki. I know one of the mods on the SE lore board in passing. Let me get with him and the others and see if they would mind compiling the lore from 1.0. That way we can have a central official source.

 

I don't think the jump from 2.0 to 3.0 will be the same magnitude of change to the existing basis of the world, especially considering a lot of changes were made between 1.0 and 1.1 [just look at Thaumaturges going from Astral/Umbral spell casters to elemental] where as 2.0 all though its major patches have added instead of over written.

 

I support a method of "If you'd like to know what this was like in 1.0 click here" or a 1.0 tab on the page of each wiki entry that has 1.0 data to include*, just in an effort to make people who don't want to know the particulars of how shitty it was to have to grind infernal tapers from having a page cluttered by it. [The tab system is quite handy, Ciel Wulfes wiki page uses it to great effect.]

[Erik Mynhier]

I am not saying not to use a tab system for changed Lore, I'm just not wanting to throw the baby (lore still valid) with the bathwater (lore that's been retconned).

 

To that end I have emailed the mods and posted an official request on the SE forums. I just want to make sure we don't lose valid lore. All I'm really doing is double-checking before we proceed.

[Sounsyy]

I'm with Erik in regards to 1.0. I think by creating a separation between 1.0 lore and 2.0 lore we will be promoting a lore source that dismisses 1.0 facts. We already have enough people challenging 1.0 lore by saying "yeah well this is 2.0, it's not the same game!" When, it is, in fact, the same game from a lore perspective. The game itself references 1.0 lore all the time and (most importantly) refers to how something from 1.0 may have changed in 2.0 because of the Calamity.

 

From a purely roleplaying perspective, everyone here roleplays a character over 5 years old. So pre-Calamity (1.0) lore facts are pertinent to everyone here and they should (IMO) be treated as canon until proven otherwise. A good example is the Central Thanalan S-rank, Brontes. If you talk to the Hunter-scholar about Brontes, she'll tell you that he belonged to a pair of cyclopes that were captured on Vylbrand and sold to an Ul'dahn circus. Welllllllll in 1.0, players participated in a levequest called "Operation Crosseye" in which we brought those two cyclopes down.

 

From my own research, I've only found one case in which lore was actually retconned by SE. This, of course, was when Conjurers were stripped of Fire, Thunder, and Ice elemental spells to accommodate the introduction of Black Mage and War of the Magi lore stating that early Magi used fire to survive the Age of Endless Frost. However, this was a retcon that happened in 1.0. I have found no other hard retcons between 1.0 and 2.0 lore. There is a whole lot of missing lore (lore that was expressed in 1.0 but has not yet been expressed in 2.0), but not retconned lore (lore from 2.0 that states 1.0 lore to not be true).

[Melkire]

If contradictions between 1.0 lore and 2.0 lore are not as prevalent as I've been led to believe they are, then by all means, work them together.

 

Perhaps segregation was the wrong word to use. In hindsight, I'm far more interested in demarcation and/or notation of 1.0 lore. If someone's reading over the lore wiki, and they come across something they're not familiar with despite adamantly perusing every piece of in-game text available to them, there should be something on that page, in that section, that clearly says, "this is from 1.0" so that they're not left wondering "but where the heck did this information come from?!" 

 

Sure, we can slap citations on those sections, but I don't want to have to scroll down to the very bottom of a potentially long article to check the references in order to learn that it's 1.0 information. Maybe have the paragraph or section boxed in with a highlighted border... or maybe a little symbol for 1.0 lore in the margin. Something.

[Olofantur]

Right, the idea I was putting forward was not to disassociate 1.0 from 2.0 lore, but to make a clarification between the two easier, for example.

 

< big long blurb about the Mun-tuy cellars with 2.0 pictuers and information>

 

 

[Erik Mynhier]

I'm with Erik in regards to 1.0. I think by creating a separation between 1.0 lore and 2.0 lore we will be promoting a lore source that dismisses 1.0 facts. We already have enough people challenging 1.0 lore by saying "yeah well this is 2.0, it's not the same game!" When, it is, in fact, the same game from a lore perspective. The game itself references 1.0 lore all the time and (most importantly) refers to how something from 1.0 may have changed in 2.0 because of the Calamity.

 

From a purely roleplaying perspective, everyone here roleplays a character over 5 years old. So pre-Calamity (1.0) lore facts are pertinent to everyone here and they should (IMO) be treated as canon until proven otherwise. A good example is the Central Thanalan S-rank, Brontes. If you talk to the Hunter-scholar about Brontes, she'll tell you that he belonged to a pair of cyclopes that were captured on Vylbrand and sold to an Ul'dahn circus. Welllllllll in 1.0, players participated in a levequest called "Operation Crosseye" in which we brought those two cyclopes down.

 

From my own research, I've only found one case in which lore was actually retconned by SE. This, of course, was when Conjurers were stripped of Fire, Thunder, and Ice elemental spells to accommodate the introduction of Black Mage and War of the Magi lore stating that early Magi used fire to survive the Age of Endless Frost. However, this was a retcon that happened in 1.0. I have found no other hard retcons between 1.0 and 2.0 lore. There is a whole lot of missing lore (lore that was expressed in 1.0 but has not yet been expressed in 2.0), but not retconned lore (lore from 2.0 that states 1.0 lore to not be true).

 

Here here, I mean, even the Calamity itself could be considered 1.0 lore. I myself use various points from my 1.0 character that was eaten before Erik and my new account came along. Despite it being a terrible game in many ways, the Lore was rich, and in some cases richer then 2.whatever lore has been.

[Sounsyy]

I'm definitely amenable to a system in which lore is cited based upon whether its 1.0 or 2.0 information, I just don't think we should hide or separate lore if it's from 1.0. Doing so might inform the reader that said 1.0 lore is no longer relevant or viable, when in fact said 1.0 lore may be more informative about whatever subject than the listed 2.0 lore was.

 

Like 2.0 gives veryyyyyy little information about what guildleves are and whatnot, but 1.0 lore informs us that there are 40 different types of leves, and that each of the little leve plates is made out of colored crystal. The inscription on each leve is one of Eorzea's 40 Virtues, and the artwork upon each card is a representation of one of Eorzea's 40 Saints who upheld said virtue.

 

A 2.0 player may ask, "Who is Saint Coinach? And why does he have an organization called Sons of Saint Coinach named after him?" 2.0 offers no lore on this. However, from the guildleve topic above, we know that Saint Coinach was an archeologist who proved the existence of the ancient Allagan Empire, when before the Allagans were dismissed as nothing but a myth.

 

So my only worry about employing a tab system wherein 1.0 lore is not readily visible in the main article, is that new players or players who are just skimming may just bypass the 1.0 section completely and needlessly miss out on a wealth of lore.