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[RFC] [IMPORTANT!] Proposal for Major FenWiki Changes
10-24-2013, 04:27 PM
Okay guys, this is an all hands on deck situation. If you're involved in Fenspace in any capacity I need your opinion on this.
I would like to move the fiction archives off of FenWiki. The MediaWiki format is not really suited for long-form fiction, as I'm sure most of us have noticed, and as the stories get longer the less suitable MediaWiki becomes for storing them. So I propose we move the stories offsite to an archive that's designed to handle fiction.
The pros are that the stories are easier to read, easier to find and (most importantly) easier for authors to upload from the forum. The big con is that we lose a measure of control over our work since we're not the ones maintaining the archive. I think that ease of access beats loss of control, but I don't know that, which is where you guys come in.
Is this something we should pursue? I have a plan of action that can be started if the Collective agrees to it, but before I start that up I want a consensus.
ETA: Just to be clear, based on current events should we decide to move the archives offsite we will not be moving to FFN.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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I like this idea. I think the wiki really should be a reference only, and as long as we can handle updating the story links properly, I strongly support splitting the stories off into a proper archive.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
On the other side a lot of things are only "documented" in the stories... moving them out removes the easy ability to search through both of them.
This could be resolved with a reasonable search-box for the fanfiction "site".
Just a question, are we talking about using a different front/backend but keep them in the "fenspace.net" domain or do you want to move them to a third party site?
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HRogge Wrote:Just a question, are we talking about using a different front/backend but keep them in the "fenspace.net" domain or do you want to move them to a third party site?
We'd be moving the stories to a third party site, as I don't think we have the time or inclination(1) to build and maintain a full-fledged archive system on the Sandwich.Net network. Especially considering that the total number of stories is pretty small compared to what a third party is designed to handle. I think we'd be better off if backend duties are handed over to people who're set up to do a better job than us.
(1) Or server space and money for that matter. FenWiki's hosting is free because the ISP owner is an old buddy from The Day.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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I have no objection to a separate fiction archive. I would like to know a little more about the archive site and their policies before I make a firm Yea or Nay vote though.
Including the obvious, for me, question of how they handle non-prose media, if at all.
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My opinion ultimately depends on where things are going to go...
Quote:On the other side a lot of things are only "documented" in the stories...
Or IRC chatlogs, obscure topics from 7 years ago, or even unseen emails and PM's between individual authors.
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The site I'm looking at right now is Archive of Our Own. The TOS is pretty lenient, we retain all rights to our work and the formatting's nice and readable. The one thing they don't do at this point is host images (though they allow for inline links) so we might have to keep Mystery here while everything else moves.
The TOS is here and the TOS's FAQ is here.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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Wouldn't it be possible to host on a third-party site and have a subdomain point there?
-- Bob
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...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Virtual subdomains are a bit out of my wheelhouse, but I think it would only work on the central index page while everything else used the third party's domain linkages. We can look into it but honestly as long as we can brand our index properly I don't see it as a major concern.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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Mal and I have already discussed this in email. He already knows I support his proposal.
--
Rob Kelk
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well if rob's in then i'll back it, i trust his and mal's judgement in these things
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Thanks.
But sometimes Mal and I miss something that someone else thinks is obvious, so it's always a good idea to point things out to us...
--
Rob Kelk
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I will chime in similar to Rob Kelk, but my discussion with Mal was "in person" at Mile High Con. I'm in favor of the move to a better platform for this part of our archive.
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I have no issues with this at this time ether.
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After reading through the TOS, I have no objections.
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I can't speak from experience as an author (I don't really have any, here or there), but Shifti is a repository for fiction involving shapeshifting, and it's a MediaWiki. The only complaint I've seen there is that uploading a single extremely long story has caused problems, which is easy enough to work around. On the other hand, the authors at Shifti aren't (generally) working on a forum and then transferring, so maybe that's causing problems.
Speaking of AO3, I've poked around there and it seems like a great place. As long as there are links between FenWiki and our presence at AO3, I can't think of any potential problems. (I'm pretty sure the Wrangulator is an actual functioning part of Fenspace-AO3's datanet. A handwavium quirk: Tag Wranglers, by participating in the steampunk sim environment, make the system do a bit of wrangling autonomously. If a Wrangler who is capable of joining in refuses to do so, the server expresses its displeasure by acting (to that person only!) as if it were under heavy load: dropping connections, noticeably lagging, and so on.)
I am not even sure we have a problem, but as long as the "Fenspace" category on the new page is searchable, it should be okay.
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MediaWiki starts providing warning messages when pages are larger than 32k.
We have 42 pages that are that large or larger - we can split the writeups for the VVS and the Senshi, but the other 40 are stories or chapters of stories...
--
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Well that's weird. Shifti has a couple pages bigger than 400 kb. I guess that proves that there's some issue that I lack the experience to see (surprise, surprise).
robkelk Wrote:MediaWiki starts providing warning messages when pages are larger than 32k.
We have 42 pages that are that large or larger - we can split the writeups for the VVS and the Senshi, but the other 40 are stories or chapters of stories... I am not sure the warning is really relevant anymore... I think its a problem of the editor in some old browsers.
Websites can easily be larger than 32 KB.
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The whole MediaWiki page size warning is a hold over from old browser editing AFAIK, and survives because of the Article size guidelines Wikipedia uses. I believe the default max article size in MediaWiki is 2 Megabytes (2048 K).
There could be some issues with mobile browsers taking a long time to download and render the pages.
I don't see anything objectionable in the TOS either.
However, I'm also not sure if we actually have a problem. How many of us would actually use the extra functionality of AOO? (Or uses the full functionality of MediaWiki?)
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While not everybody who should have a say has said anything - and I know you bastards are at least visiting the forums so there's no excuse - there seems to be a general consensus towards moving the archive offsite. So, with that in mind this is the overall plan:
I've got an AO3 invite sitting in my inbox. I'll create an account (The_Fenspace_Collective) and I can tie that either to my personal email or (and I think this is the better option really) set up a fenspace.collective@gmail or somesuch. This account will be our root - every Fenspace story we put up will be attached to The_Fenspace_Collective. I will share, through email, IRC, PMs or some other non-public fashion, the account password so every active writer can post their work as they see fit. One of AO3's neater features is an unlimited number of pseudonyms, so everybody will also have their preferred author name as a pseudonym on the account.
Step two is to back up the wiki archive - because trust in God but keep your powder dry. That's pretty simple; MediaWiki has a nice XML export function that'll let us back everything up. This way if something happens to the AO3 archive (unlikely but just in case) we still have all the fiction on the wiki as of the backup date.
Step three is scraping the wiki and the forum for completed work. That's copying, pasting into a word processor, checking the formatting and then dumping into AO3's rich-text editor. Tedious but simple enough.
From there it's all maintenance. Make sure the front page links to the wiki and vice versa, edit stories so any confusing material links back to the wiki, get everybody on the account and comfortable with the interface and all the thousand other little things we need to do to make the archive work.
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M Fnord Wrote:Step two is to back up the wiki archive - because trust in God but keep your powder dry. I haven't done that in over a month - thank you for reminding me.
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Cobalt Greywalker Wrote:However, I'm also not sure if we actually have a problem. How many of us would actually use the extra functionality of AOO? (Or uses the full functionality of MediaWiki?)
It's more a question of readability and formatting than extra functionality. MediaWiki's... adequate for reading. It works but it's not really all that great. AO3 has the advantage of being designed for fiction, so it's easier to read stuff.
In any case, is there any more comment? Speak up.
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I find MediaWiki to be perfectly readable. AO3 does have shiny features that I think people would use if they were available, but are far more trouble than they're worth to implement on MediaWiki. Offline reading options for example: with MediaWiki you have to download each page and do any format conversions yourself, but AO3 provides handy entire-work links to download .epub, .mobi, .pdf, and .html versions. Each individual advantage that AO3 has is small, but there are enough of them to maybe make the migration worth it.
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