WikiIndex talk:About

Namespace for "About"
This page says itself that it is a "'meta' page". So people browsing the real "content" pages or selecting "random page" won't be particularly pleased to see it. Why not reverse the redirect so that it's in the "meta" namespace? robinp 02:13, 7 Feb 2006 (EST)

Can you explain more?
I am not clear.


 * Goodness, I didn't know anyone was around, least of all one of the experts, Mark!!!
 * The page (if you reach it from a click on some of the "About" links) says "(Redirected from WikiIndex:About)". Somebody must have decided to move it to the main ("article") namespace. Maybe there was discussion and consensus. If so, I'll say no more. BUT most wikis I've been working on keep "machinery" ("meta") pages away from the article space, mostly in the "project" namespace (which here translates to "WikiIndex:"), so that visitors who don't want to contribute but do want to sample the content can click on "random page" and see nothing but content, not pages about how to create or improve the content. robinp 02:34, 7 Feb 2006 (EST)

Please show me pages examples of what you mean :-) MarkDilley | talk


 * Mark, Robin has a similar issue that I had when I first got here. Robin, we've been using Namespace conventions as a place for this conversation.  The status quo right now is that meta pages are in the article namespace.  We've made this decision because
 * this is a wiki about wikis so meta is on topic
 * we're not using the random page feature anyway
 * TedErnst | talk 15:34, 7 Feb 2006 (EST)

clean up
seems we are now using some of the built in namespaces, (and by the way, I can gloat, my idea of namespaces is correct! We can add 155 new namespaces to this wiki if we want) and we are using RandomPage now... MarkDilley

see http://wikicompany.org/wiki/Wikicompany:Wikicompany_v_Wikipedia for some ideas to tease ourselves away from being thought of as a wikipedia site.

http://evan.prodromou.name/Journal/2_Thermidor_CCXIV recognizes that WikiIndex is coming from a slightly different angle than Wikipedia.

Namespace creation
I didn't really know where to put this discussion, but some MediaWikis (I'll take Uncyclopedia for instance) have spacial pages called Special:Namespaces that looks exactly like the interwiki modification. Install? – Smiddle / T&middot;C&middot;@ 13:34, 5 November 2006 (EST)


 * I'm not really sure what you're suggesting we use namespaces for. Could you please elaborate? TedErnst | talk 00:07, 6 November 2006 (EST)
 * The talk page to aide pages would appear at:


 * French namespaces
 * "Discussion Aide:" instead of "Talk:Aide:"
 * "Discussion WikiIndex:" instead of "Talk:WikiIndex:" well, we also need to create a new French project namespace. (Projet maybe?)
 * Misc
 * "Proposal talk:" instead of "Talk:Proposal"
 * "WikiProject talk:" instead of "Talk:WikiProject" – Smiddle / T&middot;C&middot;@ 14:29, 14 November 2006 (EST)

Go for it. TedErnst | talk 14:59, 14 November 2006 (EST) We need a new project namespace in French, also. What about IndexDeDesWikis or something? – Smiddle / T&middot;C&middot;@ 14:12, 17 November 2006 (EST)


 * The Special:Namespaces page was something that appeared briefly in one fork (1.6-wikidata) of MediaWiki. It allowed bureaucrats to take control of the list of namespaces directly from the web interface instead of editing LocalSettings.php. The is just a kludge based on the Special:Interwiki extension.


 * As for the namespaces themselves? The actual descriptions of each individual wiki in this index should be in a separate namespace from vanity articles about people, user pages or anything else that isn't an actual wiki description. JMHO. YMMV. --Carlb 13:33, 15 December 2006 (EST)

Still stuck
re: Generally, administrative "meta" pages like this one, which provide supporting information about the task of building WikiIndex, are in the "project" namespace, so people wanting to browse by using the "random page" button will find wikis or people, not instructions or discussions.

I think that there are conversations and 'meta' pages that I would like to see in the main namespace. MarkDilley

What does it mean that "WikiIndex is not an encyclopedia"?
Do you mean that it's not a general encyclopedia, or that it's not even an encyclopedia of wikis? When I think of an encyclopedia, I think of a site that, even though it may restrict its scope to certain topics, will cover those topics thoroughly (hence the name "encyclopedia"; "encyclopedic" mean "comprehensive in terms of information"). Wikipedia deletes a lot of articles for non-notability, but once it decides to have an article on a topic, it tends to go all-out; e.g. contains a lot of information that could be considered cruft (they've actually dialed it back a bit, because it used to contain even more information; but still, there's a lot of stuff there that could be considered trivia).

But it seems like WikiIndex wants to limit its entries to basic facts about the wikis and wiki people in question. (There aren't a lot of articles here about wiki ideas, and none of those articles are very long, so there's not much precedent to show how a lengthy article about a wiki idea would be handled; but we've had a few long articles about wikis and wiki people, which were cut down). The solution is usually, in the case of pages about wikis, to link to an off-wiki about page; or in the case of wiki people, to link to an off-wiki user page.

If that's the direction you want to go in, fine. The site is, after all, Wiki "Index"; an index usually only contains very short blurbs, with a few statistics, about its subject matter. But we should clarify this in the about page, so people know.

An index tends to be boring reading, even though it may lead you in the direction of interesting content. An encyclopedia tends to be more interesting reading, as there is a lot to explore without needing to leave the encyclopedia. But both indexes and encyclopedias have their separate uses. Most of us come to wiki articles by means of Google, which is an index; and even wiki encyclopedias have their own indexes (e.g. categories). Leucosticte (talk) 15:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Mostly it means that this is a community of wiki people writing about wiki. Wiki was around for 6-7 years before Wikipedia and MediaWiki - Wiki is not defined by Wikipedia, it is the other way around. MarkDilley
 * There are a lot of different ways of "writing about wiki", though. Wikipedia uses an encyclopedia format to do so, with articles like, , , etc. My question is basically, should WikiIndex pages be full-fledged encyclopedia articles that can cover the subjects in their entirety, or are they just supposed to be a template with some statistics and links; a few sentences very briefly describing the wiki, wiki person, or wiki idea; and a bunch of categories? Even if the scope of WikiIndex is limited to wikis, wiki people, and wiki ideas, that doesn't prevent it from being an encyclopedia that is limited to covering those topics.


 * In other words, do you mean that (1) it's not a general encyclopedia (i.e. a work that, like Wikipedia, seeks to be the sum of all knowledge), or (2) it's not an encyclopedia at all — not even an encyclopedia of wikis, but rather an index of wikis? "Encyclopedia" is defined as "a book or set of books giving information on many subjects or on many aspects of one subject and typically arranged alphabetically." Thus there are general encyclopedias and more specific encyclopedias. Leucosticte (talk) 19:31, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

This might not help :-) ... WikiIndex is a wiki of wiki.  It is not an encyclopedia, it is not Wikipedia, it is a wiki.  A wiki gets defined by the community.  In my experience, any word on the wiki can be edited, talk page, account page, whatever.  We are a wiki.  We don't have a 'product' like Wikipedia.  People working on the wiki are the value of the wiki.  Best, MarkDilley
 * "In my experience, any word on the wiki can be edited, talk page, account page, whatever." Speaking of which, do you think we can get the page unprotected? It was protected back in 2012, but semi-protection might suffice to keep the vandals at bay. Thanks. Leucosticte (talk) 21:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * So the answer is . . . . there is no answer! :p It is basically a free for all!
 * I think the most sensible answer would be to create or amend articles here on WikiIndex as you see fit. If you are confident and competent with creating articles to an encyclopaedic standard, then go for it.  I personally try to create encyclopaedic content, albeit using simple inline citations, see ARRSEPedia as an example.  I will state we should not set any size limits to articles though.  Sean, aka Hoof Hearted  • Admin / 'Crat • talk2HH 22:18, 12 May 2014 (UTC)