David Shepheard

Hi, I am David Shepheard but I am also known as "Big Mac" by my friends. I have used both of these names as my user name on different wikis. Generally, I use my real name on more formal wikis and my nickname on wikis that are more fun. But there have been times when I've done the opposite thing. I used my real name on Wikia and they set up the same user name on all of their wikis.

Why I started to wiki

While I think wikis are useful, I don't write wikis for the sake of it. So you will mainly see me writing wiki articles about my hobbies. (I do also use a wiki for work, but that is an invisible wiki on the hidden web.)

My first wiki activity was with Wikipedia, where I wanted to improve the articles associated with Spelljammer.

However, after signing up with Wikipedia, I became disillusioned with the delitionists who are attempting to undermine the wikification of fiction. I believe that they are doing this in good faith (at least the majority of them are), but some of them have adopted a 'tag and run' attitude that means Dungeons & Dragons articles need to be constantly defended against aligations that they are 'not important enough' to be on Wikipedia.

(There are actually a lot of flaws with many of the Dungeons & Dragons articles on Wikipedia, but working on the articles over there has turned into more of a grind, where the minority of deletionists push you to sort out articles, while making no effort to improve them themselves.)

A number of Wikipedians with an interest in Dungeons & Dragons have split off from Wikipedia to concentrate on other projects that create encyclopedias for their favorite part of the D&D universe. I'm one of these people. But I'm certainly not one of the first D&D fans to join the Wikipedia exodus.

I actually found WikiIndex after looking around for suggestions on how to promote my spin-off wiki to other people who were interested in the same subject.

As a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, I would like to see a wiki dedicated to the canon of every campaign setting. This would help people look up obscure facts about their favorite game world.

I think that one canon wiki per campaign setting is the best way to deal with this. There are some campaign settings that have much larger followings than others and a minority campaign setting (like Jakandor) could easily be swamped if it was mixed in with a more popular campaign setting (like Forgotten Realms).

Some people like to create fan material that builds onto their favorite D&D world. For written stories, this is known as fan-fiction, but Dungeons & Dragons is a game where GMs are expected to create adventures and build the rest of the universe. Home made D&D material is sometimes called fanon (as in fan created canon). I'm not sure that fanon and canon can share the same wiki (without readers being confused by fanon polution of canon), but wikis would be a good tool to help people create a body of fanon for their favorite D&D world.

So my current opinion is that each D&D campaign setting needs a pair of wikis. One canon wiki, that provides a snapshot of all the elements of the official published material. And one fanon wiki that encourages GMs to share the material they have created to support the official material.

D&D wikis I created

• My user page on Spelljammer Wiki: This is a wiki that hopes to index all canon information for the Spelljammer Campaign Setting.

D&D wikis I visit and edit

• My user page on The Great Library of Greyhawk: This is a wiki that is dedicated to indexing the canon of the World of Greyhawk Campaign Setting.
• My user page on Forgotten Realms Wiki: This is a wiki that is dedicated to indexing the canon of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting.

Other encyclopedic D&D websites that I visit

• Dragonlance Lexicon: This is a closed canon encyclopedia that is dedicated to the Dragonlance Campaign Setting. While this isn't a wiki, it is worked on by multiple users and I've reported many small errors (like typos), so consider myself a 'minor contributor'.

Other D&D wikis I visit

• Greyhawk Wiki: This small wiki is another Greyhawk wiki that seems to be doing the same thing as 'The Great Library of Greyhawk'.
• Dragonlance Wiki: This small wiki is doing the same sort of thing as Dragonlance Lexicon.
• My user page on Eberron Wiki: This is a non-canon wiki created to expand on the Eberron material from Wizards of the Coast.
• My user page on Mystara Wiki: This is a non-canon wiki created to preserve fanon Mystara material from the Mystara Message Board. It is also planning to host various types of Mystara-fanon within different namespaces.

• My user page on the English version of Wikipedia: I think everyone knows what Wikipedia is. I'm now an occasional contributor there.

I am a native speaker of English, but am interested in Spanish.