Wikipedia:WikiProject Sword of Truth/General Forum/Archive 1

Welcome to the Forum!
Welcome to the Sword of Truth WikiProject General Forum! If you'd like to make propositions or proposals for the Project, discuss issues about Sword of Truth articles, share ideas about how to improve Sword of Truth pages, or make general comments, you're in the right place!

I hope you enjoy the Sword of Truth WikiProject, and I hope we can get some quality work done together! - Runch 00:27, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Lets get started
Okay, so what all do we need to do? - Patrickjsanford 19:24, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well first off read the tasks and formulate!--Mystar 19:49, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * well, i've never been involved with a WP, so i figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. On another note: is there any way to get the wikipedia to generate a list of all the pages in the SOT category besides looking at the category page?

I was thinking of the order in which things are listed under each category (people under the people/groups category, items under the itmes category, locations, etc). I think it may be a good idea to list things in chronological order rather than alphabetical. This way we can somewhat try to prevent spoilers. For example, the Blood Beast does not show until Chainfire, late in the series, while in order by alpha, it would be near the top of the list. Thoughts? Merrit 18:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that's a "semi-good" idea, but there still needs to be some sort of alphabetical listing for quick reference of specific articles. If you're wanting to do it in chronological order, then I would do it by book. get a sub-category for each book, and have an alphabetical listing of related articles under that so people can go through book by book without getting lost in another article, and then have an alphabetical listing of everything


 * example:
 * sword of truth
 * sword of truth topics
 * Stone of tears
 * Stone of tears stuff
 * alphabetical listing of all topics.


 * see what I mean? i think that would work better. dont know if i got my idea accross here thought. I've gotten basic editing down, but i'm still having trouble with some of the advanced stuff :P - Patrickjsanford 03:34, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Minor character articles
Someone really needs to go through and categorize all of the Sword of Truth character articles, including nonobvious ones like Princess Violet - you may need to check backlinks to find these ones. Once we've got them all in one place, the project needs to decide which ones of these are notable enough to merit an individual article. IMO, there are only a few characters in the series who need this sort of treatment. The rest, if not all, should probably be merged to a single list of minor characters (similar to the treatment in List of characters in the Harry Potter books) or deleted outright in some cases. I'd also like to see this deletion handled all at once with a mass-AfD rather than the trickle of minor-character AfDs which I've been seeing lately. Any takers? Zetawoof(&zeta;) 23:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm on it, I posted a reply on your talk page. - Runch 00:45, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I like the idea, but i dont like the look of that page you referenced (harry potter list). It's just sloppy to me. if we do something like that I'd like to see it without all the tables. I think that instead of just a plain list of characters names that there should be a short blurb about each of them on the page so theres at least some information instead of a bunch of text. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Patrickjsanford (talk • contribs).
 * It's more the general idea of a centralized "minor character" list that I'm getting at. I do agree, though, that the HP character list leaves something to be desired. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 04:39, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Task 7
Starting in on my task for the WP. I'm going through all the category pages, then checking out each page individually, and then listing my findings here.

Category:Sword of Truth
 * Abby (Sword of Truth) - needs to be merged into a minor characters page
 * Adie - Major character, leave alone
 * Agaden Reach - needs to be put under the sub category of sword of truth locations
 * Agiel (Sword of Truth) - needs to be put under the sub category of sword of truth fictional items
 * Anargo - minor character from debt of bones. merge into minor characters page.
 * Prelate Annalina - major character, leave alone
 * Aum plant - technically a plant is a creature, but this is used more like an item. and a plant, or animal stops being a creature and becomes an item when its killed. I say it needs to go under the sub-category of SOT items due to its nature of use in the series.
 * Aydindril - needs to go under sub-category SOT locations.

well, here's the "A" section. dont have a whole lot of time right now. i'll get on more with it later. - Patrickjsanford 19:35, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


 * B section
 * Bird Man - minor character, merge into minor characters page
 * Blood of the Fold - this page is a synopse of the book. NOTE: blood of the fold is also the name of a group within the series and a distinction needs to be made. page needs to be made for "Blood of the Fold(Sword of Truth group)"
 * Blunt Cliff - needs to be put under SOT locations
 * Blunt Mountain - same as above.
 * Book of Counted Shadows - add to SOT items
 * Boundary (Sword of Truth) - SOT locations, or SOT items? falls under both, but i say SOT locations because even though there are multiple boundaries they are all located in certain specific places. ALSO the boundary page is INCORRECT. there are/where THREE boundaries. around the time of pilliars of creations we learned that the bandikar where contained within their land by a boundary that prevented their escape. SOMEONE PLEASE FIND THE REFERANCES AND CORRECT THIS.
 * Boundary warden - i think that we need to get a new page for SOT classes/profeshions of people. there are many people that are not anything magical, but still serve an important function. i think that we need to get these into one pace.
 * Boxes of Orden - SOT items
 * Brophy (Sword of Truth) - minor character.
 * Patrickjsanford 17:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

WLU's wholesale deleations
Ok, I'm at a loss Hi, I need some info/insight. I need some advise/help. We have a user who is bent on wholesale removal of content on a page. Again it is WLU who has explicitly stated she abhors this author, yet she continues to remove his themes and influences page, because she doesn’t like it or him. In order to stop this consistent abuse several of us got together and got permission for a Wikipedia project on the authors page and the subsequent pages of his works and all related material.

As soon as “I” add anything, she reverts it, never anyone else. When Runch admonishes her for it, she says well I’ll defer to you, but not mystar. SHe has made negitive statements toward Goodkind and only offered up overtly negitive POV links to be added along with her statements such as "that has been my experiance with Goodkind"...

We/I am trying to work to get these pages up to snuff. What can I do? Are her actions considered vandalism? Her early contribs look like a personal war on me. If she breaks the 3rrr what do I do then? I have had some discussion re: this with several admins on the IRC channel and have been informed her actions are not in keeping with good faith, and it appears she is undergoing ownership of several pages "looks to me like WLU thinks she's in charge of the entire damn world" and "She can't just revert something because she doesn't want it there, there needs to be consensus first". ALso "I'd say bad faith". I was advised to take it to mediation. SO I have done that. Any advise?--Mystar 23:16, 30 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Apply 3RR when it's broken, and make a request for mediation. As far as I can tell, you've already got all the advice you need. Incidentally, exactly which user and which articles are in question? Zetawoof(&zeta;) 01:07, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with the Wikiproject SoT except the fact that Terry Goodkind wrote the books. The page that Mystar is referring to is the TG biopage, which has very little info on it regarding the SoT except that he wrote it, and his influences in the series. The edits Mystar is talking about is a revert an unknown user made to basically a single section which doubled the length of the article essentially by adding in a large set of quotations from a bunch of TG interviews, all basically saying the same thing. I have added a link to the page itself which takes the reader to a new (or potentially new) page which is entitled 'Influences and Themes(Sword of Truth)', which is a more appropriate venue, in my mind.

What Mystar disingenuously leaves out is that the page has been involved in a lengthy set of edits and discussion between myself, him, and several other contributors. What existed yesterday was the result of this long process - the article was short, tight, NPOV and didn't sound like it was written TG himself. As Mystar reverted it, it was a jumble of quotes which said the same thing as what is currently in the Influences and themes section. As I write this, after reverting again, it says:

"Terry Goodkind has been largely influenced by the books of Ayn Rand and is a strong supporter of her works and of Objectivist philosophy. While he admits to writing in the fantasy genre, he perceives his novels to be more than just traditional fantasy due to their focus on philosophical and human theme"

The things Mystar wishes to include can be found in the first version of the 'Influences and Themes(Sword of Truth)' page, which I created, and there I moved the information that Mystar wishes to be included. As I realize my bias and don't really care that much about it, I'm not going to bother editing or adding content to the page, I leave that to others who are more interested.

Also of interest is the [|request for mediation]. I am not jumping into the middle of this, I am maintaining the page as it was decided by several editors. To date, no one except myself and Mystar have weighed in on the issue since the biopage was more-or-less finalized over the last couple weeks.

Further, as I think most people who have had to interact with Mystar would agree, he is an intolerant editor at best. He rarely provides reasons for his editing, aside from "I know Terry, he'd want it this way" or "That's just the way it is". He has frequently presented many issues of the biopage in particular as consensus, agreed upon and complete, prematurely. Check through the history of the talk page. I can't claim to be the perfect editor, but I believe that over time I have improved and expanded beyond the TG page and in incidents where others have disagreed with me and provided reasons, I have acquiesed and accepted the changes as improvements.

Good luck working on the SoT Wikiproject all, I have absolutely no doubt that it will be fruitful for anyone who agrees with Mystar. For everyone else, I'm sure you'll find it as frustrating as everyone else that's had to work with him. I won't be working on the project as I haven't read the books and therefore can't reasonably be expected to add substantive content. WLU 02:27, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Rather than get into a dick measuring contest, this user has for some reason acted in bad faith and is only focused on attacking my work. I will point out that as I have so stated WLU is unaware of the series ergo has nothing add to the pages. The Goodkind bio page always has been included in the project. I edited it to make it clearer for her. Adding theme content et al is justified as we see on several other authors’ bio pages including George R R Martin, which WLU is acuity aware of, as she has been working on that very topic.

Again, I am doing my best to work with in the rules and as a user still becoming familiar with this media; I am going to make mistakes, thus my consistent discussion with the admins. As anyone can read my edits have been good ones as stated by parties involved. For the record, the Bio page is neither finalized nor done. Again I ask that WLU who has more than stated her dislike for the author, even though she admits never having read his works, rather allowing others to think and make up her mind for her about said author, she feels she is still qualified to edit one what he has said with regard to his work and its content. A contradiction if ever I've heard one.

My point being We/I are hard at work on this project and we can make it into a top notch Wikiproud page! We simply need people like WLU to take their personal war elsewhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mystar (talk • contribs)

Sword of Truth categories
I think the Sword of Truth categories need some formatting changes:

1. It looks like many articles are classified in both a SoT subcategory as well as the main SoT category. For example, Adie is in both Category:Sword of Truth and Category:Sword of Truth characters. She should only be in "Sword of Truth characters" because that category is encompassed by "Sword of Truth". See, for example, Rand al'Thor, who is categorized in "Wheel of Time characters" but not "Wheel of Time".

2. Category:Sword of Truth fictional items needs to be rethought. While some of the articles the cateogry contains deal with inanimate objects, like The Sword of Truth, it's also got organizations, cultures, places, and intangible things like Chainfire event and Wizard's Fire. The word "item" doesn't seem to describe what the category contains. Second, the word "fictional" does not belong in the category name. Sword of Truth is itself fictional, so the word is redundant, and the things in the category are not fictional within Sword of Truth. Basically, the category name needs to be changed to correctly reflect the articles it contains.

3. It might be a good idea to make a Category:Sword of Truth books. As it stands, the only thing distinguishing the novels from the other articles is the template at the top of the category page.

4. Further, templates generally aren't used in category pages. The template page, Template:Swordoftruth, should be put into the Sword of Truth category rather than simply have the template display on the page. This will make it easier to access the template and make changes to it.

5. Creatures in The Sword of Truth should be Category:Sword of Truth creatures - Captain Crawdad 19:10, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, looks like this wikiproject is a bit of a ghost town, so I went ahead and plunged in, despite my limited recollections of the series. Here's a progress report:
 * 1. All articles are now listed in their deepest category only, so the Category:Sword of Truth is neat and organized, like a cute little nesting doll. So that's done.
 * 2. This item I don't want to touch without giving some more time to people who better know the series to look at. I don't want to be the one to decides what categories to create to replace "fictional items". So that's untouched.
 * 3. The category is made and all the books are in it. So that's done.
 * 4. Someone beat me to sticking the template in the SoT category, but I did fix it so that it doesn't display in the category page. So that's done.
 * 5. Done and done. -Captain Crawdad 05:07, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Confessor
uh hi. I'm not familiar with WikiProjects or anything, but I discovered this page and decided to leave a notice for anyone watching it.

I created the page for Confessor, and it needs some work, maybe a lot. The Contents bar isn't showing, nor is the references section which should be at the bottom of the page. This is likely due to my weak grasp of Wikipedia code, so someone who actually knows what they are doing should probably fix that? LOL, sorry to leave boring work to be done... I tried to do as much of it as I could, like the cover image and the book details part....

Also, it might need more information on the page overall. I'm not sure what else could be added at this point. From looking at the pages for the other books, it doesn't seem like there's anything. Nothing I know of anyway.

Well, everyone involed in this is doing great work, kudos to you all for proving a strong presence on Wikipedia for such a great series. Thanks! --DragonGuyver 12:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

resignation
well all, sorry to do this, but i'm going to have to resign my active participation from the WP. i don't have as much time on the computer now-a-days so i think it would be best if i just steped asside and let someone else pick up where i left off. i've been using my mother-in-laws computer, and she's decided to password it on startup, so i don't get to get on untill later in the evening. i'll be sticking around, but i'm not going to be heavily active, so see ya'll around. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Patrickjsanford (talk • contribs) 19:53, October 6, 2006