[WikiEN-l] Fiction and Wikia

Mon Nov 13 05:13:01 UTC 2006

It occurs to me that many fictional worlds have superb wikis devoted  
to them over in Wikia. These Wikis are often doing exactly what we're  
trying to avoid doing in Wikipedia - providing large amounts of in- 
universe information.

May I humbly suggest that articles on topics that are covered by such  
Wikia should have boxes at the bottom similar to the Wikiquote boxes  
that direct users to these wikis for an in-universe perspective. That  
is to say, clear, featured links to other projects that host the  
information we've decided isn't suitable for Wikipedia. (Noting that  
the reason for its unsuitability has nothing to do with its  
reliability, and everything to do with our focus.)

Obviously this involves a bit of a paradigm shift, in that we would  
be linking to projects that are not, strictly speaking, sister  
projects. But if we're serious about moving this stuff out of  
Wikipedia (And I sincerely believe we should be serious about it if  
we want to have high-quality out-of-universe articles on Wikipedia,  
since to date nobody has managed to write an article that does both)  
we need to provide the people who use Wikipedia for this sort of  
information a clear alternative - not "go away and find somewhere  
else," but "go to this project over here."

Are there any reasons someone with a good knowledge of template-fu  
shouldn't whip something like this up?

-Phil