Talk:Main Page

Previous discussions are archived at:

• Talk:Main Page/Archive 1 (January 18, 2011–February 27, 2011)
• Talk:Main Page/Archive 2 (February 28, 2011-April 25, 2011)
• Talk:Main Page/Archive 3 (April 25, 2011-March 14, 2012)
• Talk:Main Page/Archive 4 (March 15, 2012-April 27, 2017)

Wiki cleanup

There seems to be a discussion in Meduka thread about cleaning up the wiki (and little discussion in User talk:Sondenise). I think we better continue the discussion here. My idea is that if we want to cleanup the wiki and turn it into something more formal (e.g. less fan content and speculah, more confirmed/official info), we better archive this Wiki as read only and start a new. The reason is that the wiki in its current form is a mix of fan content, speculation and official info, and many parts are not exactly well-organized.

In case we archive the wiki, this will be what happen:

• The current wiki content is frozen as read only, and put to oldwiki.puella-magi.net
• New wiki is setup at wiki.puella-magi.net (MediaWiki? Something else?)
• "Not found" page in a new wiki contain a link to suggest to look at the same article name in oldwiki.puella-magi.net

I would love to see an opinion from the community on what would be the best way going forward.

Thanks! — 0x99 14:39, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

For a reference current wiki size is 14GB because all the images. Backup in Tarsnap contains about 21GB of unique data. — 0x99 14:43, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

As long as certain pages won't be locked and the sidebar can be updated, I'm up for it. In retrospect, it's quite a hassle to edit every single page here and remove all irrelevant speculation and fanart. It'd be best to start anew and put up some new rules on the wiki so we don't have this issue in the future when new Madoka stuff comes out and everyone goes nuts:

• No fan art on character pages or episode pages or etc., we don't need to have people upload individual pieces to show off, people need to search for them on their own. Keep most fanworks to a minimum. The most notable such as Grief Syndrome are permitted to have a page. No joke pages either.
• No shipping nor speculation, the latter especially whether it be what everyone generally agrees on or not (such as whether Kyubey is evil or not) and/or what people think/predict what will happen in newer works. This should be discussed and kept to /meduka/ or elsewhere. -- The Witch's House 19:13, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I certainly agree with getting rid of fanarts; they're the source of hotlinking and take up the most space. Most fan artist do not like that we reprinting them without their permissions, etc. As for speculation, I think if it's still in the area of in-series observation and not a crazy theory (e.g. A may have something to do with Y) it should be OK. Page locking have something to do with preventing spam and edit wars (but that was from 2012), so we could definitely relax on that.

Sidebar is another story though as it's locked by permission in MediaWiki (wiki software) rather than manual lock like other pages. Granting permission to edit sidebar equals to editing all system messages which is a little scary (e.g. you can put up a side-wide persistent banner with the permission). I will see if there is an extension capable of allowing user-edited sidebars without affecting other parts of the wiki. -- 0x99 05:10, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The wiki definitely got cluttered over the years and could use a tune up. My primary concern is whether we have enough (wo)manpower to trim everything down to size. Over the past year, wiki activity has slowed tremendously, with only occasional bouts of individual, herculean efforts. Going through all 666 pages will take a lot work. Either way, I'm going to miss all the fun stuff. - Prima 05:31, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I hear you. But at the same time, we will have a lot more content coming up thanks to Magia Record (story, events, characters, etc.) If we want to those stuff in the wiki, a cleanup is definitely needed. For the fun stuff I think Walpurgischan can still be used (I plan to keep it running as long as I could) although I understand that it's not the same kind. -- 0x99 05:47, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

If we're doing this, I'll help when I could. Any goodies we can get if we're starting afresh? How about languages? Webm? Do we have to manually migrate over all the media? - Prima 05:55, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Multilangual is definitely one (so we can have en:Pages, ja:Pages, fr:Pages, etc). Setting up wiki-family for supporting multi languages wiki with common assets (photos, etc.) require a bit of work, in which doing with current wiki state is rather difficult (but a lot easier when start anew). WebM/HTML5 video is likely yes because we can upgrade MediaWiki without breaking a lot of stuff (and can set $wgHtml5 to true). Media have to be manually migrated though, but I think uploading files in newer version of MediaWiki is a lot easier than what we have. -- 0x99 06:04, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Is it really safe to assume we should delete stuff because we have a lot more content? Kirara is defunct and Magia Record isn't going to be any different from your average region locked mobile game.Trowa199 06:42, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I understand your concern. However, my idea was at we leave the current wiki in read only mode at the different URL and start migrating stuff. The existing content would still be there with nothing deleted, and we would have a clean canvas to start reorganizing stuff. If we're not sure whether the effort is going to be successful, we can even leave the current wiki as-is for the time being (at wiki.puella-magi.net) and start a new wiki at different URL until we're satisfied with it before switchover, e.g.

• Create new.puella-magi.net as a new wiki (leave wiki.puella-magi.net running as-is)
• Start importing stuff from wiki.puella-magi.net to new.puella-magi.net
• Once we're OK with the content in the new wiki, perform a switchover:
  • wiki.puella-magi.net -> old.puella-magi.net -- 0x99 07:13, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
  • new.puella-magi.net -> wiki.puella-magi.net
• Make sure not found pages in new wiki have a link to old wiki.

This way works too, but may be a little bit confusing on switchover. But either way: no content will be deleted. I plan to keep everything up as long as I could. -- 0x99 07:13, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I have the time (mostly late night or early afternoon) to help migrate to a new wiki. I am down for the effort. Also, I was considering starting the content for Magia Record but I'll hold off for now until we start a new wiki from scratch and then add that particular batch of content. Here's my couple of cents:--Sondenise 06:56, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

• No speculation unless it's something with really strong evidence (and that kind of discussion can be done on walpurgischan.net rather than clutter up a wiki with things that aren't canon). "In-series observation and not a crazy theory (e.g. A may have something to do with Y) it should be OK." Completely agree with this.
• No fanart. It seems like a big waste of space, bandwith, and hotlinking as mentioned above. Also, much of it ends up being pretty irrelevant or non canon (yuri shipping or theoretical magical girl forms of witches)
• Languages would be fun to have as well. Especially since the show has a dub in several languages (and I speak spanish :3) ---Sondenise 06:56, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Ah I see what you mean 0x99. Main reason why I asked about the sidebar is to reorganize it and be able to rename/add new works as they come such as Magica Record to keep everything up-to-date. I'm willing to help with the new wiki as much as I can. Should we divide up the work load like userA adds News related pages/media, userB adds stuff related to Tart, etc., etc.? -- The Witch's House 07:08, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Also, I know we've gone over the fact that fan art needs to go, but should we limit that in user pages too? (since I do have my own fan made content there...) --The Witch's House 07:23, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not against it as long as it doesn't go crazy overboard (like 20+ images) Sondenise 07:41, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm personally OK with posting them in user pages, as long as you have the permission to use them. (I know few fan artist who don't like us because all the reprinting without permission, resolving that would be a good thing too.) -- 0x99 08:19, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I meant stuff you made yourself (in my case, my fan witch on my page). I clearly mark them as fanwork so they don't clash of course. --The Witch's House 08:58, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

In that case I think it should be fine! -- 0x99 04:51, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Did the whole yuri page had to be deleted? --Mutopis 03:04, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

That was me. My apologies. I was trying to scrub off the speculation and mostly unfounded pages from the wiki before we all decided to get a proper discussion going. I think 0x99 said that the wiki is archived periodically so we should be able to revive the page for the purposes of this soon-to-be archived wiki and then we can better decide what analysis/speculation pages would be best to transfer to the new wiki (for example, the deciphering the runes / notes pages would probably be good to have, but a page of debunked theories not so much) Sondenise 03:25, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I've rollback the page to the version before blanking. -- 0x99 04:51, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I think dividing the workload for the transfer to a new wiki might work best. It would help to prevent us from tripping over each other in the beginning and then after the bulk of that is transferred we can then assign people/pairs/teams for the new content pages that will need to be created on the (new) wiki. 03:25, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

There's also the template tags stuff that need to be migrated. I can work on that although we need to list what templates are still needed and where (e.g. Template:Runes, Template:Box). -- 0x99 04:57, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Guidelines

Before doing anything, we should figure out exactly what guidelines the new wiki will follow first. User:Sondenise suggested trimming away fanart, fanwork, and speculation. If we're going with that, we should nail down exactly what fit into those categories. Should Science and Architecture be trimmed because it's fanwork? Should Population Dynamics be trimmed because it's speculative? We have a great selection in Articles that are all various degrees of fanwork, will they have a place in the new "formal" wiki?

At the minimum, I feel well written and edited analysis has a place in this wiki. Pages like Math are among the most popular pages on this wiki, what got it the respect worldwide and in Japan. It'll be a terrible mistake to remove them all in a rush to act formal. This wiki was an authoritative source, not because it was official or up-tight, but because it was comprehensive and in-depth. Let's avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water here. - Prima 03:45, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I love the math stuff and analytic stuff in the wiki and think they should still be fine. Population dynamics is an amazing analysis work, an even the runes decryption actually are speculative (because official never actually give us an answer for that). I think the primary concern should be where to draw a line. -- 0x99 04:51, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Some of the pages need cleaning up in terms or reorganization or cosmetic editing for ease of reading but overall I think the pages listed in Articles should stay. They're important contributions and much of it is strongly relevant to the series overall. I think the stuff that primarily needs to go would be more of the Category:Speculah stuff than anything. Sondenise 07:55, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

What about Theories? Some pages like Speculah:Let's Predict the Ending may be interesting to look back at in hindsight, even when wrong, as such worth preserving. The problem here is without explicit standards, what's "strongly relevant" is vary from editor to editor. - Prima 13:06, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, since we will be starting anew, content from old wiki (i.e. current wiki) would still be accessible from a different URL even after migration. -- 0x99 14:07, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

We won't lose the pages, they'll still remain here for anyone to see how fans reacted to Madoka when it was first coming out. But for the new wiki, are all those speculah pages really necessary? And which of those pages do we want to keep that we could consider as still relevant?Sondenise 17:12, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Documenting Speculah during the initial TV airing was an important to the wiki's growth and popularity. I can see a case to archiving the old ones at the current interregnum, but are we just not going to allow speculah permanently? What about if/when the Madoka sequel airs, will new speculah just be ignored? I'm less worried about preserving specific pages, but more that we'll get started with the new wiki without a clear consensus and explicit standards on what will the new wiki cover. This entire process came about because of editor conflict. We're going to get a lot more of that if we don't work out some clear guidelines first. - Prima 23:15, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Just thinking out loud; if we use wiki-family, we can have separate wiki but with shared user accounts and assets to support speculation and fandom content. It would be treat in similar way to linking between languages. (Or similar to how Wikipedia - Wiktionary works.) -- 0x99 04:43, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

• What is the line between Analysis and Speculah?

• Well analysis has fact based evidence behind it and speculation sounds more like theories based on personal opinion. I suppose a good way of keeping both would be to put speculation about say, a new character, on it's own page marked speculation rather than add paragraph after paragraph of what later becomes clutter on the character's biography. Sondenise 00:53, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

• What criteria mark a Fanwork as sufficiently notable to be worthy of a wiki article?
• How much fanon belong in the new wiki?
• What roles should the wiki play to help preserve history of the fandom?

• If we keep the speculation and analysis on it's own page then it would be easier to archive those particular pages later when they're no longer relevant. Just an idea. Sondenise 00:53, 30 April 2017 (UTC)