Puella Magi Wiki talk:Wiki Cleanup 2025/Fan content
~~~~) at the end of your comment.Mass deletion
Following the discussion in user talk page, this are the pages that has been deleted during mass deletion (some restored):
Speculahs:
Categories:
| Page | Note |
|---|---|
| Category:Confirmed theories | |
| Category:Debunked theories | |
| Category:Fangames | |
| Category:Speculah | |
| Category:Unconfirmed theories |
-- 0x99 (talk) 03:59, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
I've also added a list of edits that chiefly relate to removing references to the deleted pages. I'm (mostly) not trying to judge these edits, only listing them because they are relevant to this whole thing. It may be that we judge these edits to be mostly an improvement even if all the articles listed above are undeleted, but I don't want them to simply slide under the radar. ~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 05:06, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
| Page | Diff | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Episode 1 | [1] | |
| Episode 2 | [2] | |
| Episode 5 | [3] | |
| Episode 6 | [4] |
This edit may not be directly linked to the mass deletes. A lot of the removed content on this page really does seem of little use – for example the transcript of Madoka's conversation with her mother doesn't really need to be there. ~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 05:06, 25 July 2025 (UTC) |
| Episode 8 | [5] | |
| Episode 9 | [6] | |
| Episode 12 | [7] | |
| Puella Magi Madoka Magica | [8] | |
| Magic | [9] | |
| Gisela | [10] | |
| Ophelia | [11] | |
| Kriemhild Gretchen | [12] | |
| News | [13] | |
| Audio Commentary/Episode 9 | [14] | |
| Witch Runes/Deciphering | [15] | |
| Main Page | [16] |
Personally, I think the links to various discussion forums (Discord, IRC, Reddit) should be kept, provided they're actually still active. I also think the link to the runes should be kept. I have no opinion on the rest of this change. ~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 05:06, 25 July 2025 (UTC) |
| Connect | [17] | |
| Pleiades Saints | [18] | |
| Mifuyu Azusa | [19] | |
| Guidelines | [20] |
Note: I reverted these changes because a lot of the removed information towards the bottom seemed to be valuable, such as the "when to mark an edit minor" question. Perhaps some of the changes here are an improvement. We should discuss it and decide. ~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 05:06, 25 July 2025 (UTC) |
| Astronomy | [21] | |
| MediaWiki:Sidebar | [22] |
The Role of Speculah
I personally feel that the Speculah pages are an interesting window into the collective past of the fandom, esp. as some of them crosslink to relevant 4/2ch discussion posts. I really do think that proper historical speculation anchors / more specifically moving "Observations" that were noteworthy at a place in time to the Speculah category (for example: Walpurgisnacht#Observations and the sand timer observation specifically was called out elsewhere (Kriemhild Gretchen#Trivia) as being intentional) HomuraDidNothingWrong (talk) 03:53, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Personally I don't have a strong opinion about it, but I do agree that if we were to keep speculah, the observation and trivial should be moved under that namespace. One other thing is that I think speculah should have a clear distinct styling that indiciate it is a fan content, similar to how we're doing archived talk pages, e.g. Talk:Main_Page/Archive_1 -- 0x99 (talk) 04:03, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- There are definitely some things in the list up top that would probably be a better fit for Speculah, assuming Speculah is kept. For example, the Threads page. ~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 04:07, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
What Kinds of Fan Content?
I think there are three ways in which fan content is reasonable to include on the wiki:
- The Fanworks page. One single page, listing some particularly "notable" fanworks and maybe some links to places that host fanworks.
- User pages. If a particular user creates fanworks and wishes to write about their fanwork in their userspace, I think that's fair game. (Though, one could question to what extent it's reasonable to go with that – one or two pages under userspace about their fanworks is definitely reasonable, but it's unclear to me whether it's reasonable to build an entire "subwiki" about their fanwork in their userspace.)
- Analytical fan content. This refers to content that analyzes the canon, like the sort of thing you might have written for English class (or your native language of choice) back in high school (or even university, if you happened to study something like literature), though perhaps less formalized than an actual paper. Most of the pages linked from Madoka Magica Articles fall into this category. Such content should definitely be set apart from the canon content, however.
Does this make sense to anyone else? Is there something I missed? Does anyone disagree with any of my points here?
~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 04:17, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Largely agree and I do like the divisons. It also seems to me that what exists nowadays on speculah can be largely on user pages, and if high quality can be promoted to fan content / the classical "Speculah" space with proper labeling / callouts to help reduce the misunderstanding of fan content for authoritative and sourced media. HomuraDidNothingWrong (talk) 04:40, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- I agree with this take and the grouping. Moderating user pages feels like too much to me; at most maybe ask the person nicely to put a fan content warning on the page. For Fanworks and Madoka Magica Articles, I wonder if it makes sense to repurpose the Speculah namespace (as a "Fan Content" namespace or something) and consolidate them there? -- 0x99 (talk) 04:46, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think the classical "Speculah" namespace is primarily archival, is it not? That is to say, it serves as a peek into the history of how fans reacted back in 2011 when it was first airing, the speculation that occurred while the show was on the air. Having a "Fan Content" namespace isn't a bad idea, though that name does seem to imply that any fan content is fair game, which might be a bad thing. I'm not sure how it makes sense to shove "Speculah" into the same namespace, but I guess it's also not the worst thing you could do – it is sort of fan content, after all, just much less formalized than an actual article. ~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 05:19, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- It is primarily archival, but I think it might be more useful to turn this into a generic fan content namespace and present archival data as something similar to Talk:Main_Page/Archive_1 instead (for example, threads are also archival by nature). "Community Content" might be a better name. As for the content itself, I think we can set some guidelines on what can be put here going forward . -- 0x99 (talk) 06:26, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Oh, I'd add an addendum to my note on userspaces – writing about one's fan content there is fine in my opinion, but using it as the place to pose all one's fan content is not. I think something like an entire fanfic or a gallery of all the user's art does not belong on the user page. (Also, note that when I say "userspace" I'm referencing the fact that one can create any number of subpages of their user page. All those pages count as part of their "userspace", and a particularly enterprising fanfic or fangame creator could easily take advantage of that to create a "subwiki" for their fanworks in their userspace.) ~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 05:22, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- In Fandom Wikis I am in exists "Fanon Wikis" that allows people to post in their fan-made stuff. Maybe you want to consider that but also consider the factors and such. RaviaVee (talk) 12:33, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Responding to both RaviaVee and 0x99 here: I'm just saying that using the wiki as the primary hosting for your gallery of hundreds of fan arts isn't something that I think we should allow. I have no issue with someone posting a selection of 20 or so fan arts on their user page, or information about their fanfic, links to their fan game or fan music, even actual embeds of some of their fan music (since uploading music to the wiki is supported), etc. In particular, the content RaviaVee deleted here is pretty much a perfect example of the sort of thing that I think is definitely acceptable. What I was less sure of is whether it would've been acceptable if, for example, RaviaVee had broken up that giant page into one page per character (but still nested under User:RaviaVee). If you (0x99) don't have a strong opinion on it, though, even that is probably fine (text is cheap after all, in terms of bytes). But I would still draw the line at uploading hundreds (or worse, thousands) of files solely to showcase them on your user page. That said, if you (0x99) are fine with even that, then you can feel free to make it explicit. You're the one presumably paying for the hosting, after all. ~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
Could the Madoka Magica and Faust speculah be restored? Trying to cite it in a current project and it's actually annoying having to go back and piece together what was originally semi-centralized. HomuraDidNothingWrong (talk) 19:50, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- How about undeleting all of them. These pages are a mix of legitimate analysis and community history. There's value in having both. Jimbo (talk) 17:54, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
- Should I move other community content into that namespace, then? For example, the Fanworks page, or pages pertaining to specific fan games. And what about articles? Do they go in Community or are they okay where they are? ~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 15:50, 2 August 2025 (UTC)