Announcing SwordWiki -- myArmoury.com

Stirling Matheson · Posted: Sun 02 Dec, 2007 3:10 pm Post subject: Announcing SwordWiki

www.swordwiki.org is now online.

This started on Sword Forum due to people wanting a database of Angus Trim's out of production swords, but we managed to turn it into a full fledged wiki.

If you have any articles to add on specific production swords, makers, sword topics (harmonic balence), swordsmen, or anything, please do... I would love to see this become something very useful, since I think is has the potential to do so.

PS: Mods, I think this is the proper section for this, but if not, feel free toss it to wherever.

Nathan Robinson · myArmoury Admin

I have moved this topic to the Off-topic Talk forum.

Please note the description for this forum:

"Discussions of general history and other miscellaneous topics relating to arms and armour that do not specifically fit our other forums"

Thank you.

Ed Toton · Posted: Mon 03 Dec, 2007 1:18 pm Post subject:

I'm quite excited about this. I hope my server holds up... :)

We've already started putting together a framework with basic index and sections, and a few sword models. It's my hope that collectors will be wiling to contribute photos, stats, descriptions, reviews, and general info to help flesh out the data.

But we also need information to be added in a lot of other areas as well.

M. Eversberg II · Posted: Mon 03 Dec, 2007 8:10 pm Post subject:

So is any sort of sword-related information welcome there?

M.

Ed Toton · Posted: Tue 04 Dec, 2007 6:43 am Post subject:

Yes, all sword-related information is welcome, as long as it's factual information and not story-telling. :)

Stirling Matheson · Posted: Tue 04 Dec, 2007 8:15 am Post subject:

I put up an article entitled "SwordWiki Guidelines" that should give a general idea of what we are looking for, if you have any suggestions for the guidleines just email myself or Mr. Toton.

M. Eversberg II · Posted: Tue 04 Dec, 2007 9:51 pm Post subject:

I wonder if we could get Chad's approval to transplant the Typology stuff over?

M.

Chad Arnow · myArmoury Team

Bill Grandy · myArmoury Team

M. Eversberg II · Posted: Wed 05 Dec, 2007 2:01 am Post subject:

Ctrl C, Ctrl V for the win :p

I'll give the Copyright stuff a read through; I had thought the articles where by Chad but they're by someone else; his profile page had no contact info, however. :|

M.

Bill Grandy · myArmoury Team

Ed Toton · Posted: Wed 05 Dec, 2007 8:36 am Post subject:

I agree, in some of these cases it may make sense to have a general overview or summary, and link to myArmoury articles as "further reading" (and articles on other sites such as wikipedia for that matter). Sometimes having an index to a variety of resources is just as useful as having an in-depth article.

Stirling Matheson · Posted: Wed 05 Dec, 2007 3:24 pm Post subject:

We should have our own articles, which should link to myArmoury, since it is a fantastic site. I see SwordWiki filling a slightly different niche than myArmoury in that sword Wiki should be straight information, whereas in a published article an auther can present his/her opinion. Some articles on both websites should be redundant, but I think it would be worthless to copy paste them, since that would bring nothing new to the community, and problably against copyright.

Chad Arnow · myArmoury Team

Stirling Matheson · Posted: Wed 05 Dec, 2007 5:26 pm Post subject:

I'm not saying your articles are completely subjective, but there is more room here for opinion than I think is proper in a Wiki. myArmoury is clearly based on facts and knowledge of the topic at hand, but there is room for an author's personal opinion in an article. That's all I mean to say.

Wikis of course have nice amounts of drivel posted on them... but that's what moderation is for. :D

I'm nice and familiar with everything on this site, so if I see anything that has been ctrl-v ctrl-p I'll delete it immediatly.

Chad Arnow · myArmoury Team

Ed Toton · Posted: Wed 05 Dec, 2007 8:11 pm Post subject:

Excellent, yes I see some of your contributions. Thanks for lending a hand!

I've also gone in and removed a few opinions, though they're certainly going to creep in. I think you're right, some of it will certainly be valid, but we should be careful about how it's presented.

Wikipedia has the term "weasel words" for another concept I'm trying to steer clear of-- making statements along the lines of "many feel that" or "most agree", etc. If it can't be quantified, it should probably be reworded.

One thing I've also been doing is adding an indicator of some kind to the sword model names if they don't have model numbers already. We'll quickly run into name collisions otherwise (for instance, A&A "smallsword" vs Cold Steel "smallsword" vs the generic smallsword article/definition). Of course, we could always do what wikipedia does, and have disambiguation pages and so forth on a case by case basis, but I figured that would be more work for everyone. Thoughts?

M. Eversberg II · Posted: Wed 05 Dec, 2007 8:52 pm Post subject:

I was kidding about copypasta, of course; I am considering writing up an article after class tomorrow, citing our articles here as well as a few books I possess.

M.

Anders Backlund · Posted: Sat 08 Dec, 2007 2:15 am Post subject:

Interesting. That could be pretty damn awesome if it grows and gets enough articles... :)

Stirling Matheson · Posted: Sat 08 Dec, 2007 9:13 am Post subject:

I think that having "A&A Smallsword" vs. "Smallsword" should work pretty well without the need to add disambiguations.

On a side note, how tough should we be on citations? We havn't really been watching this too much, and I wouldn't want this is degenerate into craziness. I'm probably going to go in and add citation neededs to a few articles. However, this would severely limit our ability to provide statistics on swords, since most of them have been measured by the submitter.