zinewiki

[Jerianne]

What do you guys / did you guys think about the Zine Wiki site? (If not familiar: it was a wiki dedicated to zines, with pages on specific zines, publishers, and distros, plus some article reprints.)

I know some people thought it had flaws, but I thought it was a great resource, and I'm still a bit sad that it was never resurrected after being hacked. I have thought about contacting Fall of Autumn/Alan to see if they might turn it over to the care of Zine World, to see if we could reconstruct it or if not, start it over... but I know I can't really spare the time myself to do the work.

Just curious: Does anyone else think it would be worth it? Does anyone else want to see it up and running again?

[Harley R. Pageot]

I'm continually surprised/disappointed when I look people up and they don't have listings on here or they're hideously outdated.

The Canzine listing says "we'll be doing three in 2006" meaning that it hasn't been updated in well over three years.

I tend to feel like I have nothing to write about myself when I update my entry but at the very least you should have a basic entry with contact info.


Join! http://www.zinewiki.com/

[Amy]

Sounds amazing.

[James N. Dawson]

A lot of my never entering anything on ZineWiki is just laziness and procrastination, but part of it's confusion and doubts about how I should go about it.

When entering my own zines, should I talk about myself in the first person, or make my entry as though it's not my own zine, in the 3rd person?

I'm sorry to stir up controversy, but it seems all the strong feelings about privacy and "permission" and all has made me unsure of what and how much info on an old zine in my collection I should include. Will it embarrass the publisher, who now sees zines as an embarrassing part of her or his youth?

Another problem is, I have a lot of zines I've kept because I particularly liked them, but only one issue. It's hard to write about that zine's entire history. Maybe a stub would be better than nothing.

What about creating some sort of "template" to enter zines on? With prompts for number issues, first & last year of publication, publisher, last or prestent address, web address, etc. Maybe that'd help get people started, get some stubs in there, and entries could be fleshed out gradually.

Also, participating in the "wiki format" has confused me in the past, so it may take some time to get the hang of it.

Just some thoughts on why ZineWiki may not be getting much attention.

[kit feral]

Yeah, I gotta agree, I find it a little confusing. A template would be a great idea.

James N. Dawson said:

A lot of my never entering anything on ZineWiki is just laziness and procrastination, but part of it's confusion and doubts about how I should go about it.

When entering my own zines, should I talk about myself in the first person, or make my entry as though it's not my own zine, in the 3rd person?

I'm sorry to stir up controversy, but it seems all the strong feelings about privacy and "permission" and all has made me unsure of what and how much info on an old zine in my collection I should include. Will it embarrass the publisher, who now sees zines as an embarrassing part of her or his youth?

Another problem is, I have a lot of zines I've kept because I particularly liked them, but only one issue. It's hard to write about that zine's entire history. Maybe a stub would be better than nothing.

What about creating some sort of "template" to enter zines on? With prompts for number issues, first & last year of publication, publisher, last or prestent address, web address, etc. Maybe that'd help get people started, get some stubs in there, and entries could be fleshed out gradually.

Also, participating in the "wiki format" has confused me in the past, so it may take some time to get the hang of it.

Just some thoughts on why ZineWiki may not be getting much attention.

[Jerianne]

Wiki editing can take a little getting used to, I know, but there are several help pages available at ZineWiki to get you started:
guide to wiki formatting
content guidelines
Manual of Style, including a sample entry you can copy and paste to get you started. (Hopefully one day we will get a template made, but in the meantime...)
All of the above, and a few other things, can be found in the help section.

To answer your questions, James:
Articles should be written in encyclopedia style, so if you're writing about yourself, yes it should be in 3rd person. If you only have one issue, writing a stub would be better, unless that one issue is reflective of the whole series.

[Catherine Elms]

I love Zine Wiki, and have written a few entries for zines and distros (including a detailed entry for myself!) I personally think it would be a really great resource if more people created entries for their zines.

[James N. Dawson]

Okay. I did enter my old zine, JND Pseudo Zine, on zinewiki, and it *seemed* to take, but there were a few problems.

I also added it to the alphabetical title list successfully. But when I click on it, it tells me there's no entry for "JND Pseudo Zine", but when I enter it in the search box, it brings up the entry I made.

I tried to report this on zinewiki itself by going clicking on "Dan Halligan" as instructed and then clicking on "discussions", I found the discussion page, but couldn't see where to add anything.

I know it's probably tedious try to explain things to an incompetent like me, so I don't really expect anybody to. I'm just "documenting" my first efforts to try to contribute to zinewiki.

I've tried to read the instructions, but I'll go over them some more, and maybe I'll figure it out.

[Jerianne]

One thing to remember is to pay attention to capitalization when you are creating a page, because capitalization does matter. You did add it correctly to the alphabetical list (as JND Pseudo Zine), but the page you created was titled Jnd pseudo zine, which is why the link didn't work. I moved the content over to the correctly capitalized title.

To add to a discussion page, go to the discussion page like you did then click edit. It's good form to go to the bottom of the current entries and add a new section with your comments (unless you are replying to existing comments on the page). Does that help?

James N. Dawson said:

Okay. I did enter my old zine, JND Pseudo Zine, on zinewiki, and it *seemed* to take, but there were a few problems.
I also added it to the alphabetical title list successfully. But when I click on it, it tells me there's no entry for "JND Pseudo Zine", but when I enter it in the search box, it brings up the entry I made.
I tried to report this on zinewiki itself by going clicking on "Dan Halligan" as instructed and then clicking on "discussions", I found the discussion page, but couldn't see where to add anything.

I know it's probably tedious try to explain things to an incompetent like me, so I don't really expect anybody to. I'm just "documenting" my first efforts to try to contribute to zinewiki.

I've tried to read the instructions, but I'll go over them some more, and maybe I'll figure it out.

[Harley R. Pageot]

ZineWiki is still awesome - and not just because my profile is this month's featured article!

 

http://www.zinewiki.com/

 

Apparently spending a lot of time on writing your own profile is worth it.

[Dan 10things]

It is! :) Really, for an article to be a feature article, it needs a photo/cover scan, links to other articles, and enough content to make it interesting to others. Hence why we encourage anyone listing a zine to do a cover scan, it makes the whole database more exciting.

Harley R. Pageot said:

ZineWiki is still awesome - and not just because my profile is this month's featured article!

 

http://www.zinewiki.com/

 

Apparently spending a lot of time on writing your own profile is worth it.

[Persephone Pomegranate]

I added a page for Reclusive Obscenities a few weeks ago but it's still not listed in the zines quick links. Does it just take time or is there something I need to do?

 

Edit: I just figured it out :)

[Beth M]

I think it would be worth getting it back up and running again. tell us if you hear anything about it. :]