The TF Wiki

[Gutsman Heavy]

I'm all for the jokes in the captions, especially in the toys sections, when it is talking about Powermaster Prime I don't need the picture next to the body of text to say "Powermaster Optimus Prime" it seems fairly obvious what it is. If it wasn't funny I would hit random page half as often as I do, if I want boring and sterile I can go to Wikipedias various TF entries.

[Pulse]

IMO, the TF Wiki is not the be-all-&-end-all encyclopedia for all things transformers. Isn't it trying to answer our TF-questions? So what if it's not always serious in its tone? A bit of light-hearted humour never hurt anyone...

[griffin]

Sorry Griff but that wasn't my intent at all. A lot of things have been alluded to in the past and even discouraged from being discussed. Instead of having people sniping at each other in random comments in various threads I felt it would be a lot better to discuss it openly as mature adults should do.
For my own benefit I now understand Gok's and others valid criticisms of it and I think that others that administrate it can take these on board or ignore them but at least it has been articulated clearly and openly.

I do think it is a good idea to *rationally* detail the flaws or failings of a fan project if it claims to be accurate or open to corrections, but the timing of this topic isn't the best, with several discussions on the issue in a number of other topics somewhat degenerating.
But since it is too late to change that now, this topic, while it remains calm and rational (thankyou ), can continue if it has the potential of improving the wiki in question.
If the admin/staff at the tfwiki.net are keen to improve their site and open to suggestions, then anything valid said here can be brought to their attention by our own resident wiki contributor/editor(?) FFN.

[jaydisc]

I feel that since the tfwiki.net was started up by a certain group of fans, they should have the right to administrate it how ever they wish (even if they *claim* to be accurate or welcome submissions), because they at least went to the trouble of creating such an extensive project. They have no obligation to maintain any level of accuracy or seriousness. If it was unreliable, fans would go to a TFs wiki that is reliable, or create one themselves - there doesn't have to be just one. But to keep the passion towards creating and maintaining the most comprehensive TFs wiki on the net, the people behind it need to make it fun to do. Transformers is just too huge a universe now to expect a small group of fans committed to a wiki project to be like mindless automatons in the ongoing construction of it. And if they refuse to accept help from verified corrections, then it is their loss. They are the 'owners' (administrators) of the site, which means they can adopt any content agenda they want.

I agree with this completely. After all, it's not the only avenue and it's certainly not the official avenue. I actually personally plan to compete with it myself one day (although only one component of it). And when and if that day comes, I will of course do it the way that I want to do it.

[GoktimusPrime]

I'm all for the jokes in the captions, especially in the toys sections, when it is talking about Powermaster Prime I don't need the picture next to the body of text to say "Powermaster Optimus Prime" it seems fairly obvious what it is.

Not to a total noob. And when writing informative articles one should assume that the audience is totally ignorant in order to engage them. TFwiki seems to be written just for Transfans rather than for anyone who can walk in and access it. Compare this with other wikias.

If it wasn't funny I would hit random page half as often as I do, if I want boring and sterile I can go to Wikipedias various TF entries.

As a result I find the Wikipedia TF entries to be often more accurate and better presented than those on TFwiki.

It seems that a lot of people are thinking, "well it amuses me therefore it's okay" as justification for the humour - which is a biased response. As I said, I find some of the jokes pretty funny too, but removing my personal bias and looking at it objectively I feel that the humour is not appropriate. As dirge said, it reads more like someone's blog rather than a purpose-written informative article that you would find on an encyclopaedia/wikia.

IMO, the TF Wiki is not the be-all-&-end-all encyclopedia for all things transformers. Isn't it trying to answer our TF-questions?

According to wikipedia's definition of a wikipedia... "Wikipedia...is a free, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and encyclopedia" and also describes it as "an encyclopedic reference" (1, 2, 3).

So what if it's not always serious in its tone? A bit of light-hearted humour never hurt anyone...

As Kyle pointed out, it can be very confusing to people who are not familiar with the subject that the TFwiki article is talking about - which is bad form for a resource article.

Now sure - the TFwiki people don't have to lift their standards to that of other wikis, it's their baby and entirely their decision. But I cannot respect their work as a reliable source of TF information if they're going to write with such questionable writing standards.

Anyway, I think I've made my reasons for disliking TFwiki rather clear. I don't mean to tell people not to use it (although I wouldn't necessarily encourage it either) - but as others have said, if you're going to use TFwiki then be careful and try to make sure that their information can be verified with other independent sources.

And this is just common practice whenever anyone does any kind of research - it doesn't just apply to wikis. Even if you were researching information from a proper encyclopaedia you wouldn't rely on that one source alone, you would be required to use other separate sources too. You don't read academic papers or books that only have one source listed in its bibliography!

If you're just quickly looking something up, TFwiki can be okay. But if you want to know something that you're not familiar with then I would recommend using TFwiki with caution (and all wikis should be treated that way due to their open source nature).

[jaydisc]

Just a reminder to everyone that we are talking about toys, not medical dissertations. Gosh knows I need to remind myself at times

[FFN]

On the subject of tone, I don't think Transformers is not really a topic deserving of scholarly study and contemplation. It's a toyline for kids and cartoons and comics to promote the toys or the brand, and we treat it as such. Thus we then have fun with our hobby and not take it too seriously.

For bias and tone, I think Pablo Hidalgo, content manager Lucasfilm's websites, said it best:

There are plenty of reasons as a TransFan to dig it, but what I particularly like is its absolute disregard to neutral voice. It never pretends to be anything officials and in fact, gets a bit bawdy in some of its language - especially its often-hilarious captions ... It's got the perfect mix of retentive detail and irreverence.

As for 'lifting our standards' to be like other wikis, we don't want to emulate the Wikipedia or be like other wikis. In my opinion, that's what makes us stand out and makes us unique.


I question the accusations of us refusing to accept edits that are more factually accurate than what we already have (so long as it doesn't conflict with our tone and our style guide). Give us proof and whatever edits you contribute will be left alone or reworked to fit our articles.

As for captions not being Wikipedia-style captions or not being descriptive of what is occurring, well, click on the image itself and there should be a description along with (hopefully) credits for the artists and writers involved if it's a comic panel.

[Bartrim]

I'd just like to state that I am a fan of tfwiki.

[GoktimusPrime]

As for 'lifting our standards' to be like other wikis, we don't want to emulate the Wikipedia or be like other wikis. In my opinion, that's what makes us stand out and makes us unique.

It certainly does make TFwiki stand out and unique... but not in a good way IMHO.

I question the accusations of us refusing to accept edits that are more factually accurate than what we already have (so long as it doesn't conflict with our tone and our style guide). Give us proof and whatever edits you contribute will be left alone or reworked to fit our articles.

Ah, so much to choose from. I'll just use one example - the first time I once edited the page on KISS Play to remove all the bias and suggestions of it being perverted etc. I also removed another section which lacked citation (I think it was the controversy part - note that there is no controversy over KISS Play with Transfans in Japan). I left a message explaining that I was just removing the bias out of the article. My edits were quickly undone with a message telling me not to vandalise the page.

IMO my edit was valid and justified. KISS Play being perverted is a matter of personal opinion, not fact. I'm not saying that I necessarily agree or disagree with that sentiment... that's not the issue. It is really the lack of neutral voice, and in this case, painting KISS Play to be something that it is arguably not (and as Kyle said, is just downright confusing). Forget irreverant, the tone of that page is downright insulting IMO.

Another example, Titanium Series. I editted the page more than once to include Metric specifications alongside the USC measures, e.g.: 6-inch (15cm). I did not delete the USC measurements at all - I left them in tact but I just also included metric specifications for the sake of non-Americans. Each time I did this they were deleted. I also included metric conversions for other measures, like the height and dimensions of movie Optimus Prime and Megatron... again, I did not delete the USC measures, I merely included the metric conversion. Again, the metric conversions were deleted. In wikipedia measures always appear in both USC and Metric. I have no idea why TFwiki staff are opposed to this. I thought this was the world wide web (and metric is the international standard for weights and measures). Again, this was a factual edit which was undone (why can't we state Optimus Prime's height in feet and metres or his volume in cubic feet and cubic metres?).

But to the TFwiki staff's credit there has been some edits I've done which haven't been undone - and that's mostly where I've corrected "European" to "European & Australasian" when it comes to so-called European Transformers in G1. Under the entry for European Transformers I also editted it to include Australia and New Zealand and I think that's been untouched too. But there are more pages in TFwiki - individual entries on many European/Australasian Transformers which only state that they are "European".

I've given up on editting TFwiki so I'm not going through correcting them all. (-_-)

As for captions not being Wikipedia-style captions or not being descriptive of what is occurring, well, click on the image itself and there should be a description along with (hopefully) credits for the artists and writers involved if it's a comic panel.

That doesn't change the fact that the captions themselves are not descriptive. People who are browsing through the page want information to be immediately accessible - they shouldn't have to click on the images to find out what they are. Also, I haven't noticed any text telling people that they need to click on images to read their descriptions... so unless people are psychic, they're not going to access those descriptions unless they incidentally click on the image to view it at higher resolution.

It should be the other way around - the pages should have descriptions of the images and the humorous comments should appear when you click on it.

[springah]

totally agree with Gok. it used to confuse me. too many in-jokes. also un-funny ones.

eg, http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Golden_Disk_(disambiguation)

"Don't leave them alone together. They multiply."

... what?