Encyclopedia and Sources

[criticalmass]

One of the nicest features in the CIC for me is the Encyclopedia, really. I use it frequently to help my addling brain, and to get things together I read a long time ago somewhere. A BIG thanks for all the work that went into it.

The only possible flaw I could find with it is the lack of sources: Sometimes I really ask myself where a certain event, character or item is mentioned in games or books, so that I can put it in the right context.

I'd be really happy if that information were available somewhere, or if it could be added to the existing entries. I know that the effort I'm asking for may be huge if there is absolutely no source info and everything would need to be reviewed, but considering that there are about 1600 entries and 3-5 main contributors, the job comes down to a more reasonable size. I'd also be glad to offer help, although my collection is not complete in the print materials section.

But before I get people agititated, I'm not sure if the concept is intentional as it is- if the encyclopedia's angle is being a game world rather than a real world reference, then source information would disrupt that concept.

Maybe someone can clear that up for me, show opportunities or obstacles, or just offer an opinion.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The CIC Encyclopedia is fundamentally flawed -- it's a nice reference for some things, but is completely devoid of others. In my opinion, which is not necessarily that of the rest of the staff, it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

That said, I haven't personally had time to devote to such a project -- so it isn't really fair that I keep complaining. I do hope someday to finish a serious WC reference work of my own. I'll be between degree programs for a few months, and maybe it's time to put some serious work into that... but I don't honestly think I'll get anywhere any time soon.

That said, citations bother me for several reasons. In general, because they're something the internet has slavishly adopted from academia in order to avoid any sort of responsibility. Thinks like the Wikipedia are incredibly officious about them -- insistance upon them has become a crutch that replaces and denies original thought to a level that their original existence was not meant to support. They've become, in amateur usage, something that stupid people think looks especially smart. It's incredibly tempting, for a little while, to cite every sentence of everything you write... but it quickly becomes incredibly awkward and overwrought.

In the case of Wing Commander, though, we (all of us, not the CIC Staff) are the experts -- we're the credentialed Wing Commander historians, whom everyone knows can bring out their sources in a debate should the need arise. The burden of proof isn't on us in the same way that it is the casual observer turned writer.

In our specific example, too, citations can do more harm than good because a lot of Wing Commander fans want to use them to ignore whatever products they don't like. If "put it in the right context" means that you want to ignore anything mentioned by a particular game, book or movie... well, you suck. That's exactly counter to the nature of the project, building a single cohesive reference for the WC universe.

I wrote a beautiful Wing Commander pre-war timeline once -- dozens and dozens of pages of obscure references, fully cited. As soon as it was released, jerks took it, cut out all the Privateer 2 material and passed it off as their own. That was an awful experience -- those people are terrible. I've learned that anything I write will be copied over and over, and I'm fairly happy with that, credit or no (see the Japanese release of the movie...)... but I'd rather it not be available than it be edited based on peoples stupid prejudices.

When I write Wing Commander continuity history, I do so with the hope that it be the kind of material that people designing Wing Commander games in 2012 can use as a reference (and this has come up on several projects). If it's good enough to live on for that purpose, it should also be good enough to help any interested fan project -- but to survive for that either of those ends, it needs to stay in the public domain in the form I create it... and, so far, that has meant that I need to consciously avoid explaining specific sources.

If you're interested in a particular reference, though (or ten or twenty or a hundred or a thousand), why not start a thread about it? That's the essence of the community, and it's something everyone would want to take part in -- we *live* to debate obscure references.

 

[Delance]

The whole thing about references is a response to the perceived unreliability of the internet, what is a little silly. While the internet makes it easier to write nonsense, you can find published works riffled with falsehoods and inaccuracies without searching much. You have to trust the author. Because of its nature, Wikipedia can't have trusted authors - maybe if it get less "democratic", that can change for the better. Wikipedia tries to remedy this problem enforcing a strict reference policy, what might result in some improvement, but likely won’t solve the problem.

The odd thing about the original request is that, when it comes to authors, LOAF is the best Wing Commander reference in existence. The fact that he writes an article makes it more trustworthy than any citation. A completely false article can be filled with accurate references. Case in point: LOAF's butchered pre-war timeline. The references there are right, but the article is wrong. Good references don’t make a good article.

When I was writing my monograph back at the university, I was very concerned in using references to support my view, but ultimately what counted was writing. After I presented it, I realised that creative writing is the deciding factor on a work, not references.

How useful and desirable are citations on a work like the WC Encyclopedia?

 

[criticalmass]

LOAF, Delance, I do understand your points, and in the circumstances you describe I would argue the same way: A validated citation is not the guarantee for a valid argument. Therefore that danger of a "the bible says so"-argumentation is something I would not want to happen, neither in the CIC encyclopedia nor in any discussion.
To better explain my original request: "Putting things in the right context" only meant to have a reference if, say, spacesick bags are a WC3 or Priv2 item. Or if I remembered a name from a novel or from a game. Call it laziness, but I wouldn't call myself an expert on Wing Commander - I like it very much, and I like reliving the experiences that may be years past, and I also like to jump from one bit of memory to another. A reference work is a treaure trove in that state of mind, because it recreates paths both untrodden for a long time, and forks that lead you back where you came from only a minute ago.

 

[ChrisReid]

Yeah, links to the sources in some form would probably be good, but that project got complicated. The Encyclopedia that we have linked from the menu is one of several projects that never got all that far along. At one point we got the idea to try to collate information in a custom database that Kris made, and then you kind of turn the crank and it spits out an Encyclopedia. So that's what you see, and it's very incomplete because we only ever managed to get a limited amount of information input. The result is that you have hundreds of characters in there, but only a couple of the primary characters are featured. If I remember right, the way we input data into the database did include a source field, so it might be possible for Kris to push some buttons and make citations appear. But with all the missing information, it might not be worth it at this time. Definitely when we get back to it, whether it be a completely fresh start or building on one of the previous Encyclopedia attempts, I'd be very surprised if we didn't have a better way to reference where everything was coming from.