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acetone-free · 4 years

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Getting the Dames and Dragons wiki up and running proper

Hello!!!

So I’ve been editing and adding to the Dames and Dragons fan wiki for about a year now. I’m an admin and bureaucrat and all that jazz but to be honest the wiki totally needs a revamp and I would really love some help with it!! If you would be interested in writing or editing some stuff please check out the bit under the cut!

Thank you! :D

First off: Transcripts

@camomilafil got the ball rolling on the transcript front in 2018, but since then only 19 have been completed. I’ve done a couple myself, so I know that they can be pretty high effort and time consuming. But at the rate that they’re going right now Torva will have been defeated and the Guardian’s will have started their true quest of destroying Dawson before episode 50 even has a google doc.

Creating transcripts not only makes the podcast more accessible, but they also make a super good information base for pages on the wiki. Writing episodes and character pages is made so much easier when you can CTRL F for keywords on a transcript doc, rather than having to re-listen to specific episodes.

At this point there are only four more episodes to transcribe for Into Avelis, but I think it would be really good if people were to begin transcribing later arcs as well. I would love to be able to stay on top of current episodes.

If you are interested in transcribing, you can find a guide on how to format here and the master doc of all episodes here. I’ve only added a little bit to the original rules of the transcribing doc, but I think they were helpful additions :). Keep in mind, you don’t have to transcribe a full episode, or even format any of it. Every little bit helps and even just doing a minute or two is awesome of you!

Secondly: Wiki Pages

Arc and Episode summaries

So far I am up to episode 16 for the summaries. I’m trying to transcribe a few episodes ahead because personally I find it way easier to write a summary with a transcript than while listening to the episode. However, you absolutely don’t have to have a transcript to write an episode summary. On the wiki I have created a page for every Arc so far (except for The Survivor's Ballad, I’ll get on that soon hehe), with an episode table so it should be pretty easy to see episodes that need summarising.

If you don't want to summarise an entire episode but do want to help, please, please, please feel free to go back and edit episode summaries from Arc 1. I made those about a year ago before I really had a good idea on how to summarise and trust me, those bad boys are rough to read. I’ve been planning on going back and redoing those for a while now lmao.

Otherwise, whole Arc summaries also need to be written. I’ve already done one for Arc 1, so that should give you a good idea on the type of detail needed.

For writing episode or arc summaries, I would say try to keep them around 1000 words and generally don’t write anything too meta. Try to keep it as in the world as possible. That being said, it’s totally cool if the summaries aren’t Serious Retellings. I usually try to do jokey subheadings and stuff like that.

There are a few more things I think are important to keep in mind while writing episode summaries, and if people express interest I am totally down in writing a guide to how I have been doing it. The best thing I think to do would be to go and read a couple of the summaries already on the wiki. Preferably from Arc 2 because I wasn't kidding about the quality of the ones from Arc 1.

Place and People pages

Hehe alliteration.

Just to get it out there: The main Guardians’ and Maeri’s pages totally need revising. They need summaries for their actions in each arc, as well as updates on their personality sections because these dudes have gone through character development. So if you wanna start somewhere, I’d say go ahead and do that.

Otherwise, here's what I think you should do if you want to write a character or location page: Choose your favourite character or location or item or whatever. Figure out exactly what episodes they are in, listen to them, take notes, and then write the page. If you’re feeling frisky, even transcribe the parts of the episodes that they appear in.

Once again, I think the best thing to do is to read a few characters or location pages to get an idea of the amount of detail needed as well as what type of sections you should write. Like, their personality and appearance and whether or not to separate their page into episode summaries or arc summaries for that location/character. If people want, I can also make a more thorough guide on how to write these pages.

To be honest I haven’t done many of these because I’ve been more focused on getting transcripts and summaries out. So far, however, I’ve been doing these pages as I go. If a new NPC is introduced and only appears for an episode or two, I’ll write those character pages as I’m writing the episode summaries. That being said, if an NPC is introduced and I know they’ll appear later down the line I’ll usually compile all information I have on them in a separate google doc and wait until later to write they’re page. The same goes for location pages, really. For example, I have a google doc full of a half-written page on Danmar that I haven’t published yet because I know that in about five transcribed episodes the party will be back there and I don’t want to have to edit it a whole bunch.

Thirdly: Editing

If you don’t really want to write an entire summary or don’t feel comfortable enough to do so but still want to contribute the absolute most helpful and important thing you can do it edit. The wiki is like, full of typo’s my dude. (Totally my bad, I’m really bad at catching them hehe). Not only that, but it would be really good if people were to fix any grammar issues or any incorrect information within the pages themselves. Broken links, missing info, inconsistencies in categorisation, all that good stuff.

You could also go through and double check transcripts that have been deemed ‘complete’ for any typos or formatting issues, if you wished. Absolutely anything and everything helps and it’s always good to have a second or third pair of eyes.

Fourthly: Where to start

Here’s a list of wanted pages on the wiki. For anyone unfamiliar with how fan wikis work, a red link indicates that the page hasn’t yet been written but has been linked in another page, and that’s where you come in, my dude.

You don’t have to write a full on, in depth complete page. Even just creating the page and beginning to summarise is great. That creates a basis for other editors, allowing people to build on what you have started.

If you want to start a transcription you absolutely have to read the formatting and editing guide, linked here once again. Do your best to follow those rules, but it’s okay if you forget or miss some here or there. That’s why other people double check your work! This is collaborative and you can’t be expected to do everything right in the beginning.

A Final Word

I think it would be cool if we got a few more people to semi-consistently edit and add to the wiki. I don’t expect many people, but any addition to it makes it a better compendium.

If anyone wants to start writing stuff for it but feels like they need direction please message me! I’m sure I can find something fun for you to do :). Again, I think I’ll write some more in depth guides for how to write pages on the wiki, but if you want to do transcriptions the instructions are already in place and good to go.

That being said, I don’t completely know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to write any of the cool formatting code and stuff that some wiki’s have, so if anyone is interested in helping create a more fancy-schmancy lookin’ wiki and knows how to do all that, it would be really cool if you could get in touch with me as well.

I would love to hear any other questions or suggestions! To anyone who chooses to help, thank you in advance!

#dames and dragons #maeri the survivor #maeri #fran #corbin #laika #slake

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