I realize a lot of the Sue/Stu pages are stubs, and if those don't get expanded on by the writers who made those pages, then I guess I wouldn't have a problem with deleting them.

What I would have a problem with is deleting a Sue page that does contain detailed and entertaining information, but does not fit the community's definition of "notability or prominence."

Most especially of all, I would hate to have our users feel like they aren't allowed to write interesting, detailed Sue pages in the future only because that Sue is not seen as notable or prominent by our community. I am not at all comfortable with creating and enforcing some rule about what missions contain a villain that meets some acceptable definition of "important."

I feel like I'm not explaining myself well. What I'm trying to get across is that it wouldn't be fair to tell PPCers that some of their mission targets don't meet the proper badness level to warrant a page. If someone wants to make a page for each of their Sues/wraiths/whatever, and they can create an interesting and fun-to-read article as a result, I say more power to them. I hope I'm making sense.

If we could put problematic articles into that category, then anybody who had some time could go over them and give them a bit of polishing.

You could have a space in the tag for the reason it needed revision; and then whoever went over it properly could remove the tag when the article got straightened out.

It would also let people who just incidentally noticed problems with an article tag it for other people to fix, if they didn't have time to do it themselves.

I sincerely doubt that I'll have anything new to add to this conversation, but I guess I should still pitch in a little something. I'll try to do this point by point.

REGARDING THE TONE OF THE WIKI
As Chatvert said, ‘The issue with the tone of the wiki might be due to the common misperception that snark/humor is equivalent to flat-out being mean.” The wiki has a lot of snark. I think that the nastiest of it – you know, any bits where we come off as just being cruel – could be cleaned up in the interest of being diplomatic.

Of course, you have to remember that the missions have a lot of snark too. Look at the Original Series again; it has quite a few harshly humorous moments. We are a very sarcastic bunch of folks.

I don’t think there’s any way we’re going to avoid coming off as being elitist writing snobs to someone somewhere. This is the internet we’re talking about. Haters gonna hate, and trying to please them is just going to end up being a waste of everyone’s time. All you can do is shrug your shoulders and say “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

REGARDING BADFIC AUTHOR PAGES
Eh… we probably don’t need these. I’d delete ‘em.

REGARDING SLAIN SUES AND STUS
I would keep some of the slain Sue/Stu pages, but only the truly notable ones. The PPC’s most prominent rogues, if you will. Sues and Stus that really stood out for one reason or another. Of course, once you get away from famous ones like Celebrian or Enoby, the problem of what defines a Sue/Stu as being ‘notable’ arises.

Personal example: I have made one Slain Stu page myself, which was for the Sandwich!Stu. I felt that he fit the definition of ‘notable,’ what with being an animate human-sized blue plate special. The others my agents have encountered were fairly typical in their construction, so I didn’t feel they merited pages.

Some other examples of being ‘notable’ (from this Boarder’s POV): being unintentionally hilarious above and beyond the norm, threatening the stability/existence of an entire continuum, or killing an agent during the mission.

REGARDING REDLINKS, STUBS, AND UNEEDED PAGES
I think the wiki has a few pages that can be excised outright (do we really need a page on Cornelius Fudge?). Redlinks should be de-linked and pages with redundant information should be merged. Not really that much else to add. We don't need to cover everything; just the stuff that is directly connected to the PPC.

REGARDING THIS DISCUSSION
Seriously, guys and gals. It’s a just a wiki. Take a deep breath and relax.

Since a lot of people are referencing this FAQ, there are a couple of things I have to say and suggest.

As I understand it, some wiki contributors are making covert insults at the Suethors via the wiki, and this FAQ may be in danger of contributing to the problem. I will freely admit that in the PPC FAQ, there is a satirical and condescending tone in some of the answers to the questions and complaints. However, I don't think that this is necessarily uncalled-for.

The FAQ: For Other People is somewhat different from other articles in that it is reactive, not proactive. It's not going out of its way to offend badfic writers. Instead, it is a response to badficcers asking the same questions and/or making these same complaints repeatedly. Thus, it operates on the assumption that the people reading the FAQ are the ones posing the questions/complaints, which are themselves much harsher than any of the answers it gives.

This being the case, perhaps a disclaimer would be in order, to the effect of:

CAUTION: This FAQ assumes that you are a fanwriter who has launched one of the following questions and/or complaints. If you read through the questions and none of them apply to you, you may be looking for a different FAQ. [Insert links here]

To further warn people, we could also rename it to "Frequently Addressed Complaints."

If you have further suggestions, I would be happy to hear them. In order for them not to be lost among the other sub-discussions on this topic, I suggest that suggestions for improving the FAQ: For other people should take place on the FAQ's "talk" page here.

Cheers,

Araeph

Another vote for not getting rid of the "Slain Sues and Stus" pages. I like them - they're fun, and I know I've discovered a bunch of interesting missions from browsing these pages, and it can be good reference. On the other hand, I agree that not every Sue/Stu needs their own page - only especially egregious, unique, or interesting ones - but I don't think we should get rid of them completely.

As for badfic authors, I didn't even realize we had pages for them, other than - again - particularly egregious, unique, or interesting ones. Cassandra Claire and Squirrelking, for example, are useful and, I think, important pages. These are people that are big enough names with an important enough history that they really are part of fandom at large, and thus significant to us. Other pages, though, like "Sparacus" and "The ender of lives," don't contribute much of anything to the wiki. Those no one would miss. But adding more "badfic authors" pages, if done at all, should only be done with extreme discretion, and only if it would actually contribute usefully to the general store of knowledge.

Not gonna jump in on the wiki, because there are walls o' text like whoa, but I'd like to say that I agree with getting rid of the Slain Sues page. Honestly, they sort of come off as gloating, and it's always annoying when I click what I think is going to be an actual PPC character, only to get a Sue.

Also, I can smell drama brewing from here (and see some of it forming already), and I'm going to go on record now as saying that if any of it leaks into my channel I will start kicking and won't stop until either the drama is gone or everyone but me is. PPC2 was created to be a no-drama-zone, and while that's not always been successful, I'd appreciate it if it stayed as drama-free as possible.

I believe that merging pages to get rid of unnecessary stubs is a good idea. As Nesh said, narrowing the content does improve the quality of the wiki. It is like distillation. You get rid of the stuff you don't need and that leaves you with the stuff you do need. As a lover of fine spirits, I can tell you that it does make for a better product in the end.

I am all for eliminating red links. If you can't be bothered to write a missing article, then don't make a link to it. If you just need a break of a day or two before making a new article then, by all means, link away. Just make sure you do come back and write that article or remove the link. Either way.

The offending bit of the Fandom article has been fixed. I am willing to help fix other problems of that nature (after November) if someone will point them out to me.

I will agree that the Badfic Authors page needs to go. 'Nough said.

My stance on the Slain Sues and Stus page is a bit more complicated. I think that we need to get rid of a fair number of the Sue and Stu pages that are on there, because they are pretty much all the same thing. What I would keep are Sues and Stus that are unique, memorable, or had a major impact. Celebrian would stay (because of her legendary status), as would Alumia (because she required the PPC to exorcise an entire planet) and some others.

I do not think that getting rid of these Sue and Stu pages is denying our history, as some of you have said. The missions are still on the Complete List of PPC Fiction. If you want to know about a Sue, I would suggest reading a mission. Missions have all of the information of the article, plus witty banter and a story. Besides, we have lots missions in other things, as well. You are missing out on a world of wacky hijinks if you only look on the Slain Sues and Stus page. The CLoPPCF should be the go to spot for that sort of thing, in my opinion.

As I was writing this, it was brought to my attention that some of the Sue and Stu pages don't even have any links in them at all (looking through just the A's, B's, and C's, I get more than 1 in 5 being linkless). So there is no chance of using those pages to find a mission. You would need to go to the CLoPPCF (or somewhere else) anyway.

Firstly, yeah. Some of the wiki is starting to feel a bit snobby. This is Not Good.

On the matter of what the Wiki should contain: Bytes are cheap. I don't think that we should be removing every article that isn't directly related to the PPC just because it isn't directly related to the PPC. The PPC is part of fandom - other parts of fandom appearing on our Wiki is not Inherently Bad.

On the other hand, I am not going to go to the PPC Wiki to find in-depth analysis of the meta-religion in The Wind in the Willows. The hypothetical 'you' are welcome to write it, but it's not going to get much attention.

It can be a bit hard to find things on the Wiki - this I acknowledge fully. However, this is a problem that the big Wikipedia handles rather well. (I can get from, say, President Gerald R. Ford to Battlestar Galactica (the spaceship) in a half-dozen clicks.) Props are due at this point to Aster, who has been doing a lot of fairly thankless work towards cleaning things up, connecting them, etc.

There is precisely one type of article that I believe should not, under any circumstance, appear on the Wiki: Articles concerning PPC canon that has not yet been posted. Agents who have not yet made appearances, technology that has not yet been used, etc. This is writing the headlines before launching the product- the Wiki is here to make PPC Canon easier to find, not to be the authoritative source thereof.

As far as badfic-author pages go, I think we need to be very, very careful. Is it inherently wrong to have a page saying "so-and-so wrote fics X, Y, and Z"? I don't think so. But it's very, very easy to go from there into author-bashing, which is inherently wrong.

I haven't bothered to read the various pages mentioned as needing revision (yay for work), but guess what? It's a wiki! There's an edit button!

Concerning redlinks and/or stubs: If a page has been redlinked for multiple years, or a stub hasn't been touched in that long, it's pretty obvious that nobody cares about the material enough to write a page. I'd be inclined to be careful about deleting agent stubs, especially for old main-character Agents, but if a redlink has been redlinked for multiple years, I really have no problem with it getting removed.

tl;dr: It's a wiki. It's meant to be a work in progess. Some stuff should definitely be re-worked, other stuff should be allowed to slide into deletion. I really don't see why this needs to be a Serious Issue.

...except another vote for keeping the Sue and Stu pages. As various people said, they're fun to read. And there are plenty of missions I would never have found if it weren't for those pages.

I'm also in favor of at least keeping the Cassandra Claire page in some form.

So it's come to the board. Okay, let's get started.

Honestly, I wasn't even aware that there was a badfic authors page until it was brought up on the Wiki.

Honestly, I think the Badfic Authors page itself, as well as the pages it links to, are all very poorly done as it is. I'd understand why you'd have a badfic author page and links to those kinds of pages if you had more infamous people like ComixNix or Peter Chimaera whose badfics are inseparable from the authors who wrote them, but the way it is now just doesn't work. I'd be game for voting it out completely on the principle that it (and all the pages on it) are all more or less very poorly done. The fact that it goes against the mission of the PPC is another motivation, and I'd even go so far as to say that the fact that we haven't got very many pages for badfic authors is also another reason why we're better off without it.

However, I don't think it's a good idea to get rid of the Slain Mary Sues page. At the least, I agree with the sentiment that the page should be renamed "Slain Sues and Stus" or something along those lines, but those pages in my opinion are some of my favorite pages on the whole wiki. It's fun reading about Sues we've slain in the past, and to take it away is possibly denying our past, as was mentioned by Lee. So I say we keep the Slain Sues pages on that.

As for the whole thing about the "Mary Sue" page itself... My suggestion is actually something I'm surprised nobody's thought of yet. I propose that we take out the page for "Gary Stu", and copy/paste that article's most relevant information onto the "Mary Sue" page. That I think reinforces the fact that a Gary Stu is really only a part of the concept that is the Mary Sue.

Well, those are my thoughts on the key issues here. Take it away, guys.

I have noticed a problem of - not quite snobbiness per se but more disdain - rearing its ugly head on the wiki. Definitely agree with the suggestion to remove the Badfic Authors page. I mean, c'mon...we've likely all written badfic in our early days, myself most definitely included; would we like being personally pilloried for eternity on the interweb because we didn't know how to write when we were twelve?

The issue with the tone of the wiki might be due to the common misperception that snark/humor is equivalent to flat-out being mean (there is a thin line between the two and it is not trod upon lightly). Given the earlier example stated on the talk page - "This is what creators think the vast majority of fanon looks like sometimes. And they are absolutely right." - really denigrates the good portions of fandom/fanon. As an MLP: FiM fan, a lot of some really great stories are entirely predicated on well-done, non-intrusive fanon. (Then again, fanon/fandom quality may have much to do with the average age of those active in the creative portion of the fandom. Many bronies active on the creative end are college-age or older. A:tlA and Harry Potter, for example, seem to have a lot of tween/early-teen fans who quite honestly don't know what they're doing writing fic.)

I hate to say it, but even though our "job" is to accentuate the negative in fandom, we really look like a bunch of catty bitches when we don't make note of the positive as well. Worse, we look like hypocrites, since we're essentially writing fanfic ourselves. Or even "fan"-fic of fanfic.

Granted, if an author finds out we eviscerated their fic, they will understandably be sad and hurt. But if we alter the tone of the wiki to be a little more positive and welcoming, while maintaining the good-natured humor that is a PPC trademark, maybe we'll get one communicating with us, and honestly looking for feedback. The way it is right now will likely just turn people off.

Fandom is great. Fandom, as a whole, is awesome. We're all parts of fandoms. So why disdain those who partake in what we purport to love - even if they are just plain bad at it? Love the sinner, hate the sin, people. Or at least tolerate the sinner.

Soapbox hereby dismounted.