Mistborn Wiki

[DigitalKandra]

Hello fellow Brandon aficionados! I just came into possession of the Mistborn Wiki, and as it was mainly active 10 years ago it is pretty outdated. I would love some help adding content, and livening up the discussions(which tbh are much easier to use that the 17ths)!

[Firesong she/her]

I don't think it is best to come in and have your very first post be advertisement for your own website. Feels a bit more odd to do so when it is a website that attempts to fill the same niche and intention as a site that this forum is associated with. Feels odd to me. especially due to the fact that Fandom wiki is a massive scam mostly dedicated to shoving constant ads in people's face to the point of being an absolutely hellish experience rather than being a repository of information.

It isn't even fully about you asking us to come over, but it being the very first thing you posted about definitely doesn't give good vibes. 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Firesong

[Chaos he/him]

Hi there! I recall you went into the #17s Discord channel in March to ask people to help out on the Stormlight Wiki about here: https://discord.com/channels/304777819936784385/304952464749232128/1089687980790263869

I responded with several comments that you did not respond to; it seemed like you just tried to get people to edit that wiki as well. You simply said that you don't like the Coppermind. I am certainly happy to have a discussion. There are certain things user interface wise for editing that is easier on Fandom, which can be set up on the Coppermind, but Mediawiki is not easy to work with in many circumstances. If that is the primary issue you have, let's discuss and see what we can do to mitigate this! 

Ultimately, the Coppermind has several advantages. For one, it already has the most users and editors, as well as the most content already. There's just an immense amount of fandom inertia that will be challenging for you to overcome, and try and persuade people that what you are trying to build is superior to the Coppermind. Again, I would be curious as to what issues you have, and if we can help resolve them. We do believe that the Coppermind has high standards for citing content, sourcing art, and overall quality across thousands of articles, and no other wiki compares. Additionally, cosmere connections will only get more extreme, so I suspect a Mistborn-only wiki (or Stormlight-only wiki, for that matter) is inherently not going to be an idea that works well in the long term. And honestly, I think a ton of people hate the layout and obnoxious ads of Fandom. 

It is not against the rules to do what you're doing by posting this, however, I do think it's not a particularly persuasive method of joining a place--that you know runs the competing wiki--and come in, have seemingly no desire to contribute to the community, and simply advertise something else. I would be legitimately very curious to analyze what issues the Coppermind has with you and see what we can do to help. Maybe we can do some things to help, maybe not, but let's discuss it! I do think you will have a hard time getting users to your other wikis without having a compelling pitch, as the Coppermind is quite beloved in the community--it certainly gets much higher traffic than 17th Shard itself.

And of course, if anyone wants to edit the Mistborn wiki, go for it if you wish! 

Thank you for reading, and I hope to hear from you.

[DigitalKandra]

While yes, the 17th has more content and users, here.os a quote from and old Fandom user that I particularly agree with

"I always thought that the Coppermind was kind of disorganized, hard to navigate, and frankly, looked like it was built in the early 2000s. I personally think its annoying how they will have multiple pages giving the same information when it could all be neatly kept into one very informative article. "

Fandom has more up-to-date software, is more user friendly, and the developers are much closer, if I spot a technical problem all I need to do is write an email, and it will be fixed within a day. If I have a question about anything whatsoever technical, again all I need to do is write an email, and get a response within the day. And more along the lines of user friendly: while it is also easier to edit, contact developers, and post messages and fourums than the 17th; on Fandom there is many more customization options, with personal css and is, as well as advanced preferences. The things availible with Fandom are much more multitideinois than on the 17th.

Edited August 21, 2023 by DigitalKandra

[Chaos he/him]

What sort of preferences would you like specifically? I'd love to know.

9 minutes ago, DigitalKandra said:

I always thought that the Coppermind was kind of disorganized, hard to navigate, and frankly, looked like it was built in the early 2000s. I personally think its annoying how they will have multiple pages giving the same information when it could all be neatly kept into one very informative article. "

I'd certainly agree that finding what you want on most wikis--Coppermind included--can be challenging, and certainly the old skin is the old default Wikipedia skin. There is a Pivot skin you might prefer more that I think looks much nicer but has some small issues.

I'm curious if you have any specific example of pages like that. That gets very complicated for things like, say, the Knights Radiant and Surgebinding. What goes on what page is nontrivial. Ideally, something like the Roshar page is a good example of where you can have an introductory section of a topic with a link to, say, the full article on the False Desolation.

[DigitalKandra]

> What sort of preferences would you like specifically? I'd love to know.

well for starters a small few of the preference options on Fandom include, the ability to make a custom signature (like mine which is "<span style="font-weight:bold;font-size:100%;background:-webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, #3e436d, #5355be, #88dae5);-webkit-background-clip:text;-webkit-text-fill-color:transparent;">[[User:Moonwatcher x Qibli|Winter]] | [[Message_Wall:Moonwatcher x Qibli|Message Wall]] | [[w:c:community:User:Moonwatcher x Qibli/Guestbook|Guestbook]] [[File:Fandom_Stars_Logo_smaller.svg|16px|link=Help:Fandom Stars|Fandom Stars member]] </span>")

the ability to customize how you view pages with a few clicks

over ten filters to apply to what notifications you receive

Different fault-free themes

The ability to customize the width of all content

The ability to change the format by which you view dates and times

Customize how you view files

Multiple options on how to initiate an edit, all can be turned off or on with a single click of a button

The ability to make the site more accessible for yourself such as an option to "nable colorblind-friendly scheme for syntax highlighting when editing wikitext

And most of all, all of this loads fast and is very user friendly, and easy to navigate.

Again this is just a few of the options available on Fandom, and this doesnt even touch the personal customizations possible with personal CSS and JS.

[Starwatcher]

Off the top of my head, the "Preferences" link at the top of the site includes the ability to set a custom signature, options for what notifications you want to receive, the ability to change date and time format as well as set your local timezone, enable or disable the Media Viewer, and a syntax highlighter. Personal CSS and JS pages also work on the Coppermind, if that's something a user wants to do. There may be options for some of the other things you're looking for as well; "the ability to customize how you view pages with a few clicks," for example, is pretty vague. If there are options we don't have that would improve the user experience, we're receptive to suggestions, even if they don't turn out to be workable for us.

[Firesong she/her]

11 hours ago, DigitalKandra said:

While yes, the 17th has more content and users, here.os a quote from and old Fandom user that I particularly agree with

"I always thought that the Coppermind was kind of disorganized, hard to navigate, and frankly, looked like it was built in the early 2000s. I personally think its annoying how they will have multiple pages giving the same information when it could all be neatly kept into one very informative article. "

Fandom has more up-to-date software, is more user friendly, and the developers are much closer, if I spot a technical problem all I need to do is write an email, and it will be fixed within a day. If I have a question about anything whatsoever technical, again all I need to do is write an email, and get a response within the day. And more along the lines of user friendly: while it is also easier to edit, contact developers, and post messages and fourums than the 17th; on Fandom there is many more customization options, with personal css and is, as well as advanced preferences. The things availible with Fandom are much more multitideinois than on the 17th.

I personally disagree with turning everything into just a couple massive articles. While some fit with massive articles, such as pages for nations, I feel making everything into massive pages would just make information so much harder to actually find. And our wiki is not nearly as bad as some with splitting information into pages for every tiny thing, and we do a lot of combining together topics into singular pages. I feel doing it more than we currently do would just quickly devolve into absolute incoherence. 

And repeating similar information is inherently going to occur with a wiki of any sort, even wikipedia, the prototypical version, repeats a lot of information. I feel trying your hardest to never repeat info and combine any pages that have overlapping information would just lead to WH40K Wiki scale pages (if anyone doesn't know, they basically make pages that are like, 400k bytes and go onto so many tangents as they try combining too many things into it, and it ultimately leaves information harder to find in said pages.) 

[Chaos he/him]

Certainly we could install many themes if you wanted. I couldn't guarantee they all look to the same quality necessarily, but a lot of themes are perfectly serviceable. As Stargazer said, many of these things are things we can do, and we are happy to discuss such things. I admit some of the things you said like "initiate an edit" does not make much sense to me.

I do want to make some comments on this one though:

23 hours ago, DigitalKandra said:

And most of all, all of this loads fast and is very user friendly, and easy to navigate.

I can certainly admit that navigation and what defines as user-friendly can be in the eye of the beholder, but man, I don't know if I can let "loads fast" go when there are just so many ads and videos playing all over the place. It's horrendous especially on mobile--where most traffic comes from. I also think the way Fandom links all of its wikis together and so you get search results from wikis you aren't even on is... not ideal. I guess I don't exactly understand what precisely makes Fandom easier to navigate. A few dropdowns? I'm genuinely a bit baffled. I'm happy to listen to suggestions.

And yes, if you have any suggestions on how to structure content articles, we can discuss things. I'm still very curious what examples of multiple pages being disorganized. We always want to improve things. 

You're more than welcome to do your own thing on Fandom, but I don't know. Maybe I'm getting old, but these seem like minor, workable issues, and I don't know, seems like spending thousands of hours to get close to content parity doesn't really seem like the most efficient way of doing things. But again, totally up to you, but we can only try to be open. I think if we joined forces, things can be even better compared to the alternative. Certainly a lot of the Era 1 articles do need work!

[Biceratops]

Side-by-side comparison of Fandom vs. Coppermind, if anyone was wondering:

I'll be honest, whenever I need to go to a Fandom wiki I just get annoyed, because Fandom just has so much garbage. You've got to remember that people go to wikis to read the articles - shoving ads, popups, sidebars, and irrelevant wiki links in your face makes for a significantly worse experience. The Coppermind is more user-friendly simply by virtue of being cleaner.