Yes, you’ve read that right.

Until December 31, 2007, Battlestar Wiki is offering an exclusive deal for those who buy Amazon’s Kindle through us. In exchange for buying it through our Amazon.com Associates Store or through this link, you will be able to get a four-year subscription to Battlestar Wiki and Battlestar Forum for free. This only works for US residents right now, however. We hope that Amazon.com extends this offer to other countries in the immediate future.

Now what does a subscription mean?

Bascially, you’ll have to sign up for an account on either or both any of the Battlestar Wikis and on our Battlestar Forum. By doing so, you’ll get the opportunity to have your accounts upgraded to a paid membership/sponsor status, which allows you to surf our websites without advertisements, when logged in via your user name.

In addition, we are finalizing plans to offer a monthly drawing for our paid members, as a token of appreciating for your support of our websites. This drawing will consist of a Battelstar Galactica product (CD, DVD, or a gift card to an online retailer of your choice for a pre-determined amount, which will be revealed each month) and a second-prize drawing of a one-year’s extension to your Battlestar Wiki membership.

To qualify, you need to click on one of the above Amazon links and order the Kindle. Once done, you need to send an e-mail to me (Joe Beaudoin) telling me that you’ve ordered the product, preferably with the order confirmation e-mail so I can verify it through Amazon.com. (Please be sure to remove the shipping and billing address from the e-mail, since I don’t need that information.) Do also tell me what your username is on both the Battlestar Wiki and Battlestar Forum, so that I can make the proper upgrades once your order has been confirmed via Amazon.com.

Should you have any questions, please let me know via e-mail or (if they are general and not of a personal nature) via this blog post.

For those Galactipedians (or fans) who support the strike, I’ve received the following news-bit from Pencils2MediaMoguls.com:

How would you like to go to a hockey game with [[Galen Tyrol|the Chief]]?

That’s right, our own [[Aaron Douglas]] will take one fan to a Canucks hockey game, along with another buddy of his up in Vancouver.  And how can you score this treat?  Simple.  By going to Pencils2MediaMoguls.com and buying as many boxes of pencils as you can.  On the first page (which is a subset of United Hollywood) you’ll see a place to identify which show you’re supporting.  Type in “BSG Aaron Douglas” and we’ll enter your name into a raffle, with the lucky winner getting to attend the hockey game with Aaron.

In case you haven’t heard, the Pencils Campaign is designed to send a huge amount of pencils to the major studios as a symbol of fan support for the strike.  More information can be found on their website.

Look for other offers from other members of the Galactica cast in the near future — no idea what the offers will be or how many there may be.  I’ll keep you informed.

Please note that Battlestar Wiki is neutral with regard to the strike, so please do not put our name on the pencils. Please put the show name or “BSG Aaron Douglas” on the pencil. Thank you!

Today after fixing the bots, I ran the interwiki bot and wanted to see how well each wiki has been adding links. Some wikis I was just getting fusterated with, but here is the score in “school grade”.

• de: B-
  • Links are added, then forgotten. Redirects from EN help, but they hurt other wikis when the bot checks
• zh: D+
  • Found interwiki links in templates after the </noinclude> tags.
• es: F
  • Need serious development
• tr: F
  • Ditto.
• ft: F
  • Ditto.

So with that said you know what to do. Check all interwiki links when you visit a page and make sure they are correct, working, and make sense. (i.e. Miniseries should not link to Season 1)

What happens when two people do the same job and one (me) overwrites that file? continue reading this entry »

As one may surmise, we have thrown AdBrite into an airlock and have jettisoned it in space, figuratively speaking, of course. We are now using Google Adsense full-time, in addition to being supported by our [[BW:MEMBERSHIP|paid membership]] and our sponsorship by FanLib.

So if there are companies wanting to advertise or sponsor us, you’ll have to contact Joe Beaudoin directly.

So it looks like that we tripled our audience since “Razor”. Typically, we get around 5,000 unique visitors per day; during the course of the weekend (Saturday and Sunday), we saw a drastic increase topping out at 15,000+ unique visitors per day.

At present, we are presently ranked ahead of sites such as SyFy Portal (which was recently named one of the top 10 BSG websites on the net, along with us), Dark Horizons and, interestingly enough, Hannity.com (pundit Sean Hannity’s website).

Here’s a copy of those numbers in PDF format: Quantcast Numbers as of 11/27/07

In looking at the preliminary web server statistics that pulled up for yesterday (11/24), we’ve achieved the following numbers:

• 1,274,932 hits
• 25,076 unique visitors
• 214,705 pages viewed

Considering that this is a holiday weekend, and most people are out with their families and shopping for the holidays, these numbers are a bit surprising. The reason being is that web traffic to fan sites like ours tends to be down, as most traffic is directed at online retail sites.

Basically, we’ve doubled our normal Saturday numbers due to “Razor”.  And today’s numbers… we’ve nearly doubled on top of Saturday’s numbers, as far as I can tell from the Google Adsense statistics. (We’ve got 100,000 ad impressions, while yesterday we only got 58,000.)

And despite the hiccup we suffered briefly after the first “Razor” airing, the site stayed up and was, aside from a few major “Razor” related articles, fully editable.

Gee, that was quick, huh?

Anyway, I’ve re-enabled editing but have protected “[[Razor]]”, its [[Razor/Episode Guide|subpage]], and [[Helena Cain]].

I haven’t protected [[Kendra Shaw]], [[The Hybrid]] and other articles because they’re more or less control variables in my little test.

Edit away!

So add we all!

Because of the insane demand on the servers (not your guy’s fault, it’s just we’re apparently that cool) we’ve disabled editing on all language editions of Battlestar Wiki.

I don’t know how long this is going to last, but I imagine it may last up to 12 hours.

So say we all.

In order to help cover the operational costs of the wiki without relying on ads, we’ve decided to go to a paid membership model.

Basically, this means that for $10 a year (yes, year; less than $1 a month) users will be able to get to surf Battlestar Wiki without seeing ads. Non paying members will not have to fear: they’ll still be able to access all the content on the Wiki, just with ads.

We’ve just rolled this out and more details are up at [[BW:MEMBERSHIP|the English Battlestar Wiki]].

Of course, any questions can be directed either here at the blog, on the Wiki, or in our Battlestar Forum!

Just in the world around us, many things have happened this year on all fronts, both globally and provincially.

In my personal reflection of what I have to be thankful for, aside from good health and surrounding myself with people who care for one another, I find that I am thankful to everyone who has been involved with the Battlestar Wiki. Yes, I know that sounds corny, but it does not negate the truth of it.

Aside from the successes of this fan-run website, which has grown by leaps and bounds beyond even my minor expectations, I find myself thankful for all the intelligent, insightful, kind, and well-rounded people who comprise of the Battlestar Galactica fandom.  Regardless of whether or not you are actively interacting with your fellow fans, or have ever contributed to the Wiki, I wish to thank each and every one of you for simply supporting the show and your fellow fans, no matter how big or small.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, even if you do not celebrate this American holiday,  because Thanksgiving really isn’t an American thing, like Columbus Day or Martin Luther King Day, it’s a day of giving thanks for all the good things in life, regardless of their number.

Also, I know that the next month is going to be a hectic one, because of the holidays, like Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah. Just please don’t stress yourself over these things, because when one looks at the big picture, it’s really not worth the stress generated and invested in this time of the year. Keep in mind the aspects of your life that you are thankful for, and yo’ll do fine.
So say we all!

I have a friend looking for a Flash animator to do some web work. I really can’t get into specifics, other than to say that he is looking for someone who has a strong work ethic, strong communication skills, and is versed in Adobe/Macromedia Flash. This is an unpaid job assignment seeing as the work is pro bono, but it is Battlestar/science fiction related and it is for a large website with excellent visibility. It’s more of a resume builder job.

So if you are interested, please e-mail me a cover letter with your qualifications and samples of your work, and I’ll send them to the appropriate party.