We have now worked in global permissions on all wikis. This allows us to setup “rights” in two different ways. Local vs. Global. Local would just be on the wiki we set it on and Global would allow you to have the same permissions if you transversed through the different languages.

There is currently no official policy on how people get assigned to this status, however one will be created at [[Battlestar Wiki:Global Groups]] on the English Wiki, where the details are being worked on on the [[BW:CN|notice board]]. (All sysops and users on all wikis should take part in this discussion on the notice board to form this policy. It’s extremely critical to operations.

One thing for sure is this. If you are a sponsor, your permissions will be set globally so you can view all the wikis without looking at Ads. If this is not working, please contact us on the [[BW:CN|notice board]] so we can fix this ASAP.

A quick reminder. My appearance on SyFy Radio will be this Wednesday. The show starts at 10 P.M. Eastern Time and my appearance will be starting around 10:20 to 10:25 P.M., once Mike Hinman reads through his scripted material.

I’ll be there anywhere from 20 minutes to the whole show, depending on how many people start calling in and give us stuff to talk about. The main topics of discussion will be Battlestar Galactica’s fourth and final season, and I’ll also be talking a bit about Galacticruise. (And for all those people on the fence, I must stress that you really need to get moving on this, since the deadline for booking cabins and event payments is July 1st!)

The show will be streaming live from BlogTalkRadio’s website for SyFy Radio, which is here. The call-in number is (646) 200-3642.

Also, SyFy Radio has a chat room running in concert with the live show, so if you don’t like hearing your voice (or if your voice brings doom upon all mankind… kidding… seriously, I hope I’m kidding!), then you can send us questions via the chat room. Or discuss the content of our show there as well.

So remember: this Wednesday at 10 P.M., click here, and listen to the show. Call into the show by dialing (646) 200-3642.

We’d better see you there, or else [[William Adama|the Old Man]]’s gonna beat your ass with a [[flashlight]].

Update: [[User:Catrope|Catrope]] brought up a good point… Those if you in way different time zones (such as those in Europe) will probably be asleep during the broadcast. So, to address the issue of whether or not you people can hear the show as well, the answer is: “Yes, you can.” All the shows that are on SyFy Radio are archived for playback at a later date!

Bob Rehak, assistant professor of film and media studies at Swarthmore College, recently wrote an article on the J.K. Rowling vs. the Harry Potter Lexicon legal proceedings, discussing transmedia storytelling and subcreation, in an interesting article that notes the effort of Battlestar Wiki, Lostpedia and the Lexicon to “keep track of sprawling storylines and giant mobs of dramatis personae, cross-referencing and codifying the rules of seriality’s endless play of meaning”.

Rehak discusses this more on his blog entry here. It’s an interesting read, since people have been e-mailing me to ask about what the Rowling/Lexicon case means for Battlestar Wiki.

Right now, I want to assure people that we’re not in danger of being taken down. It is clearly apparent that the Lexicon and its owner are clearly attempting to profit off another established universe by selling the online resource in book form for some $30 USD.

However, the case is interesting to watch, nonetheless, as are the factions that are coming to rise because of it: pro-Rowling vs. the pro-fandom creativity/creationists.

Over the last week, a small band people who contribute to Wikipedia, the self-billed “free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit”, elected to nominate the article on Battlestar Wiki for deletion. (Link)

Now, previous attempts on creating an article there have been met, twice previously, with deletion. (Deletion #1 in 2005, Deletion #2 in 2006.)

Both deletions were previously understandable. We were a small website — hardly the success we are now — and we did not meet their “notability” guidelines. Hell, even I had endorsed the deletion back in 2006, since I feel it didn’t meet those guidelines myself.

continue reading this entry »

I’ve known about the following article for roughly two to three weeks now (time gets warped during the Holidays, so I’m not going to be committal here), but it’s an article on the Battlestar Wiki and Wiki Frakr written by Sarah Toton. You can read the article here.

As long-time visitors to the Wiki know, Toton previously gave a presentation on the Battlestar Wiki at MIT5 which caused a stir, resulting in pretty interesting feedback, at least in my view.

Anyway, I’ll post my reactions to it in the coming days, probably after Christmas. Maybe sooner. (Again, I’m not being committal here, with this time being the holidays.)

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to discuss the article either here, there, or at the Battlestar Forum.

I’d thought I’d take the opportunity to present something that’s been discussed amongst the chiefs of Battlestar Wiki.

As you may know, we began putting up advertisements on the site to offset hosting and technical costs more than a year ago. In addition to commissions from sales done through our portal at Amazon.com and other fine retailers, we’ve recouped about half our hosting costs per month. And that’s if we’re lucky.

It has always been my personal goal to get the Wiki to a point of self-sufficiency, whereby it doesn’t have to depend on me or anyone else for funding.

I believe that paid memberships are the way to do that.

Basically, it goes like this:

A person pays $10 dollars via Paypal or Amazon’s Honor system. That person sends along their username on the Wiki.

Once payment has been confirmed, the user gets moved to the “paying member”/VIP user level, which allows the Wiki Software to automatically remove the ads before they are even shown. (This only works when the member is logged in, obviously.) This also works for a year, so once the year is up, the VIP access is taken away unless they pay up again an additional $10.

The outline of everything is [[BW:MEMBERSHIP|here]].

Do note that none of this is active yet, but if you want to donate anyway, simply click on the Amazon donation link on the left sidebar. It’s not hard to miss.

Obviously, feedback is welcome. You can leave feedback at our Battlestar Forum, [[BW:CN|the wiki]], or as a response to this blog.

It’s been decided unanimously that Battlestar Wiki, as an entity, should remain neutral with regard to the WGA Strike. As such, we will not be adding banners to the website in support of or against the strike.

While a majority of the folks who contribute (including myself) fully support the writers, we’ve felt it best that the site itself should remain neutral through these proceedings. I wish I could say that I am fond of this decision, but I’m really not. Realistically, however, it’s necessary to maintain our neutrality, since we do exist due to the benevolence of NBC-Universal.

It is times like this that I wish we were a smaller site, but we’re not. We’re successful. Short of the SCIFI.com channel Battlestar website, we are the largest Battlestar-specific website on the internet, as proven by third party reporting services such as Alexa and Quantcast. We’re the top 38,000 according to Quantcast and top 95,000 according to Alexa. We get over 100,000 visitors a month and we rival such long-established sites as battlestargalactica.com and GateWorld.net.

As such, we have to be extremely careful as to what we do as an entity. Believe me when I say that while we don’t like that fact, we have to act responsibly, since we don’t want to throw away the hard work people have done to create one of the best websites on the internet.

So having said that, while the site itself may be neutral, we recognize that the users aren’t. Since the site is neutral, you can voice your support for or against the strike on your own user pages.

For those of us that support the strike and want to show it via the Wiki, please note that [[User:Catrope]] has created [[Template:WGA support|a pro-strike template]] and modified the [[Template:User Data|user page infobox]] so that you can voice your support for the strike on your user pages.

For those of you that (for whatever reason) don’t support the strike, those templates aren’t available, but can be made on request since there isn’t a demand for them yet. And if you want to support the strike, you are welcome to check out Fans4Writers.com.

Please feel free to discuss this here on the blog or via the [[Battlestar Wiki talk:Think Tank/WGA Strike|talk page regarding our stance regarding the strike]].

After today, “[[Razor]]” will have been screened at select theaters nation-wide. Those eager to talk about it in an intelligent, friendly environment are welcome to do so at our growing Battlestar Forum.

In addition, you may read a review of “Razor” on Associated Content by clicking here.

Also, despite the screening tonight, please note that all “Razor” specific material is considered to be a spoiler until its airing on November 24th per [[BW:RAZOR|the temporary policy]]!

So say we all!

The question of what Battlestar Wiki contributors should call themselves has come up [[Category talk:Wikipedians|here]].

Right now, the going name for contributors is “Galactipedians” (singular is “Galactipedian”).

Feel free to talk about it [[Category talk:Wikipedians|here]] or as a comment to this blog.

Keep the faith!

The Feminist SF blog makes mention of Sarah Toton’s comments regarding the Wiki and the representation of female contributors on the Wiki, as well as begs the question of “what the BSG guys had done to act jerky when women contributed”.

Regardless of my thoughts on those comments, I did want to let everyone know about them so that we can continue constructive discussions on this topic.

There’s currently a proposal to have an official presence on MySpace.

Please review it [[Battlestar Wiki:Think Tank/MySpace Presence|here]] and discuss the issue either here or as a response in this blog post.

    “We are all victims of mathematics.” – Londo Mollari, Babylon 5

Spurred by the discussion of gender contributions, I took a look at our audience composition, and some of the results are downright interesting, not only in terms of gender, but also in terms of income, family situation, and even sites that share a similar audience composition to us.

The results of this are here, provided by the third party organization, Quantcast.