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.

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!

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.

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.

Of course, a lot has changed since then. We were noted in “notable” media, such as being mentioned on AOL’s “Top 10 Battlestar Websites”, been offered a buy out from the “notable” Wikia, Inc. for an asinine sum, been visited by various cast and crew members from the shows, have them contribute to our site (of their own volition) and whenever you do a search on anything BSG related, a link to an article we have is pretty much somewhere on that first page of results. Oh, and we’ve been recognized by NBC-Universal/SciFi Channel, since they’ve sent us promotional material for the fourth and final season of an excellent television series.

So why then was our article deleted?

Because we still weren’t notable.

At all.

Every humbling accomplishment was dismissed by persons who believe themselves the gatekeepers of a site that makes “the Internet not suck”. And that wonderfully worded, grammatically correct phrase is from the mouth of Wikipedia’s scandal-ridden “spiritual leader”, Jimbo Wales, who has cleaned up articles for “donations” to Wikimedia… even donations of a sexual nature.

Disappointing, isn’t it?

But… here’s the thing… I’m apathetic now. I was a bit irritated before, particularly since every action the Wikipedians have done in relation to this current “article for deletion” discussion was devoid of any common sense as I have personally come to know it.

On the one hand, we need to recognize that it is “their” site and they can do with it as they please.

On the other hand, in my informed opinion, the article did satisfy their current policies.

Also, take into account that treating things equally doesn’t appear to be common sensible (to them) either, since articles from WikiFur, to “The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5″, to even Memory-Alpha. By the way, our previous article had the same exact features as the one on Memory-Alpha, but ours did not have the fluff. Ours was trim, lean…. and frak it.

I will neither bore you with the past nor with Wikipedian stupidity.

So what I will have to say is this: there are double standards at work on Wikipedia. Anyone who has contributed there knows it, and that’s why half the Internet is learning to do without Wikipedia, or so it’s beginning to seem.

At any rate, I’m now quite pleased that we don’t have an article on there any longer. Given Wikipedia’s various quality control, accountability (or the pathetic lack thereof) and maturity issues, I am now looking at this development as a positive. Since I do not believe that the current group of inmates running the asylum can do an article on us (or just about anything) justice, we should be quite thankful to them for deleting the article.

Also, for those of you that did fight for our article’s existence, I do wish to thank you. It was a futile battle, and those who fought against the decision likely knew this as well… but you fought anyway. You spoke up.

And you have reaffirmed my belief that the whole “wiki” concept is one worth keeping around…

Furthermore, I can only speak for myself when I say that I’m honored that people think that highly of the work Battlestar Wiki’s contributors have done for the past three years. It is deeply humbling, even when my own doubts bubble to the surface every so often.

So say we all!

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.

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.

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]].

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!

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!

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.