Oolite Bulletins

Not sure if this should be here or in the 'Outworld' section, so feel free to move if necessary...

Browsing wikipedia in my lunchtime I noticed that the links to fiction/stories on the oolite wikipedia page have been removed at some point relatively recently. Looking in the history didn't specifically indicate that this had been done on purpose, so I was just asking if anyone knew why?

I've got a wikipedia log-in, so could reinstate, but I generally find them a pretty ansi (not the American National Standards Institute) and anal bunch over there and haven't got the appetite for a protracted discussion on the merits of fair use rationales or relevance/verifiability clauses...

Any one know why they got zapped? Having a link on wikipedia was pretty cool after all.

Cheers,

Drew.

It'll be down to Wikipedia's External Links policy, regarding links "normally to be avoided". Most likely to do with points 11 and 12, combined with a passing jobsworth ...

Since you have an account, why not go all the way?

Start a page for your stories, either separately or collectively.
You know: "'Status Quo' is a fictional story set in the Oolite Universe" etc etc.
(You could even copy wholesale from the appropriate section on the EliteWiki.)
Link from that page to the Oolite page. Then on the Oolite page, you can link back under a 'References in popular media' section.

On "your" pages external links would be fully justified, no?

On a tangent: Wikipedia seems to have a thing against pages with few links to and from them. By that logic, having more Oolite related pages, all linking to each other, could potentially reduce the risk of getting noticed by interfering busybodies.

This is possibly forbidden by wikipedia CoI rules http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:COI

Generally I dont think its worth fighting the wikipeidia Borg, let them get on with it and hope it works out ok.

Ah, yes the whole CoI mess. Didn't consider that part. One of these days I'll remember to think "Now is there any reason this would be a bad idea" before sharing my brilliant brainstorms.

I did a tiny bit of snooping: The fiction links were removed on the 25th of February by this fellow(ette) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Yworo
Just in case anyone feels like asking why.

Yeah, I don't think *I* could set up a wikipedia page about my books, that's pretty obvious!

It's not a big deal. It's frustrating from my perspective not because I've lost a link to my stuff (wikipedia traffic to my website was minimal anyway), but more because (particularly in the case of 'Status Quo') I consider it (and I hope a few others do to) an integral part of the game experience - Elite games come with a Novella, period. I understand the rationale on behalf of wikipedia, but, well, it sucks in situations like this.

The Dark Wheel is clearly linked from the Elite page on wikipedia. Seems a shame that the same can't be said of Oolite. Ho hum.

The link to Ian Bell's Elite site has also been removed by the same guy/girl. Again, understand that, but ...

On the plus side, I'm still honoured and humbly grateful for the direct quote on the oolite.org page, so I'm not exactly hard done by! And the fiction section of our wiki and stories in general are easily visible to passers by.

Cheers,

Drew.