Luchawiki:State of the Luchawiki

Hi!

I want to thank everyone who's read this site, and even more everyone who's contributed. Those of you who are constantly at work making edits are superb, but anyone who made even a single positive edit (or sent an email suggesting one, or just told others about the site) is appreciated. This resource would not be what it is without the assistance of many people lending their time solely to make the site a little more helpful to everyone else.

I'd like the site to continue on that arc. When the luchawiki started, it was replication of José Fernández's La Arena, which focused more deeply on fewer wrestlers and featured long detailed profiles. (Those profiles are still among the best parts of this sites.) Over the last three and half years, the luchawiki has changed to a site which covers an immense amount of wrestlers (3173 last I checked), but few of them very deeply.

There are definite benefits to covering everyone under the sun (or at least under the restrictions in place.) There are wrestlers who were originally added as unknowns who've since made it to larger companies, and having that information there beforehand added a lot to seeing the new wrestler. Every national level wrestler either has a profile or gets one quickly after they make that level, and most of the better known regional wrestlers, and various amounts of other independent wrestlers.

The problem is, many of the profiles are very bare bones. Having basic profile details and a picture tells you a little bit about a person, but it doesn't tell you much if you don't already know something about the wrestler. This is very problematic for the more unknown wrestlers, since there's rarely anything more to work off than the names. Even a regular working area might at least make it easier to identify the wrestler as he shows up in the future.

I want to put suggest a new guideline for profiles

Include basic information about where the luchador wrestles or why he should be in a lucha libre encyclopedia. It doesn't need to be long, a couple of sentences is enough, as long as it gives the readers an idea on how that person fits in.

This is not a rule or a requirement, and I would not delete anyone who skipped it. It is a method of making the wiki more useful to the whole community by increasing the shared knowledge.

For current Mexican wrestlers, this request is pretty easy - just who they are, what they're doing now, and maybe even of how they got there. For foreign wrestlers, explaining why they deserve to be included in a website about Mexican wrestlers works well, and adding what they've since for those who might not know is fine. For wrestlers of the past, maybe something of who they were and how they achieved their fame. It's probably going to be pretty similar for many luchadors, but just a little bit of text may open up someone else's eye to a way to add on to that in the future.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and have been trying to find out the best way of saying it. (I'm still not sure I've done it.) Those that have used the "Create an Article to this category" boxes might have noticed I've added a prompt in the default profile to encourage this information, and there likely will be other ways I try to do the same thing because I believe it'll be better off for the long term growth of the wiki.

Not everyone is going to be able to contribute to fattening the profiles (though if you're interested enough in lucha libre to be reading this, there's probably a few that could use your help.) Another idea I'd like to get going is to open up more discussion about other projects that would make the luchawiki more useful. There's not a lot of discussion on the site, and virtual none of it is pre-edit. I thinks sometimes we all have ideas for things we'd like to see on the luchawiki, or like to see improved on the luchawiki, but doing it ourselves is too daunting or complicated and there's no easy way to spread the idea to others.

Besides the normal pages, there's very other Spaces as part of the luchawiki. You all know the Talk: pages, and there's Image: and Help: pages. There are also Luchawiki: pages. Though we've seldom used them, they're intended to be used for pages about the entire project of the luchawiki, rather than part of the content. They'd be an excellent place to start a new Current Projects page, to suggest, list and discuss long term projects for the wiki. Separate projects could easily get their own page - maybe I could get around to explaining what I'm trying to do sorting with the move category on Luchawiki:Move Category Split Project or others can talk about what they'd like to see for Luchawiki:Missing Fictional Luchadors, and then even more others could make suggestions on better ways to do it, or take care of some of the quick grunt work associated with carrying out the project even if they don't know everyone's backstory.

These are just my idea. I'm sure everyone has them and I hope you share them. The luchawiki is great, and it's been great to be able to host it, and I'm hoping we can continue to improve it.

--thecubsfan 05:59, 27 February 2009 (UTC)