Author Topic: Encyclopedia needs Editing  (Read 52949 times)

maggiekarp

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Encyclopedia needs Editing
« on: June 13, 2007, 04:10:13 am »
Not to diss whoever's in charge of the final entries in the Encyclopedia, but every now and again I find errors that really get to me. A typo here or there and an awkward phrase are okay, but sometimes it feels like the articles were written by an 8-year-old Thai boy.

Quote from: CC Characters- Lisa
Lisa is the son of Funguy and a rival to Leena concerning dates.

Now I'm okay with a lot of the...uh, fan interpretation that goes into these things sometimes... but a gender swap for a totally unambiguous character?

I know I'm new to this forum, but I've been browsing the site for quite some time. It provides me with tons of information and images I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else on the web, so it pains me to see these things compiled so unprofessionally.

I don't blame anyone for these errors- everyone needs an editor, sometimes, especially with the workload involved with this site. With the staggering amount of Chrono-stuff on this site I'd be surprised if there weren't so many errors... but as quoted above, sometimes it's just ridiculous.


I don't want to say "Hey, give me the editing job, guys!", so I'll just ask y'all to consider getting an editor or two sometime soon.

Ramsus

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2007, 03:28:53 pm »
There's really nobody actively working on the Encyclopedia wiki, although Zeality still does some work on it from time to time.

Can you do me a favor and track down as many examples as you can from various parts of the site? That way I can check the page revisions and see if the problem is mostly just content from a few specific contributors from before we closed the wiki to outside authoring or if it's certain sections that may have been rushed and are still in a first draft stage. Maybe then we can do an audit to find and clean up broken content in the Encyclopedia.

maggiekarp

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #2 on: June 13, 2007, 03:52:45 pm »
Will do, but it might take me a while. I'll post what I find later today, okay?

maggiekarp

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #3 on: June 13, 2007, 05:40:24 pm »
Well, after going through the seven main characters of CT, I've decided that just about every page is gonna need a slight rewrite here or there for awkward phrases, sentence structures, typos, wrong words, etc... The really glaring errors should probably just be posted as they're come across in this thread.


I'll go ahead and post what I've got, though.



Ayla's Entry
- "Ayla Sprite Sheet" is typed at the top of the images for no particular reason (there's already a link at the bottom of the images)
- General awkward sentences

Crono's Entry
- One of the Alpha previews in the images does not actually have Crono in it
- Several awkward sentence, run-ons and overly-used semi-colons

Frog's Entry
- "When King Guardia sent Cyrus to the Denadoro Mts to recover the lost Masamune..." Cyrus left to get the Hero Badge away from that Frog thing and wanted to see the legendary sword. Guardia didn't send him out, and actually seemed concerned about this journey
- "At the North Cape, Frog was offered a final chance to kill Magus in a duel, but maturely declined." Fanficland, but it can't be helped. I would omit the "maturely declined" part unless it goes on to explain that while there was a choice in CT, the sequels suggest that Magus lives
- Incomplete list of single techs at the top of the page
- Glenn's name is misspelled atleast once
- Several awkward sentences and wrong words used (i.e. "not being able to alter the death of Cyrus..." ought to be "prevent" instead), run-ons

Lucca's Entry
- "Alacrity" should be exchanged for a more natural-sounding word. "Eagerness", maybe.
- General sentence scructure errors and those DAMNED SEMI-COLONS

Magus's Entry
- "Erstwhile" is not only a weird word- it also appears to be used wrong.
- IIRC, Magus didn't banish the gurus. That was all Zeal, baby.
- "Powerless and prostrate" should probably be changed to omit prostate. Alliteration is only okay when we get the words.
- Some awkward sentences here or there.

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Marle.html
- Forgets to mention that Marle is the best character. Actually, I found no errors in this one! Needs a fresh set of eyes, perhaps?

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Robo.html
- Awkward phrase here or there, but seems to be okay.


Searching through each entry one at a time is gonna be hell, and I'll probably skip some big errors because of tired eyes, so I probably shouldn't do it that way. I'll try to get more up before tonight, but this is the sort of thing that I come across randomly...

...I'm in for a lot of trying to understand CC's plot tonight, I think D:
« Last Edit: June 13, 2007, 05:43:59 pm by maggiekarp »

Ramsus

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #4 on: June 13, 2007, 09:47:10 pm »
Ugh, I realize I've never actually read a lot of these pages before... Now that I am, it's looking more and more like we might have to initiate an Encyclopedia style audit project.

Just looking at the Crono entry alone... while a lot has been added to the page's content, the main text has barely changed since June 4th, 2004, which is why it sounds so rough-draftish. Not once did anybody have the guts to ruthlessly edit it.

The problem with such a project though is that most of the people best fit for the job aren't around anymore or don't have time (I sure as hell don't have any). You seem motivated and possibly skilled enough, so if you want to help, refer this thread to Zeality and ask him if you can have editorial rights in the Encyclopedia wiki. If he agrees that this is a real problem, then I'll give you an account and you can edit things to your heart's content.

The editing itself should be fairly easy, since we use MediaWiki. If you've ever helped out with Wikipedia, then you should feel right at home.


nightmare975

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #5 on: June 13, 2007, 10:26:50 pm »
Who can edit it? Because if I can, I'll try my best.

maggiekarp

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #6 on: June 13, 2007, 11:05:19 pm »
Oh, awesome. I just PM'd Zeality about it... hope it's okay with him.


I don't know Nightmare but if I'm allowed to edit I'll need all the help I can get :o

ZeaLitY

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #7 on: June 13, 2007, 11:20:00 pm »
Okay, Ramsus will have to open registration for you or something.

Carbon copy of the PM!

Burning Zeppelin

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #8 on: June 14, 2007, 04:15:08 am »
Wow, someone more obsessive over the English language than Lord J  :shock:

Ramsus

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #9 on: June 14, 2007, 03:19:44 pm »
Your account is created, and your new password sent to the e-mail account in your forum profile. You can find the login page through a link at the bottom of every Encyclopedia page on the site.

Have fun, and thanks for the help.

maggiekarp

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #10 on: June 14, 2007, 04:09:09 pm »
...Mwahahaha...


Thank you so much! I'll do my best!

Lord J Esq

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #11 on: June 16, 2007, 02:21:38 am »
Wow, someone more obsessive over the English language than Lord J  :shock:

Back to the slime under your rock, foe!

I for one appreciate any help our community members wish to give to the editing of the encyclopedia.

Generality

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #12 on: September 05, 2007, 10:15:40 pm »
*Jumps on this bandwagon*

I've noticed a number of mildly annoying errors, but there are a few huge mistruths that bug me particularly.

One that I just noticed is in the Masamune page where it says the word is Japanese for "Holy Sword." This is about as false a statement as you could make. The name comes from the swordsmith, as mentioned in the somewhat garbled legend on the same page. (That account could stand to be rewritten, by the way)

Ramsus

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #13 on: September 05, 2007, 10:24:55 pm »
Unfortunately, the community size never reached the critical mass needed to sustain a real wiki without fear of vandalism or other problems, so we closed it after the first few years to avoid problems, but that left us with some garbage and poorly edited (or never edited) contributed text.

However, if you want to rewrite part of something, feel free to post a link (as you just did) and your version of the text. Someone should notice and make the change.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Encyclopedia needs Editing
« Reply #14 on: September 05, 2007, 11:31:19 pm »
Yeah. I'm not surprised Masamune is like that. It was, IIRC, the second or third article ever created back in 2004, so it suffered in our early days of open registration.