Talk:World of Greyhawk Timeline

Establishing a Working Plan for the Timeline

I think we (being as many wiki users as possible) ought to get together and decide exactly what the Portal and the Timeline are going to be.

There's certainly a need for a "Timeline" page, beginning with that word, for search engine optimization reasons. When a user makes a search looking for a "timeline", something starting with "World of ..." isn't going to pop up automatically, and they'll have to sift through all the pages mentioning the word "timeline" to find what they're looking for.
Honestly, I think we ought to move "Timeline (Greyhawk)" to just "Timeline" so the page will direct to that page when they enter it, just like "typing "Procan" in a search goes directly to that page without the need to look for results. The word "timeline" is in the top two search words on the wiki. #1 being gods/deities. It *really* needs to have a page of its own.
Either that, or delete it altogether, and put in a page simply called "Timeline".

I think, however, that page needs to have its Redirect go to Portal:History to give readers options about what exactly it is they want to look at. We can include different sections for timelines from published sources, GH authors, LG, Dragon, and OJ sources all separately in various places, if we like. And this page can be linked from there like the other varieties of pages. If this is done, though, we ought to work on a plan to make them uniform, rather than changing details or information on one page and letting the others languish with different versions or information.

When we began working on these pages, it was with the intent of merging all the various timeline pages that had cropped up over the years on the wiki. But it was not to move all the information which had been pooled into Portal:History away from that page and subsume it all into a separate project. If we prefer to separate the timelines, and we're interested in not including some work, due to an "Apocryphal" status, maybe we can find time or way to have a conversation about it. This talk page isn't a bad place to do that kind of thing. We should define what is and isn't aprocryphal.

But, most importantly information needs to be moved, rather than deleted. We definitely do not want to be deletive.
If we decide some of the material shouldn't be on one timeline or another, it can have its own. And we can build out several versions, like Age of Worms Timeline has its own. --Icarus (talk) 01:44, 3 July 2020 (CDT)

First, sorry for overwriting your article to World of Greyhawk Timeline just now; I had been adding events from Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk, and had to either overwrite or lose these edits.

However, I'm also of the opinion that the "Source required" notices are important. Every entry should reference a primary source so that readers can be confident that the information is reliable and accurate; in the absence of this, "source required" informs editors that they have a duty to research the topic and find a source, and I've added sources for several "source required" entries so far as I've managed to find sources.

My assumption is that the wiki exists as a reference to official Greyhawk material only. Recently, I removed several timeline entries which had no source other than Oerth Journal #1, a fan work, on the basis that this is not official content.

At current, "World of Greyhawk Timeline" contains all entries from all timeline articles, including the timeline at Portal:History (except non-canon entries). This is why I removed the timeline from Portal:History, since it's outdated duplicate content. Additionally, according to Wikipedia:Portal, portals should be indexes to articles on a topic; the Fandom wiki may have moved its "Timeline" article to Portal:History, but this is not what the Portal namespace is intended for.

I'm not certain whether "World of Greyhawk Timeline" or "Timeline" would be superior SEO. I redirected "Timeline (Greyhawk)" to "World of Greyhawk Timeline" on the assumption that the reader wants the timeline when they go to the timeline, and "Timeline (Greyhawk)" was just a redirect page which nothing else on the wiki links to. I've also set up Timeline as a redirect to "World of Greyhawk Timeline" for now, so that if someone types Timeline they'll get the timeline. Rexidos (talk) 03:11, 3 July 2020 (CDT)

Good morning!

There's a couple of things I want to spotlight first, because you made some very good points, and they're some of the most important in this discussion.

I'm going to break out each topic, to make it easier to respond, so replies don't get lost in a thread.

Thanks for taking the time to discuss all of these things here, so hopefully we can get others to pipe in, as well. <hope>

--Icarus (talk) 12:03, 3 July 2020 (CDT)

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Purpose of a "Portal"

The first is about what a "Portal" is supposed to be and how it's supposed to function. You're absolutely right. the Portal should be a place where people can find different information about a topic and find varying directions their research can go, depending on the list or table of things shown. Not unlike a Differentiation page, in concept. That's absolutely what we want Portal:History to be. A good example of this would be Living Greyhawk:Main Page - though, when that was made, the author wasn't aware of the "Portal" page type. The catch of it is that the Timeline wasn't even close to complete. It was barely beyond its first step, which was to simply consolidate all the information, rather than having information scattered or fractured in several different places. The process had begun of collecting the data so it could be seen what needed to be broken out where, and it would be clear (in the Edit History) what information had been moved, and to where.
We agree with you entirely that the Portal needs to be something more than just a single stream of data with everything dumped there. Portals have purpose and a certain way to function, and I think we should work on codifying that to be what it's intended.
--Icarus (talk) 12:03, 3 July 2020 (CDT)

My thinking is that a portal should present more or less a complete overview of the content available on that topic. For example, there might be a Portal:Geography which would include a map, a list of regions, kingdoms, terrain, and so on; or at least links to articles titled like "Regions of Greyhawk", "Mountains of Greyhawk", etc. The general idea is that you should ultimately be able to get to all geography articles from Portal:Geography, all history articles from Portal:History, and so on; and get to all portals from the front page. Rexidos (talk) 18:50, 3 July 2020 (CDT)

Yes! So much!! Using the Geography example, I'd like to replace the Category:Greyhawk locations that's currently linked on the main page navigation bar with something more like a Portal:Geography. They're similar enough, but, it's about the organization of the material, and like you said, images, or something else. The kinds of articles you mention already exist and could be placed there. I'd like to see the same for Portal:History. That's absolutely where I was hoping this would ultimately lead when I started consolidating the timelines that were so muddled and had copied data back and forth, and weren't clearly seperated into which source or topic they were.

I absolutely agree with what we should do with the Portal:History. There should even have, like, some of the stuff from Category:Greyhawk chronology there, too. Like Military events/battles, significant social/anthropological events/dates. Battle of Emridy Meadows and Great Migrations, for example. And links to all the calendars, since that's how history is tracked, ... and on and on.

--Icarus (talk) 13:46, 4 July 2020 (CDT)

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Citations needed

The next point I absolutely agree with was when you said, "Every entry should reference a primary source so that readers can be confident that the information is reliable ...".
Seldom have more true words been written.
This with a doubt is the way any wiki should be. And it drives me absolutely bonkers when I can't tell if someone wrote something pulled from a published source, or not. There's no disagreement there, in any way. The only caveat is that if we put "Source required", that's kind of a formatting policy for the entire wiki. If we do it on this page, it needs to be done throughout the wiki for sake of consistency. Generally, if it's not cited, one should presume that it needs to be cited. That's true anywhere on the wiki.

There's actually a huge variety of "source needed" templates. I think we should consider using something like those, if we see this kind of notation as necessary. Otherwise, I don't think adding it to most (or many) entries in timelines is a necessary note - unless we use a template to make that note everywhere, it should just be assumed citations are always needed for everything. I will let the reversion putting "Source required" back in stand, because I don't want to go back and forth over a stylistic preference to how an editor likes to see it. Thus, here we are having a great conversation about ways to improve the wiki by adding a new template. :D
Do you have any thoughts on which citation templates you might like to use? Do we just need {{Citation needed}}, or do we also need things like {{Chronology citation needed}}, {{Citation needed span}}, {{Chronology citation needed}}, {{Incomplete short citation}}, or {{Verify source}}. And do we also need things like {{Who}}, {{By whom}}, {{When}}, {{Vague}}. {{Clarify}}. {{Dubious}}. or {{POV statement}}, as well?
--Icarus (talk) 12:03, 3 July 2020 (CDT)

For general articles, I feel that citations aren't mandatory on every sentence, but they are very useful, for a few reasons:

• They reassure readers of the veracity of content
• They allow readers to give preferential weighting to sources; e.g. to ignore Living Greyhawk content, or
• They let readers know which sourcebooks to consult for further reading
• They let editors know which sources have already been assessed
• On suspicious or particularly unlikely statements, the absence of a citation lets editors know that they need to research the topic, and allows readers to be skeptical; a "citation required" notice also serves to advise other editors to do the same

I don't think we need to put "citation needed" on every sentence, but such a template would be useful for cases where a statement is particularly dubious. I don't think the other citation templates are required just yet; lets see if they become necessary.

One perhaps significant suggestion is that, if you look at other wikis (Wikipedia, Forgotten Realms wiki), they've actually abolished their Bibliography sections in favour of References only. The old Canonfire Greyhawk wiki used Bibliography because that's what Wikipedia used in its Greyhawk articles when they were imported, but it was superceded at Wikipedia by References, which link specific sections of text to individual sources and page numbers. With Bibliography-only, the reader would have to read the entire bibliography to prove any one statement to be unsourced. If the references are complete, the References section would include everything that was in the bibliography. Rexidos (talk) 18:50, 3 July 2020 (CDT)

I think I agree pretty much entirely with your reasoning for citations being necessary.

Further, I think you're absolutely right that the previous version of the wiki is outdated because of its use of a Bibliography-only format. We generally follow the Chicago Manual of Style in the ways both are used together. I understand Wikipedia has gone to preferring mostly citations (notes), and this is certainly a wiki ... but I think following CMOS makes for more informative research. Usually, a bibliography is necessary, but, as you point out, sometimes someone would have to read an entire book to find a pertinent detail. And when a particularly notable fact or data point is mentioned, it ought to use a <ref> citation, or at the very least, an in-line citation. So, for a general list of what was used to draft the article - a bibliography. For specific points, - citations.

It will likely take a long while to manage to get all pages updated to a "References" format/section at the bottom of the page which includes both, but, with all the edits I do most of the time I try to make sure the References section is updated to the newer format. We'll eventually wean out the Bibliography-only method.

I will go ahead and load a "Citation Needed" template.

--Icarus (talk) 12:43, 4 July 2020 (CDT)

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Sources

This topic is a little more difficult. But I want to be careful to not have this devolve into a canon-debate.

"Canon" is hotly debated in many circles. I tend to try to simply avoid them in most forums. But, it's something that's come up on the wiki time and time again. We've even tried considering a way to have more than one namespace where officially published content can be put in one namesspace, fanon in another, and aporyphal things in a third, just to avoid these things.
Our goal is not really to define what canon is, or who should use what.
We'd rather present information that's most useful to our readers; information which our users are looking for. And if that includes making pages that are clearly stipulated as creating apocrypha, we'll simply note it somewhere on the page ... as some pages including LG material already have in separate sections. (But, we need to not simply remove all reference to some content.) The OJ is difficult to quantify, since it has canon, things which later became canon, completely fanon things, and things written by official GH authors but never placed in official products.

But, if we remove OJ content, then we also ought to remove reference to LG and Canonfire content or not use them in citation. If we're sticking strictly with "canon", those were fan-written, too.

But, as far as the Suel timeline, it was written by Len Lakofka. That's not quite the same as a fan making up new material. But, it's difficult to quantify where information goes that's from a published GH author who's the only one who wrote on the topic at the time. He was publishing stuff on the Suel about which he wrote so much early content, because Gygax gave him sort of carte blanche to expand the lore on them. No, it wasn't "official", but, that's where the sticky wicket comes in, and places the content in an unusual category. It doesn't matter whether it was in the OJ, or in The Official Star Trek Guide to Dumbledore's TARDIS. ;) LOL. It's not about removing it simply because the OJ isn't "canon". It's about including it because it's from Len Lakofka.

That being said, as I said above, I think we can find a way to work on the Portal, and make it into a more index- or table-structured format, where we can put different timelines; Suel Timeline, Age of Worms timeline, WoG Timeline, GH2000 Timeline, as well as using the space to define terms like some of the Ages, Epochs, Eras, etc., in addition to providing other links to things like calendars, historical events, important in-character dates of published boxed sets, and giving out-of-character information about when some timeline elements were created and by which authors.
--Icarus (talk) 12:03, 3 July 2020 (CDT)

Canon is a tricky topic. The Forgotten Realms Wiki canon policy has it that Ed Greenwood's word is canon, superceded only by official published works. The Greyhawk canon article at this wiki suggests three divisions (canon, apocryphal, fanon), with fanworks by Greyhawk published authors promoted to apocryphal.

My suggestion is that article should focus primarily on canon, but articles should have a section at the end titled Apocrypha which details non-canon and notable fan works; additionally, side-notes in the article may give apocryphal details where relevant. This approach is used well by Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha.

Perhaps the timeline in particular should have two separate articles: a canon timeline, and an apocryphal timeline. Individual events or series of events which are too specific to appear in the main timeline might get their own detailed timeline or history articles. Rexidos (talk) 18:50, 3 July 2020 (CDT)

You're right; it's tricky. I personally try not to use "canon" conversationally, because it causes most peoples' hackles to go straight up. A while ago, I even updated the Canon article to talk about "officially published sources". I've never found a decent replacement for saying "fan" stuff, though. I've generally found a lot of people tend not to like their stuff referred to that way, because it's often used derogatorily or dismissively, even though it's not always intended that way. "Fancruft", "fanzine", "fanon"and such. I'm not overly fond of the Canon essay, but, lacking anything better, it's been reworded a couple or few times over the last year, to try and make better way of it. I want to have significant apocrypha/fan stuff (but, not just any ol' random Obsidian Portal home game) on the wiki, but, we have to find a way that it's presented so it's clear what it is.

Usually, I'm not fond of having a separate section header which could predispose people to not read anything in a certain section. I think the method of having sidenotes or other details given in whatever section they're relevant to. ... like, if it's a population, years with citation should be given if it's from years after 591 CY from something like LG triads/modules. But, if it's from the LGG, it should be included normally and cited. But, if it's only in someplace like the OJ, it likely ought to be put in on another page, entirely - like the Lakofka timeline.

I think the Portal:History should include (like you're saying) more than one timeline article. I mentioned at least four above which are already on the wiki. There might be a detail or two that crosses over, but those few lines can be wiki-linked to the timeline they're from. --Icarus (talk) 13:47, 4 July 2020 (CDT)

It seems I have underestimated the difference of opinion in the Greyhawk community with regards what constitutes Greyhawk canon. I find myself largely in agreement with the divisions described in the essay Greyhawk canon, but it does not give very clear advice on how the categories should be integrated into the wiki, particularly "apocrypha".

The essay lists four good reasons to establish a clear standard of canonicity for the purpose of the wiki:

1. So that editors can agree on the wiki's scope; an example of a problem caused by a lack of clear standard is that Icarus and I have different conceptions of whether Len Lakofka's Suel history in Oerth Journal #1 is correct to include on the timeline; a clearer definition could resolve conflicts like these.
2. To establish the value of information based on its source. This is challenging, as readers may have radically different opinions about the value of various sources; one reader might discount Living Greyhawk, while another discounts the value of Dragon articles not canonically set in Greyhawk, and so on. Good use of citations would help here, but perhaps a more radical distinction between..."canon" seem to be a taboo term here, but a distinction between Official and Apocryphal could be made, with some special marker to note Apocrypha, such as a box around text, or an indent with an icon, or even another colour of text. We might therefore say that the wiki is for Official content (TSR/WotC only), but that Apocryphal (wherever the exact line on this is drawn) can only take a supplemental role, and only when clearly marked as such, so that readers can benefit from such material without being confused as to its "officialness".
3. To serve as a reference to writers of future Greyhawk material, professional or otherwise. If WotC sets another product in the World of Greyhawk (like with Ghosts of Saltmarsh), or the community undertakes some project, they should be able to have confidence that the content in the wiki is official Greyhawk; anything unofficial of ambiguously official has to be clearly marked as such.
4. To provide a context for study of Greyhawk. We can't really say "X is true in Greyhawk" without first defining a context for what works do and don't contribute to Greyhawk.

This is really a long way of saying that upon reflection I think the wiki should allow non-Official content, but only when such paragraphs are unambiguously marked as such with some particular formatting (I'll see what ideas I can come up with for this). I see your point regarding the awkwardness of an Apocrypha section at the end, rather than including them through the article as-we-go.

I'm also interested in your opinion as to whether Living Greyhawk modules and support material should be Official or Apocryphal. For example, consider the assassination of King Skotti in 594 CY, as depicted exclusively in the Living Greyhawk regional modules for Keoland. Is that event officially part of Keoland's history, or should it be relegated to an Apocryphal sidenote as something only appearing in a hypothetically separate LG continuity? Rexidos (talk) 06:33, 6 July 2020 (CDT)

I think you're pretty much right on track with what I'm thinking.

I don't really think we disagree about whether the Suel timeline should be included in the main timeline, or not ... there's likely better placement for it. I just want to make sure it's not deleted, entirely. It doesn't necessarily need to be in the main timeline. I think we could make a seperate page for it, as I mentinoed above, like there is for the AoW timeline, and such. And like other articles, it needs to be made clear that it's apocryphal, at best. In fact, I would encourage it being somewhere else.

It's just one of those things where it's difficult to put a hard line on. Like novels, or comics ... are they canonical/official? How about the Gord novels? Are the comics set in Greyhawk in the official setting? I think the essay on canon gives an example of the setting being official, but the events aren't necessarily. Just like a module or published adventure. The events may not happen the same in everyone's game. It's that defining what is and isn't significant to the setting that makes it difficult. <shrug. I think a case-by-case is the way to go right now. Hopefully it won't come up too much. Personally, I think as long as the LG stuff is noted where it's from, and there's no confusion for the reader as to the source, there's nothing with having it included.

In the case of King Skotti, I think we could use the Keoland page as a case-example. I think it's been handled rather well, citing his death in the Government section, and then a Living Greyhawk section that discusses other main differences after 591 CY.

--Icarus (talk) 01:12, 8 July 2020 (CDT)

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SEO

On a last note, the search-thing is something that's already been having data recorded for a year. But, just to be specific, I'm not talking about where it ranks in Google searches - that'd certainly be debatable which way SEO would work best. I'm referring to only the search function within the wiki, and what people who are already on the GHO wiki are searching for. It's that search I'm trying to improve: funtionality for current users. At some later point, we can talk about how best to improve Google (or other) SEO by adding meta-data to the pages, or sitemaps, indexing, or whatever.
--Icarus (talk) 12:03, 3 July 2020 (CDT)

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