User blog:Octofan/Six Month Report: 2013 Part II

Six Month Report: 2013 (Part II)

It's been approximately six months since the first report chronicling the wiki's progress rate was posted last June; with 2013 having drawn to a close, it's time for the next one to come up and give us a rundown of what 2013 accomplished and what 2014 has in store.

Gahaha here we go then. ^.^;



Follow Up
As the last Six-Month Report posted on this wiki left off promising the completion of several edit movements going on at the time, it would be fitting to start this report by stating what has become of all such discussions half a year later.

Character Page Improvements
Efforts to improve character pages have covered a lot of ground since the last report. Many character histories have been expanded for the known information about a given character, and several with enough info have had their history sections improved aesthetically. Thanks to changes in our wiki's code and new templates, we have begun adding official illustrations and quotes to balance out the amount of text in articles. We no longer have the "add by [user]" under pictures, which both conserves space and removes a minor distraction when looking at the images. Our new quote template also gives us the potential to identify and reference who said a quote (even quoting multiple people!), which gives us much more flexibility in what quotes can be added to characters. If feedback is positive, we would like to expand this quote and illustration policy to most pages, especially with the upcoming release of ichika's manga (see below).

In addition, Personality and Skills sections are being improved upon as discussed in the last report; both of the original subsections have been made their own section as a result of removing the Appearance sub-section (see below). Were are roughly 1/3rd done with this process as of this report and will continue improving these sections as needed. Like our History sections, character that have a lot of info have had official illustrations added and we've included character quotes where applicable. These improvements are meant to be more aesthetically pleasing for readers and the expansion is intended to help them better understand a character's overt or nuance traits. Because of this expansion, the new sections are being fully referenced and given great attention to detail to prevent unreasonable speculation tainting established information about the character.

Character Connections have also been revamped on all character pages to compliment Personality and Traits, as opposed to arbitrarily rehashing the History sections. After careful review, a looser policy is being applied to the connections to help readers more easily identify some subtle connections.

The previous conflict of the growing Featured In section has also been resolved, with the section being removed entirely and replaced with a scroll-box-formatted Appearances section. This new section allows us to fully list all media a character appears or is mentioned in without taking up much space. The old section caused an issue with organization and while its gallery format was an improvement, it was not ideal when tested for including all kinds of media. This newer section was placed between the Gallery and References section to better maintain a flow in the article, keeping the more technical, footnote-esque information towards the bottom for readers' personal reference.

To avoid confusion, and remove the redundancy that came from physical descriptions just above a gallery and below an infobox, the Appearance subsection of the former Character Traits section was removed with the addition of the Appearances section. With the expanded use of illustrations throughout the main article, the removal of the Featured in gallery has also helped to ease the sudden abundance of pictures in any one article, once again better establishing a flow.

On another note, infoboxes have been reformatted once again to help supplement the galleries and avatar images with a description of hair and eye color; skin color is tentatively being considered an option to add, so long as it doesn't cause any issues. Because of the afformentioned conflict with Featured in and how it affected organization, the "first appearance" section was removed and "age" has been replaced by "Born" and "Died" due to how multiple ages being used were deemed arbitrary and causing an unnecessary clutter. The religion section was also removed and added to the "Affiliations" infobox section. As a minor change for Affiliations, we decided to go by the name of each nation for a character's affiliation, instead of just listing their generic name (ie, Kingdom of Lucifenia or Lucifenian Republic vs Lucifenia). The infoboxes have also been divided between a character's technical and biographical information for ease of the reader.

^ ^ Not every page has received all this treatment yet, but for an example of how they're all supposed to look in time, check Venomania's page and just take a quick scroll through. Compare that to an older version of the page around here, and you'll see what great strides have been made for character pages (as well as how much more info we've got concerning the Venomania Event overall.) In comparison pages like Waiter, that lack information, and pages like Allen Avadonia, that haven't been updated, still are not up to quality.

Media/Guide Page Improvements
Probably our biggest change was yet another revamp for our Evillious Chronicles page; this change had several purposes. One, the previous iteration was often not keeping up with changes across the wiki, which was creating major inconsistencies with our page. Two, it wasn't really serving its purpose that well in explaining the EC or directing users to be better understand it. This wiki has made strides to expand the importance of information from multiple media, yet we were still focusing too heavily on the songs for this page. Finally, the information was becoming arbitrary as a summary for this massive universe, with many holes in the timeline and failure to actually explain it that well. So, an entire new layout was drawn up and implimented as you can see in the above link.

One of the biggest changes was actually adding a History section for the series itself, elaborating on how it has developed over the years. This is a much more manageable section, with us only needing to update it every few months after some major releases occur. Following that, we also include a Setting to best summarize what the Evillious world is and its mechanics (such as magic). To coincide with that, we included all Media in an organized fashion with a summary for each type (books, manga, songs, etc.) allowing a user to start learning from any series, book, or song that's come out. As a sub-section, we included a Fandom section to also help new users understand that there are fan variations of the stories and song videos. Afterward, general themes (that can be observed) were compiled into a section, followed by a timeline and standard Trivia section. Overall, this page is meant to be the center for our wiki's branches, taking you to media or series, which in turn should take you to characters, places, and events, and vice-versa.

Barring media without sufficient translations, the short story and novel pages have been updated with improved, completed plot summaries. A unique infobox is being designed, as well, for a future project and includes sections for a story's publication and technical information as well as chronology. Album page improvements have been slower going overall, although recently there have been renewed attempts to create a specialized infobox. Similarly, a project dedicated to the revamp of Song pages--including an additional section dedicated to the song's composition--has also been enacted recently and is ongoing at the moment. Due to the upheaval of information created by Waltz, this project has been slowed but will pick up pace again in the near future.

Recently our page for mothy has been given the extensive update that was promised by the last report. The page, in addition to receiving some reformatting edits to conserve space and visual aesthetic, now has sections recording mothy's history as the creator of the Evillious Chronicles and explaining his inspiration and storytelling style, all drawing from his blog, Nico Nico account, and his personal interviews. While not essential to the series' information, it's an improved way for you as users to understand the creator.

The majority of Series pages on the wiki have also been rewritten recently, most extensively with Story of Evil, for a more comprehensive explanations and inclusions of the series' history, setting, terminology, characters, and all media involved. As it stands, the Original Sin Story and minimal End of the Four series are the only ones yet to be rewritten in this direction, though they are planned to receive a similar treatment. This is an attempt to created a more unified format for these series page and help ease in new readers/fans into a particular series by providing information on the setting and terminology. Unlike the Evillious Chronicles page, these pages were not given a dedicated History section. This is subject to change in the future after careful consideration.

Information Updates
In regards to the Lunacy novel and manga, a handful of blog sources have given us key information contained within, which has been updated to the appropriate pages. Rajih has been given a full character page and multiple minor character sections were added and expanded from the novel and manga. The Conchita novel has received similar treatment. Translations have not yet been acquired, however, so complete updates are impossible at this time. As is the nature of any wiki, information is subject to change due to potential translation errors or misinformation. However, this information is largely backed by multiple sources and we continuing to thoroughly check for any error in the details. With the release of Waltz of Evil, we will now have access to story summaries that can at least confirm the basics of the plot lines.

For sources that haven't been released so recently, primarily the Story of Evil media, translations continue to come forward on a slow schedule, with new chapters of Praeludium as well as the Her Reason manga translated and added to articles, while translations of the Daughter of Evil: Illustration Stories were released on Tumblr during the holidays. Twiright Prank's short story is also due for a finished translation in the near future along with Retrouver of Silver.

Categorization
Categorization within the wiki has been subject to several changes since we last left off. Last September notes were made on each of the category pages in regards to specifying what is and is not to be included, while some categories without a page at all were finally given one and edited to be more standardized. In the case of pages like families, new categories were added to better impliment them into the process.

New categories were also made keeping in mind the direction the Story of Evil took with the Sin of Pride; each Deadly Sin event received a category in which to include media, characters, and other articles that could not be included in the Seven Deadly Sins Series itself. This has paved the way for seperated Minor Character pages for each expanded-on Sin and allowed us to recognize characters involved that were left out before, such as Mikulia's son and late employer in The Lunacy of Duke Venomania. So far The Lunacy of Duke Venomania and Evil Food Eater Conchita are the only pages, aside from the Daughter of Evil, to be created, although more are planned as the series goes on, particularly with the release of Waltz of Evil.

Miscellaneous
The page dedicated to HER Syndrome has finally been put up for the convenience of those wondering "who HER is," as promised, detailing the history of the disorder, it's characteristics, and known affected in the series.

After some polling into design changes that should be made for our wiki, the results have been inconclusive, with few users at the moment in favor of changing the background or logo to accomodate a new color scheme. As a result, no action had been taken to change our theme so far.

Gallery pages have been standardized and rearranged by multiple users, although this is still an ongoing project as long as new images show up for Evillious.



New Releases
This past half-year has been a good one for Evillious fans on the wiki. Over six months we've had new stories released from the Original Sin Story -Act 2- album, Evil Food Eater Conchita novel, and now the Waltz of Evil guidebook.

We've got quite a lot of elaboration on at least two of the Sin events in Evillious history, even if we don't have everything avaible just yet. Notably from Evil Food Eater Conchita, Joseph's character has been revealed as Prince Carlos Marlon and the Wicked Maid and Stupid Servant (previously translated as "Stupid Butler") have received their real names at last. OSSA2, for its part, contributed a lot to Elluka and Irina's past, Project Ma, and Levianta's related articles. As a side note on all these releases, official word on proper spellings has come in for some main characters via the Original Sin Story -Act 2- Album CD and Evil Food Eater Conchita short story listing, which has given us such (painful) changes as "Held" and "Chirclatia."

The bar on adding information from the Waltz of Evil Guidebook has also been lifted by our acting admin, which is already being acted upon, so many more edits are expected over the following days--particularly once the discussion thread has ironed out some of the trickier details.

Projects
Over six months the wiki has both been completing projects set far in advance and completing some more of its own. In most cases this led to new, more self contained pages being made for the Evillious Chronicles, based on new information or better organization of old information--new organization pages, for example, like the Venom Mercenary Group, Espionage Task Force, or Association. New locations have also received pages such as Lioness, Tasan, or even Snakeland, and the character Platonic has been given a page based on details of the Evil Food Eater Conchita novel. Old places, such as Retasan, Lucifenian, and the Freesis Mansion, have also been receiving pages.

The Families Project, incorporating both new categories and new pages, was enacted last November to file together related characters and simultaneously remove the increasingly clunky families section in character infoboxes. In a series spanning over one thousand years, some characters are bound to be pretty lengthy family trees. The solution was to lower the criteria necessary for families, like the Moonlit Family, to have their own page. Many such pages were created en masse, giving each family their own sub-sub categories to include the appropriate character articles. This was a project pulled off due to the contribution of several users, and has set a precedent in the wiki that's upholding for now, the assumption that characters of the same surname are somehow related.

The Events Project was another new addition to the wiki pulled off by several users, a project which has addressed the EC's historical aspect. As the name implies, users were assigned to creating pages dedicated to notable events in Bolganio's timeline, particularly events recorded in-universe such as the Venomania Event. Pages include a summary of the event's history and aftermath, a section detailing its perception in-universe, and they are planned to receive their own infoboxes for statistical details in the far future. A new category has been created for these pages. These pages are intended to help readers learn much about an event without having to read through every character's history. If you want to understand about Riliane's reign, you can read Reign of Evil and have a strong grasp of what occurred and how the event was looked at over time. As with the afformentioned example, a mild fanon policy was employed to better identify some of these events that are either unnamed or generalize as a generic "incident".

Categorization
A minor note: as part of our category updates listed above, the Story of Evil category has been renamed into The Daughter of Evil category; note that this is not a renaming of the series itself, as the Story of Evil series page will remain named so. The reasoning behind this change was simply to acknowledge the Daughter of Evil as a part of the Seven Deadly Sins series and include the characters and articles involved with this period in that series. It is merely a categorization choice.

Policies
As some of you may have noticed, a lot has been happening in the last few months. I mean, we got a new Admin for starters. :P

But those of you who pay marginal attention to the Recent Activity page will have seen the discussion threads dedicated to some of our biggest changes on the wiki, and especially those made for discussing all the major information we've been receiving. These have overseen the changes that occurred from The Lunacy of Duke Venomania and Evil Food Eater Conchita novels, Original Sin Story Act 2, and the recently released Waltz of Evil guidebook, among other topics. (All discussions on these threads are ongoing, and users are continually encouraged to visit and add their own input if they have anything to say. Waltz of Evil, in particular, is still very active and its wealth of information has yet to be fully updated to the wiki.) Discussion threads and community messages are two of the ways that the wiki is facilitating more user input in its decisions.

Part of the topic to many of these discussion threads was proper spellings for character and place names. Previously in this wiki, effort to determine mothy's intention for name translations was minimal while official word on the matter was nonexistant. The name "Sateriajis," for example, was examined more closely in recent months and found to be more closely translated as "Sateriasis," with word/name precedents such as Freesis and Satyriasis in their Japanese script. Millions of voices cried out in pain and then were silenced.

In other news, stronger efforts have been made to take information from mothy's blog directly, or to cite/remove what has been stated to be on the blog in the past. As expected, tidbits have come to light on the wiki that have gone unmentioned for some time, such as the non-canonicity of Kept Waiting for a Response or the trivia points now included and cited for characters and books. As a result, a harsher look at information has been taken. After the release of Act 2 to confirm some suspicions about information, a wide range of speculatory information was removed from the wiki due to lack of proper sourcing. Some of this information was restored was returned once a solid source was found, but other information (such as Hellish as an awakened vessel of sin) will remain off the actual article until a more solid confirmation or strong indication can be cited. Currently, the only information that hasn't been properly filtered is the Sloth and Envy eras of the Seven Deadly Sins Series. As it currently stands, information said to be in the Fanbook has yet to be found after firsthand inspections. Therefore, some information related to these articles is being heavily looked at to determine whether or not it should be supported or if the assumption is reasonable enough to be deemed "safe". Some information also directly affects articles (such as Freesis Foundation) overall in a large manner so this will be handled with extreme caution.

With this harsher look at information, a new policy has been enacted to prevent the widespread use of fanon and larger misguided edits; this policy requires users to consult an admin before acting upon a page for anything other than spelling, grammar, and in some cases linkage. This along with discussion threads is meant to help filter information before it gets onto articles. This is most often useful considering how trigger-happy users have been with adding trivia in the past, making connections that might otherwise be unintentional, false, overly obvious, or reaching. In other cases it is to help prevent premature additions of newly released information, which often risks mistranslation or misinterpreration in the early stages.

On another note, the new fluid layout implimented by wikia has greatly affected articles. While page width used to be a constant, it is now adjustable to browser size or tablet/smartphone orientation. To adjust to this, we have changed galleries so they will adjust with the article. That said, unintended errors like pictures bridging into other sections, paragraphs becoming significantly shorter (with wider widths), among other oversights are now being looked at and we will adjust as needed to provide the best quality appearance for this wiki's readers. That said, for those bothered by how the new layout presents articles, we encourage use to orient your tablet vertically or adjust your web browsers acordingly for the original experience. A new policy has also been written for use of our chat room, thanks largely to the contribution of one of its moderators. In the past, our chat policy was especially vague and open to exploitation or ignorance of individual users (not to mention confusion for the chat mods to enforce.) The new policy improves upon that and gives a brief explanation of chat mechanics for first-time users.

A new policy that needs to be brought up concerns the use of User Blogs on the wiki: As of late, members have been using blogposts as a space to put up faux-articles on EC roleswap and genderswap AUs, most often mimicking the format of our media and character pages. Due to these pages, by design, looking so much like ones used for canon information, there has been confusion among first-time users who see the blog posts and assumes that are legitimate pages on the wiki. To prevent such confusion (especially as much of these pertain to the fanvid-rampant Story of Evil) users are asked to to please put "This article is fanmade!", in bold, centered at the top of their AU blogposts.

Miscellaneous
Linkage. To make as much information accessible to a user with as little wiki-walking as necessary, users have been picking up slack when it comes to linking--linking minor character sections and locations on a given article, for example, at first mention.To aid our contributers, many new redirects were added for pages such as AB-CIR leading to Irina Clockworker. This is largely a quality of life improvement for editors and any users are free to suggest to an admin a potential new redirect to a page. Changes have also been made for character avatars, primarily for the Story of Evil in official Fanbook avatars being replaced with more dynamic images from various illustrations. Such changes were created for the purposes of consistency to characters without "official" avatars as well as depicting character traits.

Also for those of you often on chat or considering joining a live chat, we've made a bunch of new emotes for users to enjoy! Try typing (EFEC) in the chatroom and see what happens! 8D

Things to Look Forward To
Even with all that's been done already, the wiki has still got a pretty big agenda for the future. This can be broken down into what's new for the EC on a whole and what the wiki is going to do about itself:

New Releases
As you know, Ichika's manga for the Daughter of Evil has been advertised in Waltz of Evil already and tentatively given a February release date. Judging by the sneak-peek in the advertisements, the plot is going to follow the plot of the novels and remain relatively faithful to the events therein. Its expected that the manga will finally give us images to use for many of the minor characters in the Story of Evil who have more than enough info for their own page. (In taking the huge entries off the page and easing some of that pressure, we can also start adding more minor characters who have been overlooked in the past.) Relatedly, there are hopes to rearrange the entire format of the Minor Characters pages in the far future to be clearer to readers.

The Waltz of Evil Guidebook has also advertised a summer release for "Gift from the Princess who Brought Sleep" and "Five the Pierrot." Much elaboration on Pere Noel, the Toragay Serial Killings, and the Sin of Sloth is expected from these releases, though it hasn't been specified what their medium is exactly.

Other big additions anticipated from Waltz of Evil are scans for the Judgment of Corruption Manga, rough translations for it and other short stories in the guidebook, and whatever information comes from the timelines and interview with mothy himself. While pages are already available for the wiki bureacrats, a member of the Facebook group is currently uploading scans from the guidebook for fans' convenience with translations relying on the contribution of other active users. Scans and translations of one of the guidebook's short stories, Abandoned on a Moonlit Night, have already been acquired and translations of Moonlit Bear, Heavenly Yard, and the manga shorts are also expected alongside Mothy's Q&A and timelines.

New Projects
In the interests of compiling information for the ease of readers, several more pages are planned for release in the new future. The Conchita Event (name undecided,) and the Conspiracy of Evil event were being compiled during all this chaos and should be completed in the foreseeable future. Other pages planned include a guide page to Magic as seen in the Evillious Chronicles and, currently under debate, a character page for the creator deity Sickle. A new Minor Characters' page is also planned for the Clockwork Lullaby Series.

Aside from the these additions, talk of new formatting has also been going around, although polls at the moment are indecisive. One of our users has brought up their initiative of new and randomized logos on this blog. Another user has suggested we use a gear flavicon to replace the Lucifenian crest currently in seen at the top of browser tabs (look up). '''Please answer the poll questions below to help us decide with the implimentation of these changes. '''

In addtion, of changing the color and background themes for the wiki itself was found here and it was decided that we will not be changing our layout regardless of whether our flavicon or logo changes at this time. Since many are against changing the layout while feeling so-so about changing the background, the effort it would take to give the wiki an entire makeover (not even considering if you all will actually like it or not when its done) is not really worthwhile. As always, the option is always possible in the future but is not a priority for us right now, especially since we could be working on a lot of other things.

Without a wealth of experienced coders or template editors, some problems are persisting on the site that we hope to fix up once our agenda is more clear. For the wiki main page, we still lack a proper bot to change up the Quote of the Day selection. While our current Quote of the Day is indeed pretty awesome, it's outstayed its welcome (months and months of welcome). To fix this, it's been decided that we will be pooling all users to make sure this change isn't forgotten, starting January 10, 2014. From then on, it will be up to the wiki's community to make sure this is done daily.

New codes for the reference scroll box are also desired for convenience of the editors, as our current one necessitates that a page be edited in source mode, something that's harder for some (or most :P) users to work with.

Aside from all this, there is still the fact that misspellings, improper grammar, and other small oversights are a constant problem on a changing wiki, and many edits we and other considerate users make will be dedicated to just that. :P

Special Honors
The following users are being recognized for their invaluable contributions to the wiki in the past six months for a vast majority of the above listed changes and for their continued support:


 * Octofan
 * TheKindEvilliousResident
 * UnitedStateofPikachulious

''Servant of Evillious: As a side note (because this was forgotten in the last report), I would like to thank each and every user, whether registered or not, who has helped this wiki by fixing all the small spelling, grammar, and format errors that they found while reading our articles for the past year; your contributions are as valuable as any translation or major addition to this wiki. Thank you.''

Polls
Opinion: Do you guys like polls? 8D No they're stupid Not really, I don't like clicking and moving my mouse. I have trouble making decisions ^^; It's about the only input I make to this wiki, so... I love polls! 8D Do you want the above suggestion used for our wiki logo? Pffft, obviously a YES! Nah, I don't like them. Other (comment below) Do you want the above suggestion used for our wiki logo? Yes! GEAR! Nah, I like the one we have. Other (comment below)

What do you think of the new wiki policies? It's good to lay down ground rules. They're okay, I guess. I-it never really affected me, um. I think we should have more. I don't approve of any of them. What do you think of the changes overall? I think they are all great! I like most of them. I don't really care. I dislike some of them. I hate all of them! Which changes the past six months have been the most helpful? New Families: Knowing who is part of what has been great Character Pages: New ones and old ones and changed ones, oh my :O New Locations: Knowing more about a specific place is pretty neat Series: The new organization on some of these is great! Event Pages: What's s "Asmo-Beelzenian War"? References: Cleanup for existing pages Wait what, I wasn't paying attention... I think we still need to fix up what's already here rather than keep adding stuff Have you like the main page the last six months? 8D Just fix the quotes of the day and its perfect! Meh, it's okay I guess. Don't really use it/don't really care. I don't think it's that great... CHANGE IT BACK!! CHANGE IT BACK!!! Would you like the above suggestion as this wiki's flavicon? Yes, please!!!! Nah, I prefer the current one. Has the main page's News section been helpful? Yes, it helps me keep up with major series announcements. Yeah, but I don't use it much Don't really use it/don't really care. Nah, it's been kind of useless for me Did you find this blog post useful, helpful, or insightful? Yes No