Hi there! As you can see, the wiki has been pretty much trapped under ice for... a few years now. The idea is to bring it to life again and there are 2 possible means (among others) to reach this utopia:
- correcting mistakes/improving navigation in the existing contents,
- adding the missing models, esp. the 2012~2016 period.
To give a hand with the 2nd option I just built up a few lists, based on the official source: the Ibanez Catalogs. From the Ibanez main site, at the very bottom of the page -> Archive -> Catalogs. Long story short you should land here:
http://www.ibanez.com/anniversary/
Based on these catalogs, here are the lists referencing all the different models of the past few years:
Full Line Catalog for USA 20102010 USA catalogFull Line Catalog for USA 20112011 USA catalogFull Line Catalog for USA 20122012 USA catalogFull Line Catalog for USA 20132013 USA catalogFull Line Catalog for USA 20142015 USA catalogFull Line Catalog for USA 20152015 USA catalog
As you can see most models from the 2010~2011 era are correctly covered, but things start to crumble as the years go by. The red links can be used as a reliable guideline to know where to start with. Hope it helps. --KainTGC (talk) 22:50, April 7, 2016 (UTC)
- In case someone is interested in starting to tackle these redlink pages in KainTGC's links above, here's a quick guide that lays out what a guitar model article should look like: Ibanez Wiki:Article layout guideline/Guitar models. In some cases I've found it simpler to cut/paste the layout from an article on a similar model and then just changing the particulars for the new model.
- Regarding the red links from the 2010 and 2011 catalogs, they appear to mostly pertain to hollow body designs. The "mission statement" of this wiki states that the wiki covers only solid body guitars. As such, I would recommend that we focus our efforts on the missing solid body models from 2012 and forward. Once we've got reasonable coverage established there, we can discuss expanding the scope of the wiki. Deejayk (talk) 23:18, April 7, 2016 (UTC)
- Hi Deejayk, thanks for your link to the "Article Layout Guideline". As we are listing useful resources to edit this very wiki, I found a very interesting post in the forum: Rich Text Editor. Moreover, creating an account before editing the wiki helps a ton:
- 1st you can see the Categories at the bottom of every page when you're logged in. Log out: categories are no longer visible, sadly.
- 2nd you can adjust your profile preferences: My preference > Editing > Preferred Editor > Source Editor. It's waaaay easier to edit the wiki with this simple but effective layout.
- 3rd: Next step, check the box "Disable Category module (only applies if visual mode editing is disabled)". So you can actually see the categories all the time, even within the Source Editor.
- Hi Deejayk, thanks for your link to the "Article Layout Guideline". As we are listing useful resources to edit this very wiki, I found a very interesting post in the forum: Rich Text Editor. Moreover, creating an account before editing the wiki helps a ton:
- Last I totally agree with the solid-body concept of this wiki. It already demands some work to keep it up-to-date so semi-hollows will come later (a few years ago some ppl were complaining about it not being covered, though). Still I'd like keep these semi-hollow lists for the science but I wonder if, as you say, it may give a wrong direction to people willing to help, as it's far from being a priority. Do you think the semi-hollow should be removed from these lists to be set aside somewhere else? --KainTGC (talk) 23:51, April 7, 2016 (UTC)
- Edit: Finally I splitted the 2015 page into two pages, one for the solid-body, one for the hollow body like this:
- Full Line Catalog for USA 2015
- Full Line Catalog for USA 2015 (Hollow Body)
- I can split the 2010-2014 pages following this pattern if you like it better. Please let me know. --KainTGC (talk) 00:30, April 8, 2016 (UTC)
- Edit: Finally I splitted the 2015 page into two pages, one for the solid-body, one for the hollow body like this:
- I don't think it makes a big difference either way, truthfully. At least not at the moment — it's not like we've got an army of editors just waiting around for an assignment. If we end up rounding up some people that want to work on this and we see that they're focusing on hollow body guitars, then we can try to gently point them toward the solid bodies. I'm not too personally concerned about limiting the coverage to solid body guitars. It would be nice to eventually expand it to include hollow bodies, acoustics, basses, amps, etc., but I think there is some wisdom in trying to work on the solid bodies first. I found a couple of lonely article stubs on acoustic guitars as I was rooting through the site's underbelly earlier today. Anyway, thanks for the other tips, I was wondering why the categories weren't showing up for me. Cheers :) Deejayk (talk) 03:07, April 8, 2016 (UTC)
- By the way, in case we suddenly run out of work with your 2012–2015 catalog pages, I linked the "new for 2016" catalog on Portal:2016. Deejayk (talk) 03:49, April 8, 2016 (UTC)
- "an army of editors just waiting around for an assignment", "in case we suddenly run out of work" -> I must admit, I smiled :)
- In the interest of raising awareness of this effort I've written a blog post publicizing it. I've also added the blog to the site's front page and fixed the Recent blog posts page. If that doesn't get the effort some traction, then I'm not sure what else we can do. Also, if you'd like to write your own blog post(s), you can do so on your user page. Be sure they're added to Blog posts or News blog posts (or both) and they should show up everywhere. Deejayk (talk) 17:31, April 8, 2016 (UTC)
- Yup, I just found out your blog post and I was answering it. More, it displays directly on the front page of the wiki, that's what I call a miracle :D
- It may also be a good option to give newcomers and enthusiastic wiki editors a few guidelines:
- Where to start with (e.g. the catalogs that show what's to be done) but also the Insights (dead links etc, what you're currently undertaking) and other pages like these.
- How the wiki works: to be honest it's a maze. Project Portal, Forum, Blogs, Side-notes... tons of very useful pieces of information are spilled all over the place. Now in 2016 you have to take ppl by the hand (let's face reality) so it could be very effective to have EVERYTHING gathered in one place. Let's try to "sandbox" such a page that has to be nice, friendly in the 1st place, and that gives users all the Tips & Tricks that make life easier on this wiki. Yea, moar work for us, plz enjoy. --KainTGC (talk) 17:51, April 8, 2016 (UTC)
A sort of "Ibanez Wiki 101" page sounds like it could be a great resource! I agree that the organization of the site can be a little overwhelming. It appears that before he walked away Bram (or someone) was trying to create the "Portal" structure as a way to address this issue. In it's current state it seems at times to add to the confusion, but I think it could be made into something useful. I've taken some baby steps to updating it, but I'm not sure I have yet come up with a coherent roadmap of what it should look like. Right now, we've got the nascent Portal structure and categories as sort of dueling organizational hierarchies. If you've got any ideas on how to add clarity, maybe that could be a topic for a new forum thread. Deejayk (talk) 18:51, April 8, 2016 (UTC)