The Grand Crosslinking

Summary:

Something we need to do.

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The Grand Crosslinking

RJB_R 29 Sep 2016 00:03

The fact that our fandom is very much fixated on Series 1 and not 2 and 3 should be known to everyone. It's because Series 1 does a better job of being interconnected and allowing people to go for a wikiwalk from article to article, and keeps them engaged with the site. Then, we began to aggressively discourage cross linking in new articles, and this stigma persisted into our current Series II and III. This has caused catastrophic damage to our users ability to move from article to article and discover more of our content. Tales have also been almost completely locked off from anyone's ability to find them, but that's a discussion for another day.

The point is that compared to Series I, Series 2 and 3 are very isolated to say the least. Therefore, if we ever want them to be viable in the long-term and to actually grow our outside to community to our other stuff, we should embark on a mass editing project to add additional cross links. I know the phrase "mass edit" provokes eye twitches in many of our old timers. This is not an easy project, but it is a necessary one. It would be irresponsible to open up Series IV for new content without binding the existing Series' together.

I have an idea for how we would proceed with this, I'll keep it simple since I'm sure there are going to be many other thoughts and opinions on this project. Authors should be able to voluntarily put their articles up for it(I'll be putting all of mine up) and inactive authors can come back and ask us to undo any changes if they don't like them. We could do it by hundreds blocks to organize it, and figure out how we want this new set of links to go. There'll be no future requirement for cross linking anything but it should be strongly encouraged to do so when it is appropriate or could be interesting. We could pick ten popular articles which either have existing cross linking or can be added to them, we can use them as maypoles, like the popular articles in series I, to be guideposts for how people will be experiencing the site.

The end goal should be a more connected SCP wiki.

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List of everyone who has volunteered some/all their articles:

Roget
(Salman Corbette)
(ObserverSeptember)
(nyehcat)
thedeadlymoose
Scantron/Communism will win
Devereaux
Cimmerian
Mistbourne
Shaggydredlocks
WrongJohnSilver
Pig_Catapult
AidenEldritch
djkaktus
Decibelle
TwistedGears
Faminepulse
Eskobear
Jekeled
Crayne
minmin
Silber
Voct
TheDuckman
Dankaar
Photosynthetic
Zyn
Conwell
Dexanote
(agatharights)
SpectralDragon
Quikngruvn
lurkd
Gears(Gave staff infinite edit power)
Solo
Spikebrennan
Kain Pathos Crow
Drewbear
NineVolt

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Last edited on 05 Oct 2016 22:41 by RJB_R Show more

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

ProcyonLotor 29 Sep 2016 00:09

While my opinions on crosslinking in general can be summed up in the profound and totally-responsible-given-my-position-as-a-moderator words of "eh, whatever", I cannot support staff just cramming things into the articles of people who did not give us permission to do so. Like, take my bile-flecked rage about the continued existence of -ARCs and multiply it by seven, and that's how bad an idea I think that is. It's a gross misuse of our power and I see no reason for doing such while a great many Series II and III authors are active and a good deal of those will most likely be amenable to volunteering. Taking full custody of hundreds of articles and Frankensteining them as we see fit is like taking an atomic bomb to a chair with a short leg; unnecessary, entirely out of proportion, and certain to cause more problems in the long run than it solves.

As for the rest of it, even given my wailing and gnashing of teeth at the above, I don't have any particular objections.

Last edited on 29 Sep 2016 00:49 by ProcyonLotor Show more

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Dexanote 29 Sep 2016 00:15

I mean, a hueg chunk of writers who wrote for S2 and S3 are still around. And like, Silber literally said…

Authors should be able to voluntarily put their articles up for it(I'll be putting all of mine up) and inactive authors can come back and ask us to undo any changes if they don't like them.

Which… is basically the fairest possible way we can do this, and pretty in-line with how we do stuff. If you're specifically responding to the "inactive authors" part, that's on the table for discussion (and WOULD be a case-by-case basis deal, like every single other thing on this site is).

I misread, ignore plox

Last edited on 29 Sep 2016 00:23 by Dexanote Show more

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

ProcyonLotor 29 Sep 2016 00:16

I specifically indicated I was responding to the inactive authors part, yes. My thoughts on everything else are "sure".

Last edited on 29 Sep 2016 00:16 by ProcyonLotor Show more

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Dexanote 29 Sep 2016 00:23

Yeah I misread, editing.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Pig_catapult 29 Sep 2016 08:47

I'll volunteer mine, too.

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Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Crayne 30 Sep 2016 08:17

Any of my stuff is game. Not sure if there's sensible links to be made, but if anyone has suggestions I'm all ears.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

AdminBright 01 Oct 2016 00:56

Mine are open for it.

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Admin, SCP Wiki

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Zyn 01 Oct 2016 01:29

Any way I could do a tentative addition? I'm fine with people putting links to my SCPs in their works (hopefully with at least a "heads-up" PM?) but I'm iffier on putting links on my own works, since my general article style is short/simple/standalone and I don't know if there are any that would really benefit much from a crosslink.

Also, are we going to have some sort of team or group of users helping out with the crosslinking? LadyKatie from Forum Crit JS has expressed interest in helping out.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Dr Solo 01 Oct 2016 01:33

This would be my stance too, I'm fine with anyone using any of my work in their articles, but I'd like to maintain mine as they are.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

RJB_R 01 Oct 2016 03:22

I think that organizing a temporary team is a good idea. If both of you were able to see proposed crosslinks before they were added, could you see yourselves approving ones done well?

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Zyn 01 Oct 2016 15:40

If both of you were able to see proposed crosslinks before they were added, could you see yourselves approving ones done well?

Definitely. Opening a channel of communication would also make for opportunities for further collaboration and generally ensuring that the work referenced is being correctly portrayed as well (no poison mushroom 348 soup, please).

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Dr Solo 01 Oct 2016 20:04

I would absolutely consider it, yeah. Like Zyn I'd just like to make sure that the portrayal of my stuff is consistent.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Dexanote 01 Oct 2016 21:28

Put myself and User SpectralDragon as well. The user PM'd me and said that while they're not sure how, they're willing to offer both their SCPs for crosslinking as well. I'll offer all mine, as well as those that I currently own and belonged to other users (the various rewrites, assorted orphaned ones I've claimed, and Rights's SCPs I own now).

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

spikebrennan 03 Oct 2016 16:31

I'm in.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

spikebrennan 03 Oct 2016 16:35

A propos of nothing, here are some meta linking suggestions (which may not even be related to the project that you're talking about, but I wanted to put them on the table.)

• The article for SCP-X should be linked to tales that are about (or that heavily feature) SCP-X. Even if it's in a sidebar or the like, for the sake of immersion.
• A tale that is about, or that heavily features, SCP-X should include a link to the article for SCP-X. Exceptions might be appropriate in the rare occasion where part of the point of the tale is to disguise the relationship to SCP-X.
• All sorts of articles should have links to foreign-language-site translations of that article.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Dexanote 29 Sep 2016 00:23

I'm a fan of this idea. I DO have some opinions of why S2 and S3 are less popular in the fandom, beyond the crosslinking issue, such as the fact that the older SCPs are simply more iconic because theyve been around longer. It's the same problem Pokemon has with Gen 1 being way more well known than Gen 4-5-6, even if the style has refined and changed (though isn't necessarily BETTER, just different) since then. Everyone knows Charizard/Plague Doctor, not everyone knows Spiritomb/Too Spooky.

HOWEVER… back on topic here, I'd love to be a part of this. It's a kind of mass-edit, but I think it'll have a different level of difficulty and frustration compared to the past few Mass Edits we've had. There's no real objectivity on quality here, we just want to help crosslink. The most irritating part would probably be the permission part. I think.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

WrongJohnSilver 29 Sep 2016 00:37

I know it was part of the goal behind SCP-2305 to be a Series III crosslinking extravaganza, but we haven't had a new entry since January, there.

I'm a proponent of crosslinks, although I'm still sensitive to what makes a good one vs. randomly tossing 682 at it. Probably an important step would be to make sure the collaboration pages are properly marked and cleaned, then adding a number of references to Series II/III skips to relevant pages. One example that I think works is the use of SCP-2599 in the 682 termination page. People gravitate to a number of popular/low-numbered SCPs, and so links from them to the other articles would help with connectivity. Conversely, we don't need links from the miscellaneous pages to the popular articles.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Decibelles 29 Sep 2016 00:43

As Rewrite Team captain, I can not support editing Series 2 or 3 articles with wikiwalking if the authors of those articles have not been around and did not explicitly give permission to edit said article/those articles. I'll support this if the authors are around and have said yes, if the authors are inactive but at one point have said yes (or can be reached and give permission), or if another author is the caretaker/custodian of those articles and gives permission in lieu of the original author.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Dexanote 29 Sep 2016 00:49

That's a fair point. I think it'll be a core point to keep in mind for this, only articles who we have garnered permission to use will be crosslinked with.

I think we could possibly get some authors on board too.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

MrWrong 29 Sep 2016 01:05

In my opinion, so long the author gives their permission to include a crosslink on the article (and the author should at least know or have input on what kind of crosslink will be put in it), that should be fine.

Also, given that the more famous SCPs are in Series I, this attempt to interconnect materials seems to be (I suppose) from Series I to Series II & III. I will note that this might also draw more attention to Series I, as compared to the other Series (by virtue of Series I's established place in the greater fandom).

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

thedeadlymoose 29 Sep 2016 01:09

Also, given that the more famous SCPs are in Series I, this attempt to interconnect materials seems to be (I suppose) from Series I to Series II & III. I will note that this might also draw more attention to Series I, as compared to the other Series (by virtue of Series I's established place in the greater fandom).

It starts with interconnecting stuff from Series I, but Series II/III also need to link to each other, or the plan fails.

However, "drawing more attention to Series I" is a non-issue. It would be utterly impossible to elevate Series I higher than it already is, in the eyes of the vast majority of our readers. We'll just be using a tool that already exists to elevate Series II/III (and, heck, late-series late-adds to Series I, which are basically in the same boat as II/II).

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

MrWrong 29 Sep 2016 01:13

Ah. It will be grand to prioritise lesser known articles. Therefore, I suppose we will be interconnecting everything from multiple fronts, yes?

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

thedeadlymoose 29 Sep 2016 01:29

That would be the idea. It's less important for us to link Series 1 articles from Series 2/3 articles; usually there will be little point to this. But the other way around — linking Series 2/3 articles from Series 1 articles — is vital. (As is having Series 2/3 articles link to each other.)

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

thedeadlymoose 29 Sep 2016 01:06

(Up-front note: Let's just say we aren't going to edit non-collab SCPs without author permission and carry on. I hope that most of the comments in this thread aren't gonna be focused exclusively on that flaw in the original proposal, unless there's more to add.)

I'm a huge, huge fan of this. I think this has always been the major (fixable) reason that newer SCPs get almost no focus. There are other reasons, but this one is the most crippling. I feel Series 1 needs to connect to the rest of the SCPs, and those SCPs should keep the wiki-walk going, leading to other SCPs.

I researched a similar project last year. To make it work, we need a few things:

• A "critical mass" of current authors volunteering their work for this.
• Make it clear that authors have full control over others' edits made to their work. They can re-edit or delete at will.
  • They can even set up specific personalized guidelines for individual SCPs if they want. "Only add X kind of thing in X way." Staff can enforce even these after the author leaves.
• Make it clear that authors can also grant staff editing purview up-front if they want (or even go further and let everyone edit others' edits to their SCP to make improvements).
• Staff would need to make use of active use of existing popular Series 1 "crosslink heaven" articles such as 682, 914, the vending machine, etc. (Fun fact: Gears specifically gave staff "infinite editing power" over all his articles a couple years back, though we can still make use of collab SCPs open to everyone, like the pizza box to use a recent example… though I admit that one makes me wince a little.)

Also, I will happily offer all my articles up for this and can make modifications appropriately (such as adding a log file or new section to 1000, 1985, etc).

Optional:

• A contest involving creating "crosslink-friendly" SCPs or "hub SCPs" (with infinitely expandable logs)
  • Such a contest can also ideally involve tales & GOI articles with the requirement that they are all linked together.
• Creating a set of standardized 'templates' for collaboration, as suggested by moi in this thread. I do think coming up with different 'levels' of collaborative SCP (and options for how to handle it) could help with this.

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I will add that I don't think every article needs crosslinks at all, and I think no one is suggesting that, but right now, crosslinks barely exist. That's partly why I'm perfectly fine offering up my own articles that weren't originally designed for crosslinks (and am willing to tweak them appropriately)… because it has to start somewhere.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

MrWrong 29 Sep 2016 01:16

A contest involving creating "crosslink-friendly" SCPs or "hub SCPs" (with infinitely expandable logs)

While I suppose it could be interesting, the site recently finished a contest. This can definitely crop up in the near future (maybe end of this year or early next year).

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

thedeadlymoose 29 Sep 2016 01:27

Yes, indeed. It may not be obvious from O5, but I'm involved in most of the contests!

It's true that it's too soon to run another contest, but this is a big project. It will take quite some time to accomplish. Weeks, at least, most likely a few months in stages, with people actively working on it.

The fastest a contest typically can be planned is a month in advance, with 2-3 weeks for it to be written up and let people to read it over and edit and approve it, and then at least a week (usually more) after posting for people to prepare and ask questions. And typically we plan them months in advance, sometimes even years.

We usually want around three months to pass between contests. So this contest would likely be in November or December if it were approved (right now it's only a suggestion), and come after staff have already laid the groundwork by beginning this project.

Last edited on 29 Sep 2016 01:30 by thedeadlymoose Show more

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

AdminBright 29 Sep 2016 01:26

As long as we can avoid the 'More powerful than' crossover trope…

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Admin, SCP Wiki

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Doctor Cimmerian 29 Sep 2016 01:51

I'm a little late to the party here but I can say that "I will open up all my SCPs to crosslinking" and I agree with most of the original proposal (except the part where we edit non-present authors' works). I'll give this some thought and hopefully come up with something a bit more indepth later. Just wanted to throw my support behind the idea.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Randomini 29 Sep 2016 02:05

I think if editing is made with the intention of enhancing connectedness of articles, it's important to stress the distinction between crosslinking and crosstesting. For a lot of articles, it makes no sense in-universe to ever crosstest it with anything, but it might make sense for researchers to comment on potential links between similar objects. Luckily, we can easily find similar objects, since we already have the tagging system. Going through articles with the same tags is an easy way to find objects which have conceptual overlap, and these edits could be as small and trivial as:

Due to the similarity of their anomalous effects, researchers assigned to the study of SCP-THIS are often simultaneously assigned to SCP-THAT.

Due to similarities in the materials used for their construction, as well as geographical closeness, researchers postulate that SCP-THIS and SCP-THAT were designed by the same person or persons.

I'd also say that a lot of interconnectedness can be introduced very, very quickly and with no change to articles' actual content by having the first mention of any GOI in an SCP article link to the associated GOI page - which then acts as a content hub for other articles and tales. If we updated the MTF and Secure Site pages to be more complete, we could als link to those pages from mentions of particular MTFs or sites - and if those pages in turn link back to whatever SCPs they are assigned to or house, then we can again improve site connectedness with no change to textual content.

It might also be a good idea to make smaller hub pages for particular tags or characters. This would mean that if someone goes "Ha, Dr. Clef always does these funny things in the SCPs I read", they might click on his name (another link) and go to a hub page that contains not only SCPs with mentions of Clef, but tales as well. (This would be separate from Clef The Author's page, and similarly for anyone else who has their character's personnel file as their author page.) This could be a way to hook existing SCP readers into the tales side of things. It also gives writers incentives to use pre-existing characters in their SCPs, since they become more visible for having done so - and it introduces more interconnectedness. (Don't know if it would be neccessary to counterbalance this somehow to prevent floods of people using the Bright/Clef/Kondraki/Everyone Else Testing Crew, though.)

While I understand this discussion's specifically about crosslinking within articles, there's a lot of supplementary changes that could be made which would help towards the same end goal.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

RJB_R 29 Sep 2016 04:08

I think instead of character hub pages, the same function could be carried out by adding character tags(which would also help with the tale issue I mentioned).

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

thedeadlymoose 29 Sep 2016 05:30

I like all of these suggestions.

The GOI pages working as content hubs thing is, I believe, still planned by Troy, but has been moving pretty slowly.

I'm least certain about character hub pages, but interested in it. Would need to be set up with newer characters as well. (Character-Clef is a good test case for this, but Character-Clef and the stuff he stars in are already largely popular and well-known; the same is not the case for most other recurring characters.)

I'd also like to see character tags, though I think that's currently up to anqxyr.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

Adam Smascher 29 Sep 2016 07:01

Entirely unnecessary at this point, but I'm going to go ahead and echo the above sentiments that we shouldn't be fucking with any articles without permission.

My up-front tl;dr here is this: I like the idea of more cross-linking in articles. I like it a lot. But only if it's done well. This means not dropping trou and chocolate shotgunning the various series with random line or two edits linking to other things solely to be doing it, or they have a tag or two in common, or because someone wants to plug their tale or canon by slipping links into popular things. The last one especially gets very absurd, very quickly. This probably means I don't like the idea of undertaking a mass-edit style endeavor to staple links to everything. It strikes me as very quantity over quality, and I don't think that should ever be our aim.

We could pick ten popular articles which either have existing cross linking or can be added to them, we can use them as maypoles, like the popular articles in series I, to be guideposts for how people will be experiencing the site.

If by this you mean, "These articles have lots of links to other articles, and some of those articles have links to others, and so-on," okay, I guess, if the links are appropriate and organic. But I don't think this is the right way to go about it - this also reads as quantity over quality. Just aiming for articles to link to one or two others would be enough.

I'd also say that a lot of interconnectedness can be introduced very, very quickly and with no change to articles' actual content by having the first mention of any GOI in an SCP article link to the associated GOI page - which then acts as a content hub for other articles and tales. If we updated the MTF and Secure Site pages to be more complete, we could als link to those pages from mentions of particular MTFs or sites - and if those pages in turn link back to whatever SCPs they are assigned to or house, then we can again improve site connectedness with no change to textual content.

This is a really good idea. There's no alteration of the article's content required to pull this off, assuming we're not proposing to also go stapling on GoI references, and it makes perfect sense.

Due to the similarity of their anomalous effects, researchers assigned to the study of SCP-THIS are often simultaneously assigned to SCP-THAT.

Due to similarities in the materials used for their construction, as well as geographical closeness, researchers postulate that SCP-THIS and SCP-THAT were designed by the same person or persons.

These are the types of things I really don't want to see; stapling-on of references to other articles with tenuous or questionable basis, especially when the link doesn't actually add anything and its only purpose is to exist. The second one gives me extra pause, as it's verging on substantial content alteration. If there's going to be an initiative to add cross-links to articles, there needs to be effort and thought put into them. They need to be good, and enhance the articles to which they're added, not be half-baked afterthoughts.

We'd get a lot of mileage out of tagging tales with the SCPs they feature, unless, in a specific tale, it's intended to be ambiguous or a spoiler. Been suggested a lot of times over the years, can't remember why we kept deciding not to. Character tags, maybe a good idea. There should be some standard of relevance, so people don't just namedrop a whole bunch so their thing shows up in more places and the tags are rendered worthless.

Re: The Grand Crosslinking

thedeadlymoose 29 Sep 2016 23:00

I'm not as concerned with the quantity over quality issue, largely because my experience with rewrite-focused projects like this has been that even when mass quantities are involved, the staff running it care about quality control first and foremost. This project will require quantity to work.

That said, I agree: with the exception of some "hub"-style SCPs (such as my own SCP-1985, which is all but designed for a project just like this, and the Desire Camera, etc), the goal here should only be one or two links per SCP participating in this project. That's all that's needed to create a wiki-walk.

I also agree that the crosslinks should enhance the articles they're attached to — at least to the same degree that ANY part of the article enhances the rest of the article; I strongly disagree with adding a special higher standard to crosslinks, which I've seen a lot in the past (though it has not been suggested in this thread AFAIK).

And again, agreeing with character and SCP tags. Regarding the issue of spoilers, I'd say that we should still tag SCPs in tales they are featured even if it's a spoiler for the tale (people rarely read the tags, and if they find the tale via the tag search, they would otherwise possibly have not read that tale anyway otherwise) but allow the author to remove the tag if they specifically wish.

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