If we have a Featured SCP and a Featured Tale on the front page, why not a Featured Author that rotates periodically? You could link to their stuff via their author/personnel page. It might bring attention to some good lesser-known SCPs/Tales.
SCP Wiki Senior Citizen Staff | Thank you for testing my new memetic Forum sig
Sounds like a good idea to me. Giving a featured author can direct readers to entire bodies of work instead of a single tale, basically allowing us to feature whole tale series and even canons that way.
Since there are few guidelines and no standards for author pages, however, doesn't that also introduce a more direct link to pages that need explanation for newbies? We still get someone confused as to the purpose of member pages about once a week, and I'm worried this would exacerbate that situation.
Maybe we could link through the Nala-generated data page instead, then? Include links to both that and the author page proper? It'd strip out some of the silliness.
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
Although I'm not categorically opposed to having a Featured Author, I feel that we already rotate the Featured SCP & Tale so infrequently that if an Author were left up that long, we'd start getting complaints of favoritism. Especially if we feature Staff members.
EDIT: Case in point: the currently featured SCP & Tale were put up by Troy on May 11. That's 2.5 months. If we updated the Featureds to, I don't know, once a month or something, I'd be aboard for that.
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
I basically came here to post this. Troy says that moose is the guy in charge of featured stuff now, so if he can give us a reliable schedule of changes than I would totally support this idea.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!
EDIT: Case in point: the currently featured SCP & Tale were put up by Troy on May 11. That's 2.5 months. If we updated the Featureds to, I don't know, once a month or something, I'd be aboard for that.
This is my fault as of the past week. They're supposed to be rotated every two weeks.
Regarding the main topic of the thread: I don't think it's a good idea to feature authors. There are too few of them, and we'll inevitably end up accidentally playing favorites or accidentally looking like we're playing favorites. There's already the risk of this with featured articles, but it's mitigated by the fact that we are closing in two thousand choices for articles and have several hundred choices for tales. In this case, it gets way more personal. The instant we're featuring someone based on our own personal standards on our front page is the instant we jump headfirst into the deep end of the favoritism pool.
Plus, author portfolios aren't finished works, but rather eternally in progress. And (as Aelanna points out) we have zero standards for the pages themselves. Photo's suggestion could work for that, but it wouldn't deal with the favoritism issue.
So I seriously oppose this idea.
I think we have enough Featured things.
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
I was going to suggest the Nala-generated thing if one accepts Aelanna's objection. Unfortunately, the character of the author pages is kind of cool and people wouldn't see that. Also, Nala doesn't capture everything a person has written in an Author Detail page.
Re: Moose's objection — there are over 100 author/personnel pages, and I'm sure there are more folks than that who have written multiple articles and not put up a page (this might encourage some of them to make one…). In terms of favoritism, rotate it every two weeks, and make sure to feature more of the lesser-known authors (and non-Staff); don't just do a run through the "big names". Isn't that really the point of featuring things — getting people to look at good stuff they might otherwise not see? We don't need to feature 087 or 682…
SCP Wiki Senior Citizen Staff | Thank you for testing my new memetic Forum sig
I'm thinking just stick to featuring an article and a tale, each month. I feel like a featured author isn't really necessary, since those who are really interested in the featured article and/or tale can look up the author and peruse more of that author's works at their leisure, if they feel the inclination.
I'd like to see more frequent/regular Featured rotations before we start adding things to it.
Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.
I don't like the idea of featuring authors. I'd rather keep this as much about the material as possible, and completely avoid making it about people/personalities.
if your reading this your gay
I completely second the Scan-man.
Agreeing.
When I first took over the front page, featuring authors was something we discussed, and we realized that doing so would lead to Fishmongerism. Let people's writing stand on its own, I say, without them.
"WELL FOUNDATION. YOU MADE IT SO EASY. SO VERY VERY EASY." - dimensionpotato
When I first took over the front page, featuring authors was something we discussed, and we realized that doing so would lead to Fishmongerism.
I didn't know that. Well, we don't want any Fishmongerism around here.
… but I am glad to see the front page get updated.
SCP Wiki Senior Citizen Staff | Thank you for testing my new memetic Forum sig
Point well taken. Consider me convinced.
SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.
