WikiWalk Guide

How to Make Your Wiki-walk Wiki-work

Greetings new member of the Wiki-walk team. If you are reading this, congratulations! You are now part of a new, and exciting team of dedicated staff that is making history and will help shape headcanons, spark discussion, and draw attention to a wide variety of articles across the wiki. This guide is to provide you with a step by step from going from selecting your section of the list, to making the final notification to an author that a Wiki-walk team crosslink has been added to one of their articles. Keep in mind this is a guideline and not a set of hard and fast rules. Your mileage will vary on a lot of points here. However, the info below should provide a great starting point for you to go out and make the magic happen. Now, enough introductory paragraphing, let’s get cracking.


Step 1: Selecting a Wikiwalk Section

Probably the easiest step along the path is selecting your Wikiwalk section. All the articles that have been volunteered for use in the Grand Crosslinking have been assembled into a neat list, which can be found here: http://scpsandbox2.wikidot.com/collab:crosslink-project

This list has further been broken down into ten article sections. As the WikiWalk team goes along with the Grand Crosslinking, each member takes an available section from the list. That member is then responsible for creating the crosslinks for all the articles in that section. Be sure to label that a section belongs to you so that others do not get confused.

While there is no hard rule that you have to go in order, the WikiWalk team has been trying to work from Series I, through Series II, and then into Series III, so please try to take the next section that is available rather than jumping ahead to a section that has that “Super cool SCP you totally need to crosslink right now!!!™”

Additionally, right before the links begin is a commentary section. Check this frequently while selecting your Wikiwalk Section to make sure you know of any caveats to SCPs you intend to link. If something is posted here, and you make a mistake that could have been avoided by reading what was posted, you are 100% to blame.

Once you have your section you are ready to move onto the next step. Reading your assigned SCPs.


Step 2: Reading Your Wikiwalk Section

This section is going to be brief, as I assume by your presence on a writing site, and the fact that you have already made it to section two of this guide, that you can read. Just be sure read all the SCPs in your section, and I mean read them, don’t skim.

A lot of authors put a lot of nuance and detail into the articles they make, and it’s that very same nuance and detail that you can tap into to make great crosslinks.

So, for the love of all that is neat and neatO, fully read the SCPs in your section.


Step 3: Coming up with Crosslinks

Now that you have read all the articles in your section, the trickiest part of the Grand Crosslinking process lies before you: figuring out how to connect all these words. Below are some tricks to help you come up with link ideas.

  • Some articles will already come crosslinked, or will explicitly mention another SCP, GoI, tale, Site Dossier, etc: Generally, these articles you can just make those references links to the mentioned material and call it done, as there is no need to reinvent the wheel when the author already has a connection to an SCP in mind.
  • Search the article number in the site search bar: A fair amount of time you might find other articles that link back to the article you are trying to crosslink, or tales featuring that SCP object.
  • Ask the author what their headcanon is: A lot of the authors who have volunteered their articles for crosslinking are available in the IRC channels, or via Wikidot PM. Ask them if there is anything they always considered their article connected to, they might say they don’t know or they might provide a large slew of ideas for you to work with. Crosslinks created by an article’s author are generally the most organic, so make use of them as a resource if they are available.
  • Check the tag lists: Each article’s attribute tags are a gateway to a lot of other similar articles. Going into these tag lists can be surprisingly helpful for connecting, say, one temporal anomaly to another.
  • You don’t have to crosslink everything: Some articles are hard to crosslink, be they a format screw, a brief, tightly narrated piece, or a J in which the bulk of the article is the buildup for the punchline. Don’t feel like you have to crosslink everything because its in your section. Not everything needs a crosslink, and not everything should have a crosslink. Use your discretion and determine when it’s best to say an article is fine as is.
  • Don't Crosslink to Your Own Article: You might be tempted to do this on more than a few occasions, especially if your article is a good fit for a crosslink target. Don't do it. It doesn't look good for members of staff to be pushing their own works as part of an official staff function, and chances are there is plenty of other articles to link to other than your own. You are, of course, more than welcome to pass off the article to another member of the wikiwalk team and have them propose your article as a target if they agree with your proposal, but people tend to see through such shenanigans, so don't do it if it can be helped.

As you come up with your crosslink target articles, keep in mind that we are trying to link out of series, and highlight some of the more obscure articles. So if possible, link from Series I to II and III, link from Series II to I and III, from Series III to II and I, and give articles with ratings in the 40s, 50s, and 60s a shot before immediately jumping to link to that 500+ article.


Step 4: Crosslink Proposals

Alright. So now you’ve selected your section. You’ve read your articles. You’ve come up with what you believe to be a good idea for a crosslink. What do you do now?

You make a WikiWalk Crosslink Proposal Post in the article in questions discussion thread. A template for such a post can be found both below, and on the WikiWalk team main page, here.

After posting this to the article’s discussion section, be sure to add the “crosslink” tag to the article itself, add a link to the proposal post to that article’s spot on the Grand Crosslinking raw list, and then notify the article’s author that the crosslink proposal exists. You can find an article’s author by checking the article history and going to entry 0. Keep in mind, some articles are rewrites, so keep an eye out to see if the authorship has changed hands. A template for the initial author notification PM can be found below:

Keep in mind, you may or may not get a response from the author. If you do, great, take their feedback into account in the next step. If not, don’t worry about it too much. You have covered your bases, and the author was made aware of the process when they signed their article up.

Now that your post has been posted, and the proper authorities notified, you get to move on to the next step, and hurry up and wait.


Step 5: Running down the Timer

After you post your crosslink proposal, you have seven days before most further action can be taken. What happens here is a wildcard, as there are several outcomes and responses that can go down. I’ll list some of the more common ones below, but make sure to keep an eye on your proposals as you weight for the timer to run out.

  • No Response: This is actually pretty common. Often times people don’t see issue with a proposed crosslink, don’t care about the base article, or are neutral to the contents of the link and let the crosslink slide. In this case, just hurry up and wait. The timer will eventually tick down.
  • Author Response: Authors like to talk about and discuss their SCPs. Crosslinks are no exception. Sometimes the author will like your idea and give you the go ahead. In this case, you can end the timer early and make the edits, assuming the author has gone and made the edits for you already. Sometimes the author will respond with an alternative crosslink, or a suggest an alternative way of incorporating the link you came up with. In this case, their word is law as it is their article, so go ahead and follow their instructions. Finally, an author may not like your proposal and shoot you down. That’s okay. If you have the time, go ahead and come up with a new proposal. You have seven days at your disposal.
  • Community Response: The wider SCPF community is not only welcomed to comment on wikiwalk proposals, they are encouraged to do so. They may compliment your crosslink, and some may propose alternatives or additions. Ultimately, it’s up to you as the crosslinker whether you heed these community proposals, but please pay attention to them, as you may find the proposals that the community are turning in blow yours out of the water. Additionally, some may disapprove of your crosslink proposal. If you have enough naysayers, it might be a good idea to reevaluate your proposal and see if you can come up with a better one.

In the end, however, your timer will run down. At which point, assuming your proposal has not gained a substantial amount of negative feedback, it can be implemented.


Step 6: Making Your Edit

Once the timer has run down, and assuming your proposal has passed the author and community’s eyes unscathed, the time to actually add the edit is at hand.

Your first step should be to remove the timer from your proposal post, and in its place put something along the lines of: “Timer Expired. Edits made as discussed below. Author may revert at any time.”

From there, go ahead and remove the “crosslink” tag from the article, and add your edit. Be sure to include in the edit notes something along the lines of: “Wikiwalk Crosslink Added. See discussion for details. Author may revert at any time.”

Once the edit has been implemented, go ahead and send the author a follow up PM to let them know that changes have been made to their article. A template for this kind of PM can be found below:

Once that has been done, you have officially completed the addition of a WikiWalk Crosslink for an article in your section. After all the articles in your section are completed, go ahead and update our finished crosslink list here.


As I said during the introduction, the above is not a hard and fast set of rules that needs to be followed by the books, but a guide to help you do your job. I use the above process each time I tackle a new WikiWalk section and it has not failed me yet, however each crosslink is different and has its own nuances and you will need to be flexible to make everything work out in the end.

All that being said, best of luck to you in your crosslinking. Godspeed.

Jacob Conwell
Operational Staff and WikiWalk Team Member


WikiWalk Process Check List

  • Pick a section.
  • Read the articles in the section.
  • Come up with your crosslinks
  • Post your crosslink proposal in the article discussion
    • Add the “crosslink” tag to the article.
    • PM the article author about the proposal.
    • Add a link to the crosslink proposal on the Grand Crosslinking raw list.
  • Wait for the timer to tick down. Acquire feedback.
  • Make the edit.
    • Remove the timer from the proposal post.
    • Remove the “crosslink” tag.
    • PM the author about the edit.
    • Update the Grand Crosslinking raw list.
  • Update the Finished Crosslink list when all crosslinks in your current section are done.
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License