question[]
- Are there any ideas for other portals, such as a community portal, or an expanded The Lost Experience portal? I guess even the ones we have now are fairly minimal so it would mean finding someone interested to do it, but IMHO a community portal might be useful to coordinate larger projects or metawiki issues among the really active users and/or sysops.
Contrib¯ _Santa_ ¯ Talk 01:19, 21 May 2006 (PDT)
Fan sites, videos, fiction, parodies, etc.[]
I've been wondering about the inclusion of fansites and parodies here. It seems there is no policy toward them, and thus pages are being added helter-skelter, with certain fansites getting their own pages, and others being lumped into the main List of websites section. There are many cases of such, including: Lost Rhapsody, Brokeback Island, The Sawyer Song, Lost Humor, and many others listed throughout here, not really categorized. I notice that usually the exception is that if the topic is humourous, or a parody, it gets its own page, and if it isn't, it gets a spot on the List of websites. What I'd like to know is this: is this tendency a product of intentional policy I am not aware of, or is it simply the way things have turned out? If the later, then I request that some sort of structure be added to this all (perhaps a Community portal?) that will allow fans to submit content that is not canon, nor a direct parody, but is still an important part of the Lost community. For instance, a well-known site I often visit for Lost facts, Sledgeweb's LOST ... Stuff has created a sort of Lost Universe of its own, with hidden links throughout the site that lead to Lost-related mysteries and easter eggs, some canon and some not. The site also hosts a large Hunt every summer that takes fans through a series of Lost-related scavenger hunts, created by Sledgeweb, which feature such characters as Lenny, Penelope Widmore and Dave who dispense clues and such. It is not a direct parody, but it certainly relies heavilly on the Lost Universe, and thus I find it suprising that there is no mention of any of this in the Lostpedia. Likewise, the site I co-run, Lost Video Island, is a database for Lost Music Videos and parodies that focuses on the artistic side of Lost and the footage it contains. Many of the videos there rely heavilly on manipulation of material to tell a whole new story, and in-effect create their own parody of Lost with the footage provided. Some even attempt to answer the questions on Lost through video, such as my own Speed of Sound video, or Polarbear's Space Oddity. Most of the videos already listed here on Lostpedia are found on the site already (and there are many that are a lot more amazing than those). The Lost fandom's vidding community is one of the biggest and most-organized of any of them because of this, so in my opinion there should be more structure in the Lostpedia to include video-related content under one roof. To conclude, my request is that a new portal be added, named "Lost Community" to include fansites, parodies, and overall anything that is outwardly non-canon, but still strongly connected with the show. Perhaps from there some sub-categories could be created to divide these community areas into Websites, Videos, Fanfictions, etc, so the main categories are prominent (such as 'Lost Fanfiction' in general) and the lesser topics are kept that way (such as an individual Lost Fanfiction story). Sorry for the long post, but I feel this is an important aspect of Lost that should be included, especially if the goal of the Lostpedia is to be all-inclusive. I appologize if this is the wrong means of bringing this request up, but I am new to being a contributor (long time viewer however) so I don't know where else to make this request. Thanks for your time!
Hobbes 00:39, 17 July 2006 (PDT)
- Wow that's a big chunk of text. Could you summarize a bulleted list of, say, 3-5 main questions or concrete suggestions? Websites and videos seem to be added as individual articles by virtue of really arbitrary notability (i.e. consensus if the article is tagged for deletion), as well as by editor effort (i.e., who bothers to write an article for a site). Lostpedia's empahsis, IMHO is about trivia, not notability, so it seems we are opting for completeness, and I'd rather not disturb that precedent. -- Contrib¯ _Santa_ ¯ Talk 23:32, 2 September 2006 (PDT)