Discworld & Pratchett Wiki:Mended Drum

This is a location to discuss non-content matters (what do we do with content disputes, vandalism, etc, what do we want to do with this wiki, and so on).

This is the page for current discussions.

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• Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki:Mended Drum/Archive 1
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• Discworld & Pratchett Wiki:Mended Drum/Archive 5

The Long Earth

I've finally gotten around to listening/reading The Long Earth series. Loving the concept! --Osiris (talk) 17:07, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

This series was amazing! --Osiris (talk) 04:34, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Taking leave

I'll be off buying cigars and incommunicado next week. Somebody might pull an extra shift on watch. Hasta luego! --Old Dickens (talk) 01:19, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

will do what I can.... how long are you visiting Sumtri for? AgProv (talk) 19:10, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Hola! I'm back. Stuff seems to have been done. --Old Dickens (talk) 04:13, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Namespaces

The new page Book:The Rince Cycle points out a need for one or more namespaces for works that aren't Books or Short Stories, unless I'm missing something: this one's a playscript but there are other things. Discuss. --Old Dickens (talk) 01:59, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
(copied from Talk:Book:The Rince Cycle):

Well, we've done LP records, CD's, TV adaptations, computer games..... and the playscripts are listed in the biography and all appear to be redlinked, as if the option is there to create articles.... I'd say why not? AgProv (talk) 18:55, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Why indeed, but the question is how to define a namespace (or what to call it). It could be Peripherals: as the category, but shorter would be better. --Old Dickens (talk) 22:54, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Mirabile Dictu

Chaffinch's Ancient and Classical Mythology is now the fourth most popular page here. Huh? --Old Dickens (talk) 01:29, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm wondering if people looking for Bulfinch's Ancient and Classical are getting their ornithology wrong on a Google search; they can vaguely remember the guy they're looking for is some sort of finch but not which exact kind. I hang around on Yahoo Answers now and again just for fun and to do some corrective trolling. it's amazing how many disinterested schoolchildren put up please for people to do their homework for them when they can't be bothered to do their own research, and to be honest, a lot of them are not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. I have a lovely picture in my head of a fairly dense American schoolchild being told to look up Greek mythology, steered to look for Mr Bulfinch, who gets it wrong and ends up on our wiki instead. Thus ending up writing about Blind Io, Petunia, Offler, Epidity, Bissonomy and the rest of the Dunmanifestin gang. Then confidently handing it in.... AgProv (talk) 11:21, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

The statistics continue to boggle my mind. The main page approaches 3.5 million views, up a million since the New Year. The popularity ranking of views for individual pages may be obvious or wildly unlikely. At the end of 2014 I put up a short history of the wiki to fill in the "About" page. Who looks at the "About" page? They may reach 10,000 by the end of February! Lies-To-Children is more popular than Ankh-Morpork! Ptraci and Pseudopolis don't make the top 500. Ankh languishes at 2630th...Wot's it all abaht, then? --Old Dickens (talk) 02:46, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I also cannot help but notice that new pages I started, to fill in gaps about obscure or very minor characters and situations/ places, went from 0 views to well over 600 within hours of posting. In my experience a brand-new page tends to get 8-20 hits in the first few days, I guess from regulars looking at it out of curiosity. But 644? Something odd is happening. AgProv (talk) 22:57, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Think bots! Remember just because spammers now find it difficult to post here it doesn't mean we don't still get scanned. --Osiris (talk) 13:08, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Possible Outage

I've asked the cabal to make a DNS change. This should be transparent to you guys but there was a small unplanned outage last time we made a change. This change will let me cut my hosting costs by about a third so that's a good thing. --Osiris (talk) 04:34, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Never noticed. Glad to hear the financial burden is reduced. I'm still hoping to get together with my son-in-law the interweb marketing wallah to discuss revenue possibilities. --Old Dickens (talk) 04:32, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

They apparently haven't made the change yet. But once they do this won't be a big deal to afford. I'd over engineered to begin with but now it's only costing about $25/month. --Osiris (talk) 13:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Thursday, March 12, 2015

What are we supposed to write today? A good journalist (like Terry Pratchett) would suck it up and write a thousand words of inspiring prose and biographical notes. I'm not that good; I'm too depressed. --Old Dickens (talk) 20:22, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

It was just so sudden...--Zdm (talk) 20:40, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I have, on occasion, thought about how terrible it would be to wake up one day to the news that Sir Pterry had died, but actually waking up to the news was shocking and a very different thing. I don't know what there is to say or write here beyond what has already been said by countless others... TC01 (talk)

A man is not dead while his name is still spoken. TC01 (talk) 02:18, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

That is brilliant. Thanks for help making me smile on such a sad day.--Zdm (talk) 03:19, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Copied from my FB page. On the death of Sir Terry Pratchett, first thoughts. Having spent a lot of time trying to turn other people on to Terry and his writings and having gifted some of the most intelligent people I know copies of the books with notes attached saying "read this, you'll like it.".

Still feeling very sad as if a lot of colour has drained out of the world. Like many others, thinking he would "diminish" over a period of quite a few years. Sadly, the "diminishing" process appeared evident in his last few published books, as if he was, perhaps, creating a broad outline, filling in such detail as he could, but others (Rob Williams? Rhianna?) were completing the books. The Discworld story in "Science of Discworld 4" read as if other people had written it - the authentic Pratchett voice was missing, there were continuity problems with other books, and it read like second-division fanfic. That is, it told a good story, but the Pratchett voice and tone either weren't there or only intruded in ocassional flashes of the old brilliance.

"Unseen Academicals" was... well, Terry was in there. But it read as if at least one other writer was in there too. As well as all the continuity glitches concerning well-established characters and callbacks to previous books. Not that it wasn't good, but it could have been better.

I guess the next stage is going to be like it was with Tolkein - they'll milk unpublished writing and fragments for all they're worth (although Terry did once say he wanted all the files and hard drives wiped when he died, so nobody could come along and use him as a PhD thesis in literature). right down to, what did "Private Eye" once "publish", "The JRR Tolkein Laundry Lists" , or equivalent of.... a terribly sad morning.

And Jeremy Clarkson and Jeffrey Archer are both still alive... (unsigned comment by AgProv 13 Mar 2015)

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away” (Reaper Man) …(unsigned comment by AgProv 14 Mar 2015)

So, some thinkers and writers born more than two thousand years ago are not reslly "dead", let alone Chaucer, Shakespeare or Swift. This compels us to continue the wiki for a few hundred years, at least, in whatever form advancing technology dictates. --Old Dickens (talk) 01:11, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely! We're just lucky enough to have been around during his lifetime, to have enjoyed the books as they came out and be the ones to help keep the ball rolling, rather than having to look back in time to enjoy his works. I remember thinking, when first hearing that phrase, of the Ancient Egyptian philosophy which follows much the same lines (that memory grants immortality) - and still, well over 2000 years on we know so much of them, and they lacked the modern printing press, globalisation and internet we have now.

Besides, theres no reason why there might not be many further additions to make in future, especially if his daughter continues the series or if Narrativia manage to make more films or the rumored TV series [Mind drifts to Douglas Adams whose film of Hitchhikers Guide only managed to be progressed upon after his unfortunate passing].--Verity (talk) 17:24, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

just re-read Book:A Slip of the Keyboard. There's a bit where Terry relates a near-Death-experience he had on the operating table during what might have been a routine op to insert arterial stents. Apparently the surgeons had "fun and games" when a major artery started to spurt. This wasn't helped by Terry sitting up on the operating table and addressing an invisible presence, who apparently was offering him sandwiches . Did this make its way into the ham sandwich scene in Wintersmith. and were sandwiches offered on a recent occasion? AgProv (talk) 23:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

A book I haven't gotten to myself and not well described in the wiki. I had no tendency to hallucinations when I got my stents (even the big one) and death didn't seem interested .--Old Dickens (talk) 01:22, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I do miss the User Merge and Delete. --Old Dickens (talk) 15:25, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Aaand, we're back!

These short naps are great. --Old Dickens (talk) 23:05, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Milestone

Somewhere in the next couple of months will be this wiki's tenth anniversary. The history being lost and uncertain anyway, in those days, it may be hard to pin down a date. I must ask Death if he can recall or look up a day. Any other recollections? --Old Dickens (talk) 00:18, 24 April 2015 (UTC)