Forum:CT Archive/Interviews

As Wookieepedia has grown beyond the 50,000 article threshold, it has become an increasingly large and detailed repository of Star Wars information. While the average, casual, and hard-core fan can find just about anything they need to know on Wookieepedia, the community's direct contact with SW VIPs has been rather limited. That is not at all to disparage the friendship and rapport we have with notable figures such as Daniel Wallace, Abel G. Peña, and Tom Hodges&mdash;all of these people and more have been very supportive of our site and I don't want to belittle that in any way. However, our recent successes&mdash;the Veitch and Anderson interviews as a notable example&mdash;in reaching out to authors and artists have prompted some thought about how to further reap the benefits of increased contact between Wookieepedia and SW VIPs.

I put together a detailed list of suggestions on the Mofference page, but since we aren't having one of those any time soon and it was suggested that I put together a page and slap Proposed on it, I did so after consulting with a small focus group. You can see the page here. Don't change anything there; discuss it here first.

Purpose

 * To foster communication between Star Wars authors, artists, editors, and other VIPs with Wookieepedia.
 * To give article-writers an avenue to directly contact VIPs for information.
 * To increase SW community awareness of Wookieepedia
 * To give Wookieepedia useful BTS material for its IU articles and particularly info for OOU articles.
 * To possibly have VIPs request information from Wookieepedia.
 * To bolster Wookieepedia's status among the SW community as a source of reputable and dare I say exclusive information.

Via e-mail
I list this first because I think it's one of the more viable means and we've had success with it in the past. It's also pretty much universal. There are some concerns, which I'll try and address.
 * Proposal


 * Interviews conducted by e-mail must be carbon-copied to at least one administrator, if not two. This is to ensure verifiability and to make sure that Wookieepedia is not being misrepresented in its e-mails. E-mails that do not follow this condition will not be accepted as source material (save for those grandfathered in, which would be all the previous ones that are stored on site). If e-mail is the primary mode of communication, creating a generic interview request letter for general use might be a good idea.
 * Concerns


 * People misusing Wookieepedia's name to write a "Wookiepedia interview request" and then flame the VIPs.
 * Hence the carbon-copy to administrators. Users who send inflammatory e-mail to VIPs and claim it as representative of Wookieepedia will be banned. If User:Darth Moron (no offense if that's an actual username) sends an inflammatory e-mail to AUTHOR, we don't care. Now, if they start making Wookieepedia-related claims or pretending to be sending an interview request from us, that's bannable, or should be IMO. This is to prevent the process from being taken over by trolls.
 * Verifiability
 * ''The transcripts of the e-mails should be placed on Wookieepedia (Concurrent discussion removed as necessary) and the admin carbon-copy means that we have secondary verification. To insure that we are actually talking to the VIP and not someone else, interviews should be checked for authenticity (by means of Wookieepedia talk, SW.com, or TF.N, as simple as checking to make sure that the proper e-mail address for the VIP is used).
 * Spamming
 * Process for submitting interviews will prevent spamming by legitimate sources. People claiming to be us who aren't are not our problem unless they're on our site, IMO.

Via IRC
To be honest, this wasn't my idea, but I've heard that it's a good way to meet and chat casually with VIPs. Pretty much the same guidelines would apply as for e-mails and virtually the same issues.
 * Proposal

VIPs are welcome to use IRC to meet with users/administrators to conduct interviews, as long as at least one administrator is present and the identity of the VIP is confirmed.
 * Concerns


 * The whole flaming VIPs and then claiming to be a Wookieepedia representative deal.
 * Again, having at least one (other) administrator present in the discussion should greatly cut down on that and provide verifiability. Also, there's the little issue of being banned from Wookieepedia for pulling such a stupid stunt. Like, permanently.
 * Are we talking to the right person?
 * I would think that any interview requests could be easily verified by the administration and of course, impersonating a VIP should be one of the faster roads to permananent bannination (inside a thatched roof house, to boot).
 * Spamming
 * Admins with mod powahs! can deal with this very easily in IRC. I'd recommend we set up a channel with the appropriate controls for this if IRC is deemed a good mode of contact, or just use existing resources. I'm not very knowledgeable about this.

The bare minimum

 * Here's more or less what I want out of this, at a bare minimum. Anything else is lagniappe.
 * 1) The creation of a Interviews page to store transcripts of interviews. Once completed, interview pages will be locked to prevent tampering. It is essentially an archived discussion and all the rules about modifying those apply. See the page.
 * 2) Updating our appropriate policies to reflect that material stored on said interview page is citable for Wookieepedia purposes, but is not intrinsically canon or NPOV.
 * 3) Update WP:A as needed to give admins the policy leg to stand on. Possibly clarify Equality.
 * 4) Update WP:BLOCK to allow for banning of misconduct w/ VIPs as needed, though I think all but VIP impersonation are already well-covered, though even that could be codified under our disruption clause.
 * 5) Interviews from other means than the methods currently listed will not be accepted as an official "Wookieepedia Interview", though see below.
 * 6) The provision for a grandfather clause to allow existing interviews to be useable, as we shouldn't punish legitimate information for our lack of policy at the time.
 * 7) Provision to allow e-mail and IRC based interviews.
 * 8) Proposal policy derived from above method.
 * 9) Adjust a category or create a new one for interview pages.

Discussion
This is open for community discussion. The first and foremost question is do we want this? Indications from unoffical polling indicated an affirmative to me, but sound off. Second, what (if any) changes need to be made to the proposed page? (Linked again here for convenience). For the sake of convenience, do not suggest massive changes to the proposed policy; set up a second CT after this one is ended and generate your own proposal. Atarumaster88  ( Talk page ) 19:07, 20 June 2008 (UTC)