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Hello everyone! Although I was unfortunately unable to attend today's roundtable, I just read over the log and I'm really happy that people are taking an interest in the wiki magazine idea that LegendAqua and myself put together! However, there were some issues that I felt were a bit muddled, and since I couldn't address them in the meeting, I'd like to clear up some things here, if that's okay. Hopefully I can answer any questions here and then we can all take a bigger look at moving forward with this project!
First, I wanna talk about the issue of hosting. The idea was to host the magazine on the Keyhole for three reasons:
- We are the fan side of the wiki, so we'd like the fan aimed magazine to be hosted with us.
- We are just clinging on to life at the Keyhole, so we would like the opportunity to attract new users
- LegendAqua and I formed the basis of the magazine and planned it out, so it would upset us both if it were taken from us, really.
However, the magazine was never intended to be solely for one wiki or the other. We want it to showcase BOTH sides of our community equally, to update users on the goings on of the Kingdom Hearts wiki as a whole. That's why I first brought the idea here for the go ahead before opening the big sign-up sheet. ^^
Next up is the content of the magazine. The sign up forum is so large because we wanted to split up the jobs as much as possible to allow users to sign up for as little or as much as they wanted to do, without feeling bogged down by the responsibility of an entire page. But obviously, the downside of that is that's hard to get an overall view of the magazine. :P Instead, here are the pages LA and I decided to include in the magazine. We initially decided the content ourselves because we thought a forum would take too long, but of course we're open to more ideas.
- Cover Page: The cover of the whole thing. Pretty self-explanatory, really. :)
- Contents Page: Again, self-explanatory
- Keyhole Report: A page updating readers on what's been going on at the Keyhole. Includes log updates, introductions of new users and current arena battles etc.
- .Net Report: The exact same as the above, but focusing on .net and adding in any info the userbase here thinks is important.
- Special Editor Page: This page is sort of like a guest writer page. Any user can volunteer to write an article about anything pertaining to the wikis or the KH series. An opinion article, or a profile of a character, or anything else they can think of!
- Tutorial: Aimed at the newer users, this page is for a different tutorial each issue that teaches users how to do coding on the wiki. For example, a tutorial on talkbubbles, userboxes, how to add videos to pages, rules for adding trivia etc. I also saw that someone thought it was a walkthrough page, which is an idea I like. Maybe we could split the page in two: one part for wiki tutorials, one for game tutorials?
- Feature Article: This article is written by whoever volunteers. It's subject is the theme of the issue, and it features a comprehensive piece on whatever the subject is. For example, if the issue's theme is Riku, this article will be a breakdown of Riku, talking about everything from his story to his abilities and appearance. In other words, a slightly watered down version of the Riku article on the wiki.
- Staff Roundtable: The idea of this was to get a fun back and forth between the staff of the wiki, based around one question, which pertains to the issue's theme. Sticking to the Riku theme, the question could be Do you prefer Riku or Sora, and why? Then we open up a forum, let the staff offer their opinions, and that's the article! It's like a mini staff interview for every issue.
- KH News Board: A page all about the latest announcements from the KH world. If there's no current news, we include fan speculation etc. in its place.
- Featured Content: A page to showcase the currently featured content on the wikis. Since the Keyhole currently has no featured article etc. this page would just include the Featured Media and Article from .net.
- Community Page: A page based around our users. Current ideas are a user interview with a random user, a Top 5 list written by another user on something to do with KH (eg. FinalRest's Top 5 Keyblades) and user reviews on anything from full games, to game mechanics etc.
- Fun Page: What the title says. :D Currently includes a puzzle, KH skit (I would love to find someone who could turn this into a comic!) and a one shot voting arena readers can vote in.
- Interactive Page: Designed to get users more involved with the wikis and the KH series. Includes a mailbag for user questions, two to do lists (one for the Keyhole, the other for .net) challenging users to complete certain tasks before the next issue and a user submission section for users to submit anything they're proud of (Fanart, fanfics, talk bubbles, sigs etc.)
That's all we've got, and we tried to get a good balance between .net, the Keyhole and the KH series. Hopefully that makes the magazine easier for you to visualise!
I saw a lot of talk about how often the magazine will be released. On the forum we got more votes for bimonthly, but I noticed that the Roundtable was leaning towards Quarterly. I think the latter is probably the best choice now, with our limited volunteer pool, so we'll probably go with quarterly.
Another issue I saw brought up was that need for coding knowledge. To give you an idea of what we plan the magazine to look like, here's a link to the Fairy Tail wiki magazine which is what inspired LA and I to design our own wiki magazine. For our own wiki magazine to work, I believe we will need at least one person who can come up with templates for the writers to use. We might also need someone to check grammar and another to supervise the layouts of the articles. LA and I were also planning to be the "Editors In Chief" and oversee the finished product. And we'd also need someone who can work with photoshop to create things like the cover, or the puzzles. But of course this depends on who's willing to contribute what. I for one know that I could probably handle the photoshop stuff, grammar check, article layouts and most of the templates myself if need be, but I obviously wouldn't be too thrilled at having to take on all that work. ^^ So the more volunteers the better!
Hopefully that answers most questions. Because I can't attend IRC meetings, I can only offer my assistance through forums, so if there are any concerns or questions or anything, I'd really appreciate it if we could discuss it here, especially because I'd feel a little put out seeing my idea discussed without being there myself. ;) So yeah, if there is still some confusion just ask me about it! And a big thanks to everyone who was willing to show an interest in the magazine! I was really bummed when we didn't have enough user support before to go forward with this project, so hopefully this time we'll be able to come up with something. Thanks for your time! XD
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@Erry: I was thinking the same thing. And of course I wouldn't object to you handling all the photoshop stuff. ^^
ColdAsFire