User blog:HammerOfThor/Building wikis and going it alone with LucyKuran

''Welcome back everyone for our second Fandom Star interview. This time, I had the great pleasure to be joined by my friend and noted help guide enthusiast LucyKuranSKYDOME to discuss her rather hectic start on Fandom, fight over style versus substance on a wiki, and ponder over whether she will ever put on her dancing shoes again.''

Read on and enjoy!

HammerOfThor: Can you give a brief introduction of yourself and the wikis you are active on

LucyKuran: Hello, I am Lucy, I am an active Fandom Discord helper now known as 'Lucy Married to Fandom' there, and I am a wiki lover who specializes in building smaller wikis alone from scratch. My main wiki at the moment is Disney Speedstorm Wiki (EN/ES/RU), but I am also the main contributor of Skydome Wiki, one of the pillars of Fractured Online Wiki (EN/DE/IT/RU) and I helped out with S4League Wiki.

H: What made you first decide to become a user?

L: A couple of years ago, I was an unofficial volunteer helping Gamigo group with their gaming communities, I was close friends with one of their Community Managers who was loaded with work and stressed out, so I wanted to support him by assisting him with some of his tasks. I chose what I was able to do, and it was building a wiki for a game called Skydome. I was not very experienced at the time, languages and Photoshop were my only skills somehow related to wikiing, but there was nobody else to do it or even share the burden, so I had to learn a lot within a short period of time.

H: What was that initial learning experience like?

L: It was quite stressful as I could not understand what templates were, what infoboxes were, so I had to google a lot of articles and copy codes from other wikis to then look through them and learn how they worked. But luckily the design of the wiki was done by the CM cuz he had a bit more knowledge in web dev.

H: Do you feel like that struggle at the beginning informed your approach to wikiing now?

L: I have learned a lot from that experience by spending days and weeks adjusting things little by little, so now I would say I understand the core logic behind different aspects of wikiing, that is why I write guides for new users to share my understanding with them.

'''H: I have definitely seen the passion that you have for creating the guides, which is great to see. Related to that, which part of editing do you find most appealing or interesting?'''

L: Personally, I find designing wikis to be the most amazing part of editing. I love thinking about how to layout the content, what color palette to choose, what illustrations to add. Whenever I begin a new project, I start it with appearance and templates, it helps me visualize the way I wish my wiki to be. And when the looks are ready, I feel extremely motivated to create new content, expand the existing articles and involve community members into assisting me.

'''H: I know we have had discussions before about the balance between style and substance on a wiki, but it is interesting to hear you say that the style of the wiki helps motivate you to create the content. That is something that is not mentioned so much. Perhaps you could expand on that from your own personal experience.'''

L: I find it very hard to look at a blank page and think of something to add to it. 'Should I start with the brief information here?' or 'Should I add a picture to the left or to the right? Should it be a big picture?' It feels like there are so many questions at once and I cannot concentrate on which problem to solve first. Seeing a white empty page makes me confused and lost. But when I adjust the page to my liking, when it is colorful, when there is a background picture, when the font size is game-related, I already feel like I am not alone in this, there is something to base my imagination on. And so it gives me a huge boost of motivation to actually add more bricks to this wall and make it taller rather than keep staring at it with 0 ideas in my head.

H: What are some of the difficulties you have faced on your wikis?

L: The most difficult thing is being a one-man army. On the one hand, I have picked up a huge number of skills (both soft- and professional ones), but on the other hand, the amount of information I have to process within short periods of time is enormous, the number of pages I have to edit by myself sometimes has three digits, and working on my wikis has turned into a full-time job that I do before work, after work and sometimes during my work hours.

'''H: I imagine that is something a lot of users experience on their wikis. What would you say are some of the benefits of working on a wiki in a small group or even alone?'''

L: The obvious benefit is that you do not have to get approval about your decisions from many people, you do not have to discuss all little changes with a big team of admins and buros, you build the wiki the way you see it or the way you and your friends see it if you are working in a small team. As for me, I am a bit of a control freak, and I am used to working alone because I did not have anyone to rely on in the beginning, therefore it can be hard for me to let other people interfere, I usually re-check all the edits a few times to make sure everything is done correctly. Luckily, when I teach people, they do not make many (or sometimes any) mistakes, so I check, I feel happy and I move on with other tasks.

H: If someone was interested in starting to build a wiki, what advice would you give them?

L: I would advise doing some research before starting. It is highly important to know what ways of doing things are even out there and how they are applied on other wikis, how the admins handle various situations with content layout (use templates, put data in tables, split or combine pages, add categories and so on), what options you have for editing (what are infoboxes, what are subpages), what design options can be used for different topics, and more. Creating something from 0 is very hard, and knowing what to choose from can be a good idea.

'''H: I think the guides you have created are great for users starting to build a wiki in approaching those topics, so I will definitely link those below. What is something that people might not know about you, preferably not wiki-related?'''

L: I am a workaholic, I am unable to stop until the job is done (and maybe even then), I keep wikiing even while being on holidays or doing my actual job. I am an English teacher, and if I know that my efforts are appreciated, I can work from early morning to late evening just to help someone learn the language. I also have a degree in choreography, I used to dance more than 15 hours a week while studying at university and working. I can never relax and do nothing, that is not me, I prefer to be occupied knowing it will bring noticeable results.

H: Final question, what one word best sums up your passion for Fandom and editing?

L: Wikied!

'''H: A wonderful word to end this interview on. Thank you so much Lucy for taking the time to answer these questions and sharing your passion for wikis.'''

L: Thank you for being a great listener!

Help guide links

 * General editing guide
 * Templates newbie guide
 * Infoboxes guide
 * How to Edit on Fandom