Constructed Worlds Wiki:Conworlds Quality Control


 * This article/organization does not reflect the official policies of the wiki nor is it condoned or sanctioned by the entirety of the wiki administration.

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The Conworlds Quality Control is a metawiki organization founded officially on December 30, 2015 in response to the perceived lack of coherent, enforceable policy on the wiki and weak administration that has resulted in the accumulation of articles of low quality, blank articles, spam, dead/undeveloped projects, and more over the years since the wiki's founding. Disgruntled and dismayed by the overwhelming lack of quality and inaction to improve the wiki, the Conworld Quality Control was formed by four long-time and veteran wiki members:, , , and to bring to light the state of the wiki and to enact change and reform.

State of the Wiki
The Constructed Worlds Wiki was created for the express purpose to serve as an open environment where anyone could create their own imaginative worlds, countries, universes, etc. The wiki was meant to provide a site where individual, private projects could be expanded without hindrance, while simultaneously serving as a means for people to collaborate and combine their efforts in a group project.

Over the years, activity has fluctuated as projects have come and go, and as old members leave, the articles and projects they leave behind are left untouched for years, never to be looked upon for ages. The most distressing fact of the matter is however, is that the majority of these abandoned articles never achieved, or amounted to significant quality and/or length. Often times, articles as short as a sentence or filled with an incoherent babble of vaguely connected ideas were left behind. There are countless of articles created by anonymous users, who, at the time, believed that they would continue working on it, only to leave it within a day or two, never to return to it. And these articles have been allowed to remain.

This is not the only problem. Other articles may actually be quite "in-depth", or rather, having more information than a mere paragraph and several interlinked articles, but instead, they are riddled with egregious grammatical errors, glaring formatting issues, or worse, tired concepts recycled and mass-produced ideas under the pretense of "conworlding".

What is the purpose of the wiki? Other wikis, particularly the Constructed World Wiki's sister wikis such as the Alternative History Wiki and Future Wiki have standards, conventions, and policies on what articles are acceptable, and what are not. Articles that do not fall under the paradigms of the wiki are deleted with some redirected to other wikis. In the past, some of these rejected projects have been diverted to this very wiki. Yes, rejected projects from other wikis have been sent to the Constructed Worlds Wiki, seen as a generalist wiki where just about anything is fair game.

The purpose of this organization is not to determine what specifically may constitute as conworlding or worldbuilding–opinions and views on this are quite diverse and not the issue by which the CQC seeks to address, rather, the organization seeks to determine just what is appropriate and acceptable on the wiki and from there, formulate policies that center around these accepted criteria.

The wiki these days is nothing more than a respiratory or database by which nearly anything is allowed to exist. Most of the articles that do exist here happen to be of little value or quality. Now, just what determines an article of decent value is certainly a subjective, relative preference that differs from person-to-person. But when most of the wiki are essentially no longer than two paragraphs with simple text such as "X is a country from Y planet and there are Z people" or similar iterations, who exactly would spend their time on the wiki reading up on such insignificant works that do not amount to any impressionable effect? The purpose of these projects are meant to entertain, impress, and inspire readers.

They are a reflection of the writer(s)' work and dedication. Those who truly put effort and time into their work end up with well-written and rich projects that are worth the read of others. These articles actually take time to read, and if these articles are part of larger projects, get the reader engaged by exploring other articles within this constructed world. This is the purpose and intent of the Constructed Worlds. When articles of minimal, bare information are read that could have been easily reproduced by just about anyone and took as little as a minute to produce, this herein lies a grave problem that must be eradicated. Worlds are not being created. Spam is. Meaningless, undeveloped ideas are created. What could have grown into a thriving project filled with wonderful concepts is instead left over to die as it is either abandoned by the writer or coalesced into a string of other similar articles under the guise of an active project.

Take Leubantia for example. Upon first glance, it appears to be of somewhat satisfactory length but it appears that it could be further developed upon. However, for those who know the nature of the project, they know that this project has been left untouched by its author for years now, and that this country's affiliated/related pages were always of short quality, as small as a mere sentence.

Abandoned projects are no inherently necessarily a bad thing. Dead projects are inevitable as authors leave due to real life commitments and loss of interest. The Grand Yarphese Republic and Ivalice are good examples of dead projects that are of merited quality. Although it would be great for them to be expanded once more, they were left of satisfactory quality and depth, worthy of reread and are kept for archival purposes. The wiki should indeed be a library where old works are touched upon by readers old and new. But what is a deep, fundamental problem of this wiki is keeping articles and content absolutely unworthy of archiving, where the content offers little redeeming quality.