Mission Statement[]
I think this is the appropriate article to house this wiki's mission statement. What's a mission statement? It's just a description of what we do and do not cover here, and what the general philosophy of the wiki is. My suggestions:
Coverage[]
- Obviously, this wiki will cover all things MST3K. In addition to the episodes, cast and crew, we should cover things like the live shows, the home games and BBI's merchandise.
- I think we should also cover MST3K alumni projects. I think this is an appropriate home for RiffTrax info. We should have a page about Edward the Less. Of course, this information would be of very low priority until the MST3K stuff is in shape.
- I don't think this is the place for extensive info on the movies and shorts that MST3K features. Rather, I think those pages belong at wikipedia. Wikipedia doesn't have a page for every MSTied movie, but those could be created over there. After all, the MSTied movies do not belong only to MST3K. Our focus should be on MST-specific information. This is our specialty and something no other wiki is going to cover as thoroughly.
Formatting[]
- We need to standardize on the episode titles to use. BBI was known to use titles that differed from those seen on the episode's actual title screen. An obvious example would be The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, which they shorted to The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent. Another is Diabolik, which BBI and nearly every fan calls Danger: Diabolik. Sometimes, even, the title they used for the episode and the title they used in the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide were different from each other.
- Personally, I prefer the titles as seen on the title screens in the actual episode. That's how I wrote the Episode List. This is also how IMDb determines movie titles (see the entry for Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein for a strange example of this). It eliminates any confusion: the title is what the title screen says. There's no need to decide whether the label on Dr. F's film cannister or the title in the ACEG is the correct title. Also, we can easily construct redirects so that, for example, Danger: Diabolik leads automatically to Diabolik.
- Italics. We should start italicizing titles. This is proper English formatting. You can italicize something by surrounding it with two apostrophes in front and two in back: ''Title''.
- Dates. All dates should be linked. Eventually, we will have pages for every appropriate day, month and year. They can collect MST-related "happened on this day"-style information. Because MST3K is an American show, the dates should be written in American order: January 1, 2001. You should link a date this way: [[January 1]], [[2001]]
Wiki Philosophy[]
- We should adopt wikipedia's neutral point of view philosophy. Essentially, this means that you need to keep your personal opinions out of the articles. "Clearly, Mike was the superior host" should not be found anywhere here unless we're quoting someone.
- I don't think we need to be as strict as wikipedia about verifiability. I've included references on the Episode List and Specials List pages, but I don't think they should be a requirement on every article.
- Any other ideas or changes?