====== Enclusionism ====== This article is just an expression of an opinion [[page 3|Full Metal Lion]] developed over his time on the Island. It is not an official policy or endorsed by any moderator or admin.((That we know of.))((Although Hairy Mary has a high degree of sympathy for the opinions expressed here.))((Full Metal Lion //has// been editing the Wiki of Lies for 8 years, though, so his opinion should count for //something//))((If Full Metal Lion's Wiki of Lies career were a human being it would probably be able to edit a wiki by now.))((It wouldn't be able to edit a wiki very //well//, though.))((what a coincidence, neither can Full Metal Lion!)) (Not to be confused with //[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia|inclusionism]]//, the philosophy that the wiki should have lots of pages on many topics) Enclusionism is a doctrine guideline conjecture play on words philosophyn opinion that states that if an Islandy resource((resource here meaning "thing")) **can** be hosted on the Improbable Island servers, then it probably **should** be. For the average player trying to manage resources, this translates to putting lots of things into the Enquirer, especially the [[Wiki of Lies]] or the [[Gallery of Shame]].((The term "enclusionism" is derived from changing the i in inclusion to the e in enquirer)) The core reasoning behind enclusionism is that things which are not hosted on the Island's servers tend to be lost with time. The Island has been around since 2008, which makes it //old// in Internet years. The Island has outlasted a surprisingly large amount of websites. Of course, you have the cases where a player sets up a website to host some Island-related resources and the domain name lapses((or whatever)) after a couple of years as the player loses interest((not that those players are bad people or anything! Interests change as time goes on, that's fine!))((for a good example of this phenomenon, see the part of the [[Text Color List]] that deals with color preview tools and currently points to Improbable Island's official preview tool at http://improbableisland.com/writingtool.php. That footnote has, throughout its history, pointed to http://www.slugwatch.com/public/iitextpreview.html, Beeps's http://bitwise-guy.com/improbable/ci/preview, Devin's http://www.shadedraco.com/ii-text-preview.html, and/or Rentoraa's http://thedarkworld.net/projects/ii-preview/. The only one of these fan efforts remaining on the internet as of 2016-07-10 is Rentoraa's (which is the most recent by far) and it's now outdated, anyway.))((or, come to think of it, see the note at the top of [[Loaders]] for the most surprising example of this phenomenon)), but the Island also outlasted userscripts.org, which was a **real website** that had **millions of visits per month**.((Of course, some off-Island websites are still holding up. Here's a list of them: * http://tgw.wikidot.com/improbable-island (all relevant information has been encluded into [[text color list]], anyway) * http://thedarkworld.net/projects/ii.php * http://tinyurl.com * http://docs.google.com * http://www.deviantart.com/ * http://youtube.com * http://archive.org )) Even if a website doesn't stop existing, it might delete or move the data, or the Island community might forget where to find it((I don't know of any examples of this actually happening, feel free to add them to this footnote if you do))((If I knew of any examples, they wouldn't really be examples, now would they?)) It's hard to tell whether the Island will outlast a given website or vice versa, but we have pretty good odds on the prediction that the Island will not outlast //itself//,((well, Labs is a data point counter to that, but we'll get into that in a later footnote...)) ergo the Island's servers are a good place to store things to prevent them from being lost. One must be smart in the application of this principle, though. For instance, not all parts of the server are created equal: it's easier to find things in the wiki than the forum; the bio of a character is probably not a great place to put permanent, publicly interesting information not about that character; and /dev/null is not a good place to store things **at all**. Keeping a copy of encluded information on your own hard drive may also prove to be useful! Furthermore, enclusion should usually be nondestructive. If you'll examine the examples below, you'll find that the ones that were encluded from somewhere else have a link to that original place. One should try to get the permission of the person who created the resource one is encluding, if possible.((Also, encluding something against the creator's wishes would be unkind.)) However, if the unencluded resource can be locked, with directions to edit the version on the wiki, this might reduce redundancy. Additionally, if every agrees that the old resource can be destroyed safely after enclusion, and there are no very important links pointing to the old resource, then destroying the unencluded resource could save some space on a hard drive somewhere, or reduce redundancy. Backups are important, but they don't usually have to be public. Obvious examples of this philosophy in practice can be found at the wiki pages [[Loaders]], [[Titan Hunting]], [[greasemonkey?idx=greasemonkey|the Greasemonkey namespace]] and [[Lions]]. More subtle examples can be found in, say, the [[text color list]]. ===== Candidates for Enclusion ===== * https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1pJs8YYgalcDIRcxo70yYOVXLC02CcbEjHPrqpqkzQsc seems like a good candidate for something that could be encluded, someone should go talk to the makers... * Maybe also the Dwelling-owner's guide * Aren't videos impossible to put in the Gallery? If not, Aer's player made some good ones... * Well, I tried the "embed video" option. Twice. It [[http://enquirer.improbableisland.com/mediagallery/media.php?&s=20161002101845939|didn't]] [[http://enquirer.improbableisland.com/mediagallery/media.php?&s=2016100210082850|work]], but at least it got the urls of the videos in there. That's //almost// like a victory. Sort of. * There are a bunch of externally hosted scripts on the [[greasemonkey]] page that should be made into pages in the greasemonkey namespace a la [[greasemonkey:ii-truancy-meter]] * Find the audio CJCM((Cousjava?)) made for [[I Fought In the Morning]]((and possibly other things)) and put it in the gallery * There are a couple of blogs from Way Back When that we should get on the wiki, like http://disgruntled-birdjoker.blogspot.com/ and http://usaimpcom.blogspot.com/ (we may have missed our chance with http://maniak.cu.cc((I can't find it in any archives)), but IIRC it wasn't really too Islandy)((Perhaps each blog should get one page, (perhaps in the namespace "blogs") and that page would have all of the blog posts, in order, organized with headlines.)) * Possibly, Islandy player websites like [[http://www.rosehoward.com/iweb/CLOG.html|Rosemoo's]] and [[http://thedarkworld.net/projects/ii.php|Rentoraa's]], depending on the wishes of the creators. * [[scene_index|Your logs]], though you should probably keep the colored version in storage somewhere if you care about colors * The spreadsheet at the bottom of [[clan buffs]] * A couple things in https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9PkUdingtHEcUFWeDVzaXFPTDg&usp=sharing * http://stelio.net/stiki/Games:Stones((http://enquirer.improbableisland.com/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=3&showtopic=3973)) ===== What Is NOT a Good Candidate for Enclusion? ===== There are some resources which shouldn't be moved onto the wiki or on the gallery, usually because it would be too much effort or the Enquirer can't support all of the features that that resource needs. Examples: * Pretty colors * https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uKV7Nwc97oWEnX3ZqG_7TD5NOp96ps2VBnKuSMl8J0g * A public spreadsheet that actually does spreadsheet things instead of just being a table((a spreadsheet for personal use could easily be uploaded to the Gallery of Shame, probably)) * https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NYoJMe0ao-PRHCnqXf7vBO5EWEtJueZZsSoLWVnvHtA/edit * many things in https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9PkUdingtHEcUFWeDVzaXFPTDg&usp=sharing((You know what I just noticed? This is the only link to that folder on the entire Wiki of Lies, as of Oct 10, 2016 (but almost certainly since this essay was written, and probably //ever//). I recently had to find that folder, so I searched the wiki for my own essay about why you shouldn't store thing in google docs because people might lose track of them //in order to find a bunch of google docs I had lost track of//. Just by complaining about this problem I've alleviated it!)) * People's private things((duh)) * Things that would be more bother than they're worth (most of those spreadsheets)((Especially because some people start, say, an online spreadsheet out of the goodness of their hearts and don't want to bother with learning [[wiki syntax]] and don't want Full Metal Lion stumbling into their lives yelling "HEY GUYS HAVE YOU CONSIDERED MOVING THIS WHOLE OPERATION TO THE WIKI?"))((Additionally, they might have pretty colors in their spreadsheets.))((This guideline is the primary reason I haven't encluded [[http://web.archive.org/web/http://labs.improbableisland.com/|labs]], manifested in three ways: - The information in labs doesn't seem interesting enough - I would want to ask [[CavemanJoe]] about doing so, and that bastard never returns my calls - I cannot find a complete archive of labs. (Indeed, the most interesting things, like a wiki page intriguingly titled "You Are Smart", are not covered in any archive I can find) If I did enclude the wiki of labs, it would probably be as a namespace in the wiki))((This is also why I haven't tried to enclude all the art from http://improbableislanders.deviantart.com/, especially because I'd need to ask permission from everyone. I have sent a message to the leader of the group asking her to remind the members of the group that the [[Gallery of Shame]] exists, though.)) * Things that will introduce unwanted redundancy. (If you enclude a document, make sure no one is going to improve the old unencluded document afterwards, or someone will have to integrate their changes into the encluded document later, which is a real hassle((this is another reason to ask permission first)))