Traveller:Projects
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This page is a list of defined projects which could to be completed on the Traveller wiki. Our overall goal, as explained in the About page is encourage and extend the universe of Traveller. Listed here, in no particular order, are several detailed ideas of ways you can contribute. Each of these project can be done one page at a time. These projects provide a way of contributing to the overall usefulness of the wiki without a lot of effort.
Publications
One of the primary goals of the wiki is to have a complete Traveller bibliography, the Ludography listing all the publications. We currently have 1,514 books listed. While largely complete, there are new books continually published and occasionally previously unknown older titles are re-discovered.
Bibliography
The Manual of Style has a recommended article template for each publication, which would include a cover image, a table of contents, and a list of contributors and design credits. The more details known the better.
Contributors
As part of the Bibliography we would like to include a short biography of Traveller's creative team, the companies, designers, authors and artists who have made Traveller a living universe. We have a short article on many (but not all) of the Traveller authors and artists. But we are looking for more, particularly the fans. If you know of, or are, a Traveller writer or artist, we'd love to have a short article about your Traveller and current work. The Manual of Style has a recommended template for the article.
Cleanup projects
In addition to the usual copy-editing and details for any publication that could be added, the following specific project are ongoing and could use your help:
- ISBN project. Most of the Traveller books have a ISBN number, and we'd like to add this to the ISBN parameter for the book infobox for each page. This is to assist in finding the book at a later time.
- DriveThruRPG. Many of the Traveller books are currently available from the online reseller DriveThruRPG. We would like to update the "available" template parameter in these entries with Template:DTRPG to allow others to find and purchase the books.
Library
The heart of the Traveller wiki is the Library, an in-game reference of the whole of the knowledge of charted space and through the whole of the history of the Traveller Universe. This encompasses both what has been written in official, licensed publications and work written by the fans. when including outside work please make sure the author has given permission and is attributed properly.
The Manual of Style has recommended article templates for many of the types of articles we are looking for. The specific areas we are always looking for additional eyes and hands are:
Astrogation
Traveller is about traveling, so having places to go and things to see is an important part of the experience. Traveller's Charted Space is some 12 x 18 sectors, all of which have names. We have at least a stub for the 216 sectors, but missing articles for many of the 3456 subsectors and approximately 90,000 worlds.
Creatures
Traveller never has been one for monsters, but there are many creatures, flora, fauna and the things that are both and neither at the same time, which have confounded adventurers. The Manual of Style has a recommended article template.
Dictionary
There are a large number of terms used by the Traveller canon which need a dictionary style definition rather than an encyclopedic. The project is moving the articles into the "Dictionary" namespace, using the correct dictionary style article template, and updating the categories.
Equipment
The most complex and detailed equipment design systems for any RPG have come from Traveller. This obsession has produced a huge collection of Starships, vehicles of every shape and size, weapons of many varieties, and other odd, interesting and useful gear of all sorts. Here again we are looking to be a complete reference for this material.
In addition to adding new equipment, we looking to update the equipment categories according to the definitions in the Traveller 5:Core Rules.
Integrated Timeline
The Traveller background covers more than 10,000 years of established history. There are a number of articles which cover bits of this history in more or less detail. Borrowing from a few sources to organized this to make it more accessible:
- From the Traveller Integrated Timeline, we're looking to create a category breakdown listing of events in chronological order by year.
- From Wikipedia, we would have a single page per year listing the events in that year, plus sidebars to have links for a 10 year span, plus decades, centuries, and a link to the above timeline for the era.
In order to make this work requires reviewing all the current articles (52,830 as of this writing) and linking any event dates to their year article. Once these (red link) year articles are all linked, creating the articles should be simple enough.
People
In addition to having a place to go, Traveller has always had people to meet. From the Emperors to the Nobility, through to the crackpots and scam artists all add color to the Traveller Universe. And we want to know them all. The Manual of Style has a recommended article template.
Continuing the theme of People are the Sophonts, the variety of alien races that inhabit the universe. Making the cantina or ducal court a mixture of colors, shapes, and smells is a part of the experience. The Manual of Style has a recommended article template for the Sophonts too.
Cleanup projects
These projects involve cleaning up older articles. Usually the formatting has changed or we've updated a template and now someone needs to go through all the relevant articles and fix them. If you are looking for a small piece of work to contribute, pick one (or more) of these items and edit one or two articles to fix these project items. Thank you for your support and contributions.
- The current use of the Source template in many articles includes only a product name (or web page). To be completely accurate, any use of a printed source should use the Template:Ludography cite with a page number to make finding the original references easier. If you see a source tag referencing a book you have update it to use the Ludography cite with a page reference.
- The Needs work articles need to reviewed and rewritten following the Copy edit and Manual of Style guidelines. Things we are looking to fix:
- Spelling and grammar issues.
- Removing game mechanic references.
- Removing out-of-game and meta-game references to the article proper.
- Fixing the language to be more formal in tone, like a encyclopedia.
- There are two types of short articles, the Stub and Incomplete, and these could use a little more attention.
What not to post
The following are Inappropriate articles or content for posting on this wiki.
- Game mechanic details. The original license for the Wiki excluded posting of the mechanics, and the guideline still exists today.
- Specifics of a Ship/Vehicle/Weapon - don't post enough data to actually use it in the game - No deckplans (a small interesting part perhaps)
- Specific game NPCs or PCs, we only want to have "historical" NPCs. If your game details a significant "historical" NPC then post it. (e.g. world leader, important Noble).
- Contents of Books/Games - This is copyright violation and should the wiki should only have samples and extracts.
Organization projects
These are longer term projects, still under discussion, but brought up as ideas to make the wiki better. If you have an idea on how to make these work, or would like to pursue one of these further please post a note in the Forum:Watercooler. We'd love to hear your ideas.
The Era categorization project
After a long discussion about how to divide articles which span era's, stage one of the result was to make sure all articles which didn't span an era (i.e. was specific to one time like the Classic Era) were set with a category indicating which era they were found in:
- Era: Interstellar Wars → GT:IW Era
- Era: Milieu 0 → T4 Era
- Era: Milieu 990 → T20 era
- Era: Milieu 1116 → Classic Era
- Era: Rebellion → MegaTraveller Era
- Era: New Era → TNE Era
- Era: Milieu 1250 → TNE 1248
- Era: Milieu 1120 → GT Timeline
- To make this work requires going through all the articles, particularly the historical ones, and adding the appropriate category tag to the article.
The Pronunciation Project
Traveller, like many games (and much fiction) uses odd spellings or "foreign" languages to provoke a "not in Kansas anymore" feeling. Traveller even goes so far as to provide several languages complete with vocabulary. But it's not always clear how these words are pronounced, what they sound like. So we need someone with a good speaking voice to record themselves pronouncing the various words, names, titles, locations, etc. You will need to use ogg vorbis format using a sound editor. Then upload the files to the wiki and link them to the article via a (template needed).