Hi, I have just started trying to lift a wiki for Jim Henson's Labyrinth off the ground, and I was really inspired by the Muppet wiki thorough articles and lively community. The labyrinth wiki was founded in 2010 but quickly abandoned. I'm currently trying to bring it to life and am working hard to make it as good as I can get it (and to publicize it!) but I'm finding it quite difficult right now as I'm new to wikia and don't know where to start really when it comes to attracting contributors!
I really love Muppet wiki, so would gladly appreciate any help/advice you can offer. Before I forget, here's a link to the wiki-
Hi, Nevia. I'm not Danny, but my best advice would be to reach out to some forums and communities where you know Labyrinth fans hang out. When Danny and I started Muppet Wiki almost six years ago, we invited all our friends from the Muppet forums and websites to come help us build it. Some of those same Muppet forums (Tough Pigs, Muppet Central) would be a great place to start. Maybe next check out some forums focused on fantasy fandom, role-playing, etc. Eventually you'll find the people you're looking for and be well on your way to building something together :)
Ha, okay :) There's that, too! It might be tough finding people to work on such a focused topic. But we cover everything Henson here and there's lots of people editing, so it would be a less frustrating experience than recruiting people from scratch. Our categories on Labyrinth are pretty extensive, but there's plenty of room for expansion. Check them out here: Category:Labyrinth
Hi, thanks for your replies! I've made a large amount of head-way with the Labyrinth wiki already, so am going to stick with it and focus on it expanding it and attracting members where I can. The Labyrinth section on the Muppet wiki is really good, but I was reluctant to use it as a starting point for building up as I intend to try and get right down to the nitty-gritty of the film, which I thought might be slightly excessive for a wiki with a far broader focus than Labyrinth.
Yeah, that makes sense! You have a really good start there, and you should keep on going. So I think Scott's advice about posting on forums is the way to go. Let us know how we can help.
Thanks Danny, I glad you like the site so far! The main area I need help developing is the section on the crew. I feel very confident writing about the film, the associated tie-in material and the characters, but have shamefully limited knowledge of Jim and the team who worked on Labyrinth behind the scenes. Of course, the biographies aren't going to need to be particularly extensive but I'd like each of the prominent puppeteers to have a page of reasonable quality. Of course, Muppet Wiki has excellent sections on the individuals associated with Jim and the creature shop, it's just that I always prefer the site to feature specially written material rather than info that's been copied and pasted elsewhere (whenever practical, of course!)
I have already posted a message on Muppet Central, and will head over to Tough Pigs soon to put a message on there to see if anyone is interested in helping out.
You might also like to go visit the Founder and Admin area on community central... lots of people trying to build their wikis there with great advice and willing to help :)
Whee! I had to come by and check out your nifty new wall. It's a thing of beauty.
BTW, when I click on the "profile" tab, the one next to it still says "talk page" and takes me to the old page if I click it. But when I click "Contributions" the "Message Wall" tab does show up and sends me here.
We do! Not really. It might have been a "cache issue" -- you saw an old version of the page, and then when you refreshed, you got the new version. Maybe. Or it's elves. Something.
so... I hadn't seen Muppet*Vision_3D since i was, like, six (is that even possible?) and all I remembered about it was "woah! 3d! omg! stuff coming at my face!" and i had TOTALLY forgotten that there were REAL MUPPETS there, so my mind was blown on sunday when i saw them running around and breaking things. I saw muppets. For reals. I win.
huh. We had a sentence that the Kermit was based on the McDonald's figure -- did we put that in just to explain it? (I've just removed it). What's odd is that the others are all based on the 1986 Muppet Babies PVC figures (Schleich) and several of them are dated 1988; so I'm not sure that a 1985 figure (assuming you have the date right) which doesn't match the Schleich figures belongs in that set either. It could, if they originally made the one and then decided to add a set several years later, but it's not obvious.
Yeah, this is the tricky thing! I don't know where dates come from sometimes -- some of the PVCs don't have dates on 'em. I'll go through my Box o' PVCs and see if I can find dates on the M.Babies ones.
I just got a 1994 Applause catalog on Ebay -- they don't show up often, so I was happy to get this one. That'll help with some of the early-90s Sesame PVCs. Unfortunately, Applause didn't have the Muppet Babies license anymore by that point, so I'm still looking for a mid-80s catalog. :)
Okay, I looked at my PVCs. :) The Baby Kermit above (and on the article page) is from 1988; I took a pic of the copyright date. The other pic is the copyright date on the Piggy figure from that "Classic" set. No idea why I'd labeled the Kermit image 1985, or why I put the McDonalds figure in there. Hooray for wikis.
Hooray for owning the actual toys :). See that M & B on Kermit ?? That's for Muppet Babies PVC figures (Maia Borges). I'd assumed those were for the European market but if you bought it here then all bets are off. Of course, Piggy is just labeled Portugal without the M&B; because confusing us is fun. Is she the BabyPiggy we have on the page? This Baby Piggy is being sold in a couple places on ebay as "1988 Applause Portugal".
Ooh, I didn't even notice that! Fun. These are definitely toys sold in the US by Applause; I bought them here. So it's possible that for this first set, Applause was working with Schleich/Maia Borges (and those might be connected to each other anyway). Maybe Applause used the European sculpts and the "Portugal" is a credit line, or M&B actually produced the toys for Applause, who imported them and sold them here. Or something.
I think there's the same situation with the first set of Fraggle figures -- the five main Fraggles from Schleich's 1983 set were the same designs as Applause's 1983 set. I'll go dig up those toys and look at their copyrights. :)
I'm not too worried about the difference between Kermit's credits and Piggy's -- I think they shortened the copyright info based on how much space they had on the feet or the back of each figure. I was looking at the Baby Animal circus figure today, and it doesn't have any space for copyright info at all -- it's all smooth curves, no place to write.
I've just changed the Maia & Borges page to a Licensee although that is not quite right; still, I can't see that they ever produced anything that wasn't for either Schleich or Applause, but I'd like to save the page for the footmark picture from Kermit.
The baby piggy picture I put here appears to match the Applause Baby Piggy that Danny has (based on the foot separation); so I am assuming that the Schleich look-alike we had before on the Applause page was an error; unless of course somebody has one of those marked Applause somewhere :).
I think Mokey is from the 1986 set that isn't based on Schleich.... Although I'm curious. If both the Schleich and Applause sets came out in 1983, how do you know which is based on which?
I like all the feet though :). I wish sellers would do that more often. Why do we call it "Bully" when the mark is "Bullyland"??
Oops, yeah, I meant 1986 on that one. (Went back & fixed it.)
There are a couple reasons why I think we can say the 1983 Applause set was based on the Schleich set. First, the Schleich set has 13 figures, and only six of those were released by Applause in the US.
Also, Schleich and Applause styles have different styles. It's a little hard to explain, but the Schleich figures are a little -- scratchier? -- and the Applause figures are more rounded and cartoony. So for both Fraggles and Muppet Babies, the first set has the Schleich style, and the future sets are in the Applause style.
And.... that's a really good point about Bullyland. I thought that those were interchangeable names for the company, but at the moment, I can't remember why I thought that. Looking it up, it looks like Bullyland is the correct name. Man, it's a good thing this is a wiki. :)
Articles is coming! We've got some more work for the Message Wall, which will be rolling out over the next few weeks, with a target date of being out by November 30th. Some of the features coming up: Cross-wiki notifications, more helpful e-mails, welcomes for new contributors, flagging spam threads for admin review, sorting threads... Lots of good stuff.
Once that's finished, then December is doing a little more work on Chat, and then starting to work on article threads. I'm hoping for a first-draft limited release for articles by late January.
But -- what's confusing and borked about RC right now? We thought this was the "fixed" version. :) But we've spent more time tweaking the Wiki Activity feed, not as much on RC. If you can write down what you'd rather see in RC, we can make it happen...
I'm sorry, I must be really stupid today -- I can't figure out what you're talking about. Can you talk to me like I'm a four year old? This is a picture of what RC looks like. Can you write down exactly what you think it should look like?
Oh!! Yes! That makes sense. Damn, that's bad. I'm sorry -- we've been paying so much attention to getting the regular RC fixed, and obviously we forgot all about grouped. Thank you!!
Yay :) I can't wait to turn this on with the likes of Superman Wiki, etc, but I want to wait until article messages is live first. So, a few more months I guess. Progress is hard.
I think you can put this on without the article talk -- when we finish the work we're doing this month, I think it's really going to rock. Thanks again for showing me the grouped RC -- just one of those embarrassing "spinach in your teeth" moments. We'll fix it up.
Until that time though, here's another bug. Joe says he hasn't been getting email notifications. His preferences say he should be getting them, he's using the correct email address and checked his spam folder. He's seeing the Facebook style (1) notifications on the wiki though (except he said he had been missing it for a few weeks because it was so far out of the way), but no emails
Cool, thanks for letting me know -- I just asked him on his Wall about it. I think he's probably missing notifications b/c he's using Monobook. We're adding an extra bit to help people notice when they have new notifications, but it won't be in Monobook...
So, I know pointing things out beyond what needs to be fixed is pushing it, but it occurs to me that it would be super helpful for article messages to have the ability to tag someone in a post (a la Facebook). A majority of the time, a question is raised on a page and someone says, "Oh, so-and-so would know that", and then we have to go post on their talk page. Tagging their name to send a notification next to their username like we do now on user message walls would be a great way to take some of the hassle out of using talk pages.
Yes! That's definitely on the list -- I'm thinking of it as a "ping" feature. I totally agree, that's going to be a really helpful thing. It's not going to make it in this month, but it's high on my list for v2 early next year.
And don't worry about pushing it! You're always helpful. You've got a great eye for what people need, and you're really detailed and specific. I always want to know your ideas. :)
Hi, Sam! The message wall is only on a handful of wikis right now because it's still being tested and worked on. It'll be available in Wikia Labs at the end of November, so you'll be able to turn it on for your wiki soon!
