MediaWiki:Community-corner

Welcome.

At this point in Barkleypedia's lifetime, I'd be surprised if anyone's stumbled upon this wiki, besides myself and Wikia personnel. To have found this Community Corner, you must be a particularly adventurous cyber-explorer. I am Clispaeth, and this is the wiki I've founded, Barkleypedia: Shut Up and Wiki!

Introduction
I know of one other Barkley-centric wiki, the |Hoopz Barkley Saga Wiki. Perhaps there are others, but if so, they're as obscure as this one. You may well ask yourself, why another Barkley-centric wiki? Why not invest my time in the Hoopz Barkley Saga Wiki? As a man of similar goals to that wiki's founder, MagnumDragon, I have the utmost respect for his work. However, I have my own vision of what a Barkley-centric wiki should be.

Of course, it would be hubris to impose my vision on a project as collaborative as a wiki. This would be trebly true if it were a preexisting wiki with its own history. And yet, if I started my own wiki, and made its central conceit obvious right on the front page, perhaps others would carry out my vision–no, our vision–by their own free will. A wiki which is both informative, and a reflection of the Barkley spirit, a way for both editors and knowledge-seekers to play along, outside the vidcons. And it wouldn't take too long to surpass the Hoopz Barkley Saga Wiki's word- and article-counts.

Furthermore, the Hoopz Barkley Saga Wiki is explicitly devoted to the Hoopz Barkley SaGa. It's right in the title. This wiki, on the other hand, covers the entire canon. After all, Gaiden means "side story." Even as wonderful as Chapter 1 is, isn't it an error in perspective to place the gaiden title before the main series? Questions of quality aside, would you really center your Fabula Nova Crystallis encyclopedia around Type-0 rather than XIII and XV, or your Zelda overview around Majora's Mask rather than Hyrule-centric titles? It's just a matter of decorum.

Always keep one foot firmly within the canonical Barkley world, even when editing an article on an out-of-universe subject. Always treat each title in the canon with the proper respect, even those titles related to the canon which may not be strictly canonical, such as the films Juwanna Mann, Kazaam, and Space Jam 2. Beware of fan fiction, or at least be sure to keep canon, non-canon, possible canon, and fan conjecture each separate, with zero tolerance for cross-contamination. The question of what is and is not canon is the heart and soul, the fountainhead of the Barkley world. Thus, it would be unwise to take that question lightly...

A note on style. You might question whether or not your edits sufficiently follow the style and spirit of the Barkley canon. On one hand, I welcome such self-criticism, and would advise against trying too hard; trying to out-Chef Boyardee Chef Boyardee. On the other hand, I don't want to discourage anyone from editing by suggesting that you're not good enough for "my" grand design. I'm sure some or all of my attempts at adding to the Barkley phenomenon fall flat on their face. What I will say is that when in doubt, just stick to the facts. Dish out encyclopedic info while taking the Barkley world just a little more seriously than anyone should. That alone will achieve the desired results. If we can't slam with the best, we can still jam with the rest.

Seeing as this wiki is more obscure than the Hoopz Barkley Saga Wiki, and how even that wiki has so few edits, the attempt to grow this into such an expansive wiki might seem Sisyphean. What I'm hoping is that the eventual release of Barkley 2 will cause a surge of fans interested in the mythos. Maybe even the right Let's Play could cause an influx. When such a time comes, hopefully this wiki will be big and organized enough to start a chain reaction of growth, like a vidcon snowball rolling down a hill.

–-Clispaeth, 2 January 2016

Projects
All that being said, as big a vision I have, I'm in a little over my head. Even just messing around with images can be a little hairy. Sure, crappy photoshop jobs would be appropriate for a Barkley wiki, but how do I know my images are crappy in the right way?

Here are some projects I'll be working on when I get around to them, and if any other fans can lend their expertise, wonderful. Maybe it's more for myself than anyone else, just so I remember what I set out to do if I abandon this wiki for months or years. And if I abandon it forever, willingly or not, maybe someone who adopts it or just wants to edit will appreciate these ideas and see them through to completion, succeeding where I failed.

Official name of the Wiki
When I first created Barkleypedia, there were a couple of funny limitations to the name. First, it had to have "Wikia" at the end. Second, it could not have "Wiki" within it. "Wiki!" was fine, so I got away with that. But because I couldn't find a way to remove the "Wikia" from the end, it seems the official name of Barkleypedia is "Barkleypedia Shut Up and Wiki! Wikia". I don't see why they're so insistent, Wikia still appears in the browser header, so now up there it says "Barkleypedia Shut Up and Wiki! Wikia – Wikia". What would've been wrong with "Barkleypedia Shut Up and Wiki! – Wikia" at the header, and the official name I want? There's no "Wikia" within the titles of the Gundam Wiki, or Lostpedia, or Wookieepedia, or even the Hoopz Barkley Saga Wiki.

What did I miss? Is this new? Were the older wikis grandfathered in? At least I was able to change the name up in the left-hand corner to whatever I wanted. I'll bring the rest of the problem up once the site has grown somewhat.

Update 10 January 2016: I'm beginning to rethink the "Wiki!". I don't know if it's intuitive to use "wiki" as a verb. Maybe I should've went with "Shut Up and Edit!". Something to keep in mind. Originally, I just had a strong urge to incorporate both "pedia" and "wiki" into the name. Even outside of Barkley-centric wikis. For example, a Gundam wiki might be named, "Mobile Wiki Gundampedia" (original name, do not steal [hmm, there should be an "original character do not steal" symbol, à la the copyright symbol]). Then, there's the possibility of removing the wiki/edit part from the official name, and just having it be a tagline... but I'm not sure that's in keeping with the spirit of Shut Up and Jam!

Another Update: It's perfectly normal to use "wiki" as a verb. In fact, to wiki means both to edit a wiki, and to just search through a wiki! So it's appropriate for all visitors.

Wordmark
My immediate concept for a wordmark would be to take the title of Barkley Shut Up and Jam! as seen on the Sega Genesis box, and add "pedia" to the right of "Barkley", before scratching out "Jam!" with a paintbrush or spray can tool and adding "Wiki!" either to its right or over it. Everything below the title would be cut off, so it can fit in that space for the wordmark. You'd just see Barkley's scalp and right arm. "pedia" and "Wiki!" would be written in white, using the same font the Wikipedia logo uses, if I'm able to use it. (Linux Libertine, a public domain font.) Ideally, "Jam!" would be scratched out with a spray can effect resembling that of the '95/'98 MS Paint spray can tool, red. It seems difficult for me to acquire that exact effect, though.

A much more ambitious wordmark would be a basketball parody of the Wikipedia logo. Take that basketball image used for Barkley on the Mac OS Dashboard and turn it into an unfinished globe made of jigsaw pieces. Switch around the characters, lots of "B" sounds, maybe an "Ó" as in "Tír na nÓg", a few Al Bhed versions of English letters.

Favicon
Barkley's Gaiden headshot, or a tiny version of the ambitious unfinished-b-ball-globe, or a b-ball with a Linus Libertine "B" over it, or the same letter over a basketball-orange rounded square. ("Basketball orange," by the way, is FA8320.)

Theme design
As of 2 January 2016, I have a "babydoll"-centric theme. The only thing I really changed was the color of the little bar that appears at the bottom of the screen, which for all I know is something only I see as an Admin. I changed it to that "basketball orange" color, which doesn't look too great anywhere else. We should stick to purple, first because of the Pheonix Sun colors, second because it's good for sci-fi/fantasy stuff, like the main menu image in Gaiden. Purple, with orange and maybe yellow as secondary colors.

I also considered using basketball textures as a background, replacing the purple slanted texture I'm using now. I found some decent basketball textures from this site, here, here, here, and here. The guy wants attribution, but I don't know where I'd put that for a wiki background. On the bottom of the home page? On the image's file page on the wiki? Who knows if there's a more appropriate texture, or if it will even look good enough.

I tried uploading one background, but they're all above 1 megabyte in size, when the limit is 300 kilobytes. I don't know how to compress these images, and I don't know whether they'll still look decent after compression.

I'm setting the body of the page to white or off-white opaque, with only a slight transparency effect. Especially if I end up using a basketball texture.

I've also already changed the text in the wordmark spot to smaller font, so the lines don't overlap like the originally were. But that should be replaced with an image anyway.

Navboxes
Collapsable navboxes at the bottoms of pages are one of my favorite things about wikis. I especially like it when there are three or more collapsable navboxes all stocked on top of each other. However, the basic template a new wiki is provided with doesn't offer much variety, and I haven't learned how to customize them. As of now, I can only choose a header, and then include a single sentence with links. I need navboxes with multiple rows, each labeled, multiple sub-headers, rows divided into other rows.

Here are two of my favorite examples of navboxes:


 * Particles in physics, a Wikipedia template. Note how the "Elementary" group is divided into "Fermions" and more, how "Fermions" is then divided into "Quarks" and "Leptons".
 * Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, a Final Fantasy Wiki template. Note the two sub-headers, "Titles" and "Important recurring topics". And that main header, the color, the image, the font. Exquisite!
 * Final Fantasy VII, another Final Fantasy Wiki template. Imagine one of these for just Gaiden alone, including all the characters, moves, and enemies!

I tried copying simple-but-useful templates from other wikis and adjusting them for Barkley use, but it looks like all the templates I tried required the use of prior charms and incantations elsewhere in the wiki, far too esoteric for my current state.

Here's a list of navboxes I'd like to create:


 * Barkley Shut Up and Jam! expanded universe: divided into "Barkley Shut Up and Jam!", "Hoopz Barkley SaGa", and "Other works" sections, with the first section possibly divided into "Main series" and "Side stories" groups, and the second divided into "Vidcons" and "Movies", since there's supposed to be a Barkley 2 "movie" the vidcon is based off. "Other works" could be divided between "Canon" and "Referenced", "Canon" including Space Jam, "Referenced" including things like Juwanna Mann and Kazaam. This navbox could be a collection of other collapsible navboxes, especially since Gaiden belongs to both the Barkley Shut Up and Jam! series and the Hoopz Barkley SaGa.
 * Space Jam series: includes links to Space Jam, Space Jam 2, the article about the Space Jam, as well as the soundtrack and hit single. And characters.
 * Barkley Shut Up and Jam! series: as detailed in the first navbox, but including sections for characters and locations appearing in those games, but none appearing in just Barkley 2, since it's not a Shut Up and Jam! title.
 * Hoopz Barkley SaGa: as detailed in the first navbox, but including sections for characters, locations, items, so on, but none appearing in the main series Shut Up and Jam! games; for example, no Shut Up and Jam! characters besides Barkley and Wildman, unless I missed someone else.
 * Characters: I can think of many ways to organize this. By location, by species, by organizational affiliation, by protagonist/antagonist/minor/major/playable status, a navbox for just b-ballers or NBA b-ball stars. Perhaps there'd be multiple navboxes for each of these schemes.
 * Locations
 * Items
 * Species
 * Enemies
 * Moves: how would I divide between gameplay moves, like "Zeta Scan" and enemy moves, from non-gameplay moves, like the generalized "Slam", the generalized "Jam", "Chaos Dunk" and "Hypno Dunk"...
 * Music: how would I divide between out-of-universe tracks, like Eternity and "Space Jam (single)", and in-universe tracks, like Sweet Georgia Brown...
 * Events and eras: links include Cyberpocalypse, post-Cyberpocalypse, Space Jam, and Great B-ball Purge.
 * Tales of Game's Studios: includes links to articles for vidcons not in the Barkley canon, like The Sewer Goblet and ToG Vidcon Pack.

Character Templates
Character templates are also wonderful, and probably more easy for me to master on my own than navboxes. In the long run, I might think about different types of templates for different characters; for example, a template for all b-ball stars with NBA or WNBA history, including the teams they played for even if the teams were never mentioned in any canon games.

Here are items I might include in a character template, some with examples. Presumably if they don't apply and are left empty they don't show up on the article's template.


 * Name: Charles Barkley, Cyberdwarf, Balthios James
 * Name (Victorian Steampunk): Sir Bakley, Geardwarf
 * Also known as: Sir Charles, Cyber Dwarf, Ultimate Hellbane
 * Age: mention year, since not all vidcons take place in 2053
 * Sex: Male (Barkley), Female (Maureen), Female? (Juwanna Mann)
 * Date of birth
 * Date of death: 2053 (Brimley)
 * Manner of death: Sugarification
 * Date of disappearance: 2053 (Barkley)
 * Manner of disappearance: Fate unknown after final Chaos Dunk aboard Necron 5
 * Birthplace
 * Blood Type
 * Height: Might be something to use an out-of-universe source for everyone
 * Weight
 * Eye color
 * Hair color
 * Profession: B-baller, CEO, Priest, Agent of the B-Ball Removal Department
 * Allegiance: B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S., Diabetes cult, Church of Clispaeth
 * Species: Human, Cyborg (are human and cyborg mutually exclusive?), Duergar, Cyberdwarf
 * Race and/or ethnicity: B-ball American and Octoroon are musts
 * Class: Zaubermancer, Gun'sbraster
 * Appearances: BSUaJ (first appearance), BSUaJ2, Space Jam, BSUaJ:G, B2:RoC (Barkley) (maybe divide up vidcons and films)
 * Voiced by: Charles Barkley in BSUaJ, BSUaJ2, (whoever voiced Barkley in the BSUaJ:G intro) in BSUaJ:G

Update 10 January 2016: I've added a character template to the Charles Barkley article. There's more there than above, but one thing I forgot to add was familial relations. I'm unsure of how to place spouses in such a category. Maybe a subheader for "family", with ancestors, then spouses, then descendants. But, what about love interests, that are never married?

Another thing to consider is character infobox groups which are optional templates-within-templates. For example, a group under a subheader that's only for the playable streetballers of the main series Shut Up and Jam! titles. Or a group only for playable Gaiden characters, so there's not always the option of adding a Class (like Zaubermancer or Gun'sbraster) to Bugs Bunny or whoever.

Clever Header Templates
You know how all those other fandom wikis have the header templates with a small pic from the show or game, with a large-font, bolded quote relevant to whatever the header is for? Those are great! I love those things. You know, we could have:


 * If you can't slam with the best, jam with the rest. This page has been nominated for deletion, to the right of an imposing portrait of Charles Barkley,

or:


 * Stay out of my house. This page is semi-protected from editing, to the right of a picture of Barkley dunking in BSUaJ2.

Other templates
I haven't even really got a hold of what templates we already have from the starter wiki. Once I do, I'll list what templates I'll want to have before I really get into the swing of things.

Alright, I've had a look.


 * There's a disambig template, I guess for the tops of disambiguation pages, but shouldn't there be a template for directing people towards disambiguation pages or pages with similar names, at the top of pages linked to in disambiguation pages? As in This is the article for X. You may be looking for Y. Or, This is the article for X. To see pages with similar titles, see Y.
 * There ought to be some citation-related templates. Like a citation needed template, or an annotation template, or templates for making orderly lists of sources at the bottoms of pages.

When do we NOT use the term "vidcon"?
Never! Well, there are unavoidable scenarios. As loathe as we all must be to using "vid-con" or even "vid con", we might be quoting Truckpump when he uses those terms, or referencing that monologue. And––

––oh, oh no... It appears I've been making a terrible mistake. Of course, vidcons refer to console video games! I have used it to refer to Gaiden many times, despite it never having a console release. Will I ever escape this shame? I've probably had thousands of potential editors visit this wiki in the past week, all of whom saw my mistake and promptly dismissed the wiki for the trash it is. Well, I suppose there's a saving grace in that ToG themselves refer to their ToG Vidcon Pack as a "Vidcon Pack", when it is in fact a computer release.

But you get the idea; use vidcon as often as possible. The word "game" isn't verboten, but keep it to a minimum, preferably only for computer games. Even then, it might be possible to refer to computer games as vidcons, if we can find enough instances of ToG staff using the term so. Maybe reviewing Gaiden will reveal that Hoopz refers to computer games as vidcons, too. I only remember a computer in his bedroom.

Inconsistent capitalization and spelling
You know, is it B-ball, B-Ball, Bball, BBall? And then what about when the word is used in another title, like the Great B-ball Purge or the BBall Catacombs. Do we need to mention that the name on the text box throughout Gaiden is Cyber Dwarf instead of Cyberdwarf? I haven't scoured the text in such detail, but I'm willing to bet there are plenty of these which I can't remember.

One solution would be to care as much about it as ToG seems to have cared. Just wing it and don't bother with it afterwards. (Although, it's entirely reasonable to believe that they painstakingly chose precisely how to misspell their terms at each beat in the story.)

But I'm thinking that a quick skim through the game can lead to some sort of consensus on which spellings are best, based on frequency, and whether or not in-text mentions are valued over map names, and so on.

Vague out-of-universe capitalization and spelling
Wikipedia, and most other sources I've seen, spell the title of the original Accolade vidcon


 * Barkley Shut Up and Jam!

When you look at the cover box art and the various logos, you see that "Shut Up and Jam!" is a subtitle. So some other possible ways to write the title are


 * Barkley, Shut Up and Jam! (as Gaiden does it)
 * Barkley: Shut Up and Jam!
 * Barkley – Shut Up and Jam!
 * Barkley ~Shut Up and Jam!~

In the vidcon's manual, the vidcon is usually referred to as just Shut Up and Jam! None of the above titles are used. However, at one point the vidcon is referred to as Charles Barkley: Shut Up and Jam! Obviously, "Charles" isn't in the official title. But this instance of the full title in writing leads me to believe that


 * Barkley: Shut Up and Jam!

is the most appropriate way to title it.

On a related note, how would we title the Hoopz Barkley SaGa? It's not really a title, it's a term used in two titles. So I'll avoid italicizing it for now. But how would I title the page? Is it The Hoopz Barkley SaGa, like how it's The Lord of the Rings? Or is it the Hoopz Barkley SaGa, like how it's the Odyssey? With no known official mention, I'm going with the simpler of the two, the latter. It's the Hoopz Barkley SaGa.

How to write the titles of the two Accolade vidcons
Wikipedia writes the titles Barkley Shut Up and Jam! and ''Barkley Shut Up and Jam! 2''. I took up their cue at first. But eventually I found copies of the SNES manual and the Genesis manual. Both are beautiful peeks into the pre-Gaiden world of Barkley... It's almost prefigurative. And soon after, I discovered video of the prototype or beta for the Atari Jaguar version of the game, something that must be seen to be believed... but I digress.

In the Genesis/SNES manual, the complete title is never written. Most of the time it's referred to as simply Shut Up and Jam! However, it does refer to a Charles Barkley: Shut Up and Jam! Obviously "Charles" is not part of the vidcon's title. Maybe it was an earlier title, or the manual's writer didn't know the exact title at the time of writing. But it strongly suggests that the title is supposed to be written Barkley: Shut Up and Jam! Of course, colons aren't always included when there's a line break between the title and subtitle, as on the boxart and in-vidcon logos. Colons and commas were both reasonable assumptions, and Wikipedia was wise in playing it safe and just ignoring any possible punctuation. But the Wikipedians probably didn't come across this manual, which offers as definitive an answer as we might ever get.

So, until any further info which overturns this discovery, the titles of the Accolade Barkley games will contain colons.

Another thing to note is that on the main menu background of SUaJ!2, the title seems to be written: Barkley 2 Shut Up and Jam!, possibly implying a title of Barkley 2: Shut Up and Jam! Of course, the other appearances of the title contradict such a possibility.

Choosing standard abbreviations and acronyms
That also reminds me, we need to choose standardized abbreviations and acronyms. Not talking about in-vidcon stuff, but for the vidcons and films. Maybe the shortest titles like Space Jam and Kazaam don't need abbreviations, but is it BSUAJ, BSUaJ, SUAJ, SUaJ, BSUaJ!...? I should probably stay away from colons inside acronyms... or maybe not? Sometimes I've seen colons replaced with dashes, like B–SUaJ instead of B:SUaJ or BSUaJ–G instead of BSUaJ:G. The latter comparison seems to make sense, with one letter on its own at the end.

ToG official statement project
We know that Gaiden is canon. We know this, because Gaiden says it is canon. We're pretty sure that Shut Up and Jam! and Space Jam are canon, because the former shares the title with the canon game, ostensibly being the game to which Gaiden is a gaiden, and the former ties in to the plot of Gaiden so deeply. (Also, the player character from SUaJ!, Wildman, cameos in Proto NNY.) And if SUaJ! is canon, you'd guess that SUaJ!2 is canon. But it's never been confirmed, you know? And we should take note of that. Even Space Jam has a tenuous canonicity. Watch that film. In what way was Barkley trapped inside the Ultimate B-Ball? He and the other four were outside the Ball, in bodily form, talentless but otherwise mentally unchanged. In Gaiden, was Barkley speaking metaphorically? Was his consciousness doubled and split, one double trapped inside the Ball, the other double outside, humiliating himself? Or were the b-ball stars we saw walking around talentless each a sort of philosophical zombie, their behaviors utterly convincing with regards to sentience and sensation, yet in reality, lacking any spark of consciousness whatsoever?

While I'm partial to that last theory, we should also consider whether the stories found in Gaiden render those specific parts of Space Jam non-canon, meaning that Space Jam is not "canon" in the same undeniable sense that Gaiden is.

Then there are things which could be canon, despite not having the relevance that SUaJ! and Space Jam have. Are Juwanna Mann and Kazaam just characters borrowed from the films Juwanna Mann and Kazaam, devoid of their original contexts and histories, or are the events of the two films canon? (Well, for starters, the WNBA of the former film is replaced with a WUBA stand-in... but I'm just bringing up the issue, not making a case one way or the other.)

So, when we really step back, the only thing undeniably, resolutely canon, is Gaiden. Because Gaiden says it is, and ToG produced Gaiden. ToG is the maintainer of the canon. Thus, whatever they say is canon, whether through their works or outside, is canon. And there are multiple things which ToG has declared canon through its official channels. The live-action Barkley 2 trailer, for example. I think they mentioned that in the YouTube comments. Or the pronunciation of duergar as "durr-gurr". I saw that in a game journalist's article somewhere. Once we have a list of all of ToG's official channels (Twitter, tumblr, reddit, websites) and statements in the media, we can read over the records and find out whatever else has been declared canon. It could be a treasure trove. We cannot wait too long, lest precious data be lost.

Remember, canon is the heart and soul of Barkley. See, here's that article. The question of whether or not Space Jam was canon was the spark that led to Gaiden; to all of this.

What to name the implied shared universe
So far, I'm calling it the Barkley expanded universe, previously the Barkley Shut Up and Jam! EU. I went with just Barkley because I've seen ToG refer to "the Barkley timeline, which is the real, canon timeline" (paraphrased?). However, since the foundation of the canon is between two titles containing the words Shut Up and Jam! and the film Space Jam, maybe "Jam" is the distinguishing word or idea that should signify the shared universe... Well, that's just a thought, we'll stick with "Barkley" for now. I'm not too happy with using fan-created terminology, but we don't have all the tools we need. One way to get closer to an "official" term would be to use the term "Barkley canon", but this would mean we'd have to use the terms for the canonical works of fiction and the shared universe itself interchangeably.

The importance of the phrase "out-of-universe"
Nothing is "real." There is only canon and non-canon, and what we cannot yet place into either of those two categories, but which we know must inevitably belong to one or the other. Thus we don't say that the "real" Scott H. Creelman died in 2011, or that the "real" Wilford Brimley was seen not connected to a giant insulin mechanism after the year 2003. The Barkley timeline is the real, canon timeline, not ours. And what is outside canon is "out-of-universe," not unlike how the Cesspool X Dog asking Barkley for Mutombo's femur is "out-of-character," or "OOC." I'm thinking that articles with lots of out-of-universe information (which still might be canon) will have a little [OOU] tagged after the OOU statements, sort of like a [Citation needed]. Not as a dismissal, just as a friendly clarification.

Likewise, entire sections dealing with OOU content will be labeled "Behind the jam," much like how other wikis do the same with "Behind the scenes" sections, while also paying tribute to the Space Jam website.

Text dumps and assets from Barkley 1
It would be a grueling task to write down every line in Gaiden without any typos, especially since, even if I used all that time, I'm not sure I know of every single thing to do in the vidcon. A "text dump" would seem very useful. I remember coming across some Zelda fan communities that acquired text dumps, maybe even over a decade ago. Since Gaiden was made in RPG Maker and Game Maker, it should be more easy to acquire assets from than other games, right? (How can I be so sure, I don't even know how to format a decent wiki Navbox.) One problem might be that I'd get text which never comes up in the finished game, stuff that was scrapped or shelved but never erased, mistaking it for canonical info.

It would also be fine to acquire sprites and images this way, so I don't have to take pictures of gameplay and crop out the sprites or character portraits, probably doing it unevenly or showing a certain environment the sprite is in. And how difficult would it be to do similar things with SUaJ! and SUaJ!2? To get the character portraits of Dolemite and Spider and Shuga, or to get images of the courts and their backgrounds to place in a "Locations in Barkley: Shut Up and Jam! 2 article.

Citations and sources
I haven't made a single scholarly citation on this wiki yet, so it's fairly hypocritical for me to make this resolution, but: I'd like to keep Barkleypedia as robustly cited as possible. This is Barkley; we must take it to the next level.

There are the aforementioned ToG official statements. There's promotional material, ads. There are articles documenting the history of Accolade, ToG, Warner Brothers, the NBA. There are resources chronicling the out-of-universe adventures of Barkley figures, like Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain. There are the manuals for SUaJ1 and SUaJ2, although I still haven't found any scans for SUaJ2. I also want to encourage in-vidcon citations as well. Of course, that's harder than it would be for a book, which can be referenced by chapter and page, or a film, which can be referenced by time, but I think it can be done. I haven't looked up examples from other wikis, though.

When paraphrasing in the body of the article, we can add a citation consisting of the game the quote is from, then the quote, then maybe the speaker, to whom they are speaking, and the in-vidcon location or the events occurring when the quote is spoken. If it's a direct quote in the body, the citation can be those involved in the conversation and the location or event in which the conversation occurs. All that being said, I still haven't researched and added citation-related Templates.

Main Page: Making it look nice
Instead of the usual article layout, I'd like to have the various sections of the Main Page formatted into boxes and layers of various font sizes and stuff. Probably with two different columns of boxes, and then a third, thinner column on the far right side. You know what I mean.

Main Page: Randomized quotes and facts
Similar to how it is as of this writing, I'd like the wiki's Main Page to include that familiar "Did you know..." section. The first three factoids must be about Shut Up and Jam! or ''Shut Up and Jam! 2. The fourth and last must be about Gaiden''. Likewise, the "Featured Quotes" section must include three quotes from the vidcon, manual, or advertisements for Shut Up and Jam! or Shut Up and Jam 2!, and the fourth and last quote must come from Gaiden. I shouldn't have to explain why.

Alright, I'll just say that I think it's a great way to convey the spirit of Barkleypedia as quickly as possible. (And maybe there can be a Space Jam quote instead of or added in right before the Gaiden quote.)

What I'd eventually like to see is a randomized selection of facts and quotes, either each time you load the Main Page or once a day. Perhaps the quotes could be stored in the page's code or markup, unseen until selected, but I'd like to make a page or a category of pages solely for quotes, and it'd make sense to connect the two. There'd at least be a link to all quotes and all facts at the bottoms of both sections. A quote page would be divided into SUaJ, SUaJ2, Gaiden, and Barkley 2. Each section would be further divided into, (using SUaJ as an example), in-vidcon quotes, quotes from the manual, and quotes from promotional material. Or maybe each vidcon could have its own quote page. A page of facts, if there was one, would probably need to be a single page.

By the way, until I find evidence telling me otherwise, all "game over" explanations will be considered quotations from Kurt Cobain. Within the lists of quotes, there will be a section entirely of Kurt Cobain quotes in Gaiden; the game over messages.

One of the Hoopz Barkley facts should be "...that 'duergar' is pronounced 'durr-gurr'?"

Main Page: "This day in Barkley history" section
Similar to the "Did you know..." and Featured Quotes sections, I want to make a list of events which are known to occur on certain dates, and then have those events show up on the Main Page during their respective days. There would be both OOU and in-universe events, like the release day of Space Jam (15 November) as well as the day on which Balthios's gypsy curse causes him to transmogrify into a duergar (12 October). There should be someway to note which events are OOU and which are in-universe. Never mind the fact that there are so few dates which could make this feature useful. Since Barkley's in-universe birthdate matches his OOU one, we can probably include a bunch of b-ball star birthdays, including Barkley's on 20 February.

There's a "This day in Lost history" thing on Lostpedia, that's what I'm modeling this after.

Main Page: Poll
To top it off, there should be a poll. I haven't gotten to making one yet, even though it should be easier than all that other stuff.

Main Page: Featured News
As of this writing, I'm using my user blog to write any news articles. A post-wiki-creation update on the bballbisse tumblr blog was my excuse to create this wiki's first news article. In the future, I'd like to have a proper, self-contained News feature, like Bulbapedia's Bulbanews.

Main Page: Featured Article and Featured Image
I've yet to create a Featured Image section, although there is that SUaJ poster on the Main Page. I'll need to change the Featured Article once I have an article truly worth Featuring.

Respect
When I went through the process of creating this wiki, there was a warning against creating content that could bully... I can't remember how they phrased it, but not-famous or semi-famous people. I can't quite pinpoint what layer of fame the top members of ToG lie in, but there are certainly lots of obscure handles of out-of-universe people made canon in Hell. It's nothing I'm really worried about, but never let a need for style conflict with a certain amount of respect for any individuals this wiki needs to cover, whether out-of-universe, or both in- and out-of-universe. That goes for obscure people who made a minor contribution to the vidcons or the media surrounding Barkley, as well as ToG staff, the guys involved in the Accolade titles, and the celebrities made canon by the SaGa.

I would like to include out-of-universe content within the histories of the canonical characters, even when not explicitly mentioned in the canonical vidcons. For example, is it canon that Barkley participated in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics? We don't know for sure, but I think out-of-universe info that isn't explicitly contradicted by canon is implied to be canon until further notice. That being said, this stuff ought to be kept to a minimum. The reason I bring this up in the context of "Respect" is that some might be tempted to include edgy out-of-universe references in the articles. For example, including Barkley's 2008 DUI in his biography, or including the Bill Cosby rape allegations in the Doctor Cosby article. Maybe there's precedent in Gaiden to go in that direction, like Jordan's character arc being a reference to how the out-of-universe Michael Jordan is a bad person. And I can see the appeal. I'm beginning to rethink just what happened when Barkley slept at that inn and received the power of ghosts.

But I'd like to think of Barkleypedia as a place where everyone who visits, even Barkley or Jordan or Brimley or Cosby themselves, will have a good time. So avoid that sort of material. Even if you think I'm being too sensitive, that material probably won't "hit the spot" anyway.

Comments disabled
I have disabled comments, which Wikia seems to hope will replace the Talk pages, for reasons I can't quite fathom––or perhaps am too afraid to acknowledge. I've never liked the way they look at the bottoms of pages. They seem to make a page look weaker, as if it's on the verge of crumbling apart, held up by thin bamboo. A page without comments seems sturdy, a slab of granite.

Maybe it's a hypocritical move, since community, the ability to play along with the Barkley spirit, is so central to this wiki's vision. But if you want to make quick comments or questions and connect to other fans, create your own forum or subreddit or tumblr, or seek one that already exists. There's /r/DwarfNET and the completely barren /r/Barkley2. Give those communities the gift of activity. On this wiki, there's still the Talk page for serious business, and if you're proactive enough, there are Blogs, Message Walls, and a Forum.

But here, we don't express our love of the canon through discussion and fun. We express it by being pedantic wiki-scholar bastards.

(Not misanthropic, just pedantic. We only strive to model our behavior on the best traits of Truckpump.)

Japanese- and Al Bhed-language Barkleypedias
I was serious about that Al Bhed-language Barklepedia.

Not that I expect anyone, including myself, to put in the work. When founding this site, I read that bots were a violation of terms. So I wouldn't get a bot to translate pages. But a bot could translate pages into a .txt file, which humans could upload into the Al Bhed-language site. There's also this first result when you Google "Al Bhed". It would also be great if this was in rather than English letters. I don't know if that's the most appropriate way to do it. Truth is, I haven't played FFX.

We also wouldn't want to disappoint Truckpump by failing to establish a Barkleypedia in eloquent nihongo. And Japanese-based Al Bhed...