Talk:Los Angeles Metro Area

From ibikeu Wiki

Formatting Midnight Ridazz

I'm thinking of creating pages for some elements of Midnight Ridazz other than the rides proper--things like the forum, the field trips, and the memes that keep bouncing around the scene. Should these be separate pages, listed on the TOC beneath "Midnight Ridazz" as a second level? Or should they just be folded into the MR article? It seems to me that the forum, if nothing else, is a phenomenon in its own right, acting as a catalyst for developments far beyond that one urban social bike ride.

Also, how the hell are we going to handle nicknames/real names when we do pages for people? Some people are better known by their nicknames than their real names and vice versa. And some people are known by their real names for their activism, and by their nicknames on the street. To pull an example out of the air, if I were going to do a page about the organizer of Spoke'n Dissent, would I title the page "David Bolog" and have "Sexy" redirect to it? Is there going to be a standard here? Percival Cornelius 23:48, 16 April 2008 (PDT)

PC - first off I think it is awesome that you want to do this. I think both approachs you've suggested for expanding the Midnight Ridazz article are valid, and reasonable. If we go sufficiently far in one direction and don't like it we can always reformat it later.

There is another way of doing this called transclusion. Basically there is a way to take selected part of one page and include them in another automatically. You do this by using the transclusion feature, and judiciously making use of the noinclude and include tags.

I think the best approach would be start adding the content to the article, see what becomes onerous, and adjust on that basis.

For the names, I don't know. Here's a worse thought - what happens when other regions start doing the same thing with their peeps. We're going to find out really fast how many different names their are. I would say we respect psuedonyms when they're used for anonymity, so for example Roadblock very deliberately (IMO) does not use his real name almost anywhere - not even when you exchange emails. Other than that just judge which they're best known by?

I'm whipped - that's all I have. Sorry's if it's incoherent.

Alex 00:24, 17 April 2008 (PDT)

The reason I bring up the nicknames is precisely because if somebody from Detroit were reading the LA wiki, she might be given the impression that Sexy and David Bolog are two different people unless they're tied together in some way. I guess what I'll do for now is make pages titled with the name that the person is most known by, and I'll include the other name (but not create a redirect page) in the article. When the page is created with a nickname as a title, I'll only include the real name if I think that the person is "out," as it were, with the name. This is just an unavoidable complication of being in a subculture full of grown adults who call one another by wacky pseudonyms, I guess.

Percival Cornelius 00:47, 17 April 2008 (PDT)

I was wondering how they did this indent thing on Wikipedia, but I was too lazy to check. Colons! Anyhoo, I think redirects plus identifying their different names in the article intro is the way to go. I do suggest redirects though so that authors can reference people from other articles as appropriate. This seems to be Wikipedia's policy, and I think it works for them.

Wacky pseudonyms indeed Percival Cornelius, Placid Casual, Porno Cat.

Alex 00:57, 17 April 2008 (PDT)

organizations and entities

I feel like perhaps organizations and entities should be broken up more specifically. Funderstorm and the LACBC in one breath feels pretty broad. Maybe art & music based groups can be separated from more general activist organizations. --GarySe7en 17:11, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

At one point there just weren't that many items, so it made sense. If it's getting cumbersome then I agree that it's time for a reorganization. Go for it. Alex 17:29, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

Make this page like the main page?

Should we format this page like the main page? I can do it if there is a consensus. Alex 19:27, 28 May 2008 (PDT)

PS, we will need some place to have history of LA and so forth if we do that. Alex 19:28, 28 May 2008 (PDT)

So, is anyone interested in this? Hate the idea? What's up? Alex 20:12, 17 June 2008 (PDT)