BattleTechWiki:Planet Article Overhaul

History

This is my recollection of the origin of the BTW planet articles. It may be flawed in regards to some specifics.

In the Great Before, Sarna.net existed for many years (since 1994) as a forum of BattleTech enthusiasts and a directory of files for fans to either to showcase or download. (Sarna may also have played host to Neveron, but I don't know enough to comment about that.) Visits to Sarna were not too frequent (by this fan), but they sometimes resulted in finding gems in the files.

But in 2006, the Great Founder, Nic Jansma decided it could be better. And so he sought high and low (I presume he used MSN Search, since he resides at Microsoft as a way to fill his days, but he may have been able to use the beta Windows Live Search...we just don't know) for a manner in which to bring added value to his domain. And his search was successful, as he downloaded and then installed the MediaWiki software, most famously used as the basis for Wikipedia. And on the 8th of September, Nic welcomed all to his new world o' information and things were good.

Of course, there was a little bit of backstage stuff going on, such as the wikifying of both the CCG files and planetary information accumulated from the Inner Sphere Atlas. By doing so, Nic immediately lept to the front of online CBT encyclopedias: one (a wikia) had less than 200 articles, the other was limited to article submission only and could not be corrected on-the-fly by the reader. By employing his 'bot' to auto-generate articles based upon the data he had at hand, he quickly outnumbered the pages of the wikia (and brought me on board by doing so).

However, that database was far from precise and the auto-generation...generated...some errors of its own. Primarily, many planetary coordinates were screwed up, with the X coordinate doubling for the Y coordinate. No 'fluff' text was provided with the planet articles and the map images were reliant on the coordinates provided. Also, as Sarna had no contributors at the time, the format of the article was not vetted by consensus (as none existed). Many dedicated writers and editors registered with the site, creating the first (in my opinion) successful project, with creating a series of articles on BattleMechs. This project influenced others: vehicles, ships, products, etc. And, though there was much desire to improve the planet articles and bring them in line with the developing standards that existed elsewhere, the sheer numbers of articles was intimidating.

Not that no efforts were made. Many planets had their Y coordinates fixed, but as there are more than a few planets that have never had coordinates provided, not all saw the treatment. Two efforts (that I recall) began to fix the map images provided, but both fizzled. Other efforts were made to provide fluff to planets, but these were more individual efforts (both from a writer's perspective and per article). Other issues were discussed, but so far -in spite of a project- no significant efforts has been made.

Hopefully, that will now change.