User talk:Farragut79

Hi Farragut79 -- we are excited to have NUMA Wiki as part of the Wikia community!

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Wiki organization
Farragut79,

So I was browsing for a wiki on Clive Cussler and I found both the Clive Cussler wiki and the Dirk Pitt wiki, neither of which is anywhere near as big as this one (For some reason your NUMA wiki didn't actually show up on the Google results) Regardless, I found this wiki, and as a fellow diehard Cussler fan I'd like to help expand this site; however, I'm having a little trouble figuring out how exactly pages are organized here, so any pointers would be appreciated. Thanks!

KalebPSpector "...my philosophy of life falls somewhere to the right of whoopee." - Clive Cussler 21:18, March 28, 2011 (UTC)

Sure, I would love the help. If you look at the Vixen 03 (book) article, it is pretty much on how I set things up. As I been reading, I have found that the NUMA Universe of which I include the Fargo Adventures, the Bell books, and his children books, to be in a separate universe than ours. It parallels it but there is enough differences to be separate. I have been going back and forth whether to include some minor things, but then items like the DOXA watches and other things prominently show up in the later novels, so I am trying to be thorough. I did send messages to the founders of the other two wikis but they have never replied back. --Farragut79 02:01, March 29, 2011 (UTC)

I haven't read Vin Fiz or Hotsy Totsy but for the purposes of cataloging, cross-referencing, etc. I feel like we may as well include the Isaac Bell Adventures and the Fargo Adventures, even if they don't specifically include NUMA. I saw the Vixen 03 page as I was updating the individual templates, and it's just a whole bunch of links. I'm of the opinion that we should try and cut it down to the biggest plot details and characters for all of the books before working in the little details like the specific cars and weapons. Also, I'm confused as to the nature of the "Gazetteer" category...

KalebPSpector "...my philosophy of life falls somewhere to the right of whoopee." - Clive Cussler 02:16, March 29, 2011 (UTC)


 * I was hoping that the first part of the article would be the summary, back cover introduction, while the middle part would be the articles referenced in the book, the last part would be the real-life notes and background to the novel, and the fourth part would be the cover gallery.

I have the Gazetteer category as the main category for the nations, locations, organizations, and other geography type stuff. About the Vixen 03, it is the book I am working on right now, and the majority of the book articles do have some type of a summary, in which I was planning on doing when I get the Vixen 03 book done. --Farragut79 02:21, March 29, 2011 (UTC)


 * Ok. I am currently reading The Navigator for the first time so I'd like to enjoy it but I will start doing re-reads of The Oregon Files soon with the intention of working on those articles. I'll let you know when I've got one done so we can compare or something. Also, I've noticed you have a lot of Categories already created, and I'm wondering if maybe we should clear a lot of them out until we know they're actually worth keeping. Obviously it makes sense to have categories for the individual series but beyond that, maybe it makes sense to just create categories once we know we have enough categories to warrant them? Sorry if it seems like I'm judging you or something. I've just noticed this wiki has the organization you'd expect from a massive site but the content of a much smaller site and I'm afraid things are going to get very convoluted once we really start building pages. -- KalebPSpector 23:02, March 29, 2011 (UTC)

The reason I am going category crazy was because of a different wiki I am a part of, and in just two books, there was over 1000 articles. So I am just planning ahead.Farragut79 23:51, March 29, 2011 (UTC)


 * I see. Well I'm starting to narrow down the category listings which should help some. Since Cussler's works are essentially stories rather than immensely deep novels, I think the emphasis here should be more on cross-referencing than on cataloging each individual detail. In any case, I'll keep plugging away and I'm sure over time some of the less useful categories will disappear. By the way, any idea why the categories I'm creating aren't showing up next to the "Read more:" listing at the top of the page? They're listing books as a category but not the specific series the book is part of... -- KalebPSpector 00:45, March 30, 2011 (UTC)

Empty Categories
I thought I'd let you know about Categories that I've cleared out. I can't delete them as a regular contributor, but I'm assuming you can. For now, "Novel Series" is empty; I moved the series up and made them subcategories of "Books." "Dirk Pitt" and "Dirk Pitt, Jr" are also empty; I combined the book pages in them to form the "Dirk Pitt Novels" category. -- KalebPSpector 04:26, March 30, 2011 (UTC)


 * I do believe that the Pitt categories should be separated since Pitt Jr and his sister are featured prominently in those books except for Trojan Odyssey and Crescent Dawn where they appear as equal characters. --Farragut79 15:31, March 30, 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. All of the novels published since Valhalla Rising still get the subtitle "A Dirk Pitt Novel" because they're part of the same series. The main character might change from Dirk Sr. to Dirk Jr., so if you really want categories for main characters then we can do that. But ultimately, Clive Cussler's website lists every novel from The Mediterranean Caper through Crescent Dawn as part of the same series and I feel like the wiki should reflect that. -- KalebPSpector 23:22, March 31, 2011 (UTC)

Checking in
Farragut79,

I just wanted to check in and see how things were going. I have unfortunately not had much time to devote to the wiki as of late, but classes are starting to wrap up for me so I'll be back in the game within the next month, at which point I'll start working on The Oregon Files as originally planned. 138.16.106.88 09:17, May 7, 2011 (UTC)

(That was me; I had forgotten to log in KalebPSpector 09:56, May 7, 2011 (UTC))

No problem, work has kicking my butt lately, and I haven't had time. --Farragut79 22:34, May 7, 2011 (UTC)

Hidden Synopses/Categories
So I've started work on the Oregon Files pages but I've a hit a snag. I'd like to include a plot synopsis with each book (I'll write it myself as I re-read the book) but I don't want it to be automatically visible so people who don't want to read it won't do so accidentally. Do you know if/where we can get a template for autohidden text?

Also, I'm not adding the pages I create to any categories yet because I can't make heads or tails of the category system here. I'm assuming you've got a much better idea of the category organization so if you want to add pages to categories then go ahead. KalebPSpector 19:54, June 2, 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know how to hide that, but maybe a revamp of the book pages where a spoiler-free summary would be first then the main characters with a more detailed summary after it for the people researching rather than reading. My category system is somewhat complex, but I will write a detailed how-to. --Farragut79 16:08, June 3, 2011 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! And yeah, we could do the detailed summaries after the cross-reference information. That would make it easier to miss if you're not looking for it. Also, I noticed you added The Corporation to Category:The Oregon Files. Maybe we should move the books to a new category called "Novels from the Oregon Files"? I feel like keeping the books separated from the world they describe might be a good idea. We also might want to do this with the other novel categories too... --KalebPSpector 16:53, June 3, 2011 (UTC)


 * Or Oregon Files Novels? Honestly, I did not even think of that. Good call. --Farragut79 19:11, June 3, 2011 (UTC)


 * The structure of The Oregon Files category right now is much more oriented towards the books. I think the way to go is to create a "From the Oregon Files" category that will contain any non-book pages dealing with that series. That should also translate really well to the other series which I'm assuming we'll need to do the same thing for. --KalebPSpector 19:35, June 3, 2011 (UTC)

Article Focus
So I've got another question now that I'm working my way through Golden Buddha (I've got just over 9 pages of notes and I've only finished through Chapter 5). Should articles in this wiki focus more on information presented in/necessary for the books or on information relevant to the character/place/thing in the real world? Obviously this doesn't apply to purely fictional things. Because I could include tons of information on Hu Jintao because he's mentioned in Golden Buddha but I feel like I could just include a Wikipedia article link for that stuff and have the NUMA Wiki article focus on how he's involved in the events of the book(s). What do you think? --KalebPSpector 23:33, June 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * What I have been doing is including all the information presented in the books, since the books are in an alternate history and then have the wiki article in a link at the bottom. I don't want to see the wiki to become a copy and paste clone of the wikipedia as I have seen in many wikis. --Farragut79 00:19, June 6, 2011 (UTC)

Golden Buddha is ready
I'm ready to start putting together pages for Golden Buddha. I'm going to do object pages and character descriptions first, followed by character action sections and finally the synopsis (hopefully by then I'll know the plot well enough to summarize it in a short enough form). Before I get going on that, I wanted to ask your opinion on detail levels for new pages. For example, Lop Nur is mentioned in Golden Buddha but only in passing; nothing actually happens there. There are also characters like Gabriel Sanchez who play a very insignificant role but are nevertheless mentioned by name. I figured that as long as something or someone is mentioned in at least two different chapters of one book or in at least two different books, it should get its own page. Anything that doesn't fit those criteria can be mentioned (with Wikipedia links if possible) within some other article.

Possible exceptions to my rule: 1. The "exposition mission" Cussler likes to use in Oregon files books usually don't last more than one chapter but they're significant enough to at least give one page to each. 2. Classic cars are obviously important to Cussler and there are some mentioned in passing in Golden Buddha. If you were thinking of creating a list of classic cars mentioned in Cussler's books they should be included in that list. KalebPSpector 20:36, August 12, 2011 (UTC)


 * I should add that the exclusion rule applies only to people and places. If a vehicle or weapon or anything of that sort is named, it gets a page to make cross-referencing easier. The only exceptions to this would be in rare cases such as the classic cars mentioned earlier (they have absolutely no impact on the story in any way). KalebPSpector 22:49, August 12, 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, would you mind going over the templates? The few we have are a little iffy (I'm fixing Airplaneclass right now) and I think we could use a few more like Vehicle, Weapon, Character (we might have one but it probably needs some work), Place, etc. KalebPSpector 23:19, August 12, 2011 (UTC)

I could look into getting different templates because those were just modifications of the default ones. --Farragut79 13:23, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

Is this fixable?
So in a moment of indecision I messed up the history of the C-47 Skytrain's page. I'd like to move it back to "Douglas C-47 Skytrain" Any chance you could help me with that? KalebPSpector 00:21, August 13, 2011 (UTC)


 * Sure can. --Farragut79 13:23, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

Too many links
I noticed you went ahead and added infoboxes to some of the pages I created that didn't already have them, so thank you for that, but I noticed a couple things that I thought I should point out.

1) I noticed you removed my "In the Books" section markers. I put them there because I though that in the case of people, places, and things that exist in the real world, it might be a good idea to differentiate between real facts and information relating only to the NUMA universe. Obviously anything that exists only in the books would not have such a section marker. Do you disagree with this system?

2) I also noticed you wikilinked a lot of stuff from my articles. I'm trying to avoid overloading pages with links that won't go anywhere, so I'd prefer defaulting them to Wikipedia links. If a book requires one of those things to get a wiki page then we can go back and change the link later. I'd rather do that than have every other link lead nowhere.

3) I feel like there's a better place for all this admin talk than on your profile's talk page. Is there somewhere else we can post and discuss this so your talk page doesn't get jammed up with all these discussions? :) KalebPSpector 03:34, August 16, 2011 (UTC)

Sure let's go to Forum: Watercooler to Article Meat

So I realize I pretty much disappeared for a really long time; school is pretty time-consuming. Anyways, I was wondering if you had made any progress in my absence. Also, have you considered poking around the general Wikia community to see if we can get any more help? I can't believe we're the only two people on the Internet with an avid interest in these books and I feel like what we're honestly missing is more people. Two people alone can't write a wiki on the incredibly detailed world of Clive Cussler. We really do need more help... KalebPSpector 22:19, July 7, 2012 (UTC)