User:Styracosaurus Rider/To-do list

During my work on Wikia, I've found that if you administrate a wiki it's best to have a handy to-do list. This is so you can jot down things you must accomplish without jamming your head full of ideas that pushes the neuron signals telling you how to eat dinner out of your brain and out your ears. So this is mine.

Chronological to-do list

 * 1) Improve all existing articles. For the time being, just add referenced content and the occasional picture, if need be.
 * 2) Create new articles, listed below
 * 3) Implement new category system (then new badge tracks, based on category system)
 * 4) Wiki administration stuff - policy pages, information, MoS, etc.
 * 5) Fix templates
 * 6) Set up special forums
 * 7) Picture licensing?
 * 8) Go and promote wiki
 * 9) Profit
 * 1) Profit

Articles to improve

 * Beef up our featured articles to the max. They need to really look like featured articles for the revamp. This includes Stegosaurus, Lepidodendron, K-T Extinction (which should probably be renamed to Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (which has just been done yay)), Glyptodon, Prototaxites, and Pangaea, among others. Also Deinosuchus, just because.
 * Also, fix up existing articles and whatnot
 * http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0087236 < Beelzebufo 2014

Articles to create
Well. I have lots of articles I want to create.

Geologic periods

 * Paleozoic
 * Ordovician
 * Silurian
 * Devonian
 * Carboniferous
 * Permian
 * Mesozoic
 * Triassic
 * Jurassic
 * Cenozoic
 * Tertiary (not recognized anymore, but even so...)
 * Paleogene
 * Paleocene
 * Eocene
 * Oligocene


 * Neogene
 * Miocene
 * Pliocene


 * Quaternary
 * Pleistocene
 * Holocene

Animals

 * Hallucigenia
 * Marrella
 * Pikaia
 * Haikouichthys
 * Olenoides
 * Megalograptus
 * Cameroceras
 * Pterygotus
 * Jaekelopterus
 * Brontoscorpio
 * Cooksonia
 * Bothriolepis
 * Hyneria
 * Panderichthys
 * Tiktaalik (get into detail)
 * Petrolacosaurus
 * Megarachne
 * Proterogyrinus
 * Hylonomus
 * Pulmonoscorpius
 * Edaphosaurus
 * Seymouria
 * Varanops
 * Gorgonops
 * Diictodon (in short, WWD species are easy because there's usually lots of information)
 * Eryops
 * Estemmenosuchus
 * Triassic kraken
 * Atopodentatus (.....) (link and art)
 * Hylaeosaurus
 * Ocepechelon (weirdest. turtle. ever.)
 * Deinocheirus < due to exciting new information - will get to this once paper has been published
 * Utahraptor (already an article, but according to Jim Kirkland, Scott Hartman, and many other people, some serious new fossils are about to go down. Further bulletins as events warrant)
 * Kryptodrakon
 * Dreadnoughtus schrani (the Lacovara titanosaur finally sees the light of academically published day. This is gonna be interesting)
 * Megaconus
 * Zalambdalestes
 * Uintatherium
 * Propaleotherium
 * Champsosaurus
 * Titanoboa
 * Afairiguana
 * Andrewsarchus
 * Barbaturex < all hail the Lizard King
 * Saniwa
 * Paraceratherium
 * Hyaenodon
 * Merycoidodon
 * Andrias scheuchzeri
 * Ceratogaulus
 * Obdurodon (tharalkooschild)
 * Pelagiarctos
 * Smilodon
 * Titanis
 * Thylacine
 * Megaloceros
 * Homo sapiens
 * Golden toad
 * Thylacine
 * Megaloceros
 * Homo sapiens
 * Golden toad

Red links/wanted pages

 * Quetzalcoatlus
 * Carcharodontosaurus
 * Vagaceratops
 * Utahceratops
 * Elasmosaurus
 * Omeisaurus
 * Dryosaurus
 * Mosasaurus
 * Deinonychus
 * etc.

Unique wiki page things?

 * Pages on the art of collecting, preparing, and displaying fossils
 * Useful references page
 * Speculation forum expaaand

Miscellaneous

 * Other forum sections
 * Geologic stages
 * oh, categories
 * userboxes
 * finish main page
 * article for archived news - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21673940 (giant camel in Arctic)

In popular culture articles

 * only the big famous ones should have them (Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, "Bronto", maybe mammoths)
 * headings for each form of media (film, literature, game etc.)
 * don't go overboard?

  

This is something I've been thinking about recently. Let's call it the "Charlie the Unicorn" Debate. As you might now, Charlie the Unicorn is some Youtube thing in which a Liopleurodon shows up as a deus ex machina kind of thing. The basic stance on Wikipedia is that it isn't notable enough to merit inclusion in the article (a topic which takes up well over half the talk page), and in the past I have maintained that stance on this wiki. But should it really be excluded? Wikipedia is a BIG encyclopedia, and if they listed every single appearance in popular culture for every single article, it would get a bit messy. But the Wiki Prehistorica is smaller, with a much more narrow focus. Can we afford to have more "insignificant" pop culture references like Charlie the Unicorn's Liopleurodon?

I think we can, now that I think about it. Because we have a much more narrow focus, it would do us no harm - maybe even be beneficial - to be more fluid on which articles have an "In popular culture" section or subpage, and how many references should be included. That said, it would be fairly impossible to do this for every single article. If you try that with Tyrannosaurus, you'll be here forever.

I found a good set of guidelines to determining the notability of popular culture references at wikipedia:POPCULTURE:
 * 1) Has the subject acknowledged the existence of the reference?
 * 2) Have multiple reliable sources pointed out the reference?
 * 3) Did any real-world event occur because of the cultural element covered by the reference?

I'll go through this step by step:


 * 1) Obviously, prehistoric creatures are dead, so this first point shouldn't be too much of a problem. It's only when we get to living people that this becomes an issue, I think. Of course, in our case, "living people" equates to "living paleontologists", and none of them are really referenced in pop culture as far as I know. The only exception I can think of is Robert Burke from the second Jurassic Park film, a clear poke at Robert Bakker by the film's scientific advisor Jack Horner. Bakker himself has (gleefully) acknowledged the reference, so again, this isn't really a problem.
 * 2) This is the point that really weeds out the trivia from the "proper" PC references. If a subject has made at least one "important" (meaning more than a simple cameo and whatnot) appearance in a film, book, TV series, comic, etc. etc., than I think it can probably be put in the article.
 * 3) The final point is a tricky one because, to the best of my knowledge, things like this aren't especially common. When I read this point I think of things like a Land Before Time cosplay convention or protests about ceratopsian taxonomy, which I don't think have ever happened. This'll merit further thought.

Long story short: It's okay to include multiple pop culture references, but it's probably a bad idea to include every single reference ever.

As I was typing this up, another thought occurred to me. Maybe it would be a neat idea to create a sister wiki, which is devoted entirely to the appearance of prehistoric species in pop culture? That way, we can limit the amount of PC references on a certain article at this wiki, and on the other wiki's corresponding article we can be free to list every single PC appearance ever. It's something to consider.

Also, WALL OF TEXT WHOA.

  

Main Page

 * intro blurb
 * slideshow
 * what makes us different from other fossil wikis?...Unlike any other wiki about paleontology, we are not strictly an informational source. We allow those fueled by paleo-passion to share ideas, pictures, and tips on the wiki as well. The social aspect of a wiki is important, as long as it's not overdone.
 * what is prehist?
 * what is paleo?
 * news
 * sister wikis
 * latest images
 * latest blog posts
 * latest Speculations
 * fossil hunting tip of the day?
 * random article

tl;dr
If, for some reason, you're on this page (I have no idea why) and decided not to read it at all (you don't even make sense what is this I don't), here's a quick, handy summary of the to-do list.

'''  EVERYTHING. '''

...and Styracosaurus.