Creation and Upkeep of Ship Histories
One of the great things we can use the Wiki for is to create a history for each of our ships. One of the things we've been seriously lacking in our collective history is a record and timeline of when and how things occured in our group. So, putting together in-depth ship histories will help us keep track of what's happened.
Using the Wiki, it's quite easy to create a history for your ship, even if one doesn't exist. This tutorial will walk you through the process of setting up your ship's history and then helping to keep it updated.
Ship Website vs. Ship History
A ship's website plays an integral role in the community of the ship. It acts as the first check-point for information on that ship. It probably keeps the stats, current crew members, maybe some information on ship rules, and so on.
But what happens when someone leaves the ship? Or the ship is decomissioned? A ship is always changing, and the real history of the ship may not be recorded in the actual ship's website. So the Wiki is the perfect place to keep a running log/journal/timeline of what's happened on the ship because anyone and everyone can get involved. From ensigns to captain, this is every ship's place to just have a repository of information!
Creating the History Area
If your ship already has a history page created, you can skip this step. To find out if your ship does have a history already, just go to Category:Ship Histories.
If you don't see your ship there, then the first thing to do is create the page. All ship histories start with a page named after the ship itself. So, right click on the following link and select "Open Link in a New Window": Ship Histories.
If your ship is currently in play, click on the "Edit" link to the right of the "Current Ships" heading. If your ship is not in play, click on the "Edit" link to the right of the "Inactive Ships and Bases" heading.
Now just add your link in the appropriate order based on alphabet. You should be able to see that the format of the other links is to surround them with double brackets, like this: [[USS Enterprise]].
Click the "Show Preview" button to make sure that your link shows up properly, and then click on "Save Page".
You'll now see your ship link in red. Click on it to go to the new page. Now you have a clean slate to work with! On this page, you'll immediately want to add the following text to the bottom of the page:
{{118Fleet)) [[Category:USS _________]]
In place of the USS _________, add your ship's name. This creates a category for your ship. We'll get back to that later. The {{118Wiki}} adds a table to the bottom of your page which shows the current ships in the fleet.
The best thing to do with this "front" page is to add some introductory text about your vessel, and then some links. To see a good example, go to USS Victory's page.
Ship History Ideas
Now that you have a simple page for your ship, what to add? This is up to you! Here are some good ideas:
- Crew history: Give a detailed history of the crew. Who was the original crew? Who has come and left? When did rank promotions occur?
- Mission summaries: What missions has the crew completed?
- List of modifications to the ship: Have there been any changes to the ship structurally? New weapons, new shielding, etc.?
- Enemies your ship has encountered: If your ship has some "recurring" enemies, you could add information on them here.
- List of NPCs and their profiles: You could add in depth profiles about your NPCs here.
Reminders
- When you're adding new pages to your ship's area, be sure to include the boilerplate text and the category text so that everything can be kept together.
- Break up information logically. If you're going to have a bunch of NPCs, create a page called, for example, "Kodiak Non-Playing Characters". Make a list of all the characters and give each one their own page, calling it just by their character name. i.e.- Ensign Joe Bloggs, becomes page [[Joe Bloggs]].
- If you're going to have more than one or two NPCs in the list, create a sub-category. To do so, just add a tag like so: [[Category:Kodiak NPCs]] to the bottom of each NPCs' page. Once you've created that page, you'll see that the category tag is red. Click on it, add some text like "For NPCs on the Kodiak crew" AND add [[Category:USS Kodiak]]. This then adds your NPC category to the Kodiak history category, creating a sub-category.
- Get your crewmates involved -- you don't have to do it all yourself! Ask them to add nuggets of information where they think it's relevant. The more collaborative you make your ship history, the richer it will be!