Battlestar Wiki:State of the Wiki I
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How BSG Wiki Compares to Other Wikis
I've been visiting other wikis that include SF content, just to compare them to the BSG Wiki. You can visit yourself, but I'm happy to say that, in my slightly-biased review, the Battlestar Galactica Wiki is among the most concise, detailed, and well-maintained wikis of its kind, although there's lots of work to be done. If I were to give a rating out of ten stars to the places I've visited, these would be my grades, based on
- Depth and relevant content (overall breadth of material; is it a true encyclopedia or overly-POV?)
- Detail of popular pages, such as central characters or events
- Photo content and other illustrative content in articles
- Server speed, wiki navigation and design, and convenience in access
- Battlestar Wiki: 7.5 out of 10
- Wikipedia: 9.5 out of 10
- Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wikpedia: 9 out of 10
- The Great Machine, the Babylon 5 wikipedia (of which BSG Wiki was inspired): 4 out of 10
- The TVIV Wiki, a general TV episode encyclopedia: 6.5 out of 10
Of these, the venerable Wikipedia still holds as king of the wikis with the many, many contributors that are ceaseless in their relative accuracy. Only the anonymous editing (and resultant spamming) deters from this site. Almost every page in Wikipedia has substantial content or illustration. Battlestar Wiki lacks the sheer number of pages (of which I cannot accurately determine; how about an article counter, Joe?) but its depth and relevant information per page on its best pages equals Wikipedia's standard. BSG Wiki has one Achille's Heel; the comparative lack of information on the Original Series pages as opposed to the Re-imagined Series is almost shameful, which brought the wiki's personal score down 1 point.
The Babylon 5 Wiki, where Joe got his inspiration to build this wiki, is sadly in poor shape. Central character pages such as Delenn and Sheridan are extremely sparse, almost to major stub levels. Episode pages aren't bad, although they're remarkably short in comparison to BSG Wiki's. Memory Alpha Wiki is a powerfully built wiki for Star Trek, with excellent cross referencing and depth on character and episode pages. Perhaps the wiki is too large as the massive amount of aired information, combined with book and fan fiction and serious contradictive elements makes for reading the wiki a bit of a chore. And, unfortunately, Star Trek has serious canonical issues that make the wiki's data difficult to authenticate. On a lighter note, The TVIV Wiki is a fun wiki to any television show, which includes some BSG episode pages with GREAT screen caps. It just got started last July and has some performance issues, but is shaping up to be a good wiki.