1. I don’t know about you but when I first read a poem I don’t go looking for someone else’s interpretation of it. I rather think for myself and then come to a conclusion as to what I think the poem is about. Furthermore, minds do not need to be completely shaped they should be given the freedom to be open. You tell someone “This is about” “That is about” “This could mean either..” and they’ll automatically start to come to those conclusions by themselves and that’s not how poems should be interpreted : poems are about the reader even more so than about they are about the subject. 2. Interpretation and dissecting a poem are two separate things. It would be reasonable to just acknowledge what the poem-lyric is made of, things such as alliteration, meter, number of stanzas, couplets, assonance, consonance, iambic/iambic-pentameter , narrative, stress’s, rhyme scheme’s and accent. However it is definitely unreasonable to allow any sort of interpretation or anything that falls into a specific meaning of any sort of literature unless an author officially states, “This piece is about A” or “This piece is not about A and is about C” or you are directly asked to give your interpretation. 3. Many people will not agree with any sort of interpretation that will be included. Trust me, there are already three people in this very thread who are against the idea of song meanings being included in a Wiki. 4. Wiki’s are encyclopedias that are suppose to state facts. We already have a forum where we can discuss song meanings anyway, so it’s pointless to even create such a area to do it again. It’d be completely redundant. Let me give you an example of the type of dissecting I’m talking about. ------- 1.This poem contains 6 stanza’s 2. The Rhyme Scheme’s going by stanza are AABC DDD EEFF GHHCI AAJJ EEFF 3. It is a first person perspective narrative 4. The number of syllables in the poem going by stanza and line are 1. 8, 9, 9, 8 2. 8, 7,9 3. 5, 7, 6, 8 4. 7, 9, 6, 5, 5 5. 9, 7, 14, 9 6. 5, 7, 6, 8 but to go beyond anything other than the construction is a bad idea. There should be no saying "This poem is about war in the 18th century and how death affected the rest of the world at the time on those who have had to adapt to life without their lovers" I wrote this poem so I'm the only person that can say "this is what it's about" but I rather not even go into that, even if the message is clear, I rather people take their own meaning from it so that it always stays open to intrepretation. So once again, I'm sorry but song meanings are a bad idea. I appreciate and understand the reasoning why one would want such a thing but I'm still adamant that a wiki should not include anything of the sort.
A well thought out response to my idea, I appreciate the work you put into this and I understand your point of view. Perhaps as a compromise we should include certain objective details about songs then? BPM, Lyrics, song structure? I do want to say though, that I think reading others' interpretations of poems is enlightening as well. It serves to give you a kind of cross reference and help to see things from others' point of view. While you're absolutely correct that it should not be the default mode of reading/interaction I do think that listening to others' points presents a more social aspect of the poem/song. I know when I gather my friends for a listening party we often discuss the songs in great detail, together, and try to get the meaning from them as well as talking about the structure. I'm inclined to agree with what you said, perhaps the addition of song meanings is a bad idea. I only have my experience to base from though and mine has been mostly positive on this issue.
I agree that we should come to a compromise and that listing the BPM and lyrics and song structures is a great idea and perhaps we can even allow some interpretation in an indirect way via a link inside the wiki that says something like "What do you think A is about" that directs you to a member made page in the LPA forums. An example for the album A Thousand Suns would be the link below at the bottom or side pane of a wiki page What do you think is the meaning of The Catalyst? This way there are 1. No song meanings directly in the Wiki. 2. Leaves meanings to interpretation and for discussion 3. Links directly to LPA Forums thus bringing in more visitors.
Wiki is in the process of being built. I'm nervous about this, but I trust the community and I hope we can really make this wiki something great. I'll post a link when it's ready. *EDIT* http://lpassociation.wikia.com/wiki/Linkin_Park_Wiki Wiki is now ready. I really have no clue how to work these things (wikipedia is horribly confusing for me) so work away guys.
I'm more than willing to help. I have a long summer ahead of me, and I can dig out my old LP archives. Realistically, I'll probably be writing stubs first and potholing links in until it takes off.
Want to make the album articles, for everything from Hybrid Theory to A Thousand Suns? That would help out a ton. Anything you can contribute is welcome.
Seems like the first place to start would be with basic biographical info about the band, etc., Much of this can probably be populated, more or less, directly from Wikipedia.
Well so far I'm pretty impressed with the work you guys are doing. Lets populate it with info over the next few weeks and then we'll "officially" announce it.
My apologies for the double post, however...please refrain from editing the wiki page until further notice. We are switching the wiki over to our servers to greatly limit the ads on the page. Thanks!
Wow a lot already. I'm second thinking my interview-transcript thing though, perhaps twas a bad idea.
We should try and get it looking more like the LPA if that is possible. Then maybe you could attack it to the site? I don't know. I will give it some work after school.
Like I said, please stop editing the wiki. It's not being used anymore. It's being installed on our server.
Yeah. It's like the many dedicated one subject wiki's, It'll be a lot more thorough than general knowledge sites are. We can start individual projects adding a lot of information in (like a guitar tab project, for instance) It's like these wikis, for example Bulbapedia, for Pokemon (16,000+ articles!?) TF wiki, for Transformers (11,000, articles) Wookiepedia, for Star Wars (70,000+ articles?!).... Other wookiepedia And leave it to TV tropes to make a list of all the others there's probably's a lot of things in there we can get inspired from to add to our wiki, too. Wookiepedia has a quote generator i see. And now you also know why I was so unhappy with the other wiki having only 139 articles.
Our problem is, if we use mediawiki it removes the ads...but it's basically a site for Wikipedia experts. It strips a LOT of the custom functionality out that Wikipedia/Wikia has and it's not for everyone. With Wikia, it is for everyone, but there's the problem of ads. Not only that, our concern here at LPA is...if we have all the information fans need on that Wiki, what need will people have to visit the LPA itself? By doing this we could be hemorrhaging hits to the LPA, and if anything we don't want to get rid of traffic...we want it to grow higher. We want more members on here, not less. If this is going to continue, and LPA is going to be spearheading this project, this wiki (even though it's meant to be open to everyone) needs to be synonymous with the LPA and help increase traffic to this site. We're not trying to sound selfish, but if we're gonna break our backs moderating the wiki, it needs to help us out too.
Doesn't LPA itself have plenty of information regarding the band already (i.e. discography and biographies)? And if people felt like they wanted more info, would there be a reason to not just at it on lpa.com itself? I just don't see a need for this. And like you said, it may actually harm the site. /My two cents
hmm, try looking at bulbapedia/bulbagarden link i posted above. Their wiki is married to their main site which has links to news and forum and gallery and stuff. Though, since its your site, it's your call. I'd make the navigation to the main site more obvious.