Your Subculture Sountrack/Mixtape Wiki Project

The past month or so, I've been working on a project, which between that and work, means I've been sort of away from everything else online. Of course, the project's not really finished, nor will it ever be (I cannot, you know, do sane projects that actually have an ending point or anything), but it's getting pretty much to the point where it's all ready to be unveiled, so I figure I might as well!

I've been a fan of the Wiki for a long time now (my first exposure was in high school when we set up a wiki on the school's server, and my friends and I all started entering stuff in there, mostly joke entries and whatnot. (Thankfully, it hasn't existed since about 1998, I think.) It was useless, and after a while, I lost interest, but it was fun and I really loved the idea of having all these pages crossreferenced like that.

For some reason, though Everything didn't really click with me; I'm not sure why -- it's a wiki, but a kind of weird flavor of Wiki. Of course, though, when I discovered WikiPedia I was basically overjoyed. I still love to just flip around Wikipedia and follow the links. It's always struck me as about as close as we'll get to a real-live Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (the actual guide, I mean, not the novels which, last I checked, do actually exist in the real world). And I guess that makes sense, because it seems the online guide is awfully close to a wiki-type thing as well. (Strangely, though, I tend to think Wikipedia's a bit better at that sort of thing -- hell, I think Wikipedia's Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster entry is better than the actual guide's.

And, of course, there're lots of niche wikis. I'm an admin over at the Achewiki (about Achewood); I'm a contributor to the High Weirdness Project (a wiki with a SubGenius bent) and, well, the thing that I've been intending to mention after all this rambling, I'm an admin at Your Subculture Soundtrack. [more]

I got involved when I had the idea for a Mixtape Wiki -- sort of like Art of the Mix only wikified. Since I like to write kind-of indepth liner notes for my mixtapes (or, rather Mix CDs, I guess, if you want to get pedantic), I figure that other people might as well -- and that it'd be really cool to have, like, a depository of all sorts of liner notes! So, if I put the same song on one of my mixes that you put on yours, I could click that link and see both your notes on the song (full of various facts and opinions) and my notes on the song as well (with different facts and opinions), providing a deeper understanding of the song.

So, I go to WikiCities to pitch that idea, and they suggest asking the folks at the Music One to see if that'd be something they'd like to host... so I did, and they did, and so I got that started! Ended up doing a bunch of clean-up stuff and other content adding as well, and got to be an admin there as well! So, now, basically, I've been kicking that into shape as best I can, and carrying over all sorts of content (I moved my Guide To The Residents (originally posted at the High Weirdness Project) over), and it's getting pretty much ready for Prime Time. There's still loads of unfinished (and unstarted!) pages, but I think it's still pretty cool. It's sort of like an encyclopedia of reviews of albums, EPs and what-have-you, along with a collection of Mix CDs (well, a collection of MY Mix CDs for right now, but I'm still holding out hope!) and song notes and an brief-flippin'-through-guide-type-thing of artists.

Anyway, though, after a few months of work, it's still not perfect, but it's much, much more so than it was when we started! And the cool thing about this is that there's always room for expansion. So, hey, check it out, and add stuff! And be sure to spread the word -- stuff like this only works if people know about it! It doesn't do anyone any good if you keep it a secret, so why not tell the world, huh?

(and since I'm an admin, feel free to ask me technical stuff or whatever)