April 14, 2008

NZ Theatre on Wikipedia

Richard Grevers                posted 16 Mar 2008, 10:09 PM / edited 17 Mar 2008, 09:07 AM

Hello folks. Here’s a challenge: Coverage of New Zealand Theatre on Wikipedia is simply pathetic. And I’m telling you this because you lot are some of the best-equipped to fix it.

For starters, let’s look at some of the major companies/venues: Circa – No Article Mercury Theatre – No Article Downstage Theatre – A “stub” Bats – A stub Court Theatre – Inadequate Fortune Theatre – A stub Centrepoint – No Article That’s a starter for 10 – we can look at other venues, past companies, plays and playwrights later.

A reminder of how Wikipedia works: It’s an encyclopedia. If something is notable enough to deserve an article, then Reliable Sources will have written about it, and Wikipedia summarises those sources using a Neutral Point of View – it is a Tertiary resource, not a primary or secondary one, and Original Research (interpretation or synthesis based on reference material) is not allowed.

I’m an experienced Wikipedia editor (okay, it has soaked up a lot of the time I used to spend in a lighting booth) so am happy to help polish articles if people can come up with the basics. If you cannot create a new article (an account is necessary for that) yell out and I can create it.

Feel free to add article suggestions and helpful references here, too.

Richard Grevers                posted 1 Apr 2008, 11:17 AM

Well this thread got everyone really excited, didn’t it 🙂

Dan Slevin           posted 1 Apr 2008, 01:56 PM

I passed on your offer to Markus here at Downstage and it was met with some enthusiasm but he has been away on leave and unable to follow up.

Markus Stitz       posted 14 Apr 2008, 11:06 PM

Hi Richard, you are right, there isn’t much happening on Wikipedia at all at the moment when. In my eyes the biggest problem is the lack of manpower in marketing departments and the slow, but recently developing, use of online marketing tools. As we get quite a few visits even from a stab, I would love to develop that joke which is online at the moment much further. If you offer to help out, I could provide you with some information from Downstage’s point of view, to make our article a bit more detailed and updated than it is at the moment. Meanwhile here is some information to start with, http://downstage.co.nz/downstage/about_main.htm, and some pictures can be found in our online photo gallery at http://flickr.com/photos/downstage

Would be great to get in contact, marketing@downstage.co.nz, I would appreciate help to use Wikipedia  as an information source about NZ theatre in the future.