Anti-Human Discrimination
Why am I not participating in Galaxiki after my initial enthusiasm?
I have to admit, when I first read about it and started getting involved, Galaxiki, the “fictional galaxy that anyone can edit”, seemed like a great idea. Two things ruined it for me, though.
First, the guy who started Galaxiki is using his own, custom, home-grown wiki software to run the site. That would be fine, if everything on the wiki software worked and was documented. Sadly, when I was trying to get involved with this project, the software was very much under development and very poorly documented. At least, when compared to something like MediaWiki, which runs the Wikipedia. So, as much as I tried to help on the back end of things, I was frustrated at every turn and quickly gave up.
Secondly, there was one Rule for the project that kept me from wanting to participate.
Specifically, Rule Number Three:
3. No sun, no Earth, no humans
Remember that Galaxiki is not the milky way (in fact NGC1300 is a galaxy far, far away…), our Earth is not located in this galaxy and it’s too far away for us humans to reach it. But you may describe Earth-like planets and human-like species looking and behaving exactly like humans, but don’t call them “humans” and remember that their home planet is not “Earth”.
In all my personal, science-fiction scenarios, humans came from Earth. All my story ideas started with colonists leaving Earth. If I were to follow the Rules of Galaxiki, none of my pet projects would ever be used. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but it did undercut my initial enthusiasm and, combined with the first problem, helped me to lose virtually all interest in the project.
So, you may be asking yourself, why I’m mentioning it.
Well, my own personal issues aside, it’s still a pretty cool idea and an interesting project. Also, I get a weekly newsletter from Galaxiki and, I have to admit, I find myself thinking about adopting a star system and creating a world, race, civilization and so on, just for the fun of it. I mean, it’s not like I’m writing a lot of fiction and getting paid, so I might as well write something fictional, even if it’s not a coherent story. At least it would be creative and fun and good practice, right?
Well, anyway, if you haven’t looked at Galaxiki lately, there have been improvements and it’s worth another look. So, why not check it out?
