SpioneWiki:Community Portal
From SpioneWiki
Hello. This is a project associated with my publication and website, SPIONE: STORY NOW IN COLD WAR BERLIN.
My name's Ron Edwards. I chose to include your participation in the form of a Wiki, partly because, well, it's a lot of work to set up all this information, and you might want to help. Also, I think the cross-referencing works just right for what I'm trying to do.
You see, espionage source material doesn't really fall into categories very well. Some novels are "truer" than any so-called non-fiction account, and some people exist almost more profoundly as characters by various names, or as cultural icons, than they did in real life. Many biographies are propaganda, and many arty books about the Wall are more powerful than any political analysis.
My thinking is that we do best to discover connections among these things, sometimes great big smoking guns to astound us, or sometimes merely personal associations which we can share.
Please create an account and log in, using your real name.
[edit] So what can you do here?
Well, please feel free to add stuff.
Do some browsing first to see how the various sub-sections work together. Every book is listed both by Author and Title, books and movies should be connected to one another, and links among Categories, People, Agencies, and Characters are supposed to yield coherent wholes. Once you catch onto the pattern and interrelationships, please join in adding references and interlinking them appropriately.
You can add external links too, especially to the reference pages listed in the Main Page, or similar. In fact, definitions, biographical summaries, or publication details for sources should be left to to those external links; this Wiki is not intended to replace those functions. Conversely, please do not link to Amazon or to other commercial sites.
You are invited to post Reflections on any given title, right there in its front page (not in the "Talk" section). You write your name and state how it affected you - emotionally, politically, or intellectually. That's not the same as a movie or book review, and it's certainly not a synopsis. We should not edit one another's input of this kind, just let it stand and add your own underneath. Also, please do not comment upon one another's Reflections; if you really feel the need, then bring up the topic in the forum, preferably in Personal Files with appropriate information about your own experiences.
Anyway, that's it for now. Thanks for looking around, and for joining in.
