Talking Heads Wiki

The name of this website is Talking Heads Wiki. That's what it's about. For a more introductory message introducing the website to users, see the main page.

This website is a fan-run project that aims to finally provide a reliable, accessible, searchable, consistent, extensive, and unifying resource of information about the band Talking Heads and everything related.

Talking Heads Wiki was first envisioned by Naomi in late 2021, and gradually the idea developed further across the next 2 years until 2024 when the website was properly developed and released on May 14th, coinciding with David Byrne's birthday. The wiki collects an extensive amount of information with the intention of providing fans with a better resource they can use for information about the band.

Background

Talking Heads Wiki began as a series of ideas by the website's creator Naomi in 2021, revolving around the idea of a wiki to maintain information about Talking Heads and David Byrne. Originally it was envisioned as more of a wiki focused around David Byrne and his solo career, still with full Talking Heads documentation, and working titles including ByrneWiki or Byrnepedia. Gradually this idea was replaced by a more neutral Talking Heads Wiki concept revolving around the band instead, but still containing equal consideration towards the solo careers of its members.

From the beginning, the intention was to use a proper server environment running MediaWiki (the same software as Wikipedia) as opposed to a simpler type of wiki site like Fandom (previously known as Wikia). While other websites such as TMBW (a They Might Be Giants wiki) influenced feature choices of this site, most of the existing features were already planned first before discovering the same ideas being used in practice on websites for other artists.

The Talking Heads Archive was a recurring idea along the way, originally envisioned as being directly built within the MediaWiki environment. Similar to the Wiki itself, this was inspired by recurring issues faced in the Talking Heads community of fans not being able to find what they were looking for, including band photos, concert bootlegs, interviews. Situations would often occur where somebody wanted to find a piece of media related to the band but couldn't remember where they had seen it before, and there wasn't a very searchable method of finding it (especially when it could have been on various websites like Pinterest or Tumblr where it's hard to find things). These problems could have been solved with a fully searchable and extensive archive of media, ensuring it's all sufficiently described, tagged, and sourced. In the end, this section of the website was programmed manually from scratch by Naomi instead of using a pre-made service for it, allowing for a more customizable set of features.

Release

Talking Heads Wiki was officially released on May 14th, 2024, after several months of development (and 2 further years of planning). The release date was determined in early 2024 to coincide with David Byrne's 72nd birthday. Leading up the the release date, a postponement was considered due to various problems with scheduling, including the database for the wiki being broken around May 7th, and several days being dedicated to trying to recover it before giving up and restarting it (so losing all pages). In the end this didn't make too much of a difference, as not too many pages were created so far so could mostly be recreated within a couple of days. Upon release, all sections of the website were still in early development, with a focus on getting essential features in place then letting the remaining time being an ongoing optional (but preferred) development upon the features already present.

Features

Talking Heads Wiki

The main section of the website, analogous to a title track on an album, is the Talking Heads Wiki. Modelled mostly after Wikipedia, this section of the website uses MediaWiki software and allows articles to be edited by any user with an account. The Manual of Style focuses on specific rules and standards for editing.

Talking Heads Archive

[https://archive.talkingheadswiki.com/home

This section of the website allows users to submit an "item" (which can be an image, video, audio, or text file) alongside various text properties. These items can be browsed through with optional search queries and filters, such as limiting filetype or specifying properties like the year or people involved. The website also contains "collections", analogous to a playlist on YouTube, which group together related items, such as photos from the same concert.

Talking Heads News

This section of the website provides news in a journalistic style, covering any notable updates related to Talking Heads and its members, with varying levels of relevancy or importance. The website was modelled after the existing Archive, and likewise has all of its functionality custom-programmed for use on this website. This is also where people can enter an email address to subscribe to a mailing list for news updates.