Thursday, May 5, 2011

Welcome to the Sparkledex!

In light of all the recent indie make-up dramas, scandals, and the ever-increasing pressure on bloggers to be able to identify repackagers and shady business practises, the lovely Tempest in a Teapot came up with the great idea to start an indie make-up wiki. She was kind enough to let me join her in starting this mammoth task, but now it's time for more people to get on board!

We've got a basic structure settled. The idea of the wiki is to de-mystify a lot of issues to do with ingredients and legislation. We would like to have a full ingredients breakdown to clear up the use of carmine, bismuth, vegan and non-vegan components and which bases and fillers do what. 


We do not want to stir up drama. We'd prefer to use positive re-inforcement and the power of information; instead of blacklisting companies (and let's face it, most of us know which websites not to set, er, mouse on anyway) we will be providing lots of links to useful information and reviews, so that you as a customer have full knowledge of what you're getting into. This means that we will be providing, we hope, a balanced mix of reviews, from a variety of bloggers.

We need more contributors! If you don't know what to add or don't have time to write stuff for the Wiki, that is no problemo. Links to reviews on blogs, like yours, and forums are totally welcome! We want to make it easy for indie make-up newbies to find you, and thus feel safer in placing their first order.

At the moment we only have a few company pages up, so if you've just reviewed or read a really helpful review of a company, feel free to create the page and whack it on there. I'm procrastinating by writing this post and after it's done I have to go do some reading for uni.

So, this weather, huh?

5 comments:

  1. So on the company pages, we should link to our/other people's reviews? Should there be a quick little summary on the individual pages of things like gimmicks or points of view? Should we point out the ingredients that certain companies do and don't use? For example: Linnaeus and Shiro are fully vegan and use FD&C dyes, or Antionette's Revolution is not vegan and ship one day a week, or Concrete Minerals offers 2.99 flat rate shipping and ten gram sifter jars nd all but four of their colors are vegan. Or should we only link to reviews that list those facts? Can we also link to brand facebook pages and things?

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  2. Vijii: those all sound like really good ideas! I'll ask Tempest to stop by this post, she has more of a concrete vision than I do.

    My $0.02: as a Wiki, rather than another MMU blog, I guess the structure will evolve around the content and contributors. Apart from enforcing a more neutral tone and correct spelling/grammar (thanks for catching that typo on the terminology page, by the way!) Tempest and I as admins won't have much more 'control' as such over the site than any other contributor. Any content or ideas that you have for pages or topics will be absolutely welcome.

    I'm sure Facebook links, company blog links, and little gimmicks will be really helpful. What we mean by linking reviews is that we don't want people to feel pressured to write up new reviews for the Wiki. Having a bunch of reviews from different people's blogs, linked from the Wiki, would be more than adequate.

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  3. Hey! I've been a follower for a couple months now, and I really enjoy your blog. This is such a great idea! I have a couple Indie reviews on my blog (one of which you can see here http://hebrideanspritebeauty.blogspot.com/2011/03/morgana-cryptoria-haul-first.html)
    I'd love to show people some great Indie companies. I haven't reviewed too many yet, but I have one review in the works and about half a dozen companies I want to try. Would love to hear from you :D

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  4. amazing idea! I review mostly indie companies, so I should have some stuff to contribute for sure :)

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