Wiki Articles!

[Krilari]

Hia everybody!

I'm pretty sure everyone has noticed the massive amounts of work done by Piroska on the wiki, in the midst of all her work she has managed to teach me WikiCode (Or atleast a fraction of it). At any rate...

This is just a little update on the recent work done on the wiki:

1. While not much work has been done since Piroska's last post on this thread, the DYK and Featured Profiles is up and running.

2. I have been slowly updateing the profiles on the wiki, currently the only section complete is the "A" section (Any approved characters with their name beginning with A). What I hope to do is update all the character profiles, not to change the content of the profile, but to make the profile more visualy appealing. Although not all are finished I hope to edit them all.....Eventually.

P.S. - If anyone visits the wiki at any point, I would appriciate pointing out any errors made on my part.

[Harmonic]

Umm. Remember though, don't edit other people's profiles and add stuff without permission. And try to keep the format we've established.

[Piroska]

Never fear, Rensin and fellow Conquest of the Horde members! Krilari has the thumbs up to format the one thousand or so profiles for us. To put it in pretty concise terms, he's:

1. Bolding some text,
   
2. Adding second-line headers, and
   
3. Linking other articles in order to reduce our number of dead-end pages.

No content will be added or removed! And he's doing tedious work for us that, frankly, no one else wanted to do. Deleting over two hundred blanked articles was more than enough for me. Child labor is so much easier than learning how to use a bot!

Rensin does make an excellent point, however, and I'd like to take the opportunity to reiterate what he has said. While you are able -- and encouraged! -- to update or tweak your profile(s) and flesh out articles, we do request that you not make any sweeping changes without direct permission. If there's something that you'd like to implement or an area where you think improvement should be made, please feel free to speak up!

I'm in the process of writing out a couple of guides on working with the wiki, so that should help people who want to get involved but aren't quite sure how to do so. Also, the wiki's community portal may also shed some light.

[Bovel]

Firstly I just want to say that I love the work you are doing for CotH and is personally a bit confused that you are not yet given some sort of GM title for it. With that said here are my 'wants' for the Wiki.


- Guides; Yes, but they have to be compiled and shaven down to what is logical and not inspired by outside sources cause many guides are sadly just that. One idea could be to melt guides together and have loads of votes on what goes in and what goes out as the general rules of things on the server. (Logic such as that since kal'dorei culture seems heavily influenced by east Asia when it comes to architecture, culinary and clothing so it would be safe to assume east Asian inspiration for the blanks that are left by Blizzard if you want them filled. This of course if there is no lore of any kind to base it on.)

- Rolls; Maybe not a guide on the most commonly used roll-system but a in-depth explanation of a few since, face it, not every use the same system in the same way and some of use absolutely loath roll-combat to start with.

- Server-specific-lore; Yes, alot of this needs to be updated cause there is loads and loads of it that is not even published on forums. I'd love to some mentions of what huges things have happened on the server that might be part of stories and legends, cause when I see old posts and screens of for example Kretol I feel there is something I have missed and want to know about but not bother a GM about.

- Timeline with offical year of the server; I think I mentioned a huge effing yes for this earlier, it is sorely needed and having years pass would add an extra spice for the server.

- Guilds; Is there any system for this cause I frankly doubt the need for adding some guilds that just appear for a few weeks just to run out in the sand without even an IC reason of doing so. Perhaps some contact and responsebility put so that for example lore-based guilds can be passed down to active players if abandoned?

- In-Character posts and Storylines; These often revolve around one character, shouldn't they be posted below a characters profile on their wiki-page? I mean it is supposed to have the character info anyhow, the profile added for approval is the fast version and the stories should be there for more reading and spice.

[Piroska]

Thank you for your kind words, Bovel. There are a handful of us that continue to work on making the wiki the best resource for the community. The work that has been done lately is awesome. I'm so happy! Regarding your points:

- Guides; Yes, but they have to be compiled and shaven down to what is logical and not inspired by outside sources cause many guides are sadly just that. One idea could be to melt guides together and have loads of votes on what goes in and what goes out as the general rules of things on the server.

Primarily the goal will be to have a copy of every existing guide on the wiki. At the moment, I -- and I think the others -- have not considered creating new guides. If someone comes up with something appropriate that is accepted by the community, it will hopefully end up on the wiki. Kret and I were discussing making a specific category and namespace for guides, but I put it on the backburner when I began to focus on other areas. I hope to return to it soonish.

- Rolls; Maybe not a guide on the most commonly used roll-system but a in-depth explanation of a few since, face it, not every use the same system in the same way and some of use absolutely loath roll-combat to start with.

Definitely on the big list of things to do. I don't personally do a lot of roll-based combat (on the server I came from, we had never ever used any formal system before when roleplaying fights), so I'm going to rely a lot on the community to get this done. I'll admit, I had my first formal roll-based fight just last evening and I have been here for quite a few months now!

- Server-specific-lore; Yes, alot of this needs to be updated cause there is loads and loads of it that is not even published on forums. I'd love to some mentions of what huges things have happened on the server that might be part of stories and legends, cause when I see old posts and screens of for example Kretol I feel there is something I have missed and want to know about but not bother a GM about.

I've been wary to undertake this personally, since I am still a somewhat new member of the community. I wasn't present for most of the events that have occurred and have only learned about them from the wiki itself or the forums. It is my plan to get this done someday, someway -- and all important, lore-guiding server events will definitely have at least an article in the wiki about them, even if I have to create the articles myself.

- Timeline with offical year of the server; I think I mentioned a huge effing yes for this earlier, it is sorely needed and having years pass would add an extra spice for the server.

Started working on it just this morning before I had to take care of some other work. My goal is to create a full and detailed timeline that includes links to specific topics. This way, people can easily find more information if they want to include details of a specific event in their stories, profiles, or whatever. My only concern is that, again, I don't have specific knowledge of lore related to this server; others will have to help me fill in those details to bring the timeline up to date.

- Guilds; Is there any system for this cause I frankly doubt the need for adding some guilds that just appear for a few weeks just to run out in the sand without even an IC reason of doing so. Perhaps some contact and responsebility put so that for example lore-based guilds can be passed down to active players if abandoned?

There is no system for logging guilds right now. In fact, the last two guilds that were added to the wiki were ones that I had either created or helped form with friends. Ideally, people who create guilds would also create articles for their guilds. This doesn't happen. And, frankly, I'm of the opinion that every -- whether it's a long-standing one or even one that lasts for two weeks -- should have an article. By their very existence they play a role on the server and having the articles also lays a foundation for guilds that follow.

- In-Character posts and Storylines; These often revolve around one character, shouldn't they be posted below a characters profile on their wiki-page? I mean it is supposed to have the character info anyhow, the profile added for approval is the fast version and the stories should be there for more reading and spice.

Other than ensuring that profiles are formatted and categorized properly, I don't do much with the profiles. Each individual is encouraged to update his profile(s) personally, whether that includes new information, links to pages, or just adding stories to the wiki. I definitely think that it would be very awesome if people started doing that more.

The best example of what you have described can be found on a number of Ben's profiles. After a quick lesson on vent about how to use wikitext, he started working on Bolgron's profile. He created a subpage under the character's namespace with a story about the character. Everyone who wants to catalog stories about their characters can most definitely do the same!

I don't think that I -- or any other person -- can watch events and storylines to update profiles. It's just too much to do with the over thousand characters we have in the wiki. However, if people want to do that themselves I can help them learn how to do so. In particular, evey Sunday I post a guide on my blog, Looking for Roleplay; the past two weeks have focused specifically on the wiki and I plan to do so for another two weeks or so. This upcoming Sunday will be about the structure most articles should have and then the following week will be about images in the wiki.

However, if anyone else wants to get more involved with the wiki by undertaking a project of his own, let me know! I know that Krilari offered to do some work and is now formatting profiles; as he learns more about wikitext and the structure of the site, I plan on having him do some other work for me. Yes, yes, I delegate authority!

I'm going to update my to-do list on the wiki with your notes and see if I can get around to getting some of them done in the future. Thank you again!

[Bovel]

Then there should be some short note that the guides posted as they are by non-staff are written and assumed by any player and only inspiration and not rule. Since -ALOT- of the guides up now are either semi-made up and even contradicting other guides on the same topic.

[Azheron]

Erm... Erm..

Whadda ya mean by "Dead-end articles", actually?

[Piroska]

Part of the strength (and purpose) of a wiki is the fact that you can easily cross-link to other related articles without having to search for a topic. Dead-end pages are just that: they're articles that are dead-ends because they don't link to anything at all.

We've been fixing that in a couple of ways. Kril has been going through all of the profiles and slowly formatting them. While doing so, he's turning the race and class listed into links. I've also been considering creating a character template that would link back to the character profile page. Either way, as long as they're no longer dead-end articles, I'm happier.

Also, as a reminder, all images that get uploaded to the server need to be placed on an article. The wiki is not a repository for images. Please don't upload images on the wiki just to link them on the forums; that's what sites like ImageShack, TinyPic, and Photobucket are for. I do periodically go through the unused files page to clear out unused images, so images that have been uploaded and not placed on an article do stand out pretty quickly.

[Bovel]

No exact year decided on yet?

[Piroska]

I'm very sorry, Bovel, but I have no clue about what you're speaking. Are you asking if I've completed the timeline? If so, no, I have not; unfortunately, I've been both busy and sick. My mental faculties are currently pretty drained.

I'll see what I can do in the near future, but I make no promises! I will still need direction on what the current year is and when server-specific events have occurred.

[Bovel]

Sorry if I was unclear, what I wondered was if you had gotten a word on what current year it would be.

[Piroska]

I've never gotten a straight reply to that question. We're either a year or two past the current date as defined by the World of Warcraft games, but I can't find anything more detailed than that. And, (un)fortunately, I can't just arbitrarily decide what that number should be.