RPGWatch Wiki awaiting contributions!

We´ve opened our new RPGWatch Wiki today. The trial balloon will be Gothic 3. If it´s a success every RPG in our data base can get its own chapter in our Wiki!

What´s a wiki?
It´s an easy to maintain site which allows every reader - in our case after successful forum registration - to add new content or make corrections to other people´s submissions. Creating new pages and formating text is easy. Pages are automatically indexed, so the wiki is searchable. A high traffic wiki grows in size and quality over time, until there´s nothing more to add.

As opposed to a website a wiki is meant to collect thousands of small contributions by its visitors. Every tiny piece of information is useful! Even if you don´t remember all the details about a certain topic somebody else probably will be able to complete your entry.

A wiki depends on active participation!

Here´s a direct link to our Gothic 3 Wiki. Just type in the text and then look up the formating details in the Formatting Guide. It´s a catalog with the most common formats. Most of them are easy to implement.

Can there also be more than one name for a page? I mean, some pages might not have the best names or should have more than one name pointing to it (or redirected to it). Also, I hope we can sort out an ideal structure for this.

What we need most are contributors!

50 people who add 1 short entry every day and it would take off like a rocket!

I think pages can only have one name. The displayed link doesn´t need to be identical though. Plus you can link to every page from every other page.

Let me know if you have suggestions for a structure.

Quests should probably be sorted by city. NPCs city and maybe faction.

And interesting question is also which data to collect for quests and NPCs.

Great, going to add my little contribution using my great English skill .

It's just that on Wikipedia, sometimes when you search for something you get redirected to another page that has the same meaning. Or sometimes a word has more than one meaning and there are more than one pages for the same word. I think that makes certain things a lot better and easier to navigate and find.

Like when I search for 'tweaks' I should be directed to the same page as when I search for 'ini files', or something. I guess it already does this sort of, by indexing the page. Certain page names just stroke me as a little strange or unnatural (as in they're not in a dictionary kind of way).

Another thing: is it okay to post on other forums with this link or on other places to try and get more contributors for the wiki?

All the publisher infos you guys entered are unprecise! JoWooD is written with a capital D, Deep Silver is co-publisher with equal rights as JoWooD, Aspyr is responsible for North America, not the USA. And since Deep Silver is our primary source for G3 infos I think the Euro publishers should have the classic alphabetic sorting.

edit: Writing JoWooD correctly in the Wiki is a rather complex task.

Spamming other message boards is not a good idea. But if you happen to find the solution to a problem in the wiki you could of course credit the source.

Ah, I just thought I'd start a page about the publishers. I don't know much about them, maybe someone else can fill it in further. I'll fix the info as soon as possible. That's another thing about this wiki by the way: there's no way to correct the page name after it's created, right? I mean, we're stuck with Jowood now instead of JoWooD. And going on what you said, it doesn't like the capitals neither.

This wiki software looks pretty mature, so I'm confident that there are good solutions to most problems, but I'll have to figure them out.

As for getting more contributors without spamming or being annoying about it, yeah I wouldn't want it to sound like advertising. This wiki is for the good of all who seek Gothic knowledge.

Myrthos suggested a solution which requires to manually define each page´s displayed name. Could be a good idea. Do it once, then fuggedaboutit.

What about pages that have already been created? Can moderators change the displayed name for a page that already exists?

Not known yet.

I see. That would of course be great (also I want the redirecting to a page from another keyword thing!!). By the way, I'm currently logged into the forum, but the wiki shows me as Unregistered. Also, it lets me edit any page I want!

We can't add new pages ourselves, by the way? That kind of defeats the purpose. Can't add a page called PatchHistory, an idea I just had.

EDIT, oh wait. You can create pages, it's just a little inconvenient. Just look at this page for instructions. I think I'll create an action for it on the first page.

It´s easy. All you have do is type PageName and the page is created. Everything with 2 capital letters is a page.

Yes, and that can be a problem too sometimes, as we already saw. But the problem I had was that you have to refer to a non-existing page from an existing page first, so that you can click on it to create it then. You can also just put a non-existing page name in the URL. The downside then is that it will be orphaned, but that shouldn't always be a problem, since you can still search it or find it in the PageIndex.

You could also add the action {{newpage}} to the home page. It will insert an input field and button that allows one to create a new page. I was not allowed to edit it.

The way new pages works makes a lot of sense…it forces you to think of how the page should be compartmentalized, and allows people to get to what you've written in a logical way. I've added a guide to the Guides section, both as an example and to test out the Wiki. I'd encourage everyone else to do the same: pitch in just a bit that's missing, especially something you've found very useful or interesting while playing. It takes only a few minutes (just open up another window with the Formatting Guidelines if you're not familiar with Wikis), and if there's a critical mass of information here, the Wiki will grow and thrive, and become an invaluable resource to the Gothic 3 community. And don't worry if your spelling and grammar aren't perfect: there's always someone who'll come along feeling pedantic enough to turn your pidgin English into sparkling prose.

Like me. Anyway, there are also a ton of what the wiki calls "actions". One of these actions that you can insert on a page, for example, is {{wantedpages}}. This lists pages that are linked to, but don't exist. It would be a great way for people to find stuff that they can fill in. Check out some of the other actions, they could really increase the functionality. But I suppose the person that installed it is still working on that kind of stuff (and probably disabled a few things for now, too).

Also, I don't understand why the rich editor hasn't been enabled. That way, people can just click on a "bold" icon or whatever to make text bold. It's a lot easier to understand for most.

Finally, we need more contributors! At least I'm having fun.

New naming convention:

1. All page names must start with "Gothic3". Then continue with a logical name.
Example:
Gothic3TheShyDeer
This makes sure no important name is blocked by only one game.

To display another external name embrace it in double brackets and add one space followed by the descriptive name:
[[Gothic3TheShyDeer The Shy Deer]]
would be displayed as
The Shy Deer

2. Add a title at the top of each page:
=====This is a Title=====
Use 5 = keys.

3. Set the page owner to Gorath in the "edit ALCs" menu at the bottom.
I will assign pages to forum members so that they can feel responsible for them.

I really hate how this works. I understand that you eventually want to try wiki's for other games, but this just looks ugly. That is, this full page name appears on top of the page and also in search results. Furthermore, I feel that these page should function like keywords, while now it's just an identifier. Of course, I have no idea how to work this out with the current wiki software. I'm just more used to the stuff WoWWiki and Wikipedia use.

And what's with the page names ending with a capital? (NpcS. DownloadS, etc.) Unnecessary as far as I can see. Yeah, yeah, I know they're just identifiers, or something. I just see this thing more as a dictionary kind of look-up thing.

Also, after the layout update, the === headers look the same as the == headers, so there is no differentiation between the two headers. This should be fixed.

Finally, the smaller content width is more easily readable, yes, but editing pages like that is a pain! Especially when pasting long URL's. Some weirdness also makes it so that the cursor jumps outside of the edit area when you do that. Infuriating!

Originally Posted by Thaurin
I really hate how this works. I understand that you eventually want to try wiki's for other games, but this just looks ugly.

Not my decision. The admin insisted on it. He wants to install only one wiki for all games.

That is, this full page name appears on top of the page and also in search results. Furthermore, I feel that these page should function like keywords, while now it's just an identifier. Of course, I have no idea how to work this out with the current wiki software. I'm just more used to the stuff WoWWiki and Wikipedia use.

The name at the top will disappear. Thus we need a headline inside the page.
Navigation also needs to be added.

Finally, the smaller content width is more easily readable, yes, but editing pages like that is a pain! Especially when pasting long URL's. Some weirdness also makes it so that the cursor jumps outside of the edit area when you do that. Infuriating!

I also don´t like it.