Wiki pages - (edit) at Wikispot

[jpwrunyan]

Is the Wiki Spot site not better? Thats good enough reason for me.

[bryanhbell]

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan
Is the Wiki Spot site not better? Thats good enough reason for me.

I agree that the new site is already better in terms of content. I don't know if the Wiki Spot engine is any better or worse than Wikia's. That's the part I'm trying to understand. I'm unfamiliar with Wiki Spot. Almost all game wikis use Wikia, but I don't know if that's just due to convention or if it's because there's some advantage to hosting game-related wikis there. Obviously, joeyeti made a decision to put his content in a new place rather than fixing up the old one. I was just trying to understand the rationale behind relocating.

I'd hate to see him (and others) put lots of effort into a wiki on Wiki Spot only to discover later that they need to move it for some reason. Better to settle this now while the DW wiki is still young.

[joeyeti]

bryan,

I did some research when I was deciding where to put the Wiki. And yes, I saw the original one on Wikia.

The reasons for choosing Wikispot were mainly:
- no limit on users for free
- no Ads (this was my rule #1)
- standalone implementation, not requiring you to have a hosting site and your own Wiki installation
- some other minor things I just right now forgot about

Wikia is bloated and too "commercial" for my taste - ads flying all over the place and the like. Maybe there is a way to have it witout ads, but this is mostly a paid feature on other Wikis.

It is true that I could have widened my research and perhaps found a free hosting service to where I could install my own MediaWiki engine - this would be the best solution as MediaWiki is much more powerful than Wikispot and its syntax is standardized and more widely supported - but so far I settled for this.

I have already asked on the main Matrix forum if Matrix would perhaps consider having their own Wiki portal for their games, from which they could branch off any Wiki for one of their games if the community wanted to make one... Erik Rutins replied:

"We do have a few wikis, but no overarching site. I'll bring up the idea internally, thanks for proposing it."

So we might get up one day hopefully and find that Matrix has their own


As per a possible content migration - it is not that hard. The formatting is mostly similar to MediaWiki with some minor changes, which could be transformed on-the-fly. True, you would need to reupload all images to the new Wiki, but given say 3 people, that is also easily achievable.

The main thing with any Wiki is filling it up
Any formatting can be done post-edit, so the content is the most important thing there is...

[bryanhbell]

ORIGINAL: joeyeti
bryan,

I did some research when I was deciding where to put the Wiki...

Thanks for the detailed response! This is exactly the information I was seeking. It sounds like you gave this some real thought and made a wise, informed decision. Kudos to you! As far as I'm concerned, it's full speed ahead -- not that you need my permission

I'd like to help add content to the wiki but I am quite the newbie with this game. Participating in this project might help me learn the game, though.

I could at least help with transporting text from the Galactopedia into the wiki, as some folks here have discussed. However, do you think this will be ok with Code Force and Matrix? I don't know what kind of copyright concerns they may have about their in-game content.

[jpwrunyan]

Personally, the lack of ads is a big plus for me because it makes browsing easier on 3g network.

[joeyeti]

bryan,

you are welcome

I too am a noob in the game, so far only started two or three quick games to get the hang of it and planning soon to start a fourth to do the same and potentially more... I have yet to explore all depths of all the screens (not necessarily all of them, as the best start is on almost full Automation anyway and until I get to designing my own ships...) and get to know all the interdependencies.

That is also the reason I started the Wiki, because when you read a lot on these fora, you tend to want to summarize the information spread through many topics into comprehensive and readable pages, that are easily accessible. And you tend to forget where you have seen it, so you need to get back to more reading and browsing.

And I like to "do the background stuff" too


As per the "copying the info from Galactopedia" - I am not sure either... Does someone know whom we should PM with that question?

[Erik Rutins]

Hi guys,

Thanks for creating this. If there's anything we can do to help, let me know. You can e-mail me at erikr@matrixgames.com or post here.

Regards,

- Erik

[bryanhbell]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Hi guys,

Thanks for creating this. If there's anything we can do to help, let me know. You can e-mail me at erikr@matrixgames.com or post here.

Regards,

- Erik

Thanks for the support! May we have permission to include in-game text and images such as those found in the Galactopedia in the wiki?

[Erik Rutins]

Sure, go ahead.

[bryanhbell]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Sure, go ahead.

Thanks

[jpwrunyan]

Now we have permission to pester them with questions about game mechanics. Specifically, i want to know the function for calculating max colony population.

[Pipewrench]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Sure, go ahead.

Here, I made everyone happy but Matrix is exiled to an asteroid for now.[:)]

[joeyeti]

Thx Eric!
Much appreciated!

Nice image pipe, actually, nice images throughout the wiki indeed! Makes it more alive.


Reg. Wiki structure - guys, how should we approach the Galactopedia replication?
I would like to get oppinions on this before too much text would be involved...

1. as a more-or-less direct copy under its own page and subpages (as Bryan is currently doing it)
or
2. as a transfer of the content into appropriate pages in the current Wiki structure?


Let me make an example - the Empire Navigation Tool is currently under Game Interface, but does not have much info yet. The Galactopedia entry has some more text and some pictures and this could for instance be merged into the Game Interface entry...

If 2. would be the option, we would avoid duplicating entries for subjects already present in the Wiki currently (and in the future) and basically do an expansion on Galactopedia without necessarily maintaining its structure to the core...

Also, making links and trackbacks to parent pages is important - pipewrench does it well in his Resource pages and we should maintain doing it with new and existing entries. And also merge it with the "Related topics" as per the Galactopedia, because in such a massive game you might want to read more on a subject than just the current entry.

[bryanhbell]

Yes, I noticed as I entered data from the Galactopedia that there was duplication of content elsewhere in the wiki. I actually really appreciate all the extra info that has been added in, say, the Races and Resources pages.

So, I was thinking that maybe there could be some use in maintaining a facsimile of the Galactopedia in one section of the wiki (the one I've been working on) while at the same time having more in-depth (and perhaps differently organized) content in the rest of the wiki. If there's overlap in the info between these, so what? I can just append "(Galactopedia)" to the end of each of the pages in the facsimile so we can use the same page titles (if desired) for content in the rest of the wiki.

As we build the wiki, we can copy info from the facsimile pages as needed to expand the other sections. Maybe we could eventually delete the facsimile or maybe people will find it useful as an out-of-game reference to the in-game Galactopedia contents.

But I'm not married to this idea of keeping both. If we want to take approach 2 only, I'm ok with it.

As far as the links and trackbacks to the parent pages, I completely agree we should have those. I just haven't gotten around to adding them to the pages I made yet.

[bryanhbell]

I added trackback links to all the pages I'd added. I used the following format:

["Front Page"] > ["Galactopedia"] > ["Finding Your Way Around"] > Empire Navigation Tool

I think this is a nice simple navigation format and suggest we use the same on all pages in the wiki for easy, consistent navigation.

I added these navigation links to the top and bottom of each page. It looks a little redundant on the short pages, but on the long ones, it's nice to have the nav links in both locations.

What do you think?

[joeyeti]

Good ideas, Bryan.

I have no problem with copying the Galactopedia and initially making duplicates. As you say, it can be gradually incorporated into the main Wiki entries and eventually also deleted - at least the content will be there to copy, so later editors do not need to open the MHT files to copy the text and already have the basic formatting in also.

Also the trackback format is good, this way you also see the info depth level

EDIT: In the near future I will be adding the info from the Research trees - the details for each project. Just so that there is no duplicate work :p

[Pipewrench]

joeyeti

Added a contruction page and link so we all can post what we are working on.

Regards.

[joeyeti]

ORIGINAL: pipewrench

Added a contruction page and link so we all can post what we are working on.

Regards.

Hmmm, perhaps to make it more visible I will move it up to the Wiki Rules section...

[joeyeti]

I found a good way of coping with images surrounded by text. so that no BR tags are needed or the like...

You basically have to make a table with the image spawning across all of the rows in the first column and the text being spread across the second column (especially if you have more separate lines of text instead of a single description).

The formatting is something like this:

Code: Select all

||<rowspan="5"> [[Image(ExplorerPipewrench3.gif)]] || '''Area One''' ||
 || We have scrolled out to view the two systems that we own. ||
 || Clicking on the outer edge of our home system will show us general information about the system. If it has a colony a colored ring will surround the solar system to show what empire has ownership. Notice the blue in between the red selector graphic which matches our flag. ||
 || Take note of the star (capital) and the blue ball (fuel source)  to the right of the circle. ||
 ||<^> We can see individual mines, ships and spaceports at this zoom level but cannot see planets. If we pull out to a sector view we would only see freighters and warships. ||

The <rowspan="5"> can be replaced by the shortcut <|5>, while the shortcut <^> serves to align the text to the top of the cell (full code is <valign="top">). This is due to the wiki not having a way to evenly distribute the rows in the table and at the same time making the last row much higher than the previous ones (unless there is enough text to make them high enough, so that the last is also reasonably high).

There is a small nitpick, if you have a larger picture and not a lot of text, you might want to insert blank rows at the top of the table to move the text further down, as this:

Code: Select all

||<rowspan="5"> [[Image(ExplorerPipewrench3.gif)]] ||||
 ||||
 ||||
 || '''Area One''' ||
 || We have scrolled out to view the two systems that we own. ||
 || Clicking on the outer edge of our home system will show us general information about the 
 ...
 

As an exercise I used it in http://distant-worlds.wikispot.org/Exploration_Chapter2 and http://distant-worlds.wikispot.org/Game_Screens_(Galactopedia).

[bryanhbell]

ORIGINAL: joeyeti

I found a good way of coping with images surrounded by text. so that no BR tags are needed or the like...

Thanks. I considered using tables to format the text and images on Game Screens (Galactopedia), but got lazy and just stuck in a bunch of BR tags instead. I'll go back soon and fix that up.

I dislike having to use tables for layout. Normally in web design that's considered A Bad Thing(tm), but I suppose it's necessary in the context of wiki markup, if a bit tedious. In Wikipedia, you can force a break after an image using {{clear}}, but that kind of thing doesn't seem to be available in Wiki Spot (as far as I can tell).

Also, thanks for fixing my permissions in the wiki.

One last thing. I am wondering if maybe we should stop using this thread and the Matrix Games forums for back-and-forth communication about the wiki. Does Wiki Spot provide some facility for messaging?