I registered just to criticize! (Not as bad as it sounds)

[thirdrail]

Hi all,

I'm a long time lurker on the boards though I've been playing since about b36ish. Sadly, I'm quite terrible at the game because I always fall into the same hoarding trap and as a result only have one winner. There is no excuse for that.

Anyway, that's not what I came here for. I was pleased to see ToME make it out of beta and I must say the game has come an unbelievably long way since I started. Good job DarkGod!

Unfortunately, not everything has kept pace. While looking up mindstar pairings tonight, I realized that the wiki is, to put it bluntly, a mess. There are articles up that were there when I started and are obviously woefully outdated. Many sections are incomplete, non-existent, or lack a standardized format.

But I know all this of course. I know what's there and what's not, and I don't need most of the documentation anyway. The issue, in my mind, is that now that ToME is out of beta, promotion is underway. When looking at a new game, the first thing I normally do is hit the wiki. If it's in bad shape I'll normally pass. I suspect many other people are this way. If you look at the success of Dwarf Fortress, a lot of knowledge and support for the player comes from the excellent wiki that has been toiled over throughout the years. I play DF and it's great. Someone on Reddit recommended Kerbal Space Program when I mentioned DF. I looked through the documentation and found it lacking, so I moved on. I'm sure it's a good game, I just don't want the docs to be part of the learning curve.

So what to do? Sure, I can point out problems with the best of them but how to get the docs up to 1.0.0? Firstly, I would scrap the walkthroughs, beginner guides, etc. and write a basic walkthrough to to get people on their way. Say, guides to all of the starting areas and a couple of good builds. Then, each section should be rewritten to current specs. Ideally a lot of this would be scripted. Hints and tips could wait until the core mechanics and stats are finished. Standardized layouts and easily readable pages are very important. On that note, black text on a white background is the beginning, middle, and end of an easy on the eyes page. The obvious choice here is MediaWiki. No need to reinvent the wheel.

I know there are quite a few people that have done a lot to try and keep the wiki up, and rapid drastic gameplay changes at some point put a halt to that. This is understandable. No one wants to put a lot of effort into something that will be obsoleted in a month. But now that we're at 1.0.0 most aspects of the game are set to have a much more gradual pace of change from what I understand.

Of course the big problem is: "Who is going to do it?" If "You sound like you're volunteering thirdrail!" went through your head you're probably not alone. I don't have the editorial and page layout knowledge to lead such an effort, and IMO there should be someone at the top in that role. As for what else would be needed, I suspect there would be a lot of copying and pasting into templates from a database and linking those up. I could certainly help with that, and even manage a group of people dedicated to it. If no one here has done such a project, I'm sure the friendly people at the Bay12 Games forums could give some organizational tips.

Lastly, how to incentivize people to help. People want something for doing something. Some of it may come from the goodness of their heart, but most of it is for personal gain. Nothing says personal gain like custom titles, avatars, and/or in game colours for players' names. Those things make you a somebody.

Well, this has gone on long enough so I'll end with saying that I love the game and these forums are full of friendly and helpful people. DarkGod has done a great job with it and I hope it becomes more successful than he could imagine.

[XLambda]

I agree 100%. The wiki has been put on the back burner for far too long, it's time for a concerted effort to get it updated and fleshed out. I'm more than willing to help out with that.

[CaptainTrips]

I agree that the wiki should be fleshed out. In many cases, it would be as 'simple' as transferring some of the guides and whatnot from the forum to the wiki. However, there are a few things that tend to keep this from happening.

First, the wiki software used by the site is just not nice to use. It is very idiosyncratic and quite unpredictable with regards to what is possible and what is not. This makes editing quite a drag at times, with formatting taking up a large proportion of the time one dedicates to the project. Obviously, this is quite frustrating.

Second, in-game chat offers a quick and easy way to get answers to 'factual' questions (i.e. 'where is backup guardian X?' as opposed to 'how do I play as a Yeek PM?'), which I think is a positive thing, but definitely lessens the feel of urgency with regards to fleshing out the wiki. The forum and in-game chat have really become the defacto knowledge base of ToME, for better or worse.

Third, the wiki software is really annoying. Seriously.

But, of course none of this means that the wiki can't and/or shouldn't be fleshed out. A good start might just be somebody going through and getting rid of some of the obviously obsolete pages/info.

1, 2, 3 - not it!

[HousePet]

After looking at DarkGod's Code; I'm glad he hasn't tried to update the wiki.

[Dragatus]

You know what they say: if you want to change the world, first change yourself.

Until someone who has both an intimate knowledge of the game and a decent grasp of writing wikis shows up, we can all still go through the wiki and edit a few thing here and there.

[thirdrail]

As far as wiki software, the recommendation I made was for THE wiki software, MediaWiki. It's what Wikipedia runs on and the Wikimedia Foundation developed it. DFwiki runs it and so does Wikia.com.

Wikia.com? Isn't that the site that hosts hundreds of thousands of free wikis? Why yes it is! Somebody else has already done some of the work for us.

@CaptainTrips: Most of the guides are at best useless and at worst confusing and misleading to new players. They have helped me out along with reading and keeping up on changelogs, but us folks that have been playing beta for a long time have a different knowledge of the game than someone starting out. True, the forums and in-game chat are valuable tools, and both are shining examples of how good this community is. In my experience as a gamer though, a good wiki is the best advertising you can get.

@Dragatus: We could start off easy with code dumps being wikified, but I don't know how to extract data from the code.

How about this: If someone can pull every mob with the "Animal" attribute and include all of their stats, abilities, level range, etc in an easy to use format (think CSV) and email it to thirdrail69@gmail.com I'll see if I can pretend to know what the hell I'm doing enough to fool a few people into thinking I can actually do it. In the meantime I'll give myself a pep talk or two.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Wikia? That site that hosts all those wikis with a bazillion ads on them that take forever to load? Not sure I want the Tome Wiki to turn into that, my computer has enough problems without making them worse. A wiki that cluttered and nasty I wouldn't WANT to use.

[Velorien]

Wikia? That site that hosts all those wikis with a bazillion ads on them that take forever to load? Not sure I want the Tome Wiki to turn into that, my computer has enough problems without making them worse. A wiki that cluttered and nasty I wouldn't WANT to use.

I use AdBlock and have no ad issues with Wikia or anywhere else. If you don't use Firefox, it may be worth your while seeing if your browser has a similar extension available.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Of course I use firefox, (since what... the alternatives are internet explorer or buggy browsers? Yeah, tough choice there.) but it's popup blocker didn't stop the dozen or so animated ads per page, not counting the bar that pops up of the bottom of the screen and covers what I'm trying to read. So.... Maybe you have a different version? (Though mine (was, at the time of visiting such a site) the one right before the most recent update, so then again, maybe not.)

[Dragatus]

The problem with Addblock is that major parts of the internet are funded through adds (youtube for example) and if enough people use applications that block adds it will seriously disrupt it's economy.

Of course there are sites that are exeggerating with adds so I totally understand why one wouldn't want to use it. And as long as only a minority uses add blocking software it will be fine. But if it spreads too much it can cause problems.

[CaptainTrips]

I'd like to direct attention to this thread: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=37154

DG says a change of wiki software would definitely be possible if someone were willing to go through and convert all the non-Mediawiki pages to Mediawiki syntax. I've started on this, and it shouldn't really be too much work. Please go to that thread and give your opinion on switching software and anything else you might want for the wiki, or just let us know that you're on board to help out.