08-07-2018, 06:58 PM
Poll: What is your preferred method of handling the MFGG Wiki? You do not have permission to vote in this poll. |
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Delete the WIki | 3 | 8.11% | |
Delete the Wiki and start fresh | 3 | 8.11% | |
Archive the Wiki | 0 | 0% | |
Archive the Wiki and start fresh | 24 | 64.86% | |
Keep the current Wiki as is | 7 | 18.92% | |
Total | 37 vote(s) | 100% |
* You voted for this item. | [Show Results] |
(08-07-2018, 06:02 PM)Mario Wrote: I don’t think the sudden burst of interest in a wiki is going to last unless we really have a good justification for having it and a solid plan in place; and the solid plan just doesn’t make sense to have at this time. I think it is important to have this discussion now, though, considering a lot of people seem to feel that the wiki is not doing the site any favors. It's better to discuss what a solid plan would look like now, so we can implement it later, after LunaSMS or whatnot. It'd be great to have everything banged out beforehand, the purpose, the method of removal, all that. (08-07-2018, 06:02 PM)Mario Wrote: If we must archive it, I propose the following. We export all current articles to pure HTML; don’t save any revision history or any other kind of meta data. What you see on the wiki now is what you’d get, more or less. This eases the pain of keeping MediaWiki up and running for eternity and keeps the real meat and bones of the wiki around. It makes it simple to manage the archive for whoever has ftp access to it and gets pretty much any potential security issues out of the way. We also block off search robots and remove major links to it. I think all we really need for it is a thread on the forums in the archive boards that links to it really. This is probably the best idea if the majority of MFGGers end up wanting archive, which seems to be the case. I'm on the MarioBoards, Minus World, and the Bell Tree Forums as rollerC if you wanna check me out.
08-11-2018, 12:23 PM
So, 17/24 respondents voted “Archive and start fresh”, and it seems to be agreed among the higher staff that it is an acceptable/appropriate option. What would the archival process actually look like? (Speaking to wiki staff specifically)
I'm on the MarioBoards, Minus World, and the Bell Tree Forums as rollerC if you wanna check me out.
08-11-2018, 12:59 PM
How to Save the Wiki From the Hellscape of Forum Drama in a Few Steps:
Lock the wiki. No new articles or edits. The sooner the better. Either go with Kesha's HTML export or create new sections for the good, new articles to exist in. I can see the idea of flagging all old articles being tedious, so just preventing old sections from being used should suffice as someome wastes time trolling through the useless junk acquired over the years. Create new standards for articles. I've already promised a graphics article and my outline is as follows: What graphics are to a game and why they matter. How to create them and formats often used, especially in common tools for fangaming development. This will likely be the largest part and have subsections on tools, formats, and the many core concepts of spritework and 3D models. How to avoid the most common beginner sprite problems. Texture and model beginner mistakes are something I would have to investigate further before it would be added. If failing that, how to distinguish quality and nonclashing styles. The various official Mario styles and their perks and negatives. How to follow the above styles when customizing or scratch spriting.
08-13-2018, 12:22 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-13-2018, 12:23 AM by Heavy Fire.)
i think that the best way to archive the Wiki is to lock the current one and move it to a different domain, while the new Wiki would get the current one's domain and keep the current wiki's best articles.
08-13-2018, 09:44 PM
Lock the wiki, archive it, and port some important articles, famous fangames, engines, and such.
Create a new wiki based upon development of fangames and ROM hacking. Because of the decision to put ROM patches on the main site, resources and articles on that would be useful. The tutorials part and articles on certain fangames should be kept. I think that articles about MFGG history, like about the PPP, or the Split, should have less priority because our past is less important. I also think we should update the design of the wiki while we archive and replace it. The current design looks like something out of 2005 compared to the rest of the site. If we put in the most trafficked and found articles of the site, as well as expanding other parts of the wiki, such as tutorials, it will work.
08-14-2018, 02:57 AM
Yeah, the design is definitely very lackluster right now. Although I admittedly find dark themes shady in general.
I'm on the MarioBoards, Minus World, and the Bell Tree Forums as rollerC if you wanna check me out.
08-16-2018, 04:25 AM
I was browsing the Wiki again and looking at member pages, and I found a few of them to be sort of endearing. I don't think they belong on the MFGG Wiki itself, but what are people's thoughts on creating another Userpedia for these sorts of articles, where the whole purpose is member pages?
I'm on the MarioBoards, Minus World, and the Bell Tree Forums as rollerC if you wanna check me out.
08-16-2018, 07:20 AM
Doesn't seem worth having two "wiki" type things. All or nothing.
@Kritter
Well, what I'm trying to say is MFGG staff can keep up the MFGG Wiki. Members of the community can be administratively involved in a "Userpedia" wiki, and they would be two separate things. We could encourage other communities to be involved in such a wiki as well. MFGG Wiki has all fangame and MFGG info, Userpedia is for members to make articles about themselves or their work. I'm on the MarioBoards, Minus World, and the Bell Tree Forums as rollerC if you wanna check me out.
08-16-2018, 10:33 PM
I am very against having two wikis. One is already obviously more than we can handle.
08-17-2018, 10:46 AM
Understandable. I'm trying to say that the Userpedia wouldn't necessarily be affiliated with MFGG, but nonetheless it's enough to handle the MFGG Wiki as is.
I'm on the MarioBoards, Minus World, and the Bell Tree Forums as rollerC if you wanna check me out.
08-18-2018, 07:55 PM
Wiki Research Project
Over the past week, I've been doing further research on how people use the MFGG Wiki. I've been tracking Google clicks for a while, but with the help of @Hypernova, I set up a new script to see which pages get the most (and fewest!) page views. The most popular pages, as measured by page views, are for prominent users (more on that later) and popular fangames. Unfortunately, pages for resources and tutorials aren't getting much attention. On the plus side, pages that focus on MFGG's more dramatic events get very little traffic. Pages for silly fads and forum goofing-off don't attract much interest either, but competition pages are doing well. This analysis is distorted somewhat by search engine activity - the most-viewed pages are those that are linked by many other pages. For example, I'm pretty sure that 119 human users didn't view Hatman's page last week. This is probably why newer versions of MediaWiki don't track page views - they're not a very accurate statistic. I suppose I could install a tool like Google Analytics, but I don't think that would help me much, and I'd rather not add any kind of tracking software to MFGG. Off-Site Wiki Content (08-16-2018, 04:25 AM)rollerC Wrote: I was browsing the Wiki again and looking at member pages, and I found a few of them to be sort of endearing.I agree! Obviously, there's no point in preserving an argument that happened on AIM in 2006, but there's also a lot of fun things on the Wiki. When I first found MFGG, I enjoyed reading about games and engines, as well as members, events, and fads. MFGG seemed like a fun community full of colorful people, and reading old Wiki articles made me want to be a part of it. (I'm also aware that reading about drama could be a turnoff for new members, so we're working on that.) (08-16-2018, 04:25 AM)rollerC Wrote: I don't think they belong on the MFGG Wiki itself, but what are people's thoughts on creating another Userpedia for these sorts of articles, where the whole purpose is member pages?I'm not familiar with Userpedia, but I don't see anything we can gain by hosting any part of the MFGG Wiki off the server. Hosting all Wiki content on the MFGG server (whether it's an active Wiki or an archive) gives us a lot of control and flexibility:
Course clear! You got a card.
(08-16-2018, 07:25 AM)rollerC Wrote: Well, what I'm trying to say is MFGG staff can keep up the MFGG Wiki. Siphoning off the user pages is a good idea on paper, but nobody would really edit the pages or go to that Wiki. For all intents and purposes, we could just leave everything on Wikia from the old wiki and it would be cleared out of our minds. We could either leave the user pages in the past, or bring the most notable user pages into the MFGG Wiki. But it would take away traffic from MFGG Wiki, because some of the user pages are well written and give a good impression of MFGG, as VinnyVideo and rollerC said. Make a users section, but keep it smaller than the original. Keep editing rules strict and kick out old unnecessary history and forum drama pages. The past is the past.
08-19-2018, 08:32 AM
If we decide to keep user pages, they should be only for well-known/notable fan-game/engine creators, important MFGG staff, and very important members of MFGG. We have a users category like we did before that is closely watched to make sure no one adds needless articles or users to the wiki. We'd need to define who would deserve a user page somewhere in the Wiki's guidelines, and make sure those guidelines are enforced.
If no one will use a Userpedia, then any and all Wiki editor/MFGG member information should be kept in the userspace, not the user category, to completely separate it from the mainspace. I'll be changing the poll as soon as I can to reflect different options for the purpose of the new Wiki that people can vote on. If you'd like to suggest options for the poll (e.g. "fangame info only") reply to this thread and tag me. currently there's no way for a member who isn't staff to edit their own polls but I'll flag someone down and figure it out :^) I'm on the MarioBoards, Minus World, and the Bell Tree Forums as rollerC if you wanna check me out.
08-19-2018, 04:48 PM
As soon as you allow user pages though, the wiki will start heading right back into the same direction as the previous one which makes archiving it pointless other than a quick and dirty way to get rid of the bloat. The wiki should aid the purpose of the website in my opinion and personal user pages have no place in that.
08-20-2018, 03:52 AM
The only reason I'd believe user pages would be of some use is for important engine creators and people who've made tools for fangame creation, because I think that would be helpful and pertinent to a "fangame wiki", but I 100% understand what you mean.
I'm on the MarioBoards, Minus World, and the Bell Tree Forums as rollerC if you wanna check me out.
08-20-2018, 09:59 PM
I think there should be a criteria for "notable" user pages. These should be user pages of people who have made several notable games or is active in the forums.
I think that most old user pages should be removed. Reduce all the bio stuff and get solely into contributions. If the member is not notable enough or he is a person like LooneyTunerIan, his article should be deleted. Dupe accounts shouldn't be there.
08-21-2018, 08:32 PM
(08-20-2018, 09:59 PM)SMBXFan Wrote: I think there should be a criteria for "notable" user pages. These should be user pages of people who have made several notable games or is active in the forums. This is pretty good. I think it gives users something to shoot for. Should be something obtainable tho, like participating in x number of events or having a game on the mainsite.
08-21-2018, 09:24 PM
(08-21-2018, 08:32 PM)Syaxamaphone Wrote:(08-20-2018, 09:59 PM)SMBXFan Wrote: I think there should be a criteria for "notable" user pages. These should be user pages of people who have made several notable games or is active in the forums. I was somewhat thinking about having at least 500 posts on either the phpBB and/or MyBB forum and/or more than 25 submissions. At least 5 games would be a good qualification if the user has games that are good and/or well known. Maybe several posts in the art board and over 7 posts in the sprites section could work. That way, members that are a central part of the community like KirbyLover2048 would be included. These are just suggestions for criteria that could be obtainable. |
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