Wikis / Unreal Wiki / Legacy:Wiki Growth

Topic Growth

The topic are on triggers is a prime example.

1. We started with just the class spec stuff, Triggers (UT) and Trigger.
2. I then made "Types of Trigger", intended as a sort of 2nd way into the various trigger classes.
3. Event, Tag get definition pages. At some point I wrote quite a bit on the "Event" page. "Collision Cylinder" also added.
4. "Triggered" added.

We now have quite a lot of overlap, and it's starting to get a bit messy. I don't think this is a problem, quite the opposite. It's the Wiki Way :-) The refactoring will be hard work, but we'll end up with something much stronger than we had to start with.

Thoughts:

• we could rename "Types of Trigger" to "Trigger Overview", in line with "Actor Oveview". I like the idea of having a quick crib-sheet of the trigger classes & what they do. (I always forget...)
• alternatively, the "Trigger Overview" could cover what's currently spread across "Tag", "Event" and "Triggered"
• "Tag" and "Event" are still good pages to have, as they are natural to link to from tutorials or whatever that are bound to say "set the Skaarj's tag...". However, they can become quick definitions which point to a main page.

Other areas that may need treatment:

• Zone / Zones / Zoning etc

You forgot about Pawn (and the subclasses that I'll be touching on). There's more information there than you can shake a very big stick at. Sub-pages or something similar would probably be the way to go but I'm not of the best way of "implementing" the changes.

if you need a page renaming let me know: the admin rename function updates all links across the wiki too, so it's better than just shunting an entire page content. As far as page splitting, I have no idea... we may find that the convention on using subpages for everything relating one class breaks down. erm... just try something & see how it works.

(still, it's far better we have the problem of "arg! all this stuff, how do we organize it!" than "oh dear, the wiki is a tumbleweed town where nothing happens". A wiki with information overload is a happy wiki. :-) – Tarquin

Life Cycle

Uh-oh. I spoke way too soon: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiLifeCycle

Though which stage are we at? The move to BU stimulated a lot of growth & new writers, but this last week of April has been largely 4-5 writers hacking away. I can't work out if we're at 5, 12, or maybe it's just me on 13.... lol – Tarquin

Wow. Interesting read... and unfortunately pretty accurate. I've seen that exact sequence of events happen to pretty much all of the communities I've been involved in during my time online. :\ – Capt. K.

Mychaeel: Maybe we're at stage 12 indeed. I do hope though that there's some possibility that there's a loop in that life cycle – jumping from stage 13 back to 5, especially if that "introspection" results in an improvement. (By the way, stagnation is something pretty common in the Unreal community right now, with UT2003 and U2 pending. Ever checked PlanetUnreal lately?)

Good point. This particular wiki is a branch of a community that's currently laying low. I'll be optimisitc, and say we've looped back to 4 :-) – Tarquin

Wow, that's pretty interesting reading. Personally I'd say we were between stages 5 and 9. I read some research a while ago that my dad gave me. It was a study comissioned by a group of churches in America. The conclusion was that once a "community" gets over 50 people start losing the feel of the community, and become "transient visitors", or merely "attendees" that have no link to anyone in the community - simply because forming those links is a daunting task because of the size of the community that exists already.

There were two things that attracted me to the Wiki. The first was that way in which contribution is made - and that anyone can simply change a page - the concept is interesting. The second was that the spare time I have available to do this sort of stuff is intermittent - mainly because of work and family life. The Wiki approach is completely non-pressured - so I feel able to sustain occasional contributions because that is part of the "Wiki way".

Probably the thing that irritates me the most about my contributions to the Wiki is that I don't exercise as much rigor in the contributions as I know I would normally put in on any project I get involved with. Still, that's a personal issue I have with myself. Might be a time thing, might just be that I'm not at work so it matters less. Still annoying though.

I think Tarquin's point about the UT Scripting/Editing community being in a state similar to hibernation is a good one. Sometimes I feel that the current Wiki is a case of documentation for documentations sake; UT is almost obsolete, and will be once UT2003 is released.

Something else that's occured to me. This is primarily a "how to" and documentation wiki. It's very likely that the development of this wiki will be divergent from a more conversational, debate orientated wiki. Oh well, that's my deep thoughts on the matter – EntropicLqd.

We've made inroads into debate with things like your EntropicMods page – that page certainly showed me that this site can outgrow my initial ideas for it, which was very pleasing. I'm (secretly) hoping that will draw in more of the same. Wiki is a little harder to use as a debating platform that a forum, but it has the huge avantage that a long and winding discussion can be refactored into major points – which can lead to further debate.

I think a healthy lack of rigor is to be positively encouraged: on Wikipedia they say "always leave a page unfinished", so other people are incited to edit the page and combine their thoughts on the topic.

This project has started very late in the day for UT. Wiki has been around longer than Unreal (1995), it's a pity no-one thought to start this before. In many ways, yes this is a sort of practice run for UT2003: getting to grips with the system, adding things we need, and most important of all getting people involved. Don't forget though that there are still plenty of n00bs out there on the forums fighting the UnrealEd Goblin for the first time. I think the large majority of what we've written will apply to UT2; it'll largely be new aspects of the engine we'll have to cover. When it's released I expect many people will start writing up what they discover as they play with the new toys. I hope that by then this site will have made enough noise & attracted enough attention for people to post here so it can all accumulate together, instead of pockets of information all over the web. (damn, that was good. Must copy over to Project Aims ;) ) – – Tarquin

Refactoring

(shunt from elsewhere. Needs refactoring, oddly enough)

At time of writing, Tarquin has spent much of the last week of Wiki quiet-time refactoring pages & adding links all over. This is stuff we could all be doing.

Page deletion: leave a message like "This page is marked for deletion", move material to a new home & give people a week or so to object. Admins will delete the page itself when they spot it.