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[jecowa]

Not really sure on the history of the wiki, but assuming the wiki has been around since the first public alpha of Dwarf Fortress, and assuming that the wiki switched to each new namespace on the same days that the relevant *Dwarf Fortress* versions came out, here's how long each version of the Wiki was the current version namespace:

• v0.23 - 447 days (1 year, 2 months, 21 days)
• v0.28 - 885 days (2 years, 5 months, 2 days)
• v0.31 - 684 days (1 year, 10 months, 14 days)
• v0.34 - 874 days (2 years, 4 months, 22 days)
• v0.47 - 3074 days (8 years, 5 months, 0 days)
• v0.50 - 681 days so far (1 year, 10 months, 11 days so far)

Got curious after noticing how much longer some 0.47 articles were than the previous.

[Salmeuk]

dang.. that really does explain a lot about how the community shifted over time. I think there was quite a dissolution after 2017-2018 rolled around and it became clear that the 'big wait' was gonna be.. bigger than anyone had expected.

also... I've been here for every single one... each version was its own game, frankly. some versions meant the loss of dear features, which I've simply forgotten the pleasures of experiencing. one must move on I suppose. yet

After returning to 47.05 after a year of premium.. I was reminded of what made me love DF. The beauty of high-contrast, properly rendered ASCII tilesets overlaying a complex simulation of a fantastical universe. luckily, this experience is only a download away for most people!

[Quietust]

The current wiki dates back to 40d, but that's all it had at the time - when version 0.31 came out, we created the version-specific namespaces for both of them (with the latter named "DF2010" because we didn't have a better name at the time) and also added one for 23a (which I think we populated with content from old article versions), and ever since then we've added new namespaces every time a save-incompatible version was released (namely, "DF2012" for 0.34, which got renamed to "0.34", and then "DF2014" for 0.40 thru 0.47 which never got renamed).

The reason "v0.47" was around for 8 years is because Toady managed to not break save compatibility during the 0.42, 0.43, 0.44, and 0.47 releases.

[jecowa]

I think it's good 47 lasted so long. There'd be so many wiki versions if it lasted the length of the others.

I think version 50 was a good time for a new version too. Because it's so different, there might be a few people wanting to stick around on version 47 for something more familiar. Even if 50 didn't break saves, it was a good place for a new version.

Guessing the Myth and Magic release will break saves too.

[lethosor]

Guessing the Myth and Magic release will break saves too.

I don't know if it will, but Emi and I are in agreement that a new namespace for future versions is not something we want to support. This is why all current articles now live in the main namespace. It takes quite a lot of effort to set up a new namespace properly - articles, templates, and categories all need new versions, and some additional things like redirects also need extra logic. I wasn't able to dedicate the time to do this properly until a week or two after the Steam release back in 2022, and it led to a pretty bad experience on the wiki during that window. Not something I want to repeat, and it's not really something we can prepare for when release dates are uncertain and major compatibility-breaking releases happen so infrequently.

Naming things is hard, too - following DF2010 and DF2012, DF2014 seemed like a reasonable name - we didn't realize it would last until 2022.

[jecowa]

With how difficult it is to load older versions on Steam, and with seemingly the vast majority running DF via Steam now, it seems less likely that people are going to run an older version anyway. Maybe individual pages can be copied to a new page if there's a major change that makes it worth backing up the old version of that page?

DF2014 was the Pax Romana. I didn't have a problem with the DF2014 name. I don't know how wiki namespaces work, but that seems like probably the best way to name it without being able to see into the future. I used to think the game had major updates every 2 years that triggered the need for a new wiki version.