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Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum

Could be useful, I would read/post
- 18 (37.5%)
Could be useful for those who use/work on the wiki
- 12 (25%)
Wouldn't be useful - I don't use the wiki
- 0 (0%)
Wouldn't be useful - I think this should all be on the wiki, not here
- 11 (22.9%)
I don't care
- 7 (14.6%)

Total Members Voted: 48


Author Topic: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?  (Read 1116 times)

Mason11987

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Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« on: July 07, 2010, 08:25:54 am »

Hi All,

I had sent a message to Toady, asking if we could have a forum dedicated to discussing the DFwiki.  I thought this could be useful for large scale projects (like when the upgrade happened).  It would be good for discussing overall plans and getting general feedback on what the DF community would like to do with the tool often referred to as the source of info on playing DF.

Toady said that he'd like to see if there was community support for this, so I'm making this poll.  I tried to make the answers as descriptive as possible to gauge the attitude of the community.  Please share your thoughts!

Thanks!

Creamcorn

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Re: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2010, 08:49:05 am »

Dammit, you beat me to it. Although my idea was to make some sorta FAQ on how to update, manage and plain use the wiki tools.

I'm for it.
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Mason11987

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Re: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2010, 08:59:18 am »

Dammit, you beat me to it. Although my idea was to make some sorta FAQ on how to update, manage and plain use the wiki tools.

I'm for it.

That'd be a sticky, for sure :).

Starver

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Re: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2010, 09:04:00 am »

Mixed feelings.

I've been, for a long time now, been thinking I really should register myself on the Wiki to add my two-pennorth on the some of the Talk pages, and moreover make some enquiries about whether some Original Research should be carried out[1][2].

The thing is, I'm not online, where I usually play DF, so I tend to target the Wiki with those little queries that I've accumulated, (and remembered) once I get into an online situation, so actually prepping edits up seems to be superfluous, at the moment.  Yet I could see myself doing as I do now with the forums, contributing 'real-time' in such discussions.


On the other hand, signal-to-noise might be a concern, and how much "This is being discussed on the wiki page foo:talk already!" would occur.  I don't want to flood (or have flooded, by others, even if I keep myself at bay) the forum with more traffic just because another lane has been added to the metaphorical carriageway.



[1] I've been personally rationalising the Embarkation skills list with the skills commonly gainable/available by use (or brung in by immigrants), e.g. Knife User isn't (to memory) embarkable, but is common with immigrants and may develop of its own accord in dwarf with a given military configuration.  Part of this rationalising concerns the order the embark list displays and the (now, i.e. since 0.31.* came about) strict ordering of skills under the general tab.  Anyway, for all I know there's already a complete breakdown on this on the Wiki, and/or mention on the forums.  This might be something I'd pose on the DF Wiki subforum, maybe.

[2] In a similar project, that I started and completed last night, there's the ordering of items on the stone sublist of the stocks screen vs the ordering of stones in the Stone Use/Not Use administration screen (which I noted doesn't mention Obsidian!) and the stockpile stone list.  This was done because I was reorganising my "Masonic Quarter" and wanted to make sure I was making one pile per stone-type[3], for a given subset.  Would that be a useful additional piece of information (if not already there) on the Wiki?  That's something I might ask on the DF Wiki subforum.

[3] Which reminds me, I don't suppose there's a Dwarf Therapist-like variant for Stockpile management?  Similar philosophy of basic situational awareness of each entity (i.e. stockpile), more user-friendly one-glance rendering of said information and perhaps a quick edit-and-write-back facility for what stock each extant entity takes...  I don't use DT as much as I might, but I think that has about the right level of Not Cheating vs easier interface, and it would be nice to see replicated.
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Mason11987

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Re: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« Reply #4 on: July 07, 2010, 09:20:41 am »

Mixed feelings.

I've been, for a long time now, been thinking I really should register myself on the Wiki to add my two-pennorth on the some of the Talk pages, and moreover make some enquiries about whether some Original Research should be carried out[1][2].

The thing is, I'm not online, where I usually play DF, so I tend to target the Wiki with those little queries that I've accumulated, (and remembered) once I get into an online situation, so actually prepping edits up seems to be superfluous, at the moment.  Yet I could see myself doing as I do now with the forums, contributing 'real-time' in such discussions.


On the other hand, signal-to-noise might be a concern, and how much "This is being discussed on the wiki page foo:talk already!" would occur.  I don't want to flood (or have flooded, by others, even if I keep myself at bay) the forum with more traffic just because another lane has been added to the metaphorical carriageway.

Great points, I had tried to set up some "general discussion" areas on the wiki, but they haven't been quite as successful as I would have hoped.  I wouldn't expect this forum to have topics on individual articles, most don't really need that.  But I could definitely see an topic popping up where people can work together researching and improving the DF2010:Nobles article, which could use some work.  Certainly there is a possibility that people in both locations will miss part of the discussion but I feel people missing the discussion because they don't understand the wiki (or even know there are discussion pages) is a bigger problem.

In my opinion duplicating discussion is a far smaller problem then having discussion be difficult.

[1] I've been personally rationalising the Embarkation skills list with the skills commonly gainable/available by use (or brung in by immigrants), e.g. Knife User isn't (to memory) embarkable, but is common with immigrants and may develop of its own accord in dwarf with a given military configuration.  Part of this rationalising concerns the order the embark list displays and the (now, i.e. since 0.31.* came about) strict ordering of skills under the general tab.  Anyway, for all I know there's already a complete breakdown on this on the Wiki, and/or mention on the forums.  This might be something I'd pose on the DF Wiki subforum, maybe.

[2] In a similar project, that I started and completed last night, there's the ordering of items on the stone sublist of the stocks screen vs the ordering of stones in the Stone Use/Not Use administration screen (which I noted doesn't mention Obsidian!) and the stockpile stone list.  This was done because I was reorganising my "Masonic Quarter" and wanted to make sure I was making one pile per stone-type[3], for a given subset.  Would that be a useful additional piece of information (if not already there) on the Wiki?  That's something I might ask on the DF Wiki subforum.

[3] Which reminds me, I don't suppose there's a Dwarf Therapist-like variant for Stockpile management?  Similar philosophy of basic situational awareness of each entity (i.e. stockpile), more user-friendly one-glance rendering of said information and perhaps a quick edit-and-write-back facility for what stock each extant entity takes...  I don't use DT as much as I might, but I think that has about the right level of Not Cheating vs easier interface, and it would be nice to see replicated.

Edit - Just got a chance to read it.  Those things are VERY interesting and I think a forum would be a good place to discuss how to arrange that sort of information since it spans a number of existing articles.  This is in fact a perfect example of why I think this would be useful.  I'm interested to see what you have to share about all that.
« Last Edit: July 07, 2010, 11:37:27 am by Mason11987 »
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Cruxador

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Re: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« Reply #5 on: July 07, 2010, 12:52:11 pm »

The new magmawiki stuff is planned to integrate everything in a manner that functions almost exactly like a forum. In light of that, I don't think a forum on these boards is even close to necessary.
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Mason11987

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Re: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« Reply #6 on: July 07, 2010, 01:34:14 pm »

The new magmawiki stuff is planned to integrate everything in a manner that functions almost exactly like a forum. In light of that, I don't think a forum on these boards is even close to necessary.

While I'm as much an advocate of that as anyone, I'm also unsure of exactly how that'll look, and when it'll be completed.  A forum on the other hand would take a minute to create, and probably only a few minutes to remove if it's need is completely covered by something else (which I'm skeptical of).

Retro

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Re: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« Reply #7 on: July 07, 2010, 02:14:54 pm »

I tend to jump between "lots of editing all of a sudden" and "no editing for a while" every now and then, so I think this would be useful - the wiki search function works well in some respects, but having somewhere to just dump a question in would certainly be handy (especially to newer members who are intimidated by the wiki). Although I can't say how much I would post in it, I would definitely follow along and read it. A good way to let the community know what's going on and have a say without getting tied up in learning wiki editing and what pages to look for, I think.

Mason11987

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Re: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« Reply #8 on: July 07, 2010, 02:48:17 pm »

I tend to jump between "lots of editing all of a sudden" and "no editing for a while" every now and then, so I think this would be useful - the wiki search function works well in some respects, but having somewhere to just dump a question in would certainly be handy (especially to newer members who are intimidated by the wiki). Although I can't say how much I would post in it, I would definitely follow along and read it. A good way to let the community know what's going on and have a say without getting tied up in learning wiki editing and what pages to look for, I think.

Something I want to stress is that this won't be a "answer your questions about DF" forum.  The Gampeplay and Dwarf Mode forums (as well as the wiki itself) are perfectly suited for that and already filling that need.  This would be for discussing the wiki, and asking questions about the wiki itself.

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Re: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« Reply #9 on: July 07, 2010, 02:49:28 pm »

Yes, I agree - wasn't clear enough, I guess. I meant question about the wiki as well :P

Bouchart

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Re: Dwarf Fortress Wiki Forum?
« Reply #10 on: July 07, 2010, 09:28:29 pm »

I'm against it.

There are talk pages for each individual article and I believe a talk page on general/administrative issues.  It just seems redundant.
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