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[axus]

So, I've heard endless stories about how the Wiki is untrustworthy, due to vandalism, speculation somehow making it into articles, and other such things. Is this true? And if so, how long would the cleanup take?

Depends on how many people work on it, right?  You can see the edits to the 2010 wiki here:

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php?namespace=112&limit=500&title=Special%3ARecentChanges

It looks like a steady number of small changes.  You can see Mason11987 on there.  It looks like Quietust has taken it upon himself to be an editor and move pages he considers "low quality" to the Talk page. 

[Mason11987]

So, I've heard endless stories about how the Wiki is untrustworthy, due to vandalism, speculation somehow making it into articles, and other such things. Is this true? And if so, how long would the cleanup take?

Depends on how many people work on it, right?  You can see the edits to the 2010 wiki here:

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php?namespace=112&limit=500&title=Special%3ARecentChanges

It looks like a steady number of small changes.  You can see Mason11987 on there.  It looks like Quietust has taken it upon himself to be an editor and move pages he considers "low quality" to the Talk page.

Seems reasonable to me, this could be some useful information but since there are often complaints about how difficult it is to read information on the wiki, putting it on the talk page where it can be developed and improved until it looks more like it fits on that page is probably a good idea.

[Lord Darkstar]

I've found the wiki to be a great tool. I can't recall anything I've looked up to be wrong, although I have found a few things to be "incomplete". Where I've known more than the article, I've expanded the wiki. But I think it's one of the very best wiki's I've used for being focused on its subject, and for its accuracy about its subject. (knock on wood for it to stay that way.)

[MrLobster]

I haven't noticed any inaccuracies or vandalism on a live page.

I do have a criticism about the way content is being pushed down by UI cruft:

1) I don't want a big blue box at the top of every page, open by default, giving me Site Announcements which are really just kinda sidebar stuff. Yeah, I can hide it, and never open it, but a) then what's the point of it long-term, and b) first impressions are important.

2) If the current page is good for the current version of DF, I definitely do not want to see an attention-grabbing version box anywhere near the top of the page.

Together, these two push content halfway down the window, making the wiki annoying and ugly to the default visitor IMHO.

[Mason11987]

I haven't noticed any inaccuracies or vandalism on a live page.

I do have a criticism about the way content is being pushed down by UI cruft:

1) I don't want a big blue box at the top of every page, open by default, giving me Site Announcements which are really just kinda sidebar stuff. Yeah, I can hide it, and never open it, but a) then what's the point of it long-term, and b) first impressions are important.

2) If the current page is good for the current version of DF, I definitely do not want to see an attention-grabbing version box anywhere near the top of the page.

Together, these two push content halfway down the window, making the wiki annoying and ugly to the default visitor IMHO.

1) The top box reminds editors of a few things they should follow.  We've tested removing them (and the box) and those things almost immediately start being ignored and causing us to do huge fix-up, such as removing pages that are mass-copied from 40d.  I don't know why people forget, but they do and this saves a lot of work for the people who are willing to do it.  That being said I think having the option to minimize it as requested is a good compromise, and if something is added that you need to see we can make it pop open as a one-time thing so you can see changes.

2) I think the box is actually fairly modest, and on many occasions people have said they want it to be more noticeable.  Perhaps an option?  I'm not sure how to best satisfy everyone on that but I could see how that might bother someone.

[G-Flex]

I never really had a problem with those two things in particular. Most websites like that will have something up top anyway; having article content start at the very top of the page might look jarring.


I personally think the two major problems with the wiki are people copying over unverified data from the 40d pages (I've seen this far too often), and the fact that things are so much in flux right now that information tends to get out of date relatively quickly, or at least the fear of it might prevent people from updating. For the most part, I think things will get a lot better as time goes on, assuming contributors do their job right.

[i2amroy]

I agree with G-Flex. Sure the wiki has a few problems with people mass-copying from 40d, but the places where I have seen that have been decreasing a lot lately. I mainly think that the largest problem with the wiki currently is just that there hasn't been enough time for the DF community to figure out all of the missing holes yet. This isn't something that we could do anything about anyways, except maybe work to discover more things through dwarven science by ourselves. The only real cure for the problem is time in my opinion, as time goes on, more of the new holes will be filled and the wiki will become better as a whole.

[Josephus]

I've found the wiki to be a great tool. I can't recall anything I've looked up to be wrong, although I have found a few things to be "incomplete". Where I've known more than the article, I've expanded the wiki. But I think it's one of the very best wiki's I've used for being focused on its subject, and for its accuracy about its subject. (knock on wood for it to stay that way.)

The wiki was a great help for me as well, but if a player is starting in 31.x, they at least deserve an accurate array of information. The 31.x information is mostly complete, now that I look.

[Tsarwash]

The wiki maybe should be more aware of it's actual role. In my mind, there are two purposes that a great dwarf wiki can fufill. Obviously to be a factual encyclopaedia of DF. Additionally it can serve as a useful tutorial for the game. Now the latter is an additional bonus, but I think that the encyclopaedic pages should not get bogged down with tutorial pages. In my mind tuts should have a separate section of thier own. Tutorials are after all mostly opinion of ways to negotiate facts.

Saying this, I have found the wiki incredibly useful, and was constantly used when I was first learning the game. Well done everyone.

[Mason11987]

The wiki maybe should be more aware of it's actual role. In my mind, there are two purposes that a great dwarf wiki can fufill. Obviously to be a factual encyclopaedia of DF. Additionally it can serve as a useful tutorial for the game. Now the latter is an additional bonus, but I think that the encyclopaedic pages should not get bogged down with tutorial pages. In my mind tuts should have a separate section of thier own. Tutorials are after all mostly opinion of ways to negotiate facts.

Saying this, I have found the wiki incredibly useful, and was constantly used when I was first learning the game. Well done everyone.

There is a Guides category:

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Category:Guides

Though I do agree this could be improved.