Author Topic: Can we improve the wiki?  (Read 29874 times)

Indirik

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #30: August 06, 2013, 06:41:19 PM »
I must admit, I am making an important assumption: that the extension will allow using the actual "blog posts" themselves as an includable piece of a larger wiki page, so that the newspaper can, in fact, have both a newspaper-y layout and a simple backend for posting new entries.

Can anyone tell us whether or not the Wikilog extension will permit this?
You can use transclusions to include the text of one page on another. (Templates are actually just a fancy, pre-defined method doing transclusion.)  This is how I made the Dwilight Daily. You can create one page and then transclude it into as many different pages as you want. You don't have to do anything fancy to make a page transcludable. Any page can be transcluded into any other page. So whatever extension you created to enter the articles wouldn't have to do anything special.

There is a way, using semantic forms, to create a form users can use to edit a page that prompts them for all the required information to embed the semantic data. You can then use semantic queries to display the desired articles on a page using transclusion.

You shouldn't need to redesign anything, or code any kind of special CMS application. It just takes someone who has the time to figure out how to use the tool we already have to do it. I tried to do it with the TattleMaster, just never had the time to really polish it up and make it work easily enough.
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Revan

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #31: August 06, 2013, 08:10:40 PM »
The example just has the typical "top to bottom" blog format: http://juliano.info/en/Blog:Memory_Leak

So I guess that's out.

A newspaper guild would make publishing easier, but wouldn't help with the "blog" part at all. Still, it's an interesting idea. aspirants would be "readers", members would be "writers", and elders would be "editors".

I don't know. It might collate articles in a traditional blog format, but click through to the posts themselves and you have just a normal wiki page that you can do anything with. That could work fairly well for newspapers. You can have a short summary on the main newspaper 'blog' for each new edition and then you click through to get the meat of the latest issue.

Tom, you're going way overboard with this. We don't need a full-fledged content management system to do wiki newspapers. All we need is someone who has a good knowledge of wiki authoring to make some templates, and write up instructions of how to use it. I created some very automated systems for the Dwilight Daily. I started trying to redo the TattleMaster with semantic forms and semantic data, but just couldn't make it lay out right with the semantic wiki template system. If someone could make that work, then you wouldn't need any coding at all.

In addition, I  think you're trying to design a system that just doesn't fit the way that wiki newspapers are done. They are done blog-style because that's the way that content is created. With only one or two people working on a paper, you don't get complete "issues" released all at once. You get one article a week, not 6 or more where you have to lay it all out, and have headlining stories, with bylines and filler.

I've been a fairly heavy user of the BattleMaster wiki in my time. I can happily tweak and mess around with run of the mill templates and wiki markup to get the results I want. But I'm afraid using the semantic wiki was way over my head. It's too complicated for me. To be honest, I think you're about the only person who managed to get something going that really made use of it.

I really liked the way you had the Dwilight Daily running and I was intrigued by what you were trying to do with the Tattlemaster but I absolutely couldn't do something like that myself. I think we would, as you say, have to polish up some templates and get some instructions written up to see the automated systems you were using used by others.

Tom

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #32: August 06, 2013, 08:55:59 PM »
Tom, you're going way overboard with this. We don't need a full-fledged content management system to do wiki newspapers.

I didn't say we need one. We need a simple, specialized tool. I can write a prototype in a day, easy. All it needs to do is three things:
  • a comfortable WYSIWYG editor to write individual articles
  • a simple javascript front-end that allows a drag-and-drop layout process with a few pre-defined templates
  • a very simple permission system to determine who can write articles for which paper





Tom

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #33: August 06, 2013, 08:58:26 PM »
I really liked the way you had the Dwilight Daily running and I was intrigued by what you were trying to do with the Tattlemaster but I absolutely couldn't do something like that myself. I think we would, as you say, have to polish up some templates and get some instructions written up to see the automated systems you were using used by others.

I was incredibly thrilled when sophisticated papers like these appeared.

I do think they will never be the norm because only a few people know the syntax and other details well enough to be able to do them. That's why I think a more user-friendly system would tremendeously lower the barriers-of-entry.

Swiftblade

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #34: August 07, 2013, 02:48:12 AM »
Well having it so you can write individual articles and save them for later would be amazing, then when you have enough you could copy and paste them to someone (or work with a permission system), he could drag and drop them all and you would be done. Then I guess it would just be a matter of displaying them. Even a simple message system could be used to let people know there is a new issue depending on the realm of the people who wrote it. So if the main author is from X and the editor is from Y, both X and Y realm get a little message saying "The XY Times has released a new issue. Read it here."

If you created a prototype then it could be beta'd in game for a while, see how people like it and if there are any major flaws. If there arent any then leave it, if there are spend an hour and fix them.

Tom

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #35: August 07, 2013, 03:08:40 AM »
It really isn't difficult. But: I have to work on stuff that puts money into my bank account first.

Revan

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #36: September 14, 2013, 02:12:09 PM »
So, it's nice to see the wiki updated to the latest version but has something gone awry in some of the settings or extensions? All of a sudden we're experiencing a torrent of spam account creations.

Indirik

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #37: September 14, 2013, 03:20:52 PM »
It's just another spambot attack. Bad Behavior is blocking all their edits.
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Tom

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #38: September 14, 2013, 05:11:45 PM »
Yeah, we never figured out how to stop them registering accounts in the first place.

Anaris

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #39: September 14, 2013, 06:04:25 PM »
Actually, I suggested using the already-installed QuestyCaptcha to make them answer some trivially-discoverable questions about the game (like "How many continents are there?" with a link to the list of continents, or "what is the class every noble starts out as?" with a link to a page clearly stating that...etc), but IIRC, you were afraid that our real users are just too stupid to handle that. :P
Timothy Collett

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Tom

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #40: September 14, 2013, 06:40:58 PM »
Ok. I changed my mind, let's do that.

All we need is an answer bots can't answer. something as simple as "what's the game called? Hint: B.....M....r" would probably do.

Anaris

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #41: September 14, 2013, 06:52:42 PM »
Ok. I changed my mind, let's do that.

All we need is an answer bots can't answer. something as simple as "what's the game called? Hint: B.....M....r" would probably do.

Actually, we already had that question, without the hint, and the bots were still getting in. Less than they have been since the server move, though, so I assume you didn't put it back in on the new version.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Vita`

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #42: September 15, 2013, 09:27:26 PM »
And before Tim's suggestion, I discussed some superior captchas to Questy: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,4211.msg105635.html#msg105635

Revan

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #43: September 17, 2013, 03:40:54 PM »
Actually, we already had that question, without the hint, and the bots were still getting in. Less than they have been since the server move, though, so I assume you didn't put it back in on the new version.

Would a variation on that theme be able to fox them? Something like input the name of the game twice.

Tom

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Re: Can we improve the wiki?
« Reply #44: September 17, 2013, 04:11:38 PM »
Would a variation on that theme be able to fox them? Something like input the name of the game twice.

What would work are trivial but non-obvious questions, and a random rotation of 3 or 4 of them.

Something like "fill in the blanks: ......Master" and "fill in the blanks: "Battle......" - I think the name of the site is probably in the word-list the bots try.