13th Slayer
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DROD is worth it, we must have a wiki. It is nothing official. If you are willing to help, it will be greatly appreciated.

Nuntar
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It seems the front page has been locked to prevent editing, so here are the errors I wanted to amend:

"As well as it's brothers" -- should be its
"This is a wikipedia" -- no, it's a wiki. Wikipedia is the proper name of one particular wiki. Should be a comma after it.
"i'd recommend" -- should be the capital I
"the good idea" -- should be a good idea

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13th Slayer
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Nuntar wrote:
It seems the front page has been locked to prevent editing, so here are the errors I wanted to amend:

"As well as it's brothers" -- should be its
"This is a wikipedia" -- no, it's a wiki. Wikipedia is the proper name of one particular wiki. Should be a comma after it.
"i'd recommend" -- should be the capital I
"the good idea" -- should be a good idea

Fixed that. Thanks, Nuntar!

t_z
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Nothing against Wikia, but the ads do detract from the experience.

Instead, how about turning the official DROD community website (previously and still linked from DROD.net) into a wiki? Lots of companies are hosting wikis for their own products these days, and it is a great way to get community involvement in maintaining the site.

Just a thought.

t_z

13th Slayer
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t_z wrote:
Nothing against Wikia, but the ads do detract from the experience.

Instead, how about turning the official DROD community website (previously and still linked from DROD.net) into a wiki? Lots of companies are hosting wikis for their own products these days, and it is a great way to get community involvement in maintaining the site.

Just a thought.

t_z

Well, this request would go to Schik aka Matt Schikore, Matt Curtis aka Ezlo and other site editors. I am not responsible for anything on this site, nor this forum, (except my posts), nor caravelgames.com, i am not a part of caravel team.

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[Last edited by 13th Slayer at 08-29-2009 07:38 PM]

Garlonuss
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I actually think a wiki's a great idea, wherever it's hosted. I will admit that the ads do kind of detract from the experience, but they've become so ubiquitous that, like most people I barely even notice them anymore.

(Maybe it should be called DWOD - Deadly Wiki of Death?)

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Tahnan
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Before I go poking at the wiki, or adding anything, or the like, I wonder: what would a wiki be used for? Is there anything that can or should be put there that isn't already on the site or doesn't already have a place on the site?

13th Slayer
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Tahnan wrote:
Before I go poking at the wiki, or adding anything, or the like, I wonder: what would a wiki be used for? Is there anything that can or should be put there that isn't already on the site or doesn't already have a place on the site?

You can add anything there, DROD related that is. It is like an encyclopedia. You can add articles about games, holds, characters, etc, by the way, i still can't make up what should i write in DROD RPG article, even though i linked to it on the front page. This is a good example of a game-related wiki. It has tons of stuff about this game and the series, well, i want to build something of that kind for DROD.

Garlonuss wrote: (Maybe it should be called DWOD - Deadly Wiki of Death?)

Good idea, but it's late to change that.

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[Last edited by 13th Slayer at 08-30-2009 07:09 AM]

Tahnan
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13th Slayer wrote:

Tahnan wrote:
Before I go poking at the wiki, or adding anything, or the like, I wonder: what would a wiki be used for? Is there anything that can or should be put there that isn't already on the site or doesn't already have a place on the site?

You can add anything there, DROD related that is. It is like an encyclopedia. You can add articles about games, holds, characters, etc, by the way, i still can't make up what should i write in DROD RPG article, even though i linked to it on the front page.

But that's not really an answer. I know that anything could be put in a wiki, but what would be put there? Descriptions of the games? Sure, but we have those on the website here. Descriptions of holds? We more or less have that in the first post about each hold (and in that hold's thread); is anyone going to want to read a detailed description of the hold ("The tenth level consists of twelve rooms, all of them featuring tar mothers.")? And...characters? Are there enough characters with enough to say about them in DROD?

I skimmed through the HalfLife wiki (before the ads got to be too much). To be honest, it looked like a whole lot of articles with very little actual content to them. Things like "Dunn is a Black Mesa security guard who had a locker in the Area 3 Security Facilities at Black Mesa. This security guard only appears as a name on a locker...." My reaction is "Good Lord, who cares?"--but that's not entirely facetious, either. Who does this help? Who'll find this stuff useful if we do it for DROD?

Dischorran
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To be fair, there are plenty of useful wikis out there - I've used the Nethack wiki a fair amount. It could be a decent structure for compiling basic tips in one place - how to keep guards from moving, slayer manipulation, goblin manipulation, aumtlich beam oddities, and so on. Or it could just end up as a compulsive catalog of all holds containing trapdoor mazes, which is less useful.

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13th Slayer
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Tahnan wrote:

13th Slayer wrote:

Tahnan wrote:
Before I go poking at the wiki, or adding anything, or the like, I wonder: what would a wiki be used for? Is there anything that can or should be put there that isn't already on the site or doesn't already have a place on the site?

You can add anything there, DROD related that is. It is like an encyclopedia. You can add articles about games, holds, characters, etc, by the way, i still can't make up what should i write in DROD RPG article, even though i linked to it on the front page.

But that's not really an answer. I know that anything could be put in a wiki, but what would be put there? Descriptions of the games? Sure, but we have those on the website here. Descriptions of holds? We more or less have that in the first post about each hold (and in that hold's thread); is anyone going to want to read a detailed description of the hold ("The tenth level consists of twelve rooms, all of them featuring tar mothers.")? And...characters? Are there enough characters with enough to say about them in DROD?

I skimmed through the HalfLife wiki (before the ads got to be too much). To be honest, it looked like a whole lot of articles with very little actual content to them. Things like "Dunn is a Black Mesa security guard who had a locker in the Area 3 Security Facilities at Black Mesa. This security guard only appears as a name on a locker...." My reaction is "Good Lord, who cares?"--but that's not entirely facetious, either. Who does this help? Who'll find this stuff useful if we do it for DROD?

Well, yes, you're right. LOL on "Dunn" thing. But well, yes, it's a wiki so any content, except such small things, will be useful. Well at any rate, wikipedia can be modified by anyone and anyone can put anything, that is the purpose. It only has to be related to Wiki's theme, DROD in our case. Yeah, i was not exactly specific about Game/Hold descriptions. By game description i meant descriptions of new elements, etc, and hold, i meant official holds, like, description of storyline, puzzle styles... we don't have that, well, not much about it on our site. Oh, and, people, use adblockers. I've managed to get rid of all the ads on DROD wiki somehow, actually i did not even see any.

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[Last edited by 13th Slayer at 08-30-2009 08:18 AM]

eb0ny
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I have a question. Are we allowed to place (cropped) screenshots from DROD 2.0+ and other Caravel's graphics there? It would be a bit silly to make an article about slayers and not have a single official tile or avatar of them.

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13th Slayer
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eb0ny wrote:
I have a question. Are we allowed to place (cropped) screenshots from DROD 2.0+ and other Caravel's graphics there? It would be a bit silly to make an article about slayers and not have a single official tile or avatar of them.

Yes, yes, yes yes. To upload graphics though, wikia requires registration

Tahnan
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13th Slayer wrote:
But well, yes, it's a wiki so any content, except such small things, will be useful.

Let me be, actually, perhaps a little more explicit. Sure, we could all go put time and effort into a Wiki about the game, but I think there are probably things that people could be doing here instead. For Pete's sake, go vote in the latest contest: the poll's been up for a day and a half and there are three votes there.

A Wiki would be worth putting effort into if there were some tangible benefit we'd get from it: if it helped the community interact, or if it served as a place to store information that DROD players need access to and can't otherwise find. But I disagree that any content will be useful. I don't think it's useful to reproduce the in-game help files there; we have those in-game. I don't think it's useful to list user-made holds there; we have such a list on this site. I think there could be useful content, as Dischorran suggests. But I think that a project like this has to have clear, well-defined goals, or else it's going to turn into a collection of pages listing the number of builders in each room of TCB and other wholly useless stuff. ("Infohut: none.")

Lay out a definite plan and explain how it'll benefit the DROD-playing community, and I'll be there editing pages. In the meantime, though, I'll be here, trying to convince people to play holds and rate holds and test holds and so forth, or at least people who aren't already Curious Shy Rabbit.

13th Slayer
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Tahnan, for adder's sake, you confused me.

Tim
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Making a wiki for DROD is a great idea!

It's a way of putting more information about DROD outside this site, which is always a good thing. Since it's a wiki it's not going to have the same thing as on this site, unless people want to have dicussions on a wiki, but I've never seen that before.

The good thing about a wiki is actually very dynamic. You don't need a clear and well defined plan to begin. It can always be changed, or adapted later. It can be changed a lot faster than the main site. (Have you noticed how long ago it was that the Caravel site had ben updated? IIRC, all our site admins are MIA.)

In fact, during the DROD history we've had a number of good external sites made by forumites, that I'm kind of sad that some of the information there were lost when then disappeared.

Writing a wiki is always a good idea. At the very least it will teach you how to write a wiki and that is something that you can use in your other projects.

Go for it!

PS. If you are using images from Caravel, then you should ask Mike for permission.

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13th Slayer
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Tim wrote:
Making a wiki for DROD is a great idea!

Thanks!

Tim wrote:
PS. If you are using images from Caravel, then you should ask Mike for permission.

Except screenshots, those can be distributed freely because technically, anybody can make them, and stuff is copyrighted by whoever made it.... right?

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[Last edited by 13th Slayer at 08-30-2009 12:33 PM]

slimm tom
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13th Slayer wrote:
and stuff is copyrighted by whoever made it.... right?

That's not really true, I'm afraid. You can't copyright a screenshot, and posting screenshots of games counts as fair use, so you won't have to ask permission for posting screenshots. You can't post game sprites or edited game pictures though.

13th Slayer
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slimm tom wrote:

13th Slayer wrote:
and stuff is copyrighted by whoever made it.... right?

That's not really true, I'm afraid. You can't copyright a screenshot, and posting screenshots of games counts as fair use, so you won't have to ask permission for posting screenshots. You can't post game sprites or edited game pictures though.

Thanks. Can edited screenshots be posted? I kinda don't understand...

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[Last edited by 13th Slayer at 08-30-2009 01:57 PM]

slimm tom
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13th Slayer wrote:
Thanks. Can edited screenshots be posted? I kinda don't understand...

Yes, they can. If you, for instance, post a screenshot of DROD with lines drawn on in paint for the purpose of showing someone how the room is done, that's fine.

What's debatable, is taking a screenshot, using some editing program, and copying (for example), Beethro's sprites. You can use them on a web page to explain what Beethro is all about, as long as you state that the images are from DROD and Caravel owns them. You can't post them and say: 'Hey I made this!'.

What's definitely not OK is using those sprites in a creation of your own (Think another game, magazine, movie, you name it), without explicit permission from the owner of those images.

13th Slayer
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slimm tom wrote:

13th Slayer wrote:
Thanks. Can edited screenshots be posted? I kinda don't understand...

Yes, they can. If you, for instance, post a screenshot of DROD with lines drawn on in paint for the purpose of showing someone how the room is done, that's fine.

What's debatable, is taking a screenshot, using some editing program, and copying (for example), Beethro's sprites. You can use them on a web page to explain what Beethro is all about, as long as you state that the images are from DROD and Caravel owns them. You can't post them and say: 'Hey I made this!'.

What's definitely not OK is using those sprites in a creation of your own (Think another game, magazine, movie, you name it), without explicit permission from the owner of those images.

Gotcha, thank you. Also, i used TCB disk cover image as logo for the wiki and on the article page. Is that fine?

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[Last edited by 13th Slayer at 08-30-2009 03:05 PM]

slimm tom
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13th Slayer wrote:
Gotcha, thank you. Also, i used TCB disk cover image as logo for the wiki and on the article page. Is that fine?

Yes, that counts as fair use.

Jeff_Ray...
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13th Slayer, I appreciate the idea of the wikia. However, the DROD page needs a lot of revision, and I'm working on that right now. Hope you don't mind!

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13th Slayer
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Jeff_Ray... wrote:
13th Slayer, I appreciate the idea of the wikia. However, the DROD page needs a lot of revision, and I'm working on that right now. Hope you don't mind!

Did you remove the game list table? If so, then why?

zex20913
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Tahnan has my vote.

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skell
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I second zex.
On a side note, some kind of Eighth knowledge compendium would hit the spot.

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Fang
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I personally would like at least 1 page delving on the subject of the Eighth's history. How did the towns came to be? Was there always monarchy? Were there civil wars, uprisings, great battles? How did the Smitemasters start out? And so on.

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Snacko
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We cannot post content that does not exist.

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Fang
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Does that mean we have no backstory of the Eighth?

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Jatopian
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It does indeed. If Erik ever had one... well, he doesn't work at Caravel anymore. A shame, too; it was such a fascinating little world. And it's amazing how they get through whole years of Smitemaster's Selections without establishing a single fact of canon.

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