skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3775
Registered: 12-28-2004
IP: Logged

Just as the Illumination states, we've got the DROD wikia to a slightly better state. There is still a lot of work to do (I'd dare to say it's less than 5% done) but what we have right now is a solid starting point.

That's where you come in. Navithmastero, 12th Archivist and I have prepared a ground and now you need to plant and reap the seeds because it's too much work for three people.

A link to the wikia.

I'd like to say a few words about each of the categories currently created and what I had in mind when I made them (since I am guilty of coming up with the structure):

- What is drod? is a page which serves as a kind of entrypoint. If you have a friend who never played DROD, link it to him. If you want to talk about DROD on other websites, this should be a page where all information can be found.
- DROD versions there has been a lot of confusion with the way DROD games are released. This page is meant to explain, in detail, what different versions are.
- Elements is a big list of all in-game elements, linking to each element. Do note that in the wikia we're using two terms to discern DRODs - Classic DROD and DROD RPG.
- Smitemastery Guild is a kind of "tutorial" place, written from the in-universe perspective (learning should be fun!) It is meant to contain all advanced techniques to solving DROD holds. I have the PSD and Hold file for the images, so if you want to change anything I'll make them available
- Eighth this should be replaced with a link to DROD lore which would contain quick links to things like The Eighth, characters, places etc. Basically this is the entrypoint for all the canon lore in the. Off-canon things and speculations are also welcome but they should be marked as-such.
- Hold design a section dedicated to making and designing holds.
- Scripting a section dedicated to scripting, something which most likely I will want to take over completely.
- Holds right now is meant to be a place to put information about specific holds, reviews and whatevers.
- Mods contains things like custom clocks or custom styles.
- Creators is a section dedicated to the people who made DROD possible.
- There isn't much work done on structuring RPG part because time.

None of the things there are set in stone, I'd love to discuss what to change and what not either here or in the chat. There are a couple of pages with standards I came up for the wiki, another thing which is not set in stone. So feel free to make pages, make edits, discuss, help and make this the best wikia out there. Also, since I hang out in the chat almost all the time (except when I sleep) I should be available if you have any questions when making changes.

----

Now let me elaborate a little why I decided to step in and help with the wiki and why I decided to become its "patron" (if skell's patronage ever meant anything to anyone). If you look around different popular and less popular games you'll notice that almost all of them have a wiki yet DROD, even though it's a game with way more content than many of those games combined never had one. Sure, there is the fan site (about which I'll talk below) and there was a half-assed wikia with only a bunch of pages with little content (don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the work that was done before because majority of the content that we have on the wiki right now is just restructured older content, but in the grand scheme of things, for a random visitor it wasn't worth that much). The bottom line is, there is a lot of content which is hard to find, because our fan site and caravel main page are far from perfect and while I can't really do much about them, I can do a lot about the wiki.

Now about the fan site. At least for now it's going to stay as-is. Ideally I'd like to archive all of the content unique for it in such a way that it can at least be referenced from the wiki, because all of that is DROD's history. Only time can tell.

____________________________
My website

PigmyWubba
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 162
Registered: 04-14-2012
IP: Logged

I'm gonna go through and add the info for most of the monsters over the next few days.

Though i'm terribly inexperienced with editing wikia, and i'll probably do something wrong that will need to be fixed later.

____________________________
790th Raft Complaint Clerk-

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[Last edited by PigmyWubba at 05-10-2015 01:17 AM]

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3775
Registered: 12-28-2004
IP: Logged

Just for the reference we have so far four pages outlining standards for different aspects for the wiki:
- How to name pages?
- How a game element page should look? (or just use Roach as a template)
- How to use the game names in text? This is to avoid confusion, so if talking about rules use "DROD X.0", when talking about a hold use the hold's name etc.
- How to name images before uploading them? this ensures the images can be easily found later if you need to add them somewhere.

Don't feel obliged to follow them 1-to-1 from the very start since everything can be fixed later .

____________________________
My website

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[Last edited by skell at 05-10-2015 07:40 AM]

karlpopper
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 263
Registered: 03-28-2009
IP: Logged

I approve of having a wiki, and its presence may induce me to chime in.

Just want to check something with Caravel: would it be ok if parts of the Caravel website were copied into the wikia?

My answer would be - yes, providing that a backlink to the Caravel page is left in wikia.

____________________________
76th SkyWatcher
When the only tool you have is a Really Big Sword, all problems start to look like Giant Roaches

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3775
Registered: 12-28-2004
IP: Logged

Assume it's a real wiki, so feel free to paraphrase or quote content and include traditional references, like here for example.

____________________________
My website

Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1645
Registered: 12-12-2004
IP: Logged

so out of literally every wiki option you chose the one that keeps control of the wiki if you choose not to use its services anymore

for serious

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3775
Registered: 12-28-2004
IP: Logged

Banjooie wrote:
so out of literally every wiki option you chose the one that keeps control of the wiki if you choose not to use its services anymore

for serious

I didn't chose it as the wiki existed before I came in and started to overlord things. I don't really care personally about the fact that the wiki is going to exist even if I decide I don't want to play with it anymore since way bigger communities and games have a wikia of their own.

____________________________
My website

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

I'm taking it upon myself to revitalize this project. It seems like it'd be rather useful, and since I am familiar with Wikia (I even moderate the PvZ Wikia), I feel fit for this undertaking.

And before anyone asks how I could get the ability to moderate the place when it's abandoned... Well, Wikia has an adopt feature. Easy, really.

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 10-18-2016 05:23 AM]

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2796
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Camwoodstock wrote:
I feel fit for this undertaking.

Don't do it. You will fail. Nobody believes in you.



-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

DezzTech
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 327
Registered: 03-31-2009
IP: Logged

OOOHHH, someone remembered that the wiki exists!!! How exciting, etc!!!

So hey, did anyone know about the super cool gifs we have on the wiki (that I wanted to post about a year ago but forgot)? Check them out:
http://drod.wikia.com/wiki/What_is_DROD%3F#Gameplay
http://drod.wikia.com/wiki/Smitemastery/Basic_Training
http://drod.wikia.com/wiki/Smitemastery/Goblins

I think there may be a few more, but I'm too lazy to look for them atm.

So yeah, there's like a super cool section on the wiki all about explaining game mechanics and various tricks with gifs, and it's currently... kinda lacking in content. I had started (and soon after stopped) working on it like a year ago... But now that there's some activity on the wiki I feel like I should help a bit, even though I don't have that much free time anymore.

OK, the point I was getting to is, I'm gonna start making gifs soon again and if anyone has any cool ideas on what should I make feel free to tell me. You don't have to suggest any obvious stuff that I'll eventually make anyway, (like showing how to cut tarstuff etc) but if you think there's some obscure interaction I should make a gif of, or some other thing that might be useful to DROD players, please do tell me. (post here, pm me, catch me in chat, edit the todo section here, anything)

____________________________

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[Last edited by DezzTech at 10-18-2016 05:18 PM : The link broke because I didn't disable emoticons, amazing]

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

For those who want to help:

• A page exists to view things like redlinks that need pages, pages without categories, etc.
• A category for pages needing more information. If any page you see has lacking info, put a {{Stub}} template in there via Source mode.
• In particular, lots of monsters added in DROD 5.0, like Puffs, Rock Giants, or Engineers, lack info, if they even have any. Please add some!
• A lot of info about lore is missing. Please help with that.

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 10-19-2016 03:53 AM]

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

Personal life is going crap right now, so I might not be able to edit as much as I'd like. If you want to help the wiki, though, there's various resources on this thread and on the wiki to help. And if all else fails, mash the random page button until you find a page that needs help.

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

DezzTech
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 327
Registered: 03-31-2009
IP: Logged

Ok, so since the wiki doesn't have a forum where we can discuss this sort of wiki-related stuff, I'm posting in this thread to discuss some organisational issues on the wiki. And also because this allows me to pretend that there are more than 3 people working on the wiki.

I am utterly confused by some changes to the game elements pages that happened since the last time I worked on the wiki. More specifically, the merging of RPG and Classic drod pages makes no sense whatsoever to me. Why was this change made in the first place? It is highly, highly unlikely anyone looking for Classic DROD info is going to want to check out the RPG pages, and people looking for RPG info are unlikely to want to look at the Classic DROD pages, considering that gameplay-wise the games are almost completely unlike eachother. And even if they wanted to do so, we had a nifty link at the very top of each element page to let them switch to the other game's element page. But now that some pages are merged into one, it requires more cognitive load to parse the page and identify which information is relevant to which game.

If this change was made to reduce information duplication, well... first of all, wiki editing isn't like programming, I'd argue it's okay to have some duplicated information sometimes, as long as it is more convenient to the readers. I think it's better to provide the readers with more information on each page with links to other more detailed pages if they need more info, than just shoving links everywhere and constantly telling them to click on them even if they only wanted to know some minor thing. And second, the pages on each of the doors now have a DROD RPG section with 2 almost identical paragraphs so gg.

And the element navigation box. Oh my god, not only does the spam of (RPG) links next to almost each element makes it look like an eyesore, it, once again, also increases cognitive load and makes it much harder to find the page you're looking for. Not to mention that the pages for Classic and RPG elements are now mixed together in one great mess.
Say, for example, you're a new reader of the wiki and you're looking for a page on Keys. You intuitively notice that all the DROD RPG elements have (RPG) label next to them, so you start searching for the Key link near the (RPG) labels, and... you find nothing, because it's nowhere near them! So your intuition was wrong, thanks to the awful UI design of the navbox. Now, if we had separate pages for Classic drod and RPG elements, each with their own navbox, this wouldn't be a problem.

Oh, and I know I am blowing the issue out of proportion (or it looks like I am, thanks to that huge wall of text), since only a few pages were affected as of now, but I wanted to express my concerns anyway, since I strongly disagree with merging Classic DROD and RPG pages, and, if someone new started editing the wiki, it might look to them like merging the pages is the next logical thing to do.

I'm going to split the pages for each game later when I have some time to do so. If anyone has any objections to that, please post them here.

____________________________

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5195
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

+1

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

superluminal
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 75
Registered: 05-26-2016
IP: Logged

DezzTech wrote:
If this change was made to reduce information duplication, well... first of all, wiki editing isn't like programming, I'd argue it's okay to have some duplicated information sometimes, as long as it is more convenient to the readers.

Probably, yeah. For most elements, there's almost no difference between how they work in Classic and in RPG. I personally like information density (part and parcel of being a programmer), so having all-but-duplicate pages for each and every element seems absurdly wasteful to me.

And the element navigation box. Oh my god, not only does the spam of (RPG) links next to almost each element makes it look like an eyesore, it, once again, also increases cognitive load and makes it much harder to find the page you're looking for. Not to mention that the pages for Classic and RPG elements are now mixed together in one great mess.

I agree, splitting the navigation box would be a good idea. But again, I don't know if each link on the RPG navigation box needs its own unique page. Also, what do you mean by "cognitive load"?

I dunno, I don't think the UI design is all that awful. But I can't think of any arguments against changing it other than information redundancy. No other objections here.

____________________________
spacelike

DezzTech
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 327
Registered: 03-31-2009
IP: Logged

superluminal wrote: Also, what do you mean by "cognitive load"?

Ha, I already forgot that I even wrote that, (good job, me!) but I'm pretty sure by that I mean "how much effort it takes for the reader to get the information he/she is actually looking for from the page." I just used super smart words to say that for some super dumb reason.

Probably, yeah. For most elements, there's almost no difference between how they work in Classic and in RPG.

That's what it seems on the surface, yeah, but once you get down to the details, there ara suddenly lots of sublte nuances to each element. Or even just some information that's simply irrelevant to one of the games. For a really mundane example, here's the page on floors. Let's look at the behavior section. I know this isn't one of the pages that got merged, (I don't think RPG even had a page on floors actually) but I just want to show an example of how even the simplest element can differ between two games. Or mostly as an example of a page with most of the information irrelevant to one of the games. Here's the Behavior section:

> Empty floor can be treaded by any creature except for seep and waterskippers.
So, first of all, none of the standard monsters included in RPG can actually move, so perhaps this can be slightly rephrased. And second, you can actually have a waterskipper on the floor in DROD RPG. However, due to the way this is phrased, if this page was supposed to contain info both about Classic DROD and RPG, the reader might think that it's impossible for a waterskipper to exist on a floor in DROD RPG. So now the wiki editor might have to rephrase this sentence in another way that might actually end up more confusing than if there were two pages each with separate information.

> Seep and waterskippers can jump out of their respective wall and water to attack their target. In the case of seep it will die along with its target.
Completely irrelevant to RPG since the monsters don't move.

> Floor is treated as a valid tile for brains to guide monsters through, unless there is a brain-invisible object also on that tile.
Irrelevant to RPG, since the brains work differently there.

On top of that, the infobox also contains no information relevant to DROD RPG. RPG only has 6 of the styles out of 12 shown, all of them have higher resolution graphics (er, and will also have higher quality graphics once I get to them... in 5 years... maybe... don't count on it... >_> ) and don't need either of the "First appears" or "Brain visible" sections.

So those are the differences between just the floors in the games. Sure, it's just "The stuff most creatures walk on" but the actual wiki pages need more information than that. And a lot of the gameplay-related information tends to differ a lot between the games. And in most cases I think, it would be Classic DROD info that's irrelevant to RPG.

Now, of course, I'm just talking about the gameplay sections, and of course there are other sections that would probably end up almost identical for both versions of the pages. Like, say, descriptions. And I'll admit that that seems rather wasteful to me too. Is there maybe some way to embed some section of one wikia page in another so that it can be edited in one place? Does anyone know if that's possible? (I know it's possible with templates, but maybe there's a more elegant solution?)

____________________________

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

If someone, for some reason, merged the classic/RPG pages, undo that. I didn't do that, and I highly disapprove of that.

I know I ain't staff on the wiki, but the old b-crat went AWOL, and given nobody here seems to really approve, I can only do my best.

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 11-25-2016 07:33 PM]

Radiant
Level: Moderator

Rank Points: 142
Registered: 02-05-2003
IP: Logged

Camwoodstock wrote:
If someone, for some reason, merged the classic/RPG pages, undo that. I didn't do that, and I highly disapprove of that.

Yeah, that's just a bad idea. Even the template at the bottom looks really confusing now, as it goes "Game element (RPG) element 2 (RPG) element 3 (RPG)" and so forth.

Let's face it, the RPG is a completely different game with different mechanics. It makes no sense to combine Classic DROD and the RPG on one page.

____________________________
= Radiant =

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

Heads up on some stuff:
Major stuff
• I added blogs! They'll allow us to communicate regarding the wiki on the wiki itself. Of course, I'd recommend you also post stuff about the Wiki here. Every bit helps.
• I revamped the main page a bit; I moved the to-do list to the side navigation, added a recent blog summary to it, and put a recent activity at the bottom of the main (left) portion of the page.
• I'm working on a category for everything related to DROD RPG, simply titled "DROD RPG." If you can edit the DROD RPG related pages and add that category, that'd be helpful!
• I plan on adopting the wiki; this means I will become a bureaucrat (highest position of a normal wiki's staff) on the wiki if this succeeds. From there, we can revitalize the wiki as appropriate. Discussion about this should be put on the blog about this, which can be found here. If you're okay with this, leave a comment on the blog saying as such; part of the process is to show approval of me adopting the wiki, so... Yeah, kinda important.

Minor stuff
• I have made a Smitemastery category for the Smitemastery pages (those are still a huge WIP from what I can tell)
• I made a category named "The Budkin Family" for the characters that are related to Beethro Budkin's family.
• A whole bunch of other edits!

P.S. My Wikia username is Camwood777. Just in case nobody knew.

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 11-25-2016 07:36 PM]

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2796
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Looked at the wiki for the first time today. (I take a long time to do things sometimes) It's really impressive.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

Reminder to please leave a comment of approval here so I can adopt the wiki and revive it properly! Currently with no active staff, but no special staff privileges, reviving the wiki is tough.

I'm planning on spicing up the maintenance/notice templates from their current white-boxes-if-that-ness, similar to what the PvZ Wikia (another wiki I moderate) does.

Just an example of what the PvZ Wikia does for these templates, since they're what I plan on basing these off:
• Stub
• Pix
• Archived
• Unused
• Delete

The question is, what quotes should we possibly use? I think it'd be super sweet if we used quotes, too. Please message me (be it via PM here or via the wiki) with possible quotes.

Once I adopt the Wiki, I plan on holding a poll hosted on the wikia (why it's not on the forums? i don't wanna clutter them with this wiki) to choose what DROD-related quote we could use. I do have a few templates in mind + a few template quotes in mind.

Templates
•Construction: A template for generally WIP articles.
•Stub: Goes at the end of the page, but before navboxes. If a page has sufficient info, but is lacking general content, put this there. An article under construction is always a stub; make sure both are there if you plan on placing a Construction template here.
•Delete: Should be obvious. If a page needs deleting, slap this guy on here and staff would be checking it out shortly.
•Pix: Has to same use of the PvZ Wikia template. if a page needs an image, it'll have this.

Possible Quotes
•Constrution: "And a wall here..."
•Stub: I don't have any quotes; any suggestions?
•Delete: "Prepare to meet your unmaking."
•Pix: "Embrace the mothingness!"

AFTER-POSTING UPDATE:
•Beginning work on placeholder templates for Construction, Stub, Delete, and Pix so far. All quotes and images are temporary, and Pix doesn't even HAVE an image... Since we need a picture of the Pit Thing.
•I've added images to disambiguation images! This'll help people visualize what people are looking at.
•While this is something a bit more obvious, we've been noticed by Erik of CaravelNet, as you can see in the post before this. Thank you so much, man! <3

AFTER-POSTING UPDATE 2:
•Delete, Stub, and Todo have all been spruced up! Stub is next. I'm waiting for someone to snag a picture of the Pit Thing's portrait before going ahead and making Pix.
•I've also added a new template; Construction! Again, the quote is a placeholder until we can decide better ones. Stick it on any page that is missing crucial information if you can!

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 11-28-2016 03:03 AM]

DezzTech
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 327
Registered: 03-31-2009
IP: Logged

Can you please verify the information you're posting on the wiki before posting it?
Because CaravelNet is not
a game
development
team

It's just not.

____________________________

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

DezzTech wrote:
Can you please verify the information you're posting on the wiki before posting it?
Because CaravelNet is not
a game
development
team

It's just not.

Truth be told, I'm not quite sure what the word is to describe it.

But I do get the difference between Caravel Games and CaravelNet now, thanks. It was kinda late at night when I did that.

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

Just a heads up that I plan on submitting the request for wiki adoption on December 3rd, 2016, or this Saturday. If you are okay with this, please leave a comment saying so on the blog here! Part of the requirements say that it's best to show evidence that the active community there (if one exists) is okay with you adopting the wiki.

In other news...
* Cleanup template! If a page is particularly messy and needs clean-up, be it in visual or in source mode, add this template.

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 11-30-2016 04:51 PM]

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

Heads up that tomorrow (might be today if you're in the UK) is the last day to leave your comments of approval for my adoption of the wiki! Simply go to this blog linked here, scroll down, and leave a comment in the comments section below it! I'll still leave a request for adoption, but doing this will make it a whole lot easier and more likely for me to adopt the wiki successfully.

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

A long overdue bump! Thanks to the help of skell, I have now unofficially adopted the wiki, and became a Bureaucrat! You can expect a few things, some of which you can see now:

• Crucial pages, such as the will finally be locked to prevent vandalism.
• Staff will get dedicated username colors in the Wiki's CSS!(you may need to hard refresh the page before you see these)
• Badges! That's right, you can actually go ahead and earn little special badges for helping out around the wiki, be it by posting images, adding categories, or even plain ol' editing! (Category-specific badges will be coming soon!)
     ○ Note that if I do catch someone spamming edits to falsely obtain badges, they ''will'' be placed under a warning, and possibly blocked if their behavior does not shape up.

Anyhow, three more things (that are much more insignificant) before I go.
• Firstly, 13thSlayer on Wikia + skell are considered founders. What does that mean? They either founded or adopted the wiki, and get a fabulous blue username for it. I'd consider myself a founder, but I'd rather ask if others agree on that one.
• None of the bureaucrats that existed before I was made bureaucrat by skell are to be demoted in case they return.
• I added a "Roaches" category for everything relating to Roaches... But found out that Roachie/Pocket Roach has no page(!!) Someone, please get on that.

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

I've added a bit more.

• Staff page! This lists the wiki staff.
• I've added quite a bit to character pages! Namely added the article for Arky, added to First Archivist and 84th Negotiator, and added some characters to the Navbox.
• Badges for Monsters and Characters!

Also, remember, you don't even need a wikia account to edit the wiki (though you do need one if you want to be recorded via the the badge system), so don't feel nervous about helping out!

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Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

An ancient little bump, but during the long span of time, I've been thinking of potentially moving the wiki to another service. Wikia has been INCREDIBLY unstable as I've learned from experience on other wikis, between the constant layout changes, and the "Fandom" thing they keep shoving down the throats of anyone. And the advertisements, dear god the advertisements. The layout of an average Wikia page without adblock is 25% article, 10% pictures, templates, and other stuff, and 65% giant banner advertisement.

I've had a few ideas of what to do, but I'm not certain if they're the best ideas, or even reasonable. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

The most optimal idea would be making a leap from Wikia to a MediaWiki wiki. Wikipedia uses MediaWiki, but so does the Mario Wiki, the Homestar Runner Wiki, and really, just about any non-Wikia wiki under the sun. Not only that, but MediaWiki is flexible. Very flexible. How flexible? Well, we could theoretically link it to CaravelNet services themselves and set up an incredibly easy way to set it up so we can keep pages on holds, levels, and even specific rooms, and with a bit of elbow work, it wouldn't be too hard, though it's certainly something that'd require getting the assistance from the people who help set up CaravelNet in the first place.

The main issues with that idea are that not only would we have to move every last page over from the Wikia wiki over to the new wiki, but we'd need someone who would be willing to buy and sustain a domain for it--and I'm not that person; I'm too poor to sustain a domain, much less buy one. I also lack the tech know-how to set up a server myself. I also also doubt the Caravel team itself is interested in even letting a wiki be a sub-domain in the regular DROD domain, mostly since I assume they're busy with other things.

Again, if anyone has a better idea, I'd greatly appreciate it. I just feel like we could really use an upgrade because Wikia is proving to be... not exactly the best platform for a wiki for a topic as massive as DROD.

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Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 11-25-2017 03:03 AM]

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 120
Registered: 07-02-2014
IP: Logged

Another bump, though not nearly as long as last time.

Now that I'm certified to be 132nd Skywatcher, I know a lot more about DROD lore than I did previously; as in, a LOT a lot. This is less notable, however, compared to the other thing.

Remember last post, where I declared an interest in potentially moving the wiki to a MediaWiki platform with its own domain? We're down one of the big issues with doing that! I asked Porplemontage, owner of the Super Mario Wiki, as to if there was any easy way to move a Wikia wiki to a MediaWiki wiki, as he had experience when he helped Pikipedia, the Pikmin Wiki, move itself from Wikia to MediaWiki. He was able to tell me about Grabbers; no, they're not some custom DROD element, but they're scripts to transfer data from one Wiki to another. MediaWiki themselves has a page on Grabbers here.

As a result, there's only one real problem now, and that's finding anyone who can be capable of buying and sustaining the domain. On the extreme off chance the DROD team themselves are okay with helping set up an "official-ish" Wiki hosted on the Caravel domain... Please PM me or just reply here, I'd love to look into getting this thing going!

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Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 01-10-2018 06:54 PM]

superluminal
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 75
Registered: 05-26-2016
IP: Logged

I support someone with money (possibly me?) hosting a wiki on MediaWiki and someone with Caravel influence (definitely not me) endowing it with official Illuminatory status.

Can anybody recommend a good host? I'd be willing to shell out the few bucks per month for it if it's worthwhile.

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spacelike