Wiki? No, I gave at the office

JH · Post by JH » Wed Mar 16, 2011 10:08 pm

lordreaibn wrote:Look, I know you are a busy man, but let me know when/if I can tempt you into being a moderator.

Thanks. I'm flattered. At the moment I'm not keen to take on any more commitments (though I hope to have time to write some episodes). I think that between you you and Ben should have the moderator role fairly well covered. One thing that you may have to watch out for is wiki spambots, which seem to be very active at the moment, judging by one other wiki than I'm involved with in an admin role.

JH · Post by JH » Wed Mar 16, 2011 10:10 pm

"One of my main intentions was to attract interest from other addventure sites, which is why Lord Fred is included, as well as the main characters from the Unending BE Addventure. I figured if the folks that frequent NEQ and BE were given a chance to write about their favorite characters, they wouldn't have a problem contributing."

Very sneaky, Ben.

I think that may well work in my case.

Won-Tolla · Post by **Won-Tolla** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 11:47 pm

So basically the 'new' idea ended up as another addventure with the main difference being that you can and options without writing them. And what would normally be the first two or three levels has been combined into one wall of text. I believe the expression is tl;dr.

lordreaibn · Post by **lordreaibn** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 2:58 am

Won-Tolla wrote:So basically the 'new' idea ended up as another addventure with the main difference being that you can and options without writing them. And what would normally be the first two or three levels has been combined into one wall of text. I believe the expression is tl;dr.

Oh lawdy that's harsh. Actually this experiment is related to something that Ben and I have wanted to do for a long time, which is revive Horsehockey. The official revival will likely use Extend-a-Story code but this wiki idea seemed brilliant for a test story.

I really enjoy your episodes, Won-Talla, and would hate it if you decided not to contribute to the experiment. That being said, each to their own.

I also disagree that the 'wall of text' is 'what would normally be the first two or three levels'. It is an extended setup because of what it is trying to achieve: the resurrection of something that several of us loved for the sheer insanity of what it was.

In addition, I believe I addressed the "tl;dr" factor by saying in the help area that anyone can feel free to add their own episode on the fly. No need to 'stick to the narrative'. I think I even specified that.

I stand by the fact that this is new. An addventure in the wiki format, and it is an experiment that I look forward to exploring with all who are interested.

I am also still going to pursue working on an episode guide wiki for NEQ, and writing episodes here. I have not abandoned that idea at all.

lordreaibn · Post by **lordreaibn** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 3:00 am

JH wrote:"One of my main intentions was to attract interest from other addventure sites, which is why Lord Fred is included, as well as the main characters from the Unending BE Addventure. I figured if the folks that frequent NEQ and BE were given a chance to write about their favorite characters, they wouldn't have a problem contributing."

Very sneaky, Ben. I think that may well work in my case.

Excellent! As stated, feel free to deviate from the narrative with whatever options you wish. This is a free-form experiment.

lordreaibn · Post by **lordreaibn** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 3:01 am

JH wrote:Thanks. I'm flattered. At the moment I'm not keen to take on any more commitments (though I hope to have time to write some episodes). I think that between you you and Ben should have the moderator role fairly well covered. One thing that you may have to watch out for is wiki spambots, which seem to be very active at the moment, judging by one other wiki than I'm involved with in an admin role.

I had to ask. Yes, I think we will have it well in hand. I have contacted the Living End and he will be coming on board to write some eps, and I just notified Lots as well. This should be a fun experiment.

I will keep an eye out for bots.

JH · Post by JH » Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:00 am

A few more thoughts about the implementation:

1. One big drawback is that it won't be possible (unless there's a wiki feature that I don't know about) to alert people by email when an episode of theirs is extended. I think this may be a big disadvantage compared to purpose-built assvewnture siftware.

2. Is it possible to implement a watchlist feature like one has in Wikipedia, preferably with watch automatically set on pages that one has created oneself? That way, one will be able to see if anyone has modified any of one's own episodes (or any other episodes that one has set to be watched).

3. The "recent changes" wiki feature will be important, so that one can see what new episodes there are.

4. Could each page have an associated talk page as on Wikipedia? That will facilitate discussion of episodes.

lordreaibn · Post by **lordreaibn** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 1:54 pm

JH wrote:A few more thoughts about the implementation:

1. One big drawback is that it won't be possible (unless there's a wiki feature that I don't know about) to alert people by email when an episode of theirs is extended. I think this may be a big disadvantage compared to purpose-built addventure software.

Yes, that is something that I am already looking into. It is not a simple implementation, however, so more research is necessary. One possible solution is having each author be their own custom group. I could then set up notifications for those individuals for their own 'group'. This would work, but I am working out the easiest way to make it work.

JH wrote:2. Is it possible to implement a watchlist feature like one has in Wikipedia, preferably with watch automatically set on pages that one has created oneself? That way, one will be able to see if anyone has modified any of one's own episodes (or any other episodes that one has set to be watched).

I will look into that.

JH wrote:3. The "recent changes" wiki feature will be important, so that one can see what new episodes there are.

4. Could each page have an associated talk page as on Wikipedia? That will facilitate discussion of episodes.

I agree about the 'Recent Changes' feature. As for the talk pages, I will check into that as well. Thanks so much!

JH · Post by JH » Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:26 pm

One more thought. It would be useful for easy navigation within a thread if each episode could have a link back to its parent episode. Of course the writer of an episode could always add one manually, but it would be better if it was added automagically.

lordreaibn · Post by **lordreaibn** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:58 pm

JH wrote:One more thought. It would be useful for easy navigation within a thread if each episode could have a link back to its parent episode. Of course the writer of an episode could always add one manually, but it would be better if it was added automagically.

Yes, this is a 'must have' in my mind. I will research that this weekend.

Ben McClellan II · Post by **Ben McClellan II** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 2:03 am

I had a couple of small ideas that we've got to talk about.

Namely, different background schemes other than black text on white or white text on black.

I also think it would be nice to add a thank you to Chris Burch, the guy who first started HH in '99, somewhere on the main page, too.

lordreaibn · Post by **lordreaibn** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 4:47 am

Ben McClellan II wrote:I had a couple of small ideas that we've got to talk about.

Namely, different background schemes other than black text on white or white text on black.

I also think it would be nice to add a thank you to Chris Burch, the guy who first started HH in '99, somewhere on the main page, too.

Yes, that is something that I have no idea how to implement. I need to e-mail Sir Toby about that.

As to the second idea, when we implement a better main home page that is absolutely something I think we should do.

JH · Post by JH » Sat Mar 19, 2011 10:29 am

Also a link on the main page to the LiveJournal Horsehockey community would be a good idea.

BTW, yesterday I sent you an email to the email address given under "Get Admin Assistance", but it doesn't look as if you received it. It was to let you know that when you created episode 8a, for some reason the three options that you included all finished up with "LRD" in their links where you would normally expect "Main". I followed up one of them, and as a result my episode finished up being created as LRD.Ep8a2 rather than Main.Ep8a2. This means that when one is looking at a Main page and then clicks on Recent Changes my episode doesn't show up.

Ben McClellan II · Post by **Ben McClellan II** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 4:12 pm

lordreaibn wrote:Yes, that is something that I have no idea how to implement. I need to e-mail Sir Toby about that.

As to the second idea, when we implement a better main home page that is absolutely something I think we should do.

Okay, good. I wish I knew how to figure out how to program different background schemes, too. We'll figure something out.

I do have a list of suggestions listed in the "Background schemes" topic a little further down the page if that helps.