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[Aredhel]

Thank you for the comment! We're trying.

*puts on her best Joe Friday voice*

Just the facts, ma'am!

[Etrigan]

I noticed you guys were taking up possibly doing a beastiary. Yeouch. You all going to do Quest listings & Item Listings as well? ;P

[Aredhel]

One never knows, now does one??

[Etrigan]

Originally Posted by Aredhel

One never knows, now does one??

True, I've started to wonder since I've heard Alla's not doing a VG site (which is good, we don't need that IGE-owned stuff in our Vanguard! ;D).

[Aredhel]

AMEN, bro!!! Thank you for that!

[Iendan]

i have a suggestion, maybe not exactly for the main page, but for the wiki in general (tho it could go on the main page), i think you should have a section which has a list of areas/types of sections that you want expanded on/created, perhaps even one added to/maintained by the community, i suggest this because i often think to myself "hey i know a good bit about vanguard i should help out on the wiki...but what to add...hmmm..." then i got off and do other things :P

[SwordMage]

Originally Posted by Iendan

i have a suggestion, maybe not exactly for the main page, but for the wiki in general (tho it could go on the main page), i think you should have a section which has a list of areas/types of sections that you want expanded on/created, perhaps even one added to/maintained by the community, i suggest this because i often think to myself "hey i know a good bit about vanguard i should help out on the wiki...but what to add...hmmm..." then i got off and do other things :P

Note: this started out as a small response to your post and has turned into a monster, but hey, I've been up for 30 hours and hope that it adds to the thread as a whole.

I do think it would be useful to have a page of current projects; however, I would hate to see that limit what people write about.

One of the things I found as I was working on the SWG wiki and, later a couple on EQ2, was that the best thing to do is write about things you know and that you find are missing or incomplete. For example, you may be learning the ins and outs of tanking in VG and while its fresh in you mind you may choose to add to the tanking strategy page, only to find there isn't one yet and that you have what it takes to start it. Just go ahead and write as much as you know; the wonderful thing about the wiki is that once information is in, it can be moved around, added to, and shaped to fit with other information as a consensus is built about the structure and content of the Wiki.

The trick is the interaction of these discussion threads and the Wiki pages. You can create a first draft of some new type of page (say a town guide) and then add a discussion thread for the page proposing your structure as a model for others, who may in turn contribute other ideas about what info they see as useful. Later on one of the Wiki Gurus may come along and structure a template that helps make all town guides consistent while easing the input of information for future guides, again striving for consensus among the interested contributors.

Of course, if you run across an identified hole in the wiki go ahead and fill it; there will be plenty of holes to fill for the foreseeable future. For instance, once the NPC page template is stabilized it will take many months and many contributors to add all the significant NPCs; some of whom may simply add the basic information for NPCs while others flesh out the pages with cross reference info and screen shots.

One wonderful resource is the "special pages" link in the tool bar on the left of the wiki pages. It points to wonderful resources such as a list of "wanted pages" that people have linked to but which don't exist. For instance, right now I found a wanted page for "Abyssal Chains I" and if I were an experienced Dread Knight I might be able to fill in the information for that ability using the same template that other ability pages uses.

I might then click on the "What links here" link in the tool bar to see what pages refer to the page I just filled in and might find that a referring page expects a piece of info to be on the ability page that isn't in the standard template. That might lead me to the discussion thread for the template to ask whether this new information should be part of the standard page structure.

I really want to emphasize "consensus." The wonderful thing about a wiki is that it is a collaboration of the entire community, but to make that work, we must all trust each other's good intentions. Unlike a forum, once you add a piece of information into the wiki it belongs to the community and you must be prepared for others to "improve" it in ways you might not like. Of course, it is best if one proposes significant changes to a page in a discussion thread instead of just making wholesale information changes; it is much better if disagreements are settled in a civil discussion thread rather than with duelling edits that leave everyone frustrated.

[SwordMage]

Originally Posted by Etrigan

I noticed you guys were taking up possibly doing a beastiary. Yeouch. You all going to do Quest listings & Item Listings as well? ;P

A suggestion about Quest listings. I grew to love the quest treatment on http://www.eq2i.com/articles/Main_Page for EQ2. It might serve as a good model for this wiki (although there are so many repositioning quests, e.g. "Training", that it could get very busy if complete -- you do QuestA for A and then he gives you QuestAtoB to report to B who then gives you QuestB; she then gives you QuestBtoA to find your way back to A again.

[Kethra]

Wow, definitely a monster of a post.

I agree 100% though. The reason (well one of them) we changed to a wiki system instead of handling the pages strictly by staff is that this is a game about community, and a community about a game, so it should be up to that community what sort of information they wish to see.

This game is massive and there's no way any one person can cover all of the information the game has to offer by themselves. Especially with the spheres system that Vanguard has. It will take years for one person to master all three spheres. With a wiki, people can come in, pick and choose what topics interest them, and expand on them using their experiences and enthusiasm for what they love to do.

I admit I've been lacking in my wiki guruing simply because of time constraints. However now that release is here, I'm going to try to knuckle down and get some templates up and running, and get some fun navigational methods in place.

I appreciate all feedback and if you like, feel free to leave a note on my Talk Page or send me a PM.

[SwordMage]

Small request, can you make the Wikispheres References title just "Wikisphere" (my large fonts screw up the alignment). If you think that wil be unclear, just ignore me (but just this once).