What I have learned about our humble wiki is that one of the primary focuses of general structure and text is that it should be above all else rot resistant and easy to maintain. In lieu of that one of the things that has annoyed me the most about the wiki is the outdated and bloated “locations” category.
I think we need to cut our losses with the “location” pages. There is way too much work required to maintain accurate description and images across every room type across every station. Pubby is dead and Rad station is missing. Half the “needs revision” pages are these ones. And the other half are pages with one paragraph of text and an extremally outdated image.
Here is what I imagine: one page per room “category” type e.g., “general” or “medical.” One nice, representative banner style image at the top of the page. General text about the each sub-department true across all stations and very unlikely to need revision. And then we have a separate station difference sub-sub heading that BRIEFLY describes exception or extra stuff for station if needed. This is also easy to maintain since the descriptions are simple it’s easy for a person to see there is something extra and add: “Fland also has x” or see that something is missing as simply say: “Box is missing x, but instead has y.”
This system would cut down from the 500 (SURELY THIS IS TOO MUCH) required images and text to just 10 nice images and much less text that is easier to maintain. One nice image, some generic text with optional flavor to spark the imagination. A suggestion to find out in game or to ask in game. Maybe a link to the ss13 webmap site. I think it’s a much better solution from an aesthetics point of view and maintenance one.
And before you say WYCI, for once yes I will do it actually, I just checking what other people think about this.
The point of the wiki is to have everything about the game. Sure, it’s impossible to maintain but it might give someone something they wanted to know about vs a vague description that doesn’t really help them at all.
Say, I want to know what the Vacant Office is? A page for that is helpful to have.
You misunderstand. There would be a “vacant office” sub-header. It just would be part of the “engineering” location page instead of having it’s own page. It would not have an image, but I think that is a necessary trade off. The less extreme version is to have one image for every room type and while that reduces the required images from 500 to 100 I still don’t think that is good.
It’s a great idea, and if you’re willing to put the effort into it like you say you are then it’d be a huge improvement, but it’s important that the descriptions remain detailed and useful.
You wouldn’t be cutting that much work believe it or not. Unless you just don’t want to add images for each maps, which defeats the point of the page since that’s what people would look for.
Remember that the wiki, especially these pages, are for people learning the game, not the most experienced players.
I did a lot of work on those pages, and I stopped not necessarily because of the workload, but because I started getting into this arms race with contributors who would change their maps entirely or add new ones, without caring about facilitating changes on the wiki.
Just taking screenshots alone and cropping them took 50% of the total time it took me to make one location page.
Really, it boils down to contributors not helping at all.
For instance, If contributors would just take screens of the areas they created to then dump them in a dropbox or something else for wiki contributors grab, the location pages would be much much better maintained.
I don’t think that is true. I feel the new players can still learn there is a room of such type, it’s part of X department, what is used for and where they can even see what it kind of look like using the ss13 webmap viewer. I don’t think having an image of every room on every station is necessary or sustainable.
The images are the main problem. That is why I’m proposing this new format that only requires ~10 images. My whole point is the wiki should be organized in a way that required the minimum work possible to maintain taking into account the constant changes and that people only wish to contribute in certain ways.
I am making this post exactly so that I can ask permission from people like you who have “done a lot of work on those pages” because I’m essentially going to nuke it all regarding the images at least.
I was going to expose my thoughts in details, but I changed my mind at the last minute.
You expose the failing in your reasoning here. Your proposal is the locations pages without the critical information that new players would need.
I don’t think you properly understand what new players would seek with those pages.
New players don’t ask mentors “What is in custodial closet”, they ask “Where (THE FUCK) is custodial closet”, the text in the pages is random trivia for more experienced players.
The game is ovewhelming and horribly presented, new players get lost all the time. They don’t care if Chem on Fland has an extra dispenser compared to Box because they don’t even know what a chem dispenser is.
What matters is the location of the area.
That information is delivered with the picture, and the added details below that picture.
You correctly identify the main source of workload with the pages, but forget that this workload is the main information those pages deliver.
Sure, you can nuke everything that was done to those pages, then link the webmap and say “stare at the pixels until you get it”, but I don’t know who you would be helping here.
Unless you have a way to dynamically have the webmap direct players to the area they are looking for, then no I think you’ll be missing the mark.
we should have an autowiki script that does that for stuff (maybe it’d be difficult to render certain parts of a map everytime, but I’m sure it could be automated)
Yeah, the images are the main concern, and it would be great if somehow the webmap could be dynamically integrated on the pages to render specific areas or allow readers to navigate it in a more guided manner.
I just don’t think making those pages without images makes sense however.
Again, to reiterate, nobody owns these pages, you are free to do whatever you think is best with them.
OH! GUIDE BOT! LET’S ADD THAT! A bot which roams the primary hallway and allows you to select an area and it will attempt to go there and open doors for you depending on your access.
What information? I just listed all the thing they would have:
All the text based info and more would remain. The only thing they wouldn’t have is being able to literally see the room. The said image is probably outdated, too small or too “cut off” to make sense of where it actually is. However I was a new player once I remember those images didn’t help all that much for exactly the same reasons.
In fact they made me fell like going to the “locations” part of the wiki was a waste of time because it seemed so outdated. I would compare the room when I find it to what is on the image and that is the feeling I got.
The web viewer is optional. I said “they can even”. I think the average SS13 player has the brainpower to read where a room is, what department it’s part of etc etc I think they can figure it our on the web map. Or at least have a very efficient question from someone.
Thanks for the feedback, appreciated lol. Again if you think it’s garbage and you have a solution by nuking it all, and redirecting to the webmap or mentors on discord, then go ham. You don’t need anybody’s approval.
Which goes back to my original point, you are trading the overhead created by images for overhead created by text.
Yes but you found the room and had a rough idea of the purpose it had. Your text will also drift out of date as contributors change the maps.
The point I was making is that you aren’t providing a solution with the page, you are telling them to find the full information elsewhere.
You seem convinced of your own idea and unwilling to budge, so if I were you I’d have started work already.
Actually I won’t nuke the old pics. They can be repurposed for a gallery sort of thing at the bottom of the page. A simple “probably outdated but gives you a rough idea” disclaimer works good here. This idea even works with the small picture sizes.
Matter of fact most of the text content will remain as well. I might even repurpose the different station tab system to succinctly show differences between stations. The technical overhead might not be worth it though.
A mentor who does not find joy in teaching new players is not a good mentor. While it can be frustrating sometimes, they quite literally signed up for this.
I will also add that it pains me 100 times more to see someone do something wrong or in an outdated way that doesn’t work anymore because of recent updates, while the wiki isn’t updated.
Even if I’m trying to explain something complicate and it’s taking infuriatingly long, it’s pretty much always worth it when they do finally get it :b
(I’ve also been saying for quite a while now that the mentor tab should be a bit more advertised to newer players, I don’t think I used it once when I was new at the game because I didn’t know it was a thing.)
We actually can autowiki generate location pages. We just don’t have the autowiki PR. It would be relatively trivial to say a location + give a webmap link and now new players can find anything.
The real solution here is porting the TG navigator or holomaps
