Still an interest in a new structured wiki or not?

Discussion about the site's wikis, including bugs/issues encountered.

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Banshaku
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Still an interest in a new structured wiki or not?

Post by Banshaku »

There was a debate in another thread regarding the structure of the wiki. It seems that debate as died for some reason.

I would like to know if people still want a structured wiki? I already have installed the software on the parodius server (mediawiki) and it just waiting for content. If the interest doesn't seems to sprout up again, I will just remove it and not put more time on it.
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blargg
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Post by blargg »

We need a few people willing to work out the overall organization and page style guide. This means making proposals, evaluating them, and choosing/refining one then implementing it. I have a vision of something that I'll write more about when there are a few other people dedicated to a more planned approach (delayed gratification).
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku »

blargg wrote:I have a vision of something that I'll write more about when there are a few other people dedicated to a more planned approach (delayed gratification).
I see. I kind of knew that you had interest in it and expected that you would reply to this thread. I do have interest too since I already installed the wiki software for that purpose (it was done at the same time I started to build the emergency wiki site when the original one went down).

I may be able to provide some structure ideas for the software developer section since I know well my own needs as a programmer. Regarding the emulator programmer and hardware ones, I have no knowledge at all so I can only speculate what can be useful for them.

So we are already 2. Anybody else is interested?
frantik
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Post by frantik »

i'm interested in adding and organizing content. i was planning on adding stuff to the old one but then the server went down and I decided to wait till a new one on parodius was launched
tepples
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Post by tepples »

I too am interested.
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blargg
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Post by blargg »

OK, looks like we have enough people to architect a framework. The process should be divided into two basic phases: design and implementation. During design, we are focused on working out WHAT pages will exist (overall organization), and HOW they will look (writing style). We will NOT be trying to add all the information, as that would constrain further design changes. Once the design is refined and agreed on, we can implement a few of the main pages and see how it goes; if all seems well, then we can open the Wiki to everyone. Since the current Wiki works and has information, people wanting to work on things right now are free to work with it.

When working out the design, concrete examples are a must. So we might use the Wiki to sketch out examples with a few pages showing how it would look, or contrast different approaches.
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku »

First I need to clarify the current state of the wiki site administration. By administration, it doesn't mean "making content": who is in charge if the wiki site/software fail. Since we had issues with the previous one with only one admin that was not reachable, there will be 3 admins (in no particular order):

- Tepples
- Memblers
- Me

All mentioned users have already access to the credentials for the server.
Blarrg wrote:When working out the design, concrete examples are a must. So we might use the Wiki to sketch out examples with a few pages showing how it would look, or contrast different approaches.
There is already 2 wiki actives. We can use one for testing and designing, experimenting display etc. It can be accessed here. This wiki require users to register before editing content. The registering process is open and anybody can register. I will leave this one open if other users want to contribute at a later stage to the designing phase. If for some reason some mischief happens (and I hope not), I will close the registration process but I don't think it will ever happen.

There is another wiki (which I won't give the link for now) that will be for the final one. This one the registration is closed and I will make the account for only the one that contributed to designing phase. The registration will becomes open once the site will be good enough for everyone.

If we need any other software (extra wiki for testing, collaborative web application etc), I will install it as soon as I can.

Regarding the license, since we are in the designing phase, we don't have to worry too much for now.

One thing I would like to figure out is how to have the same wiki be multilingual. I'm sure some user would like to find X section but display it in, let say in french for example. I don't know if media-wiki supports that feature.

I may add more comment later since I need to prepare for work.
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tokumaru
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Post by tokumaru »

I'm interested in helping out. Let me know if I can do anything.
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku »

tokumaru wrote:I'm interested in helping out. Let me know if I can do anything.
Good. The more that chip in, the more ideas will come out of it.

I think the first thing to do would be the propose some structure for the site, which mean what would you like to see on the site and how organized. Another point would be to check what are the current issues with the current site that is not related to is structure (article too long, unclear explanation etc) and find solution about them.

I think that would already be a good start. If you have any knowledge about formatting the site display, any ideas to make it good for the nesdev content will be great.

I need to write down some possible structure for the developer (home brewer) section.
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MetalSlime
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Post by MetalSlime »

I think the first thing to do would be the propose some structure for the site, which mean what would you like to see on the site and how organized.
I think it would be useful to have 3 (or more) main sections:

1.For developers
2.For emulator writers
3.For hardware people
??4.For ROM-hackers??

Each section would have its own set of articles for the various topics (for example, there would be 3 articles about the PPU registers, one for each group). The articles in each section would be targetted at that specific group, and there would be links to the other sections' corresponding articles (if they exist) at the bottom for reference. Naturally there would be a lot of overlap, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

For a small example, the UxROM mapper page. Developers would probably want some basic information about how it works and some example code to get it running, but probably don't care about the information in "Solder Pad Config" or "Hardware" or "Variants". Hardware people probably want more detailed information about how it works and don't care about example code. So they'd each get their own UxROM page (with links to each other at the bottom)

For a bigger example, try imagining what would happen if we added code examples to the current NES_PPU page. That thing would be a monster (the bad kind).

The reason I am requesting this is because I often find (as a developer) that the current nesdevwiki articles are a little too technical. There have been many times where I wanted to edit them and add in more developer-friendly explanations with examples, but I didn't because there didn't seem to be a good place to stick them without overinflating the articles or messing up the flow.

What do you think?
MetalSlime runs away.
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