Short List of Questions for Duwis

[Borror0]

Well, you asked for it. Before I knew of your existance, I created a thread where I offered some suggestions on how I thought I may improve you may Compendium. I suggest that you check it out. As for my questions, here is a list of the things that come to mind to start with.

Also, I noticed that you updated some templates. Thanks for that. It should make things a little easier.

1. It seems to me that the initial goals for the wiki version of the Compendium were to improve the content of the Compendium, and to give players the tools to come create new documents and edit the current documents in a more real-time manner. Are these assumptions correct, and if not, what are the goals? If they are, how do you plan to resolve the current conflict that exists between inviting players to be content editors and the limitations such edits difficult?

2. What is your role with regards to the Compendium? Are you acting as just the implimentor in upgrading the current design, as its admiistrator in making sure that any future changes that are needed are put in place, as its architect in guiding its design can strucutre, or as its shepard in maintaining and guiding the community?

3. Currently, the data from the Compendium is pulled directly from the game and thus updates the moment anything is changed. Unfortunately, this has several disadvantages: incorrect descriptions that cannot be changed, enhancemements showing up in the feat category, messy display thanks to feat such as Weapon Focus, etc. What are the advantages of pulling the data directly from the game? With this being the case, would it not be easier to simply update it manually? Also, is there any plan to workaround the shortcomings of this function or even simply discard it?

4. What is the exact purpose the <no edit> tags? Is it to seperate "official" information from "non-official" information, or was it simply a by-product of the data import process? They make it difficult to make meaningful changes. Many page contain incorrect, mislead or incomplete information. Is there any plan to allow us give us more freedom in editing the wiki or is Turbine set on seperating official data from player input data?

5. Was the heavy usage of namespaces a conceptual decision, or was it a by-product of the data import? The current implimentation is both a misuse of the system as well as confusing to users. Will we be able to migrate this to a better system either using categories or tags?

6a. Usually, adding an extenstion is a matter of minutes. The time it took for parsers to be added is to be counted in months, is there any techincal problem with adding extenstions to the Compendiun which explains the long delay and there any extentions currently being evaluated to be added to the Compendium?
6b. FlaggedRev is a great way to balance control with editing freedom. Was there a reason why this was not chosen to be used, and will it be used in the future?

7. The current Compendium lacks meta templates, or any sort of structure for that matters. Is there any plan to build one to ensure a more uniform presentation of the information?

8. Many pages are repeating redundant information. Is it possible to merge these pages together so that they do not clutter their respective category?

9. Are there contractual problems with allowing EU players to edit the Compendium, or is the matter purely technical? I am sure many of them would love to contribute to the project!

10. The pop-up feature you guys have is pretty neat. Is there any way we could gain access to it through the means of a template?

11. The current skin is tiring on the eyes and is also too vertical. Has there been any talk to create a new one?

12. Could it be possible to unprotect the home page?

13. Pages explaining the basic information about the game, such as Armor Class, ability scores, spell points, alignments and so on would be a great addition. One of the major problems of DDO for new players is its steep learnnig curve and such pages would lessen the problem. Is there any plan to add these?

14. Help pages are missing. Would it be possible to create some? (Please, make a better one than Media Wiki's)

15. DDO has a very active community, given it's size. What do you intend to do with regards to fostering a community on the Compendium as exists on the forums? Do you have any ideas to encourage community contribution, editing, and stewardship of the Compendium?

Thanks for the invitation and opportunity,
Borror0

[Duwis]

Before I knew of your existance

I have always been here.

1. It seems to me that the initial goals for the wiki version of the Compendium were to improve the content of the Compendium, and to give players the tools to come create new documents and edit the current documents in a more real-time manner. Are these assumptions correct, and if not, what are the goals?

That seems fair to say; we want the Compendium to be a reflection of the data in the game with the ability for others to elaborate.

If they are, how do you plan to resolve the current conflict that exists between inviting players to be content editors and the limitations such edits difficult?

Internally, we have discussed ways to foster participation from the community. Take the weighty design around the 'official content' block on articles. We've reduced that significantly on the Lorebook. This is one way we are working and seeing what we can do from a design standpoint to reduce the "whoa, I probably can't edit this" factor.

What do you see as the limitations barring people from being active editors?

2. What is your role with regards to the Compendium? Are you acting as just the implimentor in upgrading the current design, as its admiistrator in making sure that any future changes that are needed are put in place, as its architect in guiding its design can strucutre, or as its shepard in maintaining and guiding the community?

Definitely not a shepherd; I look awful in a bonnet. My role would be best summed up as "developer". I am currently working on improving the import of game data into articles on the Compendium as well as implementing new features like the advanced searches.

3. Currently, the data from the Compendium is pulled directly from the game and thus updates the moment anything is changed. Unfortunately, this has several disadvantages: incorrect descriptions that cannot be changed, enhancemements showing up in the feat category, messy display thanks to feat such as Weapon Focus, etc. What are the advantages of pulling the data directly from the game?

The clear advantage is summed up by a variation of an old catchphrase -- "If it's in the game, it's in the Compendium". We should be importing and displaying exactly what you see in the game. That is our goal with the Compendium.

Having said that, there is plenty of work to do to get us there. We're working on not only adding in new data but also to address some of the issues you've listed above.

With this being the case, would it not be easier to simply update it manually? Also, is there any plan to workaround the shortcomings of this function or even simply discard it?

From one perspective, yes, it would be easier in the short term. Consider though the difficulty of maintaining hundreds, if not thousands of pages, by hand. However, if we do the hard work up front of building the system to parse the game data into articles automagically, game system changes only require tweaks to the system, and it can simply chug along and update the articles in a fraction of the time.

4. What is the exact purpose the <no edit> tags? Is it to seperate "official" information from "non-official" information,

Nose... you are on it...

They make it difficult to make meaningful changes. Many page contain incorrect, mislead or incomplete information. Is there any plan to allow us give us more freedom in editing the wiki or is Turbine set on seperating official data from player input data?

There are no plans currently to eliminate the noedit tags. This is where the community comes in and holds our feet to the fire. If the info. isn't correct between the tag, we need to fix the system so it is. In the meantime, we encourage the community to post images, text, etc. outlining the correct information for others to see.

Here is an example from the Lorebook.

5. Was the heavy usage of namespaces a conceptual decision, or was it a by-product of the data import?

The answer to that is lost to the gelatin of the Cube. This is the system in place when I came aboard. I can hazard guesses as to why based on MediaWiki's explanation of namespaces. Can you spot which line might be the one that makes my Drow sense tingle?

The current implimentation is both a misuse of the system as well as confusing to users.

Can you elaborate on this perception of yours?

Will we be able to migrate this to a better system either using categories or tags?

Nothing is off the table; we explore a number of ways to best organize and present the information.

6a. Usually, adding an extenstion is a matter of minutes. The time it took for parsers to be added is to be counted in months, is there any techincal problem with adding extenstions to the Compendiun which explains the long delay

There is no technical issue per se; we certainly want to vet any extensions for security, stability, etc. However, extensions take a back seat to efforts to get the game data correct.

and there any extentions currently being evaluated to be added to the Compendium?

There just might be...

6b. FlaggedRev is a great way to balance control with editing freedom. Was there a reason why this was not chosen to be used, and will it be used in the future?

Again, I can't speak for the past that lies in the Cube's... would you call it a belly? Hmm... Will it be used in the future? The world is full of possibilities. We did add the CategoryTree extension (e.g., Category:Items) at some point, so we are not opposed to adding new ones. But again, this is lower priority than getting good, clean data in there.

7. The current Compendium lacks meta templates, or any sort of structure for that matters. Is there any plan to build one to ensure a more uniform presentation of the information?

This is something we bandy back and forth every now and again. We definitely want a consistent look and feel for our official game data. Anything else, we lean towards letting the community itself determine standards and practices. We're not above lending a hand to build templates, but we don't really want to tell the community 'No, any content you add has to be done this specific way'.

8. Many pages are repeating redundant information. Is it possible to merge these pages together so that they do not clutter their respective category?

Examples?

9. Are there contractual problems with allowing EU players to edit the Compendium, or is the matter purely technical? I am sure many of them would love to contribute to the project!

IANAL, but I would love to have them contribute.

10. The pop-up feature you guys have is pretty neat. Is there any way we could gain access to it through the means of a template?

That is a distinct possibility...

11. The current skin is tiring on the eyes and is also too vertical. Has there been any talk to create a new one?

Yes.

12. Could it be possible to unprotect the home page?

13. Pages explaining the basic information about the game, such as Armor Class, ability scores, spell points, alignments and so on would be a great addition. One of the major problems of DDO for new players is its steep learnnig curve and such pages would lessen the problem. Is there any plan to add these?

14. Help pages are missing. Would it be possible to create some? (Please, make a better one than Media Wiki's)

15. DDO has a very active community, given it's size. What do you intend to do with regards to fostering a community on the Compendium as exists on the forums? Do you have any ideas to encourage community contribution, editing, and stewardship of the Compendium?

/wraps self in +5 Cloak of Deflection
/redirects these magic missiles to Tolero and the rest of the OCR team.

[Tolero]

12. Could it be possible to unprotect the home page?

If there's something you would like to see added to the front page it's easy enough to just contact us and ask us about it (have already had requests come through, such as on the Quests area players did very nice work, it wasn't too much trouble to link it up).

13. Pages explaining the basic information about the game, such as Armor Class, ability scores, spell points, alignments and so on would be a great addition. One of the major problems of DDO for new players is its steep learnnig curve and such pages would lessen the problem. Is there any plan to add these?

Great minds think alike ^^

14. Help pages are missing. Would it be possible to create some? (Please, make a better one than Media Wiki's)

Yeah we agree. We're in the process of making some more help pages that are less "WALL OF OVERLY SERIOUS TEXT HITS YOU FOR 4000 DMG SO YOUR EYES GLAZE OVER" and more "learn to wiki, it's fun and easy!!"

It really is fun and easy... Tarrant and I started out as utter wiki n00bs, and have found the learning curve for wiki not very steep. We agree that it helps if you have better, less "dry" instructions

15. DDO has a very active community, given it's size. What do you intend to do with regards to fostering a community on the Compendium as exists on the forums? Do you have any ideas to encourage community contribution, editing, and stewardship of the Compendium?

Interest continues to grow, but I think a lot of it relates to everyone wants to feel like they're not the only ones in the Compendium ^^ Duwis has put a ton of work in lately, and I think you'll really start to see that the Compendium is almost a living breathing entity - like the game itself heh - and there's room for everyone's contributions! It will never stop getting changes and updates, from players or us Between all of us, we'll be able to help new or less knowledgeable players out!

[geoffhanna]

I thoroughly love what I am reading here.

Just saying.

You go, Duwis

[QuantumFX]

I have always been here.

That is a distinct possibility...

Yes.

/wraps self in +5 Cloak of Deflection
/redirects these magic missiles to Tolero and the rest of the OCR team.

So… what you’re saying is… you’re a vorlon?

[Ustice]

From one perspective, yes, it would be easier in the short term. Consider though the difficulty of maintaining hundreds, if not thousands of pages, by hand. However, if we do the hard work up front of building the system to parse the game data into articles automagically, game system changes only require tweaks to the system, and it can simply chug along and update the articles in a fraction of the time.

Any chance that we will be able to do some of that data parsing through an API?

[BattleCircle]

I don't think I like the fact that I get refered to LOTRO lore book.....

[Duwis]

You go, Duwis

> n

You go north.

You are in a cave. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

> w

You have been eaten by a grue.

Game Over.

[Duwis]

So… what you’re saying is… you’re a vorlon?

We are all Kosh.

[Duwis]

Any chance that we will be able to do some of that data parsing through an API?

There is always a chance of that, but first, we have to make sure we can provide good data.

[TreknaQudane]

We are all Kosh.

....Who are you?

[Nyvn]

> n

You go north.

You are in a cave. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

> w

You have been eaten by a grue.

Game Over.

RoK refrence huh? Who knew.

[Ustice]

There is always a chance of that, but first, we have to make sure we can provide good data.

I don't need GOOD data as long as it is consistent. I can filter noise if needed. (yay for regex)

If you would be the guy to talk to about an api I have lots of ideas of what we could use. But that is a bit off-topic here.










But now that you mention it, what sort of chance are we talking about here?

[Dark_Helmet]

We are all Kosh.

I think you just like to Babylon .. 5 times more than before.

Which is great to get some feedback (keep channeling, Sheridan!)

[Borror0]

Thanks a lot for the response Duwis.

Here are a few answers to your questions and comments to your answers.

I have always been here.

True but this is your second post on these forums. You were very quiet.

[...] we want the Compendium to be a reflection of the data in the game with the ability for others to elaborate.

If that is how you would word your goal for the Compendium, there are two problems with it.

First of all, it means that you value reflection the game's data over valuable information. There are multiple of pages were the description is either incorrect or so generic that it does not give any information worth reading. It's not the fault of the Compendium, as it reflects the data found in the game but it still is a problem for the players.

A good example of incorrect description is Evasion. It description reads "When you make a successful Reflex save to avoid damage, you suffer no damage instead of half damage." While this was once true, it has been changed in Update 4.1 Mark of the Dragon, nearly two years ago. For it to be accurate, it would need to mention that the character benefits of this feat if wears light or no armor and is not heavily encumbered. As for a good example of worthless generic description, you can look at Two Handed Fighting whose description might just as well be "I exist and make you hit harder. Pick me!" I pointed that out to Codog over year ago and this feat's description still is as uninformative.

As shown by both of the examples I named, it seems updating game data is not that easy, or not a priority. One has been outdated for almost two years now and the other has been mentioned to a developer in October '07. Thus, we are forced to conclude that if the Compendium's primary goal is to be a reflection of the data in the game, it be at the loss of valuable and correct information.

The second problem is that the game does not seem to be coded for its data to be used by the Compendium. Let me elaborate on that.

The worse section for this is the feat section, which is a total mess. All feats lack their prerequisites, which is basic key information. Racial feats, free feats and class feats are not separated from bonus feats (the ones you get at level 1 and every multiple of 3) which may be extremely confusing for the players. Enhancements that are probably coded to act as a feat, like action boosts, are added in the wrong category. Redundant feats spam the category, like favored enemies, weapon proficiencies, weapon focuses and weapon specializations.

The list goes on.

While I agree that it would be ideal if you could just have every automated, I am not sure it is a realizable project in the end. Of course, I do not have the technical knowledge to know whether this is true or false but that is how it looks from the user's end.

The Compendium celebrated its two years old yesterday and such obvious problems are still there.

Take the weighty design around the 'official content' block on articles. We've reduced that significantly on the Lorebook.

I know. I saw that a while ago and thought it was a significant improvement over the design we have.

What do you see as the limitations barring people from being active editors?

Well, there are a few and I think the major one is that if any would want to spend time editing, he would rather spend time editing the DDOwiki over the Compendium because most players agree that the Compendium is "worthless". Both in quantity and quality, the DDOwiki is superior to the Compendium (which is kind of sad because the wiki is kept updated in the spare time of what is the equivalent of three editors) and for this reason most knowledgeable players don't see the point in editing the Compendium.

If I was to list the four most important factors to me, it would be:

1. Contains very little useful information
2. Difficult to browse
3. Little control over the information
4. Visually unpleasant

I already covered the first point above so let me cover the other three.

When I say it is difficult to browse, it is because those who designed the Compendium fell for the two pitfalls of a wiki: too much information on the same page and assuming categories will the job for you. Class pages are guilty of the first one. It requires far too much scrolling down to get to the information you want (which is made worse by the lack of a ToC) and the page is too long to load on bad connection/computers.

Meanwhile, most category pages in the Compendium of the second. While listing all members of a category in the way it is currently done requires less work, it is much less enjoyable for the user who usually prefers pages with short descriptions as it allows to browse the category faster and with less clicking.

The other two points sort of go hand in hand.

Having little control over the information, when it is incomplete or incorrect, takes a lot away from the desire to edit and contribute. When one sees he cannot correct the mistake, the question "Why should I bother with this wiki?" then arises. If this, on its own, is not enough to drive the editor away then the look the edited page has after may be enough. The weighty design around the 'official content' makes the 'unofficial content' look silly and gives the feeling to contribute to a low quality product.

Then, visually, the skins used are not appealing (this is of course only my opinion) and may affect someone's decision to contribute, too.

From one perspective, yes, it would be easier in the short term. Consider though the difficulty of maintaining hundreds, if not thousands of pages, by hand. However, if we do the hard work up front of building the system to parse the game data into articles automagically, game system changes only require tweaks to the system, and it can simply chug along and update the articles in a fraction of the time.

How long can we should expect "long term" to be?

Can you spot which line might be the one that makes my Drow sense tingle?

Not sure I understand your question.

Can you elaborate on this perception of yours?

Well, when I say it is a misuse, I mean that it is both an uncommon use of namespace and an overuse of them.

The DDO Compendium is the first wiki I have seen use namespaces this much. Neither of wikia nor wikipedia use namespace in that manner. The same applies for other wiki I have edited or browsed. Since most gaming wikis are on wikia and the only exceptions I know of are EVEwiki and WoWwiki who both use namespaces in the same way wikia and wikipedia do, it only makes sense to conform. It will make one less thing for new editors to adapt to.

That's the weakest argument, though.

When I say it's an overuse, I mean that it is unnecessary work for the editors and users. Because of your heavy usage of namespaces, an editor will have to type [[Feat:Power Attack|]] instead of [Power Attack]] each time he wants to link to the Power Attack page. Same goes for enhancements, items, etc. It's unnecessary work. Users go through the same trouble when typing the address of a page, even if that is a less significant problem.

Most importantly, it is very confusing to use. It may lead to duplicates (v1 & v2) or simply lead to complicated questions regarding what goes where, which could easily be avoided. Of course, we could develop rules to navigate with. Once made clear and applied correctly, there should not be much trouble. However, this means more learning for new editors that would otherwise be familiar with wikis.

If it is a by-product of the data-import to avoid possible conflicts in name, maybe there is a workaround the problem?

Examples?

There are a few.

Let me just list you Favored Enemies to give you an idea:

• Favored Enemy
• Favored Enemy (Aberration)
• Favored Enemy (Animal)
• Favored Enemy (Chaotic Outsider)
• Favored Enemy (Construct)
• Favored Enemy (Dragon)
• Favored Enemy (Dwarf)
• Favored Enemy (Elemental)
• Favored Enemy (Elf)
• Favored Enemy (Evil Outsider)
• Favored Enemy (Giant)
• Favored Enemy (Gnoll)
• Favored Enemy (Goblinoid)
• Favored Enemy (Halfling)
• Favored Enemy (Human)
• Favored Enemy (Lawful Outsider)
• Favored Enemy (Magical Beast)
• Favored Enemy (Monstrous Humanoid)
• Favored Enemy (Ooze)
• Favored Enemy (Orc)
• Favored Enemy (Reptilian)
• Favored Enemy (Undead)
• Favored Enemy (Vermin)

Of all of these, only Favored Enemy is worth keeping. Others are simply repeating the same information for nothing.

There are others. Weapon proficiencies, Fighter <weapon> Specializations I & II, Improved Criticals, Power Criticals, Weapon Focuses and Weapon Specializations are the ones I can think of right now but there might be others. They are annoying and useless clutter in category lists.

I think many would love them to be removed.

[Borror0]

Yeah we agree. We're in the process of making some more help pages that are less "WALL OF OVERLY SERIOUS TEXT HITS YOU FOR 4000 DMG SO YOUR EYES GLAZE OVER" and more "learn to wiki, it's fun and easy!!"

LOL! You have no idea how much I loathe MediaWiki's explanations.

Everything I learned about wikis, I have learned it from looking at what others did. MediaWiki's explanations are usually so horrible that I only ended up more confused. I always wished to replace the DDOwiki's help page by something better but never came up with something.

Covering the basis would be plenty (bold, underline, italic, internal and external links, using templates, etc.) to start.

Then, on a separate Help: page, put more advanced stuff. Maybe give tables their own page because they are usually the first "advanced" think one would like to learn.

[Tolero]

LOL! You have no idea how much I loathe MediaWiki's explanations.

Everything I learned about wikis, I have learned it from looking at what others did. MediaWiki's explanations are usually so horrible that I only ended up more confused. I always wished to replace the DDOwiki's help page by something better but never came up with something.

Covering the basis would be plenty (bold, underline, italic, internal and external links, using templates, etc.) to start.

Then, on a separate Help: page, put more advanced stuff. Maybe give tables their own page because they are usually the first "advanced" think one would like to learn.

Yep /agree, a page with the basics works, advanced stuff comes later. Will see if I can finish up that write up I had this weekend. I feel wiki really is all about learning the basics. Most people just want to know simple formatting to get started so their page doesn't look like plain text.

Yeah for me, I learned wiki by yelling over my shoulder at someone else who knew (you know, like questing hehehe). Once I learned basics I just ran around looking for codes to do what I wanted from then on. Granted I had a head start knowing html, but even without that it's pretty easy.

[Borror0]

I learned wiki by yelling over my shoulder at someone else who knew

Well, to be fair, I had Elliott but if you knew Elliott you'd know why I said I learned on my own.

Oh, by the way, how much damage does my overly serious text above does?

[MrCow]

how much damage does my overly serious text above does?

Inflict Serious Words
Necromancy
Level: Clr 3, Wikimaster 2
Components: V
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One Creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will half
Spell Resistance: No

When speaking your serious words upon a creature, you channel wiki energy that deals 3d8 points of damage +1 point per caster level (maximum +15).

Since internets are powered by wiki energy, this spell cures such a creature of a like amount of damage, rather than harming it.



I couldn't resist, I'd say it depends on your level of Wikimaster.

[Junts]

I used to use ddo wiki a lot when I needed to look stuff up; less so now. I rarely use the compendium (primarily for access to spell lists and progressions). That is to say, the compendium/wiki situation isnt a big deal to me either way.


However, this thread is amazing, and I want to compliment Duwis on having a more direct back and forth exchange of ideas between turbine staffer and motivated player than any I've ever seen. I am really impressed, Duwis, in how you have directly addressed some direct criticisms and asked for and acknowledged ideas. It's awesome.

Its clear the ddowiki was once extremely useful when it wasnt extremely out of date, and I think the community would benefit enormously from harnessing its creative forces with the compendium. This game has a lot of active and mature posters; it would benefit a lot from a true wiki and from permitting players to correct errors and handle upkeep - we have enough people to do it, and ones who would, in my opinion, even casually/occaisionally - I think Turbine would be very wise to put significant confidence in the ability of players to explain and keep up to date information, even newbie information, often in ways better than any one other person could. Many players regularly explain these things to new players and new guildies and know already (from lots of repetition) what works best for retention.

The danger for Turbine, it seems to me, is that a player-run wiki setup is more likely to include information which is not always complimentary to the game; eg 'this feat is not good' and 'this enhancement is regarded as poor and rarely taken', which for understandable reasons they may not want in their official compendium, but for equally understandable reasons the players might want them there!

I hope you, Duwis, can take the same 'that means we need to get the data right' approach to those situations and let the game be guided by a 'players would stop saying virtuoso sucked if it stopped sucking' approach to more player access to including information.