Community Portal/General Organization

General Organization

(Sorry if this is a bit redundant, it almost fit into a couple of topics above, but not quite -- so I put it here.)

Writing a Book: First, to a fair degree here, we're writing a book. That's no small undertaking. Most contributions tend to be in the form of Q&A or at best, articles and tutorials. Ideally those would be redrafted/reorganized into a more booklike structure.

Physical Organization: The wiki software is geared to be a series of loosely interlinked articles, but the material here is much more structured an ordered (or should be). Because of this difference, the use of categories to organize material probably ought to be auxiliary rather than central. By that, I mean that structured hierarchical links ought to be created manually rather than automatically. E.g. Wikibooks:Python Programming or UESP:Morrowind Modding. So, specifically, I would suggest that the current joint article/category pages be split into separate articles and categories.

Crumbtrails: If it's desired to do crumbtrails, there are a couple of ways of doing it. E.g., the python example above uses subpages -- but that's kind of a pain and isn't turned on here (it's a pain because you have to re-enter the full path in every page title. e.g. "Scripting/References" instead of "References" -- this isn't just a problem with creating the pages, but also with linking and listing them (esp. on category pages). The other approach is crumbtrails (e.g., top right of article UESP MW Runtime -- except the crumbtrail really ought to be on left instead of right. Note that this crumbtrail is actually split (Modding or Management). Also it's put in place through a template {{Morrowind Modding Management Trail}}.

Types of Use: There are three main types of use: 1) Reference -- someone comes in looking for information on a specific function or dialog box. 2) Tutorial -- reader comes in not really knowing much at all about a topic and needs a tutorial to get started. 3) How to -- reader comes in with a fairly specific question, but really know what sections are relevent.

The original wiki was mostly reference with some getting started tutorials. I would say that it has become contaminated with too many Q&A type discussions. A better organization (IMO) is reference pages plus tutorials and articles. Instead of Q&A articles, we should have an FAQ list which points to specific reference, tutorial and article pages. It might be useful for such pages to include at the bottom mini-FAQs to answer common questions.

Aside from the potential work involved in splitting Q&A pages into specific articles, there's also basic organizational work. E.g. for describing variables, do you have one page which covers all types? Or a different page for each? If you're filling in details about can be done with references, do you put that information on specific function reference pages? Or do you put it in a single article on references? Probably there should be a general policy answer to this. (Though it should be expected that the general rule won't work in all cases.)

Discussion/Potential Work:

• If this is to be done, someone needs to figure out desired organization and then get consensus to agree to his/her re-organization.
• If it's desired to split up combined category/article pages, then that's a bit of work in itself -- but probably not too bad. Creating manual index pages is a bit more work, but also not too bad. Need to get people into habit of adding new articles to it though.
• If crumbtrails are desired, they would require a little work to implement, and then a moderate amount of grunt work to add them to all pages. (Just paste in the appropriate template at the top of the page. Note that template can include category page text.) For an example, see Morrowind Modding Management. (Note the style used to be handled differently (check further back in history -- I personally preferred the old style, but the newer style has the advantage of being more compact.)
• Substantive reorganization would be the most work. There would be a lot of work at the beginning, splitting up and combining articles as desired. Later on, an effort has to be made to make sure that new additions fit in existing order. Probably this would require one person's ongoing attention.

Which is more work than I want to take on (even at UESP). But I thought that I'd do an idea-dump if you all want to go forward with any of it. :D

--Wrye 21:59, 7 July 2007 (EDT)

I certainly have been wanting to do things like this, but I did not have nearly as concrete ideas as you - I have never really worked on a project like this before, so I don't really know how these kinds of problems are usually handled. I think that ideally, there would be a main page for things like variables and references, but short pages for each - presumably the main page would be a category with the sub-pages contained therein. I like using categories as pages themselves, that makes sense to me. Of course, if we can't get the Search function changed, it doesn't work well at all (I've been bugging Gstaff about it and he keeps avoiding responding, so I'm thinking it's not going to happen). Alternatively, we could just use Redirects for the subpages, pointing to the main page, and more importantly, to the appropriate section of the main page (e.g. Internal Links). Discussion here would be good.

As for actually doing the work... I want to, but I have limited time. I try to work on things, but big projects are difficult because it has to be chopped up so much. I had a very long weekend which allowed me to get started on the function categorization overhaul, but that doesn't happen often and there is competition for what free time I have. But if we get some discussion going, and I can get some direction, I can work on implementing these changes over time, hopefully.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 14:31, 8 July 2007 (EDT)

Time's always a problem, eh? :lol: My suggestion is: come up with the plan, post it, and then if no one screams too loudly, start implementing it. Pick some area which would particularly benefit and which constitutes a moderate sized "chapter" of info and do it. If that goes over well, it sets the standard for others to do similar work, time permitting. Work on smaller sized wikis tends to be sporadic, with slow evolution punctuated by sudden changes (because people are busy for a while, then someone pops in with a week or two of time on their hands and does a bunch of work). Anyway, generally speaking, knowing where you want to go in the end will clarify the goals for smaller chunks of work, and will help people writing new articles to write towards that goal in the first place.

--Wrye 19:39, 8 July 2007 (EDT)

Hello Guys, I have been trying to help out a little bit here and there since I was personally invited to help out with parts of the Wiki Mainly OBSE by DragoonWraith. I have been slowly chopping the main Article up a bit trying to better reorganize it and I also written a small add-on for Notepad++ that gives support for OBSE commands using a 5th slot unlike the normal ones which only have 4 slots. I was able to do a small hack and able to make the list use 5 or more slots in case someone makes a plugin for obse that also improves more scripting functions. I may not be able to do very much because of limited time I do have to do thing. I have made quite a few goof ups but also have DragoonWraith come back and fix my goof up. If there is anything that I can also help out with you can contact me through the Official Elderscrolls Forum I use the same user name there. I am also still learning the Wiki Formatting and heavily rely on the Help pages.

--Raziel23x 22:05, 6 August 2007 (EDT)

I recently written three Articles explaining how to do a few things with examples they are listed as followed

• Oblivion Shader Editor
• Health Regeneration over Time
• Soulgem Scripting

I think I placed them where they belong in the proper sections and I am not sure about a few things in the information about Oblivion Shader Editor (OSE) one. Since I created that one based off of bits and pieces of information that I found off random Forum pages in the official forums but it was from outdated topics back in September of 06 which were archived and saved for some reason. I also found some information from google which has given some good information on the topic and that was added to the page as well. But the other two I am not sure of. I have them flagged them properly with the correct categories. I also flagged all three as unfinished and would like someone to look them over to see if they are in need of additional information and additions on to it. I also would like someone to proof read them and if you think the Articles are completed enough, feel free to remove the needing updates and unfinished flags if you wish. I am new to editing with the Wiki and it seems a bit of a step back from normal HTML coding so I am still learning what the proper writing scripts are for here so bear this in mind when looking over the information.

--Raziel23x 22:05, 11 August 2007 (EDT)

One thing I notice about your articles is a lot of headers with only a few words under them. Using headers is a good thing, but I think you overused them a little. Try starting another paragraph,use bold text with a colon, or a bulleted point instead of a header. And I don't think you need both the unfinished and the update template, it's obvious unfinished articles need to be updated.

I know nothing about shaders, but I'll take a look at your other two articles and comment on the talk page. Just so you know; it's good to put the information on the Wiki even if it's incomplete. There's a bigger chance someone will update an article than make a new one. However if you're the information is correct, don't forget to mark the articles erroneous to warn the readers.

--Qazaaq 06:39, 12 August 2007 (EDT)

That would be great. I mainly set up that way for information to be placed in there as the main reason for the headers. Some of the blocks I have yet to write the documentation on the section as of yet. Feel free to change the layout if you feel it will be more suited. I just created them because I thought they would be informative and would help others who wish to do such or tried and failed and could see how I was able to succeed where they failed. When I find ways of doing things I like to share how it was done in case someone wants to do it with their mod and since this place is a wiki and the information is give freely and it is public properties meaning once it is on the pages you can't label the stuff as you need my permission to use this even though I write a wiki article which I have seen in a few places which didn't make sense. I am just trying to do my part and help improve the wiki. I have taken over 2 years off from moding for both Morrowind and Oblivion. And now I am back and I seem to be here on the wiki and working on a mod more than actually playing the game. I think I get more enjoyment out of creating something for the game then actually playing it.

--Raziel23x 09:49, 12 August 2007 (EDT)

I forgot to add that my tool for Notepad++ Script Definitions is out for those who do scripting which would greatly help you out with scripting. It is found under the tool section of this wiki. If there is anything else you would wish to be added that you think I should add support for feel free to communicate that on my talk page or the talk page of the Notepad++ Script Definitions

--Raziel23x 10:17, 12 August 2007 (EDT)