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Is this the place...

Discussion in 'Stratics Wiki' started by Kirthag, Nov 22, 2016.

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  1. Kirthag

    Kirthag Former Stratics Publisher
    Stratics Veteran Alumni Stratics Legend Campaign Benefactor Evergreen

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    ... where we discuss, vent, and talk about the wiki's development (or lack thereof) and what avenues could be taken to improve, facilitate and get REAL information in the Stratics wiki?

    Or is there a more private place? Now that I am through some hurdles and able to embrace my passion again, I _want_ to contribute to the wiki... but omg... what is the STRATEGY there? Is there any real direction? Who is doing what or is it a true free for all and I just go willy nilly and add things?

    Tell me, Charlie Brown!

    o.0

    On a more serious note,

    Here is what I find... lacking. And yes, I'm blunt. If you cannot handle it then just tell me to stfu and I'll take my fingers back to my own site.
    • Every time I seek a true rare, semi-rare, or hard to find item, I get nada information that helps me with what I want to know from Stratics. Information most people are looking for when keying into the wiki...
      • when did the item become part of the game (DATE)
      • how did the item become part of the game (quest line, spawn, event, glitch, etc.)
      • any other kewl trivia that might actually inspire a player to seek out that rare item?!
      • EXAMPLE: I want to find the game item called, "A Heritage Token"
        • The _only_ result for this is a patch note, with no links to anything (that is lost SEO) and is not even about the Heritage Token, but talking about the Heritage Tree
        • Took search term to just "heritage" - again more patch notes, nothing about the item itself.
        • So, I think maybe I should add that page in.... but... oh gee... WHAT FORMAT DO I USE? IS THERE A TEMPLATE?
    • Next point: I personally don't care for the pre-sort way rares are listed - Stratics seems to be forcing people to categorize as the editor wants it done - that is firstly bad publishing and secondly NOT how a good data structure is built, particularly in a relational data struction.
      • I recognize that... it is "old school html ways" and worked back in the 1980s and early 90's. Wikimedia is a relational structure, why is it being forced to do things this way? (Essentially, breaking the entire wiki process of storing relational data.... )
    • Instead, implement tags and key-terms which assists with searching, web SEO and of course, DATABASE OPTIMIZATION
      • An example... the green Glass item that came from the St. Patrick's day even back in the dark ages of UO... uses the "Glass" object, but with that perma-green hue.
      • My search terms included the following: glass, green, st. patrick, saint patrick
      • I want to know what year the item appeared and how. The information that is in the Stratics "rares database" does the normal player nothing as the item cannot be found.
      • The best information I can find on that item is through (website redacted due to shady nature of the site) and that is a site I'd rather not visit again, but it is the only site with the information I sought.
      • When I key in "glass", I would expect the following items (at minimum) to show high relevancy:
        • Glass (the standard glass mug with no special hue, with a link thru to the item I am searching for)
        • Glass (the green hued item at yes, it has its own item ID, hue, etc... AND such wonderful history with it)
        • Champagne Glass (remember that one?)
        • Champagne Flute (as it is a separate ID from Champagne Glass, but is related)
        • Any assortment of glassware in the game
        • AND... if said glassware came as part of a gift/set/surprise drop, etc... it should be easy enough to link to a "create a page for blah blah blah"
        • That's how a wiki works, eh?
        • (Please remember, I was not married to wordpress my entire life. I am at heart a coder, and I teethed in wikipedia's early development)
    • Now that I realize every entry must have "UO: " in the title (uh, redundancy... why?!?!) I feel more comfortable in adding to this wiki. Is there a "How To" for this wiki's purpose, ideology, and direction? If you want the community to contribute, that should have been the very first thing published... somewhere... and linked to on the front of the wiki - not that mumbo-jumbo hype-up that, for lack of a better phrase (and no, I don't care if I insult someone) sounds like a used auto sales person trying to convince my dad to buy a third vehicle that he doesn't need.
    I've heard enough from people saying Stratics is "ripping off" information and data from other sites, and would like to see the existing data from the "old stratics" merged in here, along with active contribution from the community - is what we were going for anyway, wasn't it?

    Please explain the logic (don't hype it, EXPLAIN IT) so that the people who want to contribute here (besides myself) can understand and help...

    *steps off soapbox and returns to frustrated searching to identify her vastly expanded rares collection and museum*
     
    Taylor and Lord Frodo like this.
  2. BrianFreud

    BrianFreud Lead Wiki Mod & Doer of Crazy Things
    Professional Wiki Editor Wiki Moderator Campaign Supporter

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    I spent many many months building what's in there now. As for what to add, if it's missing, and you feel like adding the page/info, go for it.
    That's all in there already, for all EM items, server births, and at least some gifts and "glitch created" items. There's upwards of 11,000 rares in there, but UO is too huge; just getting this data into the wiki, I had to draw the line somewhere, and get the thing built, rather than keep expanding the list of rares to be added. :p
    Not all gifts are yet in the wiki. Most of them aren't yet in there, actually. But feel free to add any that aren't yet. :)

    There is a "how to add rare items" wikipage How to edit the Rares pages - Stratics Community Wiki | Stratics
    Or, just go to the (non-existant) wiki page, in this case, http://stratics.com/w/index.php?title=UO:A Heritage Token , and click the "Create" tab to go to the edit page for that page. The simplest way to then create that item's page - rare or not - is to then look at the tabs up top, and click on the "Open Item Editor" link to access the GUI editor I wrote.

    First, this is a wiki, not a database directly. I've no idea what you mean by "pre-sort"; the main Rares page is simply every report I could think of that folks who collect rares might want. A decoupled list-builder extension is then used behind the scenes to re-interpret the templates of rares pages, selecting only the matching pages, and generating a list which is then formatted and inserted into those reports. However, those are only "reports", and interlinking on the pages for the rares themselves is not only encouraged, but where possible, interlinks in the sidebars are procedurally generated, auto-creating links to the shard, etc. Same over on the mob pages in the hunter's guide. However, in the main-body text you add to an item, or a mob, or whatever else, nothing prevents you from adding interlinks within that text. PS: Wikis don't store relational data. *Semantic* wikis do - this is not a semantic wiki, though I treat it somewhat like one on the back-end to generate those reports.

    "implement tags and key-terms which assists with searching, web SEO and of course, DATABASE OPTIMIZATION"

    Wikis don't utilize a tag system; they use categories, which the rares and other templates create a large number - and you're not prevented in any way from adding more within the page text. And, as this is not a front-end to a database, but is instead a *wiki*, there is no database to be optimized. As for web SEO, tags and keywords don't really apply.

    "An example... the green Glass item that came from the St. Patrick's day even back in the dark ages of UO... uses the "Glass" object, but with that perma-green hue. (snip)"

    Again, this was a gift item; not all gifts are in the wiki yet. All three server birth "glass"es are, however: Glass (disambiguation) - Stratics Community Wiki | Stratics

    "When I key in "glass", I would expect the following items (at minimum) to show high relevancy: ... That's how a wiki works, eh?"

    Not actually. The wiki search system does not use (nor can I imagine how or why that would even work) a user-generated ranking system. It uses a text match, listing both pages with that term in the title, and those with it in the body. You're assuming "glass" as a noun, while "glass" can and does also get used in UO as an adjective, example, Ruby Encrusted Glass Slippers. That is why Search results for "glass" - Stratics Community Wiki | Stratics does not match your expectations.

    Firstly, no, it's not redundant. "UO:" is not part of the title. It is the namespace within which the page exists. One might as well ask why "Main Page - Stratics Community Wiki | Stratics" has to appear within the URL. SO: and SOTA: are also valid namespaces at the moment, with the door left open for other namespaces to be added in the future.

    Second, look to the left side of the screen, specifically under "Wiki Usage Guides". You'll find that the pages you want do indeed already exist.

    You know me; I'm not going to give "hype". In terms of the person who claimed that Stratics "ripped off his entire wiki", it's frankly a bizarre claim. The pages currently in the Stratics wiki are based mostly upon data I spent several years building:

    * For rares, the rares list Manticore had maintained was my initial source, with numerous years worth of work by me to hunt down every item I could possibly find, to correct errors and omissions, and a ton of time searching through ancient sites (most of them dead and accessed through archive.org, and many of them in Japanese or Korean) to help flesh out the vaguer data based upon reports from the time the items were created. The numbers of others who helped me with that project are too many to list, but I will call out Decadence specifically; she and I worked collaboratively for a long while, working on trying to handle some of the items in the Manticore list that had the name wrong.

    * For mobs, the old Stratics Hunter's Guide was the primary source, with a Japanese site (atwiki) and various other blogs and such used to help fill in gaps, then a lot of travelling around, collecting info in game, and searching the net for anywhere with info, though avoiding a certain popular UO wiki out of principle.

    * For patch notes, I used 1) my own saved copies of ancient notes, 2) a few freeshards had usefully kept copies of pre-T2A-era notes, and 3) hunting through archive.org's copies of uo.com over the years. There are multiple useful html to wiki format converters, and I wrote various helper tools to help add interlinks, plus adding interlinks and cleaning up text formatting whenever I was bored.

    * For the Atlas, it's all code I personally wrote driving that engine, using UOAM map data contributed over the years from various users, including maps I myself had published (Eodon, stealables, etc).

    * For dyes and hues, I've been building up a database of both over the years, and built those pages using that data.

    * For what does exist yet in Items/Quests/Skills/etc, not much has yet been migrated from the old Stratics site. I know a couple people were working on the skills pages, but I don't think those are too far advanced yet in their progress.

    As you know @Kirthag, there is a LOT of content in the old Stratics archives; what exists in the wiki at the moment took me years to assemble, and 10 months or so to turn into this wiki format. More people helping migrate the old data, update it, add to it, etc, is welcomed.

    So back to the "Stratics ripped off ***" claim. First, the only place ANY of this wiki exists there is in the mob and patch notes pages.

    First, re: mobs, a large amount of the data at that site CAME FROM STRATICS IN THE FIRST PLACE. But the UO community is small enough, in terms of people collecting data, that type of raw mob data also drifts around. The emulator dev sites, the Japanese and German wikis, etc - everyone borrows that data, because that only makes sense to do.

    In terms of mobs, first, I've only seen a single mob actually used to "prove" the claim. It's a non-spawning mob, so it's difficult for folks to go and collect their own "fresh" data. Given that, it only makes sense that if anyone did have any data on that mob's stats that that data would end up used by everyone in the community. I would point out, conversely, that at least several *dozen* of the mobs on the site claiming we "ripped them off" directly took their data from the old Stratics, according to either those pages' text or their edit notes. Again, it's a bizarre claim to say that Stratics "stole" pages from somewhere, when those pages DO NOT EXIST at that site.

    The only other content that has actually been provided to "prove" that we "stole" anything is a single patch notes page. Yes, I did not author that page. Nor did that other wiki site. UO.com wrote that text, and I copied it from there, as presumably did they. The formatting was converted from html to wiki markup using a tool built for that purpose, and I applied one of my auto-interlinking tools to it, then manually added various formatting while watching the news one night.

    But as for the claim that Stratics, or I personally, somehow "ripped off" that other site, and that the Stratics wiki is just a copy of them, it's a bogus claim. The only "proof" provided is that one mob's data and one patch page both contain the same info. (Would you expect otherwise?) Strangely, however, 95%+ of the pages in the Stratics wiki do not exist at that other site in any form. (On the flip side, more than a few of the pages on that other site contain text copied directly from the old Stratics. Pot, kettle, black?) I wrote the templates that drive the mob, rares, and other pages.

    I personally collected the data (as noted above), and the conversion of that data into wiki-formatted templates and pages, then adding those pages to the build out the wiki was handled by me. During the time I was building the Stratics wiki, I intentionally avoided going to his wiki site at all, to avoid even the possibility of inadvertently copying any of the look, feel, or content of that site - ie, I built the Stratics wiki clean-room-style, with regards to that site. But then, the gentleman who made the claim about me and Stratics "ripping off" his site has a history, a history which includes him personally doxing me last year, sharing my personal information just days after my son was born, and also includes several copyright infringements on another of site he manages, to the point that I had to send several DMCA notices... ...and that's only the things he's done to me personally, apart from Stratics itself. I've so far avoided publicly addressing his claims about the Stratics wiki because I have zero desire to have anything further to do with him.

    As for the existing data from the old Stratics, that's a huge project. Migrating the hunter's guide took a couple of weeks, once the templates for mobs were written and debugged. But those pages are mainly data-driven templates. Migrating and updating the raw text of all the rest of the old Stratics content is a larger project, one which will likely be ongoing for a good long while. But I welcome you, and everyone else, to help with that project, migrating or writing new pages as much as you are willing to do. :)

    Brian
     
  3. Basara

    Basara UO Forum Moderator
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    As I've noted before in those half-baked "Stratics stole..." threads.

    Wikis BY THEIR NATURE typically cite official descriptions first and foremost, usually DIRECTLY QUOTING OFFICIAL SOURCES. Too many wikis I've read take this to a ludicrous extreme, and don't allow content that isn't a word-for-word quote of the official source, with allowances for coding and putting it onto a context (like correcting grammar). One infamously DISALLOWS CITING THE VERY TV SHOWS IT IS ABOUT, insisting that the shows themselves are NOT primary sources, only written material ABOUT the show (paper or web), and has deleted pages and banned users for DARING to provide information that can only be gained by listening to the shows' dialogue, or reading data readouts on the screen. (See the "Macross Compendium Wiki" by Egan Loo, et al)

    When you START with the official release material from the source, OF COURSE two different sources will end up with about 95% identical material. There's only a limited number of ways to say "They walked the dog" when the source material has the words "walked" and "dog" in it, and is written in third person with non-specific gender.

    And, if you want to really get technical, no one - not us, JC or anyone else can claim ownership of a screen-grab of an item. As the Terms of Use for UO indicate, Broadsword & EA are the owners of the pixels and bytes of data. So, unless you are posting an image of an item that uses freeshard-only art (which itself is out of our purview) you CAN'T really claim ownership of it. It's not the same as a photograph, because you signed off on the ownership when you agreed to the Terms. You could do a webcomic or video using the art and text from inside the game, but all you can claim legally is the player-generated text and story, not the art (which you legally should have to cite belongs to EA) or pre-programmed text of the game.
     
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  4. Kirthag

    Kirthag Former Stratics Publisher
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    JC said stuff?

    *shrug*

    Thank you for the clarity.
     
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