Setting up a Wiki Game

[clehrich]

Hi gang,

I'm looking for advice.  Bear in mind that I live in the stone age, when we still used pencil and paper, so I'm a little clueless.

I have come to the conclusion that Shadows in the Fog will work best as a wiki, eventually I hope a reasonably large one.  One thing a number of people have commented negatively on is that there isn't really any background information available in the game, and rather than retype and reformulate a vast amount, I'd rather make use of the many wonderful resources already on the web.  So links with commentary is a great start.

I would need some pages to be locked, i.e. only editable with a password, to prevent some wanker from removing rules and whatnot.  Ideally, I'd like to have most pages set up such that one can only add to them, not delete anything; editorial remarks could be incorporated at a later date by me or someone I trust, with the remarks then buried in a subsection somewhere attached to the poster's name.

Another way to limit annoying posts, I suppose, would be to require registration.  You would have to type in some sort of ID and password, and a valid email address; the server bounces email to you telling you that you can now log in.  This prevents wiki spam, which I've seen already on Jere's Age of Paranoia wiki.  I'd like to incorporate this if possible.

Might it make sense to have the stuff that's not to be edited formulated as a regular HTML page, and then a wiki attached to that?

Initially I don't expect that there'd be a whole lot of pictures, but eventually I suppose people will add some, and so will I.  I assume that this means that the thing will eventually be quite large, though initially as it's all text it wouldn't be.

So....

Um, how do I do this?  I mean, from the start.  See, I don't own a domain or website, and I haven't a clue about how to get one.  I did a little searching, but I don't know what this stuff ought to cost and I'd like to keep it to the barest minimum possible since I don't intend to sell the game and this is all for pleasure.

I do know how to write Wiki pages, though I'm no master, so that's a start.  Publishing to HTML looks simple enough, and I do have some software to do this, though I do not have a website to publish to.

Suggestions?

On a related note, do people think it's worth having a European and Australia/NZ mirror?  I don't know if access is very slow or something, and I'd kind of like those who have appropriate accents to find the site easily accessible.

Many thanks.

[DevP]

User registration and/or password protection on edits is certainly doable in most modern wiki software. For those pages where you would want only the possibility to add-content (or, rather, a the standard-content, and wikish endnotes/discussion area), I would suggest (a) consider if this kind of control is actually needed, if you're only allowing select people access anyway (and you can easily track changes to pages); and (b) if you uwanted to seprate the static and wiki parts of the page, that would be a minor change to most code (so, it wikipage RulesText would include RulesText.txt (which you privately uploaded) as unchangeable,a dn still has a wiki portion.

Incidental to the (a) above, modern wiki software often comes with RSS feeds, meaning you can use various software (like Mozilla Thunderbird, or even My Yahoo) to have changes more or less tracked for you.

My and Doyce (and others) have great success with PmWiki, and MediaWiki (which runs Wikipedia) is also very strong. So then, the only question is where to put it - to this, I'd say either find donated space, or possibly invest in a Dreamhost account, where you can put up whatever software you like (like a wiki), and make future room for your website. If you're not supertechnical, you may want someone to manage the dreamhost account for you.

[Trevis Martin]

Hey Chris,

I'd let you put it up on my wiki.  I use the TWiki software which is reasonably secure with registration and group permissions and you can protect individual pages.  I'd make a seperate web for you if you like.  You've been there already I know, becaue you saw Revisionist History.  Anyway you could start there and then move if you needed to, the twiki files are easily portable.

On the other options, there are two web sever possibilities that get mentioned here pretty frequently.  One is actionroll.com, who Ralph (Valamir) hosts with (for some reason acitonroll.com doesn't have anything at it right now, but if you do a search here at the forge for actionroll, you'll find that Nathan offers some good deals.)  Other than that I host with Dreamhost, and their cheapest plan runs about $8 a month, which is what I use, and they are more than adequate and very responsive.

If you need help setting up the wiki, I can help you do that too.  I've played with about 4 of them and I like TWiki, but there are others that are good.  Mediawiki for example.

best,

Trevis

[clehrich]

For those pages where you would want only the possibility to add-content (or, rather, a the standard-content, and wikish endnotes/discussion area), I would suggest (a) consider if this kind of control is actually needed, if you're only allowing select people access anyway (and you can easily track changes to pages); and (b) if you uwanted to seprate the static and wiki parts of the page, that would be a minor change to most code (so, it wikipage RulesText would include RulesText.txt (which you privately uploaded) as unchangeable,a dn still has a wiki portion.

Hmm, I need to be clearer.  Sorry.

The idea is to keep the wiki completely open to anyone who's willing to register with an email account so I can ban them if they start spamming or abusing people.  In a perfect world, the historical material will eventually become so dense that people who aren't even playing RPGs may find the website useful for Victorian research, and I want them to be ready and able to contribute as well.  The more the merrier!

But, for example, consider the following page setup.

Wilde, Oscar
<Huge amounts of material written here by lots of folks>

Now some wanker comes along and decides it would be funny to delete it all and just type "homo" or worse.  What I want is for someone to come along and write, "In a post above, Joe mentions that Wilde died in December, 1900.  In fact, however, he died on November 30, 1900", where this is added at the bottom of the page.  This works particularly well for occult weirdness, because it means that there's a running series of claims and statements made rather than a single official "right answer."

---
One other thing I'd really like to have, but it may not be possible.  I'd really like to have people required to click one of three boxes on each post: History, Fiction, Invention.  The idea is that History has reputable sources stated; Fiction is material like where Dr. Jekyll's house is; and Invention is weirdness you came up with, probably for your game.  By flagging entries this way, you help other users know what they're reading and how they can manipulate it.

Is this possible?  Is there that much coding control available with a Wiki?  I know lots of techies who might be able to code it if such a thing can be done at all.

[clehrich]

Trevis,

Many thanks for the offer; I may take you up on it.

But I have a couple of questions.

If, as I noted in the previous post, I need weird special coding, does that cause a problem if the wiki is a subsection of your wiki?  Or is it possible to encode things such that only things from X page downward are subject to special restrictions and tags?

Where does the wiki actually get stored?  I mean, if I have a link that says, "Email the editor here," does that mean it goes to you?  Cause that seems like a pain in the ass and you'd soon want to throttle me.

Or is this all the ravings of an obvious neanderthal?

[Trevis Martin]

Chris,

Well the Webs within the TWiki are pretty autonomous.  So you can set up a bunch of things that are web level that don't affect the whole wiki. The type of thing you are talking about would be pretty easy to set up.  Take a look at our Uni game at http://wiki.trmfineart.com/bin/view/Unigame/WebHome  .  Look at some of the scene or component topic pages, you'll see a form at the bottom that we've been using to help organize the automatic coin tracking.  So little checkboxes (with a hyperlink by the box to tell people how they can mess with it) is not a problem I think.  As for who can mess with the wiki, I allow access to anyone who wants to register.  And then for a further filter on the unigame I have them email me to be admitted to the group that is allowed to edit the unigame web pages.

As far as having them email you, no problem at all.  A couple of options, you can setup mailto links at your current account or I can give you one at my domain (I have like 100 of them or something and I use, I think, 3.)

The wiki data itself gets stored on the server at my hosting service.  But since almost all the files are text the storage required isn't very much.

Don't worry I think you're only a subtle neanderthal.  :)

best,

Trevis

[Brendan]

Chris, don't worry too much about erasure of important text; a wiki never forgets anything.  When you "delete" text from a wiki page, nothing actually gets deleted--the wiki just archives the previous version of the page and then sets the most recent version to the one with less text.  You can always go in and retrieve an older revision to set that as the newest version, thus undoing the changes.

So, for example, if we have a page about the Muppets that you create, it might say:

MUPPETS

Muppets were created by Jim Henson.

As soon as you submit that, the wiki would store it as version (or revision) 1.  Now you or someone else could and change it to

MUPPETS

Muppets were created by Jim Henson.  Some Muppets include Miss Piggy, Kermit and The Great Gonzo.

That's revision 2.  Both 1 and 2 are stored in the wiki's files (or database, depending on what kind of wiki it is).

Now let's say some idiot comes along and changes it again:

MUPPETS

dewd muppets suck

That's revision 3.  But revisions 1 and 2 haven't been lost; you (or any user with the right permissions) can edit it again, and, with most wiki software, just hit "Revert to revision 2."  Revision 3 is then archived (unfortunate, but part of the system), and revision 4 becomes a copy of revision 2.

If I were you, I wouldn't worry about setting special pages without delete permissions; I'd just put up a "rules" page saying "hey, don't delete anything, only add."  If users break the rules, undo it and warn them, and if they do it again, ban them.

If you think undoing deletions would be tiring, though, you might want to consider a different piece of software.  For instance, a phpBB bulletin board (like this one) isn't too tough to install, and would allow anyone to add content while restricting delete-permissions to the admin--you.

[daMoose_Neo]

And too, alot of the BB systems are highly customizable. Need a little more programming knowledge to write the 'hacks' for it yourself, but most versions have a wide variety of additions available.
I'd say what it sounds like you're looking for, as far as systems, is a BB system.  You have more control as author, theres more permanancy to the posts (users can edit/delete their own, if you allow it, but not others, only add ^_^), and most are just as easy to set up as Wiki would be.

[clehrich]

Just a little more wambling for the techies out there -- many thanks for what you've already answered, yet I'm still scraping along in my knuckle-dragging way.

As I see it, the advantage of a wiki is the cross-referencing, which allows you to generate empty pages every time you type something that seems to need expansion someday.  Then you end up with hugely branced hypertexts very quickly.  BBs don't seem to do this so well, at least in my experience of things like the Forge, where x-refs actually generate a whole type of thread: "Looking for an x-ref, my search-fu isn't great, etc."

Jere's Age of Paranoia wiki has recently been plagued by spam.  Somebody is posting page after page of entries entitled DinGo and similar, which seem to be full of ads and nothing else.  Given that this can be blocked by a registration process, that seems like not a huge problem.  Then there's the "Dewd muppets suck" example (nicely put!), which again requires manual blocking but banning someone seems not unreasonable.

So what do you people think of the following:

1. Registration is open and requires a valid email address.

2. The rules say that you may not edit the content of a page except to add things.  Any real editing, i.e. changing what is already up, will only be done by the editors.

3. The editors include me and anyone I at some point decide seems to have proven his or her mettle and I trust not to screw around.

4. Each added piece gets one of 4 flags:

History: I, the author, hereby assert that this is actual history, and I have named my source or sources.
Fiction: I, the author, got this material from a work of fiction, and have stated where I got it.
Invention: I, the author, made this up, or my group made it up, or I found it somewhere (preferably source given) that I suspect is not a reliable source.
Editorial: I, the author, would like to draw the editors' attention to the following problem(s) in something previously written on this page.  At some point, the editors will get around to looking at this, and we will make the appropriate changes; we will then attach a link to a <<page-errate>> that contains the original editorial comment, possibly with responses from the editors if we don't agree with something.[/list:u]5. Spam is grounds for an instant and absolute ban.

6. Abuse of pages or other users is grounds for a single warning that explains the rules; any repeat causes a final ban.

7. A few pages, including rules and whatnot, are locked and cannot be altered except by certain people (i.e. the editors).

8. Images should be kept small, if used at all; we would much prefer that you upload them to another site and include a link or other kind of reference so as to keep the wiki small.  If you upload a large image, we will probably take it down, possibly first shifting the image to some other public-access website (there's some kind of "photos for all" website someone told me about once, but I forget where it was).  We will also email you to ask that you not upload such large images.

9. I'm also thinking that a PayPal "tip jar" would be nice, with at least 50% going to whoever hosts the service.  Nobody is required to use it, of course, but it would be nice.

10. Eventually I'll also put up a regular website -- although locked Wiki pages would work almost as well.

So is this all doable?  How does it sound?

I realize that there are some organizational issues to be worked out, but does this sound like a basically reasonable plan?

Thanks.

[Trevis Martin]

Chris,

Sure, that sounds reasonable and doable to me, and I agree that the yperlining is the best quality of wiki as well as the simplified markup for those who aren't code junkies.  Let me know if you need help or want to set up with me.

best,

Trevis

[clehrich]

[edit -- sorry, meant to send this PM]

[Brendan]

Chris, your ground rules sound quite a bit like those I came up with when I started thinking about doing my own game design via wiki a couple weeks ago.  It's encouraging that we both seem headed in the same direction.  Best of luck with the wiki, and I hope you'll post again when it's off the ground.

[clehrich]

Brendan,

It is indeed encouraging!  I will post to Indie Design when the wiki is up, since it will also include revised rules and will be in effect a complete game ready to go up on the web.