The Forge Archives

Has this ever been suggested before?

I know I'd find it tremendously useful if it was half as good as Doyce's Sorcerer Wiki.

What would have to be done to get someone started at it? Doyce, I'm staring at you with gigantic, hypnotic eyes.

Hello,

Wikis have been suggested for all kinds of things at the Forge, up to and including replacing (or rather, officially modifying) my essays.

Anyone is of course free to set up any kind of Wiki they want, ranging from Forge topics to free-love to neoconservative-takeover conspiracy theories to safecracking. A Forge-ish one might do well to narrow down the topics a little, but again, that's the choice of whoever sets it up - maybe he or she would expand them instead, for all I know.

Sirogit, one thing you might consider is that any of us is competent to suggest something constructive that someone else is supposed to do. I can think of about a dozen things I'd like you to do, starting right now - including washing my car, resolving the global-warming vs. global-industrialization issue, and writing a great role-playing game.

I picked these three examples carefully. The first is possible, but socially inappropriate - you don't owe me anything, and if I want my car washed, I should either do it myself or pay someone who's socially neutral to me. The second is impossible for a single person and (if you tried to do it) only serves to make me feel good about "doing something," while wasting your time. The third is something either of us could do, but which neither of us can make the other one do well.

Suggestions of the third type are very tempting, especially since they seem so reasonable compared to the other two. People often bribe others to fulfill them through compliments.

I'm trying to make a point here, to everyone on the Forge. There are literally thousands of great acts and contributions people can make to our joint effort, on their own websites as well as here. The only way to see any of them happen is to do it.

Best,
Ron

In addition to Ron's points, Doyce's Sorcerer wiki is a lot more than that. If you ask me, it's becoming the official unofficial Forge wiki. Go click around on RandomWiki, and you'll find sections on Dogs in the Vineyard, The Shadow of Yesterday, and more.

That's because I love playing great games, and the Forge makes great games.

/lovefest

Or it's because I'm an Indie whore, regardless of medium.

/selfdep

Or I'm eeeevery so slightly OCD with a need to reorganize data in order to learn it.

/confessional

That all said, Clinton's got a point -- I'm more than willing to **host** sections of RandomWiki for... well, really whatever games you feel like writing stuff down about -- just pleaseseses don't expect me to do more than host (and contribute to whatever games I'm currently jonesing on (which I will)) -- cuz I just won't :).   Right now, I'm teaching myself the Heroquest rules -- that's where most of my effort goes.  Later, it'll be PTA and TSOY.  If you want something in a Burning Wheel section... well, get typing!

Ron's got a good point about 'doing what are you willing to have done', stated in his inimitable style, but let me pull that back a step and ask a more general question:  what would you see 'Forge wiki' being?  I know that the only reason I did the Sorcerer wiki was to put together something that collected all the wisdom I could find, while avoiding a search function.

What are you thinking of, when you say Forge-wiki, because it means something different than what I think of (like, it might include a "Forge theory archive" section, which can only fill me with personal dread. :)

Quote from: DoyceRon's got a good point about 'doing what are you willing to have done', stated in his inimitable style, but let me pull that back a step and ask a more general question:  what would you see 'Forge wiki' being?  I know that the only reason I did the Sorcerer wiki was to put together something that collected all the wisdom I could find, while avoiding a search function.

I don't know what sirogit had in mind.  However, I think that there is room for something like my http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/theforge/">Forge Info Page or Scott's http://scottrpg.com/rpgstyle.htm">Roleplaying Styles Links Page.  i.e. Collections of links or other information which have pointers to important or interesting discussion here at the Forge, which can can be updated with new results and information (as opposed to the essays and posts here, which go out of date).  

There is basically a huge gap between types of writing here at the Forge.  On the one hand, there are the articles and reviews (linked at the top).  There are 51 of these, which date back to early 1999.  These have to go through a review process, and only 11 of them are by someone other than Ron and Clinton.  On the other hand, there are forum posts, of which there are nearly 150,000 since the forums started in early 2001.  I think there's room for something in between -- i.e. which is a little more prominent than just a forum post, but not quite so rare as the articles/reviews.

Quote from: DoyceThat all said, Clinton's got a point -- I'm more than willing to **host** sections of RandomWiki for... well, really whatever games you feel like writing stuff down about -- just pleaseseses don't expect me to do more than host (and contribute to whatever games I'm currently jonesing on (which I will)) -- cuz I just won't :).   Right now, I'm teaching myself the Heroquest rules -- that's where most of my effort goes.  Later, it'll be PTA and TSOY.  If you want something in a Burning Wheel section... well, get typing!

Doyce -- do you have any policies about editing on RandomWiki?  i.e. Should other people stick to their own sections, or are you open to edits of existing pages?  Also, can people upload things?  What are your disk space limits like?

Quote from: John Kim

Quote from: DoyceThat all said, Clinton's got a point -- I'm more than willing to **host** sections of RandomWiki for... well, really whatever games you feel like writing stuff down about -- just pleaseseses don't expect me to do more than host (and contribute to whatever games I'm currently jonesing on (which I will)) -- cuz I just won't :).   Right now, I'm teaching myself the Heroquest rules -- that's where most of my effort goes.  Later, it'll be PTA and TSOY.  If you want something in a Burning Wheel section... well, get typing!

Doyce -- do you have any policies about editing on RandomWiki?  i.e. Should other people stick to their own sections, or are you open to edits of existing pages?  Also, can people upload things?  What are your disk space limits like?

John, hi and thanks for the question.

It's a little known fact (around here, anyway), that I also run Fireflywiki.org, which is a pretty popular Firefly fan site, and maintained/patroled by everyone and anyone who feels inspired to do so (with the wiki code I use, ANYONE with an RSS aggregator can keep an eye on the wiki from anywhere on the net).  

I think a similar philosophy can hold true with any wiki.  Mike works on his ShadowWorld stuff, but he also drops good info in the Heroquest section -- I know I feel a surge of 'yay' whenever anyone posts new info to the Sorcerer wiki -- I consider that a community resource at this point, and really most of the sections on games are that way.

Obviously, some areas make more sense for that philosophy than others -- I have wiki pages up there for some of my Sorcerer campaigns and the like, and I don't imagine that anyone but I would be editing those areas (unless there's some glaring typo, of course) -- that's pretty obvious.  If there was some confusion there, it's a simple thing to set an 'edit' password on a particular area, while leaving it wide open for public viewing.

Uploads and disk space.  Running uploads currently require a password (which is essentially free for the asking if someone has something they'd like to do with that).  As for disk space, the wiki would literally have to grow exponentially for a year for it to be a problem.

Hey!!

Having gotten a little more into this wiki thing, I've now dumped the RPG Theory glossary I had compiled into RandomWiki.  Here's the link:

http://random.average-bear.com/TheoryTopics/HomePage

So that's a fair chunk of information that's been dumped in.  I guess I'll see if people are willing to go in and add to that information.  What would be great is if people would go in, pick a topic, and add in links for their favorite threads for that topic.

John, that's really quite awesome.  Really.  I am totally impressed (not least because I saw what time you started doing this last night, and you're done already. :)

Yep, it's pretty cool. I already was in there doing some minor housekeeping. Folks should check it out. I think it's a resource in the vein of the glossary, but more extensive and crosslinked. Like John notes, very much a wikipedia on the subject (any chance this stuff will get into the Wikipedia?).

And if you come by, stop by my bit of the Wiki while you're there and see if you want to make a HQ character while you're at it. Anyone. I'm a junkie that way. :-)

Mike

Ron:

Very good points. I think even though I made the request in jest it does say something insightful about the this specific conundrum.

Joyce:

Actually, I -was- mainly hoping that either A) You're hosting something like it B) You could point me towards a stub. It isn't so much of a request as an expectation of previous-standing excellency from yourself.

Towards what I would like to find on it/make on it, would be a very complete and referenced bit on rpg theory, though honestly I'm only really intereasted in a subset of that rpg-theory, that is, the grounded/practical sort, i.e. "Here's some ways to make sure everyone is on the same page in the game, they work." versus the more esoteric/contestable "Dice-rolling is actually Force" "Narrativism is actually gamism" etc, etc.

But anyway, thanks for the links and pardon my ignorance.

Quote from: sirogit
Actually, I -was- mainly hoping that either A) You're hosting something like it B) You could point me towards a stub. It isn't so much of a request as an expectation of previous-standing excellency from yourself.

Well, three days ago, I wasn't hosting anything like that, but now, thanks to John Kim:

http://random.average-bear.com/TheoryTopics/HomePage

A most excellent beginning.