AGS Wiki

[Babar]

The AGS wiki is woefully out of date, and kinda...all over the place.

I am not making a call to action for members here to work on it, I figured I'd do it myself. If you want to work on it, that'd be cool, but you'd probably also benefit from discussion (that will hopefully happen) here.

Browsing through it, however, I found that the content seems to be very mixed.
There are scripting resources - woefully out of date
External Resources - also out of date (none of the links work)
Attempts at comprehensively documenting AGS in a bizarre and incomprehensible way - Surprise surprise, also out of date
Walkthroughs - that I assume are not out of date, but I had no knowledge of this game
Pages of users - Some more detailed, many less, most of people who haven't been here in over a decade
Jokey Historical in-jokes - Full of bygone members who we miss
Less Jokey Explanations of various Forum things - Not out of date for the most part
Archives of Forum discussions - Unfortunately, while interesting, very much off-colour and inappropriately languaged in parts
Records of our awards - Also out of date, but thankfully this is something easily remedied
Pages about games - Mostly not out of date, except where a link is shared

So...what do we want to use the wiki for? I feel there's an argument for the case that we don't need it at all.
Should it be a storage of links to resources, or should that be in a resources section on the site?
Should it be a place to find tutorials on how to do stuff, or should that be searched on the forums?
Should we include AGS games? Or is that unnecessary with AGS games pages?
Should it be a museum of AGS history, about the members, activities, awards, etc? I feel this could be the best use-case, but I'd be curious how many people even access those pages on the wiki

Depending on these answers, I'd go about tidying up the wiki (maybe not deleting some pages, keeping them for posterity, but...archiving them in some way), and restructuring it. OR...if it seems a redundant thing, we could get rid of it all 

[Alan v.Drake]

For starters, we should remove the duplicated (and outdated) contents, and link instead to the relevant manual or github pages.
A mention to main resources, like themes, manual, etc.

I don't have any strong opinions about walkthroughs and game pages.

It's fine to document some of our history, but the old internet humor has not aged well. The list of AGS awards winner is always nice to have.
If it can't be salvaged, it's best be removed. New users don't need the extra confusion.

Would be nice if the main purpose of the wiki were to store useful articles and guides and avoid misleading users into walking through ancient cobwebs.


- Alan

[Snarky]

I think the Wiki is still good to have, and I don't think it needs to be "for" a single particular thing. Why would it be a problem that it's a mix of different topics? Basically, if the Wiki has an article on something, it's because somebody at some point thought it would be useful/nice to have an article about that—I don't believe there's been a particular problem with spam or other junk content. Besides, it is part of the history of the AGS community, preserving things that are not stored elsewhere.

Now, some of the information may be outdated, and some articles should possibly have disclaimers, but I wouldn't really delete much, if anything.

[Kastchey]

If someone was willing to write a more accurate, up-to-date and useful article on something that was covered two decades ago, would we not want to replace the dated, inaccurate and partially offensive content with the new version?

And if so, where would the old content go, if we think it should be preserved as part of AGS history? Is there an archive of sorts?

[Gilbert]

Maybe if the content of a page is too old and obsolete but we still want to keep it, just put some tag/disclaimer on it for clarification?

Like this, where the original versions of the pages for AGS V2 are still kept:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/wiki/Using_256_colour_graphics_in_AGS

[Babar]

Oh, I am not saying it needs to be for only 1 thing, it'd just be nice to clarify what it is for. Especially since a lot of what it includes is stuff that is more easily and more up-to-datedly available elsewhere (like the forums, or the games pages). And while there aren't too many examples of that currently, we can also say "This is a thing that doesn't need to be on the wiki" for some stuff when it is added in the future (i.e. relevancy to AGS).

Also, if we establish specific use cases for the wiki, aside from random articles, those can more easily be integrated into the rest of the site (e.g. if "Walkthroughs" are a type of page, we could have those included in games pages on the site. Or profiles in the forums or in the games pages as authors could have linked wiki articles).

I think the way the wiki functions, older versions of pages are stored as older versions, and they wouldn't be visible directly unless you checked the history of a page. Would that be a sufficient level of "archiving"?

Edit: Can someone who has access share the data on page views and accesses? I'd be curious how many people use/access the wiki, and what pages they access, and whether a page has even been viewed in the past 10 years.

[Kastchey]

I think the way the wiki functions, older versions of pages are stored as older versions, and they wouldn't be visible directly unless you checked the history of a page. Would that be a sufficient level of "archiving"?

If that is how it works, then maybe it would be fine for both the people who want to see the up-to-date content, and the people who want to preserve snapshots of the old community for the sake of AGS history.

The thing is, when someone goes to the AGS Wiki for the first time and chooses to view an article on minority representation in adventure games, they are looking for an article on minority representation, not a piece of AGS history. It's irrelevant. And similarly, if they want to know who was an active community member 20 years ago or how the discussions were structured back then, or just take a trip down the memory lane, they would be looking for archived threads or pages on AGS history specifically, not articles on random unrelated subjects.

If outdated archival discussions and inside jokes from 20 years ago hold a sentimental value for someone, it shouldn't be just wiped out. But we should ensure it is preserved in an adequate place and form, rather than disguised as AGS-endorsed substantive content.

[cat]

I have renamed the article in question to "Archived Discussion: Minority Characters in Adventure Games". This should make it clear that it is an archived discussion and not a formal article representing the current opinion of the AGS community.

[Pixie451]

Hello Everyone!

I'm the one who became the catalyst for this discussion.

I'm really pleased to see how much publicity this has gotten. Thank you very much!

[Kastchey]

@cat , thanks, that helps!

The one question that remains is, if someone actually squeezes out the time needed to update any of these ancient articles, not necessarily the minorities one but any outdated article, what is the best practice for publishing the update? Do we just go ahead and do it, since the previous version can always be restored if necessary? Or should the updates be pre-approved by moderators before they are posted? In case of a full update that replaces almost everything, where should the previous article go?

@Vixie_Pixie , welcome to the forum. Thanks for bringing the outdated content to the community's attention What might be important to understand is that, well, we're a tiny group, at least compared to giants such as Unity or even Godot. Everything that happens is community driven and while we do what we can, there isn't that much spare time and effort that can be streamed into extra activities, like running additional events or making extensive updates to the resources and documentation. This said, if you're happy to contribute something yourself, let us know what you've got!

[Babar]

Do we just go ahead and do it, since the previous version can always be restored if necessary? Or should the updates be pre-approved by moderators before they are posted? In case of a full update that replaces almost everything, where should the previous article go?

Better be the first, because that's what I've been doing. As members of the forums, we all have access to edit the wiki, and the whole point of a wiki is to be community driven. Optimally there would be someone in an adminny role who checks up on updates and make sure changes aren't messing stuff up, but I can understand that in a community as small as ours, that might be slower than normal.

As for your second question, if I understand our wiki to work like others, unless you completely delete a page, as long as you are editing the same page, even if every bit of text is changed, the previous version would still exist as a previous version.

[Crimson Wizard]

Please also update the Open Source Games

Here's a sticky list of more of them found in the more recent years:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/advanced-technical-forum/a-sticky-list-with-open-source-ags-games/