Website & Forums Improving The Wiki (easy!) [26 Supporters!]

This is mainly a small proposal that I believe would greatly improve the activity on the wiki, and allow it to be a place full of updated, current and accurate information.

THIS IDEA SHOULD NOT TAKE EXTRA TIME TO IMPLEMENT
(It is a small and easily feasible addition to future update posts made by admins.)​

==The Issue (TL;DR at bottom)==​

This originally sparked from this: "Made a few quality of life improvements to some old quests, but you don't need to know about that." quote from Grian in the 1.15 update thread.

Right now, not a lot of people contribute to the wiki. There are various reasons, some just don't know where to start, others have a hard time learning the markup code to create good pages, and for a good portion of wiki contributors ALREADY: The pages that need creating or updating are just hidden. There are a billion pages on the wiki that are not UP TO DATE, and there is no way of finding these other than blind luck, finding something out for yourself ingame, and checking the wanted pages where MAYBE someone has linked to a page that needs to be created. THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM. And yes, Grian, we DO need to know about those changes so that the wiki can become an actually RELIABLE source of information!

TL;DR - When updates come out the wiki is slow to update because the specific changes in an update aren't given on the update threads. Lots of people could help with small things, but the wiki is daunting and hard to know what to make, what to do.

==The Solution==
1. When an update comes out, ones like 1.15, or the Changeblogs of the Gameplay Update, have a SPOILER or a link where people can view a specific log of all the changes. This would allow people to find things to update on the wiki, and would allow for a more knowledgeable player-base. Any changes that the CT wants to hide, like new mysteries or easter eggs in game, would completely be off limits from the list; I don't want the community to lose it's intrigue of discovery!

2. For #1 to work out, there would have to be more obvious wiki mentions in the update threads, and possibly a little "notification" in the Questions section of the forums that might say:
"Before you make a thread, be sure to search our wiki for information!"

3. This would require effort from the content team, and I know they are buried knees-deep in tasks and projects due to the evolving nature of Wynncraft. BUT, this could be a change that is EASY. Whenever you complete something (talking "to" the CT), you could take note of it.
EXAMPLE:
just a little notepad document saved as "changes i made"
-New cave by Bucie
-New mob: Powder Imp, spawns by Llevigar plains
-removed Cinfras
-added item buyer at center of Ahmsord


If you support this idea, vote on the poll.
AND REMEMBER: MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK.

Spoiler: Thread Accomplishments

[✔] 5 Likes
[✔] 10 Likes
[✔] 15 Likes
[✔] 20 Likes
[x] 25 Likes
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[✔] 10 Supporters
[✔] 20 Supporters
[x] 30 Supporters

​

 

Good thread and good intention! However, I think the #1 reason we don't have many active editors is not confusion, but simply laziness. People like to play games instead of doing boring work on the wiki. I can't blame them, I do this myself, but of course I have contributed a great amount in the past and continue to do administrative tasks. Here's a few things to look at if you don't know what to edit on the wiki:
To-Do List (the main focus of current editing work)
Version History (new content in the game that needs to be added to the wiki)
Recent Changes (see what others are currently working on)

 

Like @Grvphene said, most people like to use the wiki rather than update it.

The wiki is also a community project, not one that the content team should feel compelled to contribute to. However, there are numerous content team members whom I know edit the wiki.

Also, I think you're confusing Ryuu with Rycinator. No offense to Ryuu.

And the fact of the matter is, we should at least recognize the progress that we have made in the last 6 months. The wiki has been significantly improved and updated. I only hear general complaints that it's not updated, rather than what specifically needs an update.

And finally, I think the fun of the wiki, and the fun for those who contribute, isn't having a detailed changelog. I think it's great to explore the game right as the update comes out, and be one of the first people to document it. And in some respect, I appreciate the wiki for that.

 

I actually find editing the wiki fun, as others can see what I've made and contributed. In my very first days of editing the wiki, it was literally a blast. I have no idea why, but it was. The feeling of contributing to something other people can view is amazing.
Nowadays, I'm almost always lazy, but I do have those times where I feel like editing the wiki every now and then. I (meaning all of those who care) still need to update all the images on the wiki, so that's going to be my (our) next goal. I find it fun, as well, to screenshot places in Wynncraft for them to be on the wiki (Fun fact: I have an entire folder of pictures that need to be cropped and uploaded, about 50 in there right now).

 

Thank you for taking the time to type up responses, it helps a lot!
I was talking about Ryuu when I tagged her (she has a significant amount of recent contributions), and I would've tagged Ryc as well, however it seems that he deleted his forums account.

Some counter-arguements & claims to both colin and Grvph:

• Though many players would enjoy playing and USING rather than CONTRIBUTING to the wiki, if more mentions of the wiki were made, I feel that people could "discover" the wiki; like @Glitch496 said, it can be great fun to find something you know about or can help with, and having everyone else USE your work to help themselves and others. I believe that more official wiki "mentions" would help draw in some contributors.
• The To-Do List and Recent Changes are indeed good places to look for things to do, but the Version History is what I made this thread ABOUT. The logs that the admins give us do not include many changes to things that need to be updated on the wiki. Just by looking at these we do not see which quests are outdated or what new areas need updates or a page.
• I agree with the point made that there is joy in exploring new features or places and being the first to document these changes. However, adding a detailed changelog wouldn't necessarily extinguish this excitement, in my opinion, it would instead support it. Except if you go out and explore, you could know exactly what you want to look for, and it would be an efficient way to discover the changes. EVEN IF the need to explore things was removed with these specific changelogs, there is an inner fuel of someone with a passion, and with that inner fuel it powers an energy to look at things, to experience it firsthand (there are pictures of animals, but everyone still wants to go to the zoo).

It is a pain to check changes for quests by playing them ingame, then going through them on the wiki to see if they are all caught up. With a specific changelog, you could see: "Added new cutscene for Green Gloop quest" and then you could check the page for Green Gloop, and then update if needed. It reduces a lot of tedious work.

 

The first days of editing the wiki were so much fun. I know I can't say that I'm an elder editor or whatever you want to call it since I'm new to the wiki. And I agree that sometimes updating the wiki is not happening because of laziness. I know I fall into this category. As soon as the 1.11.2 update released for Minecraft, I wanted to make a map of it. And because I have wanted to make a map of it, I haven't been on Wynncraft or the wiki in the last few days.

The wiki does obviously need some great help for it, but as you said, "Many hands makes light work." We need help from the community and from the developers if the wiki is going to be an actual database for information about the world of Wynncraft.

I believe the best way to do this is to tell people that it is so easy to contribute to the wiki. Like how I came to the wiki: I noticed that a page needed updating and linking to another page, so all that I did was ask the administrators for permission and now I'm in the wiki community. Because it was so easy for me to contribute to the community, I am now able to sit here and have a valid opinion. For the content team to make specific change logs, it wouldn't take that long, in my opinion. They probably already have their own documentation of all the changes that come with the update, it wouldn't be so hard to share that document. But you might say they wouldn't want to share that information with the public, so don't! Send an email with that information to the most active wiki editors, and then let them update the wiki.

If anyone in the editing community has any ideas not previously mentioned above, please, leave a message down below saying your idea. And to all of the Content Team out there reading this thread and the messages underneath (I know at least one of them is reading this message), make a suggestion to the Head GM and Builders or even someone in the Content Team above you, because this needs to happen for people to feel that there is information out there on everything in Wynncraft.

Remember: The answer's always no to anything you want to ask until you do. Thank you for your time in reading this message.

-RogueHatter

 

I wonder why they don't do this already, unless they purposely don't want us to know things. I support

 

Some things I understand, like easter eggs or mysteries (like the Talking Mushroom or the Clock Mystery), but public changes like updates to quest I think should be put in a concise changelog.

 

I agree specially major changes

 

Yea, easter eggs and other stuff like that can be kept secret, but major stuff should be released to the public, like @CookedPelvis and @chaostitan said.

 

https://forums.wynncraft.com/members/garlek.37037/ @Garlek

 

*cough cough*

 

So, here we go.
I think this is a good thing because the wiki must be a wiki. Not just information about the game, or an unofficial wiki, which this one isn't. We should more frequently use the Recent Changes page, so we can see what people have changed, what to add to it, or revert it because it's wrong or just get informed by what happened, at least. The second thing to do is do things that are on the To-Do List. They range from an important to semi-important (for me) case, and when you do it, it'll improve the wiki. Recently with this coming up, which is the Request Form for non-editors, the wiki can get better more easily. Another thing to do work in the wiki is do the Random Page marathon. What it is is you go to a random page to another one, and fix things that are in the pages from little spelling corrections to big page updates. A good thing to do, and the easiest thing to do is removing the unimportant links in pages that aren't a page, which you can find all of them in the Wanted Pages page. This will make the page so much more useful, and show us what pages are actually needed and what are not. We have much more than enough editors even to finish the wiki, but the problem is that most are inactive. This is why it takes more to do what we would supposed to have done. The only active people I have seen except me are only @RogueHatter, @CookedPelvis and @colin350. It's not even 5% of the editors we have recruited. Not Grian and Salted has to follow this suggestion, but at least mods or an active content team member can give us information for the wiki.

That's all. By the way, thanks to @XavierEXE because I would have no idea to this if I weren't tagged. Last words, if more people could work on the Wanted Pages, it would be useful to the whole wiki and its editors and even non-editors. And with the last sentence I said in the last paragraph, you should change the title from "Complete Changelogs in Updates" to "Give More Information to the Wiki," or "Help the Wiki," or something like those.

 

I agree with you @Garlek. We do have a lot of editors that just aren't active enough to be considered actual editors. I think there isn't a very good and easy way to fix this without asking the Content Team for help with this. Once we get help from them the wiki should be better than before. I also see that on the main https://wynncraft.com/ website, the wiki isn't linked when it probably should be. If it was linked, I bet a lot of people would be helping with the wiki more and using it, making it a bigger deal for the Content Team.

 

My only counter argument is to the Wanted Pages. There are some pages that are on that wanted pages list that as an admin team we have deemed unnecessary. I'm not sure if all of the mobs are removed from that listing, but certainly we don't need every single mob reference. Or we don't need every single miscellaneous item, or every single weapon or armour piece to have its own page. But maybe a good solution is making the todo list more concise so that there is always something that needs to be worked on.

One thing I've noticed is that on pages like: https://wiki.wynncraft.com/index.php?title=Unique all of the unique items in the game aren't listed. So someone could go through an update the table on that page. Or the rare page, or the legendary page.

 

If we have need pages in the Wanted Pages, and it's included in the sidebar (when the clearance is finished) it will be useful for editors if they can't find what to do.