One Year Anniversary
Today the wiki is officially one year old. One year since that “Create a Wiki” button was pressed, one year since the first edit was made and one year since the first page was created. During these one years we have accomplished an enormous amount of work and I thought today would be a nice time to feedback on all that was done. We will be looking at the progress in a couple different ways but the most important part is that at the end there will be a small questionnaire, which we would love if you could fill out. Feedback is key to a wiki and yours would be greatly appreciated. So, without further a due, onwards!
Visual ProgressThe Wiki doesn’t only aim to collect all the information concerning the Edain Mod but it also aims to present it in a suitable manner. If that wasn’t the case we could just copy paste the content of the game files and call it a day, but that wouldn’t be much fun for anybody. Therefore, we first draw out the required information and then display it on page that change over time as we think of better designs or add more information. Below are a couple examples of before and after which truly show what the wiki was and what it has become.
Main PageOf course, we can’t start this without looking at the main page first. It’s the most important page providing a home base for newcomers to then go to wherever they like. It’s the first age we present when advertising the wiki and it also contains mains links to other platforms of the mod. The Main Page has had 3 distinct version which are all linked and listed here:
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Main Page V1.0: This is now the table of content, not much welcome, a lot of text and just in general a terrible and extremely long structure.
-Main Page V2.0: A temporary fix displaying a welcome message and a more visual organization. In addition, it provided the bases for the third edition of the main page. It was a nice page but wasn’t compact enough, providing too little unique information over too much space. It was permanently deleted to avoid clouding the wiki with an unused page but it looked a bit like the current version expect that it was still too long.
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Main Page V3.0: This is the latest (and current) version of the main page. It is one of the best designs, providing compact navigation along with other various other more trivial information which make the wiki feel… alive. I believe this is the version that will most likely stay the longest but it might eventually get overhauled.
It would have been nice if we had the main page 2.0 since it would have provided a nice transition between the first and final edition but a lot has changed on the wiki and restoring the page would just render a mess of deleted pictures, improper formatting and broken templates.
Faction PagesThis one we can’t display, faction pages are just much too long to include in a single screenshot but I will include links to old revision although you won’t be able to see the old color scheme. Overall, the faction pages lost very little and rather always gained more with their content tables evolving from:
Links:
Erebor:
Old Revision and
Current PageEred Luin:
Old Revision and
Current PageLorien:
Old Revision and
Current PageArnor:
Old Revision and
Current PageAlthough I’m sure that couple screenshots from when they were created might provide a couple giggles:
Visual progress isn’t all, while it is the most easily assessed it is also a shallow perspective, nothing beat the statistical progress. The Statistical progress shows the impact that a wiki has been making on its community and is to my eyes one of the most important, for all things are bound to die out without a community.
Statistical Progress This isn’t the first time that this has been done. We did it 6 months ago at a low activity point to show the progress we had made, but let me show you how much more progress we have done. As usual, I have put all the wiki stats into various graphs and discussed them below. The graphs are only here to give everybody a better understanding of how the wiki progresses. They are even essential to us since it is sometimes hard to see the big picture when you’re in the middle of the some big edit. Having a big visual graph to help us understand the effect of our contributions.
EditsBefore I get into in the analysis part I wanted to explain how exactly edits are counted. One Edit is counted every time somebody submits their changes made to a page, it doesn't base the number of edits on the amount of stuff changed, which isn't the best idea if you asked but like that the system can't be abused. So, what is there to see on this graph? Well, not much actually. Because of the scale of the edits the line itself is almost straight with only minor spikes from time to time due merely to the number of people that had time to edit the wiki, not because of any specific reason.
Pages are all pages that don't have a prefix. For example all the template pages will have "Template:" as a prefix and therefore won't be counted. This allows us to really only include pages that are purely to document features of the mod. This one is more interesting but still quite simple, the firt six month I have already explained so I won't reiterate but the next six are interesting. First of all, its clear that once we completed the wiki with the currently released factions it all slowed down a lot, even decreasing when we shifted the dwarven hero pages. And finally it peaked again when we created pages for all the building bringing us to the total of 434 pages that we have today.
The last is files, this one has had one of the greatest increases because of the new quote system. Previously they would be linked from another website but with the new template they are uploaded directly to the wiki. This number should rise rapidly over the course of the next month and reach new heights as all the quotes will be uploaded to the wiki.
Both the visual and statistical progress are great ways to look at the entire picture but they lack the a certain time frame, everything is the same and nothing is really explained on how they get there. Which is why the third way we are going to look at this is the chronological order, supported by some images
Chronological ProgressThe wiki was created on the 6th of January 2016, a year ago. But it didn’t instantly become what it is now, many things happened along the way that changed the way it looked and changed the way it was displayed. Many events happened and we will attempt to list all those that can be remembered:
- Creation Wiki including the first few pages and the basic structure
- The first few faction pages appear in their rough shape
- The first few Java scripts appear opening new possibilities for the wiki in terms of presentation of the information
- The Merge Project is discussed (eventually succeeding and merging both the more ancient wiki and this new one)
- The factions pages are all completed giving birth to the first draft of the wiki
- Main Page 2.0 released
- The first “Monthly Massive Wiki News Post” appears, becoming the wiki’s news system
- The 100 pages mark is reached
- Mordor and Lorien pages completed
- Main Page 3.0 released
- The 200 pages mark is reached
- Navboxes added to all pages
- Spellbook overhauled and spellbook template introduced
- Arnor Page completed
- The 300 pages mark is reached
- All faction pages are complete
- Half a year reflection news post
- Imladris is completed
- Wiki Color Theme Overhaul
- Formation of the Wiki Team
- The Wiki moves its forum to MU
- The 400 pages mark is reached
- All buildings are added pushing the number of wiki pages to 434
At this point most of the post is simply old news, things that have been known for months now. Nothing more than blowing off the dust from old news posts and sandwiching it with some fancy words, but the fun part comes next: the future.
The FUTURE!So, what’s next? The list goes on, we have many plans for the future and many ideas for plans. Some plans are even in progress as we speak a couple future plans that can be revealed are:
The Audio Quotes ProjectA simple project, the goal is to look into the game files and find all the quotes used by the heroes and units and, using a simple script, convert them into clickable audio files which users can listen to on a whim and at any time. A subproject of this task includes finding the origin of all the audio file such as Cirdan’s (Markus Aurelius from “Gladiator” and Dumbledore from “Harry Potter”) or Theodred’s (Maximus from “Gladiator”). A fun project, even more so since recent discoveries have allowed a very efficient system to be installed on the wiki. The previous system was quite heavy on the viewer’s browser resulting in a laggy navigation for even the strongest of computers
The Buildings ProjectThe Buildings Project is a recent addition which aims to do what we did with units and heroes to the buildings of each faction. They will each get a page with a description, an infobox containing pictures for all their models and function of the building. It's a short little project but definitely adds on to the wiki.
QuestionnaireFeedback from the community is very important to the wiki, the entire concept of the wiki is based on a community slowly building its own database, but that doesn’t exclude some dedicated users giving it a little ‘push’. But I just have a couple questions about different aspects of the wiki and your thoughts on it. The Questionnaire is actually just a poll but the questions are explained in depth below, just makes it easier for everyone. Now because of how the polls are set up your will get a certain number of votes and you just have to spend one on each questions, for the most precision please only spend one vote per questions. The answers are always the same but the questions will differ.
Answers:
A) Visual Aspect (units models, the different units textures, hero models, visual effect of spells and abilities). This includes pretty much everything that can be seen in the mod, if you have any more ideas make sure to post them down below.
B)Audible Aspect (more hero and unit quotes, crowd response quote, spell and abilities sounds, building sounds) This includes pretty much everything that can be heard in the mod, if you have any more ideas make sure to post them down below.
C)Mechanical Aspect (expanding the game mechanics page, finding out all the numbers for the effect of abilities, finding hidden mechanics) This includes the game play itself and the balance of the mod.
D)Other bits (eastereggs, community creations, members of the ET, expanding the functionality of the wiki) Everything that isn't directly related to the mod pretty much. If you have any ideas, especially for this one, make sure to post them.
QuestionsQ1. What aspect of the mod would you like the wiki to expand on?
A)Audible Aspect
B)Visual Aspect
C)Mechanical Aspect
D)Other bits
Q2. What aspect of the mod would you like the wiki to improve on?
A)Audible Aspect
B)Visual Aspect
C)Mechanical Aspect
D)Other bits
Q3. What aspect do you prefer on the wiki?
A)Audible Aspect
B)Visual Aspect
C)Mechanical Aspect
D)Other bits
Just head to the top and select one answer for each question. Thanks for your feedback!
With that final thing I bid thee farewell, it has been an interesting 12 month and I can't wait to see what the next 12 bring. We await them with a firm foot and eagerness, one last round of applauses and thanks for all those that have helped me and... curtain.
