TripleA Wiki (?)

[RogerCooper]

@lafayette The problem with any Wiki is that it is not a database from the point of view of the user. You need to have a lot of discipline when entering categories because of the lack of tools to work with them. You can easily create duplicate categories and you can't search for articles based upon multiple criteria.

For example, in my Wiki every entry in the category "TripleA Scenarios" should also have the category of "Historical", "Hypothetical", "Fictional" or "Abstract" but I have no way of enforcing that.

Furthermore, I can accidentally assign "Triplea Scenarios" as a category and I will not be stopped or warned.

[RogerCooper]

@rogercooper Here is an example of open source project using a wiki, https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page

[LaFayette]

@Alexei-Svitkine / @RoiEX - I'm curious specifically if you two have any thoughts?

The proposal is to move all user, developer & player facing documentation to a wiki. Github wiki would be a natural choice but it is feature under-par and we have rejected its use in the past. The current proposed choices for wiki is between a wiki powered by node.js that we would host, or to use fandom.

Fandom would be nice because we don't have to worry about wiki infrastructure, but the drawback is ads & a one-time cost of changing the wiki markup that we currently have from markdown to an older and more classic wiki markdown syntax.

Hosting our own wiki gives us more control, but we need to manage it. I think we can co-host the wiki on the same server as the forums without any additional server costs, but we would still be hosting our own thing.

[LaFayette]

Side-note, I'm trying to look a bit at different wiki engines.

There are a few things I'm looking at:

• (A) whether images can be pasted from clipboard into the wiki
• (B) automatic table of contents
• (C) clean view of all wiki pages, with nesting so we can group pages
• (D) to a lesser extent, wiki syntax
• (E) able to handle page renames cleanly

So far, wiki.js does not support pasting of images at all, fandom has support but it's not super clean. (nodebb, this forum, does have super clean support to paste images).

I'm thinking to add 'mediawiki' to the mix for a wiki engine to evaluate.

[RogerCooper]

As I use Fandom can I answer some of these questions for Fandom

• (A) whether images can be pasted from clipboard into the wiki
  Yes, but they always have the same name and format. I find it easier to upload the image.
• (B) automatic table of contents
  You can see the tree view structure, but not very well
• (C) clean view of all wiki pages, with nesting so we can group pages
  Wikis are not hiearchical.
• (D) to a lesser extent, wiki syntax
  Easy to view, I often work directly in the wiki code.
• (E) able to handle page renames cleanly
  No problem.

[Dor20]

tripleA is big enough to deserve a wiki. its not that hard if you have a good plan as you said. there are wiki sites with web search traction (potential exposure), but tons of adds. very slow. i think we're better than that. i see our community as an intelligent bunch. (i have experience with wiki organizing - i would have one or a few ppl lay the foundation first.)

[TheDog]

@rogercooper
On Fandom can you control the number of adverts shown, as there are just so many?
They really slows my browser down, to the point it starts to annoy me.

[RogerCooper]

@thedog I have not seen many ads when I use it. Check it out Axis & Allies Wiki

[Ondis]

On a related topic I think what we as players need FAR MORE is a DISCORD server. A place for people to communicate outside of the game that isnt like the "old" forum heh. Where folks can organize games, post screenshots, memes about world war 2, discuss history, etc.

EDIT:If you mean a Wikipedia focusing on modding, development and map making then I'm sure that could be a great resource if you like the Wiki-format. I just dont know enough about it to fully comment!

[jkprince]

@ondis there is https://discord.gg/PRtexuSprq already, but it's not very active