Unreal Wiki talk:MediaWiki conversion

Many thanks for this much-needed page. At the risk of suggesting what's already in progress, I do have a further concern. While the problems that we face are easily grasped, the solution seems a little... missing.

As far as I can gather, we're to move into the common area content that's been shelved, fitting said content into an unfinished structure that Wormbo has tucked away in his secret underground lair somewhere, all the while dodging the fact that the old content is licensed in a fashion completely irreconcilable with the new site.

This is marginally better than the migration strategy to date, which seems to have been 'turn everything on it's end, tinker with it in our WalledGarden and explain what happened later'.

I can't grasp how a course so contrary to wiki itself (as well as any progress that, given a better strategy, might have been going on right now) could have seemed like a good idea. Our most valuable resource is standing agape, scratching its collective head. For a site built on the idea that content is the result of the common user's effort, this is a most unfortunate "plan".

I don't mean to make trouble, but rather to illustrate what a counter-intuitive task we've before us. Please understand that I would like nothing better than to get to work. All I need is a signpost that says "start here". Where is it? —Graphik 06:03, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

The only "structure" so far is the category system, which is still very incomplete so far. I only really worked on a way to make class browsing easier. The main page, some general guideline pages in the project namespace and a few help pages are also there, but those should probably be considered as a suggested layout. I didn't expect Haarg to switch over to the MediaWiki version that quickly and for me the final switch happened at an unfortunate time. My online time during the week is quite limited and on weekends I don't really have enough time to compensate for that. The new wiki definitely needs a lot of work, especially in the field of guidelines and topic structure.

I can only really speak for the UnrealScript part, but people have been complaining about the lack of tutorials as opposed to reference information. Also, the old Unreal Wiki did not separate the different games and engine versions too well. Often links point to pages about different UnrealEd versions and people wondered why stuff didn't work when they tried to do it.

Your "start here" signpost probably the Project:Task list, which is also linked from the Project:Community Portal. I guess "establish a good topic structure" is the first thing we should be working on, though I have to admit I don't know enough about the parts not related to coding to actually come up with something useful there. That's why I concentrated on the programming part.

On a side note: I'm working on a new class wikifier with pretty neat output, so we should soon have at least the complete set of class pages for UT, UT200x and UT3, maybe also for the UE2 Runtime. I'm still wondering about what to do for UT2003 vs UT2004 as there would be a lot of duplication, but suggestions are welcome. -Wormbo 07:17, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, we've heard about the problems of the old structure: lack of discretion in the various engine/game versions, missing tutorials, duplicate material, etc. (Part of me says, "Welcome to wiki space!") But, by the same token, let's turn a (positive) critical eye on this conversion and the lack of structure or plan. As it is now, unless you go through the old pages, this wiki appears much, much less useful than it did before April 1st. Let's not loose sight of the fact that most web-users do not read as carefully as one might wish, so those subtle links to Legacy content are just not as useful as one might believe. The conversion has forced us to forget the past, so let's turn our attention to the future. I strongly suggest active contributors make it a top priority to establish a new structure that will improve on the old, one that will not draw criticism and calls for ... another conversion. The longer this wiki sits in its current state, the more likely it seems that the Unreal community will turn away, rather than help contribute again. And let's face it, an enormous amount of work to be done, the wiki needs all the help it can get. -SuperApe 09:16 (PST), 16 April 2008

So to summarize what I'm pulling together from various comments and pages, we're to

1. build an organizational structure and toss it around until it's to our liking, and
2. fill it with content that can be loosely based on — but not directly extracted from — the legacy content;

in other words, start over. Am I right? Give me the green light and I'll start clicking and typing. —Graphik 20:24, 16 April 2008 (UTC) That is the plan in the long term, but for now, I also want to link in the Legacy on the main page and other parts of the primary navigation structure. – Haarg 05:02, 17 April 2008 (UTC)