This is not meant to stir the pot. I’m genuinely curious to see how others are faring browsing the wiki for new content, as it stands I couldn’t imagine posting a creation of my own there due to how awful it is to navigate. I fear anything new being posted there will just be lost and go unnoticed by an already niche community.
The lack of communication and feedback there as well makes it all feel cold and disconnected. What are we doing here?
I feel like a page that explains how to use the wiki would be good (I kinda wish sites in general had a “how to use this site” button). like unless you are searching by tags you aren’t really gonna find anything. but that also means that stuff has to be tagged and that we don’t have 4 different tags for the same thing (being able to OR and NOT a tag would also be nice)
the full games list should also have some way to sort by date (the other sorts that are available for tags would also be good). otherwise I feel like we might get a telephone book thing where every game is called acme
I think the game directory is good. Having a template, with a place for a gallery and a sidebar and a standard layout for common information and links is useful. I admit that figuring out how to upload images took me an embarrassingly long time. (The file-uploader dialogue box appears at the side of the screen, not in the “embed image” dialogue box.) So yes, a “how to use this site” would be nice.
So I think it’s better for organising games. But for news and discussion it’s essential to link back to the forum.
Well, there are reasons for the whole “Patreon effort” and this is one of them.
See this post for more details: Weight Gaming Patreon Fundraiser - #75
I didn’t want to say it, but, I very much agree. There’s no way to sort content or find content based on categories or tags, that I can find. Navigating it seems to depend on scrolling through everything in a big list on a page and seems to lack a robust search or filtering. It also seems as if adding listings requires you to modify the page that everyone else’s stuff is on to add your own. It seems slightly better than it was last time I looked, but not by much. In my opinion, the biggest thing missing is tags for different kinds of content and types of games that this site has.
The situation is somewhat cursed by design, unfortunately. So long as there aren’t enough moderators to handle new project discussion, the clunkiness of the wiki can serve as an impromptu rate limiter.
yeah i cant make heads or tails of how to navigate it. not to mention wikis arent great for letting people know your project updated - or if a new project was recently made and added.
As the person currently most active on the wiki, I can offer a little insight in what’s going on at the moment over there.
Currently I’m mostly at work getting some game pages up and going, and trying to get some consistency though all the pages. Mostly in an effort to get a default in new games may follow. (Though it still has its flaws, I do think I’m at least heading the right direction with that one, I’ll call it a work-in-progress) → do give me a heads up if anything feels broken on that though. I’m aware I’m missing a few bits here and there, as well as some poor choices on wording certain things.
It’s true that browsing the actual games hasn’t gotten quite enough attention yet, I’ll go and make that a bit more of a priority to set up. I do want to put up a way to find new content, as well as updated content.
As for searching the tags, also working on that. I’ll be going through the games manually to make sure the tags are consistent at some point. I just need to figure out what games need what tags.
As communication and feedback goes.. yeah, should probably make a post on that soon. Thank you for getting me started though!
Should also be noted I have been working with @Izzyao in the back ground on some possible improvements to the wiki since they have been one of the most active users on it atm.
Once thing we have discussed is the issue with the index page. It is quite unwieldy and I do see people making entries but forgetting to update it meaning you can only find it by looking with the directory view. I do have some plans to setup a cron that will run periodically and automatically regenerate the index page in the future but my focus atm is the main site and forum/mod reorg so will be a bit until I can consider getting to it.
The biggest issue atm is the wiki is just starting to get some use so I plan to make any adjustments that are reasonable or within my power to do so as I see pain points come up. So if anyone has any issue or suggestions feel free to state them here or in a new topic. I will be keeping an eye out and taking notes about where I can improve the wiki where able.
Also, as a quick side note there is a last modified sort in the brows by tag page which I think should work for what you want, unless you are asking about created date.
This page seems to be hard to access from mobile though which is a bit annoying.
After the index page generation is finished I may look into possibly expanding the functionality of this page with some of your suggestions since I am more familiar with the tech behind wikijs then discourse so its much easier for me to make changes there if needed.
I was talking about this list since it has the most games. though this might just be a problem now because a lot of games pages doesn’t have tags yet
also doesn’t the “Creation Date” button not work properly or did you just miss that it exists?
I just missed that lol and ya we are a bit limited on the index pages.
I may be able to do something custom there eventually but its not an easy lift as for safety reasons you can not just run JS code on those wiki pages so it would require me to see about creating a fully custom page and linking the index to that which not 100% on how feasible that might be within the wikijs framework.
Ill make sure to note it down for looking into though when I can.
Maybe I’m missing something here but if you put a field/section/whatever for last updated on each page then when sorting by last modified fairly easy to check if a game has been updated or it was just the page content. Admittedly this relies on this section being updated with latest release. Alternatively, it could be in the game’s title. Which again has the drawback of it needs to be updated - but that’s true of anything on a wiki as I understand it. Either way - I’m really just suggesting this as a temporary measure until something more robust can be put in place.
Currently at work on a new games page, even if maybe temporary. it’s still unfinished, a little wonky and inconsistent in places, and some information I want and need is still missing. but I’m going to bed. I’ll finish up on some things there tomorrow.
It won’t automatically update, but I’m taking that on me. so just assume it updates once in a while.
if you guys can give me a heads up if this way might be more useful to browse, I’d appreciate it.
Linked for your convenience: Games | Weight Gaming Community Wiki
Wiki entries can now easily display by the creation or update date? We’re getting spoiled! Thanks!
Does Weight Gaming have a Discord? A “forum” style channel on one of those may be quite helpful, either as a companion to the wiki (as somewhere default to communicate with devs) or as the game “listing” itself, with built-in conversational capabilities.
yeah there is a discord invite link at the top bar thing. I remember someone suggesting something like this on the future of the site thread (or maybe it was on the discord while that thread was new). I don’t remember if they said anything if they would want to do something like that or not
It has been discussed but currently views on its usefulness from the devs I talked to seem mixed. For most of the devs I have talked with WG is really important for driving traffic to their games as well as gathering feedback for them.
Since discord servers are “closed” by nature (wont show up on a google search basically) devs more concerned with discoverability and driving traffic to their games have concerns with that method. While devs more concerned with feedback think it could be more useful, but some dont see why they wouldn’t make their own discord at that point.
Generally speaking we are keeping it as an option if we end up winding down the forum, but it would be in conjunction with the wiki instead of an alternative for it.
