Initial thoughts about a MERPwiki

Well, since no one has written anything here yet, I will start by sharing a few thoughts:

My dream is to create a Wiki-style database of Middle-earth aimed at gamemasters. This would include an atlas, bestiary, character and culture descriptions, city layouts, etc. Where appropriate, each entry would also include RPG stats (hopefully for a couple of gaming systems).

The most detailed account of Middle-earth yet to have be created is found in the ICE modules and the subsequent fan modules. During the last years, I have collected and systemized quite a lot of the information found in this material (about 5000 entries so far).

I'm still considering if merp.com would be the best place to start creating such a wiki of Middle-earth. Some potential problems:

1) will the Wiki system on merp.com be capable of sorting entries into categories? For example, you might want to get a list of all rivers in Arda in alphabetical order, or you might want to get a list of just all the rivers in Rhovanion.

2) How do we deal with a world that changes over time?  Should we write the entry descriptions in past or present tense? Ice MERP is focused on the mid-third age, and IMHO I think we should stick to this in the MERPwiki. Another idea would be to add a temporal marker to each entry - consider for example Minas Anor/Minas Tirith.

3) Let's say we are a couple of people who spend a lot of time on creating a MERPwiki on merp.com. Would it then be possible to make a backup of all that information? What if the site suddenly is forced to close down because of legal, financial, or any other reason? All the time devoted to create the wiki would be a waste. 

Sorry about the pessimistic undertones, but I just think it's important to sort a few things before you start devoting a lot of time on a project.

I happened to publish this message twice - perhaps the admin could delete the double?

Cleaned up.

Meanwhile, in response to your posting, some thoughts...

Sounds great about the detailed wiki, that is definitely what we've had in mind all along, and that it be as multi-game-system as possible. it is very important we keep trying to break out of the assumption that we only support the dead ICE MERP system, we support ANY RPG system that is Tolkien-based.

There are two major choices to make on the wiki issue. Either an integrated wiki that is all part of the same main site, or a separated wiki. The advantage of the integrated wiki is only one login, consistent permissions, and layout. The downside is that so far, the only passable wiki product for plone is Zwiki. We need to play around with it and be in close contact with it's developers, to answer you questions as to it's features. They might very well even code specific features in since we're a large enough site. I have a regular rapport with one of their development team in their IRC chatroom. So if the feature isn't there, they might create it for us.

The other alternative is just to use the mediawiki software and host it as a separate server as we have done here for evaluation: http://wiki.merp.com

The upside is that it is very familiar to wikipedia users (same software), and if wikipedia has the features, then this site running wikimedia, will have it too. The downside is that it is a completely different software/server setup, that it uses PHP (an inherently insecure and poorly designed scripting language), and that it doesn't have any login integration with the main website (we can tweak the UI to look the same of course).

I would suggest trying out the zwiki part with just a few of your entries, and then see if the functionality you desire is there. If not, then we can talk to the developers about it. If it is too onerous, and too far away to have those features, then we can fall back to the wikimedia option. Or any other options that might come up.

How does that sound?

As for the backups, we do keep backups synchronized to other locations, so unless the physical servers were seized in three completely different locations and a coupld different countries simultaneously, the data would never be lost. As we get more mirroring hosting back online, the redundancy will imrpve that much more. So let me at least allay your concerns about he work being lost, that won't happen from a legal harrassment standpoint. From a technical servers issue, we do need to get regular backups running more frequently, currentlly they are only haphazardly run about once per month. We would like to get the backups to be once per week full backups, with differential backups on a daily/nightly basis (you restore the last week one, then restore the differentials), this is a compromise between ease of restore, and bandwidth/server/resource consumption. We have the infrastructure in place to do it, but just need someone to turn on the scripts, and keep an on eye the backup servers in case any errors occur.

As for the time setting, I would strongly suggest that we use your suggested categorization for that as well. For example a category for ICE MERP 1600 time settings, versus other settings (ICE MERP did also do late third age and fourth age (And a smattering of other) times). Plus there are a number of projects working now in the second and first age (Ea RPG for one). So I definitey don't think we should limit the wiki to any one time setting, we just need to figure out a formatting approach that makes it easy to discern which times settings it fits in. It could be multiple settings. Again, that is a cagegorization feature.

I will ask the Zwiki folks if there is any such way to categorize the wiki data, and post back here, since that sounds like a show stopper for using zwiki.

Your thoughts?

Cheers!

Here is the link to the zwiki documentation section:

http://zwiki.org/FrontPage#documentation

If you want to join their chatroom, they are VERY responsive there:

It is the Freenode network (irc.freenode.net or accessible via tor at mejokbp2brhw4omd.onion)  in the chatroom #zwiki

They suggested WikiBadges for categories here: http://zwiki.org/WikiBadges

They also mention considering turning on dtml in the wiki as well:

http://zwiki.org/QuickReference

Also some other links they suggested:

http://zwiki.org/FrontPage/wikiindex

http://zwiki.org/FrontPage/wikistats

Additional comments in the chatroom: "sm> you can only have one outline structure, but you can have any number of wikibadges (like tags)"

"<sm> no problem using them together, as long as you have your system clear in your mind"

"zwiki.org, wiki.zope.org/zope2 and wiki.zope.org/zope3 are examples of some large zwikis"

<sm> did you try the control -  key to switch off the plone skin ?
<sm> power editors may appreciate that sometimes

Hey guys,

Just an art guy here, but as a role-player I think the problem with the middle-earth setting has always been knowing where to start. Maybe the entries could be organized in such a way that the person looking through the material (setting up a campaign, researching an adventure) can jump to the relevance of the place in each age (i.e. Mountains of Lhun in the first age, being the eastern border of Beleriand, in the third the westernmost mountains on middle-earth. So perhaps instead of committing to a chronology, just filet the information within the entry by age? Just a thought

If it will work, what I am suggesting, is letting the wiki entry be as normal (by the topic of the item), but where there are variants between location and/or time setting, list the categories it fits into (wiki badge?). For example, something like (making this up totally).

Race 1  (category race/culture)

Found in locations x, y, z (categories x, y, and z).

Only available in Second and Thirday age (categories SA and TA).

.....etc.....

Assuming that's even do-able, would that work? That way, when you are in a region and/or time, you should see a listing of entries that match that location/time. Thoughts? Would that fit what you're thinking of?

And of course, there are always just simply using WikiCategories:

http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiCategories

Your thoughts Morgan? (and others).

FYI. Going to change from Zwiki 1 to Zwiki 2 for testing. The developers of Zwiki indicate they are finished developing for Zwiki 1, and all effort is now in Zwiki 2. So I am going to have us try out 2. If it is too buggy, we'll go back to Zwiki 1. With Zwiki 2 they are much more likely to meet our needs if we request things, and any issues that come up, they can address quickly. I'll an announcement when the Zwiki2 software is in place. In theory you won't see an real change, until you start doing edits.

Previously Merp.com Admin wrote:

They suggested WikiBadges for categories here: http://zwiki.org/WikiBadges 

Aha!  Tags.  That makes me happy.
   There's still room for confusion in working up the ICE material, e.g. given the way a town map for a TA 1640 setting might often come with the footnote that it can in fact be used for any period.  But we can employ a Tags system as simple or as complex as we like.

Cheers,
--Os.

PS Am I meant to see a Retract button on the panel for every other user's posts?
(I haven't risked clicking on any of these yet.)

Previously Merp.com Admin wrote:

I would suggest trying out the zwiki part with just a few of your entries, and then see if the functionality you desire is there. If not, then we can talk to the developers about it. If it is too onerous, and too far away to have those features, then we can fall back to the wikimedia option. Or any other options that might come up.

How does that sound?

Sounds great! There is not any hurry, so I will definitely see what zwiki has to offer in terms of functionality, and to see if it's possible perhaps to add certain missing funtions.

Regarding the retract button, those of us on the Volunteer team have some higher level privieleges than the average user for moderation. I should probably tighten that up over time, but for now I'm not too worried.

 How are things going on this? Anyone had any time to experiment? You can create an instance of a Wiki in your own folder easily. Try it out, so we can get going on the main Wiki soon.

Discuss here.

Cheers!

well to be honest I´m quite happy with the wiki you made here:

http://wiki.merp.com

...it should be easy to add content if we can agree which categories to use and how we treat content from the MERP canon to distinguish it from probable content from Other Hands and fan Modules contributions... (I think also the house of fire Zine and the elendor Mush and ME Play by mail games draw from the Merp canon...)

It would be good maybe as a starting point just to start listing each of the ICE MERP and Decipher LotR modules maybe?

yes, that would be a good point to start.If every module had it´s own article that could include indices of the characters, places etc. that appear in the module, which then could lead to further articles.

Well, how about we get rolling on that?

I can't start for about another 2 weeks, then my schedule will open up mostly for the summer. I would like to have this new version of merp.com launched before MerpCon V (July 23rd) if at all possible.

I'll be able to start contributing here in 2-4 weeks.

Hopefully others can get started sooner?

Let's add a litle structure to it. Each person may take on one book at a time initially, so we don't end up simultaneously posting the same book.

I recommend we handle it by posting in these forums, stating something like "I am about to post ICE 8000 MERP Rules 1st Edition". Then post when you have finished posting what you are going to post for the day, so that others can add/amend your posting.

Then on to the next item, post just before, and just after starting, and stopping.

Sound ok? Or too much overhead?

I will be starting up in about 2 weeks, maybe sooner.

Cheers!

when will the wiki be put up?