Birthright wiki

[Arjan]

Hi all,
I am tossing with the idea to make a wiki site of BR.net. that way everyone can add/edit stuff to the site as you can do with the wikipedia sites.

what do you all think of this idea?

If no or other, pls tell us why or what

[Arjan]

added little info on whats a wiki

"A Wiki or wiki (pronounced "wicky" or "weekee") is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that allows a user to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows that content to be edited by any other user." -- from Wikipedia.

So why a Birthright Wiki? As you're going through looking for information, if you see something that's incorrect, you can correct it. If you see any information that's missing, you can add it. This way, the information here should be as up to date as possible, instead of having to wait for a small group to update the information as the game changes. The more people who use the Wiki, the more up to date the information will be.

[geeman2000]

I love the idea of some sort of wiki.birthright site. I don't personally know much about how that software works or website design stuff in general for that matter, but for such a project I'd be happy to learn, so if there's a need for volunteers I'm the kid going, "ooh! ooh!" in the front row.

Gary

[Satchkep45]

I also like the idea, but don't know how we would go about doing it, a look at my birthright website (http://www.geocities.com/satchkep45/satchkep.html) shows that I'm not really a programming expert. However, I would be more than willing to help add stuff to it and fix it up.

[Danip]

Great idea.

As an example of a wiki check out Wikipedia's entry for the BR setting,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_%28campaign_setting%29 This entry itself could use more additions.

[akalars]

I think having a wiki for birthright would be very nice. It would make it easier to find the information as well as to contribute.

Configuring and seting up the wiki in it self is not a very difficult task, neither is learning how to use one. There is also the question of which wiki software to use. I think moinmoin is a good choice. I have used it for simelar projects with great success. It has good search functionality, RSS feed for recentchanges, access controll on page level as well as default acl.


For a br wiki to function at its best we would have to add all the stuff that has been made so far to the wiki, that would require a significant amount of time. Alot can be cut and pasted, but tables and so forth might have to be recreated.

[irdeggman]

After reading the wiki entry for BR something crossed my mind. . .

Birthright is not OGC so any use of campaign specific terminology is not "technically" allowed. Things like Anureans, Brechts, etc., are campaign specific and "copyright protected" material. Which is why the SRD doesn't contain things like FR deities or the proper names of many spells (BIgby for instance).


We, as the "Official fansite", have more leeway on this. I don't think that WotC will have trouble with wiki stuff as long as not tto much material from 2nd ed is not posted thus rendereing their copyright material pretty much void.

Just being "anal" this morning.

[ausrick]

Usually, it seems game developers get more bent out of shape about the game play related details (holding levels, specific rules, etc), or straight out rips of their information being shared, then they do about discussions on characters, history, fluff, etc. Thats just what I've noticed, and the SRD actually functions opposite to that normal assumption. Irdeggman is right to advise caution.

However, I think a Wiki would be a great thing to have. The amount of information that would be available and the ease of its use would be indespensible to DM's.

I have always wondered about Wiki's, though, how they always seem to contain such good information being that any one can seem to edit them. I just don't have that positive of an outlook on the community orientedness of mankind, mixed with the anonimity of the internet. If anyone who has had experience with wiki's would want to enlighten me on this seeming anomaly I would much appreciate it.

[Arjan]

Although we have quite some freedom, we have to be carefull indeed on how we set it up too. clear seperation between fan created and published material. And foremost leave the original info intact (ie not killing the gorgon and tuarhievel cleaned brechtur of any humans etc..)
WotC does encourage fans to create their own stuff to simply keep the setting alive.

This poll was just to see how the community stands towards the idea of an wiki before i go into implementation details at all.
But so far the results are beyond my expectations

[Sorontar]

I am one of the moderators for a wiki primarily related to a medieval club at http://cunnan.sca.org.au/wiki/Main_Page. The bulk of what I need to do (other than normal editing) is removal of vandalism (i.e. rubbish edits) and spam (i.e urls being added to unrelated pages). Most of the time this is no problem, but sometimes it can take a while to cleanup the pages. Yesterday, I removed one piece of vandalism and undid one piece of editing which I believed to be incorrect.

One of the key things that we find need to be done for this wiki is identifying globalisation and localisation. For the medieval club, our problem is the international nature of the club, which means that terms and practices aren't quiet universal. I think this will also be an issue for a BR wiki. By globalisation, I mean entries that are good for everyone, e.g. a new awnshegh, new shadow spells, new magical items/relics. By localisation, I mean entries that only work because they are tailored to your campaign, e.g. new rules, redefining an existing NPC, redefining anything in the BRCS. For a BR wiki, we will have to make sure that editors don't take the view that "what works for me, must certainly work for everyone-else". Otherwise, it may be a very confusing wiki.

Likewise, a basic set of rules and expectations should be set down in the early stages. For instance, can private campaigns write their own pages? Should any pages relating to these campaigns be marked or categorised in some way? If anything is quoted from the BRCS, should it have a certain format? Are certain pages locked so that only moderators can edit them? Should all BRCS-related pages be locked? How will we differentiate AD&D entries vs D&D3.5 entries?

Does anyone know of any large scale wikis for any other campaign setting?

Sorontar.

[Arjan]

The only "large scale" i have found so far is http://www.wowwiki.com/Main_Page

[akalars]

One way of organizing a wiki like this would be to have one “official” version of the world, and have things that are not part of that world as sub pages/categories. For instance the page called Haelyn would be the “official” version while “Some_Campaign_Name/Haelyn” or “Alternative/Haelyn” are the other versions. That would make it easy to distinguish what is the “official” version.

Locking pages is in my opinion not a god idea since it might discourage people from contributing if they meet pages they can not edit at every turn, but it might be necessary to lock some pages that are considered completed or that have become a part of a editing “war.” It is anyway important that we have the option to lock down certain pages, so we should be sure to chose a software that suports it.

Other wiki sites often have a talk page connected to each and every page so that changes can be suggested on that talk page and commented on before the main page is edited.

[Arjan]

Other wiki sites often have a talk page connected to each and every page so that changes can be suggested on that talk page and commented on before the main page is edited.

theres a connection script available for vBulletin which creates a new thread on the forum when a page is made and shares the registered users

[Arjan]

One way of organizing a wiki like this would be to have one “official” version of the world, and have things that are not part of that world as sub pages/categories. For instance the page called Haelyn would be the “official” version while “Some_Campaign_Name/Haelyn” or “Alternative/Haelyn” are the other versions. That would make it easy to distinguish what is the “official” version.

i was thinking about 3-4 different section
* original setting information (* depending if we may publish holding info etc)
* extended projects like the Atlas and BRCS 3.5e
* Homebrew
(* perhaps an section on PbEM's)

*all is in depending for what we may publish from WotC.
I have contacted good'ol Rich again to see whos the legal contact for us official sites. He going to find it out, until then well have to wait.

[Lee]

I would like to second the notion that one could post the "official" version of things, and then link to variations. In essence, each poster could say, "Well, in my campaign, it works like this ..."

Lee.

[geeman]

Well, so far this looks like it's about as close to a consensus as we could hope for. I guess that's not really surprising since the question is really whether or not we should have an additional BR resource and forum. The issue itself hasn't really been fleshed out entirely, but I think the BR community is pretty well informed about what this kind of effort would require. At least the responses so far seem to indicate that participants understand this isn't just a simple undertaking, so on the whole I'm pretty confident about the poll. In the long run I think it's a very good idea since it would both help the 3e BR design guys, provide a forum for their efforts and allow those who don't want to be formally involved in the project to still have a voice in its development.

That said, I am curious what the concerns are of the folks who have dissented in this poll. Pardon me if this takes the poll/thread a little further down the road than was intended, but why not have a wikibirthright site? From what I can tell there are a few issues.

First, there is the issue of the website itself. There are the typical problems with finding a webspace provider, address, etc. In this particular case there would appear to be some software that needs to get set up. I have contributed from time to time to various wikis and I can attest to the ease of that process. It's not as easy as, say, writing a post to a message board or composing email, but it's not substantially more difficult than that. The additional "difficulty" is really just a depth of utility. That is, the software allows one to create links, add graphics, etc. and one has to figure out how to do that. That's not really a "complexity" issue, per se, it's just a matter of travelling up the not-so-steep learning curve.

Second, there is the concern that a wikibirthright site might somehow replace or otherwise diminish the quality/content of a full-fledge BR update pdf. I think that is a pretty likely possibility, to be honest. A wiki site can be updated more quickly, easily and frequently than could a pdf, even a very diligently produced one with a full-time staff. A pdf has a certain "final product" feel to it, so replacing that pdf with a series of web pages might not strike some folks as a good alternative. Printing out articles that are constantly updated isn't very practical, and not everyone wants to game with a computer in front of them so they can refer to the campaign material on-line. That's especially problematic for those of us who don't necessarily take anything as cant and want to rule on things in our homebrews. To me, this is a "six of one, half-dozen of the other" kind of issue. I can see the argument both ways. Interactivity versus a finished product. The benefits and the defects of a wikibirthright site balance out in this regard, but others might not see it that way.

Third, there is the issue of copyright and what kinds of things can be allowed in a such a resource. WotC still owns the original materials and they could take issue with the production of material in a wiki site. On the whole, I think the combination of standard, fair-use rules and the birthright.net mandate to produce "official" material derivative of the original 2e texts should more than adequately cover this problem, but some guidelines for the production of articles would have to be hammered out and included in a set of conduct rules.

The last major problem I see is the issue of vandalism to the site itself. I'm sure that there is going to be some sort of vandalism to the site. Wiki software makes changing text easy to do by design and eventually one runs into a destructive person who derives pleasure from that kind of thing. However, it appears the wiki software is dynamic enough that it is difficult to be truly destructive in the long term. Articles can be quickly rebuilt and restored. Because of that a vandal has to be not just a jerk, but a dedicated jerk to have a lasting effect. Otherwise his vandalism will not outlast the contributions of those who participate on the site.

In order to deal with that issue a bit, however, I would suggest that (if the wiki software will allow it) a wikibirthright site should require a login for both those who submit and those who want to edit articles. Wikipedia apparently recently went to a login system for those who want to submit (but not edit) new articles so falacious or spurious articles are more difficult to submit. The process isn't any more difficult than signing up for any other login, and it would prevent the "casual vandal" (as opposed to someone who might actually hack the site) from deleting or altering text. That is somewhat against the "philosophy" of open information wiki sites, but I really don't think it's all that much a problem. Besides, in a smaller wiki the issue of a casual vandal deleting or altering text is more of a problem. A site like wikipedia is protected not just by the staff of that site, but by the number of contributors and the general nature of the topic. On a wiki site that has a smaller number of articles and many articles that might be more popular than others (an article on particular domain actions, for instance, would probably get more viewing than one on how to muster units of Vos varsk riders) the site becomes more vulnerable to anonymous vandalism. At least, such vandalism appears to have a more profound effect on such a wiki. A login requirement for both editors and contributors would not eliminate the issue, of course, but it would help deal with this problem.

What other problems can people foresee in the creation of a wikibirthright site?

Gary

[Caliene]

I am mostly familiar with the wiki's for the Paradox computer games. (Crusader Kings, EUII etc) These have areas for downloading finished products, beta's strategys, game mods help in game mods, etc. From what I understand, it is mostly clearing vandalism there too. It has not noticeably slowed down the forum, just made a neat place to find knowledge. Though it could be problematic, I think it would make a great centralised fund of knowledge that can be independent of the forum.( so there will be a backup if eitehr crashes) and discussed on the forum.
It might also contain a list of things taht are being done and subjects that are being discussed or have been discussed.

For instance, I can not find the maps of the City of Anuire, I have no exact idea of what is being done and I would like to do something.

Caliene

[Thomas_Percy]

I voted "no". Why?
Because I appreciate Brt-3,5-pdf made by this site staff and I don't want its creators abandon Brt-3,5-pdf project and do other things.

[Arjan]

I voted "no". Why?
Because I appreciate Brt-3,5-pdf made by this site staff and I don't want its creators abandon Brt-3,5-pdf project and do other things.

Sorry, but imo this has nothing to do with the other projects at all.

the reason why i came up with this idea was just to get people invloved who are NOT on these projects but want to contribute to this community.
Since this site is supposed to be from the community, why not let the whole community maintain it?

hopefully the barrier will be lower for people to add stuff to it instead of writing it up, sending it to me or another moderator or whatever. this simple doesnt work.

Perhaps members can think now, hey i am not a rule wizard but i can do some write ups on exsisting material. or just go over the writting material and correct pages or add little paragraphs etc.

[geeman]

In the long run, I think a wikibirthright site would have some sort of effect on the production of new 3e pdf documents. For instance, if we imagine the current on-going process of putting together the Atlas of Cerilia it seems as if a wikibirthright site that had such material dedicated to it would wind up affecting how a "finished product" would be developed in several ways. At what point would the wiki material be deemed "completed" enough to put into a pdf? When would the constantly changing wiki be altered signficantly enough to rate a new version of the pdf? Which would have priority (officially and in the minds of the community) the wiki or the pdf? Would a wiki eventually "take over" from the other? Picture the same process with the general game mechanical 3e update pdf. The issues remain pretty much the same.

That said, I honestly think a wiki would wind up being a much more positive than negative thing. Simply by virtue of the nature of the material, the fact that it would be more quickly (if sometimes roughly) available, and the fundamentally cool nature of the wiki system/process, such a forum would be an excellent resource. There are downsides here and there, but when it boils right down to it, there are more good things about a wiki than bad, so I'm all for it.

I've been working for a very long time on a pdf for all the awn/ersheghlien that I've written up over the years. If one imagines a wiki for that kind of material not only could anyone who wants to contribute a new character, the long wait in getting a "final version" of that material would be less of an issue since all of the character write ups would be around in one way or another on the site. They already exist in early drafts in the br.net and birthright-l archives, but second and third draft versions would be available and easily editted. Now, if I were the "master editor" of a pdf document that compiled all of those character descriptions, I can see where it might be problematic to have an unlimited number of contributors to a project that was, essentially, never really finished--but to a certain extent that's the case with any on-going piece of work. It's just another way (a more efficient way, at that) of engaging in the whole process. So on the whole, I can see the value of such a thing and would like to see it implemented even if it winds up creating a few weird issues regarding the production of "final" projects dedicated to the same material.

Gary

[Thomas_Percy]

Arjan - now I understand, and I change my mind :).

You will have a lot of "fun" with folk like me who don't like "low magic, low level" vision of Brt and one will see C. Dosiere stats with 20 magic items and similiar weird things :). IMHO it will be good.

[ausrick]

Just reading your post, Thomas, made me remember something. Some where I saw printed a campaign suppliment or whatnot that took an interesting approach. Each main villain or character had several different versions of them. And their equipment and level were varied. The purpose of this was for Game Masters who were running a lower powered campaign as opposed to those running a higher powered campaign.

Maybe with this wiki it could be similar. For example, if I am a DM, and I want to see some stats for the Gorgon. I could search the wiki and probably find several different versions, all of varying power level. I could pick the one that fits my view of Cerilia. And if my players also went to the wiki, they wouldn't know which one I picked. If they abused their player knowledge-character knowledge relationship they might be in for a sore suprise. Also, that might correlate real well to what the inhabitants of Cerilia might actually believe. You go into one tavern and hear stories about how Stoney-Butt is so unbelievably powerful, but is the 'Real' Stoney-Butt big enough to live up to the legend or is it an exageration? There is only one way to find out! :D

[Sorontar]

I am yet to place a vote in the poll because most of the comments seem to be about how they expect most editors/contributers to behave and what people would like to see included on the wiki. But I am interested in what you, the BR subscriber, think that you would do if the wiki existed.

Myself, I am a AD&D player, not a DM, and haven't played much D&D3.5. So my main contributions would be editing to fix formatting, English spelling and grammar. That's mainly what I do for other wikis. I might also add background stories to components, areas and people and suggest plots and plot hooks.

Sorontar

[manetherin]

I am somewhat undecided, honestly.

On the one hand, yes this may very well result in more rapid additions to the ruleset we accept as 'official' and would make things easier when it comes to providing an answer when someone asks a question that isnt quite covered in what is already there. This is, obviously, a very good thing.

On the other... the main downside to Wiki is that all 'facts' provided in Wiki have to be taken with a grain of salt. Since anyone can post their own data or edit someone else's, there is no way to be certain that when you look something up it hasnt been provided or edited by someone out there who is very, very wrong, which could result in some very game-breaking situations. Few things would rip my players out of an otherwise immersive game session more effectively than me as the DM having to go, "Wait a second, that cant possibly be right. We're gonna have to do that whole domain turn over again."

I havent actually managed a Wiki myself, so I'm not aware of potential admin tools. But if there is some means of having submissions either not show up, or go to an alternate location in the Wiki untill an admin can look it over and confirm, deny, or edit it before adding it to the official data, that would be ideal. This would prevent a great deal of errata as well as avoid another situation I've seen with Wiki (two individuals who both felt very strongly that their version of the same data was correct and the other's was wrong, constantly going back and re-editing each others post again and again).

[akalars]

I have tried a few wiki softwares and non of them had any moderation. But they have something called Recent Changes that show you exactly what was changed and who changed it. Using that it is easy for the rest of the community to se if some one did a change they do not agree upong.

[Sorontar]

As an administrator on a MediaWiki system (available on Sourceforge) I can
* ban logins by specific urls or usernames
* promote other users to admin status
* "rollback" changes to any pages. This is a lot easier than having to manually edit the pages to undo someone's work.
* edit the protected pages (like the MainPage, which is the equivalent of index.html)
* delete pages (users might be able to do this too)
* look at logs for the above

As an editor on the same system, I can
* look at RecentChanges
* edit any page (except the protected ones)
* upload images (I think, never actually done it)
* get a list of all the edits done by any editor

The sysop can also set up spam filters to block entire groups of urls from logging in and causing havoc to the system and restrict what edits can be on each page.

Sorontar

[geeman]

Here's a link to the wikipedia page that compares existing wiki software (I hope, looking at a wiki site about wiki software isn't too incestuous in a weird sort of away.) The links to the various sites and other pages also contain some very good material on what sorts of things are available. I particularly like the option of a WYSIWYG ability. If anyone is concerned about getting hardcopies of such material having the ability to format pages to fit standard printouts would be pretty cool....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software

Gary

[ausrick]

I can think of all sorts of things that would be exciting to find here that wouldn't necessarily be "important" enough or in the "scope" of the official pdf files.

As a DM, often I want or need to know things fluffy as the agricultural exports of Aerenwe or a history of the Emperors of Anuire. The wiki would be the place for it it seems.

And as to contribution, I would kind of handle it like how I do things here. I will ask a question or do a search, and if no one has an answer, I will make up one and post or submit it. Along with drawing maps and making images and such.

[Arjan]

It looks like the majority of us would like to see a BRwiki.
I would like to start planning the implementation and strategy of the wiki. Are there any volunteers that would like to participate in that? preferable with some wiki moderation/implementation experience.
If you think you want to help on this, send me a PM

[celtibear]

If no or other, pls tell us why or what

I'm more inclined towards a more traditional website than a wiki. Maybe it's just me.

[oximoron]

when can we expect the new birthright wiki, I am looking forward to seeing it

[Arjan]

i am currently looking in setting it up.
When the temperature cools down a bit i will continue to work on it

A.

[darkon]

Does anyone know of any large scale wikis for any other campaign setting?

Sorontar.

Dragonlance CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance
FRCS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_Realms
Planescape CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape
Ravenloft CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft
Spelljammer CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelljammer
Vampire the Masquerade CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade
Vampire Bloodlines CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade_-_Bloodlines

[oximoron]

Dragonlance CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance
FRCS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_Realms
Planescape CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape
Ravenloft CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft
Spelljammer CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelljammer
Vampire the Masquerade CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade
Vampire Bloodlines CS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade_-_Bloodlines

These are merely single entry in a larger wiki page, I believe what Sorontar was looking for was a wiki dedicated towards other Roleplaying worlds

The difference being that a game specific wiki could hold detailed information about everysingle province or NPC in birthright while all the single entry for birthright does is sum it all up in about 3-4 page worth

although some of those links are intresting to look at

[oximoron]

BUMP

Has there been any progress on setting this up

[Arjan]

BUMP

Has there been any progress on setting this up

Yes, actually we have been working very hard on this.
We are about done with the basic frameset of guides and policies and are now filling the wiki with basic information. this way we can filter out some little child disease thingies.

[Arjan]

and heres a little screenshot of what is to come :)

[oximoron]

Its looking very good Arjan

[Arjan]

Its looking very good Arjan

and some more screenies

[Vicente]

It´s looking impressive :) Great work!

Vicente

[eldritchknight]

Indeed, looking good!!

I am looking forward to its completion, yes I am, indeed!!

[Jaleela]

I was noting in your screen captures that there are images taken from the game setting. Is this going to send copyright lawyers nosing around or has permission been granted by WotC to actually make use of the game images?

[Arjan]

I was noting in your screen captures that there are images taken from the game setting. Is this going to send copyright lawyers nosing around or has permission been granted by WotC to actually make use of the game images?

well birthright.net does have the permission to use copyrighted material (official website license)

[Eyeless_One]

I like it too. Will there only be official 2nd and birthright.net material there or will we be allowed to add private stuff? Thinking about the various domain descriptions and other material from PBEMs, tabletop games and just home made.

[Arjan]

I like it too. Will there only be official 2nd and birthright.net material there or will we be allowed to add private stuff? Thinking about the various domain descriptions and other material from PBEMs, tabletop games and just home made.

its also allowed to add homebrew/campaign/pbem stuff to the wiki. We got several sections for this.

[Eyeless_One]

Any projections on when it will be launched?

[Hellian]

ofc, that is a great idea

[Arjan]

I am currently working on the final design for BRnet and the Wiki.
Testing out a few vBulletin mods to see if they really fit and do work together with the wiki engine.

but everything looks very promising :)

think i need arround two more weeks to complete it

(little screeny below)

[Arjan]

well its up and running, so i can unstick this thread :)