OpenGeofiction
Although there are a few amazing articles in the wiki, there are also a LOT of stubs, unfinished, deprecated, abandoned, confusing and unreadable articles … plus multiple templates. Has anyone got ideas how we could improve the quality and generally make it something more like the real wikipedia? At the moment it is just growing more and more arms without getting any more believable, or coherent - in fact, just the opposite, despite some valiant attempts.
Ideas?
Happy mapping Udi
Discussion
Comment from zhenkang on 8 December 2016 at 15:27
Maybe there can be categories for wiki articles… Languages, Countries, History, etc. and they can be put on top of a wiki article. There can be status also for each wiki article, like in-progress, finished etc?
Comment from zhenkang on 8 December 2016 at 15:31
The main reason why some wiki articles are left incomplete is due to the lack of time. It is hard to keep mapping and writing wiki articles at the same time.
Comment from Yuanls on 8 December 2016 at 16:54
I have recently gotten into the habit of writing articles on the Yuanls: Sandbox page. Once I have finished my article, I delete it from my sandbox and upload it into its own page.
Let’s not forget the thousands of stubs on actual Wikipedia though. If there’s not much to say about it, I guess just don’t say anything. But are we supposed to write OGF wiki articles from the stance of a person in the OGF universe, or as the creator of the universe. If it were the latter, I think articles such as stubs and similar articles would be far more justified.
Comment from wangi on 8 December 2016 at 17:28
“from the stance of a person in the OGF universe” = wiki pages
“or as the creator of the universe” = the OGF: wiki pages
Comment from UltraWorlds on 8 December 2016 at 17:32
I think we should have articles in different languages; if we don’t have yet
Comment from isleño on 8 December 2016 at 20:21
Thanks for bringing this up, Udi.
For anyone finding it difficult to make time for both mapping and wiki work, it’s probably a good idea to pause your wiki work until there’s more progress with your mapping.
The main role of the wiki is to help “bring your mapping to life” so that you can share your vision with everyone else, which means that (1) there’s no need to write about things that haven’t been significantly mapped, for the most part; and (2) it’s better to have one high quality article that really succeeds in expressing your vision, than dozens of articles that fail to do so.
I think a lot of the problem comes from people trying to focus on too many things at once. I’ve added a “quality not quantity” warning to this effect to the excellent OGF:Making a good wiki article wiki page (feel free to redo it, Udi, if you don’t like it) and I’ve also added a link to that page from the User Help & Resources portal. Like most resources, the people who need it most aren’t likely to see it, so I’d encourage anyone to reach out in a friendly way to those who seem to be struggling in the wiki and point them in the direction of good advice.