Tutorial page Thread

ITT we discuss the future of the tutorial page and how to keep it from becoming a Wiki, per a past poll suggestion. I have an idea for it, but I'm not ready to present it just yet, so in the meantime suggest your own ideas to make it better.
Gogogo!

WIKI!
That is all.

I agree with the Wiki decision, that is, if the community is willing to put enough effort into it.

No way. I don't like the wiki decision. Way too different from the original site. I like it the way it is.

Edited by: Karuto

Wikis fail at life and are a big waste of everyone's time.

i like both a hybrid system would work for me

BlckWyerve wrote: Wikis fail at life and are a big waste of everyone's time.

Yeah, Wikipedia's a failure. Their bad.

Either way, I have reservations about a wiki system, but I've got some ideas of my own. We'll see some major revamps in the next version of the site.

So in other words you made such a big point about people tell you their ideas when if fact you're already using your own?

methulah wrote:

BlckWyerve wrote: Wikis fail at life and are a big waste of everyone's time.

Yeah, Wikipedia's a failure. Their bad.

Either way, I have reservations about a wiki system, but I've got some ideas of my own. We'll see some major revamps in the next version of the site.

Wikipedia may not be the greatest example. BeyondUnreal hosts a Wiki, and it is great. I think Epic's official docs may be wiki-ized too, but maybe restricted to licensees. Regardless, the greatest Unreal tutorial is definitely a Wiki, and the second best is a hybrid Wiki too. I believe that Source is pretty Wikified too, but I don't have much direct experience to comment on the quality of those docs.

Looks like Wiki's win at game dev tutorial sites

BlckWyerve wrote: So in other words you made such a big point about people tell you their ideas when if fact you're already using your own?

I'm explorig my own ideas, I'd be pretty poor if I wasn't. Howver, I really want to hear from other people about their ideas, otherwise I wouldn't make polls like that. Gibberstein, BeyondUnreal is a great example of a working Wiki.

A Wiki will only work if ModDB staff are taking it in their responsibilty to look after. If the comunity is expected to keep things tidy and keep to any sort of complicated conventions, it will fail, guaranteed. That said BU's wiki is great as already mentioned, and doesn't have a particularly large team behind it.

What I dislike about the Tutorial system right now, is more of the actuall content. Each category has a large selection of unrelating tutorials. I'd love to see some tutorial series to help new people get started. Something like:

• Beginning Unreal Mapping (3 Tutorials)
• Beginning Source Mapping (3 Tutorials)
• Beginning Quake Mapping (3 Tutorials)
• Beginning 3DS Max Modeling (2 Tutorials)
• Beginning XSI Modeling (2 Tutorials)

Something like that to make the system seem more organized.

A wiki system would be disastrous. The reason why Wikipedia works is because of its vast userbase that polices it and keeps it up to date, and the reason why the BeyondUnreal wiki worked is because of the general maturity of the much smaller userbase there, although it suffers horrifically in terms of organisation. At ModDB, a wiki would result in some fiercly awful entires and constant vandalism from either less mature users or those less experienced using a Wiki.

I think the tutorial system just needs a bit of organising, like Salohcin says.

Yeah, I agree to Salo, too. Hcin is right about branching the content. Right now you have to pretty much scroll through all the content even to retrace a tutorial you have once started. It would be really good if there was some kind of way to take you right back to where you left the tutorial section. That would be gold for the system, but I guess its too difficult to make?

Edited by: SinKing

yes it could work if the right wiki engine was used

Moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de

Mediawiki.org

Siteground.com

Wikimatrix.org

Trac.edgewall.org

Wow, your necromancing skills astound me .

Is there any official word from teh ModDB about this decision? Is it still going to be a Wiki-based system>? I'd definitely like to see some of the whys and whens of whatever decision you came to, I'm sure many on these boards would too

It's still under discussion. We'll be sure to let you know guys know what we'll be deciding on when we come to a conclusion.

EDIT: we instead of I

Edited by: Karuto

a wiki should be good but there needs to be things done to counter the vandalism like a certain amount of posts
allso moderators should be apointed to look for wrong/vandalism pages(i would be happy to apply xd)

It's counter-productive to have to appoint people to fix things that should never have been modified in the first place.

That's what I was thinking. But, a wiki is certainly a more creative and constantly evolving place, compared to the current Tut system - maybe the benefits outweigh the time and effort needed to maintain the thing.

That said, It'll be about 10 times as hard to maintain a ModDB wiki compared to, say, the Unreal wiki; this is mainly because of the depth and breadth of the subjects covered here. Whereas Unreal Wiki has only one subject to cover - unreal modding - Moddb has so many games listed here that a wiki system could quickly become out of control. It's not to say it can't work, just to say that it will alot more effort to maintain than the current system. The question is, is it worth that effort?

Personally, I think that there isn't a large enough dedicated community to actively maintain an organised wiki that covers such a broad spectra of topics available here at ModDB. You're quite correct, it'll take an enormous effort to keep it in a useable fashion - and it's not a one off task, it requires constant maintainance. The current tutorial system definitely needs an overhaul, but as I've probably said before in this topic, a wiki is almost definitely not the answer.

well the current tut system cant go on like this
look at this: Moddb.com
it uses the filters game: fear and all types and difficulties
there are general tutorials that works with fear to but others like the gtl radiant tutorials, Q4 wallpaper and wavelength 2 review (?) arent generaly usefull
allso the ones to create websites should be in a different section
but there are no tutorials for fear modding in specific, all you get is 3 pages of general tutorials, guides and 1 review :s
we definitly need something else and a wiki seems like the best solution to me

I don't see how that'd be probable, Dark, to solve the problem with a wiki. You'd still be stuffing all those general tutorials into one place. It'd be up to the user to submit them and we'll just pile them into how they were labeled. It's kind of like how someone sends us a mod and the database adjust accordingly. Unless you want a moderator to go through each and every single tutorial (161 tutorials) and determine the exact filter and difficulty level, that's kind of asking for too much.

Please explain how a wiki would solve this problem. If what you're saying is really a problem, all we'd do is add more filters.

Edited by: Karuto

If the did a wiki they need to start it off by still keeping the tut think we have now and start build up the the tut slow like start out with games like like DOOM, Half life, quake and Unreal and standalone game and other then as people whant they can ad or if make request for a new game to be add an i also think there need to be a special wiki team put together that have full control over the wiki like what get add to the front page of the wiki and if you want a good design for a wiki check out Modwiki.net and Gw.gamewikis.org

More filters is a start. Personally, I think some form of organisational (folder?) hierarchy would be pretty useful to flick through too. It'd allow much easier access than simple searching and allows for easier control over additional diversity when required.

A "wiki-team" is not an option. ModDB already has a large staff base that struggles to attend to Mod / News authing requests, and they go via a control panel and use a highly regimented system and set of rules. Wiki systems, by their fundamental nature don't have that sort of infrastructure and would require ridiculous amounts of policing to keep in order.