Sir-Toby.Com

I have wiki I use for my (now semi-defunct) D&D campaign. I am going to create a page and use it as a staging area for a test NEQ wiki.

I would very much appreciate input/suggestions on how all of you think such a thing would be best laid out.

I think that at the top level you'd need an introductory page, explaining what the NEQ is and when and how it began. You'd also want pages on the main characters and authors, and also on the main storylines. At the top level of storyline pages, you'd have one on the addventures set in Fred's world, one on Stacy's addventures, and one on those of Scott and Josh and their friends. (Maybe one or two more, but those seem to be the main three "areas" into which most of the NEQ naturally falls.) Beneath these, you'd have further pages dealing with individual storyline, in a tree structure.

I would also look at the existing guides for ideas, even though they only cover a fraction of the ground and aren't wikis. The one that covers the most ground is WolfRun's:

http://www.reocities.com/toh1999/wolfrun.html

It's also worth looking at how the BEAddventure is documented, as that's easily the largest addventure around, though being pornographic it's not to everyone's taste. There's a wiki (actually part of a larger wiki) here:

http://www.ftf10.com/wiki/index.php?tit ... Addventure

It also has some amazingly detailed non-wiki documentation, thanks to one heroic person who - assisted by software - spends an enormous amount of time in keeping it more or less up-to-date:

http://www.bearchive.com/~addventure/ga ... index.html

Some general thoughts. The most common definition of wiki is a website that allows editing. (On a side note, when I googled "define wiki" the second entry turned put tpo be a Wikipedia article about... definitions. Duh.) It doesn't say anything about the content, it's just that the format is suitable for reference works. So these days when people talk about wikis they actually mean some kind of wiki reference work. (As we all know, one of the biggest has claimed "Wikipedia" as a name, but that doesn't hide the fact that it is a wiki encyclopedia.)
Looking at it this way I have come to the realization that this site is half wiki already. Anyone can add to it and edit their own entries for a limited time, but not edit each others' work. Wuld it be possible to make a true wiki story, or would that end in chaos?

I've speculated about the possibility of using wiki software as the framework for an addventure story. I think that one would have to find a way to stop people editing and vandalising episodes that someone else had submitted at some earlier time.

One of the basic ideas with a wiki story would be that it can be edited, and it would of course follow the wiki tradition of keeping old versions so that anything bad that happens to it may be reversed. For a first attempt it would probably be a good idea to limit access to disciplined writers who won't start an edit war, though.

First, thanks guys! I appreciate the input and will take it to heart.

Secondly, I think a wiki story could work. When creating a new wiki page, you have the option to specify an edit password. Each author could have their own edit password. Admins have their own password which grants access to edit any page.

Note: Authors who do not mind others editing their page can always leave their pages unpassworded, but I know I won't do that.

That could work. Hmm. I may do a test story on my page. Any interest?

Test wiki story. Episode One up soon.

http://wiki.horsehockey.org

Ben, you mind if I use your episode one here or should i save that for the Extend-a-story version?

If you do mind, I will tap someone else to do an episode one for this test story.

Episode One by our own illustrious Ben McClellan has been posted.

Excellent news re your Wiki addventure. But that's not a first episode - it's a full-length novel! Seriously, though it's very well-written, I think that a scene-setting episode that contains so much material is actually harder to write off than something short. (Though I suppose with a Wiki addventure there would be nothing to stop one adding in an option for continuation part-way through in addition to those at the end.)

A couple of things about the wiki implementation. It looks as if options that lead to created and not yet created episodes are the same colour. So the only way of finding out if a particular option has already been taken is to click on it. If you do that and the episode hasn't been created, as you'd expect you get the chance to write it. But if you don't want to write it and click on Cancel, you get an error message: "The webpage cannot be found"

Actually, and I will clarify this on the front page, any wiki link that has not yet been expanded will have a "?" question mark at the end of it. So, no question mark = expanded link.

Also, good point. I personally like the novella style opener we have there, but if you wanted to expand it with a new link you could do so by editing the page and inserting (somewhere unobtrusive, like between paragraphs):

[[pagename | Episode Link Text]]

lordreaibn wrote:Actually, and I will clarify this on the front page, any wiki link that has not yet been expanded will have a "?" question mark at the end of it. So, no question mark = expanded link.

Thanks. I was expecting an unexpanded link to have red text, as it does on Wikipedia.

JH wrote: Thanks. I was expecting an unexpanded link to have red text, as it does on Wikipedia.

I like that as well, and I will look to see how/if I can implement that. I have also added help files on the sidebar.

Look, I know you are a busy man, but let me know when/if I can tempt you into being a moderator.

Yes, it was excessive, but it was intended in the old spirit of Horsehockey where anything could and would happen.

One of my main intentions was to attract interest from other addventure sites, which is why Lord Fred is included, as well as the main characters from the Unending BE Addventure. I figured if the folks that frequent NEQ and BE were given a chance to write about their favorite characters, they wouldn't have a problem contributing.

I also considered having Reaibn break down the first episode into four parts, and the last one would be the one where everyone else who's a writer could start contributing. I suppose if there's enough objection to such a long opener, we still can, but we'll just have to wait and see.

We will see. I for one love it.