Proposed Wiki Update


justthisguy

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Hey everyone

I've been talking about it on the irc channel a bit and want to try to improve the quality of the wiki so that its more friendly for new users, more organised and more up-to-date.
I'm willing to put quite a bit of time into this but if anyone has any comments, suggestions or offers of help they would be most welcome :) .

Some things that could be good are:
A centralised list of tutorials on or linked to from the wiki; for example different ways to reencode video, a general emulation/roms tutorial, and whatever people think is needed;
maybe a list of 'the best' homebrew to check out (I'm not sure how we could decide this) so that people can easily get started enjoying playing with the gp2x;

Again, if anyone has any suggestions to add to these then they are most welcome :)

Mark
 
justthisguy posted on Oct 26 2006 at 05:55 AM said:
Hey everyone

I've been talking about it on the irc channel a bit and want to try to improve the quality of the wiki so that its more friendly for new users, more organised and more up-to-date.
I'm willing to put quite a bit of time into this but if anyone has any comments, suggestions or offers of help they would be most welcome :) .

Some things that could be good are:
A centralised list of tutorials on or linked to from the wiki; for example different ways to reencode video, a general emulation/roms tutorial, and whatever people think is needed;
maybe a list of 'the best' homebrew to check out (I'm not sure how we could decide this) so that people can easily get started enjoying playing with the gp2x;

Again, if anyone has any suggestions to add to these then they are most welcome :)

Mark
http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Development_Tutorials
http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/User_Tutorials
http://gp2xgamer.com/reviews/
 
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Yono posted on Oct 26 2006 at 12:19 PM said:

Yes - my point is that these are not exhaustive, or even near complete; the quality of the articles isnt the best and could be improved and made more user-friendly :) To take an example, the video convertion tutorial on the wiki ( In my opinion ) has too many options for the windows section; and is pretty technical in the linux and mac os sections. For some people these pages are enough, but they need to be made more userfriendly for people with not as much experience as you

Mark
 
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I think the wiki needs to take a less first person approach to writing a lot of articles. One of the factors that makes wikipedia so high quality is it's neutral opinions and 3rd person descriptions (exception for user pages and talk pages though). I'm willing to move stuff around and improve some articles.

In addition, a lot of page articles are incredibly out of date. For example, the Works In Progress page is very out of date - there are a lot more games that are being worked on, and emulators, for example KK2X or VBA2x respectively. A lot of the dates and project status parts need to be updated, too.

I think there needs to be a policy on what pages are actually useful. For example, http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/JamVM is of little importance to anybody. It would be good if a lot more time was spent perfecting current articles rather than creating an infinite number of pages. Endless stubs don't make a wiki look good, and make wikis incredibly useless a lot of the time. One of the rules wikipedia has is not to create a page because you can, since this leads to stubs.

My next idea is to have groups of people that manage specific subjects - wikipedia uses this system which is incredibly effective at getting people with specific fields of know-how to help each other out and have a discussion area for what articles need improving. You might have a group of people that keep emulation status up to date, or a group of people who improve stub articles in general.

I also come across quite a few pages which are fairly well documented, but don't use the correct templates, or don't use them at all. Normally this would be fine, but as most of them use templates, it makes the wiki look inconsistent and rather sloppy.
 
justthisguy posted on Oct 26 2006 at 11:30 AM said:
To take an example, the video convertion tutorial on the wiki ( In my opinion ) has too many options for the windows section; and is pretty technical in the linux and mac os sections. For some people these pages are enough, but they need to be made more userfriendly for people with not as much experience as you

Mark
This part is out dated, i think it can be very small. This article have to be reworked a lot ^^
 
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Alvin posted on Oct 26 2006 at 01:18 PM said:
I think the wiki needs to take a less first person approach to writing a lot of articles. One of the factors that makes wikipedia so high quality is it's neutral opinions and 3rd person descriptions (exception for user pages and talk pages though). I'm willing to move stuff around and improve some articles.

Yeah, pages like http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/How_no_skill_set...nd_ported_spout are way out. For the talk pages, one idea I just remembered is that for the game / emulator pages on the wiki, the talk pages could be used for reviews, or a separate section of the page, which should be clearly distinct, and the rest of the page should be as NPOV as possible.

Alvin posted on Oct 26 2006 at 01:18 PM said:
In addition, a lot of page articles are incredibly out of date. For example, the Works In Progress page is very out of date - there are a lot more games that are being worked on, and emulators, for example KK2X or VBA2x respectively. A lot of the dates and project status parts need to be updated, too.

One way we could tackle this is to maybe try to keep it up with the news forum at least - either say you should update the relevant wiki page when posting an item or make sure that it happens - as at the moment that seems the best source of information for keeping up to date.

Alvin posted on Oct 26 2006 at 01:18 PM said:
I think there needs to be a policy on what pages are actually useful. For example, http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/JamVM is of little importance to anybody. It would be good if a lot more time was spent perfecting current articles rather than creating an infinite number of pages. Endless stubs don't make a wiki look good, and make wikis incredibly useless a lot of the time. One of the rules wikipedia has is not to create a page because you can, since this leads to stubs.

yeah, this page has been around for an age too if i remember correctly. Marking pages like these actually as stubs and prioritising them for more information to be added would probably be the way to go forward before adding much new content as you say - although just adding content for content's sake is the opposite and just as dirty, for example ( in my opinion ) what has happened to http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/UsbNet_on_Linux - comparing the first and last revisions, a lot of cruft has been added to what was a simple walkthrough - the linked g_ether.zip from the archive doesn't even work when I've been trying to help other people.

Alvin posted on Oct 26 2006 at 01:18 PM said:
My next idea is to have groups of people that manage specific subjects - wikipedia uses this system which is incredibly effective at getting people with specific fields of know-how to help each other out and have a discussion area for what articles need improving. You might have a group of people that keep emulation status up to date, or a group of people who improve stub articles in general.

This sounds like a great idea - if anyone wants to volunteer for a specific section then that would be excellent :)

Alvin posted on Oct 26 2006 at 01:18 PM said:
I also come across quite a few pages which are fairly well documented, but don't use the correct templates, or don't use them at all. Normally this would be fine, but as most of them use templates, it makes the wiki look inconsistent and rather sloppy.

Another thing is the featured application on the front page - the current one (gp2x-gpe) has been there for a while now. Any suggestions? I propose payback or the payback demo as that is an excellent demonstration of what the gp2x is capable of :D

Mark
 
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Yod4z and I try to maintain the wiki best we can. One of the problems is that snaff is the only person with administrative powers (deleting pages for example), so there is only so much we can do. Of course any help would be appreciated, and I can see you have already started.

Kudos for the topic.
 
I do all the french pages (Fr:****) and help on some english pages. I already work on the spanish wiki ^^
 
my opinion - i'd like to see the "Getting Started with GP2X Development" pages made much more concise and less confusing. *full* sets of steps to successfully complete a working dev environment setup and toolchain would be really useful. i still haven't gotten one going on yet..

also, the Samba-TCP/IP pages could use some cleaning up (i was just going through those today)..
 
The Basilisk II emulator page also has to be updated. There's no guide on how to get it working.

The NeoGeo section is still up to date, and I myself followed those instructions, and it worked great B) I also agree that the game section has to be updated, The G&W Fire Game is missing, as well as Reword.
 
GPM2k6 posted on Oct 27 2006 at 09:57 PM said:
The Basilisk II emulator page also has to be updated. There's no guide on how to get it working.

The NeoGeo section is still up to date, and I myself followed those instructions, and it worked great B) I also agree that the game section has to be updated, The G&W Fire Game is missing, as well as Reword.
Neogeo game teste have been done for the version 0.6.9 in the french page, i have just to translate to english and do another teste with the last version of gngeo
 
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Ok guys;

UPDATE :p

Basically, if you want to help out, there are several things you can do:
  • Keep the wiki up-to-date - Every time you hear something on the news forums, on IRC or from somewhere else, check it out and if you can, make sure that the wiki is updated with the new information.
  • Translate pages - Many pages are in some languages. If you have l33t language skills, or at least know how to use babelfish or google.co.uk/translate , then feel free to create copies of pages in other languages. Also, try to make sure that the pages are kept in sync; when you update one page, either change the other pages or put notes in the talk section for other people to do the same
  • Improve 'stub' pages - Many pages are very short and/or lacking in some information. If you see a stub page and know more that can go on it, please feel free
  • Improve the quality of pages - A lot of pages are written from babelfish, or not in someone's first language. They may need reordering and reorganising, or just generally improving :) . In these cases, two words: Feel Free!
  • Contribute user tutorials - as I'm sure you know, there are many faq's on these boards, and if people write more user tutorials to help out and add to http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/User_Tutorials , that would be great :D
Keep up to date at http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Wiki_organization ! Translate this page ! ;)

Many thanks

Mark
 
Sorry for bumping this but a lot of it is still relevant.

Mike has sorted out sysop privilages for jtg, Yod4z, Yono and myself so the cleanup project is back on (jtg has been pruning it the last day and a half). If you use the wiki, please look at the proposals that have been made and leave comments (it wouldn't be good to go changing things people need as is): http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Wiki_organization.

Also, have a look at the featured application discussion page to take part in a weekly selection vote :).
 
I have been using the wiki for quite a while and look forward to seeing the results of the cleanup and it getting updated and improved further. However, I have had difficulty trying to register for the wiki - I've been able to create an account, but I am unable to receive the confirmation email to any of the addreses I have tried. It may be delayed, perhaps, so I will continue waiting. While I wait, however, I thought I could post some of my comments here, if that is acceptable.

Firstly, I have been out of the gp2x community for quite a while due to time commitments elsewhere unfortunately, although as I have been getting back into it as I have had more time recently, I have used the wiki an awful lot the past couple of weeks or so, and even hope I might be able to contribute to it in the future as I "get back into the scene" and start learning again :)

I did want to respond to a few of your points from my perspective (a perspective of an end user who knows a bit about the gp2x and the community, has recently been using the wiki a lot, but has not yet contributed to it), so obviously I do not see the full picture and my perspective may be biased.

QUOTE
Next is the main problem in my opinion - lists. The GP2X community seems to love making them, but hate keeping them up to date. This has resulted in loads of emulator compatibility lists which are totally wrong. They are also purely subjective as they are, and I believe they should be removed.


Firstly, I think the lists as long as they indicate which version the comment applies to is highly useful. Sometimes they contain tips or information (e.g. frameskip levels, clock speeds) as well as compatibility, and I have used the lists many a time to get an idea as to what works or how to get it to work, or reassurance that I probably can't get it to work if other people have failed as well. They may not always be up to date, and this is something that could be improved, but I see it as a useful resource and in my opinion, it would be a shame to see them go. Plus, basic compatibility (e.g. doesn't work at all, or works) is often pretty similar accross releases. The things I tried in uae4all a year ago still do not work on a much older release still do not work on today's release. Those that do work may be more playable, but those the emulator seems to struggle with completely have not. I think it would be a harm to remove them - lots more people asking if something works, lots of pepole struggling to get something to work which no one else has managed but not realising it, people missing out useful information on how to get something to work perhaps with something they haven't tried. I can only speak from my perspective, but having a centralised and useful place to find this sort of information has been highly useful to me.

QUOTE
Pages based purely on speculation need to go too like http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Emulation_Speculation, or made fact-based.


As for the speculation pages, as long as these are clearly labelled as speculative, I think these are still important as well. Speculation does play a part on this console, as to what is possible and not possible and so forth, but it useful to know what people feel is possible and not possible, both for newcomers to the console to know what can and can not be done, and for longer users to see what could be possible and isn't done yet and what definitely won't be appearing. Plus, the page has often been linked to to show the current stance on systems and emulators, and has proved itself useful on many a time. I think to remove this resource, even though it is speculative, would also be a shame. Lots of people new to the handheld often ask things like "Will it ever be able to emulate <x>" or "Can it emulate <x>", and having the list of what it can, might and can't do is a quite useful resource for the new user. It may be speculative, but is generally reflective of the current views and still contains information which I think is useful. One of the goals of the wiki is "Keep all GP2X related information in a single place.", and I think information such as that matches that goal, and thus should not be discarded.

QUOTE
I'm also going to be holding a weekly vote to decide the featured application, see the appropriate discussion page for more information.


About the featured applications, it might be worthwhile adding the message that users can add applications to the list after the instructions about placing a star, not only in the 'Notice from Orkie' section as at first it wasn't clear to me that other emulators could be added to the list (as the list is above the notice) until I read the notice (which some people at first glance or who do not scroll all the way down may not).

QUOTE
Finally, I've protected a few important pages like the main page which I notice has been subject to minor vandalism and shouldn't be open for anybody to edit.


I must admit I find it disappointing that pages have had to be protected (although I often find it saddening when blanket rules need to be put in place which often affect the majority who have good intentions). It is required that users are registered with a confirmed email address, and thus mindless anonymous editing shouldn't be a problem, but personally, I think it's a shame to have to protect pages. I can understand the need on places like wikipedia, but for smaller communities such as the gp2x community, and without there having been too much of a problem, I didn't think there was as much as a need. However, I can understand the reasons for doing so, especially as the wiki grows.

Thankyou for your hard work and good luck to you and the others in maintaining the wiki into the future.

Just my perspective :)
 
I don't think there is a way I can manually activate your account, but you could try this: http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Special:Confirmemail

I don't intend to protect loads of pages, I've just locked the main page (which shouldn't be unlocked anyway really and has been subject to a few 'test' edits) and the list of past features applications just in case anybody got upset their favourite didn't win the vote ;). I will add the note as you suggest to the voting page.

I don't want to remove the compatibility lists totally or even straight away. I just don't think they belong on the wiki as they can be very misleading at times (like I said in the notice, when I first got my GP2X it said FF7 was virtually playable which simply wasn't the case). What I'd like to do is move them to a different site with proper provision for organising and keeping the lists up to date as I do recognise a lot of people are interested in them. This is an exceptional case and it clearly isn't a good idea to move lots of stuff off the wiki :).

As for the speculation, I think this comes down to opinion. I think that such pages don't belong in the wiki, it should be reserved for fact. The emulator one has been proved wrong several times anyway. I don't see anything wrong with a page about what is currently 'emulatable' with a brief note at the bottom saying it's unlikely that systems more powerful than whatever will be emulated on the GP2X, but going through every single system seems hugely wasteful to me and just adds to the clutter. Having 'possible' system lists just gets people's hopes up needlessly and any developer wishing to write an emulator for the GP2X will know whether something is possible or not anyway. I would like to change that page to an 'Emulated Systems' one rather than 'Potentially Emulated Systems'.

Basically if the wiki is going to improve, it needs some drastic changes made to it (like when I rewrote and restructured the Wikipedia article) and we can't keep a load of outdated and inaccurate information hanging around making it harder to find what you want and add new information (of course, anybody is welcome to dispute this - we don't want to 'take over' the wiki).
 
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