Proposal: Add Communities Sub Section

[regnr8 0]

Proposal: Add Communities Section

Background:

This was originally proposed specifically for the Star Wars Episode 1 Racer wiki but I think this is also relevant across all game communities. 

In some instances, when newcomers arrive on a wiki page, it is valuable to be able to connect with members of that gaming community.

In my specific case, it was very useful to have the SWE1R discord (unofficial) linked in the General Information section.

As a modder, it allowed me to connect with other community members and get a project off the ground.

From what I understand after having a conversation with staff in the PCGamingWiki Disord server, having this link posted under General Information goes against the wiki policy.

Therefore I propose that policy is edited to include a communities section.

 

Proposal: Add Communities Section

Adding a "Communities" section to the wiki right below General Information would allow people like myself who are looking to connect and collaborate with other community members, to easily do so.

The SWE1R community, like so many communities surrounding older games, is very small and having visibility for various communities to connect with newcomers is so important.

It means that people such as myself can find those communities in the first place! For example, had the policy been enforced and this discord link not have been posted under the General Information section, I wouldn't have been able to even begin my mods for the game.

Connecting with other people was essential to make the SWE1R HD Upgrade Pack a reality.

Making Community Links visible and easily accessible at the top of the wiki is vital to the future growth of many small communities.

I urge your team to take this into consideration.

Thank you,

- J King

[Aemony 142]

Adding a section just below the General Information section doesn't really solve any of the current issues, and will only result in even more wasted space at the top.

In another thread and in previous discussions the removal of e.g. stuff like community-driven wikis have also been mentioned as possible changes.

I can see a benefit in having a general "everything goes" community section at the bottom of articles in Other Information, as that have generally been considered the place for non-technical stuff like mods or info not applicable to any of the other sections, etc. It would also serve as a general acceptable place to list however or whatever community members would feel beneficial, and the lack of prominently being featured on the articles would also prevent edit wars.

So in short:

• General information - Official game resources
• Other information -> Communities (or however it would be called) - "everything goes" community section filled with links and whatnot to unofficial resources and stuff.

To bridge the two, we could add a link in the general information taking visitors down to the bottom (e.g. "See community-oriented links" or something similar).

[regnr8 0]

I don't know what the current issues are that you're referring to.

You're far more knowledgeable about the going ons of your wiki than I am.

All I can share with you is my own experience with pcwikigaming.com as well as my own experience as an administrator of numerous communities.

Having a dedicated section for known and established communities, especially for older games where the publishers or studios are now defunct, is incredibly useful for people looking to connect with others that are passionate about those specific games.

Burying or removing community links altogether does a disservice to the end user who is seeking to connect as well as to what I presume is the primary goal of the wiki, to provide the best and most relevant information about a game to the end user.

Whatever your team decides, is up to you. That is my 2 cents.

Thanks again for taking the time to consider my input.

 

[Aemony 142]

To make a long story short, there's a ton of ongoing undercurrents that your proposal touches upon 🙂

To give you a tiny glimpse into it, I'll just quote myself from another ongoing thread regarding the removal of unofficial wikis in the general information section:

On 6/7/2019 at 5:02 PM, Aemony said:

•  This touches partially on what PCGW wants to be, and cover. PCGW have included mentions of official/community wikis as well as "fan sites" as acceptable being listed in the General information section for years now, and while perhaps a wiki haven't been listed in all cases, it is one of the more frequently seen links of articles. This is one of the least "technical-focused" aspects of articles, and is more about general information about the universe of the game etc.
  •  Basically, do PCGW only want to concern itself with technical stuff about a game, or try to serve as a universal springboard for further resources a player might want.
    •  Should players be linked to PCGW only when it concerns technical matters, or should PCGW be able to link players forward in non-technical matters as well?
  •  This relates to possible discoverability of titles through PCGW, if such a thing is desired as a goal of the site.

I think the idea of a separate communities section or community-based resources is overall good, and am glad that we have an official proposal thread for it to keep track of it. We just need to figure out how to fit it into what PCGW wants to be and balance it with the various factors involved.

For the moment the "other information" section sounds the most appropriate due to its general "everything goes" nature. It is, of course, also possible we can find a solution to feature it higher up the page in an appropriate manner, e.g. collapsed by default to prevent even massive lists of community resources and sites from overtaking the rest of the page.

[regnr8 0]

I understand.

Well, I hope your team sides in favour of being a "one stop shop" repo for all gaming info.

The technical should maintain priority imo but at the same time servicing the greater gaming community as a hub to other community resources that perhaps might not fit within PCGM's original scope is quite valuable and seems relevant to me as an end user of your site.

I'll keep an eye on your team's developments!

Thanks again!

 

[Andytizer 269]

PCGamingWiki in 2012 was initially envisioned as a technical-only website providing only quantitative data on fixes, and we have been strict on enforcing this for the last 7 years. Partly this was to keep our concept pure and make it easy to attract new editors. Another reason for this was being somewhat unsure of how we could moderate qualitative content - we already have substantial amount of arguments and edit wars about fairly straightfoward technical things!

However there is nothing in about 'PCGamingWiki' which limits itself to only fixes - we can potentially cover anything useful to the average PC gamer. In our Discord chats, I am always amazed about the amount of information about games that we collectively know and discuss, but cannot fit into our narrow single-row settings templates.

There are plans in the future to expand our remit substantially to cover more qualitative content and become more of a one stop shop for everything PC gaming. This is likely to include a Community section somewhere on the page. This probably won't be at the very top, but would be slotted in between other future headers - like 'port history', 'engine', 'reception', 'gameplay', etc.

As with everything on PCGamingWiki, changes like this need to be done over time, as each policy has ramifications over all 37,000 of our current articles. However a Community section, and other sections are on our radar. I believe that eventually becoming the 'one stop shop' could catapult PCGW as the #1 resource for everything PC gaming - potentially even the top search result for every PC game. This in turn will expand our editor base substantially, making it possible to finally have the manpower to fix every single PC game, past and future.

[Mirh 103]

On 6/29/2019 at 3:40 AM, regnr8 said:

In some instances, when newcomers arrive on a wiki page, it is valuable to be able to connect with members of that gaming community.

I couldn't concur more with this.

Especially for older games, it's invaluable to know where the last survivors use to hang at.

On 6/29/2019 at 3:40 AM, regnr8 said:

From what I understand after having a conversation with staff in the PCGamingWiki Disord server, having this link posted under General Information goes against the wiki policy.

Because once upon a time we had a douche (or maybe it was two) war editing, and nobody of us was knowledgeable of such community, and somehow rather than just ban him for *uncivil* and completely reckless behavior, somebody thought that if we had a requirement for officiality, then a reasonable person wouldn't have attempted such edits in the first place....

But by all means, wiki means you can and should question the rules too.

And indeed, it doesn't make sense. General information should provide, you know, information (put even aside whatever psychological argument you could do about "what does the user need on top of the page"). And "being official" is just so completely tangential to it.

The official Mass Effect's answers.ea.com website could be probably beaten by an *archived* copy of the old bioware forums probably. And TES games without nexusmods are like a planet without a sun. And so on.

Then, of course it's not so automatic anymore - but nobody is forcing anyone to add info, if he's not sure.

And I'm not seeing the point in listing communities separately. Unless perhaps a game had like a dozen, all equally worth.. But at that point does it even make sense if they are so widespread and diverse (e.g. minecraft)?

[Andytizer 269]

Yes I take your point @Mirh let's begin drafting this and get the ball rolling.

 

General information/key points is going to be phased out and replaced by several things including a fully prose introduction. Ideally Community might be a section underneath this.

 

This is what I think it can potentially look like:

 

Introduction (no header - all prose separated as paragraphs)

• [Genre and gameplay]
• [Port history]
• [Key information] (main issues and improvements)

''Community'' (bolded)

[Links in a column - 

official forums

Steam

reddit

NexusMods

very large communities]

 

[Community current state including modding] - prose
For example -

Skyrim is has one of the large PC modding community which is spread between NexusMods and the Steam Workshop, with a vast array of content mods such as Falskaar and quality of life mods like SkyUI and SKSE.

 

Notes:

• We need criteria for notability and ranking - we should limit it to say, 2-3 communities
• We should determine a criteria and ranking - the most popular and most unique should be featured
• Move official website into infobox (like Company pages)
• Make new templates for linking to reddit, Steam etc. (like we do with Wikipedia) so that it shows a favicon/logo for contrast/ease of use

Interested to hear your thoughts, and then we can implement them into a sample page.

Some months ago I drafted this, but needs work and to decide an actual 'formula' so that it can be applied to every article.

[Mirh 103]

14 hours ago, Andytizer said:

very large communities]

The communities should be "useful" probably, rather than just big for their sake. Though I guess most of times, there really isn't a difference between the two ideas.

And "just having a presence on a big website" shouldn't necessarily qualify you either. If the game is on steam, ok, its community pages are an automatic go-to place for everybody.

But just because a subreddit exists, if it's not "busy" I wouldn't see much sense into it.

14 hours ago, Andytizer said:

we should limit it to say, 2-3 communities

I would argue that's already enough to cover without any "need of arbitration" 99% of games.

14 hours ago, Andytizer said:

Move official website into infobox (like Company pages)

That's smart - considering most of time those don't provide even information.

 

For the remainder, I get you'd like a conversational introduction and I (sorta) see where you are coming from. But I personally struggle to see any way in which this wouldn't sensibly dilute the clarity of fixes and everything else.

Edited January 24, 2020 by Mirh

[Aemony 142]

13 hours ago, Mirh said:

For the remainder, I get you'd like a conversational introduction and I (sorta) see where you are coming from. But I personally struggle to see any way in which this wouldn't sensibly dilute the clarity of fixes and everything else.

The discussion which sorta sparked that idea is from like 1½ year ago or so as part of a discussion on search engine optimization and how "bloggy" content -- even machine-generated "blog posts" are often nowadays positioned higher on search engines, even if they do not provide actual new or important content.

It's possible that it's a direct result _of_ diluting the content, as it means users have to spend more time on the page to be able to take in the information vs. e.g. our current wiki structure.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Mirh 103]

It is possible (for as much as I don't think google tracks "eyes time"), still I was just saying I really don't feel like I can help with that.  

If really we needed some better "welcoming" of users, I'd rather have more key points if any.

If you want to make a wikipedia-like introduction, explaining the game genre, how the game plays and whatnot.. Seriously, what's the point for somebody that already ideally has the game in his hands? And if you are going as far as to imagine a future where people would straight look here for info rather than wikipedia itself.. I don't think we really can and should compete.

[Andytizer 269]

7 hours ago, Mirh said:

Seriously, what's the point for somebody that already ideally has the game in his hands? And if you are going as far as to imagine a future where people would straight look here for info rather than wikipedia itself.. I don't think we really can and should compete.

Firstly PC gamers do check our articles to research before they buy a game to make sure it meets their criteria before making a purchase, e.g. support for ultrawide, controller, inversion, type of DRM, etc. we are just expanding this. 

Secondly there's nothing to stop us competing with Wikipedia. Our articles are more relevant to PC gamers than Wikipedia which is bogged down by multiplatform information, plot synopsis, reception/reviews, awards etc. Also many PC games especially indie ones don't have Wikipedia articles because they are not 'notable' enough.

Proposed introduction section is still heavily focused on on technical and quality of life issues -  my drafts so far provide bare minimum in terms of gameplay/genre - even less than a typical bloated MobyGames entry.

 

I've begun drafting a template here for changes to the Introduction using your feedback so far:

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PCGamingWiki:Editing_guide/Introduction