User talk:Wrye/2006-04

TESwiki

Just so you know, we're already doing a TESwiki (well actually, and Oblivion wiki with TES lore too) over here. Would love you have you contributing. Peerless 19:40, 22 March 2006 (EST)

Thanks for heads-up and invite, but I expect that I'll be sticking with UESP Wiki. 1) According to the active users page, I'm the lead contributor! -- so I don't want to blow my lead by going somewhere else! 2) Also, my focus tends to be on the technical side, and Dave has demonstrated a strength there. 3) And on another note... No ads at UESP Wiki! --Wrye 19:50, 22 March 2006 (EST)

I'm looking into getting rid of ads - also, what about the technical side? I'm lost lol - and not asking you to move, but don't DUPLICATE all our work here - why not have UESP for lore and the previous games and all our hard work so far not go to waste, and keep Oblivion game info over at TESwiki? Peerless 19:52, 22 March 2006 (EST)}}

If Dave had said, "Yeah, hey Oblivion at TESwiki, older stuff here." then that would be one thing. But he's clearly not doing that. There's already a chunk of Oblivion info here, and so far as I can tell, there's more here than at TESWiki. And it was always Dave's intention to do Oblivion here.

I agree about not duplicating content, but I think that for encyclopedic wikis (like this one), there's a much greater tendency to have just one site -- the convenience and networking effects are too high. E.g., I can look at what I did for Morrowind Trail templates and immediately copy it to Oblivion Trial Templates. Or I can easily link from Oblivion modding to Morrowind modding, if that's useful. And it's not just the link that's convenient -- it's that the whole site format, navigation and formatting are the same. So even having an interwiki link doesn't match the convenience of having everything at the same wiki. So, my bet is that TESWiki won't last, while UESP Wiki will continue to grow. It's just hard to beat an existing standard. Sorry, but I think that's the way the cookie will crumble.

My only real concern is with site stability. That's been a problem since about October. But Dave thinks he has it fixed, and of course, he has a huge track record of dedication to the TES world. --Wrye 20:23, 22 March 2006 (EST)

I don't want to compete! That was my point. You sounds very... competitive... kind of scary... how long have you been working with wikis? It's not the wiki spirit. Anyway, in the same wiki spirit, I would like to combine with you then. I have 12x domains relating to this - should I foward them to the oblivion page, or just the site? Peerless 20:29, 22 March 2006 (EST)}}

http://TESwiki.com	http://TESwiki.org	http://TESwiki.net	http://TESwiki.ws
http://obliviowiki.com	http://obliviowiki.org	http://obliviowiki.net	http://obliviowiki.ws
http://oblivionwiki.com	http://oblivionwiki.org	http://oblivionwiki.net	http://oblivionwiki.ws

I actually am not a hypercompetive guy at all -- but I am aware of group and market dynamics. This is a case of say, Linux vs. Berkeley unix. Even if you're both free, open to all, etc., the fact is that there's still a limited supply of both contributors and users. And because of network effects, there's a very strong tendency for there to be a very clear "winner". (Another example: Name the number two wiki encyclopedia after WikiPedia! There isn't one! That's networking effects.) So, yep, I think that it's best to combine into a single TES encyclopedia.

If you're willing to merge efforts then I think that the best thing to do is to copy your content over to UESP Wiki. Follow existing layout and make sure that you're not duplicating existing information. Try to follow what the Morrowind section has done.

(BTW, let me say that if you are willing to merge efforts like this, you're more of a man than me! After putting that much work into something, I'd probably go down to the pub, order a couple of yard longs and fill them with my tears of grief! (After emptying the beer, first, of course.))

I think that the urls are not as important -- though check with Dave. My thought is the best thing to do is to rewrite your home page to suggest that people go to UESP wiki. (Remember, you have to keep paying for addresses every year -- could be a painful reminder.)

Note that while I'm a major contributor here, I don't have any long term committment to the site, and I don't make any basic decisions, nor have access to servers or anything like that. That's Dave's deal. And he pays for it. A lot. I'm just glad that it's not me forking over those server fees...

Final note... Don't completely kill your site yet... Dave says UESP Wiki is back up, but I've heard that before...

I hope that all this isn't making your life too miserable! (I'd mail you a yardlong if I could cram it through my dialup modem...) Cheers! --Wrye 20:59, 22 March 2006 (EST)

I'm still a bit lost lol - allls I was saying is we make wikis, but with one this established, no need for us to infringe. If you guys want hosting, we'd be glad to give it - would look different, but nothing would change system wise (well we have a ton of improvements on mediawiki, but it is all backwards-compatible). Anyway, pretty sure you don't need it - but we're always open to help our wiki-brethren. As I said, it's a smple situation - I started a wiki, like we do with any game, and here was one already done. Not much effort wasted on my part, lots of effort wasted on the parts of my contributors, about 120$ down the drain on domains, oh well. My fault for not looking around enough. If you need anything (especailly help with mediawiki or hosting said program, that's what we DO for goodness sakes) just drop us a line - else, bye! Peerless 21:09, 22 March 2006 (EST)}}

Thanks again for being cool about this. When UESP started converting to wiki format about a year ago, there were a couple of other people with the same idea (like me! -- also Pauli at TheLys and several other folks). That mostly winnowed down to UESP wiki eventually. So, there's quite a bit of history. Anyway, thanks for the hosting offer and good luck with the rest of EnterWiki! --Wrye 21:22, 22 March 2006 (EST)

Reply about Namespaces

Moved to: Oblivion Talk since it's general policy discussion.

Quest spoilers

I'm sorry! I was myself complaining about the spoilers there... I thought everyone who are working on the wiki have a lot of playtime behind them already. --FMan 03:27, 2 April 2006 (EDT)