Wiki

[ccexplore]

Hmm, I have to admit I totally forgot about the wiki for a while now.  But now that you brought it up, a wiki would be a perfect vehicle for organizing challenge results and replays (and keeping them updated regardless of whoever originated the thread), something I was thinking of doing over the upcoming holidays.  Closing the wiki now seems like too drastic an action.  Is there some way we can simply limit access instead?

I do agree that it looks unlikely we'll get a useful full-blown wiki out of the current state of affairs.  But wiki as a simple interface for creating and updating the kinds of pages on specialized topics, that remains useful.

[Gronkling]

I forgot about this too, probably because I didn't play much lemmings over summer. I don't think we need to delete it but we don't really have enough editors to make it into a fully blown wiki. I'll continue to edit anyway as I find editing wikis to be rather relaxing.  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" /> It's a shame about all the spam though. Why people continue to spam on wikis and forums I don't know as it obviously doesn't work. Also I changed the homepage into something slightly more welcoming, feel free to change the picture or any of the categories or anything else.

[ccexplore]

Why people continue to spam on wikis and forums I don't know as it obviously doesn't work.

My understanding of the economics of spam is that because they can be massively distributed in an automated fashion with fairly low cost (especially if done by hijacked/infected computers, effectively stealing someone else's networking bandwidth to distribute spam), they are therefore (sadly) extremely cheap to produce, so the cost is near 0.  Which means that even though they may have a very low rate of consumer effectiveness, they nevertheless can remain viable.  More nefariously, in other cases the spam may merely be a vector for viruses, malware and phishing scams etc. that have "value" (from the evildoers POW of course) outside of merely generating sales.

In other words, don't think of it as targeting our specific wiki and forum, but rather all popular types of wikis and forums, plus other mediums like emails etc.

[Nortaneous]

Why people continue to spam on wikis and forums I don't know as it obviously doesn't work.

More links = higher ranking in search engines. It's not about getting people to click it; all that matters is that the links are there for the search engine crawlers to notice.

[Clam]

Thanks Gronkling for fixing up the main page http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/thumbsup.gif" alt=":thumbsup:" title="Thumbs Up" class="smiley" />. I'm almost inspired to start editing again now http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/smiley.gif" alt=":)" title="Smiley" class="smiley" />

Hmm, I have to admit I totally forgot about the wiki for a while now.  But now that you brought it up, a wiki would be a perfect vehicle for organizing challenge results and replays (and keeping them updated regardless of whoever originated the thread), something I was thinking of doing over the upcoming holidays.

Organising challenge replays has crossed my mind as well lately, and I think geoo was interested in this too. This is definitely something we should look into.

Maybe 'close the wiki' isn't the right way to put it, since the collaborative wiki approach probably is better for community stuff like this than a single-user fansite, which is likely to stop updating if the creator is real-life busy or loses interest. What we could do instead is to have something that looks like a 'complete' wiki, but just focus on the interesting stuff and put off the grindy stuff (level stats, etc) forever.

As for the spam issue, what we might do (if it's possible) is to merge the wiki accounts with the forum, so you have to register for the forum to get edit rights to the wiki. The 'what colour is a lemming's hair' quiz (or whatever it is, I haven't looked at the registration page since it was changed) seems to be working for preventing spam on the forum, so with any luck this should keep the wiki clean as well.

[ccexplore]

and put off the grindy stuff (level stats, etc) forever.

Come to think of it, seems like there may be a good bit of overlap between what Finlay has been doing with his spreadsheet and the kind of "grindy" stuff we might want on the wiki.  If we can just convince Finlay to format his stuff in Wiki instead of in Excel, we may well be 80% there even for the grindy stuff. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" />

[Clam]

I don't think we need to delete it but we don't really have enough editors to make it into a fully blown wiki. I'll continue to edit anyway as I find editing wikis to be rather relaxing.  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" />

You must be extremely stressed out lately, considering all the 'relaxing' you're doing http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/laugh.gif" alt=":D" title="Laugh" class="smiley" />. It's also curious that I mention closing the wiki and now it gets more updates than ever before http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/tongue.gif" alt=":P" title="Tongue" class="smiley" /> http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/thumbsup.gif" alt=":thumbsup:" title="Thumbs Up" class="smiley" />

Meanwhile, the spam continues to roll in. This is something we need to sort out pretty soon if we're going to keep the wiki viable. I googled up some useful-looking pages on wiki spam and what to do about it:
- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Spam" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Wiki spam
- http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Combating spam
- http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Anti-spam_features" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Anti-spam features
- http://www.umasswiki.com/wiki/UMassWiki:Blocking_Spam_In_Mediawiki" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">Blocking Spam In Mediawiki

[ccexplore]

Embarassingly, I can't log into the wiki anymore. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/XD.gif" alt=":XD:" title="XD" class="smiley" /> It appears I had used a different password from the forums when I signed up for the wiki, and now I no longer remember what it is. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/XD.gif" alt=":XD:" title="XD" class="smiley" /> Worse, apparently I didn't leave an email address either so the "email new password" option also doesn't work.  I think it may have to do with my paranoid distrust of security of wikis (which perhaps is not completely unfounded given the spam volume we've observed http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/undecided.gif" alt=":-\" title="Undecided" class="smiley" />).

Any possibility an admin can fix the issue with my wiki account not having an email, so that I can make use of the password reset?  Adam?  I'm sure you all know the email address by now, it's ccexplore (at) yahoo (dot com).

I suppose in worst case I can just sign up on the wiki again as ccexplore2.  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/undecided.gif" alt=":-\" title="Undecided" class="smiley" /> Still, would be nice to recover my original account.

[finlay]

and put off the grindy stuff (level stats, etc) forever.

Come to think of it, seems like there may be a good bit of overlap between what Finlay has been doing with his spreadsheet and the kind of "grindy" stuff we might want on the wiki.  If we can just convince Finlay to format his stuff in Wiki instead of in Excel, we may well be 80% there even for the grindy stuff. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" />

How do you mean?

I made a few pages for some ports of Lemmings. Could you check them out? Also, I think we need some kind of template for them, so that we can put in some explanatory data about their capabilities.

[ccexplore]

How do you mean?

Didn't you compile like a list of all levels in several Lemmings games and for several different ports?  With details like level title, stats, etc.  I was just thinking that the wiki probably wanted the same information.

[finlay]

I know, i mean like how would you want it presented, particularly?

[ccexplore]

Oh okay.  Ha, have to admit I haven't given it much thought yet. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/XD.gif" alt=":XD:" title="XD" class="smiley" />

I guess as a start, simply taking the Excel and just make it same table format in the Wiki would be a start, though I'm sure we can do better.  Deveria.com's approach is kinda nice but I know some of it exceeds wiki capabilities (eg. the neat flyout of larger level picture with stats).

[finlay]

http://www.lemmingsforums.com/w/index.php5?title=Fun_1&redirect=no" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">http://www.lemmingsforums.com/w/index.php5?title=Fun_1&redirect=no
I started making a couple of redirects like this to begin with, but it'll take a while to do the rest of them and I'm not really sure I can be bothered right now http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/tongue.gif" alt=":P" title="Tongue" class="smiley" />

Also, I had a bit of a binge earlier this evening and made all of Fun and Tricky be in roughly the same format with little pieces of trivia added for some of them (like the origins of the titles).

Some notes on what I'm currently doing: spelling errors are a major one, but sorting out all the levels to have a navigation box and some info is the main one. I'm also replacing every instance of a spelt-out number 10 or above with the numeral, for clarity's sake (some of them are also misspelt).

The other one is that I've just made a new template "LevelInfobox2" for levels that have a differing number of lemmings and/or goal in DOS Lemmings and Amiga Lemmings.

[LemSteven]

I would at some point like to see the max-% record noted on the page for each level.  It would also be nice to note which glitches/tricks/strategies are needed to achieve the record.  Ultimately, I would like to see pages explaining how the glitches work, and examples of where they are useful.  Obviously, some of these ideas will take a while to implement, but I might as well put them out for consideration.

[finlay]

Fair enough. I'm not sure of the best way to implement those ideas tbh.

Anyway, I've finished inserting some info about each level of the original lemmings, and formatting them so they're all roughly the same (although I've stuck some stuff in the Trivia section that could go in a Ports section instead and the Trivia sections could probably use bullet point lists...).

Well, i'm not doing any more today, because I've had enough, but there are a couple of other things that I think need doing – in particular, the Fun levels all have screenshots from the Windows version in jpg format, and it'd be good if they could be changed to screenshots from the Amiga version in png format, like the rest of the game. I think it was Gronkling who uploaded all the Amiga screenshots, so maybe doing it for Fun too would be a possibility? As i say, i'd do it but i'm a bit sick of the wiki now.