EA/Database/IG Research

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Seven Sons of Sin
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EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Mon Apr 24, 2017 12:29 am

See that whole separate subforum.

Has the idea gone to die? What has happened to it?
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Sabines
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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Sabines » Mon Apr 24, 2017 3:10 am

And while we're at it, is there any particular reason ea.arelith was taken down? I feel like its removal has done a lot of (further) damage to the server's historical tradition. I'd love a replacement!
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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Hunter548 » Mon Apr 24, 2017 3:13 am

Sabines wrote:And while we're at it, is there any particular reason ea.arelith was taken down? I feel like its removal has done a lot of (further) damage to the server's historical tradition. I'd love a replacement!
It didn't work. The code was borked seven ways to Sunday. Mods couldn't add or delete new articles, some articles would fire off unicode characters instead, and a bunch of stuff like that.
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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by ArcanaFTW » Mon Apr 24, 2017 1:37 pm

Hunter548 wrote:
Sabines wrote:And while we're at it, is there any particular reason ea.arelith was taken down? I feel like its removal has done a lot of (further) damage to the server's historical tradition. I'd love a replacement!
It didn't work. The code was borked seven ways to Sunday. Mods couldn't add or delete new articles, some articles would fire off unicode characters instead, and a bunch of stuff like that.
Are there any plans to bring it back in a different form?

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Ork » Tue Apr 25, 2017 1:28 am

I mean.. no one's stopping anyone from making another.

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Kuma » Tue Apr 25, 2017 1:46 am

The new attempt at EA died because someone with English as a second language basically took charge of it. Admirable, but frustrating. Combine that with the usual arguments about 'accuracy' of very subjective events that we don't have records or accurate dating for, and it was a little doomed to make it so definitive from the start.

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Tue Apr 25, 2017 3:00 am

I'd happily lead up a charge to make it more a random assortment of tid bits and facts and piecemeal "topics" than actual mega chronology, an actual "history." And that was the core problem, making it some kind of absolute Truth was doomed. Rather, it should exist like some kind of "second-tier canon" where new players can draw inspiration, there half-truths that can be dug up to create new plots, and new scholars and characters can debate what actually happened, or who that person actually was, rather than it be forgotten.

We'd create our LucasArts canon tiers! pre-Disney, of course.

What would be the best format to achieve this on?
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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by ArcanaFTW » Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:41 am

Seven Sons of Sin wrote:I'd happily lead up a charge to make it more a random assortment of tid bits and facts and piecemeal "topics" than actual mega chronology, an actual "history." And that was the core problem, making it some kind of absolute Truth was doomed. Rather, it should exist like some kind of "second-tier canon" where new players can draw inspiration, there half-truths that can be dug up to create new plots, and new scholars and characters can debate what actually happened, or who that person actually was, rather than it be forgotten.

We'd create our LucasArts canon tiers! pre-Disney, of course.

What would be the best format to achieve this on?
For all the faults it has, I would recommend wikia. The format being a long list of the years all the way to 100 AR or so, where people may make pages - events, if you'd like - within a certain date and write down an IC-style account of said event, while others who visit the page may also add their own header and IC account under that. This way, you have several perspectives for the same event.

The writers of these pages (or maybe the admins?) would add relevant tags such as 'Guldorand' or 'War', so that you may view the 'Guldorand' page and see every embed event in order of year relevant to the settlement.

A character section of the forum, along with a bestiary like the old database would be great, too - preferably a bio written by the original player, alongside other IC-style accounts of said character by other players in the bottom. It'd preferably be more descriptive than outright factual, not every big secret about every character needs to be written down.

That's my general view of how it should be, and I'd be happy to assist in whatever way I can - and if the devs give it the thumbs up to use wikia, which I know has been a bit experience in the past - I'd be happy to make it and start development with others.

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Kuma » Tue Apr 25, 2017 7:28 am

Bear in mind that Wikia refuses to let you delete pages, and they're kind of terrible pricks in general. Some sort of sub-wiki from the extant official Arelith one would be better, I think.

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by ArcanaFTW » Tue Apr 25, 2017 2:17 pm

Kuma wrote:Bear in mind that Wikia refuses to let you delete pages, and they're kind of terrible pricks in general. Some sort of sub-wiki from the extant official Arelith one would be better, I think.
I didn't think of that, for some reason. It's likely a much sounder idea than mine - hopefully the devs would have some kind of response as to what they want in regards to this?

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Tue Apr 25, 2017 10:52 pm

... could someone give a brief overview of what's the difference between the wiki and the wikia? What's our official "one"?
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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Iceborn » Tue Apr 25, 2017 11:19 pm

There are different formats and hostings of "wiki" pages. (most of them all look the same at their core, but occasionally they have very different functions and administrations of permissions).
For example, NWN vanilla uses a wikia.
http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
While in Arelith, we use a wiki (mediawiki, exactly, which I think it's the exact same base as the wikipedia we know and love).

To add, wikias are a little more... intuitive and easy to edit. It's little different than making a forum's post to begin with.
(It looks like this)
Image

While the more standard wiki, while more versatile, is something like...
Image
Misc Changes, with the Feats and Skills sublinks.
Available races
Spell Changes
Class Mechanics
Command Guide

Take a look before asking your questions!

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ArcanaFTW
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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by ArcanaFTW » Wed Apr 26, 2017 6:32 am

I would say that I much prefer wikia's format, but dealing with their apparent bad practices would be a huge pain in the butt.

Another option would be google sites, perhaps, though I've no experience in any so I couldn't fully say what would be the best.

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Sabines » Wed Apr 26, 2017 9:46 am

Seven Sons of Sin wrote:I'd happily lead up a charge to make it more a random assortment of tid bits and facts and piecemeal "topics" than actual mega chronology, an actual "history." And that was the core problem, making it some kind of absolute Truth was doomed. Rather, it should exist like some kind of "second-tier canon" where new players can draw inspiration, there half-truths that can be dug up to create new plots, and new scholars and characters can debate what actually happened, or who that person actually was, rather than it be forgotten.
Agreed. Attempting to make it "absolute truth", as you say, is laborious and discourages actual IG historical efforts.

I also think the emphasis should be on player submission of character biographies like with ea.arelith. It'd stay subjective, but a lot of otherwise unattainable history would get captured when you connect the dots. We all love to write about our own characters, so there'd be no shortage of manpower (remember how hilariously obvious it was when someone was f5-spamming their character page viewcount on the old website?).
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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Daedin » Wed Apr 26, 2017 2:16 pm

On a bit of a tangent, but related,and this is something I loosely talked about with some other folk:

What could be useful would be a gathering, reviewing and...a bit of cleaning of general Arelithian mythos and lore. A lot, if not all, is very loosely spread out through dungeons, areas and npc conversations, which I know is done by design, and it does what it is supposed to do: create a puzzle out of it all with plenty of place for mystery and theorizing.

However, I still think the very basic stuff could use some compilation of sorts. Things like the pantheons and the time line and even major historical events that could be considered mainstream knowledge. More important than that, Arelith as a whole has deviated so much from standard forgotten realms and d&d lore that it has become a thing of its own, a paralel universe and time frame.

For new players, I think it would be a cool resource to tap into for inspiration upon character creation and even goals.

To the point where I have been thinking of making it a new pet project after I am done with the UD guide thing.

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by DM Symphony » Fri Apr 28, 2017 7:58 am

I have a decent amount of wikia experience, I built my own after a bit of deep thinking about how to organize my materials best. (Links, categories, "style")

You can delete pages, controlling moderators is relatively easy. It's more than enough to tackle this task, but I wouldn't recommend it because I can't stand the advertisements.

I can't stand the ads on NWN wikia, and if we had an Arelith Wikia, I'd personally probably never use it.

I'd rather use and edit a free solution even if it wasn't as publically user friendly.

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Liareth » Fri Apr 28, 2017 8:59 am

We can set up a new wiki at ea.arelith.com if people would be willing to populate it (and handle user registration). We can't enable public registration or editing because bots mess everything up and we don't have the time or the inclination to fix the mess they leave behind!

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by ArcanaFTW » Fri Apr 28, 2017 12:40 pm

Scholar Midnight wrote:We can set up a new wiki at ea.arelith.com if people would be willing to populate it (and handle user registration). We can't enable public registration or editing because bots mess everything up and we don't have the time or the inclination to fix the mess they leave behind!
I'd love to be one of the people working on this wiki if it is set up, so count me in!

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Mr_Rieper » Fri Apr 28, 2017 1:21 pm

Me too. I'd love to work on it.
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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Iceborn » Fri Apr 28, 2017 2:17 pm

I can do (and would be glad to do) administration stuff and edits, but not 'populate it' myself.
Misc Changes, with the Feats and Skills sublinks.
Available races
Spell Changes
Class Mechanics
Command Guide

Take a look before asking your questions!

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Liareth » Fri Apr 28, 2017 2:36 pm

I've created arelith.com/ea (will change to ea.arelith.com at some point). The following users have been created and granted admin privileges, and been sent a PM with the relevant information:

ArcanaFTW
Daedin
Hunter548
Iceborn
Kuma
Mr_Rieper
Sabines
Seven Sons of Sin

Don't contact me or any of the admin team directly for account creation; post here or send a PM to one or all of the players listed above. If there are technical issues with the new wiki or any server changes that need to be made, feel free to contact me regarding them.

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by If Valor Were Inches » Fri Apr 28, 2017 8:46 pm

I'd love to work on this too.

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Iceborn » Wed May 03, 2017 1:42 am

For anybody curious, we have a little Discord channel to plan and set up the foundation of the new EA wiki.
Send a PM if you want in.
Misc Changes, with the Feats and Skills sublinks.
Available races
Spell Changes
Class Mechanics
Command Guide

Take a look before asking your questions!

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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Mithreas » Wed May 03, 2017 2:49 am

Scholar, any objection to me integrating user authentication for the EA with the game (i.e. using the same user accounts as the forum)? If not, can you grant me permission to access the relevant folders and database on the server?

Thanks :)
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Re: EA/Database/IG Research

Post by Liareth » Fri May 05, 2017 9:02 am

Mithreas wrote:Scholar, any objection to me integrating user authentication for the EA with the game (i.e. using the same user accounts as the forum)? If not, can you grant me permission to access the relevant folders and database on the server?

Thanks :)
Feel free as long as it's okay with the EA crew! :) (sorry for the slow response, I've been extremely busy).

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