Talk:IFWiki origins

Okay. I believe Nick Montfort plans to add more to this page, but here are my thoughts and please forgive me if I make too much about this.

It's my belief that the IF Community wastes a lot of time. There are probably dozens of websites and personal pages that have varying levels of content regarding interactive fiction. Some of the owners of these sites are excellent at keeping them fresh and up to date. Eventually though, it seems that all sites tend to grow mold or content simply disappears.

I also believe that wikis are perfectly suited to many of the types if information that a hobby like interactive fiction contains.

It's because of these two thoughts that we have this website.

It would be nice to build content into the wiki, but I would also ask people to seriously consider what information they maintain on their own websites and determine if that infomation couldn't be better supported on ifwiki.

In the past I had created iflibrary.org/.com and one of the major issues with people using it was that it was more or less "owned" by me. It didn't really feel "public". It was also security driven so that the burden of maintenance was on me or people that happened to register.

So here is a solid pledge. The ifwiki.org is not to be considered an entity of David Cornelson. It is owned by everyone that has an interest in interactive fiction. It is public information. I refuse to be the sole or final judge of how content is designed, styled, or managed. I accept a role as an IF Community member and will work with others as a team to create a useful tool for interactive fiction research.

--David Cornelson 21:10, 1 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

Here are a few general thoughts:

What will this wiki do that Wikipedia doesn't do, and that existing IF sites don't do? Will walkthroughs and detailed discussion of games be included, and if so, how will spoilers be indicated? Should there be a "neutral point of view" as on Wikipedia, or some standard more suitable to making critical judgments about particular pieces of IF or aspects of IF? Will authors be allowed to enter information about their own games, or will that be prohibited, as it would be on Wikipedia? Is there any reason to have a "glossary" that is separate from the other "articles"?

And a few more personal thoughts, related to ifwiki and my own writing:

I'm not sure how collaboratively-written articles, free for anyone to edit, will be useful for the type of writing I've done or the type of writing others have done. My "Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction" is an essay I wrote, presenting my own explorations and arguments, just as Graham Nelson's "The Craft of Adventure" presents Graham's particular perspective. I'd be glad to have it mirrored or republished intact anywhere, but the proper way for someone to build on it or respond to it would be to write another article, not to edit it wiki-style. So I wouldn't think to offer it all as raw material for a wiki.

Now, if we wanted to say something along the lines of "let's everyone detail the way that Shade works, or the way Varicella works, and what we think the allusions/meanings/effects on the interactor are at every step," that might be different, and might lead to an interesting accumulation of discussion. It would be something not supported by other sites, and something probably not appropriate for the shorter-form articles in Wikipedia.

A final note:

I think we should consider who the readership (and the writership) for ifwiki is supposed to be. Even if we're wrong, it's better to have some idea than no idea. Will it be the IF community, adept at searching the Web, communicating constantly on USENET and ifMUD, familar with many of the games we'll document, and perhaps not crying out for a resource like this, whatever this resource is going to be? Will it be students in middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities who are trying to figure out which IF pieces they might study, how they might understand them better, and how they might fit them into broader cultural contexts - which the IF community might not be so concerned about? Will the readership consist of IF nostalgics who might be "recruited" into the IF community? Or a new crop of geeks, outside an academic setting, who might be recruited to play and author IF?

--Nm 21:56, 1 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I think we want to categorize opinions, but not promote any single opinion. So on a craft page, we might link to the various essays that discuss craft.

I would like to see content moved to ifwiki from other sites. Barring that, we may very well duplicate it and reference it.

I guess making it public now is okay. I had hoped to have more content to make it seem more legitimate, but then again, the quicker people have access, the more they might feel inclined to help build it.

I think pages for authors and games are fine. I think reviews should be somewhere else, but they don't have to be. As long as the review is a title (not just 'review') and linked as an opinion piece, then it should be fine.

For the most part, this could be the hub for all IF content. The ifwiki doesn't need to contain it all, but it could certainly link to it all.

--David Cornelson 22:10, 1 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I guess I would suggest focusing on something that the wiki, and collaborative writing about IF, can do particularly well. I'm not sure that just being the hub for all of IF is a good goal. Why try to defeat Google and help people search for links related to IF more effectively than Google can? Why try to defeat baf's Guide as a good index into the IF Archive? But if we try to exhaustively explore and study particular works, offering thoughts about what different characters, puzzles, locations, texts, etc. actually mean within that work, that might be quite interesting. These always involve opinions, but such an exploration wouldn't be the same as a review. If we were looking at Curses, it might involve explanation of mythological and literary references and the relationship of certain puzzles to those in earlier IF, for instance.

--Nm 22:17, 1 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I myself would like to see/contribute to an IF Design Patterns archive. IE, a set of commonly used recurring IF problems/solutions like 'Door' 'Room' 'LockAndKeyPuzzle' 'Maze' 'Follower' 'Compass' 'Knapsack' and how the concept has evolved over the years, the pros and cons of various solutions, and how they can be implemented in a variety of IF languages. The Glossary is probably a step toward this but I'm thinking one step beyond jargon but one step less technical than a language reference guide.

--Nate 00:36, 2 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

So maybe we should try to come up with some ifwiki bylaws. I don't think we're going to be able to narrow down the style in a simple manner. So a list of acceptable content and how it should be styled might be a better way to go.

--David Cornelson 10:37, 2 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

Vote:When should ifwiki.org go public?

--David Cornelson 11:27, 2 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

Nate's suggestions seem good; I might or might not contribute to the articles about those myself, but I can see how collaborative writing would work in that case.

Again, it seems a good idea to consider what special role the wiki is supposed to play, and who is going to read it, write it, and benefit from it, before coming up with lists about what should be excluded or what style things should be written in. I think Nate's ideas would have the IF community and authors as their readership/authorship, while a focus on how games work and the explication of them would include the IF community as well as other scholars and students. They aren't exclusive, of course.

Wikipedia seems to work, in part, because people are descriptive there, writing about other facts, lines of thought, countries, works of art, etc. Wikipedia isn't a way for people to develop new philsophies of mind or to write new novels together, though. This is why I think some sort of focus on something pre-existing (existing games themselves, "design patterns," existing IF development systems, etc.) could be good. I'm not sure people will write something like "The Craft of Adventure" or "Toward a Theory of IF" on the wiki, but they might work together to elaborate on some existing structure. I'm not saying we should exclude everything else, but it could help to decide on one thing, or a few things, that the wiki is supposed to accomplish.

--Nm 21:12, 2 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I'll be honest. This sounds a little too restrictive to me. I'm a simple guy. I think most people that will come across this website will be looking for help on a topic here and there. I agree that we can use the site to deepen discussions or theories, but in order to do that a foundation is required. It's my belief that foundation is in the details that have already been catalogued in other places. So in a way, we need to pull that information into the wiki before we start building on it. There has to be a way for someone to come into the wiki and start from scratch, take a step here and there, and then when they're ready, delve into the patterns and theory articles.

One of the traits that I have had forever has been to champion the new author. I am still that person. I personally want to see design patterns and more threortical works done, but I don't want it on a shelf so high that people can't reach it.

So it's boring and it seems repetitive, but it's my belief that we need to take the time to reconstruct our collective knowledge of where interactive fiction starts.

--David Cornelson 00:23, 3 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

So we want an index of games and authors, as well as terms and techniques? That seems doable.

I do like the idea of aggregating the common knowledge of the community into a common wiki format. Heck, I hang out on ifmud all the time but I have no idea really where to go to answer simple questions about what games are what. ifarchive.org is the only site I know of for sure, and that doesn't answer questions. At the very least a reference to things like Cloak Of Darkness (if it still exists, and wherever it is) should be on the wiki. Things like InfoDoc too, and whatever else is out there. I keep forgetting the URLs to those.

I guess I see a wiki as a step up from Alex, without the deliberate stylized wackiness.

Would it be an idea to have templates for standard game, author, etc pages, or is that putting the cart before the horse? --Nate 01:11, 3 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)