Talk:Questions for DDOGamer

Part 1: Life as a DDO Wiki Sysop (this section is for you specifically) ''(Note: I'm not sure if he meant this for me specifically, or from the point of view of the specific SysOps who answered this, but until he tells me otherwise, I suspect the latter - no point in doing this only only getting the POV from one guy!)


 * 1) How did you get involved with the wiki?
 * 2) What is your opinion regarding why do some people (like me) mainly read and use the wiki while other people (like you) feel led to contribute and change it?
 * 3) Have you participated in editing other wikis or other similar activities? If yes, how were the editing experiences different from editing DDOWiki?
 * 4) What motivated you to do so much work in this specific wiki?
 * 5) What rules or styles do you try to follow when adding to the wiki?

Part 2: General Info and History (this section is for whoever knows the answers)


 * 1) Who founded the wiki? Borror0?

I founded the wiki along with Elliott. Our original vision was to create a network of gaming wikis called Enterwiki. This was all happening around the time that Wikia was starting up though. In the end, we abandoned the idea because it became apparent that it was going to be too difficult to compete with Wikia. I now regret not giving Enterwiki more of a chance. DDOwiki was the only wiki that survived from the Enterwiki experiment. --Xevo (Contributions • Message) 11:50, April 7, 2013 (EDT)


 * 1) Was there one person who sort of drove things and provided a vision? Or did a bunch of people form up right away to provide crowd-sourced editorial control? Or something else?

While there were certain individuals who drove the wiki forward in the early days, I would say that it was more of a crowd-sourced phenomenon. I am still amazed by how DDOwiki has evolved over the years. --Xevo (Contributions • Message) 11:50, April 7, 2013 (EDT)


 * 1) Who hosts the wiki? Doesn't that cost money?

I host the wiki. The ads pay for the hosting.--Xevo (Contributions • Message) 11:50, April 7, 2013 (EDT)


 * 1) There are ads on the site. How does that work? Where does that money go?


 * 1) Is the site backed up and "safe"?

Absolutely. The wiki is fully backed up daily.--Xevo (Contributions • Message) 11:50, April 7, 2013 (EDT)


 * 1) Is there a general style guideline for wiki submissions?
 * 2) It seems like the look and feel of the wiki underwent a big change a couple of years ago. Did it or am I just imagining things? If yes, why?
 * 3) How do you as a group resolve differences? You can't all have the same philosophy about wiki work but also cannot spend eternity editing each other to comply with several competing individual philosophies. How does that work?

'''Part 3: Questions for everyone. Please ask as many of the other sysops to answer these as possible:'''


 * 1) What is your favorite piece of work you've done for the wiki, and why is it your favorite?
 * 2) How much time do you spend in the wiki versus time in the game?
 * 3) Would you consider appearing on DDOCast to talk about the wiki?

Answers from ShoeMaker
I can still remember How the wiki used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance That I could make those people &#32;/dance&#32; And, maybe, they'd be happy for a while.
 * Part 1: Life as a DDO Wiki Sysop
 * How did you get involved with the wiki?
 * A long, long time ago...

But February made me shiver With every ooze I saw quiver. Bad news from a sahuagin adept; I couldn't take one more step.

I can't remember if I cried When I saw the changing tide, But something touched me deep inside The day the wiki died.

So bye-bye, DDOwiki guy. navigated my browser to the site, But the site wouldn't load now matter how much I did try. And them gruff old dwarves were drinkin' stout and ale Singin', "this'll be the day that I die. "this'll be the day that I die."
 * What is your opinion regarding why do some people (like me) mainly read and use the wiki while other people (like you) feel led to contribute and change it?
 * Hrmmm... Let me think on this one.
 * Have you participated in editing other wikis or other similar activities? If yes, how were the editing experiences different from editing DDOWiki?
 * I've participated in editing many other wikis. DDOwiki is a much calmer and less dramatic place than some of the other places I've edited.
 * What motivated you to do so much work in this specific wiki?
 * I saw a need, and felt passionate about my ability to be able fill that need to some extent. Also, since I prefer to work mainly on templates and the way the wiki works and less on the actual pages, I'm gaining valuable experience in creating logic they may benefit me in the future.
 * What rules or styles do you try to follow when adding to the wiki?
 * Our current rule and style guidelines are currently under construction as we are starting to realize that the wiki that was never suppose to last this long is strong enough to endure most any controversy for the remainder of the lifetime of DDO itself.
 * Part 2: General Info and History (this section is for whoever knows the answers)
 * Who founded the wiki? Borror0?
 * I'm not entirely sure...
 * The list of candidates I would guess includes, , , , and ...
 * Was there one person who sort of drove things and provided a vision? Or did a bunch of people form up right away to provide crowd-sourced editorial control? Or something else?
 * I believe there was a small group at the start and it grew from there. Not certain... Yoko or Xevo would know more.
 * Who hosts the wiki? Doesn't that cost money?
 * hosts the wiki, and yes it costs money.
 * There are ads on the site. How does that work? Where does that money go?
 * The ads are what pay for the domain name registration and other hosting costs. (*cough* we pay ours DDO. :p)
 * Is the site backed up and "safe"?
 * It is! We actually had to restore the site from a backup last year due to an attack.
 * Is there a general style guideline for wiki submissions?
 * There isn't a "formal" guideline per-say (at least not that I'm aware of, and I would hope I would know). We really don't have issues with it very often.
 * It seems like the look and feel of the wiki underwent a big change a couple of years ago. Did it or am I just imagining things? If yes, why?
 * It did, and it's about to go through another!
 * That was the changing of the tide I was talking about in my little jingle above. There was a big disagreement and the wiki actually went down for a few months until  decided to take over the hosting and bring it back up.  However, in this process we lost our enwiki and a few other things we had set up... Took a few months for the wiki to recover from that, but I feel it is stronger now than it ever was.  I saw a record number of new contributors when Update 17 was released, so many infact I had a hard time keeping up with the patrolling of pages and had to set my own projects a side and focus on making sure that all of the new editors edits had some validity and were reasonably accurate.
 * How do you as a group resolve differences? You can't all have the same philosophy about wiki work but also cannot spend eternity editing each other to comply with several competing individual philosophies. How does that work?
 * It is about the information... Personally, if the information is correct, then I tend to leave it alone even if it's not exactly the way I would have done it or the way I like to see it. In extreme cases (which rarely happen), we take it to a discussion page and the two or three people that disagree state their case (sometimes the initial stating of cases is done on our  and although it hasn't been utilized, I am also happy to field case points in email.  Then, after some discussion and deliberation (and usually some mediation from outside parties), we try to reach some kind of agreement that works for everyone.  This doesn't "always" happen, and we have lost a few editors in the past I felt were valuable.
 * Part 3: Questions for everyone. Please ask as many of the other sysops to answer these as possible:
 * What is your favorite piece of work you've done for the wiki, and why is it your favorite?
 * My favorite pieces of work for the wiki are some of the more complicated templates I've created.
 * How much time do you spend in the wiki versus time in the game?
 * It varies... Sometimes I spend weeks on end editing the wiki and only pop in to get mail, and other times I play daily and only pop into the wiki to check my talk page for notices.
 * Would you consider appearing on DDOCast to talk about the wiki?
 * Possibly, if I had time to prepare my answers to the questions being asked.

Part 1
1. In 2007, nobody was using this wiki it seemed so i started using it as my "personal notepad".

2. Check this book out. Its kinda old and obsolete, the title is ridiculous (its sooo 2004 and sooo "web2.0") but it covers all the stuff going on early wiki scene and still holds so much of the truth. This wiki is no different nor special.

3. Yes. Japanese gaming wikis, guitar wikis etc.. Most of these were running on early branch version of MediaWiki called PukiWiki though. I do edit en.wikipedia and ja.wikipedia regularly as well.

4. and 5. At some point of my life, I totally went nuts with this game. Wake up, check the AH and forums then spend all the time at work figuring out builds and item layout, come back home play the game and sleep only to have a dream of playing DDO kinda thing. You know what i am talking about? I hope not lol. I dont really think about rules and styles. All my motivation is to salvage info otherwise gets buried in forum and, well this is a big thing, it is also for learning new stuff myself by putting together articles on them. Trust me, for this kind of geek stuff, there is no better way of learning than to do this. In other words, i do this because it benefits me the most.

Part 2
1. Nope its not Borror0 the French Canadian guy. It was by who at the time was 18-years-old-ish web geek lived in Alaska. Google his name, its amusing and he is awesome. Man, I wish I was born in his generation and in a good family like his.

2. I consider Tihocan to be "father of the wiki" in this regard. Then Me and Borror joined, things slowly built up and ... yea long story.

3 and 4. (his RL name is Ken?) hosts it, who for what I understand was Elliot's mate and "purchased" ownership of the wiki from him. It does cost money, ad is what is there for it.

5. I think so. I trust him.

6. Uh, we are still working on it. DDO wiki:Editing guideline is the one but as I stated above I care less about rules and such.

7. Wiki has changed its "look and feel" many times IMO, and its totally healthy thing. When exactly is "a couple of years ago"?
 * In 2006 (Mod1 - 3) - 's look and feel was dominant on the site along with CSS skin created by EC, of which today we still utilize.
 * In 2007- 2008ish (Mod4 - 8) Me and added bunch of stuff. Quest pages shaped their form. Mod 6 crafting was all community effort to figure out recipes and such so this wiki exploded in that time as well.
 * Then uh, around Unlimited/Mod 9, the wiki had another explosion, much bigger this time. and  joined and did colorful templates and table stuff. Thats what we see today in individual Item pages.
 * or, are you talking about overhaul on Home page look ? The idea of it came from Ultramonk then I completed the task.

8. bleh, I dont try to resolve differences or anything. Again read the wikipedia book.

Part 3
1. Theres no such thing as my favorite work.

2. Right now I am not such a enthusiastic gamer/editor. Comes back to game every patches and updates, gets done quickly and take another break kinda player. Editing is minimal as well, just checking RSS feed and paying attention to talk page updates.

3. My English is crappy, I dont have webcam right now, lives in totally different time zone, but yea will consider it. DDOVault guys certainly will start poking at me though zomg!

Tauro's response
Part 1: Life as a DDO Wiki Sysop

Q: How did you get involved with the wiki?


 * Well, I looking back, saw a couple spelling errors, made an account, read up on how to edit, and went from there. Minor edits like that turned into template layouts, image uploads, etc.

Q: What is your opinion regarding why do some people (like me) mainly read and use the wiki while other people (like you) feel led to contribute and change it?


 * I feel people use the wiki as a reference guide to help them though difficult quests. Lets face it, some of these quests, you could be beating your head in to the wall (or standing in the lava, like at the bottom of The Pit) for hours trying to figure out the puzzles without help. I love the idea people use it and regard it so highly. I do become a little disheartened when someone complains that something is "wrong" or "ddo is not right" or "someone should fix it" - There's an 'edit' button there (*hint*hint*) - and if you mess up, it's a simple click to revert to a previous version of an article, so not like your lack of wiki-expertise is going to mess anything up.

Q: ''Have you participated in editing other wikis or other similar activities? If yes, how were the editing experiences different from editing DDOWiki?''


 * Yes, I have edited a few other wikis. Some were on Wikia (which uses a really annoying software in comparison to MediaWiki that DDOwiki/Wikipedia uses), and a couple others. DDOwiki is the most developed, with a crew of active editors and admins that constantly add, update, and tweak things daily.

Q: What motivated you to do so much work in this specific wiki?


 * My love of DDO, and a lot of time on my hands. After seeing all the work being put in by all the admins, I inquired about joining the admin crew

Q: What rules or styles do you try to follow when adding to the wiki?


 * I try to follow the rules that are set forth by the guidelines (File nameing, capitalization in sentance formats - little things, really), but in my book, no edit is a bad edit so long as it can be edited again to comply with the guidelines.

Part 2: General Info and History

Q: ''Who founded the wiki? Borror0?''


 * I joined well after the founding of the wiki, so I'm not really qualfied to answer - but if I had to guess, Xevo (who now hosts the site).

Q: ''Was there one person who sort of drove things and provided a vision? Or did a bunch of people form up right away to provide crowd-sourced editorial control? Or something else?''


 * Again, not qualified to answer.

Q: ''Who hosts the wiki? Doesn't that cost money?''


 * Xevo hosts the wiki; Yes, website hosting costs money.

Q: ''There are ads on the site. How does that work? Where does that money go?''


 * Yes, The ads pay for hosting.

Q: Is the site backed up and "safe"?


 * To my knowledge, the site is backed up daily. We also take measures to block spammers/malicious users as quickly as possible.

Q: Is there a general style guideline for wiki submissions?


 * Yes and no. If there's an established page using a template - you'll see fields that you'll have to input hidden in the input text (for example: " |minlevel = 12 " or an item's minimum level is 12)

Q: ''It seems like the look and feel of the wiki underwent a big change a couple of years ago. Did it or am I just imagining things? If yes, why?''


 * Yes, our default skin shifted to something that was a little more stable/compatible. As softwares update, standards change. This again is also being discussed and addressed.

Q: ''How do you as a group resolve differences? You can't all have the same philosophy about wiki work but also cannot spend eternity editing each other to comply with several competing individual philosophies. How does that work?''


 * "Edit wars" are ugly, nasty things, and I've seen them result in many hurt feelings. We try to avoid them as much as possible. We discuss the issues normally in a Talk page, very similar to a forum thread.

'''Part 3: Questions for everyone. Please ask as many of the other sysops to answer these as possible:'''

Q: What is your favorite piece of work you've done for the wiki, and why is it your favorite?


 * It's so hard to choose, I've uploaded many item pics to the wiki staring my toons or my guildmates modeling the items.

Q: How much time do you spend in the wiki versus time in the game?


 * There was a time when I spent almost all my game time in the wiki, and only logging in to get data for the wiki. Then the MOTU expansion came out. Basically that has flip/floped now, and me and my guild mates have been more active in game.

Q: Would you consider appearing on DDOCast to talk about the wiki?


 * I'm not sure how much more I can add.

"Tauro" (Contributions &bull; ) 13:41, April 7, 2013 (EDT)

geoff hanna thanks you all
Really nice answers everyone, thoughtful and helpful, thank you for putting so much time and effort into this.

By the way, how will I know when everyone who should answer, has answered?

Thanks again!

-- geoffhanna

Update one: First article using these answers has been published. Check it out! http://www.gamergeoff.com/appreciating-ddo-wiki-the-crunchy-bits/

Update two: Second half of the DDO Wiki interviews article is published. Read it here: http://www.gamergeoff.com/appreciating-ddo-wiki-peeking-behind-the-curtain/

These articles are getting a lot of page views and positive comments. Everyone appreciates the work you guys do for the community.

Thank you for answering my questions, and thank you even more for DDO Wiki!


 * I think it would be fairly safe to assume that everyone that should have answered and is going to, has answered by now. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 07:42, April 24, 2013 (EDT)