WANTED: Lurker Wiki Administrator

[Bolty]

WANTED: Lurker Wiki Administrator(s)

For the Lurker Lounge to be a premier strategy website, we need to start building a strategy archive for newcomers to read up on. Now that World of Warcraft has been around in retail for about a year, it's time for Lurkers to stretch their fingertips and start doing something they never could do in the past: add strategy content directly to the main site.

This is a fundamental shift in policy from years past. Before, I was the "gatekeeper" of main site content for Diablo and Diablo II. Articles that I felt were fine examples of game strategy I would offer to host and put online. My emphasis was HARD on quality and not quantity - I wanted any Lounge reader to be able to read an article knowing that it was completely accurate.

It was far too daunting a task for one person, and I eventually gratefully accepted help from Griselda, Refrigerator, Lemming, and now MongoJerry to assist with main page content. A small game like Diablo could have one person run a strategy section fairly well, but a gargantuan behemoth like World of Warcraft needs a whole host of authors to write strategy guides, character builds, hints and tips, you name it.

My hope is that the Lurker community embraces this concept - of collecting not necessarily the largest, but the BEST overall strategy guide wiki. Nazi-style nitpicking, the norm around here, can help us all assemble a guide that we can feel a part of - the total accumulation of WoW strategy knowledge that we possess.

To do this requires participation from YOU, the Lurkers. If you don't add content, it goes nowhere.

But to start it off, we need administrators. People who want to spend a little time every day to monitor activity on the Wiki, act as quality control, and ban miscreants. What's required is a fair mind as well - if someone edits your work you can't ban them. :)

Administrator(s) will also set the standards of the Wiki, the overall architecture, and help keep it on an even keel. In short, you will be a master of the content there. I will be fulfilling my role I take now on the main site - technical setup guy, and can help with skinning/design of the Wiki, but I'm not going to head up its content.

Questions:

Q) Why a wiki? Why now?
A) There's been some interest expressed here about the addition of content directly of Lurkers, and I feel it's key that posters here feel more "in touch" with this website itself.

Q) What will set this Wiki apart from other WoW wikis? Are we re-inventing the wheel?
A) The focus of the Lurker wiki will be purely on strategy and game mechanics - what this site's always been about. Administrators, of course, will need to enforce this. Most wikis are informational only. Nothing wrong with information, but it's got to be USED for something - to demonstrate a strategy, tactic, or guide. Just as the Lurker Lounge links to informational websites all the time and in its older Diablo/Diablo II guides, a Lurker wiki will be full of links to informational sources, and what sets us apart are the strategies.

Again, this only works if Lurkers want to make it work. Please let me know your thoughts, and help me gauge the interest level. If every regular poster here submitted a strategy article to the Lurker wiki about something they know well once per month, we'd have a hell of a huge, useful strategy archive in no time.

-Bolty

[Sabra]

Dear Bolty:

I would love to be part of this and truly believe that what you are posing is exactly what's needed on all of the levels you pose. Great strategy, dialogue and interchange of ideas would deeply enrich our content and enlived Lurker Lounge.

[Urza-DSF]

Heh, well I am always around looking for things to do, admining a wiki and it's articles would definatly not be a problem. Heh, well that and I agree that the lack of WoW content on the Lounge needs to be fixed ;)

[TheLuminaire]

I'm about to end up with quite a bit of time on my hands in the next week or two, so I'm happy to lend a hand if there is need. I've moderated a few forums of my own in past, and I helped out with a Company wiki-page at my last job, so I've got an idea of what it entails.

All I'll be doing is playing WoW from now 'till the new year, so might as well contribute. :)

[savaughn]

Again, this only works if Lurkers want to make it work.  Please let me know your thoughts, and help me gauge the interest level.  If every regular poster here submitted a strategy article to the Lurker wiki about something they know well once per month, we'd have a hell of a huge, useful strategy archive in no time.
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Regular poster: check.
Willing to post something once a month: check.

Be beamingly happy to.

A thought: several of us are going to want to pick the same idea for content. If we can commit to putting the content up on the site right away, even in unfinished form, we can work collaboratively. That way, we'll end up with one finished (whatever) relatively quickly rather than having three people who have a partial write up that never gets submitted. The trade off is that some stuff will be on the site in partial form. Is that acceptable?

[Bolty]

A thought:  several of us are going to want to pick the same idea for content.  If we can commit to putting the content up on the site right away, even in unfinished form, we can work collaboratively.  That way, we'll end up with one finished (whatever) relatively quickly rather than having three people who have a partial write up that never gets submitted.  The trade off is that some stuff will be on the site in partial form.  Is that acceptable?[right][snapback]94232[/snapback][/right]

As long as info is accurate, if incomplete, and marked as such, then I don't see a problem.

-Bolty

[Gurnsey]

As long as info is accurate, if incomplete, and marked as such, then I don't see a problem.

-Bolty
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Something that would be good to start off with, before even writing any guides etc, is to come up with a style template - i.e. an Instance Guide will have these sections, this info in this order, a single Class page will exist that will link to various Guides related to that class, no duplicate guides to some things (i.e. Person 1's guide to BRD, Person 2's guide to BRD, but instead have one guide to BRD with clearly marked alternate strategies, routes etc., but OK to have several Warrior guides if they are significantly different strategy/builds).

These are just suggestions. If there is something of a template, it will leave areas to contribute to and fill in.

[Gurnsey]

WANTED: Lurker Wiki Administrator(s)
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From my last post I think I volunteered myself to be an admin :P I'm not so hot on the strategy itself, but I am a good organizer and have a lot of experience writing style and content guides (I write SOP's and work instructions for a living, basically). I'd love to be involved in the creation of a LL-Wiki.

Suggestion: No boring blue-on-white generic Wiki skin! Good job on the forum skin, I think it works well (though it doesn't copy and paste into emails well, silly white-on-brown :) ) and is certainly more exciting than most places.

[Bolty]

Thanks for the feedback, all.

I'm looking to get this up and running Thanksgiving weekend.

If you want to help out but not as an administrator, please start writing strategy articles and guides to put up when we go live. :)

Emails will be going out "soon" regarding Wiki administration.

-Bolty

[Quark]

Emails will be going out "soon" regarding Wiki administration.
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Is that using Blizzard's definition of soon?

:w00t:

[Gurnsey]

Thanks for the feedback, all.

I'm looking to get this up and running Thanksgiving weekend.

If you want to help out but not as an administrator, please start writing strategy articles and guides to put up when we go live.  :)

Emails will be going out "soon" regarding Wiki administration.

-Bolty
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Echoing Quark, how soon is soon? "I'm going to log off soon" soon, "I'll be done doing my makeup soon, honey" soon? :P

Keep in mind that strategies don't have to be huge all-encompassing epics - a wiki is also built up in little pieces. Some very valid stuff that I've seen on the board that would do well in the Wiki is, say, that the Firesworn go berserk when pulled too far from Garr, that Bloodthirst does damage equal to 40% of the number of your attack power and the mathcraft involved to see when it is a viable talent, various short little strategies that came out of the big Majordomo discussion, places where Mind-Vision can be used to hop targets or scout, etc.

Hope we hear soon! I think a Lurker-Wiki will be a great success.

[Kevin]

Hey I can reply here now without needing to take a pill.

As I mentioned to Bolty in PM's I would like to help with this. I wasn't sure at first but after more thought and discussions with Bolty I'm sure that I would like to throw my hat in the ring of potential admins for a Lurker WoW wiki.

As to the question of soon. I'm fine with as long a wait as you want. I know that what I've been working on with instance guides would be perferct on a wiki as I could put in what I have now and others could add to it since most of what I have now is basic framework and a few notes on strats.

I raised some security concerns to Bolty and I still think some level of user groups would be good. If we do an instance guide section you can set-up the framework and lock that from anyone being able to edit it. Stuff like that. Some of that is to keep a more consistent look and feel. Some of that is still "old school" protect the original authors work thinking. :)

I would also personally add some guild only content to the wiki. As much as that deviates from the strategy heart of this site. Things like our Molten Core strats would be open but a page of Lurker crafters, what sever and guild they are on and what recipies they know doesn't need to be available for edits by anyone but members of the lounge. Sure it's no problem if anyone can read it but if you have a crafting page that lists all the know crafts for that class and you are simply adding your toon name, server and your lurker account (for PM access to get a hold of you) I don't see any need to open that up to others to mess up or potentially cause an admin to have to roll back.

I would like to also have it set up so that all edits need approval before they are publically visable. You can set it up so that anyone that logs in can see edits before they are public but someone just surfing won't see those till they are approved (at least our wiki at work was like that and log in determined what you were public for, could edit, etc so it had several layers so you could have the guild section edits even less visible if you wanted for some strange reason).

I know it's not practical to have the forum login tied in with the wiki login either from talks with Bolty though I would like to do that as well. :) But that shouldn't be too big a deal.

And of course this wiki wouldn't just be for WoW sure much of the D2 and D1 content that might end up there could just be guides that are transfered over to it but still a Lurker wiki for anything we cover would be very sweet.

[Bolty]

Is that using Blizzard's definition of soon?[right][snapback]94674[/snapback][/right]

Quark: good, people like you keep me from slacking off.

Emails have gone out. If you expressed interest to me in administrating the wiki, and didn't get an email, either the email account you used in your forum profile here is wrong or I forgot you. Check your profile and/or PM me.

-Bolty