User blog:Fairingrey/First Blog: Welcome! Things Regarding the Wiki

''In the words of Zero, "chimera=6 boobs. nuff said." "10/10", Ayumi touted back.''

Introduction
Hello, readers, and welcome to the Age of Ishtaria wiki! This is the first blog I'm going to be posting here but there will be others concerning different topics; this one covers mostly things about the wiki itself.

Going to start off by introducing myself: I'm Fairingrey. If you're from Valkyrie Crusade, you probably know me as "May★", "Spica.", "Lyr.", or simply my user handle on the wikia community as Fairingrey. I'm a college student in the US that's majoring in the Comp Sci field with a certain potential focus on game development, although it's subject to change. I'm also learning a bit of web development and networking on the way there.

If you're ever interested in learning more about who I am, reader, you're always welcome to go ahead and stalk my profile on this wiki or others or take a look at the stupid edits I make sometimes. Yeah, I like being stalked  or noticed. You heard it here, folks. Please be gentle.

But enough about me.

There's a lot that still needs to be done on the wiki. Although we have a solid foundation for a wiki that's starting up for a relatively new game and have our feet planted somewhere in the right place with our naming and style conventions, we don't have too much in the way of sorting/looking for things. As this is a relatively new wiki for a relatively new game and I don't have a lot of experience maintaining one, we'll need some help.

Quite a bit of the help, actually. So this post will probably address some issues that I've been hearing about within my own little community of friends in addition to the small amount of reception on the forum. There's not a lot of people that browse the wiki right now, but I'm hoping things change in the near future because I feel like we have at least some nice things to talk about.

Last thing I want to finish this intro with: The Age of Ishtaria wiki is a community written and handled repository of information regarding the game so it's important to note a couple of things: That being said though, there will be important things to keep in mind as you, reader (and hopefully a potential contributor), should know. We'll be discussing these things. In the end though, Miyuki and I are looking for a design that requires minimal user input, so even an unexperienced wiki editor can get used to things without feeling confused.
 * No matter how difficult your ideas or suggestions are to implement, they should be shared. There will be discussion about a certain feature or function and its benefits or demerits.
 * Don't be afraid to do some minor editing on your own if you feel like a tip should be included on a page. Just make sure it is concise and well written.
 * Don't be afraid to post things in the forum even if they might be empty! We need some discussion going on to spice up how quiet it is sometimes, although the wikia forum doesn't have quite that great of a discussion format.

Units: The Format for Unit Pages, and What to Know
Around a month ago, the wiki didn't even have a template built for units. Instead, all it was was just a bunch of images along with some information pages that never quite felt finished.

So then feeling compelled to get something started, I contacted a friend of mine, User:Kelerik. We talked together and basically drew up a unit template that could be used to provide some basic needs for the units that were available in the game already despite the game being only on it's third event.

I'll give a little bit of leeway. The main rush was that we wanted to get a good foundation before the wiki would get butchered by poor design and mismanagement by not-so-knowledgeable users like in many other less popular wikis. So there's that. If nothing happens, nothing gets done. The main point is that we were trying to set a field where users could quickly start contributing to the database without feeling like they don't know what they were doing.

So here's a run down of what you want to keep in mind.

Most of those will describe what you need to know for when you create or edit the page for a unit. There shouldn't need to be any extra steps done as long as you're up to date on the template usage. The documentation for the template for units might look intimidating at first, but it doesn't take very long to get used to once you understand all the right things to put into the fields. Just make sure you preview it and edit it accordingly for any mistakes you make - otherwise someone else has to catch them.
 * First off, read the wiki policy if you haven't already. Everything there is good to keep in mind despite not being limited to units.
 * Second off, read the documentation for the Template:Unit usage. There may be changes to it, but basically what's there is to account for most of the information that we have.
 * Know that you can simply add pictures to the wiki by just clicking on where they should be with the blank unit art placeholder.

For now, we're requiring little user input past just creating the page with the template on it. No extra work should be required because we're trying to keep the things a wiki contributor should remember to do to a minimum.

Unit Sorting
We're trying to figure out a way to do more advanced things like sorting through all the different kinds of units. This was a suggestion from a user, User:Coax75ohm. From what I know, said user is working on a sort of sortable unit list to figure out what you're looking for, and so far it looks pretty nice. Even if, well, he's running the script on his own server. Well, what can do, I guess. Even Kelerik has to do that for his own bot, User:Coeur Noir, on the wiki he manages.

So about this suggestion, I guess I'll comment a little bit on it.

My Original Problems with Having an "Album" Page
I was talking with Miyuki on Skype for the group chat for our Union and I was basically working on a page that was published but she pointed out that I had to add it to the "album" page.

Yeah. That's fine all, but I'm vehemently against a wiki with a page that includes an extra step for the user that in the end wants to just contribute a page. Other wikis have users that update these kinds of lists manually, but I wanted to have the design for a wiki that requires less work and less things to remember for the contributor so as to not complicate things.

This goes into a couple design critiques - particularly those in user experience. Including an extra step outside of the page the user's editing kind of adds more complicating things to the mix. Even if it doesn't sound like it'd be a huge mistake to forget about adding a unit's page to the "album" page, it's a pain to edit it constantly and constantly as there will continue to be more units added.

Bot Work on Sorting
A bot could do it, however. We have all the classification we need - almost to a violent case of overclassification, but including more that the user should have to obfuscates things. I think what Coax is doing is just parsing through the template text for every page in the Category:Units with his script, so that might have not been totally necessary but we still have all those other little categories there. You can take a look through them if you're ever interested, although they don't serve that much of a purpose.

Either way, it's difficult. But once there is something working, it'll be there and ready to be used. By then, I'll include it on the navigation where it needs to go among other sorts and things.

Last thing of note is that I should probably apologize to Coax for coming off as kind of rude because I was urging Miyuki to remove the album page because very few people would use it if all it did was just list units in an only partially sorted manner. He happened to post on her wall about it on the same day and I got a little bit irritated over the whole ordeal, but I have my moments. Sorry, helpful person… please don't hurt me I love you really. You did a great job so far, I like what I'm seeing.

Last Note
As a last note to all of this regarding templates and unit info, I'd work on stuff like this more but I'm being pounded by finals. Frankly this might be the wrong time to write something like this but I felt like it should be written since I have the time to fit anyway.

Articles
I've worked on writing on most of the articles that concern things about the game, although my way of doing things is taking information that's largely from the help section of the game or the event pages.

Help Section
The help section of the game is really helpful for new players and it's written surprisingly well for a localized game. Good job, Silicon Studio. It's just that it doesn't have everything, which is why we have to kind of account for the other stuff that isn't so blatantly obvious ourselves. Thus, I miss some things that I think might be common knowledge for myself but not so common for others. An example would be the Quests page. Although the tutorial already teaches you a lot about the different types of skill combos you can do, we don't quite cover all the bases on it.

Thus, refer to the Q & A board on the forum, please! If you have a question that you feel should be answered, refer there. Comments sections can sometimes go unanswered, as Mediawiki has moved from using the conventional ye olde talk page to a comments section that sometimes has stuff that never gets looked at unless you're on the page itself. Or, well, you happen to like checking your email a lot. I don't because I'm freaking lazy.

General Tips vs. More Extensive Tips
The other thing too is that while general tips can and do preferably go into these, more extensive tips and strategies should go on a blog post like this one or a discussion post on the forum if you're looking for input. The reason I gripe with this is because people may disagree. An example would be how to set up your raid battle team for Battle or Raids. Some people say that Auto just works since Battle is all about that blitzkrieg, and that quality is greater than quantity. Some say that more balanced team will work instead of one that is generally imbalanced with strong units towards the front, middle, or the back. People just disagree about this, case in point.

Writing Metric
I don't want to be a stickler on writing convention but it turns out that I kind of am. I try to write things from a rather objective, non-assuming point of view that's clear and concise, and I rarely outsource any of the knowledge I copy.

Miyuki talks about how pages should be credited by where the information comes from but I'm not always ok with that. Mostly because this isn't GameFAQs. It's a wiki, for christ's sake. If we were getting paid for this job, then I wouldn't have any complaints, but as much as a community effort goes, some of these kinds of pages can be kind of wrong sometimes.

Here's an example pulled from this page.on the Ishtaria subreddit.

"However Breaking is another story, never Break a unit that is not in it's final state of evolve, which is commonly referred to as +2. The reason being that if you ever do evolve that unit, it will lose all of the stats it was given through Breaking. Materials for breaking can be consistently achieved through Battle rewards."

So I'm just cherry picking a fact here, but this is incorrect. You can safely limit break a unit and still retain its break stats as long as you use the broken unit as the base unit in evolution. More about that here.

It's not only the potential for being incorrect, but it's also confusing to write information on a page that has the property to meander. Things that aren't well said can confuse others, which is why I go out of my way to rewrite some pages that I feel aren't quite up to par when I assess them. Here's a changelog example, taken from the Union page as of today. Look at the difference in writing that I try to take on. I'm not especially fond of starting off with something like "X is similar to" when I'm trying to explain something objectively.

The battle page is another page that I've felt like I had to rewrite. Here's the changelog if you want to see what I'm talking about, taken as of today.

"Every time a player levels up, Action Points(AP) and Battle Points(BP) are refilled. BP should be used up every time before leveling. This is especially true in the beginning when levels are easily acquired. BP can be used in both Battles and Raids. Both of them give rewards, but in a different way. Some players might say that Raids are for when you deal more damage, but Battles are relevant throughout the game."

First off, you never start off talking about what the page ISN'T about. If I'm looking for what a battle is about, I want to know that the first thing to catch my eye is what it is, not what would be useful. That comes after, always. It may run just fine in a community like the subreddit, but for a page that can be referenced often by others it must be written well so as not to confuse readers.

I've also cut out a lot of the tips stuff as I've mentioned before, but I've mostly tried to leave general tips here and there regarding battle. We're looking to expand on that, but that's another story.

Writing in Second Person
It's not exactly wrong to write in second person when you're writing an informative article about something. Writing in first person is definitely wrong, however, except if you're on a talk page with someone else or something like that, or scribbling in a comment.

There has been a user that has prodded me about this, User:OhMyAsian. Now while I do understand his sentiments, it's just that when you're writing something regarding directions or tips to follow as a general directive, it kind of becomes annoying to continue saying things like "The player should", "The player gets", "To access this, the player must". Like, we get it, the player is you, the player is me. It's just someone.

I'm going to wrap this up very quickly, but here's an example case: Say I wanted to describe a situation between "you" and another player. It would be such a pain in the ass and confusing to follow if it were something akin to "The player does x to the other player, and the other player receives y points". It just wouldn't make sense to me.

In short, there are fitting places to use it and there aren't. For the most part though, writing articles like these isn't all that bad, and the work is mostly relegated to those who have a penchant for writing and an eye for detail, preferably.

Policies
They're there, don't touch them, that's for us to worry about. If you feel like something should be included, excluded, or fixed, let an admin like me or Miyuki know.

Event Pages
Not much unique stuff that goes here, just typing out from the rules. There are some things though.

I've gotten asked by a couple users to help do something more with the event pages and try to make them more useful. Frankly, not a whole lot comes to my mind when writing them, although there are things that could be included.

One user recommend that I make a table with ranking information on it during a competitive event like Folly in the Forest, the event currently running, is. My gripe with that is "Who's going to go through all the hard work of filling it in, and how useful would it even be?" The problems don't end there either. In the case that it isn't filled by someone, it's going to just look ugly. That, and we'd have to pick a metric for where to put the ranking intervals to record, and exactly at what time the tallies took place. It might be useful for talking about the trends of ranking, but frankly I have too little experience to even comment on what each event ranking is like when I haven't been through much of them.

Thus, I don't really know what to do for that suggestion. It'd be much better if said user just made a post on the suggestions thread and we could discuss about how practical it really would be to have it there. I'm not against having things like that, but it really needs to be useful if its going to take up some space. I don't want things to become an eyesore to look at.

That's all regarding articles.

Forum
It needs to be more popular. That's all. I can't really comment much on it because there isn't much to say when there isn't much there.

Closing
Ok, so I know this is pretty long, and potentially disorienting for people that are new to the wiki like I am, but these just cover some things about the wiki and the kinds of standards I'm trying to uphold while I'm one of the new wiki admins. After all, Miyuki did tell me she originally just volunteered to be the wiki manager out of some thread on the subreddit I don't keep track of. That's fine, but I kind of annoyed her and then picked up the job because although I'm new to editing, there are two things that keep me here: This is my first time administrating a wiki. To all the users here on the wiki: Although I'm fairly new, please take care of me well! And let me know if there's anything specific you're curious regarding me or how I'm doing my part to help manage it.
 * I love Age of Ishtaria a lot. I think it's a pretty great game for a CCG, and even if it's only been a month I have a lot of hope that this game will get somewhere.
 * I've always been someone that references the wiki of a game a lot when I start playing it because there's a lot of information that might be useful to me when I find it. Thus, seeing the progress that this wiki made since a month kind of makes me proud.

And remember, I'm just a player like you guys. I just love cute girls and love an interesting, so as long as Age of Ishtaria keeps doing its part well, I'm here to stay.

Thanks for reading! And as always, well... best of wishes to all of you people out there getting all the cute girls you ever wanted. Comments regarding this post can be posted below - I'll respond to them when I get the chance.