SC4 Encyclopaedia

[mightygoose]

help as writer offered.

[Ennedi]

help as writer offered.

Thank you, I will contact you soon 

[krbe]

Actually, looking at that Wordpress page gives me an idea. I wonder if there's a way to add meta tags/keywords [like in a blog] to a particular page to assist with searching...

I'll look around in the help files and see if it's built in or requires an extension. They probably have to do it with searches anyway...

The redirecting feature will be highly helpful! I hope the search will be as powerful of Wikipedia's--at least my searching returns som relevant results over there and not just 0%'s as here

I'm not sure how tags works in a wiki, but this also has somting to do with the way we're writing and how different things are named in the game and RL. Example highway: I always thought it was the American equivavlent to the autobahn, but it turns out to be any main road or any road at all. This is of course not going to work if we're writing about SimCity, where highway implies a highspeed, highcapacity road (or the very least the 2-lane RHW).

[DFire870]

The equivalent to the tags in a wiki are the categories. Under a page you put in [[Category:Name]], replacing name with whatever category, and when you visit the category it gives you all pages listed in that category.

For example, if you went to the Avenue page, at the bottom there could be the "Road" and "Transportation" categories. If you clicked on the "Road" category, it would list various pages such as Street, Road, One-Way Road, Avenue, etc., as well as sub-categories.

This the default method MediaWiki uses and would work quite well with what we want (wow, can someone say alliteration? ).

-- John

[Ennedi]

krbe and SA: If you would like to explain a bit more clear which way of searching are you talking about?

Why am I asking for it? Yes, DFire870 is right, we can use categories to searching, but I am sure we will need more searching methods. I have an idea about it, but I would rather like to wait for your explanation, I don't want to complicate the discussion.

Adam

[krbe]

Just pointing out that the writing style matters for search, AND that we're dealing with the SC4 concept spread througout the world. We need to find a common ground when it comes to writing, so that an American game with its own concept translated into severeal languages can be translated back to (American-SC) English

[Ennedi]

Just pointing out that the writing style matters for search, AND that we're dealing with the SC4 concept spread througout the world. We need to find a common ground when it comes to writing, so that an American game with its own concept translated into severeal languages can be translated back to (American-SC) English

OK, so maybe it would be good to write SC4 terms definitions? You are right, we had troubles with such terms as street and road when we made translations of the query texts for cogeo's Road Top Mass Transit Set. In addition, we noticed that SC4 Locale files prepared by EA are misleading in some cases. We will have to consult it with players from various countries.

[Shadow Assassin]

The equivalent to the tags in a wiki are the categories. Under a page you put in [[Category:Name]], replacing name with whatever category, and when you visit the category it gives you all pages listed in that category.

Nope, not at all what I'm trying to get at. If you look at a blog, you'll notice keywords at the bottom of the post. They're not necessarily categories, but keywords that can be brought up in a general search.

[JoeST]

Have you looked around for a Wiki modification or plugin that allows something like [[keyword:road]] for example... I haven't particularly looked around but if you cant find one, I might try and see if I can make one for you

Joe

[freedo50]

The mediawiki search is pretty good anyway; it works exactly like the one on wikipedia, so it will give each result a percentage match and will search the whole of every article for that word/phrase. Keywords might be a good way to adjust these to take into account the fact that if you're searching for road, you're not going to want to see an MD where the author is placing lots of road , which atm would have a high percentage.

Fred

[xxdita]

I'm thinking that the wiki search should only search within the wiki, not the forums as well. And since the MD's would stay put in the forums, that shouldn't be an issue.

[freedo50]

Sorry yeah, that wasn't what I meant. There will probably be wiki pages about the most interesting/legendary MDs, like 3RR and SCR. The forums will definitely not be directly linked to the wiki, although they may be affiliated and/or on the same server.

Fred

[Shadow Assassin]

Have you looked around for a Wiki modification or plugin that allows something like [[keyword:road]] for example... I haven't particularly looked around but if you cant find one, I might try and see if I can make one for you

I will look, but I think the keywords can be added by using meta-tags, which is what search engines [such as Google] use to find if a page is relevant to a particular search.

[krbe]

SA, you mean the stuff that goes in the <head>? Also, there's a nifty way to write a short summary to show up in search engines instead of parts of a lengthy introduction piece.

[freedo50]

Hey guys, I have implemented an extension to allow the inclusion of meta tags to articles .

See, we do listen to you! 

Fred

[JoeST]

Hows it going?

[Ennedi]

It seems I caused some delay - I was ill last week (and I'm not quite well yet). I promised writing some articles and now I have to do it quickly 
It seems we have everything what we want, but now we must play a bit with some content (so a few articles are necessary).

[JoeST]

What about now? I hope your feeling better Ennedi

Joe

[mightygoose]

indeed you have our best wishes....

[Ennedi]

Thank you Joe, I'm feeling quite good now (although I will be a convalescent next 4-6 weeks  )
In fact, I made some work yet, but these were another things. My absence caused a huge accumulation of work - both in RL and in SC4.
I had 3 important tasks:
- preparing the slope mod to release
- the Encyclopaedia, and
- my own MD.
It was impossible to do everything in the same time. All these things need too much time. I decided to finish the slope mod first and... I spent a lot of time with it  . Fortunately, it seems I finished it today.
The second reason of the long break in the Encyclopaedia activities was collecting an information. Now the first thing to do is to write a few articles and check the Wiki software in action - and I didn't want to write nonsenses  
I think I will start writing articles next few days - but I don't know how much time will I need - maybe 1 or 2 weeks? Then the rest of the testing team members will do their tasks - editing, quality control etc., and we will be ready to make the Wiki public.
It isn't too good me that others must wait for me   - but it seems I creared such situation myself  , so I must do what I promised.
Of course I'm going to work with the Encyclopaedia in future too, but this task is huge and it will need many people to become something useful.
Personally I will try to do my best  

Edit: thank you mightygoose for wishes and also for your nice post in my MD - I will answer soon 

Adam