Wiki and what happened with it

[Xyphien]

Hello everyone, many have noticed the amazing wiki has disappeared. I am here today to answer the questions, and concerns on it.

The wiki began to have some bugs that began increasing in size/amount and we had to take it down. After contacting the support for the wiki we were told that it was on our end as we 'changed' something with the code, even though we never touched the core script, or really anything to be honest. After that they said try to re-purchase a download license as it has expired, so after doing that... guess what... it caused the whole site to crash, and they said they weren't able to help as it was still on our end. I then had to quickly remove the wiki, and haven't been able to add it back.

Here is where I am confused on... we have a LOT (I think around a thousand pages) of content on the wiki. Most of them were hand posted by @MinisterJay it would be extremely unfair to him, and the community to simply remove it and move onto another one, however, I doubt we'd be able to fix the wiki at it's current state. I just left a 1 star review on their public xenforo page, which will hopefully get them to try and resolve the issue, however, there was at least one other post on how poor their support is, so I'm unsure if that will happen. So... my question is, should we spend the possible months to try and fix this, even pay someone to fix the current wiki, and possibly have some downtime on the site in hopes to restore the wiki, and all of the content we have? Or should we count our losses and try the other wiki that's available for xenforo?

I'd really like to hear your opinions on this matter, @MinisterJay you will initially have the last say in this, as you put the most time, effort, and energy into the wiki.

 

[LordBones]

What files do you have from the Wiki, is there a database file? Someway of being able to get the information out. I don't even mean in a manageable way because if it's just formated there's a chance one could make a converter into raw text making it a not impossible way to get it all out?

 

[Cunechan]

Somehow we always get screwed with support stuff, don't we :( RIP wiki... Will we have to remake all the entries if we get the other wiki on Xenforo?
If all of the fixing doesn't help at all and we have to remake the entries than I'd suggest that we might replace all of it with a new feature? idk why I'm thinking of a playground but we could add something funny but whaaaaat

Howevs, I'd ask MJ first

 

[Amysaurus]

To be 100% frank, I don't really think having a wiki here made that much sense in the first place. It just felt like a distraction from actually making a topic. Although inactive(?), there is already an RMMV wiki that people would most likely go to instead, as it wasn't really advertised here.

If there's any way to access the pages, I think the information is worth saving, but I don't think it's worth another time/money sink into fixing. If nothing else, the info could be turned into a list or something (think what GrandmaDeb does on other forums).

 

[LordBones]

To be 100% frank, I don't really think having a wiki here made that much sense in the first place. It just felt like a distraction from actually making a topic. Although inactive(?), there is already an RMMV wiki that people would most likely go to instead, as it wasn't really advertised here.

If there's any way to access the pages, I think the information is worth saving, but I don't think it's worth another time/money sink into fixing. If nothing else, the info could be turned into a list or something (think what GrandmaDeb does on other forums).

I doubt it however I'm hoping there's a way to get access to the database. If the pages worked the whole thing would work?

 

[LTN Games]

I agree with Amy, if the information can be saved and it may be doable by going through the database and extracting it but I don't think it's worth the time trying to get it working or spending money on a new one, I'm okay without it here.

 

[LordBones]

Could always use the Mediawiki one as an alternative I suppose. I know it won't have the same users but it is free.

 

[Macro]

That's really unfortunate that the wiki was corrupted. I wonder what happened? There's no way to do a rollback or anything then? Anyways, I personally never used or looked at the Wiki (sorry MJ), and I could do fine without one. Really sad about what happened though. :(

 

[Micro]

that really sucks! especially because they took your money and then said it was your fault -.- honestly, that's terrible customer service. I don't think it is worth the money/time to try and revive it because it wasn't a very popular feature of the site anyway IMO

 

[Companion Wulf]

I have this philosophy (stemming from my own experiences with support): Screw me once and I can tolerate it. Blame me once and I will not tolerate it. I've had experiences where the company were clearly at fault, yet they blamed ME for their failures. Of course, this particular company (does not merit naming) threatened all kinds of hell after they were contacted by the BBB because they refused a refund or to fix the problem. I personally don't think it's worth pursuing fixing the Wiki with them, but to me it was useful for being able to have certain sections in one place, notably plugins and resources, and being able to scan through them quickly. I agree that if the database can be extracted, perhaps it can be reused either elsewhere or just put as a single reference post.

 

[Cunechan]

@Amy I totally agree but it was a nice place to write stuff about ones game (even if most people have threads for that). Idk, browsing was fun though. Rip wiki (maybe we can get a new playground)

It feels like xyphien always gets screwed when it comes to these kind of things. It's always like that. I remember paypal when he tried to make the crowdfunding site... That's so sad tho D:

 

[Amysaurus]

@Cunechan I get that. I don't think it was a bad idea - I just don't think it was implemented in a way that made sense for the site, basically.

I think it'd be nice if we could extract info from the pages so people could make a topic from what they have, rather than starting back at square one. Who knowwwssss lol

 

[MinisterJay]

One of the purpose of the Wiki, in my opinion was to have an organized listing of the different type of resources. In the Resources forum, each resource is listed in it s appropriate section according to the most recent update or initial creation. There were limitations with the Resources main page, and each individual section's pages, in seeing all resources available on a single page. We were able to achieve this within the Wiki. Having each individual resource's page link and creator's name had advantage of cross-referencing within our site.

There was also information available from individual member's projects or creations that were available elsewhere. @Bizarre Monkey and @LTN Games had unrealized information about their creations. I apologize for any other creations makers that had contributions within the Wiki.

There is a population that looks at a site's Wiki before delving into the main site. Having a Wiki helps with SEO for the whole site.

I would have know problems with starting from scratch. There are only about 700 Resources, at this time, and it would not take too long, relatively in placing them in alphabetical order.

I do have a lot of time on my hands...

 

[Xyphien]

Hey everyone, so it seems we will be looking at switching over to the other wiki system we have. Sadly, I'm not able to get the database from the old wiki because of several reasons, so sadly, we'll be starting from scratch.

This being said, the wiki costs more money than the last one, so we're going to need some donations for it. https://rpgmakermv.co/donate/

 

[Cunechan]

How much does it cost? Because if it's too much we should ask the community if it's worth it (sorry for saying that). But it's a thing for consideration if i may say so

 

[LTN Games]

I'm not 100% sure this is the correct one Xiffy is talking about but if it is, It's $30. You can check out what it looks like here http://8wayrun.com/wiki/index/ you can also check out the product page here https://xenforo.com/community/resources/8wayrun-com-xencarta-wiki-pro.1690/
I really don't mind having a wiki, I'm happy with or without but I must admit I had plans to create wiki pages sooner or later, when I found out our old one was a lost cause I thought those plans were going to be washed away with time. So I am kind of excited to see a new one TBH now I can keep my plans intact lol.

 

[Cunechan]

Ahh okay thanksies LTN~ I'm looking forward to seeing the new wiki and what we plan to do with it.

 

[ejronin]

I think wiki's are powerful resources when curated by adept and detail oriented individuals. In fact, next time I get paid I'll gladly donate for it

 

[Macro]

I like Wikis when it comes to video games and general entertainment media (anime, music lyrics, lore, etc.) but I just can't see a practical use for it with RPG Maker. This RPG Maker wiki just seems like an unneeded extended manual, because there is topics and plugins from here and other sites to handle everything, and Google ties them all together.

Maybe someone could give me a good example of how it could be useful? I know some people obviously enjoy adding to wikis to get a sense of accomplishment, because it's so darn fun to organize stuff (I can relate), so you guys don't count (sorry lol). I want to know what a non contributor would get out of it.

Again, people that are solely (read: you only use it to add articles and nothing more) contributors don't count in my eyes, because I know you are going to want to defend your baby no matter what.

I liked Cunechan's idea for a wiki playground (I'd like to see more explanation on that idea!) quite a bit, however. ^.^

 

[ejronin]

I like Wikis when it comes to video games and general entertainment media (anime, music lyrics, lore, etc.) but I just can't see a practical use for it with RPG Maker. This RPG Maker wiki just seems like an unneeded extended manual, because there is topics and plugins from here and other sites to handle everything, and Google ties them all together.

Maybe someone could give me a good example of how it could be useful? I know some people obviously enjoy adding to wikis to get a sense of accomplishment, because it's so darn fun to organize stuff (I can relate), so you guys don't count (sorry lol). I want to know what a non contributor would get out of it.

Again, people that are solely (read: you only use it to add articles and nothing more) contributors don't count in my eyes, because I know you are going to want to defend your baby no matter what.

I liked Cunechan's idea for a wiki playground (I'd like to see more explanation on that idea!) quite a bit, however. ^.^

I think it can be both entertaining and utilitarian.

The nice thing about wiki is that it can be split. You can have a manual side (which is lacking even on the main product site) and it can be written and curated by veteran users . additionally, it can catalogue releases so that people can learn in a different way on what works and what doesn't. I mean, there's really broad support among divergent groups with RPG Maker and usually, the elitists stay in their corner and noobs in another... I'd hope that was an antithesis to this site... Which was the driving reason I joined here and not elsewhere.

So, I think it's worthwhile to attempt it...it won't hurt anything and I think the potential is solid. But, that's just me as a visitor. If it's voted down, well... Okay, but I really think there's a lot of solid opportunity.