Yeah, there are three main things in grand total on the wiki, and they're M:EM, Squinty's Sandbox, and a whole list of keywords that someone is putting together for... some reason (I forget who's been working on that... Welder? Maybe?), but last time I checked that was only partially built.

I'm not sure what content you're looking for exactly but if it isn't those three things it probably doesn't exist at all yet. I'm also not sure what you think putting in categories would do since like... there'd be really just three categories.

Oh and I think Welder was working on putting together a page for one of the 4e like basic campaigns but I don't think he's touched that recently.

@Zherog/Fire (oh hey you're the same person I gotta remember that in future):

The list idea seems fairly reasonable, and if TP was interested I could help him set up a template for artist names and their permissions and possible uses for their art (or whatever else would be useful).

I think TP wanted a whole complex tagging system though so that might not work. (Though frankly maintaining and curating that seems like more trouble than it's worth, but if someone wants to do it, godspeed.)

EDIT: WOAH I LIED! There's a new project on there: Zinger's Tomb of Horrors. Curious to see where this is going.

Firstly, the wiki was just launched publicly, while there were a few people working on some stuff behind the scenes prior to that launch, we still need some time for it to be out there and getting some infrastructure set up before we can really start setting up a good directory on the main page and what not.

Secondly, try thinking about thing this way:

The forums are like a tree, a trunk with many branches, you start at the bottom (the index) and you follow a single path down branches getting small and smaller. Forum - > Subforum -> Thread -> Page.

Wiki sites are not like that. Even with there being a 'main' page, wikis are a large number of assorted pages that are could be connected in sort of a web or could be completely independent. Traffic doesnt start at one point and follow a flow to another certain point. Traffic can enter the wiki through any page (from someones comment in a thread, someones signatures, a link through google, the link to the main page, etc )and depending whats on that page wander through any number of other pages.

Consider for a moment wikipedia. You want to know something thats on wikipedia, lets say, the date that the Golden Gate Bridge was finished. Do you go to Wikipedias home page and click a button that says 'Architecture' then go to a page with different sorts of architecture where you click a button that says 'Bridges' , then 'Bridges in the USA' , 'Bridges in California', 'Golden Gate Bridge' ? No. You go to wikipedia home page and type "Golden Gate Bridge" in the search bar and hit go and bam you're on the page. Now if the topic you type in is too vague, it'll display a list of pages that might be what you want.

But now lets think of how you navigate wikipedia. You're on the Golden Gate Bridge page, you see thats its in San Francisco Bay and you want to learn more so you click the link and go to that page, you're reading that page and read about a really cool prison called Alcatraz, so you click that link and go to that page. Now you see that when the Civil War broke out the island was armed with cannons and that sound cool so you click on the Civil War link and go to that page and read a really cool story about the Battle of Fort Sumter. You're no on the other side of the country, reading about a war instead of an orange bridge, having played the internet version of Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon more or less.

TDLR : The wiki isnt a 'mess' its a work in progress and will always be one as it grows and thrives. Navigation isnt as simple as the forums, but as time goes on more pages will link together and more webs of pages will grow making it easier to have solid links to 'areas' on the main page.

I think I chose my words poorly, so I apologize.


There are several things on the wiki that it took a lot of searching to find. The only pages that link to most things are "all pages" and "recent changes", and someone has been overloading the former.

And most wikis I have been to at least have overarching subsections. That is kind of what I meant. For example, one wiki I go to has "members" as a subsection. There is some really nice stuff on there. But not stuff I would have known to search for.

Yup. Refer back to the first line above.

As more subsections get added and grow there will be a better way to put of a path to the major sections. But as things like the 'member subsection' you mentioned above in wiki terms thats a 'category' and while not everyone will no to add them to their pages, any page I've made or made edits to I've also categorized. For example if you go to Squinty's Sandbox you'll see its in the 'Squinty Sandbox' category and if you click that link you'll see every page in that category. Pages can also exist in multiple categories, so a lot of the play by post stuff I'm adding exists in both the "Mafia" category and the "Play By Post" category. As time goes on and more pages are added obviously new categories will arrise... so maybe at some point Squinty's main page will be in "Squintys Sandbox" , "User Created Campaign Settings", and "Pathfinder Play-By-Post Games" etc etc.

http://wiki.nogoblinsallowed.com/index. ... :ListUsers

Boom. Took 32 seconds. I timed it.

I'm not sure what exactly you're complaining about, to be honest, and it's getting increasingly hard to not take what you're saying personally. I mean, "overloading?" Really?

EDIT: Here's my advice, actually. Make a list of what features you're looking for, and we'll either help you find them if they DO exist, or we'll tell you to go ahead and make them yourself if they do not. That seems like a more productive use of all our time.

EDIT AGAIN: Speaking of categories... DOES anyone know what Griftermage is doing with all the keyword abilities? They all just materialized one day out of the blue, and a lot of them are just namespace atm rather than fully fleshed out articles. It looks like he's been super diligent about giving them categories, though, which is great: http://wiki.nogoblinsallowed.com/index. ... &redlink=1 (mainly because it'd be a real pain in the ass to have to find all of them and give them a category after the fact >_<)

Out of sheer curiosity, what determines the creation date of each user on that list?

An auditorium full of chimpanzees with typewriters.

Looks like it's based on when an existing NGA user first looks at the wiki. All of the M:EMbers are clumped together chronologically, for example, due to being given time in advance to start building the Archive. The Admins are similarly clumped due to being around for the Wiki's creation.

...Why Ragrio is up there right at the dawn of time is beyond me, though. Guess he must've found the wiki early.

The one next to my name is the first time I clicked on my name at the top of the screen.

So if I had to guess, I would say that. But then the wiki would have had to been open since April or March, so I don't know if that works or is just coincidence.

That's right. The rollout has been a slow process.

(Which was ok, since it gave me time to learn the more complex code functions and set up the M:EM side of the wiki, so that there was some actual content.)

On closer inspection, nothing in the search bar lets me find the users list page.

I learned I couldn't search it while exploring the wiki. But I can easily get to any other page if I already know about it.

You can get to the Users page easily via Special Pages. A lot of remarkably useful stuff is stored there.

Perhaps the link should say "useful pages" instead of "special pages". It's hard to guess what the word special means in the context of pages.

Special pages just happens to be what Mediawiki, and in fact I think all wikis, call the link.

I'll run that idea by Welder though to see how possible that is, im not sure exactly how much control we have over the Mediawiki as I mostly work on the front-end.

Yeah, "special pages" doesn't really explain anything.

By tagging, I mean I want something like what http://konachan.net/post has. (It's that bar on the left).

Yeah I figured. Still sounds like pain to curate to me but it'd be possible to do with the category system for sure.

The problem with changing the name of Special Pages is that a. they are special pages in that they aren't indexed pages or categories but automatically generated information pages and b. all mediawiki's tutorials and information refers to those pages as special pages so if someone actually is trying to google how to do a thing in a mediawiki setup they're gonna get confused unless they know the system. (I'm also not sure that "useful pages" really says all that much more than "special pages" does either.)

I think a bit on the main pages teaching people where to go and how to go there would do much more than changing the names of things hardlined into the software.

I know theres the Mediawiki how-to, and tutorials and stuff, but I also realize that the average person is gonna sit and complain that things are hard rather than taking the initiative to learn them.

as NGA's resident complainer I can confirm that this will happen.

I have a crack legal team of one lawyer and his lovely assistant!

Also details such as the name of special pages are configurable, if something isn't doable on the front end just let welder or myself know and we can update it.

Note: the plugin we were using for forum/wiki interoperability mangled usernames somewhat (e.g., I was "Gobo welder" rather than having the proper capitalization). I believe this should be fixed now, and all usernames should be the same on both the forum and wiki.

Let us know if you have any issues.