20 replies to this topic

[anubis]

take a look at our wiki ! all the major work is currently happening there and perhaps you can add something yourself. there is great new content to explore almost every day.

[Tufty]

I think we could do with maybe highlighting a few of the better wiki articles though, and possibly bringing them across to the main site - just so people know they exist!

[Methulah]

Gamedev.net has many good articles, devmaster.net has a better forum (in my humble opinion) and a better wiki.

[Dia]

Thanks for your comments, Edward. Could you elaborate further on what you mean by "if more time is spent"? The thing is, there are a couple of dedicated individuals who have helped (and continue to do so) make this site what it is right now, despite the other responsibilities and commitments each one of them have. If nobody is submitting articles, then how can one expect them? Part of the reason for the development of the wiki is the lack of article submissions. With a wiki, people would be more willing to contribute. I believe we're doing our best; it is also partly on the community to help out. So by saying "more time should be spent", what aspect do you mean?

We do welcome on board anyone who would like to assist in making devmaster meet its potential. We would also appreciate any advice to help us achieve that goal.

[Methulah]

I didn't go to the Wiki until Ed posted some of my threads there and I was suprised by the amount of content that was already u. It already has more pages that there are articles.

Another place that I have found great for articles is Gamasutra

[Ed Mack]

We should have a random wiki article link on the front page to show visitors the sort of stuff in there.

[Noor]

good idea Ed Mack

[anubis]

Quote

good idea Ed Mack

i'm not quite sure about this. there are some articles that could very well be of interest but it would be bad advertising if, for example, stub articles were shown on the front page. also there might be some articles that are totally uninteresting outside of the "dictionary" style wiki context.

[Reedbeta]

Yeah, I agree with anubis. If you go to the wiki and click "Random page" it frequently comes up with something rather trivial. Maybe it would be better to have some kind of spotlight from the wiki, with handpicked articles.

[Methulah]

I agree with Anubis and Reedbeta. The random engine has that issue, it displays many engines that are trivial or next to useless. This would be further accentuated with the many stub articles in the Wiki at the moment.

I think that any moderator should have the right to handpick an article out of the Wiki and give it a "spotlight". The php system could be totally seperate to the mediawiki and therefore easier to implement.

[justdan]

I think everyone should post something about their expierence at game making or a tutorial even if there's already one about the topic since it provides a different beiw and is sometimes easier to understand.

[Methulah]

Then the articles are watered down and we get crappy ones from people who do not know what they are doing.

[Reedbeta]

Yeah, there definetly needs to be a quality standard. At the minimum, I would say, it needs to be spelled, punctuated, and capitalized correctly. But then I'm a stickler for such things Actually, I do not feel that many of the articles on DevMaster are very good, having sampled a few of them. I guess I should put my money where my mouth is and write a few myself to show how it's done, but I haven't the time right now =D

[Dia]

Part of the reason there have been much less articles posted is because of the increased level of standards, which filters out almost all of the articles we receive.

The old articles on devmaster were published back in the old days where standards weren't strict. Soon, we will be completely removing some of the old articles which lack quality and accuracy.

[Tufty]

Good idea. I'd submit an article or two myself but I don't feel I have anything exciting to contribute, and I'm not a very good writer really. I know what I want to say, I just can't explain it in a way that makes sense to other people.

Maybe next year when I'm a little more comfortable with my games programming - I'm shortly starting the second year :D

[justdan]

Maybe a rating system would be good. The articles should also be checked to make sur ethey're right done by who they say they are.

[Methulah]

Reedbeta, I would love to see some articles from you about your shaders and HLSL in general.

[Onikhaosifix]

I don't agree with having a rating system. People would try to abuse it unfortunately and give some articles a bad rating without reading it in it's entirety.

[Tufty]

Onikhaosifix said:

I don't agree with having a rating system. People would try to abuse it unfortunately and give some articles a bad rating without reading it in it's entirety.

Yeah, no ratings please. But corrections of mistakes and editing would be useful.