Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?
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@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
For example, Ares has a
whois <name>command that tells you their full name (including rank and callsign) and lets you look people up by first name, last name, or callsign. 90% of the time you don't need the whole spammy finger-style profile, it's just the clunky way we've gotten used to for figuring out "who is this person again?".steals idea
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@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
For example, Ares has a
whois <name>command that tells you their full name (including rank and callsign) and lets you look people up by first name, last name, or callsign. 90% of the time you don't need the whole spammy finger-style profile, it's just the clunky way we've gotten used to for figuring out "who is this person again?".$ whois thenomain No whois server is known for this kind of object. $ finger thenomain -bash: finger: command not foundDammit, @Chime, what's going on here!
Anyhow, yeah, we can draw from our elder Unix roots for this stuff. And we should. So much of this has already been solved.
$ who thenomain pts/0 2017-10-25 16:22 (xxx.central.biz.rr.com) thenomain pts/2 2017-10-25 19:29 (xxx.central.biz.rr.com)A lot of what we use looks familiar for a reason. We should continue stealing ideas that make more sense than what we've been doing, no matter of its age.
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I'd rather see things on the MU*. Honestly I feel that wiki's have killed a lot of what our hobby is, not enhanced it.
Does anyone even look at desc's anymore? My favorite is someone not looking at the desc of a police PC, who was clearly desc'd in uniform and did not have a wiki yet. Someone was stupid in front of said cop PC and then freaked out OOC because "I had no way of knowing you're a cop".
Nothing is secret because, well, wiki. There's no sense of wonder, it's hard to enjoy that suspension of belief sometimes because everything is on the wiki about PC's.
I'm not completely anti-wiki. If you have a lot of theme stuff, background story etc etc as a game. Then a wiki is great for that. Take Arx for example, massive amounts of lore and things to know... NO SEARCH FUNCTION.
Wiki's make for a good friendly way for new folks to view the game, absolutely. You know how to log in the game, maybe a chargen guide is up. Things like that are not so bad.
For the most part, it's just simpler to keep it all in game. Oh, and well, less bots posting dumb shit on a MU*, unlike wiki's.
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@templari said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
For the most part, it's just simpler to keep it all in game. Oh, and well, less bots posting dumb shit on a MU*, unlike wiki's.
I have yet to see a half-way decent wiki in which bots/spamming was a problem. If it is, I usually take this to indicate incompetent administration or an abandon-ware game...which is useful in and of itself since it's a clear sign I should not waste my time.
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I do 95 percent of my MUing from a phone. I generally prefer info on a wiki instead of trying to figure out archaic + or @ or who knows what commands and switches to get the info I need and even then the formatting isn't always all that nice to read on a phone screen.
But.. I think it all should be available on the MU AND the wiki. We have the technology now to make it not a huge headache
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@templari said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
For the most part, it's just simpler to keep it all in game. Oh, and well, less bots posting dumb shit on a MU*, unlike wiki's.
I've never seen a game wiki where user-registration wasn't locked down. Either they use mediawiki, and usually don't allow user creation (instead, in game you +request to get an account), or they use wikidot and require manual invitation or have a password provided in-game required to join the wiki.
As for the rest... Nothing is secret? People put secrets on their wiki?
Its true no one looks at descs anymore, though.
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@templari Bot abuse, lack of search ... those are just a sign of bad wiki design and not a problem with wikis in general.
As for whether PBs and lack of secrets has killed the hobby? That's back to the chocolate/vanilla argument again. Secrets don't interest me, finding RP does. Transparency, open sheets, open wikis help me personally immensely in that regard.
I hate static descs and would much prefer just tossing a brief note in my set pose about what my character's wearing if it's unusual and/or relevant. Otherwise I just assume people are wearing clothes. Couldn't care less about the color/style/etc. of their outfit. Wikis and PBs are a godsend in terms of visualizing characters and add incredible depth to the experience.
But again... chocolate/vanilla. What "kills" the hobby for one person is the greatest thing since sticky velcro for someone else.
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Yeah, idk.
The specific example of the cop and his desc not being read thing...
Like it probably should've mentioned in ONE OF the poses, that they're in uniform. Like what is going in the poses, nothing descriptive at all? It could've been something as minor as "settles a hand on his hip, against the belt that's part of his police uniform".
I mean, people definitely don't read descs, but come on. Nevermind that, for every instance of a situation like that, there's one where somebody leaves the WRONG desc on, and somebody poses about it and the person goes OMG NO THAT IS THE WRONG DESC YOU CAN'T DO THAT!
There's still plenty of secrets out there, I just don't think stuff like 'my vampire is a Daeva' qualifies as something that should be kept secret in the first place, which is the general problem. At least in WoD, I've noticed people tend to want to try and keep really trivial shit secret. I, thankfully, missed the days of the "OOC Masquerade", but I can't imagine how that was ever helpful, unless your game was meant to be intensely competitive and not cooperative at all.
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@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
But again... chocolate/vanilla. What "kills" the hobby for one person is the greatest thing since sticky velcro for someone else.
Rainbow-colored hair is killing the hobby.
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@tempest said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
unless your game was meant to be intensely competitive and not cooperative at all.
Generally they were.
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Chiming in late to the conversation, but I am that person who has a wiki, +finger set, +info set and a shortdesc.
I figure information overload is better than a blank slate and nothing to go off of or create interest.
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@three-eyed-crow Many have been fairly solid, but I randomly eyeball the change logs is when I notice them most times. Sometimes folks forget to purge the bots presence from there.
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@faraday To clarify on the lack of search function comment, Arx has a true website, not a wiki.
As for PB's, when I started playing it wasn't a thing back then. Occasionally someone may mention who they had in mind but that was about it.
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@tempest My understanding was the gun belt had been referenced in pose more than once. Hell the SHORT desc included the uniform.
Here's the thing, why require descs and not require people to look at them?
As for the days of the OOC Masq, yup. Pile on me, I'm one that misses it. There was something to be said for being completely unaware that some innocent looking kid was the real monster you should have been watching instead of the large hulking vanilla mortal. Not knowing had it's own brand of fun. Figuring things out for yourself isn't always a bad thing.
I'm not saying that the wiki side isn't useful for getting RP together, but I didn't see RP lacking in the ooc-masq side days either. If anything I still feel the RP overall was a better quality. That's my opinion.
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@templari said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
@faraday To clarify on the lack of search function comment, Arx has a true website, not a wiki.
Yes, I was aware. I was speaking more in generalities. My point was that having a repository of information you expect people to use and not have search is a problem with that particular repository's design, not a problem with repositories in general. It's user experience 101 type stuff.
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@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
I hate static descs and would much prefer just tossing a brief note in my set pose about what my character's wearing
This is what I see more than not these days, but I still use descs to get across mood and general persona via the description.
Back In The Day (tm), it was multidescers. Descs were not static, and you looked at someone as your part of joining the scene. This has changed, obviously, but expectations and games need to shift as informed by what people are doing.
I, for one, welcome our not-using-multidescers-any-more overlords.
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I agree completely; the last game I used a multidescer on was CDI (a million years ago), where I used it because everyone used it, but as I hate writing descs and having like... three outfits, after CDI, I got into the habit of posing my outfit on entry to a scene.
And I promptly stopped using multidescers, which directly led me to fall out of the habit of writing decent descs, and lately, I ... admit I have a character with a url for a desc. Most of my people have descs, but this one I just wasn't feeling it during chargen... and after I was like... never got around to it.
I feel the shame of this, yes.
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@ixokai Welcome to the darkside.
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@thenomain Not just back in the day... there are a few of us who still have a love of multi-descers. I've been known to create a dozen or so descs for a character, because I'm a nut-job I also know that most people don't read any of them. So I do tend to pose something about what my character is wearing, because no one is going to read the desc.
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Speaking of having the incorrect desc on...
"Oh, hehe, I guess you're naked in public! Oh my!"
(No, that has never been me because I don't write naked/porn descs. I have seen someone forget to put a clothed one back on, though.)
