Wikis vs Forums
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I've been thinking about how many games use wikis, and they seem like great tools, but I do find some of them(mostly ones I encounter at work) to be poorly made with referencing and linking to other related materials which makes searching difficult.
I find I really dig this forum setup, and was wondering if anyone's come across a MU that uses forums instead of wikis (or both?) for their WWW presence?
I know a lot of people prefer house rules to be included on the mush itself, which is nice, but I find once a game gets to a certain age, they quite often become rather difficult to find and sort through.
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I can't really imagine how you would use a forum for the functionality of a game wiki. Wikis are for information and forums are for discussion. I know games with forums that supplement wikis specifically to offer a discussion space, but they have fundamentally different purposes.
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I find forums to be a pain in the ass to search and archive information, though they're great for ongoing conversation and updates.
Both seems preferable and I've seen plenty of games that have wikis and an integrated forum (either using the wiki forum itself or another one linked).
I've also seen MU*s that were purely forum-based and the setup always struck me as more disorganized than it needed to be, but stuff is there. Somewhere.
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@Roz said:
I can't really imagine how you would use a forum for the functionality of a game wiki. Wikis are for information and forums are for discussion.
Exactly. They are very different tools with very different purposes. You can certainly set up a wiki poorly, but trying to do the same thing on a forum would be even worse IMHO.
As for having both? Unless the web forums are somehow integrated with the in-game BBS, having two always seemed to be redundant to me. Players always seem to gravitate to the in-game forum.
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What I'd really like is some way to auto-post in-game +bbposts to a wiki feed, but that might require more work than it's worth.
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@faraday said:
@Roz said:
I can't really imagine how you would use a forum for the functionality of a game wiki. Wikis are for information and forums are for discussion.
Exactly. They are very different tools with very different purposes. You can certainly set up a wiki poorly, but trying to do the same thing on a forum would be even worse IMHO.
As for having both? Unless the web forums are somehow integrated with the in-game BBS, having two always seemed to be redundant to me. Players always seem to gravitate to the in-game forum.
I've had games where the forum could be popular with some real in-depth discussion. On my old Mass Effect game, we did weekly posts from both staff and players on major RP topics, and the discussions on them were fun -- but also not stuff that I think would be comfortably done on an on-game bbs.
That said, out of the two games I'm on staff on now, only one of them has a wiki forum, and it's used very sparingly.
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On the SR5e game I was making I was doing a forum attached to the wiki. The forum was going to be linked to the in game BBS so ShadowLands was available for people at work or whatever. I never did get it functional though because I suck at sql.
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@Roz said:
but also not stuff that I think would be comfortably done on an on-game bbs.Out of curiosity, why not? If your BBS has the mod that lets people reply inline to a post, what would prevent you from having the same discussion on the in-game board?
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@faraday said:
@Roz said:
but also not stuff that I think would be comfortably done on an on-game bbs.Out of curiosity, why not? If your BBS has the mod that lets people reply inline to a post, what would prevent you from having the same discussion on the in-game board?
Man, it's hard enough getting people to read the game-relevant bbposts. I wouldn't want to drown the important stuff in discussion.
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My experience is that the in-game BBS works fine-ish for announcements but suck for discussions however most of the time people are not that interested in discussions so that's fine. I've seen atleast one game that created a subreddit for their game though it didn't look very used.
On RfK I argued that we should set up twitter accounts for our vampires and have IC twitter brawls. The players were worried it would make outsiders over-react.
What is obvious to you may not be obvious to me and vice versa.
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@Groth said:
On RfK I argued that we should set up twitter accounts for our vampires and have IC twitter brawls. The players were worried it would make outsiders over-react.
What? In what way?
Right before I started MUing, I was playing in Livejournal games (we used AIM, and then a private MU, for our scenes) and one of the things I loved the most was the complicity of "private" posts that every player could see, and the comment wars on journal entries. That shit was amazing and so much fun.
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@Coin said:
@Groth said:
On RfK I argued that we should set up twitter accounts for our vampires and have IC twitter brawls. The players were worried it would make outsiders over-react.
What? In what way?
Right before I started MUing, I was playing in Livejournal games (we used AIM, and then a private MU, for our scenes) and one of the things I loved the most was the complicity of "private" posts that every player could see, and the comment wars on journal entries. That shit was amazing and so much fun.
I can't remember exactly how the conversation went, but creating twitter accounts for the characters of the MUSH is still something I'd like to try. Having the harpy actually tweet biting blow by blow commentary about the weeky court complete with hashtags would be amazing.
What is obvious to you may not be obvious to me and vice versa.
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@Groth said:
@Coin said:
@Groth said:
On RfK I argued that we should set up twitter accounts for our vampires and have IC twitter brawls. The players were worried it would make outsiders over-react.
What? In what way?
Right before I started MUing, I was playing in Livejournal games (we used AIM, and then a private MU, for our scenes) and one of the things I loved the most was the complicity of "private" posts that every player could see, and the comment wars on journal entries. That shit was amazing and so much fun.
I can't remember exactly how the conversation went, but creating twitter accounts for the characters of the MUSH is still something I'd like to try. Having the harpy actually tweet biting blow by blow commentary about the weeky court complete with hashtags would be amazing.
Absolutely. I'm surprised it got shot down.
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Players aren't expert writers to create that stuff.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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IC twitter stuff.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Misadventure said:
IC twitter stuff.
What about it? I'm not sure what you're insinuating, is all. Like, are you saying "players aren't expert writers and thus can't/shouldn't do this"? Expound, please.
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I think the number of players who can write as well as a harpy, who play harpies, and will create a twitter account are so few that it is unsustainable, and not worth the effort save for the novelty. I suspect that the number of other players willing to follow said twitter will number in the high single digits, though if many players use twitter no harm in adding it.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Misadventure said:
I think the number of players who can write as well as a harpy, who play harpies, and will create a twitter account are so few that it is unsustainable, and not worth the effort save for the novelty. I suspect that the number of other players willing to follow said twitter will number in the high single digits, though if many players use twitter no harm in adding it.
That can be said about so many things in our hobby. That's why it's a hobby: none of what we do should be expected to be anywhere near a professional level.
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<amiable vague agreement> <comment with snarky undertones questioning @coins reasoning capacities by referring to common meme> <6 success clever word play>
edit for twitter: <amiable vague agreement> <comment with snarky undertones questioning @coins reasoning capacities by referring to common meme> <6 success cl
