Topic: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

I've been looking at ic-wiki.com, trying to figure out how to battle the spam problem, when it occurred to me that one of the reasons it's so difficult to sort out the crap from the real content is that the real content isn't categorized very well.  Much of it is sorta just floating around.

To get an idea of what I mean, check out this list of all pages that don't have a category:

http://ic-wiki.com/index.php?title=Special:UncategorizedPages&limit=5000&offset=0

Looking at that list, it's just hard to identify what is spam and what isn't based off the page titles.  I think a first step in solving that problem is categorizing all the real content, meaning anything leftover would by default be spam.  The problem there is that the current categories, while created with good intentions,  aren't exactly well-organized themselves:

http://ic-wiki.com/wiki/Special:Categories

I want to take a closer look at how we, as a community, think about ourselves in terms of data.  So I'm gonna ask you guys, how would you break down everything you know about IC?  Not necessarily in terms of a wiki, but just in general?

Here's my very brief and general stream-of-conscious take on things:

The IC Experience
    The Game
        Exploration
        Economics
        Alliances
        War
        Diplomacy
        Strategy
        Tools (MapGen, etc)
    The Community
        Forums
        Chat
        Awards
        External Sites (ic-wiki, nibbler's gallery, icwizards)
        Clans
    The Staff
        Admins
        Mods (and all the variations thereof)
        Chat Ops

How would you group things?

Got a few bucks?  The Imperial Tip Jar is accepting contributions!

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

I would put the pages for pie pie and primo right next to eachother so we can be together forever!

NEE NAW NEE NAW

Primo

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

i call for primo to be locked up behind a firewall so only +18 year olds can see him

pie, the guy who comes up with an index rules the world.  Look at linneaus, he's still dominant after 400 years

The core joke of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is that of course no civilization would develop personal computers with instant remote database recovery, and then waste this technology to find good drinks.
Steve Jobs has ruined this joke.

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

True enough.  If only i knew anything about taxonomy.  I guess that's why I'm asking for help haha.

Got a few bucks?  The Imperial Tip Jar is accepting contributions!

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

i like the general outline though i would add players after clans because not everyone is associated with a particular group.

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

perhaps we could get a team of volunteers  preferably people who have been around forever to validate and organize the wiki?

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Ah, families and players.  How could I forget.

A team of volunteers would be great, although even just some brainstorming here would be a nice step forward.

Edited:

The IC Experience
    The Game
        Families
        Players       
        Exploration
        Economics
        Alliances
        War
        Diplomacy
        Strategy
        Tools (MapGen, etc)
    The Community
        Forums
        Chat
        Awards
        External Sites (ic-wiki, nibbler's gallery, icwizards)
        Clans
    The Staff
        Admins
        Mods (and all the variations thereof)
        Chat Ops

Got a few bucks?  The Imperial Tip Jar is accepting contributions!

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

i have time to help

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Well that's awesome, thanks. smile

To be honest, I'm not really sure where to start.  The little break-down I did was just a quick brain dump.  The wiki is interesting because pages can have multiple categories, so a hierarchical representation isn't necessarily appropriate.

A given player, for example, can be categorized under "Players" as well as "Moderators" as well as "Chat Op".

I guess a better way to think about it might be in terms of tags.  What tag(s) would apply to any given piece of knowledge about IC?

Re-thinking my example:

(A Specific Player): Players, Moderators, Forum Moderators, Rookie Moderators, Awards Presidents, Chat Operators
(A Specific Family): Families
(A Specific Admin or Mod): IC Staff, Administrators
(A Specific Alliance): Alliances

Map Gen, YAMA, etc: Tools
Family: Game Mechanics
Player: Game Mechanics
Exploration: Game Mechanics
Alliances: Game Mechanics
War: Game Mechanics
Forums: Community
#general: Community
EOR Awards: Community
ic-wiki, nibbler's gallery, icwizards: External Sites, Community
Clans: Community
Overbuilding: Strategy

And taking that and turning it into a list of cats:

Players
Moderators
Forum Moderators
Rookie Moderators
Awards Presidents
Chat Operators
Administrators
Families
IC Staff
Alliances
Tools
Game Mechanics
Community
External Sites
Strategy

I'm sure I'm leaving plenty of things out.  Any ideas?

Got a few bucks?  The Imperial Tip Jar is accepting contributions!

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Hmmmm i do support this idea very much .. it could be a good base for us mods to rewrite our IC guide again too

The new changes and maybe the new ideas our developer team is busy with we can integrate too .. (;))

GJ Pie wink

~" Peace can only grow where blood flows "~

11 (edited by I like pie 11-Dec-2011 09:22:10)

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Well, I haven't done too much yet, but thanks. smile

An update for anybody who's interested:  All the spam pages are gone and the uncategorized pages have been categorized.  Now, clicking the random page link (http://ic-wiki.com/wiki/Special:Random) should actually be more interesting than just running into random spam.

There's still a lot of work to be done though.  I don't anticipate anybody to jump in and start mass contributing, but I am cooking up some ideas to make contributing easier and more rewarding.  Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, if you do want to help, an easy first step is simply writing a quick blurb about yourself.  Or, if you're not keen on writing about yourself, there is a list of pages that are linked to but not yet created below:

http://www.ic-wiki.com/wiki/Special:WantedPages

Happy editing!

Got a few bucks?  The Imperial Tip Jar is accepting contributions!

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

I contributed!

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

i saw!  and i removed some of the slander!  still, much appreciated =P

Got a few bucks?  The Imperial Tip Jar is accepting contributions!

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

i used to IP ban all those spam bots but they just keep coming

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

just deleted a load of bot made pages


i see bots are spamming user pages too


but the good news is i made top 5 big_smile

http://www.ic-wiki.com/wiki/Special:PopularPages

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Much thanks TYMO!

The changes I made to slow the spambots seem to be becoming less effective. =/  I'll try to find some time to rethink the process.

Got a few bucks?  The Imperial Tip Jar is accepting contributions!

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Freaking Spam!

"The market is like a.....game within a game Teddy"

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Everyone hates spam!

Make Eyes Great Again!

The Great Eye is watching you... when there's nothing good on TV...

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

loads more spam being created recently

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

oh wow...

thanks for pointing this out.

now that i think of it... it may be worth using IC's account logins for ic-wiki.  that would mean guest access won't work anymore, which sucks, but it would definitely prevent this kind of thing from happening

Got a few bucks?  The Imperial Tip Jar is accepting contributions!

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Deleted some spam which was added below valid pages and tried to categorize some of the stuff about beta 1, Harkonnen, Wars and Tortuga Nebula Thugs.

Another old bloodstained Harkonnen.

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Cannot you host the wiki at on the main Ic domain but point it at the current server?

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Most of the spam I deleted, was back a fews hours afterwards.

Who can block spam-posters?
Perhaps there are even not humans but bots who work down a watch-list.

In this case there were 2 involved with the following usernames:
KennethPerez
RuthBaker

Please, tell me how to block them or just do it. Thanks in advance.

Another old bloodstained Harkonnen.

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

Mace: technically yes, but i need some action on stefan's part, and it's not worth the hassle just for a domain switch imo

Altruist: they're definitely spam-bots.  I've tried using captchas and question/answers to slow them down, which has worked to some degree.  Still though, every now and then we just get a ton of spam at once.


I've made both of you guys admins.  No pressure to do anything with the wiki but I know both of you have done good work on it.  Hopefully soon I can at least partly consolidate accounts so we won't have to deal with this issue anymore.

Got a few bucks?  The Imperial Tip Jar is accepting contributions!

Re: (Re)Designing IC-Wiki's Content Structure

> I like pie wrote:
> I've made both of you guys admins. 

Mmmh... in a, as I fear lost, fight vs spam robots, I made rollbacks for more than 300 pages.

The list of active users for the last 30 days consists of 12 names. Of those were 3 admins and the other 9 were spam accounts I blocked.

> No pressure to do anything with the wiki

Ok, as usual I'll show up about once in a year...

> Hopefully soon I can at least partly consolidate accounts so we won't have to deal with this issue anymore.

If possible that would be very helpful.

Another old bloodstained Harkonnen.