Wiki Structuring Project

This little corner of the wiki is where we talk about and plan the structure of the wiki itself. It's used by editors and admins and anybody else interested to order and organize the information so that it will be the most useful it can be. If you're just a content writer, it's helpful for you to participate over here, but not required. There are folks around here that will go over what you did and place it in its right place so you can focus on writing new content.

Informational Structure

The information on the wiki is of several topics, described here. Below this list each topic is discussed in more detail on how it should be organized.

Installing the Game

Documentation of various processes needed to install the game.

Playing the Game

Documentation of the game itself and the game client used by players.

Server Administration

Documentation of the game from the standpoint of running a server, and documentation useful to server administrators. There is some overlap here with Playing the Game.

Extending Armagetron Advanced

Documentation for extenders, people who want to make new graphics/sound/whatever.

Development Docs

Documentation written by and for the Development Team, part of their regular work cycle.

Project Docs

Political-type documentation by and for the Armagetron Advanced Project Members. Includes organizational documentation, project goals, etc.

Tournament Hub

There is a tournament hub that has sprouted up in the last months that needs to be either spun off to its own website or incorporated more fully into the structure of the wiki.

Every article needs to be associated with categories, one or several. If the article applies to any specific versions of the game, it should be put in those categories. Only public releases should have versions, with a special version, in the Playing the Game section. However, in Development Docs, we may need to categorize for releases that don't yet exist. If the article does not apply to any specific version of the game, it should be put in a general version category, possibly called "All Game Versions". The article needs to be in its parent's category, most articles have parents. Finally, we'll need some top-level categories that reflect a slightly different informational structure. These top-level categories should be built with an eye towards allowing people to reach articles quickly when they already know what they're looking for.

Playing the Game

This is the User Manual for the game. The goal for this section is simple: everything a player needs to know to play should be here. So it should include tactical and strategic articles, documentation for how to use the client, install extensions, and so forth. How-to articles should also be here. The top-level page that is linked from the portlet should contain an article and a table of contents that together constitute the table of contents in a book and the introduction. The article text needs to tell a user summary information for each section to guide him to the area he needs to know. The entire Playing the Game section should *only* document public releases. If a code hack is required, it should appear at most as a footnote in this area. Keep in mind always that this section should only document the game client, it should never document the server. When information here is also needed for the server, it should be put on its own page and transcluded in both places.

This list shows the structure that should exist under Category:Playing the Game:

• Category:Getting Started - Basic guide to downloading, installing, and playing a local game, ending with a discussion of internet play. The Object of the Game needs to be factored into the top-level Getting Started page. Category name: Getting Started
  • The Basics
  • Teamplay - article needs to be updated to reflect that it is for people brand new to the game
• Category:Program Documentation - Complete, canonical documentation for the game client *only*, but should include how to use the game client to host a network game. Category: Program Documentation
  • Category:Client Features - How-to information, such as "how to install a moviepack", "how to change player colors", "how to use in-game chat". Feature by feature, a separate page for each with detailed discussion including screenshots. The top-level page here should be a Category: special type page. Category: Client Features
    • Player Settings
    • Chat Features - This will need to be referenced in the server administration section, but should be documented here as it is a player feature
    • Network settings
    • Category:Camera
      • Custom Camera
      • Camera Glance Keys
    • Configuring the client to play specific game variations
    • Discussion on how to use client settings and the console to construct your own game variant
    • Others as needed (insert your topics here), but stay focused soley on "how can I do <this> with my game client?"
    • Console
    • Effects and Display
    • Customizing the game - This page needs attention. It probably needs to be broken up into smaller bits that are transcluded here and elsewhere.
    • Playing Maps
    • Moviepacks
  • Category:Client Reference - Complete UI reference, appendix-style, with screenshots. Every menu item and possible choice needs to be documented here. Categories should be used to distinguish between 0.2.8-series and 0.3.0-series. The top-level UI reference page should be a Category: special type page.
• Category:Game Concepts - detailed discussion of the concepts that drive the game and most affect players. These should be understandable by non-technical people although they can and should contain technical details. Categorize with Game Version.
  • Lag
  • Rubber
  • Scale
  • Frames Per Second - article needs to be updated to discuss simulation FPS as well
  • Grid Games - Games people play that are *not* supported in settings so they can't be considered variations
  • Game Variations that are currently supported and known about in a public release. May require additional external scripts, but may *not* require building a patched client.
  • Camping
  • Etiquette
  • Clans - page doesn't exist yet
  • Glossary of terms
  • Double Binding
• Category:Tactics - Ongoing discussion of strategies. All articles under this section need to be put in the category for the game client version to which they apply. Multiple categories can be used. In this manner, old tactics that become less useful in newer versions can be phased out and ultimately cleaned up or moved to a historical section. We don't need to differentiate between "strategy" and "tactic" yet. Maybe eventually, but not right now.
  • Category:Getting Started (tactics) - Top-level discussion for new players
    • Building Your Skillset
    • The Basics
  • Single-player tactics vs AIs (currently an empty section on the wiki)
  • Multi-Player Tactics - should include both multi-player local and multi-player network tactics. Each article should be put in the server category in which it belongs. If the server it's associated with no longer exists, it should be also be included in a category that indicates the tactic may be obsolete because the server no longer exists (called "Dead Servers" or something like that). This specific page needs to be moved into a Category: special page.
    • Advanced Tactics
    • General Tactics
    • General articles about tactics
    • Swamplords
    • Tigers Classic
    • Armagoshdarn
    • SP
    • MBC
    • Generic Sumo
    • Specific Sumo servers
    • Specific Game Variations not specific to a server
    • Others (you know what goes here)
  • Category:Team Tactics - As with Multi-Player tactics, categories for servers with an additional category to mark that the server doesn't exist anymore.
    • General Team Tactics - page needs work
    • Category:Fortress Tactics - page needs editing to reflect new structure
      • Offense Tactics
      • Cutting
      • Defense Tactics
    • CT Tactics (tactics useful on CT Fortress)
    • Other Team Tactics that make sense
    • Specific Team Game Variations not specific to a server

Development Docs

These are pages that the developers write. The purpose of these pages varies depending on the content, some of them are historical pages, some are pages that serve to communicate to other developers how specific parts of code should be used. There is also a group of articles that start here and end up under the Playing the Game hierarchy. Those articles are the developer's documentation for new features. Developers should try to categorize their feature documentation and write the documentation itself in such a way that it can easily be moved into the other sections in the wiki when a release is finally made that contains that feature. If a feature changes substantially between unstable releases, then two or more pages may be required, one for each version. That's up to the developer to determine, but after the page is moved into another part of the wiki, it is considered "open season" for editing and other contributors should then go in and flesh out the documentation, add additional useful information, and so forth. So for feature documentation, there should be a flow from Development Docs into Playing the Game, Server Administration, and Extending Armagetron Advanced.

Otherwise, no structure is imposed on this part of the website. It's intended to be used by and for developers, and is available for others to view and participate if they desire, but otherwise this part of the wiki is intended for communication amongst the developers.

Moderation and Editing

Mostly I have nothing to say about this, not sure it belongs on this page. :)

Trash Cleanup

Nothing really here either, just that we need to work out how we're going to mark pages for deletion and/or factoring those pages' content into other pages before deletion.

For pages frequently spammed, we should protect them so only registered users can edit them to reduce the amount and frequency of spam posts. At least trying this to see if it lessens the amount of spam mod work.