Is the wiki setting up new players for success?

[RaveRadbury]

The wiki is in need of some love.

The new player guide is in need of a redo and a lot of our pages teach players bad behavior.

I've spoken with community members about it here and there, but I think we would benefit from having a thread open for more organized and central discussion.

Are there things you'd like to improve on the wiki?
What pages are most in need of attention?

[EuSouAFazenda]

The general items page needs some work.
Some stuff doesn't mention their main use - crayons don't mention you can use them to write, for example. Other stuff has flavor text that really shouldn't be there like the camera and the Space Cleaner really can't figure out if it's talking about the liquid or about the bottle; it both says to not be confused with the liquid from chemistry and how to mix water and ammonia to make more of it.

[Misdoubtful]

Honestly I think just comparing it to the state of other big ss13 wiki's will be the best tool for seeing what needs to be improved. From custom guides (and just more guides in general), to all inclusive writing, lore, more information on what a job gets and easy gimmicks, documented common mistakes, idk, there is a lot. Not to mention wiki's that get updated with new content when that new content gets merged. The biggest issue is how little amount of functionality the wiki actually covers. Like the blurb on secways not telling people you can stuff a banana in it, how pet AI works, that you can tame cows. Ashwalkers hasn't been updated on the wiki since 2019.

It isn't a one man overnight project. The new player guide being up to date is an obvious one, but no one can keep all the new features and changes regularly coming out up to date on their own.

Maybe a wiki team would be a better way of solving and mitigating this.

[Rohen_Tahir]

Pretty much all the x_Items pages are very outdated, low quality and do not contain enough information. Out of those, Research Items is probably the worst. Also, those pages are all(?) erraneously categorized as templates, probably due to category tags outside of <noinclude> on some template page.

Additional Access fields are commonly misused, probably caused by people not knowing what the term means. Someone should probably fix this.

Template:Delete does not appear to exist. It should probably be created.

Edit:

lore

Someone should probably put a link to the lore repo on the Wiki sidebar.

[Farquaar]

Zeroing-in on the "a lot of our pages teach players bad behavior" remark:

The wiki isn't supposed to be straight-laced and boring. It's fun to read, and more than a few jokes are cracked here and there. I know that I've thrown in a bunch of my own during the countless hours I've spent editing the wiki. Looking back to when I first heard about SS13, it was through reading the wiki that my interest was piqued. It portrayed the game like a fun, crazy, and chaotic experience. Lo and behold, I downloaded BYOND, logged onto Sybil, and found it to be just as it was promised.

Do a few wiki pages make reference to what might be considered lite-grief/powergame? Maybe. But it's those experiences that make the game interesting, and what keeps bringing me back after all these years. The advertisements match the product, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

That said, if you have any particular examples of pages that "teach bad behaviour", I'd like to hear it so it can be discussed in detail.

[EuSouAFazenda]

Box (not Icebox, regular Box) is still the default image in most location pages.

Tram's list of locations is entirely empty outside of Xenobio and Citology Lab.

Kilo doesn't even have a list of locations

[Mothblocks]

The new player guide is really, really awful. Not only does it suggest picking prisoner, but it gives you an insane amount of information that you won't need right away. A lot of our wiki is like this--it's veteran players flexing what they know, and not trying to teach new players.

[Jonathan Gupta]

The new player guide is really, really awful. Not only does it suggest picking prisoner, but it gives you an insane amount of information that you won't need right away. A lot of our wiki is like this--it's veteran players flexing what they know, and not trying to teach new players.

you either suggest janitor or nothing good(I can't think of anything)

[RaveRadbury]

That said, if you have any particular examples of pages that "teach bad behaviour", I'd like to hear it so it can be discussed in detail.

Here's a recent ban appeal where someone cites advice they found on the wiki.

[Farquaar]

That said, if you have any particular examples of pages that "teach bad behaviour", I'd like to hear it so it can be discussed in detail.

Here's a recent ban appeal where someone cites advice they found on the wiki.

Seems to me like he played a stupid game and won a stupid prize. He knew what he was doing: trying to detonate a bomb that he saw someone holding. Given how blatant of a rulebreak blowing up the station as non-antag is, I doubt that it was an innocent misunderstanding caused by a supposedly obtuse and newb-unfriendly wiki.

An equivalent situation would be if I read this passage and extrapolated from it that I'm allowed to murder the chef when he leave his door open.

[cacogen]

Just put the latest metastrategies in so we aren't lying to players that their toil matters

[EuSouAFazenda]

Officers may go into the break room alone, and make themselves vulnerable to attack; reducing the number of officers may help even when they aren't your target.

Lawyer's page, near the bottom on the traitoring section. I've looked through the rules pages and while I didn't find anything specifically stating this to be murderboning, "kill a random cop because they might not come after you later on" isn't really something that should be encouraged imo.

[Farquaar]

Officers may go into the break room alone, and make themselves vulnerable to attack; reducing the number of officers may help even when they aren't your target.

Lawyer's page, near the bottom on the traitoring section. I've looked through the rules pages and while I didn't find anything specifically stating this to be murderboning, "kill a random cop because they might not come after you later on" isn't really something that should be encouraged imo.

Thinning out security is a valid strategy for completing your objectives, even on MRP. You are allowed to kill people who aren't your assassination target so long as it's not indiscriminate killing.

[dragomagol]

https://www.digg.com/r/SS13/comments/ ... ents_hall/

[Jackraxxus]

I think it'd be pretty cool if the new player guide linked to our station's pages on AffectedArc's webmap (https://affectedarc07.github.io/SS13WebMap/)
TGMC does this in game and it's very helpful. Learning the maps was probably my biggest early hurdle and the webmap is so much easier to use than our wiki's images.

[Farquaar]

I think it'd be pretty cool if the new player guide linked to our station's pages on AffectedArc's webmap (https://affectedarc07.github.io/SS13WebMap/)
TGMC does this in game and it's very helpful. Learning the maps was probably my biggest early hurdle and the webmap is so much easier to use than our wiki's images.

wth is up with the dabbing catgirl as /tg/station's icon? I hate it

[bastardblaster]

It's representative of modern /tg/

[SpaceSmithers]

Learning the maps was probably my biggest early hurdle and the webmap is so much easier to use than our wiki's images.

This would be beneficial for pretty much everyone, as maintaining wiki images for the map pages and the many location pages is extremely tedious and mundane. In fact, a green medbay can still be seen on our Security Posts page.

[Farquaar]

Learning the maps was probably my biggest early hurdle and the webmap is so much easier to use than our wiki's images.

This would be beneficial for pretty much everyone, as maintaining wiki images for the map pages and the many location pages is extremely tedious and mundane. In fact, a green medbay can still be seen on our Security Posts page.

It would be cool if there were a tool to easily update the wiki's map images. I've added a bunch in the past by screenshotting and uploading, but that is an enormous pain. Sadly, well beyond my skillset to create one, though.

[dragomagol]

I think it'd be pretty cool if the new player guide linked to our station's pages on AffectedArc's webmap (https://affectedarc07.github.io/SS13WebMap/)
TGMC does this in game and it's very helpful. Learning the maps was probably my biggest early hurdle and the webmap is so much easier to use than our wiki's images.

Would love if we could somehow get this to work for the department images; they change frequently enough that updating the images feels like wasted effort.

[Jackraxxus]

As of this post Progression Traitors was full-merged 17-18 hours ago.
Currently the wiki has not been updated. Someone (Read: Not me I haven't played it) should probably update that soon-ish.

[Farquaar]

I think it'd be pretty cool if the new player guide linked to our station's pages on AffectedArc's webmap (https://affectedarc07.github.io/SS13WebMap/)
TGMC does this in game and it's very helpful. Learning the maps was probably my biggest early hurdle and the webmap is so much easier to use than our wiki's images.

Would love if we could somehow get this to work for the department images; they change frequently enough that updating the images feels like wasted effort.

Yeah, this would be big. I really can't understate how much effort it would save in the long run.

[sinfulbliss]

The Space Law page definitely isn't setting up new players for success on LRP, I think. New security officers will follow it to a T and instantly become shitsec without trying to. Not to mention players can get noted for enforcing spacelaw too closely (viewtopic.php?f=34&t=30236), and a solid chunk of the crimes listed are supposed to be ignored as sec on LRP. This wouldn't be a problem by itself except the sec SoP on the wiki page is "You are an enforcer of spacelaw," and the spacelaw page is still necessary for listing the crimes sec can execute for and whatnot.

Some LRP players think it's less than useless, which is understandable, but I see no reason why sec shouldn't have a guide for what crimes to arrest for since arresting is 90% of their job (no different than a med doc's wiki guide of how to treat people, IMO). Everyone learns a job by experience, and in time you'd learn the vibe of the server and what is/isn't a crime, but in theory you should be able to do a little bit of reading before you enter a job so you can have something that will guide you.

[Pandarsenic]

No luck rolling traitor for me so I can't update shit

Honestly Space Law should probably be overhauled to a new legal code, but that's not a thing for here.

[cocothegogo]

noobs are there to be owned

[Farquaar]

I would caution against Space Law being simplified. If you make the law simple and easy to understand, then lawyers have nothing to do.

Rules ought to be simple. Space law ought to be as complicated as we can make it.

[Pandarsenic]

I would caution against Space Law being simplified. If you make the law simple and easy to understand, then lawyers have nothing to do.

Rules ought to be simple. Space law ought to be as complicated as we can make it.

Even if we try for that, it should at least be in a way that there's room to interact with it. The only time Space Law comes up now is people getting bwoinked for trying to use it

[Rohen_Tahir]

I'd suggest adding something along the lines of "This means that an action that is legal under Space Law doesn't necessarily have to be valid rules-wise (for example, admins probably won't appreciate you arresting unconverted crewmembers for breaking and entering into an an area where a blood cult summoning is taking place)" to the top of the space law page.