Sega-16 Wiki - Why not?

[Barone]

Hello everyone!

Do you remember that proposal about a Tips & Guides section? Yes, I'm still pursuing it.
So I was talking to Phantar the other day and he mentioned several reasons to NOT support that idea as a sub section of the forum, mostly due to how clumsy and difficult to maintain it would be. And I gotta say he convinced me.
But he also suggested that we could do that as a Sega-16 Wiki and that's an idea he would support.

So I decided to create this thread in order to see how feasible it is to create a Wiki and what's the acceptance of this idea.

Melf, what do you think about Sega-16 having a wiki?
Do you know what kind of tools and/or changes we would need in order to have something like that integrated to the main site?
What's the investment we would need to make it happen?

Bottino, goldenband, Phantar, Jeckidy and others:
What do you guys think?

C'mon, let's make it happen!

[IrishNinja]

man, i don't know about vbulletin, but my forum uses invision, and we once had a plugin for wikis but then upgraded the board's software & lost it. i imagine there's more options here, but what specifically would you want on it, like the more helpful information from good threads on here (overclocking/how to ID models of Genesis/etc)? because ive seen other places just leak drama onto them as well, haha

could be cool though!

[Zebbe]

It would be cool if it was somehow integrated to Sega-16. Every game had its own page with the review (if any), forum thread link, screenshots, YouTube video embedding, hints and tips, links to Sega-16 features where the game is mentioned. Would probably be extremely hard and time-consuming to implement, but I'd like it.

[SEGA-Jorge]

If each game review could include a wp widget that collected all the articles with keywords associated to that game, that would be great.

Then, add the YouTube links, forum links and wiki link and that would be really great. I'd love to help out somehow.

[tryphon]

There is already a wiki concerning Sega games (at segaretro). Wouldn't it be easier to include links to the relevant pages of sega-16 in it ? It'd have the advantage to avoid dispersion of knowledge (the segaretro wiki being a source of useful information).

Unless there's a rivality betwenn sonicretro and sega-16 I'm not aware of.

[BonusKun]

It would be cool if it was somehow integrated to Sega-16. Every game had its own page with the review (if any), forum thread link, screenshots, YouTube video embedding, hints and tips, links to Sega-16 features where the game is mentioned. Would probably be extremely hard and time-consuming to implement, but I'd like it.

Yeah I won't lie. I'd love to see this implemented.

[Baloo]

I think it would be good for compiling the massive amount of Game Genie codes posted on the boards, as well as some cheat codes. Though I feel those could also easily be put onto the main site as well without creating a new Wikipedia page. We have lots of history embedded in articles on the website, and the website is pretty easily searchable for the most part.

I'm just wondering, what could a Wiki offer that a new section or pages on the main site couldn't? I'd love to see more information implemented on the main site. I remember pre-wordpress days we had some pages that simply had images of advertisements and things of that nature. Would like to see that return.

[Barone]

Thanks for all the comments, guys.

It would be cool if it was somehow integrated to Sega-16. Every game had its own page with the review (if any), forum thread link, screenshots, YouTube video embedding, hints and tips, links to Sega-16 features where the game is mentioned. Would probably be extremely hard and time-consuming to implement, but I'd like it.

This

There is already a wiki concerning Sega games (at segaretro). Wouldn't it be easier to include links to the relevant pages of sega-16 in it ? It'd have the advantage to avoid dispersion of knowledge (the segaretro wiki being a source of useful information).
Unless there's a rivality betwenn sonicretro and sega-16 I'm not aware of.

Their wiki works more like an extended database on games, focused on technical and historical info.
What me and others have been saying here is focused on gameplay guides and tips, which is very different from what they push there.

Yeah I won't lie. I'd love to see this implemented.

Me too.
We could also use the fragmented but valuable data we have today in "Can Sega-16 Beat?" threads in order to feed several game pages with gameplay details and completion conditions we'll hardly find anywhere else.
And everyone would have a good reason to also revisit the games of the library they feel they know something others don't; like the Darwin's 4081 lesser known transform or this.
We could also have a tab for Game Genie codes and, then again, we could reuse the tons of exclusive GG codes that Tony H has provided to us over the years.

Of course, the wiki wouldn't feed itself and much less be super filled with info in a single day; but, man, it can be so awesome and so positive to the vibe of the community.

I think it would be good for compiling the massive amount of Game Genie codes posted on the boards, as well as some cheat codes. Though I feel those could also easily be put onto the main site as well without creating a new Wikipedia page. We have lots of history embedded in articles on the website, and the website is pretty easily searchable for the most part.

I'm just wondering, what could a Wiki offer that a new section or pages on the main site couldn't? I'd love to see more information implemented on the main site. I remember pre-wordpress days we had some pages that simply had images of advertisements and things of that nature. Would like to see that return.

If there's an easier way to do it, I'm all for it too.

[Crom]

There is already a wiki concerning Sega games (at segaretro). Wouldn't it be easier to include links to the relevant pages of sega-16 in it ? It'd have the advantage to avoid dispersion of knowledge (the segaretro wiki being a source of useful information).

Unless there's a rivality betwenn sonicretro and sega-16 I'm not aware of.

SegaRetro is focused on preserving historical info surrounding the games, such as release dates, contemporaneous reviews, staff credits, developer info, cover scans, and so on.

I think people here are talking about a wiki that focuses more on the gameplay itself, such as tips and strategies for playing.

Otherwise, I'd say just help out at SegaRetro. Black Squirrel is working on linking all of the games with reviews of them in magazines such as EGM and GamePro, so all you have to do is click a link to be taken directly to the scanned page of the review. It's awesome.

[goldenband]

I think it's a great idea! It would have to be in its own sandbox, I guess -- either a WordPress plug-in, or something external -- since Melf is a busy guy and, AFAIK, there's no way for us to publish content in WordPress without his manual intervention.

I've thought about starting a thread listing the win conditions for every game, including different endings on different difficulties, alternate endings, games with no end, etc. as well as some strats. But a wiki would be a better way to manage that information, for sure.

[Lync]

It all sounds very ambitious - would the idea be for the site to be one part reviews, one part features, one part forum, and one part informational (games, developers, people, etc.)?

The amalgamation is attractive, especially if anyone has noticed but almost any questions or topics related to Sega on the internet is quick to pull up Sega-16 within the first page of results.

So yeah, it would be nice to have some sort of collective - my question is what is the format to it all.

[tryphon]

Their wiki works more like an extended database on games, focused on technical and historical info.
What me and others have been saying here is focused on gameplay guides and tips, which is very different from what they push there.

SegaRetro is focused on preserving historical info surrounding the games, such as release dates, contemporaneous reviews, staff credits, developer info, cover scans, and so on.

I think people here are talking about a wiki that focuses more on the gameplay itself, such as tips and strategies for playing.

I had understood

I was suggesting to fusion both (and even add some technical infos about games, such as things you can find on datacrystal wiki). I don't see the point in having, for the same game, different wikis for general infos, gameplay, technical guides. That said of course, I love wikis so I'll plainly support sega-16's if there's one

[profholt82]

Idk, any information that one would want to look up in a wiki is certainly already available somewhere in the site. While it would be convenient to have information streamlined, if anyone wants to look up specific information about something Sega related, the search function is their friend (or the old google search with "site:sega-16.com" in the bar). However, it would be a godsend for the lazy, and likely drum up a lot of traffic to the site. While it's not necessary, if it wouldn't be expensive or too time consuming to implement, the benefits could be worth the effort.

[Barone]

The forum structure doesn't give visibility and doesn't provide easy maintenance for a lot of the valuable content we have produced so far.
Forums are great to express your opinions and quickly engage a discussion, but in terms of content organization it's pretty bad IMO.

The forum search feature is mostly broken for searching outside a single thread. Google search helps a lot but, even so, you have to remember the exact words some people used in the discussion or you'll have a very little chance to find what you want.
We have lots of duplicated threads asking for things people couldn't find, for an example. In the case of the strategy guides and gameplay tips you would easily lost track of the content already created; anyone who has tried to manually maintain even a simple index of threads knows how hard it is.

[fluxcore]

I'm just wondering, what could a Wiki offer that a new section or pages on the main site couldn't? I'd love to see more information implemented on the main site. I remember pre-wordpress days we had some pages that simply had images of advertisements and things of that nature. Would like to see that return.

Distributed content generation.