Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (
More info?)
On Sat, 7 May 2005, keith wrote:
>
> Wouldn't a wiki be a more appropriate place for ideas than this newsgroup?
> I've see wikis like roguelikedevelopment etc... I think it's more likely
> potential authors of RLs will spot them there and the wiki might also
> keep an idea "warm" for a longer time than a post.
>
> Just an idea. I've seen some pretty good RL ideas floating as well as
> discussions on gameplay that I think would be a shame if they went to
> waste.
There are certainly wikis for RL development. One that has been
mentioned in this group in the past couple days is RogueBasin
http://roguebasin.t-o-m-e.net/index.php/Main_Page
and I think there are little (big?) wikis for H-World and maybe some
other specific RL projects. See "Roguelike Links" on the page above.
I see a couple inherent drawbacks to wiki, though:
First, I think wikis are less conducive to community than newsgroups. I
know a lot of people disagree. (Wikipedia seems to have a great community
--- several of them, in fact!
And it's the sense of community that
makes people want to share their ideas, rather than just noding factual
information; at least, that's my idea.
So there's a way to get quick
feedback: "Yeah, cool idea!" or "Okay, but how about..." The wiki layout
doesn't do threading or anything special to facilitate /discussion/ of
ideas.
Second, there's the omnipresent copyright problem. On Usenet, everything
is pretty much assumed to be copyright the author, unless the author
explicitly gives up copyright (which nobody ever bothers to do). Which
means you can't just go to the Usenet archives and start pulling down
interesting content and sticking it on a wiki; you need to get permission
from the author(s) first. And that's a pain. So wiki and Usenet don't
play well together.
Of course, if anyone got in the habit of noding a substantive article
on RogueBasin /first/, and then posting the text or a link to it in
r.g.r.d, that would be cool, and might start the ball rolling. I can't,
because my good substantive ideas are few and far between.
Third, there's just the fact that people (read: I) don't like switching
back and forth between Web browser and newsreader a lot. So again, wiki
and Usenet don't play well together.
Those points aren't meant to discourage you completely, though!
I'm sure that if someone with a lot of good ideas started noding on
a wiki and posting links here, newsgroup readers would start jumping
on the bandwagon pretty quickly. I volunteer to fix all their spelling
mistakes.
-Arthur
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