Doom Wiki Month in Review (Issue #17)

May I ask why does Catacomb 3D has its own article on a Doom-focused wiki?

3 hours ago, Xymph said:

Just because Quasar still appears unable to provide it, is no reason to withhold from y'all the overview of new articles in January, another productive month on the Doom Wiki. So, <takes a deep breath> here goes:

 

Core Content

Catacomb 3D
ZDRay

 

People

Gerwin Broers (Gerwin)
Magnus Norddahl (dpJudas)

 

Glad to see this work featured ;) I was surprised Fate TC had an article - Completely missed this, as did the previous feature where some of my first edits also landed into.

Thanks Xymph for doing these and ill take a subscription on this from now on :) Thanks also to all the other editors providing much needed info for the DoomWiki.
 

21 minutes ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

May I ask why does Catacomb 3D has its own article on a Doom-focused wiki?

@Arno wrote the main article, i added the GL part. I had my doubts aswell, and considered a Talk entry about it. Then i realized we also cover things like the Raven Engine and Wolf. Catacomb goes even further away than Wolfenstein 3D but provided the basis for all of them.

Why not Hovertank 3D then? Well, i can imagine that Arno opted to write the Catacomb article without mentioning his port CatacombGL because he is the author of that and writing it would look like advertising for the own church.

CatacombGL is what sets this apart, personally, and thus is an interesting part to add in. But Arno likely has his own views on it, hence the tag :)

But what about ZDRay? Well, i found this (abandoned) feature significant enough to warrant its own article - The fact that Nash Muhandes was so kind enough to upload a build of the latest branch and provide details along with Rachael willing to host this on the ZDoom server (In return i retrieved the old QZDoom alpha builds that weren't present in the archives yet) was a clear and unexpected win. They didn't had to, given that i was just starting out. The fact that they did really cemented my beliefs in archiving and in the Wiki. :)

Personally, there is still a lot to be done: There is still a lot to add, especially around ports and platforms. As time progresses, it will be written :)

4 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

May I ask why does Catacomb 3D has its own article on a Doom-focused wiki?

I saw the Wolfenstein 3D article and thought it was pretty interesting how some concepts and ideas from Wolfenstein 3D were later on reused in Doom. So I added an article on Catacomb 3D to illustrate the relationship between that game and Doom. I didn't mention my source port to avoid self-promotion and because it is probably not relevant in the context of Doom. I'm sure @Redneckerz added it later on in good faith. I'll leave it up to the Doomwiki moderators to judge whether or not it is appropriate.

There's probably some relationship between Hovertank 3D and Doom as well, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to write about it.

I actually thought about adding Hovertank and Catacomb 3D earlier, as they're part of the tech pathway that eventually leads to Doom, and influenced it in various ways (one of those is already succinctly illustrated on our article about fake contrast).

On 2/6/2020 at 4:43 AM, Xymph said:

Engine bugs in Hexen

> Blowing leaves can push things

> 🤔

On 2/6/2020 at 6:43 AM, Xymph said:

<old link removed>

Hey, would it be possible for me to only be credited by my internet username? I did reveal my real name long ago in the documentation for some projects and community projects I was involved in, but in the intervening years I've gone back on that and prefer to only use my username for attribution, and with the way the internet is going I now severely regret my decision to put my real name out there in the first place... If only I had that insight a decade ago

Yeah, we actually have a policy for that. Doom Wiki:Information removal requests.

Edit: I changed the pages on the wiki. To be thorough, you'd have to edit your post here (since your name is still in the URL of the link) and @Xymph should edit the OP. And to be really thorough, you can ask for the older revisions of the six pages I had to modify to be hidden -- this is something only @Quasar can do, though.

tbh I'm not sure I'll go for the full on history nuking. I'd like it if my identity was completely nuked, but this is the internet, and nothing dies. It's too late for it to happen, as I can't exactly go back and hound the idgames archive maintainers to remove my real name from Claus1024, have it removed from the archived idgames things on archive.org, and remove every subtle reference to my real name I made before I've decided I'd like to be credited by net name only..

In any case, thank you for putting the request there and moving the pages.

13 hours ago, Quasar said:

I actually thought about adding Hovertank and Catacomb 3D earlier, as they're part of the tech pathway that eventually leads to Doom, and influenced it in various ways (one of those is already succinctly illustrated on our article about fake contrast).

Thanks for the tip; I just added a reference to fake contrast in the Catacomb 3D article.

On 2/8/2020 at 11:28 AM, SaladBadger said:

Hey, would it be possible for me to only be credited by my internet username?

I updated the link in the first post to match what appears to be your updated wiki page.

Let me know if it's correct, or needs further revision.

It looks good, thank you for doing so.

I'm so glad we're no longer on the Thing That Used To Be Wikia, look at this horrendous shit:

https://community.fandom.com/wiki/Thread:1772517

Imagine, you're reading a "fandom" article somewhere, and there's a gallery of images, and there's one you want to look at more closely so you click it... and you get redirected to the article you were on. And also, of course, you can't see the file's history, either. For alleged SEO purposes.

56 minutes ago, Gez said:

I'm so glad we're no longer on the Thing That Used To Be Wikia, look at this horrendous shit:

https://community.fandom.com/wiki/Thread:1772517

 

Imagine, you're reading a "fandom" article somewhere, and there's a gallery of images, and there's one you want to look at more closely so you click it... and you get redirected to the article you were on. And also, of course, you can't see the file's history, either. For alleged SEO purposes.

.... What a terrible idea. Lets redirect anons to a place they didn't ask to be on. So clever. A great example of Moving the issue instead of fixing it.

There are several things about the Doom Wikia that i do not like:

• It has useful articles that are unique to it, especially regarding source port references.
• People are still editing that monstrosity of a site (Likely because they aren't aware there is another, official Wiki)
• Another reason is that the Wikia often ranks up very high on Google Searches, sometimes even higher than the official Wiki itself which just confuses things.

For all its intents and purposes, the Wikia should be eradicated and removed. I wonder if there is any consensus for this idea amongst the main DoomWiki maintainers, but i can imagine that having this cursed Lost Soul still hovering so close to the actual Wiki in more ways than one is quite distracting.

We cannot remove the old wiki because the wikia staff can take action to restore it.

The best you can expect if you tried to delete its content is get banned from "Fandom" sites.

Couldn't we just... I dunno, request a takedown instead?

1 hour ago, Redneckerz said:

 

• It has useful articles that are unique to it, especially regarding source port references.

Then let's "port" that to Doomwiki ;).

19 minutes ago, Gez said:

We cannot remove the old wiki because the wikia staff can take action to restore it.

 

The best you can expect if you tried to delete its content is get banned from "Fandom" sites.

But why would they restore it when its proven beyond any reasonable doubt which wiki is the official one? Or is the wikia staff not run by adults?

7 minutes ago, seed said:

Couldn't we just... I dunno, request a takedown instead?

 

 

Then let's "port" that to Doomwiki ;).

I mean, i did make you an offer regarding this. ;)

Bad idea. If you do so, you will have to credit the unnameable wiki, as per the CC-BY-SA licence. I am speaking by myself: Could we stop suggesting crazy and jeopardizing ideas, please?

I don't know if this is the right place to said this but, here i go. Sorry if it doesn't belong here, or of this comment annoys somebody.
One thing that i wondered a few times is the lack of wiki info, little to no info sometimes, on most non-english projects.
So, Is there a place from where to retrieve this info? Because their respective country community forums are a little difficult to take in account if one doesn't properly know the lenguage :/
I think that some projects like Sacrament, A.L.T., Heroes' Tales, the 3 houres d'agonie serie from the french community, Czech's projects like Zones of Fear, the recently CzechBox, or even REKKER need their proper wiki page, specially the ones mentioned in the ''Top 25 Missed Cacowards'', and Cacowards winners and Runners-Up.
For example, if one don't know about the proper doomworld's cacowards page it becomes pretty difficult to find info about, or get to download, or get to know wads like Rekker, Doom Zero, etc.

2 hours ago, Diabolución said:

Bad idea. If you do so, you will have to credit the unnameable wiki, as per the CC-BY-SA licence. I am speaking by myself: Could we stop suggesting crazy and jeopardizing ideas, please?

Not if it's done via an export of the edit history. Fandom/Wikia deserves no credit; it's the people who wrote an article who are to be credited vis-a-vis  the CC-BY-SA license. A live link to the source page is allowed as an alternative to this full export.

That being said, some things that exist on the Fandom site don't exist on ours because they're of dubious quality. An example would be their so-called "Doom timeline" that pretends to make sense out of games that were not intended to take place in the same chronology. Such fanfic-like reasoning isn't allowed to take up articles on our site - if we were still calling the shots over there, it'd have been deleted as soon as it had been created. Thus if there's a list being made I'd prefer if we put it somewhere, maybe on a Doom Wiki:RFC subarticle, and review the needed pages as a team.

EDIT: This is done by using the page https://|doom.fandom.com|/wiki/Special:Export

EDIT 2: I have created Doom Wiki:RFC/Other wiki import for this purpose.

2 hours ago, P41R47 said:

I don't know if this is the right place to said this but, here i go. Sorry if it doesn't belong here, or of this comment annoys somebody.
One thing that i wondered a few times is the lack of wiki info, little to no info sometimes, on most non-english projects.
So, Is there a place from where to retrieve this info? Because their respective country community forums are a little difficult to take in account if one doesn't properly know the lenguage :/
I think that some projects like Sacrament, A.L.T., Heroes' Tales, the 3 houres d'agonie serie from the french community, Czech's projects like Zones of Fear, the recently CzechBox, or even REKKER need their proper wiki page, specially the ones mentioned in the ''Top 25 Missed Cacowards'', and Cacowards winners and Runners-Up.
For example, if one don't know about the proper doomworld's cacowards page it becomes pretty difficult to find info about, or get to download, or get to know wads like Rekker, Doom Zero, etc.

Some of the WADs you mentioned already have articles and corresponding map articles.

Heroes' Tales

3 heures d'agonie 1, 2, 3, and even the bonus round.

As for the others; well, hi. A high proportion of articles for WADs from recent years were done by me. The list includes the 3 heures d'agonie series, most of the Doomworld Mega Projects, all of 32in24 (and all map articles for 32in24-1, setting a rough standard for DM map articles in doing so), all of MAYhem, Resurgence, 50 Monsters, BTSX (E2), Sunlust, Tangerine Nightmare, TNT: Revilution, THT: Threnody, Eviternity, HYMN, Swift Death, NOVA 1 + 2, Ancient Aliens, Whitemare 2, Base Ganymede, Unholy Realms, Winter's Fury, Stardate 20X6 and 20X7, Swim with the Whales... so on, so on...

That takes a lot of time, and I used to have plenty of time for it, but that's not the case anymore, so I'd encourage anyone who thinks a WAD (not your own..) should have an article, pick a WAD article, click on edit page, and look at how its formatted, then use that to create a new article for whatever WAD. On average, to do everything including map links and soundtrack listing, a megaWAD article would take me around an hour. The community isn't slowing down, keeping the documentation thorough ultimately can't fall to just a few people!

1 hour ago, Quasar said:

Not if it's done via an export of the edit history.

I stand corrected.

3 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

But why would they restore it when its proven beyond any reasonable doubt which wiki is the official one? Or is the wikia staff not run by adults?

it is run by Effective Managers. it is well known that even an ordinary earthworm (not Jim! ;-) has more intelligence and consciousness than any number of Effective Managers.

8 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

But why would they restore it when its proven beyond any reasonable doubt which wiki is the official one? Or is the wikia staff not run by adults?

They're motivated by lucre, and their revenue source is ads + marketable user data. Their entire business model is to leech clicks off other sites. Why do you think they renamed themselves to a super-generic name like "Fandom"? Before that, if you looked for <nerd thing> + fandom, you'd get a lot of various fansites, now you get their shitty wiki. That's for ads. Then shitty changes like the one that created this tangent are to force people to register and log in, so as to get the marketable user data.

8 hours ago, Eris Falling said:

That takes a lot of time, and I used to have plenty of time for it, but that's not the case anymore, so I'd encourage anyone who thinks a WAD (not your own..) should have an article, pick a WAD article, click on edit page, and look at how its formatted, then use that to create a new article for whatever WAD. On average, to do everything including map links and soundtrack listing, a megaWAD article would take me around an hour. The community isn't slowing down, keeping the documentation thorough ultimately can't fall to just a few people!

Indeed. And to clarify, for multi-level WADs only such overview articles are needed. With the list of map links I can then configure XymphBot to generate skeletons for all the map articles.

Ideally the map links use the maplinkgen template to prevent typo-differences between the links and visible parts of the map names. And for WADs with custom monsters and such, it would be a real boon to have an overview of that content, which can be as brief or comprehensive as you like.

11 hours ago, Diabolución said:

Bad idea. If you do so, you will have to credit the unnameable wiki, as per the CC-BY-SA licence. I am speaking by myself: Could we stop suggesting crazy and jeopardizing ideas, please?

I was not planning on copy-pasting their articles - Rather, rewriting them from scratch. That way Fandom can't claim its a copied work. :)

2 hours ago, Gez said:

They're motivated by lucre, and their revenue source is ads + marketable user data. Their entire business model is to leech clicks off other sites. Why do you think they renamed themselves to a super-generic name like "Fandom"? Before that, if you looked for <nerd thing> + fandom, you'd get a lot of various fansites, now you get their shitty wiki. That's for ads. Then shitty changes like the one that created this tangent are to force people to register and log in, so as to get the marketable user data.

Oh i understand the commercial aspect of it - Rather, i was more impressed as to why they didn't keep a sensible option out. But i guess to make an apt comparison, Fandom is essentially the Wiki's equivalent to Randy Pitchford - Money, recognition and clicks are what make the world go round.

IANAL, but i love to know how this situation holds up in court, what with the SEO results, the commercial stance of the Fandom community, and what not.

11 minutes ago, Xymph said:

Indeed. And to clarify, for multi-level WADs only such overview articles are needed. With the list of map links I can then configure XymphBot to generate skeletons for all the map articles.

Ideally the map links use the maplinkgen template to prevent typo-differences between the links and visible parts of the map names. And for WADs with custom monsters and such, it would be a real boon to have an overview of that content, which can be as brief or comprehensive as you like.

I have to admit that when i write articles for the DoomWiki, i pay very close attention to how other articles are formatted - And learn from that. As my work is less about maps and more about documenting authors and source ports, i try to create some universal semblance in these articles - You will notice that author pages from my hand have a very similar structure as to how they are made.

Source ports and platform ports are a bit different as many variations can exist that base themselves around the same port. I look at these on a per-page basis to figure out what is needed and what not. They also take the most time to make since unlike map stats, you can't automate this process in the way XymphBot does these, haha :)

Since you are here, allow me to hand over a compliment for the work done there - And for correcting other works. Highly appreciated!

2 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Source ports and platform ports are a bit different as many variations can exist that base themselves around the same port. I look at these on a per-page basis to figure out what is needed and what not. They also take the most time to make since unlike map stats, you can't automate this process in the way XymphBot does these, haha :)

Sure, work on other articles than maps and WAD overviews is also appreciated - I was just following up on Eris Falling's comments on this particular area.

2 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Since you are here, allow me to hand over a compliment for the work done there - And for correcting other works. Highly appreciated!

Thanks.

Speaking of maps, the skeletons for all maps of e1contest.wad are still missing. And there are edits by Redneckerz pending of revision.

14 hours ago, Eris Falling said:

Some of the WADs you mentioned already have articles and corresponding map articles.

Heroes' Tales

3 heures d'agonie 1, 2, 3, and even the bonus round.

 

As for the others; well, hi. A high proportion of articles for WADs from recent years were done by me. The list includes the 3 heures d'agonie series, most of the Doomworld Mega Projects, all of 32in24 (and all map articles for 32in24-1, setting a rough standard for DM map articles in doing so), all of MAYhem, Resurgence, 50 Monsters, BTSX (E2), Sunlust, Tangerine Nightmare, TNT: Revilution, THT: Threnody, Eviternity, HYMN, Swift Death, NOVA 1 + 2, Ancient Aliens, Whitemare 2, Base Ganymede, Unholy Realms, Winter's Fury, Stardate 20X6 and 20X7, Swim with the Whales... so on, so on...

 

That takes a lot of time, and I used to have plenty of time for it, but that's not the case anymore, so I'd encourage anyone who thinks a WAD (not your own..) should have an article, pick a WAD article, click on edit page, and look at how its formatted, then use that to create a new article for whatever WAD. On average, to do everything including map links and soundtrack listing, a megaWAD article would take me around an hour. The community isn't slowing down, keeping the documentation thorough ultimately can't fall to just a few people!

Yes, i know that collecting the information and making the page, surely takes time, thats why i asked if there is a way or a place to check about the info as some wads had little info on their respectives .txt, and because i wanted to learn how to help and improve the pages of the projects that i think need more info about them, and add the ones that were made by staple community members, like Mtrop's Dimension of Time.
Sorry if i named some wads that already have a page, i didn't want to discredit your work in any way, i just named some wads from other communities as an example. My bad for don't double check about them.
I will check the wiki FAQ and learn how to properly add content to the wiki to lend you hand and for the community to have the info if they need it.
 

19 hours ago, Diabolución said:

Speaking of maps, the skeletons for all maps of e1contest.wad are still missing. And there are edits by Redneckerz pending of revision.

I don't even see a WAD overview page for e1contest.wad in the wiki, therefore it's logical there are no map pages yet. Edit: Found it.

As for reviewing edits, I generally only review/approve simple tweaks and types of content I'm familiar with, like... map articles. :) Other types I leave to admins with expertise in those areas.