[Mars]

But it's not knowlage, it is theories, not based on anything other than the author's imagination. That's fine for the forum, but not so good for a wiki.

The difference is that the theories which make your computer work are tested over and over, whereas the theories in Freespace are better described as hypothiseis

[Shade]

Knowledge or not, in Freespace there is a very clear distinction between canon and non-canon. If that distinction starts to get blurred due to fan theories, however well founded, being presented or even to some extent accepted as canon, we have a problem. And the wiki shouldn't increase the risk of something like that happening, which is why non-canon material is already marked as such.

But if that proves to be ineffective, segregating non-canon into a completely seperate section, or even keeping it to the forums as Mars has suggested, might be necessary to avoid blurring that line. I prefer the former, he the latter, but either way something will have to be done if that line gets too blurred in the wiki.

[Mars]

My concern is that the non-canon tag simply isn't preventing this blurring from happening

[Shade]

Indeed it is not. I've got some vacation coming up in two weeks, which should give me time to work on a way to make it more difficult to mistake non-canon for canon (not to mention get to coding some, which I haven't done in a while). I've actually been thinking about that for a while, just haven't had any free time to speak of to actually do it.

My current thinking is nesting the non canon stuff something like this, starting from the main page menu bar:

Main Page
-Menu bar
  Retail Freespace
    -Current stuff
  Freespace SCP
    -Current stuff
  Modding Freespace
    -Modding
    -FRED
  Freespace Universe
    -The Universe
->Non Canon<-
    -New user made campaigns portal (with friendly reminder that user campaigns are not part of the official freespace timeline)
      -Any non-canon campaign-specific info on the relevant campaign page
    -New fan theories portal (with big disclaimer about the difference between canon and non-canon)
      -All the non campaign-specific ideas and theories, neatly sorted by what they are trying to explain

Keeping all non-canon information to those last two portals would considerably reduce the risk of people thinking it's canon, I think. Much of the current confusion comes from the non-canon stuff appearing in the middle of an otherwise canon article, as despite it being properly marked with non-canon tags and all that kind of intermixing really does lend itself to confusion.

This would also remove any contradictions appearing on the same page due to various campaigns' different take on an issue, as those would be on their respective campaign pages instead of intermixed with eachother on some theory page. Not to mention it would also give the whole user campaigns section a much needed overhaul, as it's currently just a boring and uninviting list - A proper portal page would be much better.

[Goober5000]

* Goober5000 agrees with Shade

[Mars]

So only one person is in disagreement?

[NGTM-1R]

If you're referring to me, I'm all for them being more clearly segregated. I just don't want them nuked.

[aldo_14]

In the absence of all-out deletion (of non-campaign linked fanfic), this seems the best option.

[Shade]

Alright then, I'll see if I can get started on the two portals this weekend, though I doubt I'll have time to do much about actual content until my vacation so I won't link to them from any other page yet, just get the layout sorted really and drop links here so anyone interested can comment or edit.

Oh, and speaking of links, who do I bug to get permission to edit the main page for when they are ready for public eyes?

[Edit] Wee, first draft of the user-campaigns portal, courtesy of a lot of cut-and-paste and a little tinkering: Linky. Feel free to change stuff you don't like, this was a 15 minute botch job just to get an idea what it could look like... I'll get more serious about it tomorrow

One thing I am rather interested in opinions on is the categorisation of the campaign types in the menu bar. The bar obviously can't have every campaign ever made, so I figured this way made reasonable sense without unduely favoring any specific campaigns, as ultimately which are better is a matter of taste. So, I figure there are few enough TCs and heavy mods that we can show those no problem and then simply link a list of campaigns that rely on them (such as Raider Wars and BHX for TBP or S:AH for Inferno, for example). After that, the modless (or nearly so) campaigns are just sorted by length, with seperate sections for FS2 retail and FS1 as I don't recall any major mods or TCs for either of those that don't also work with the SCP.

[Goober5000]

Oof.  Bad categorization idea IMHO.  People won't go to the portal to compare mission length, they'll go to the portal to compare stories.  They should be organized by era: FS1, Reconstruction, FS2, Post-Capella, etc.

In fact, why does the portal not link to the current list?

[Wanderer]

Its very WIP.....

[Shade]

In fact, why does the portal not link to the current list?

though I doubt I'll have time to do much about actual content until my vacation so I won't link to them from any other page yet, just get the layout sorted

I won't put any content on it at all, links included, until I've worked out how to categorize and display it. In fact, I don't even think it's up to WIP yet, unless that's work in planning rather than work in progress. Once the portal is done, I actually expect the current list to be obsolete as everything on it will be accessible from the portal in at most two clicks - After that I'll see if I can get it renamed to 'master campaign list' or something like that and just keep one link to it somewhere on the page where it doesn't get in the way.

What's there now is really there just as a testbed for showing you all (and myself) how different layouts and ways of sorting the campaigns might work, and to bring out ideas for how to do it better. Like yours about categorizing after era instead of length - Which I agree with, that would be a far better way of doing it, so I'll change it to that next time I work on it

How about my splitting it up into TCs, campaigns that are also major mods that other campaigns rely on, and campaigns with few-to-no mods though? Good or bad? Reason for doing it is that the heavy mods and TCs essentially have a continuity of their own, with entire new fleets of ships and complex backstories or for that matter a different universe which their child campaigns adhere to, and so keeping the campaigns that require those mods/TCs together instead of intermixed with the rest makes sense to me.

Finally, I'd like to keep the seperation of campaigns into which engine they run on, simply for user friendlyness - Someone who runs Retail can quickly find compatible campaigns that way without having to click on each one and see if it is for FS1, FS2 or FSO. Can still apply the categorization by era to them though, that makes good sense regardless.

[Edit] PS. Thanks to whoever fixed it so I can edit the main page, just noticed I have an edit link now instead of view source It's nice to not have to pester other people to add the links it once these pages are ready.

[Edit 2] Updated with Goober's suggestions, left out FS2 Era and post-capella categories for FS1 campaigns though, on the assumption that none exist since the story didn't exist at the time. Also made a (so far empty) Featured Campaign template and added that, which we can use similar to the featured article on the main page to in turn give notable campaigns a time in the spotlight.

[Goober5000]

How about my splitting it up into TCs, campaigns that are also major mods that other campaigns rely on, and campaigns with few-to-no mods though? Good or bad?

Bad.  The number of mods used by a campaign has absolutely nothing to do with how much back story it has.

I agree about TCs, but that's easily fixed: have the categories be FS1, Reconstruction, FS2, Post-Capella, and TC.

Finally, I'd like to keep the seperation of campaigns into which engine they run on, simply for user friendlyness - Someone who runs Retail can quickly find compatible campaigns that way without having to click on each one and see if it is for FS1, FS2 or FSO. Can still apply the categorization by era to them though, that makes good sense regardless.

Again, no.  That's easily accomplished by the asterisk system on the current campaign page.

In fact, the asterisk system is probably a good way to solve this whole problem.  If any user campaign has a sizeable back story, it can be indicated by a symbol on the listing page.  Then the campaign page can link to whatever story pages are needed.  If we then put all those pages in a category, we can have an easy way to reference them, and we won't even need the Portal page.

[Wanderer]

How about using well color codes? That is to make a table out of the campaings and then assigning some color to certain camps (according to engine they need for example)

[Shade]

Colour codes sounds like it could work well, as long as it's possible to distinguish compatibility at a glance, I'm happy... and much as I hate it, I think I still have to agree that Goober has a point... again And using a table instead of a list for the different campaign categories also sounds like a good idea, that way it can be nicely formatted and keep key info such as number of missions and download size available without needing to enter the actual campaign page.

So, TCs seperate, rest sorted into era and colour coded to display which game they are made for. I'd still want to sort campaigns that rely on a specific mod into seperate lists connected to that mod though, but this can be easily done without compromising this categorization. Acceptable?

[Wanderer]

I made major alterations to the page recently.. feel free to revert back if you like.

[Shade]

I'm not happy about that way of doing it. The page will get way too big for a portal - A portal page itself is really just the entrypoint, which when done can hold general info such as a non-continuity disclaimer, and in this case tips on safe mod and campaign installation and a 'featured campaign' template for showing off specific articles, and then simply have links to the lists for various eras. The current layout would be sorta like trying to display all of the current portal pages on the main page instead of just linking to them, imo. It has to be easily navigable to work, and this won't be.

I could see keeping the TC field as there will never be that many of those, but the rest imo will have to stay on their respective era pages. However, using that kind of layout could work well for the era pages - Not side by side I think and somewhat wider, but it would make it easily possible to colour code backgrounds for campaigns based on what engine they need.

I'll let it stand for a bit though so others can comment if they want to.

[Wanderer]

Yeah.. my version is more like remade user-made campaigns page not user-made campaings portal.

[Goober5000]

Yeah.. my version is more like remade user-made campaigns page not user-made campaings portal.

IMHO this is better.  No need to duplicate pages; the portal and the campaign list would probably end up inconsistent anyhow.

[Shade]

It would be better for a list of campaigns. But a portal serves a different purpose - Take a look at the FRED portal for example (which was my first go at portal-making), it doesn't have links to every article on fredding right there, but rather just articles on major new features and after that the rest is found in lists and categories, yet I think it really did help make the content more accessible to newcomers than it was before.

If the goal was simply to make a nicer looking list of campaigns, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place... we'd be finished yesterday But the goal is (at least as I understood it) rather to make a portal that won't seem overwhelming to newbies, which has a good section on the non-canon nature of fan campaigns to avoid any confusion in that respect, contains some friendly tips on safe installation and links to a page with solutions to common errors (which I'll be making when the time comes, already started taking notes when problems are solved on the forums), and to provide an entrypoint to the campaign sections rather than being a campaign list itself. Basically, it's a portal, so I want to make a portal.

That does not mean I'll be doing away with the current lists and categories though, they'll still be there if people prefer to browse them that way. But that'll be more for people who know what they're looking for rather than a newcomer who wants explore the world of user made campaigns. But it'll take a while before getting to that point, especially as sorting the layout of the portal is the easy part, after that comes the real work on the actual campaign pages. But as I mentioned, I've got vacation coming, so it'll get there