Nat_VS Posted 3 hours ago Report Posted 3 hours ago Hi all! I'm looking for some feedback on some proposed plans for the modding section of the wiki in terms of how to make it more useful for everyone who uses it. If you have the time, I would love to hear your opinions on the following. I did write this as a message to some of the VS team, but it occurred to me that the wiki is made for the community, so you should have a say to express your opinions. I apologize in advance for the more casual tones this message has. ----- Okay, so first off the state of the wiki currently, there are a few distinct issues that I have been putting off because they are overwhelming me: 1. First and foremost, navigation to find pages is a nightmare. I took influence from the Starbound modding wiki, which separates navigation boxes to categorize everything. Unfortunately, this is only really helpful for step-by-step wiki guides, where categories don't really interfere with one another. But, our categories are highly interlinked, and this kind of navigation has just ended up resulting in a huge number of "landing pages". It takes several clicks to get to specific pages, and it's only really useful if you already know what you're looking for. 2. Second issue is the predominantly "Windows-heavy" content of the modding tutorials. It's very much a case of "do this in Windows and Visual Studio. If you aren't using those, then figure it out yourself." I thought this was a valid viewpoint to take initially, due to Linux users generally being more tech-savvy than the average person. After now using Linux myself and realising how difficult it can be, I have fully changed my mind and want to have specific tutorials on how to work with different OSs and IDEs. 3. Third issue is the variety of specificity across the modding pages. Some pages are obnoxiously broad and contain multiple sections. E.g. The "Developing a content mod" page contains "selecting an IDE", "Template/Example Mod Setup", "Manual Mod Setup" (which contains how to setup the mod workspace, modinfo, modicon, and assets folder), "Mod Domains", "Publishing a Content Mod", and "Updating a Content Mod to a new Game Version". If a user wants to know how to publish a content mod, they have to know that the information is contained within this page. This is countered by the fact that some pages are really specific, offering information on one specific topic, such as the "Types of Mod" page. The problem with the small pages is that they can very easily clog the wiki's navigation, making it generally harder to find specific pages - But smaller and specific pages are considerably easier to read, write, and maintain. I think those three are the largest issues that the modding section of the wiki faces. ----- The goal is to make all the information on the modding section easy to find, while also making it easier to maintain. I've come up with a number of solutions that I would like to implement to the modding wiki. Note that these do not necessarily match in order to the issues above: 1. Recreate the homepage navigation. Currently, the homepage has links for a "Quick Start Tutorial", an "All Modding Pages", and 7 distinct categories. The main page can be found here: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Main_Page I would like to turn this into a table that is a cross between categories and specific pages. The table will contain the 7 categories, as well as an 'Other Resources' section. There will be greater emphasis on the 'Content Mods' and 'Code Mods' categories, as this is where the majority of mod content on the wiki is located. Each category's box in the table will contain its most useful pages, and then a link to view all the pages in the category. Note that it is unreasonable to list every mod page on the homepage. 2. Rewriting a number of the large and more chaotic pages into a set of smaller, more relevant and succinct pages. This will be done with an emphasis on avoiding duplicating information, as that is one of the hardest parts of maintaining the wiki. It will be beneficial for some of these smaller sections to be inside of landing pages, though. E.g. a wiki page called "Content Mod Essentials and Setup" may contain links to the pages for what a content mod is, how to create a content mod, how to update a content mod, and how to package a content mod. The goal is that ALL pages can be accessed within two clicks or less from the homepage. Each page will also be included in the category's "All pages", so there will hopefully be multiple ways of finding every page. 3. Split some pages into operating-system or IDE-specific pages. This is extremely relevant to the process of setting up code mods. It will double-up as a form of organization, but also show clarity for supporting various OSs and IDEs. 4. Deeply categorize pages to automatically generate "tag-based modding pages". i.e., any pages that give any details on creating, using, or modifying entities will have the "Modding Entities" category. As more pages have more categories, this will establish an "index" system, like the ones found in the back of any good informational book. (On a related note, I have also created a glossary page to help with terminology, but this is currently not linked anywhere.) 5. I would like to expand the navigation boxes at the bottom of the wiki pages to have one navbox per category that will contain all pages in that category. It is not practical to have a single navigation box for all modding pages, as there is simply too many pages now. The old system of having one navbox for content mods and one for code mods also doesn't work, as there's too many pages that don't fit into either of those categories. Having individual navboxes will also make it much easier for anyone to add new pages. ----- Thanks for spending the time to read this. I'm hoping to get feedback on: - If you have any of your own issues with the modding wiki. - Agreement or disagreement on any points I have made. - How valid you think the solutions I have given are. - Any further information on the solutions that you think may be relevant, or any solutions that I may not have considered.
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