NationStates Jolt Archive

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think it's a pretty good idea. In my opinion. I can put forth all sorts of arguments but the bottom line is this: NSwiki is a very reliable and pretty solid base for NationStates (related) information, a true haven for information freaks and perfectionists who want to have every aspect of their nation covered that can't be done on the Jolt forums or on your nation page.

I'd say [violet] or any other authority on the forum should look into this, because it doesn't seem a very bad or harmful thing to connect NSwiki and NS. Both are maintained by players - the NSwiki server is even operated by a well-known player. Abusive users are fairly easy deleted, mischievous users banned and the whole thing is kept pretty much up-to-date. What takes dozens of pages to make one story can be wrapped up on one NSwiki page after the roleplay. I'd say that's a very good thing. And most importantly, it's easy to use and to give some very basic information.

Share your thoughts people!

PS: Crazy Girl if you post here I'm just gonna report you for flamebaiting. Got that?

Make NSwiki an official source of NS information
I don't see how something over which the NS staff have no direct control could ever be 'official'. I also don't see any problem with its current status - well-known and usually reliable third-party information source.

I don't see how something over which the NS staff have no direct control could ever be 'official'. I also don't see any problem with its current status - well-known and usually reliable third-party information source.

Um, forum Moderator Frisbeeteria has adminship on the NS wiki y'know.

Yes, James, but the rest doesn't. Personally, I believe the NSwiki still has flaws in it, and it is too easy to alter articles. I also don't see the reason why it should become official, it's fine as it is now. Just like the IRC channels, a handy tool.

PS: Crazy Girl if you post here I'm just gonna report you for flamebaiting. Got that?Isn't this flame-bait in and of itself?

Actually, I happen to agree with it remaining a supplement - since that's what it is. For one thing, I doubt the powers that be will be compensating Goober any time soon for his work on maintaining it or making any upgrades to it, and I don't see anyone here putting up any cash for that either. Remember, it's a private site that he's offered for folks to use, at his own expense.

In any case, point on the 'can be easily altered' and such. It can. I think in most cases, it's free enough of malicious activities, - props to Goober and the other NSWiki admins for working to keep it clean. Regardless, all this 'official' business is overrated anyway. People will use it if they like for the good resource it is. I don't think [violet] or anyone ought to be beholden to any offshoot projects that have been inspired by the game that's grown far beyond what the creator has in the past stated he thought it would, nor do I think any users need to feel like they need to use it either on account of some 'official' tag.

Pardon ramblings, on a short work break, kind of rushing through.

And Guffingford, you really blew it with your initial bait there with CG. That kind of crap really has no place here in a discussion where the topic is one that ought to be open to ANY player to discuss, nevermind the fact that you called out one person in particular who doesn't have anything to do with administration of NS, the power to keep you from using NSWiki, or anything of the sort. I remain unimpressed.

Isn't this flame-bait in and of itself?No, because of some stuff happening some time ago she holds a grudge against me. Very understandable, but CG has the very annoying tendency to take it to this forum. I don't want to see any "emo" stuff in here, or whatever it's called. In RPs you can request people not to post, idem for debates in general. What's the big deal?

Onto the topic. I was proposing this, mind that this is a proposal, because there isn't any kind of official off-site reference material available. Considering the amount of work put in and going to be put in NSwiki in the forseeable future. Or to put this upside down: why not make it an official source? I adress the staff to answer there, because [violet] can say something in the lines of: "after reviewing NSwiki I came to the conclusion that it's a swell piece of work and it deserves my stamp of approval. From now you may say that its an official source of information..."

And a chat medium, since that's what mIRC is, is a lot different than a quite static online encyclopedia.

And by the same token, you obviously hold a grudge against her. So long as she keeps it polite, grow a skin and take it like anyone else does when posting this sort of thread. This isn't an RP forum. You asked for input from the general populace. You don't have to like what all gets said, but you sure as hell ought to not start it off with snarky comments like that. I would imagine that is likely a good part of why you two have issues. Do us a favor and don't try to play the martyr here - it doesn't fly.

What's the big deal, indeed. Are you so afraid of commentary you feel you need to allow only certain viewpoints? Real fair and balanced, that. Bravo.

As for 'official', there is an official site. This one. I don't see a need for other 'official' ones, given the mods and admins already have enough to do without having to regulate stuff on offsite forums/resources that they have no control over. Nor do I relish the idea of competition over sites for the vaunted 'official' title that is guaranteed to happen if they start picking and choosing, nor the flamewars that will, given proven past behaviour of enthusiastic supporters on this site (no, not referring to any one person or group in particular, just the overall tendency we see when popular things get challenged), end up cropping up all over the place on account.

NSWiki, or any of the other projects, sites, and tools that NS has inspired do not need an 'official' stamp, regardless. They're quite capable of standing on their own merits, and those who wish to use them, will. There's an abundance of links in all the forums to all manner of these sorts of offsite resources. I really don't see them being 'cheated', or ignored, or forgotten, so long as NS players find them useful.

No, because of some stuff happening some time ago she holds a grudge against me. Very understandable, but CG has the very annoying tendency to take it to this forum. I don't want to see any "emo" stuff in here, or whatever it's called. In RPs you can request people not to post, idem for debates in general. What's the big deal?


The key point is that's a roleplay. This isn't. This is an OOC discussion in which pretty much anyone is allowed to post. Your addition of baiting Crazy Girl was not necessary, especially with the topic of this thread.

I don't see how something over which the NS staff have no direct control could ever be 'official'. I also don't see any problem with its current status - well-known and usually reliable third-party information source.

Only too true. And, Um, forum Moderator Frisbeeteria has adminship on the NS wiki y'know. does not mean that NSwiki is troughly reliable. :(

I also have not ever used the NSwiki, and therefore can not comment any further.

No offence to Frisbeeteria.

(...)Way to jump into conclusions... Although I like the FOX news motto. Still, perhaps you've heard of prevention? And last time I checked, you weren't a member of the moderators so who are you start dictating what I should and shouldn't allow in threads I make. That's like me saying what you must in- or exclude in your roleplay threads. Doesn't make very much sense now does it? Drop the issue Lady. This thread is about NSwiki, not about two players who act like adults who have a bad marriage.

Thank you.

<ontopic> What people are saying about having no added value is correct; it's a symbolic function. When you have a document, whether it be HTML or paper and it bears a stamp of approval I'm sure it attracts more people. Not only does it work as an advertisement, its also appreciation for all the effort and thought put in NSwiki. And you know NSwiki is fairly objective in its articles, has a good management and lots of content.

The "nswiki is has certain flaws" argument doesn't hold water people, everything has some kind of flaw in it. And if it has a very specific, do tell. Minor software bugs, downtime and typos aren't the kind of flaws. Power abuse, abusive content, bias and that sorta stuff. I've been using NSwiki for quite some time and I find the staff doing a good job keeping it clean.

Way to jump into conclusions... Although I like the FOX news motto. Still, perhaps you've heard of prevention? And last time I checked, you weren't a member of the moderators so who are you start dictating what I should and shouldn't allow in threads I make. That's like me saying what you must in- or exclude in your roleplay threads. Doesn't make very much sense now does it? Drop the issue Lady. This thread is about NSwiki, not about two players who act like adults who have a bad marriage.

Thank you.

Check your venom at the door, and please read again. I don't 'dictate' anywhere in my post there - I don't have the authority to, any more than you do in telling me to 'drop the issue' when you're trying to make more of this than it ought to be. Nor is it jumping anywhere to observe that you seem to have a bias towards CG on account of your initial 'PS' post. I would think it's obivious to anyone who bothers reading that I'm not a moderator. Nice use of misdirection there with the rp insertion again - it isn't the same, and it still doesn't fly. This is what's known as voicing an opinion - something that again, anyone is able to offer here when there is a lack of 'moderators only' request in the title or initial post, according to past statements by the moderating staff right here in this forum. It isn't usurping authority to point that out.

I made an observation, you chose to get defensive, so be it. You just got told by one of the mods that your comment was out of line. It would seem my observation was correct, whether you happen like that fact or not. Had I been incorrect, I'm quite certain they would have let me know, and I would at this point be offering an apology rather than further criticism and defense on my behalf.

You were the one who created the off-topic venue with your exclusive 'warning', so reason states you get to deal with the fallout from making that choice. That also is not an ursupation of authority, merely another observation. How you choose to do so ends up speaking volumes for your intent and character. Had rather hoped you would have realized that before now.

As for on topic, you have yet to refute a good many of my points, choosing rather to continue pressing on an issue you have already been shown to be incorrect in. Please bear in mind, I have nothing against NSWiki use - after all, I link it in my sig, and have also, as previously stated, been impressed with the content and management of it. Still, your argument seems to rest fully on 'I think it's nifty and informative, so it should be official', while ignoring a plethora of pertinent concerns.

Would you care to try again?

Why should I refute valid points brought forward? That's your opinion on this idea, these is mine and I let someone in charge decide about it. There's nothing special about your opinion and why I should refute them. And even if I do, you're here to prove me wrong again.

Kinda defeats the point of expressing an opinion doesn't it? I say it'd be a good idea (note "good idea" and "I say") if NSwiki receives some kind of official approval, so players know it is a reliable source of information. It has no real function, it's a symbol of good work.

No, here to see some reasonable debate - golf clap for your leaping to conclusions, though. ;)

Not claiming there's anything special about my opinions, was curious to hear your rebuttal/response/observations in return, as you hadn't addressed any of those concerns - in agreement or otherwise.

Discussion - lets see some, rather than the continued weak attempt at barbs.

The key point is that's a roleplay. This isn't. This is an OOC discussion in which pretty much anyone is allowed to post. Your addition of baiting Crazy Girl was not necessary, especially with the topic of this thread.

Doesn't it amount to mods as a weapon - "do this or I'm going to report you"?

For what it's worth, I don't think NSWiki should be official as it relates to being governed by NS Administration's rules. That said, the same thing holds true for the offshoot boards like the NS Draftroom and Lineart Inc. NSwiki has its own ruleset that comes down from Gooberguncheria and the moderation staff he's picked. Changing the status from unofficial to official means that an offside resource comes under NS Admin control.

The same thing holds true for the Lineart board and the NS Draftroom. The Lineart board operates under the ruleset established by Hogsweat's player. The NS Draftroom operates under the ruleset I've established. I would oppose efforts to make the Draftroom "official," not that there are any to begin with since it's got such a small percentage of NS's overall player base.

Look, this thread is in Moderation. I'm sure the mods will deal with it as they see fit. Shouldn't we at least try to stay on topic?

I don't really feel I can add much, but I would make an observation: we will need to spring clean, first. We document some rules on NSwiki: because there are non-mods on the sysop staff, protecting them wouldn't be enough, so we would have to make it very clear they were unofficial. Also, we would need to delete some articles - for example, I really can't see any 'official' site having the Hall of Ex-Nations on it. Furthermore, the whole style of a wiki means it really is open to abuse. But, it's not my place to judge.

Fact: Goobergunch owns NSwiki.

Fact: SalusaSecondus has spoken with Goob about NSwiki about various relationships between the two sites, including copyrights and crosslinking. I'm fairly certain that the idea of a direct link from the nation page was discussed and dismissed by both sides.

Fact: Max Barry is aware of NSwiki, and has mentioned it in two separate MaxChats. (with some prompting by Goober, but still) It's not like he doesn't know it's out there.

Fact: I was an NSwiki sysop before I became an NS mod. I keep the two personas separate, and in fact have been largely inactive on NSwiki since being promoted to Game Mod. NS privileged information is not being used to manage NSwiki. ALL NSwiki sysops (including me) base their decisions on what happens on that site only, with the exception that certain events that spill over (like the Hogsweat deletion vandalism) might have a stronger penalty due to the behavior on BOTH sites.

High probability of fact: NS servers don't have the available space or bandwidth to support NSwiki. The wiki is something of a resource hog, and Jolt is slowing down enough on its own. If we suddenly have 110,000 users instead of the current 2315 registered users, I think the load on the wiki would become substantially higher as well. We're already seeing database errors on NSwiki and unexplained pauses in NS. I don't think anyone wants both to be even slower.

Fact: The NSwiki and NS codes are based on entirely different engines and concepts. There is no way to integrate the wiki cleanly into NS. All you could really do is link it, which you can do now informally. If we were redesigning the game from scratch, it would make a cool addition. Trying to integrate it now would be ugly and troublesome.

I can't speak for the owners of either site directly, but I'm pretty sure it's not gonna fly. If an admin wants to comment or override me, they can, but for now I'd say the matter is not under any serious consideration.

Um, forum Moderator Frisbeeteria has adminship on the NS wiki y'know.
You demoted me on one site and promoted me on the other.

I'm a Game Mod here, and a Sysop there. Goobergunch is the only NSwiki Bureaucrat (admin).

You demoted me on one site and promoted me on the other.

I'm a Game Mod here, and a Sysop there. Goobergunch is the only NSwiki Bureaucrat (admin).

You're listed on NSwiki:Administrators (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/NSwiki:Administrators) as an administrator, which appears to refer to all sysops, bureaucrats, etc.

Just as a note:

Any site where I or anyone else who felt like it could go in and edit random people's nation pages to read "YAMS YAMS YAMS YAMS YAMS" should not be an official source for anything. :)

(I dislike the actual wikipedia for some of the same reasons, but that's another topic entirely...)

"YAMS YAMS YAMS YAMS YAMS"
To be fair, the wiki's complete edit history and record of the vandal's registered name or IP does compensate for that. I actually prefer it to our regional messageboards, on which a spammer can be quite unpleasant until a mod intervenes. Any signed-in user can revert a wiki page, sysops with even greater ease (one-click interface).

Yams?

Here is my opinion as a NSWiki user (contributor and reader) ... I'd like it to remain separate. Wikipedia's content essentially rests in a public domain, and is subject to change by anybody ... which is one of the differences between it and say an on-line encyclopedia coming from an organization or publishing company.

In NationStates, there are some players (myself included) that consider many elements of the game engine poorly implemented, for example: environmental resolutions, thus we ignore some game engine supported notions. (Yeah, there are people who consider this bad form, but frankly this is just a game.) I wouldn't like for the game to be updating my roleplayed information.


Now, I'm likely in the minority here, but I would love to encourage NS players to contribute to and use NSWiki, but I simply would rather it not become "official". The way I think this can be done would simply be to contribute articles and also talk about what you like (here, there, etc.). Essentially I'm of the "Build it, and they will come" mentality.

No offence, but I do not want to be taking orders from the staff on the forums, because there would be certainly be some sort of subordination on the NSwiki side. Let's keep it the way it is.

Now, I'm likely in the minority here, but I would love to encourage NS players to contribute to and use NSWiki, but I simply would rather it not become "official". The way I think this can be done would simply be to contribute articles and also talk about what you like (here, there, etc.). Essentially I'm of the "Build it, and they will come" mentality.I like this line of thinking. As far as I'm concerned, the best form of sanction the NS Wiki can get is having Max talk about it or Salusa talk about it. But that's where I think the line should be drawn.

I like this line of thinking. As far as I'm concerned, the best form of sanction the NS Wiki can get is having Max talk about it or Salusa talk about it. But that's where I think the line should be drawn.

Yeah... Max has talked about it, though it was through MaxChat on IRC.

This isn't going to happen. It probably couldn't happen without weird administrative-access swaps that aren't going to happen. I've talked to SalusaSecondus on the couple occasions in which there was a conceivable conflict between NSwiki and NationStates moderation policy, and I'm willing to work with NationStates staff on any topics pertaining to NSwiki. The current setup works well, and I don't see any reason for it to change.

Fact: The NSwiki and NS codes are based on entirely different engines and concepts. There is no way to integrate the wiki cleanly into NS. All you could really do is link it, which you can do now informally. If we were redesigning the game from scratch, it would make a cool addition. Trying to integrate it now would be ugly and troublesome.

Hells yeah. The MediaWiki software (which I badly need to upgrade, by the way - that'll happen tomorrow) is written in PHP, and NS is written in Perl. Trying to integrate the two besides linking would be quite unpleasant and would probably break upgrades to MediaWiki - as there might be a few nice vandal-fighting upgrades in the pipeline, this would be a bad idea.

The database errors surround the 'max_questions' resource, which essentially means that we've maxed out the amount of database queries that my account is technically allowed. I'm going to talk to Servage about this. And yes, MediaWiki is not known for being nice to servers.

Also, we would need to delete some articles - for example, I really can't see any 'official' site having the Hall of Ex-Nations on it.

The Hall of Ex-Nations actually comes from the NationStates forums - I reposted in to NSwiki after the Keeper of the Hall went inactive here.

I like this line of thinking. As far as I'm concerned, the best form of sanction the NS Wiki can get is having Max talk about it or Salusa talk about it. But that's where I think the line should be drawn.

See the News page from a bit ago. :)

We get enough noobs on our forums as it is. Imagine if NSwiki joined us, and ALL the noobs who are supposedly "experimenting" start going into big and powerful nation's pages and write "I IS TESTING111!11!!11oeneoneonetyone!"

Even if you CAN revert it, it would take 24-hour mods to do it.

I think that the experienced players will make their way to NSwiki on their own, without a link. All we need on NSwiki are experience players. :P

(...)Well I didn't know this was happening behind the scenes. And people, I said making NSwiki officially approved, not putting everything on one server with one admin and the same moderators. Hence why I said "symbolic".

Well I didn't know this was happening behind the scenes. And people, I said making NSwiki officially approved, not putting everything on one server with one admin and the same moderators. Hence why I said "symbolic".

Well... Max said he liked it. That is all we need, I think.

The wiki concept means making rules together, and if I'd be taking orders at all it would be from Goob. Like Pacitalia said I'm not really cheering about having to conform to some sort of NS standard, whatever it may be. (Would we have to ban users banned in NS? That sort of thing.)

The posts by both Goober and the moderators here pretty much says it all: contacts, when needed, have been pleasant and will most likely continue to be pleasant.

As for server problems... Goob is on it, and myself and several others would love to be able to contribute to a new server should such problems become hard to solve on the current server.

To use the analogy of Wikipedia, Wikipedia is about the world, but the world is not officially affiliated with Wikipedia. ;)