Does a genuine multi-contributor exalted WIKI exist?

[CapitanTypo]

Does a genuine multi-contributor exalted WIKI exist to share stories, maps, notes, etc?

I write a lot for my games that I'd be happy to share but not enough to justify setting up a website for.

If such a wiki exists, where?

If not, would it be worth setting one up?

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and all that.

[Erinys]

This is the only one I know of: http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/Main_Page

The Official Exalted Wiki used to be awesome, but CCP took it offline and OPP isn't putting much (or any?) priority on fixing it, so there is only an incomplete, uneditable archive of it.

[Lioness]

We've got a fan wiki in the useful links section, it's new but growing in content all the time.

[Jürgen Hubert]

We've got a fan wiki in the useful links section, it's new but growing in content all the time.

<speaks up>

So far, I've primarily set the Exalted 3E wiki up for rules material, since (with the advent of the 3rd Edition) this seemed to be the most pressing need. But there is absolutely no reason why I can't create sections for setting material as well.

However, so far the wiki has been organized into specific sections ("Quick Characters", "Charms", and so forth) and I'd like to keep that setup. So if you can come up with a list of sections you need, I can implement that and create appropriate forms.

Based on the OP, there seems to be a need for:

- Fiction
- Maps

I am less sure what a "Notes" section would be about. Could you elaborate? A

- Locations

section would probably be also useful, though maybe we should come up with appropriate tags to subdivide these (such as "city", "country" and things like that).

[Avrjoe]

The Limbo the old Wiki fell into saddens me there was a lot of good stuff in there.

The evasiveness of the replies when anyone asked about it and lack of even a partial restore or data dump of the Wiki was odd and disheartening. We can only guess that the copy was lost deleted or never recorded in the first place. None of which would bother me if someone admitted to it. Accidents and miscommunication happen starting a new business to keep these games in production was no small task. The run around and silent treatment however have never been ok. That sort of treatment by any company makes me think much less of them regardless of what they sell or how much I like their product.

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've added sections for fiction, locations, and maps to the wiki, as well as editing tips. Please tell me if you think anything is missing!

[CapitanTypo]

I've added sections for fiction, locations, and maps to the wiki, as well as editing tips. Please tell me if you think anything is missing!

Great!

Here's a couple of extra categories:


Story ideas
Links/external resources

[Jürgen Hubert]

Added!

I am curious what everyone will come up with for this.

[HighPriest]

The Limbo the old Wiki fell into saddens me there was a lot of good stuff in there.

The evasiveness of the replies when anyone asked about it and lack of even a partial restore or data dump of the Wiki was odd and disheartening. We can only guess that the copy was lost deleted or never recorded in the first place. None of which would bother me if someone admitted to it.

Some of the old White Wolf wiki is now salvageable at http://rathess.xi.co.nz/exalted/index.php/Main_Page

If there is something that is missing there and you have a reasonably clear idea what it is that you're looking for, send me a private message. I've got a slightly different copy stored locally that I've never been able to get re-uploaded properly (it always ends up borked in roughly the same way as the copy they got up at the above link). Things work differently enough on the local software I use to pull out info that I might be able to salvage what you want out of the wreckage. I'm not on here so much these days (my group decided against moving to 3E and we're now looking at other systems) so there might be some lag on my response.

As for what happened to it, my money is on never recorded. In the early days after the old White Wolf stuff went down, I vaguely recall some genuine sounding confusion from OPP staff regarding the fact that the Exalted wiki was actually a separate thing from the main White Wolf wiki, which they did a pretty good job of preserving as far as I can tell (haven't been big into WoD since the '90s so it's possible that there are big chunks of it missing too and I wouldn't notice). It is still disappointing that no one at OPP seems willing to just fess up and say "we goofed, lost it, sorry".

[HighPriest]

Please tell me if you think anything is missing!

So some of the better wikis of this sort that I've seen encourage tagging a piece of content by its creator. In the old White Wolf Exalted wiki, for example, you could search for all Artifacts by a given author - useful if you think a particular poster produces decent quality content. User pages could also serve this function though that would be up to the user in that case. If the wiki you have up has that functionality, I'm having trouble finding it (but I'm not super great at wikis in general so this could be my failing).

Encouraging Comments sections on pages (maybe including them in default templates if possible) might also be helpful so people can discuss custom material balance and hopefully work toward better content.

The below link is a strong example of a user-based page. It also includes a separately editable comments area. (This page is admittedly way better organized than most user pages, but that's the ideal to strive toward)

http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/Wordman

No easy example to give you on the pages tagged by creator idea unfortunately - that's the part of the old White Wolf Wiki that is still the most broken in most copies I've seen restored to partial functionality.

Good luck getting this project started! It would be great if we could once again have a thriving wiki for Exalted stuff, even if it is limited to 3E!

[Erinys]

Given the evasive and incomplete answers to questions about it and the years that nothing at all has happened, it feels like OPP have no intention of restoring the Wiki. (Perhaps they did before, but now think that everything from 2E is unwanted/useless. Perhaps CCP deleted all the files at the start.) Yet, Ian Watson said the files exist and they're still working on it, and I don't want to accuse him of lying. ... (It still feels like it'll never get done.)

But I really wish that ALL the surviving pieces could be ported somehow onto a new Wiki, including the crunch and pages that summarized canon stuff, no matter what edition it came from, converted or not. It's all too damn useful to let it be lost forever. There are NPCs, creatures, setting locations, martial arts, charm trees, artifacts, hearthstones, and extremely useful summaries of mountains of setting material for people who can't afford/find this or that book, etc. I've found the canon charm-tree summaries priceless for playing non-Solars in the quest threads -- obviously the mechanics aren't there and I couldn't use them for tabletop, but they're immensely useful for understanding how a given splat works. Given my miniscule personal budget and lack of gaming group, that sort of info is a big part of how I decide whether to buy a book at all. And all that material would be ripe for conversion by anyone who wants it in 3E (or useable by anyone who prefers 2E) if it wasn't so hard to navigate the broken wiki archive/dump to actually find anything.

I know that copying everything would be incredibly time-consuming, though, and that there isn't necessarily anyone with that kind of time to spare! That's kind of why I've been copying the Martial Arts out of there into more legible forms.

[Jürgen Hubert]

I know that copying everything would be incredibly time-consuming, though, and that there isn't necessarily anyone with that kind of time to spare! That's kind of why I've been copying the Martial Arts out of there into more legible forms.

That depends on what kind of format the last available backup is in, and how easily it could be converted into a new format via Perl scripts.

[Erinys]

A ray of hope!

I freely admit that though I've edited the type of wikis that the old one was, my first impression of this/your 3E wiki was of a very unfamiliar format. And I know no programming, myself.


Edit: Dude, where's my signature?
Edit 2: And it reappeared after I edited. Weird.

[Jürgen Hubert]

A ray of hope!

I freely admit that though I've edited the type of wikis that the old one was, my first impression of this/your 3E wiki was of a very unfamiliar format. And I know no programming, myself.

It is, but I have some experience with both Wikidot.com wiki (what the new wiki uses) and MediaWiki wikis (which is what Wikipedia uses, and I believe the old wiki used as well). And some experience with Perl as well, which was pretty much designed for translating text-based code from one format into another.

Now, I am currently away from home and it probably won't be until next week until I can dedicate any serious time to this project. But if you do have some backup of the old wiki somewhere and can give me access to it then I will take a look at the problem.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Addendum: I actually have some experience in wiki restoration. Back in 2007, the ICE Cave - the old Delta Green wiki - was under heavy assault by a spammer, with literally hundreds of spam links added to each individual page every day - and the admin of the wiki was unreachable. Once we discovered this, I provided a new wiki - the Fairfield Project (also at Wikidot.com) and I and a few other volunteers sifted through the page histories and ported it over to the new wiki. Just in time, too - a few days later the host provider of the old wiki noticed what was going on there and shot it down for good.

Now, before I decide how to best proceed for this wiki I would need to take a look at the archives first. One option would be to take a look at Archive.org (but what was the URL of the old wiki? While I had looked at it a few times, I don't remember much of it). But if someone has some other type of backup, it would be better - saves me from downloading everything from Archive.org, which is slow at the best of times. Ideal would be if the backup archive uses actual wiki code - I can easily convert that with the right scripts.

Since the old wiki presumably uses rules material from the previous edition, I think the best approach would be to create a separate "Exalted Archive Wiki" that just mirrors all of the old contents. Then we can see what we can port over to the new wiki - systemless setting material can just be copied and pasted.