Is the Wiki working? It doesn’t seem like most users here actually look at it, or consider it a resource.
Is this because
a) No one knows about it?
b) No one’s adding to it, making it a useless resource?
c) Many developers here don’t know what a Wiki is?
d) Some other reason?
Just an observation from recent posts…
Kev
I expect most people’s experiences are just like mine yesterday:
Am I right?
So I’m a bit lazy… but it needs a WYSIWYG client. The web sucks terribly as an application medium.
Cas 
WYSIWYG client ? It’s possible, but to code something like that is terrible.
I don’t think the reasons are technical. Everybody here is very we enabled to write wiki pages.
But is there a reason to write something there? What content is valuable? Who’s reading?
IMHO, a public Wiki is not focused enough. Just too free. I don’t think it’s a valuable resource.
Look to the ‘shared code’ forum here. Not too useful, isn’t it?
I think the greates problem is:
“somebody else will do that” :).
The best solution would be a collection of usefull Stuff that is managed by a few guys.
I would like to help with that, if anyone is interested in that stuff. Someone else willing to help?
What should be in that collection (besides kevglass texture stuff 
) ? And where could we put that stuff?
I think there are quite a few people (including myself) that would be happy to put in a bit of work to manage/edit/organise a website resource of a decent quality, where things can be quality/correctness checked…
Would this be possible within java.net? I think is the open collaborative nature of the wiki that is currently causing the problem.
Infact, didn’t the old java gaming use to have a set of resources just like that? (e.g. the Java Images Stuff)
Kev
There are attempts to create a project within java.net (http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=suggestions),
but i don’t like that…
it’s way to complicated for a beginner.
i think a more straight-forward solution would be better than
this.
As much as I agree with you, that its not easy for the people who are actually going to want to use it to get to, we also have to accept that this forum is now a SUN space.
This means that everything is going to want to be java.net and fit in with their overall “community” goal, and hence the hideous Collabnet interface…
Frankly, I think we were pretty lucky to get the forums back
Kev
I know that we have to play with their rules, but I really don’t want a tutorial on “How to get the Tutorials”. Last week I helped a few guys to start using Jogl. They were Java beginners, but they use SourceForge a lot for their own Projects. I needed 15 min to explain where to get it and how to download the jogl-demos and jogl itself.
but the next problem that gets into my head is the license of the code. i want to create a gpl-game. am i allowed to put the tutorials-stuff into my game? for example the texture class? it is perfect, why should I change something. But the problem is that gpl is a “sticky license”. If I use it, nobody else could use it without using the gpl license 
(but hey, IANAL)
I think I have to call my lawyer tomorrow
[quote]Is the Wiki working? It doesn’t seem like most users here actually look at it, or consider it a resource.
Is this because
a) No one knows about it?
b) No one’s adding to it, making it a useless resource?
c) Many developers here don’t know what a Wiki is?
d) Some other reason?
[/quote]
[quote]I don’t think the reasons are technical.
IMHO, a public Wiki is not focused enough. Just too free. I don’t think
[/quote]
I agree entirely, and Gergis and I have debated the reasoning before in another thread.
[quote]I think there are quite a few people (including myself) that would be happy to put in a bit of work to manage/edit/organise a website resource of a decent quality, where things can be quality/correctness checked…
Would this be possible within java.net? I think is the open collaborative nature of the wiki that is currently causing the problem.
[/quote]
I’m another of those who is hoping to help do this (…once I get through the last of the publishing deadlines for GPG4, and see our current game through to the end of it’s alpha test). Due to prior experience, though, I’m not getting involved until/unless some organization and quality assurance is in place (which could be as simple as having a named person/group responsible for such things).
AFAICS, if this is what we need, we have to press ahead with it, despite any constraints of java.net - the GTG is still finding it’s feet, and appears to have some leeway to make changes where there is extremely strong - and obvious - demand for it. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that a large part of why we got the forums back was that a large number of people showed very clearly quite how important they were to us. I’ve seen marketing and mgmt people argue with many good ideas, but rarely when they come from a large cohesive group of customers / users.
As for suggestions (rather than just writing a me-too post ;)), perhaps we could have a CMS to manage a submission, review, publication cycle, and have a link on JGO.org frontpage to “Articles”, which drops into this. A full CMS is probably overkill, but ISTR there are some good farily lightweight ones designed for news sites.
My only concern with something like that is that many are extremely painful to setup :(. I’ve used Zope with it’s MSWord-to-HTML conversion to make fairly easy-to-use intranets with doc-publishing capabilites. I’ve also done quite a few using other CMS’s, such as Notes/Domino, and had similar levels of pain.
Sounds like it would be quite complicated.
I was wondering if just some web space, a common style sheet and organisation structure would be enough. A few people have access to actually add to the site, a mailing list supports assigning interested parties in reviewing articles before actually adding them to the site.
The key would seem to be getting a few people to “get involved” and actually take the time and effort to actually keep the quality up…
Wouldn’t a simple process be enough? Something like:
Add on something to deal with corrections and ammendments requested by the readers…
I’m sure this is too simple, but going for a complete system seems that it might just be another “thing” to learn into.
Kev
[quote]I expect most people’s experiences are just like mine yesterday:
Am I right?
So I’m a bit lazy… but it needs a WYSIWYG client. The web sucks terribly as an application medium.
Cas
[/quote]
Ding ding ding! I’d rather just make an entry here, in blog, or put code/docs in CVS.
Sounds great!
The next parts would be:
I think the main problem is lack of integration with THIS site.
I’ve updated a few pages in the Wiki… but it needs more exposure here. We need to link to it in our messages here etc…
As far as being unfocused - it is only what we make it.
The syntax for editing the wiki is not that bad… you can click on a link and get a summary window with the various syntax elements in a chart… just keep that to the side as you edit the first couple times and then you won’t need it anymore.
I just think that a few well placed links on these forum pages and the java.net site would tie things together better.
E.g. get a FAQ going on the wiki and make a big link to it at the top of these forum pages.
In my opinion there are two big hurdles to be overcome with the Wiki. The first is that people just don’t know it’s there! The Games site is all very well and good, but it is not the hub of the community - this forum is. Just count the number of times you visit the forum versus the number of times you visit the “hub” - I expect a considerable number of forum regulars have never visited the Wiki.
The second problem is that much of the data we intended to put up there would probably be better put in the Javapedia! We need to come to some agreement here - what we add to Games’ Wiki and what we leave for the Javapedia. Do we just duplicate and to hell with it, or defer some topics and link them up?
I have to disagree with the problem of “yet another markup language” - it really shouldn’t be a problem, and this should be clearly stated. If you have something to say, go ahead and say it! Just type. Raw text. Doesn’t matter! Someone will be by to clean it up sooner or later. That’s just the way Wikis work.
Well the hub thing can easily be handled by simply adding more to the banner that’s at the top of this part of the site. If we put links here to the latest distro, the wiki, etc - we should be fine.
But none of this is getting past the fact that alot of people have a reaction like Cas’s. Its a new system, I don’t know how to use it, I’ve haven’t got time to do this and develop my game…
Kev
[quote]But none of this is getting past the fact that alot of people have a reaction like Cas’s. Its a new system, I don’t know how to use it, I’ve haven’t got time to do this and develop my game…
Kev
[/quote]
Hmm. This started as a short response to Kev’s post, but it’s grown into a post “We really need a decent front-page to JGO, and that might even solve the Wiki’s loneliness problems on it’s own”…
Sure, but isn’t that what swpalmer was getting at when talking about tieing things together a little more? If a few people start X-referencing the Wiki in forum-posts, perhaps it would gradually get people to look more often at the wiki, and over time they become more comfortable with it, and eventually…?
I can’t remember a single Wiki of significant size that didn’t manage to lose several of the useful pages. Some big ones have pages that I would almost swear are linked to from nowhere (internally) - and these are sometimes the most important pages; experienced hands know how to get to them, but newbies rarely find them (or have to use google etc to get to them!). A loose, random and/or morphing categorization is a terrible way to organize a site for a heterogeneous collection of users, with newbies continually walking in the door.
One of the reasons the forum works well is that there’s such a small number of topics ALL presented at one level (none of this excessively deep tree-categorization of most Wiki’s: excellent for mostly non-changing communities, terrible for newbies) - and that posts bring topics to the top of the list (so any ongoing conversation attracts newbies - without them having to go off and find the thing independently.
Indeed, a slightly more profligate use of “sticky” topics would make the forums even better - c.f. the suggestion of a sticky “howto” in the JOGL topic. I’m usually against “everything’s a nail” syndrome, but in this case the forum + sticky topics is a much better way of doing a JOGL howto than forum alone.
The main question, of course, is why the alternative is “forum alone”. IMHO this is because the frontpage of JGO is currently a complete waste of space.
…and from here I’m moving to a new topic, partly because I’ve found a different angle that might interest different people, partly because I’m veering OT.
The loneliness of an unloved front page…
To everyone who wants to help this comunity
Please help with adding content to the Wiki. It’s not that hard to do. Just read the two files:
http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/TWiki/TextFormattingRules
, http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/TWiki/GoodStyle
And then begin to add your content there http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Games/
And yes, I know that a wiki is hard to maintain, I mentioned it myself before, but after some talking with a few guys, I think it’s better to use what we have now. Stop crying for something better, use what is available ;D.
Show the management that we really support this site ;). I added something a few minutes ago, more to come on Sunday!!
troggan
I support the site - I just really hate the Wikki