Official release of the unofficial Dominions 3 Wiki

[lch]

So, lots of people have their futile attempts at being productive for this community and providing something which is inherently good, let me show you mine: I hereby announce that you are welcome to visit and use the Dominions 3 Wiki at

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/

A lot of people already know about this and some are even already fellow contributors (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Special:ListUsers), for the rest here's a brief introduction:

What is this?

You probably should know Wikipedia, which is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit and contribute to. This is a Dominions-centered Wikipedia. The Dom3Wiki is meant to be collaborative community tool to track and document everything that you can think of regarding the Dominions game series. As far as I'm concerned, it is a culmination of over one year of work.

What is it for?

The aim is to provide structured, accurate and thorough information to you. Since this is impossible, it is a work in progress and never going to be finished. You're welcome to try and help to make it better, though. There's even a highscore table (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Special:ContributionScores) as an incentive. I dare you to try and beat my score.

How should I use it?

If you have a question about Dominions, you can go there and look if you can find an answer there. In case you found it, good. In case you can't find it but managed to get an answer by some other means, you could document it and add it where you didn't find it on the Wiki to help the next person who is looking for answers.

What is it not?

The Wiki isn't meant to be for discussion other than discussions about the articles on their talk pages. It's meant to be a place for facts and for answers, not questions. Although it could be one, it's not supposed to be a pure filesharing service for the community either. Uploads of images to help illustrate an article are very welcome, uploads of e.g. map and mod archive files unfortunately not (yet!).

Wait a minute, this doesn't look right...

Then please, by all means, fix it. All you need to edit the Wiki is to sign up. If you're smart enough to write an email or write a forum post, then you're smart enough to edit the Wiki, too. It's mostly just text and there's an "edit" button to everything. If you found a lapse somewhere, a slip of the pen, then you can correct it in an instant. No special education is required, just try it. If you found something grave, I have set up a bug tracker (http://dom3.servegame.com/bugs/) where you can report things. Please be aware that my time is limited and I'll probably ignore requests that take a sophisticated effort for an indefinite time.

Thanks

Thanks go to Illwinter for the Dominions game series, Shrapnel Games for publishing it and all the people that directly or indirectly contributed to the Wiki. Which for the latter is the whole Dom3 community. Further thanks go to the Wikimedia Foundation (http://www.wikimedia.org/) for MediaWiki (http://www.mediawiki.org/) and to OntoWeb (http://ontoware.org/) for their work on Semantic MediaWiki (http://semantic-mediawiki.org/) which comes the closest to realizing one of my pipe dreams when I started the Wiki. Hopefully one day it'll be possible for me to harness the full power and potential that it offers. From the people that already directly contributed on the Wiki, I especially want to thank two of them: moderation (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/User:Moderation) for pushing me over the edge and getting me to start the Wiki when I half-jokingly said I'll do it if you ask me on the IRC channel (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/IRC). He said that he at least would be going to use it as a user and a contributor on a regular basis - lying, of course, because he is smarter than I am, but he was there and provided a lot of input in the crucial early steps. The Wiki's current main page (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/) for example is derived from his work. Then there was matryx (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/User:Matryx) with a lot of very constructive work, on the technical side with lots of Templates that are still in use at the Wiki right now and on the creative side with his awesome Dominions 3 AAR (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/User:Matryx/Guides/Dominions_3_Newbie_Game) which can be found there and only there by now. That alone is justification enough for the existence of the Wiki. I'd like to write a short sentence about all the other people that helped as well, but then this paragraph would never finish. In case you feel that you should be mentioned, I hope you don't mind if your name didn't show here. Whatever you did to help should hopefully speak for itself.

Closing

You may now attempt to use the Wiki. I have a devil-may-care attitude about it: Don't be afraid of breaking anything. Please attempt to break the Wiki! If you found any kind of meaning in this post for yourself, you're free to keep it. Cheers! :)

[Lingchih]

Wow. thanks lch. I never really though the thing would get to a usable state. Looks nice though.

[Omnirizon]

Hasn't this been around for a year now? I thought you were hiding it from everyone but the IRC crowd for some reason.

[Quitti]

Well, he wasn't ready to release it yet I suppose ;)

Still, great work. I've been using it for quite a while already (and noticed a few bugs, which have been already fixed, thankyou lch). And I recommend people to give it an effort. More users mean more (and better) content.

[lch]

Hasn't this been around for a year now? I thought you were hiding it from everyone but the IRC crowd for some reason.
Yes, and no. I haven't been hiding it, I just wanted to wait until it's looking shiny to attract more attention. Since I've already seen a couple of links to it from this forum there are no reasons to retard its release, though. I didn't want to see the usage going down like the Dom3 section at the StrategyWiki because people don't know what to do with it and think it's awkward, plus legal concerns. A few people found use for it already, for the rest there's the announcement.

[DonCorazon]

Congrats lch - this looks amazing.

I find it a great resource, especially since the manual has a fair amount of errors and lack of updated info to begin with, making your wiki the best place to quickly find current, accurate info.

[Sombre]

The whole concept is garbage.

[Fantomen]

As soon as I found my guide in there I decided it was a great wiki!:D

The whole concept is garbage.

What´s the point Sombre? I mean sure if I thought so I could post "this mod sucks" in one of your mod threads, but why? Perhaps there is some irony or hidden joke that I don´t see but if not I think you´re just throwing useless negativity about.

[Sombre]

What´s the point Sombre? I mean sure if I thought so I could post "this mod sucks" in one of your mod threads, but why? Perhaps there is some irony or hidden joke that I don´t see but if not I think you´re just throwing useless negativity about.

Why? To let me know that my mod sucks I guess. I'd love for people to be free to post things like that. I think currently the moderation would jump on them.

But yes, I'm just joking with lch. Don't get your panties in a twist.

[Fantomen]

Panties untwisted:p

[Snoddasmannen]

Hi lch,

Very useful wiki, great effort, great job!

Keeping up my own futile attempts at being useful to the community, I have added links from my online interface of the spell/forge database to your wiki. So a description off the spell/item is just one click away.

http://www2.onyx.nu/pb/dom3/spells.html

Something which really interests me is reading what other players think of the spells/items, how they use them and so on. Would you say that this is covered by the "What this is not" section above, or are you open to having a fuzzy area where users can leave hints/use cases for the items? In the main article? The discussion page? A new cool page for each article which you can hack together in no time?

[lch]

Keeping up my own futile attempts at being useful to the community, I have added links from my online interface of the spell/forge database to your wiki. So a description off the spell/item is just one click away.

http://www2.onyx.nu/pb/dom3/spells.html
Thanks! Be aware that some spells have multiple versions which share the same name, but that shouldn't be much of a problem because the Wiki has disambiguation links/pages for that.

Something which really interests me is reading what other players think of the spells/items, how they use them and so on. Would you say that this is covered by the "What this is not" section above, or are you open to having a fuzzy area where users can leave hints/use cases for the items?
That's what the Wiki is for, users can and are encouraged to comment on the articles for the units, spells and items. At the moment, the articles for the items and spells are among the oldest code, there is no special "Notes" section for that yet. People can always add a new section to an article on their own, however. Eventually the item and spells articles will get redone so that they have a "Notes" section like all the unit articles have now, check e.g. Assassin (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Assassin) and Lord of the Night (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Lord_of_the_Night) for that. A couple of spells already have a "Short summary" section, like Doom (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Doom), where the spell's effects are being explicitly stated, and all the globals have a section titled "A dire portent" which describes the messages that are being generated when the global is successfully cast, see e.g. Gift of Health (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Gift_of_Health). In principle, users can leave anything on the article pages. Here are two items pages where you can see what I had in mind: The inspiration sections on The Chalice (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/The_Chalice) and especially on The Ark (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/The_Ark).

In the main article? The discussion page? A new cool page for each article which you can hack together in no time?
Some people already started articles named Key item (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Key_item) and Key spell (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Key_spell) which are linked to from the Main page to highlight important items and spells in the game. Another possibility would be to link to the articles directly from a nation's strategy guide. Basically, you can do what you want. The discussion pages should only be for discussions about the article's layout, not about the item/spell itself, though. The forums are more useful for discussions like that, I think.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm sure I posted in this thread, but the Forum must have eaten it... Great, great job, Ich. Very nice work, particularly the unit descriptions. It's really helpful, and obvious that you put a lot of work into it. I especially appreciate how easy it is to copy the unit sprites. Makes modding 1000% easier.



I did notice that the listed units' equipment is often inaccurate. Natural weapons often seem to be duplicated, and manufactured weapons don't always appear.

[lch]

I did notice that the listed units' equipment is often inaccurate. Natural weapons often seem to be duplicated, and manufactured weapons don't always appear.
I'm not aware of that. Can you pinpoint some examples where this bug manifests itself? Then I'll add it to the bug tracker and try to fix it when I have time for that.

[Quitti]

Here (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Yaksha). And here (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Dragon_%28Blue%29) (should be bite+claw, not claw+claw). And so on. You should visit IRC more lch, I could point this stuff out for you ;)

[lch]

I'll just point to the bug tracker again: http://dom3.servegame.com/bugs/

Come on, hurt me. :)

P.S.: I can see it now, a typo on the database import. The data will be refreshed shortly.

[Calahan]

Absolutely fabulous job on the Wiki lch. What more can be said other than awesome.


One potential mistake though. Are the siege mechanics in the Wiki correct? Since they appear to be following what is printed in the manual. Which I understand (and have observed) to be incorrect.

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Siege


If the Wiki does have the wrong information on this, then I am surprised, since it was you who pointed out the error in the manual, and also supplied the correct siege mechanic formula :) Link to a brain refresh below ;)

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=685786&highlight=post685786

[lch]

One potential mistake though. Are the siege mechanics in the Wiki correct? Since they appear to be following what is printed in the manual. Which I understand (and have observed) to be incorrect.
Check the dates, the last time that the Wiki article was edited was half a year before I wrote that forum post. I did debug the game code prior to writing the forum post, so it's likely those are the correct formulas.

I dare you to fix the Wiki article... ;) There are likely more things not up to date.

[zzcat]

A small bug: All capital-only units and commanders are not listed in the "Units" section of nation description page...

[Gandalf Parker]

Excellent work lch.
By any chance did you create an import from Edi's spreadsheets for up-to-date core pages on some of these areas? The reason I ask is that if you ended up with a script to export the different sections to text files as a half-way point I could sure make use of that.

[sector24]

This is great, thanks for all the hard work. I would love to add all my meager content to the site. I noticed that you already have the Jotunheim guide but if you'd like to use my magic path booster guide too, go for it. I'm not really sure where something like that would go though.

[sector24]

I spent a good hour or two on the site today at work. Two unit entries I noticed were all messed up.

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Davana
http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Mandaha

This is because the names of these units were changed in a patch (to Danava and Mandeha).

[Ironhawk]

Ich == winner!!

[lch]

A small bug: All capital-only units and commanders are not listed in the "Units" section of nation description page...
Not a bug, but WAD. Those units are being granted via the national sites, they're not normal recruitables. The site data isn't in yet. DrPraetorius did start adding information about capital-only units by hand, but only for some of the nations in the Early Age, IIRC.

By any chance did you create an import from Edi's spreadsheets for up-to-date core pages on some of these areas? The reason I ask is that if you ended up with a script to export the different sections to text files as a half-way point I could sure make use of that.
No, I did not use Edi's spreadsheets, in fact it was the other way around, I sent my findings to Edi so that he could update the data in those spreadsheets. Edi did help with recognizing and naming some unit abilities, though. I am reading the data from the game executable so that it will always be up-to-date with the upcoming patches. The downside is that first I have to find it and understand it, and rediscover the formulas that are being used in the game. One reason why the "real" prot and enc values aren't in there yet, they depend on the armor worn.

The reason I ask is that if you ended up with a script to export the different sections to text files as a half-way point I could sure make use of that.
I can send you my text exports, if you want. The script that I am using is a gigantic mashup of Python code and you have to change the code by hand in order to make it generate the different text files. You'd have to learn Python in order to make use of it.

I noticed that you already have the Jotunheim guide but if you'd like to use my magic path booster guide too, go for it. I'm not really sure where something like that would go though.
You can start working on it in your personal space, at User:Sector24/Magic_Path_booster_guide (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/User:Sector24/Magic_Path_booster_guide) for example. The article can then be moved or linked to wherever it makes sense.

I spent a good hour or two on the site today at work. Two unit entries I noticed were all messed up.
Thanks for the work, that's encouraging. I don't have much time for working on the Wiki anymore and intend to mostly work on the technical stuff, if at all, not on the content anymore. I wish I'd have time to train more people about editing Wikitext - it's not hard to do! - or start a tutorial about it.

I'll delete the stale unit articles, they're indeed leftovers from previous patch versions.

I am indeed even visiting the SMW Camp 2009 (http://smwforum.ontoprise.com/smwforum/index.php/SMW_Camp_09) this weekend in order to find out how to make the Wiki better in regards to the use of Semantic MediaWiki, in fact. Let's see if that leads to some nice changes.

[Gandalf Parker]

By any chance did you create an import from Edi's spreadsheets for up-to-date core pages on some of these areas? The reason I ask is that if you ended up with a script to export the different sections to text files as a half-way point I could sure make use of that.
I can send you my text exports, if you want.
Thanks, but I have some of those. I was going to automate some of the files in www.dom3minions.com/docs so that I could repull the data after every patch. Since the first line is always the same, and there is usually an "end" marker of some sort for each section it wouldnt be hard (which is probably why it never got done).

The script that I am using is a gigantic mashup of Python code and you have to change the code by hand in order to make it generate the different text files. You'd have to learn Python in order to make use of it.
Ahh no dont say that about Python. I always felt that one of the benefits was that you didnt have to learn it to use it, or even to modify. Just if you wanted to write from scratch. But once someone has done the hard part the code almost reads like english.

But thanks. I might ask for it later if I give up.

[sector24]

Thanks, I used your link to post the guide. I can see why you don't want to take an active role as the admin...it took me several hours to interlink the guide with the pages it refers to. :)

Another thing I noticed sitewide is that the summon spells don't link to the units that they summon. I manually added links to a lot of the path boosting commanders as part of the guide, but I was wondering if there was a way to programmatically link the unit ID to the spell that summons it.

[PashaDawg]

Thank you, lch!

[HoneyBadger]

Ich, is there a place for mod Nations in the wiki?

I was also wondering if you had any interest in listing/connecting the CBM stats and changes, in some form, along with the vanilla units?


And, does anyone know if the newest updates to the game have corrected the fuzzy sprite "fading" that occur with the basic installation of the game? That's all I have access to (and only for a few hours a week at that), and with the sprites being so clean in the wiki, I was hoping that that had been corrected at some point. If not, it seems like a possibility that it now could be.

[lch]

Ich, is there a place for mod Nations in the wiki?
Go ahead, put anything that's related to Dom3 into the Wiki. I generally want to encourage adding any kind of content, even if it's just a draft, and improving it with incremental updates. You could work on it in your user space until the articles become mature enough, same answer as I gave to Sector24.

I was also wondering if you had any interest in listing/connecting the CBM stats and changes, in some form, along with the vanilla units?
Of course I do, in fact I even had that in mind when I started the Wiki, that you could switch to the CBM version data through a tab. That would require that I write a Dom3 mod file parser or rely on ongoing updates by hand, though, which both doesn't seem that feasible at this time.

And, does anyone know if the newest updates to the game have corrected the fuzzy sprite "fading" that occur with the basic installation of the game? That's all I have access to (and only for a few hours a week at that), and with the sprites being so clean in the wiki, I was hoping that that had been corrected at some point. If not, it seems like a possibility that it now could be.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Can you give an example with a graphic, maybe?

[Fantomen]

And, does anyone know if the newest updates to the game have corrected the fuzzy sprite "fading" that occur with the basic installation of the game? That's all I have access to (and only for a few hours a week at that), and with the sprites being so clean in the wiki, I was hoping that that had been corrected at some point. If not, it seems like a possibility that it now could be.

This is an issue with resolution I think. The graphics go fuzzy if you display low resolution settings in fullscreen mode. I had one issue where I couldn´t change the resolution at all on one of my installations, and that led to fuzzy graphics. A clean install solved it.

[Rich]

One thing I missed in the wiki was regarding SP play. This was pretty much downplayed with a terrible AI. I've seen a couple of posts on this forum that give hints for improving the SP experience. It would be nice if those with the knowledge would fill in some blanks there.

[Huzurdaddi]

Well done on the Wiki, it is really great and I am sure that it will become even better over time.

Also, that AAR is amazing, a true tour-de-force. I can not imagine how many hours went into it.

[Edi]

One thing I missed in the wiki was regarding SP play. This was pretty much downplayed with a terrible AI. I've seen a couple of posts on this forum that give hints for improving the SP experience. It would be nice if those with the knowledge would fill in some blanks there.

There are some things in the FAQ regarding this, but the link in my sig to the Better Independents mod v2.1 should serve you well. It makes the AI much tougher by eliminating the chaff hordes as recruitables.

It started out as just an idea to see if SP could be improved and it was surprisingly successful. I personally never play SP without BI enabled anymore.

Read the thread, there are some good tips there on what makes for a tough opponent with that mod.

[HoneyBadger]

As far as the sprite issue: A long time ago, when Dom3 first came out, there was talk that when the Devs had uploaded the sprites from Dom2, there was some kind of conflict that turned the uploaded sprites "fuzzy", which does seem to be the case, atleast when I copy certain posted sprites. So I'm wondering if that is, or was, true. If it wasn't, then I agree that it's probably resolution that's causing the problem.

What's an ideal resolution for the game, by the way?

[Horst F. JENS]

very happy to see such a pretty wiki.

good job, ich !

any clever idea of how to use the wiki for different dom3 mods, i think about vanilla vs. conceptual balance mod at the nation overview pages.

list different units / effects on the same page in extra sections (like cbm mod) or start extra pages ? or use the category system ?

[Kaffa]

Great great job ! Incredible and huge effort but very very helpful for noobie like me !!!
thanks ich

[Herode]

Congrats, Ich. I was dreaming of this Wiki and you made it ! :clap:

I can now dream of something else. At least...

[Stagger Lee]

Thank you lch, from a noob who was very disappointed in the strategy wiki. I should have the game mastered any minute now.:rolleyes:

In the meantime, I have a question about the heroic ability formulae. Specifically, I have Udum'ukinna in year five of my second SP game and he has plus 30 strength. By the formula, plus 30 is hundreds of turns away. Have I been incredibly lucky with a DRN, or am I missing something?

[Edi]

If he has the heroic strength ability, it grows very quickly. Additionally, the initial bonus is dependent on the base strength of the unit, so a unit with high base strength (like he has) gets to 30 pretty quickly.

[lch]

I can proudly announce that the Wiki now features every magic site (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Category:Site) that the game has to offer! It also gained semantic properties for these articles and a couple of others, so it is becoming a real database which you can run queries against later on, like "show me all sites which give a laboratory when found". (see this ugly preview (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Special:SearchByProperty/Site-20effect-20lab/true) for that - this is only a very raw interface to the data)

In the meantime, I have a question about the heroic ability formulae. Specifically, I have Udum'ukinna in year five of my second SP game and he has plus 30 strength. By the formula, plus 30 is hundreds of turns away. Have I been incredibly lucky with a DRN, or am I missing something?
I suppose you're talking about http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Heroic_ability

All the information in there has been gained by debugging. I may have made some errors here and there. Just be lucky that your bonus is so high. :)

[Thilock_Dominus]

Is it possible to have Dominions 3 wiki to have the "tab" plugins?

{{tabinclude>PATH}}

[lch]

Is it possible to have Dominions 3 wiki to have the "tab" plugins?
That plugin is for Dokuwiki, which is another Wiki software. I use Mediawiki.

I have activated the Header Tabs extension for you, which should provide similar functionality: You can create tabs with it. I have edited your Nosophorus user page (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/User:Thilock_Dominus/Nosophoros) to show how it can be used: Add some Level 1 headlines and one html tag, you're done.

For further info, check http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Header_Tabs

[Thilock_Dominus]

Thanks! The way Mediawiki handles tabs seems way easier.


Thanks again. :)

[Herode]

BTW, how do you edit unit data ?
I tried with the Warden_of_Avalon (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Talk:Warden_of_Avalon) whose cost is wrong, but I failed to find the procedure...

[HoneyBadger]

Can someone please sticky this already? Considering I use it 15 times a day, and I'm not even playing the game, I'm tired of having to hunt for it (for some reason--maybe that I'm blind?--I always have trouble finding it, even though it's on the first page).

[Thilock_Dominus]

Can someone please sticky this already? Considering I use it 15 times a day, and I'm not even playing the game, I'm tired of having to hunt for it (for some reason--maybe that I'm blind?--I always have trouble finding it, even though it's on the first page).

+1

A lot of cool stuff on the wiki.

I'll also recommend that if anyone have something to contribute to Dom3wiki, especially if they made a mod, to add them: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Mod_nation

[lch]

BTW, how do you edit unit data ?
You don't. It's being auto-generated from a database. The reason why some values are wrong is because things like armors and weapons aren't taken into account yet.

I do hope to make the data more accessible and accurate to what you'd "expect", but it's not a trivial task and there's a trade-off between accessibility and flexibility.

I'll also recommend that if anyone have something to contribute to Dom3wiki, especially if they made a mod, to add them: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Mod_nation
Yes, your entries on the Nosophoros mod (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Nosophoros) are coming along nicely, I'd say.



I can add one more slogan to promote the Dom3Wiki: We're even too original for Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist#dom3.servegame.com.2Fwiki.2F)! :rolleyes:

[Trumanator]

I dunno if this is the right place, but you seem to have a problem here. (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Kaijin)

[lch]

Thanks, fixed.

[HoneyBadger]

Machaka also lists/links to the normal Sorceress, rather than the Machaka version.

And are you planning on listing the Capital Only Recruits/Commanders, and the National Heroes, with each Nation?

[lch]

Machaka also lists/links to the normal Sorceress, rather than the Machaka version.
Thanks, somehow the Sorceresses didn't make it through the unit article naming process. Fixed. I see that there are five other units which somehow have unaddressed dupes among them, too...

And are you planning on listing the Capital Only Recruits/Commanders, and the National Heroes, with each Nation?
The site data is in now, so yes, that information will eventually become visible.

[ese-aSH]

Hi Ich !

some errors I have found in the wiki :

on the spells page, the following links to not refer to the spell, but to the summoned unit :
/wiki/Black_Servant
/wiki/Corpse_Candle
/wiki/False_Horror
/wiki/Father_Illearth
/wiki/Harvester_of_Sorrows
/wiki/Iron_Dragon
/wiki/King_of_Banefires
/wiki/Monster_Boar
/wiki/Phantasmal_Warrior
/wiki/Poison_Golem
/wiki/Siege_Golem
/wiki/Watcher
/wiki/Will_o%27_the_Wisp
/wiki/Ziz

One has to add "_(spell)" at the end of the URL in order to go to the spell page.

the page :
/wiki/Summon_Mandaha
raises SQL errors

And finally not really a bug but the pages :
/wiki/Ambush_of_Tigers
/wiki/Contact_Couatl
/wiki/Pack_of_Wolves
Do not directly refer to the spell but offer some nation selection before (this look strange since the spell is the same for all nations + there are some spell with several nations that can be access directly from the spell list).

Same note for :
/wiki/Divine_Blessing
which does not contain any spell information, only the description.


edit : hm I am doing a little tool based on the information from the wiki, I used a script to download spells & items informations (thats how I found those errors : the script did not worked there), I'll share it to you when its done maybe I can use a simpler way to get the data I need.

[ese-aSH]

oups I forgot "Behemot" and "Leviathan" in the first list (those who must have "_(spell)" added).

[lch]

on the spells page, the following links to not refer to the spell, but to the summoned unit :

/wiki/Behemot
/wiki/Black_Servant
/wiki/Corpse_Candle
/wiki/False_Horror
/wiki/Father_Illearth
/wiki/Harvester_of_Sorrows
/wiki/Iron_Dragon
/wiki/King_of_Banefires
/wiki/Leviathan
/wiki/Monster_Boar
/wiki/Phantasmal_Warrior
/wiki/Poison_Golem
/wiki/Siege_Golem
/wiki/Watcher
/wiki/Will_o%27_the_Wisp
/wiki/Ziz

One has to add "_(spell)" at the end of the URL in order to go to the spell page.
Yes, I know. Unit articles take precedence over the spells by the same name. I pleaded that the spells would all be named "Contact ..." or "Summon ..." but that wasn't done, so this is WAD. I might add disambiguation links to those articles to link to the appropriate alternate article, though.

the page :
/wiki/Summon_Mandaha
raises SQL errors
Thanks, fixed. The spell had the old pre-3.23 name.

And finally not really a bug but the pages :
/wiki/Ambush_of_Tigers
/wiki/Contact_Couatl
/wiki/Pack_of_Wolves
Do not directly refer to the spell but offer some nation selection before (this look strange since the spell is the same for all nations + there are some spell with several nations that can be access directly from the spell list).
They're not the same spell - they do have different spell IDs. They're just named the same and have the same effect, yes.

Same note for :
/wiki/Divine_Blessing
which does not contain any spell information, only the description.
Thanks, fixed.

edit : hm I am doing a little tool based on the information from the wiki, I used a script to download spells & items informations (thats how I found those errors : the script did not worked there), I'll share it to you when its done maybe I can use a simpler way to get the data I need.
You don't need to spider the Wiki, if you want the data that I have in my database then I can share it with you. Just drop me an email, for example through the Wiki (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Special:EmailUser/Lch), if you're logged in. Although with Semantic MediaWiki it IS possible to get RDF data dumps out of the Wiki, which apparently is a cool feature, according to the database/semanticweb folks.

[Stavis_L]

While reading through the old-age thread, I noticed a "construct lord 1" unit modification effect for the Mason of the Underworld (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Mason_of_the_Underworld) hero. What is this effect?

Also, is it possible to search by unit modifications?

[lch]

While reading through the old-age thread, I noticed a "construct lord 1" unit modification effect for the Mason of the Underworld (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Mason_of_the_Underworld) hero. What is this effect?
The modifications now link to "Effect" article pages. They're mostly just stubs so far, but they may contain some info about the effect.

Also, is it possible to search by unit modifications?
I do want to make them into fully fledged semantic properties later. Until then, you can go to the corresponding "Effect:..." article and use "What links here" from the toolbox to show pages that contain this effect.

[Stavis_L]

While reading through the old-age thread, I noticed a "construct lord 1" unit modification effect for the Mason of the Underworld (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Mason_of_the_Underworld) hero. What is this effect?
The modifications now link to "Effect" article pages. They're mostly just stubs so far, but they may contain some info about the effect.


Thanks! +1 to construct summons apparently.


Also, is it possible to search by unit modifications?
I do want to make them into fully fledged semantic properties later. Until then, you can go to the corresponding "Effect:..." article and use "What links here" from the toolbox to show pages that contain this effect.

Hrm...I tried this, and the "What links here" says that no pages link to the article. Perhaps the cache hasn't rebuilt since you updated?

[lch]

I don't know where you clicked on the "What links here" link, but for the effect you mentioned it links back to two units:

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Effect:Construct_lord

That reminds me, now I'll introduce this to the items, as well.

[Stavis_L]

I don't know where you clicked on the "What links here" link, but for the effect you mentioned it links back to two units:


I clicked on the link to the effect from list of effects in the unit block for the Mason article, and then from the effect page, I clicked on the "What links here" in the left nav toolbox. However, it seems to be working now, so I'm still going to suspect it was cache that hadn't caught up yet. :)


That reminds me, now I'll introduce this to the items, as well.

Cool, thanks!

[Illuminated One]

Hmm, what's with the unused items, does this mean there exist items with unused effects/effect combinations or are they just placeholders?

[lch]

Hmm, what's with the unused items, does this mean there exist items with unused effects/effect combinations or are they just placeholders?
What do you mean by unused items, exactly? The effect table is guesswork and not all of them have been successfully classified yet.

[lch]

Good news, everybody! The Wiki has now better readable effect values for units and items: They directly link to the spells or units that an ability (like domsummon (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Shade_King)) is referring to, you don't need to look up the unit/spell with that particular ID anymore.

One community member has developed a standalone tool for browsing through the spells and artifacts with a couple of filtering options by using the data from the Wiki, too. (see the previous page) The tool is already usable, let's see if a download option for it will emerge later.

Cheers,
lch

[Thilock_Dominus]

Good news, everybody! The Wiki has now better readable effect values for units and items: They directly link to the spells or units that an ability (like domsummon (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Shade_King)) is referring to, you don't need to look up the unit/spell with that particular ID anymore.

One community member has developed a standalone tool for browsing through the spells and artifacts with a couple of filtering options by using the data from the Wiki, too. (see the previous page) The tool is already usable, let's see if a download option for it will emerge later.

Cheers,
lch

Great! Going to be useful :)
I can now then redirect my mod units abilities.

[Foodstamp]

This wiki has replaced several tools I use for modding. I really appreciate the work you guys put into this!

[lch]

The Wiki and my associated Dom3 stuff has moved to a new machine. The rusty old Pentium III at 950 Mhz has now been replaced by a (drum roll) Celeron running at 1333 Mhz!! Plus, the OS has been updated and this notebook is a lot less noisy.

If anything doesn't work anymore like it should and you can't use or contribute to the Dom3Wiki like before, then just report this via email or by posting here. And if you didn't contribute yet, then feel encouraged to try this out on the new machine now! ;)

[Foodstamp]

Someone Wiki savvy make it possible for me to search for "homesick" units.

Thanks!

[lch]

I'm sorry, that's not possible right now. The wiki still has a lot of room for improvements and it'd involve a lot of work, but unfortunately I have no time for that.

But I can tell you that the only ones that have it are the Naiad (1226), Blood Guard (1353), Blood Lord (1389), Nushi (1431), Swamp Serpent (1435), Partholonian Sorceress (1795) and Hama Dryad (932).

[Foodstamp]

I'm sorry, that's not possible right now. The wiki still has a lot of room for improvements and it'd involve a lot of work, but unfortunately I have no time for that.

But I can tell you that the only ones that have it are the Naiad (1226), Blood Guard (1353), Blood Lord (1389), Nushi (1431), Swamp Serpent (1435), Partholonian Sorceress (1795) and Hama Dryad (932).

Perfect! I only knew about 4 of those, thank you!

[Stavis_L]

I'm sorry, that's not possible right now.


*sad panda*


But I can tell you that the only ones that have it are the Naiad (1226), Blood Guard (1353), Blood Lord (1389), Nushi (1431), Swamp Serpent (1435), Partholonian Sorceress (1795) and Hama Dryad (932).

RE: 1795 - that's interesting, as that unit is also 1) immortal, and 2) a hero. Raises two questions:

1) Do "homesick" units that die of longing for home get resurrected? (assuming they pine away while still in dominion)
2) What is the "home province" for a hero unit? The capital?

[KissBlade]

how'd I add my Yomi guide on there? =( And also a Jomon guide I plan on working on sooner or later ...

[Viajero]

Ah, sorry for the double post. Did not realize this thread was here. The page seems to be down. Can anyone confirm?

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes its down.

The DNS service thru no-ip still is up, but the machine itself seems to be down. I would think he would have kept the machine up using it for personal purposes and just turned off the address we all knew for it. So it might be a crash (he did recently do a major hardware upgrade which raises the chance of that)

[lch]

how'd I add my Yomi guide on there? =( And also a Jomon guide I plan on working on sooner or later ...
You should register on the Wiki and edit the page http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Oni_Kings/KissBlade's_guide and add it on the Oni Kings article afterwards. For a template, see the source code of your Patala guide (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Reign_of_the_Nagas/KissBlade%27s_guide_to_playing_Patala_competitivel y) by using the edit button there.

The page seems to be down. Can anyone confirm?
Sorry, they turned off the power in the building over the weekend. It's up again.

There also is some problem with special characters in the database. I will have to convert them so that they don't display as rubbish on a lot of pages. No idea how to do that yet.

[SlipperyJim]

The page seems to be down. Can anyone confirm?
Sorry, they turned off the power in the building over the weekend. It's up again.
FYI, it's dead again.

[lch]

Yes, the hard disc is about to fail it seems. I don't think I have a backup of the new installation on another disc yet, so in case that the drive really is gone it will take me a couple of days to restore things, again, after finding a suitable replacement. GAH, work! :( :( :(

[Sombre]

Some of you ungrateful ****s should donate to the wiki fund. Apparently I am the only person to have done so thus far. Despite everyone else using it all the time.

That will at least keep lch in really, really cheap rubbing alcohol during this time of stress.

[vfb]

Oh, good idea! But it's down ... so is there a pledgie thingy somewhere?

[Gandalf Parker]

I will try to dig up a reciprocate amount but it might take a month or so.

[Ink]

we demand a dom3 wiki pledgie!

[Maerlande]

What's a reciprocate amount? If I donate $10 you'll donate $0.10? The reciprocal?

[lch]

Sombre, you scoundrel! History repeats itself, eh? :) There is no Dom3Wiki pledgie, there was a "Donate" button... on the Dom3Wiki! Talk about bad design. ;) Only Sombre ever used it!

I'd like help in form of contributions to the Wiki far more than donations, like FungalReason, Squirrelloid, Graeme and others have been doing over the past days. But the Wiki and the Donate button will be back, I promise. :P Damn fricken piece of junk...

[Gregstrom]

Quick, donate $0.000000000001!

[Gandalf Parker]

What's a reciprocate amount? If I donate $10 you'll donate $0.10? The reciprocal?
No I meant in reciprocation to the help lch gave when my server had hardware problems.

[Maerlande]

I figured as much Gandalf. I was just trying to make a joke. Probably it failed. :)

[lch]

People just need more irony potential, Maerlande.

The good news: it seems that no data is lost. I have already backed up everything of importance. It will take some time until I can set up the system on a new hard disc drive, so I'll put it up as is again soon for the time being, but you probably should only read it for now unless you're not concerned that any changes to it might get lost.

[lch]

Actually, if you want to add stuff to the Wiki just go ahead. The data is being backed up remotely in a 24 hour cycle now. I'll take care about the hardware problems later.

[lch]

I can't reach the server myself right now, maybe it has finally died now. I was getting big honking red flashing S.M.A.R.T. errors, "Help me, I'm dying here! Several errors on multiple partitions!" every time I logged in lately, but as I said I kept daily backups so we should be fine. I already have a replacement drive, but as I hope to get a replacement for the case and everything else aswell things might take a little while to set up again.

[lch]

Aaand we're back in business. New junkpile, featuring slightly more RAM and a slightly better CPU - we have arrived in 2003 now, hardware-wise (wooo!) and most importantly a new HDD that hopefully will make less trouble than the old one. Sorry for the wait. Enjoy! :)

[chrispedersen]

Hey Ich
I've tried a couple of times to add content. Strategy guides, etc. Never had permission to edit. Am I doing something wrong?

[Lingchih]

The Wiki is quite nice. But sorry, I just donated my last 20 bucks to Llamaserver. Perhaps, when I get a steadily paying job again, I can donate to the Wiki.

[lch]

Hey Ich
I've tried a couple of times to add content. Strategy guides, etc. Never had permission to edit. Am I doing something wrong?
You need to register to create an account. There's a button on the top right, "Log in / create account" for that. But actually, right now you make me aware that I'm not sure that sending out emails works like it used to... So please report back if you manage to do that!

And apparently the new notebook went into suspend mode when I closed the lid... d'oh! :( That is fixed now.

Lingchih, thanks for considering to absorb the costs, but it doesn't have to be money donations, contribution of content to the Wiki would be nice, too.

[Stavis_L]

I don't know where you clicked on the "What links here" link, but for the effect you mentioned it links back to two units:

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Effect:Construct_lord

That reminds me, now I'll introduce this to the items, as well.

Sorry to resurrect this again, but what was the other unit (besides Klaus) that had this? (since you elsewhere mentioned that the What Links Here approach won't work.)

[lch]

Hmm, so the "WhatLinksHere" feature seems invariably broken now. I do want to provide backlinks from the effects to the units and items that provide/possess them with the appropriate numbers, but that would require me to introduce a lot of semantic attributes, something that's quite a lot of labour and thus withheld me from starting to work on it. It's still on my TODO list, though.

[Stavis_L]

Hmm, so the "WhatLinksHere" feature seems invariably broken now. I do want to provide backlinks from the effects to the units and items that provide/possess them with the appropriate numbers, but that would require me to introduce a lot of semantic attributes, something that's quite a lot of labour and thus withheld me from starting to work on it. It's still on my TODO list, though.

Alternatively, you could let search robots crawl the wiki and let Google et al. do the work for you...or is that not allowed for content distribution reasons?

[lch]

Alternatively, you could let search robots crawl the wiki and let Google et al. do the work for you...or is that not allowed for content distribution reasons?
The content got green lights from Shrapnel Games and Illwinter. Huh, Google doesn't index it yet? Maybe I prevented robots from doing that. File a bug report / request in the bug tracker. ;)

[zzcat]

Both wiki/Ancient_Presence and wiki/The_Citadel_of_Pyriphlegeton raises database error.

[lch]

Both wiki/Ancient_Presence and wiki/The_Citadel_of_Pyriphlegeton raises database error.
Thanks, this is a bug in the Semantic MediaWiki extension that I am using. I've prepared a temporary (ugly) fix for this and will hand the bug report upstream.

[lch]

To silence scruples, the Dom3Wiki server is running fine, the reason that the site can't be reached since yesterday is that some technicans seems to have b0rked the networking for the whole building. When I was passing the distribution room yesterday, while the net was still working, I saw a couple of technicans in front of it, talking about what to do, apparently they managed to kill the Ciscos with whatever it is that they did.

[lch]

There will be another scheduled power cut in the building some time tomorrow, so the Dom3Wiki might be unavailable over the weekends. Enjoy your weekend, everybody!

[TheDemon]

Ever since the outage I am unable to modify any pages and get a Internal Error when I try.

[lch]

Thanks for the feedback. I already had to employ a really weird hack to make the Dom3Wiki work with the database extension again, it seems that there's some PHP bug (http://www.mwusers.com/forums/showthread.php?14371-ConfirmEdit-and-reCaptcha-extensions-cause-Internal-Errors) that is causing this. I'll revert to an earlier version.

[Viajero]

I ve browsed through the thread and do a search with the key word "protection" here, but could not find anything just yet... reason is this:

When I browse units descriptions in the wiki for the most part I find the protetcion value to always be much less than the actual one we see in game.

I'd presume the protetcion shown in the wiki is the basic one, without taking into account the armor of the unit?

[lch]

Yes, the values being displayed in the Wiki pages are base values without factoring in the modifiers through armors and weapons.

[Viajero]

Cool, thanks. I also guess that there are technical difficulties in the database or the wiki that prevent showing the in game actual displayed protection instead then?

[Edi]

The protection formula in the latest DB should work correctly, or at least give a ballpark figure for what the right number is.

[lch]

Cool, thanks. I also guess that there are technical difficulties in the database or the wiki that prevent showing the in game actual displayed protection instead then?
The technical issues are that the armor is being stored as armor values for its parts in the data and I was too lazy to find out the correct formula to calculate the protection value that the game displays, especially how it behaves if a unit is wearing more than one piece of armor at the same time. I do agree that the displayed information in the statboxes in the Wiki is very lacking regarding this and the corresponding encumbrance values.

[lch]

The Dom3Wiki may be unavailable for a brief or even longer period of time at the end of the month as I will no longer have the office that I had at college. I'll try to find alternate hosting options and in the worst case, will try to have it running at home.

[Mysterio]

The Dom3Wiki may be unavailable for a brief or even longer period of time at the end of the month as I will no longer have the office that I had at college. I'll try to find alternate hosting options and in the worst case, will try to have it running at home.

I miss it already. :(

[lch]

Don't worry, it'll be back. I'm aiming to have it back online this week.

[BvG]

I have a free, yet not completely craptastic hosting to offer, if you're interested?

[Inindo]

*sniff* please come back, pretty please with a cherry on top

[Finalgenesis]

Would porting it to one of those free wiki site work? (Assuming I'm willing to get hit by advertising and so stuff, admittedly a huge undertaking formatting the stuff over) What good free wiki sites are there? I'm only aware of Wikia.

Is it possible to provide your web folder zipped as a download temporarily? I could gradually edit them to a free site in bits and pieces, though my formatting do leave a bit to be desired.

[BvG]

I can host as is. no need for advertisements of any sort. you get your own ftp login and cgi-bin (tho i'll be able to look inside the folders and the db of course).

[Gandalf Parker]

I can host as is. no need for advertisements of any sort. you get your own ftp login and cgi-bin (tho i'll be able to look inside the folders and the db of course).
He has had such offers in the past. He has a login on my shell server and even had root. He did some appreciated work there for awhile.
:target:

He might be considering the next evolution. A home server. I hope so. He seems to have covered all the different "jobs" of one individually. We can definitely use some more servers.

Maybe he will consider a synch'd site.

[lch]

The Wiki is back, in a way, sorry for the wait. I did try to find other hosting options at college or with friends from other colleges, but for various reasons those plans never bear fruit. So now I am indeed hosting it from home, an idea I originally was very opposed to, because while it is a broadband connection it won't be as fast as before and I don't want to hog the available bandwidth whenever I download something. I did have hosting offers, but one thing I care very much about now, after a dozen years of experience as a sysadmin and some unpleasant surprises, is dependability, which by now means that I want to be able to have physical access to the machine when I want to as well. It might be worthwhile to consider transferring the entire site to Wikia, at some point in the future maybe, but I fear that a lot of things then won't make it during the transfer process.

So, this is better than nothing, I guess. Please tell me your experiences of using the site, if this is okay for you or if it is unbearable.

[lch]

And bam, upgraded the Wiki to MW version 1.16 now as well. I've been waiting for this for months. Enjoy the new vector skin!

And report back if you get errors.

[Jorus]

I'd like to post my experience using the site, but still can't get in. I'm hitting all the links at the beginning of this post, but get nowhere. Is there another way?

[lch]

I'd like to post my experience using the site, but still can't get in. I'm hitting all the links at the beginning of this post, but get nowhere. Is there another way?
The woes of dynamic IP addresses... :( I'm trying to fix the dyndns script.

[Kadelake]

It works fine now. And not as slow as I feared it would :)

[Jorus]

Yup, it's workig! Thanks, J

[lch]

Argh, the script still updates the IP address with the internal LAN IP. :( Can't fix it right now, sorry!

[Mysterio]

Is the wiki down again? Chrome keeps timing out.

[lch]

The Dom3 Wiki has been unreachable for some time in the past, it is offline right now as well. This is because it is hosted behind a DSL line with a failing router which is finally showing his age, sorry for that. I plan to replace the unit during the start of next week, then the connectivity should be much better. Thanks for your patience.

[llamabeast]

Ah, great news - thanks lch!

[Bullock]

Thanks for you wiki stuff.
As a noob i ve learned tons from it.

Cheers :)

[brxbrx]

I am so tempted to try out my LOIC...

[Chazar]

I have still frequent trouble accessing the Wiki.

I am new to Dom3 and find it so incredibly useful - I am actually delaying a turn because I am unable to access the Wiki. Has it been considered to create a mirror for the Wiki elsewhere?

Thanks a lot!

[brxbrx]

Can I suggest putting it up on a wiki farm? They're free, the only downside would be advertising.
There would be no more access problems.

(also, the temptation for me to LOIC would decrease significantly)

[Soyweiser]

Well, it is also pretty hard to get your own extension on the wiki farms. If you want mirror stuff, it is probably best to ask lch.

[Chazar]

The wiki is down again since the last few days, and I cannot find it in Google's cache either :( Does anyone know an alternative?

[Joku]

The Dom3 Wiki has been unreachable for some time in the past, it is offline right now as well. This is because it is hosted behind a DSL line with a failing router which is finally showing his age, sorry for that. I plan to replace the unit during the start of next week, then the connectivity should be much better. Thanks for your patience.

Btw, I could host the wiki or a mirror on my NAS box which is behind a 100M/100M connection if you are interested.

[lch]

Thanks a lot for the very generous offer to host the Wiki, I would definitely have been glad about this when I no longer was able to use my office as server storage. But even though hosting it from home might be sub-optimal and the server might be sluggish or unresponsive at times, I don't have the time that it would take to transfer the Wiki and prepare the software and the databases someplace else right now. Another thing which has become quite important to me and which I don't want to lose anymore is to have physical access to the server in case something happens.

I apologize again about the Dom3Wiki being unreachable over extended periods of time in the past. It turned out that the router that I had wasn't dying, in fact, but was configured to not hold and re-initiate the connection to the Internet in case it got lost, but to go to sleep in case there was no traffic for a while. Since my line was in use pretty much 24/7 before, this didn't become apparent before, but since I am now no longer using it during much of the day, the router would just shut down the Internet connection. I have since used a Host tracking software to keep track of my uptime, and I will share the findings that I got from it with you here:

Dom3 Wiki - August
Total uptime:84.69% Downtime:2 day(s) 15 hour(s)
Monthly uptime:84.69% Downtime:2 day(s) 15 hour(s)
Day 2011-08-31 Uptime:99.97% Downtime:22 sec(s)
Day 2011-08-30 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-08-29 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-08-28 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-08-27 Uptime:99.91% Downtime:57 sec(s)
Day 2011-08-26 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-08-25 Uptime:20.43% Downtime:11 hour(s) 48 min(s)
Day 2011-08-24 Uptime:0.00% Downtime:13 hour(s) 35 min(s)
Day 2011-08-23 Uptime:9.83% Downtime:16 hour(s) 10 min(s)
Day 2011-08-22 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-08-21 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-08-20 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-08-19 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-08-18 Uptime:99.94% Downtime:55 sec(s)
Day 2011-08-17 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-08-16 Uptime:55.83% Downtime:6 hour(s) 16 min(s)
Day 2011-08-15 Uptime:90.82% Downtime:2 hour(s) 12 min(s)
Day 2011-08-14 Uptime:78.65% Downtime:4 hour(s) 19 min(s)
Day 2011-08-13 Uptime:60.75% Downtime:8 hour(s) 42 min(s)
Day 2011-08-12 Uptime:97.57% Downtime:35 min(s) 2 sec(s
Dom3 Wiki - September
Total uptime:91.78% Downtime:3 day(s) 16 hour(s)
Monthly uptime:96.28% Downtime:1 day(s) 21 min(s)
Day 2011-09-30 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-29 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-28 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-27 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-26 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-25 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-24 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-23 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-22 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-21 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-20 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-19 Uptime:97.82% Downtime:30 min(s) 50 sec(s)
Day 2011-09-18 Uptime:57.69% Downtime:10 hour(s) 9 min(s)
Day 2011-09-17 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-16 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-15 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-14 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-13 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-12 Uptime:50.58% Downtime:8 hour(s) 59 min(s)
Day 2011-09-11 Uptime:86.71% Downtime:3 hour(s) 11 min(s)
Day 2011-09-10 Uptime:97.65% Downtime:32 min(s) 11 sec(s)
Day 2011-09-09 Uptime:99.93% Downtime:60 sec(s)
Day 2011-09-08 Uptime:99.94% Downtime:50 sec(s)
Day 2011-09-07 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-06 Uptime:96.50% Downtime:50 min(s) 20 sec(s)
Day 2011-09-05 Uptime:99.97% Downtime:29 sec(s)
Day 2011-09-04 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-03 Uptime:99.83% Downtime:2 min(s) 10 sec(s)
Day 2011-09-02 Uptime:100.00%
Day 2011-09-01 Uptime:99.81% Downtime:2 min(s) 47 sec(s
The downtime in August is mainly because of the misconfigration of the router that I wrote about before. The longer downtime in September is due to a power failure that we had. Apart from those two incidents, I think the uptime is not too bad and I hope that you can live with it, too.

Last but not least I want to give my sincere thanks to those folks that still update the Dom3Wiki these days, new users and old Wiki veterans alike. Although I'm mostly absent from the forums and from the games and I can't spend much time on improving the Wiki much further, I look over what's going on with the Wiki edits from time to time and enjoy seeing that you continue to use it that much. Although there definitely is a lot of room for improvements, I hope that the Wiki is of some help to you.

[kernel]

just caught up with this - great site Ich :)

[Chazar]

I consider the wiki to be essential, especially since I am jumping into multiplayer with little time to experiment around in singleplayer. So thanks a lot for the wiki!

Dom3 has lots of things to explore, but in order to be competitive in multiplayer, it is good to look ahead how things really work underneath. The wiki is excellent for that!

[lch]

The Dominions 3 Wiki is undergoing updates and has to be offline for some time. After upgrading, a very old bug in the MediaWiki software persistently denies all attempts to fix it. I did manage to circumvent it the past two years by keeping upgrades to the PHP version back and not updating it anymore, which is no ideal solution anyway. Now that those packages have been officially removed, I'll try to upgrade everything to the newest version and to have the Wiki running with that. Sorry for the downtime.

[brxbrx]

The Dominions 3 Wiki is undergoing updates and has to be offline for some time. After upgrading, a very old bug in the MediaWiki software persistently denies all attempts to fix it. I did manage to circumvent it the past two years by keeping upgrades to the PHP version back and not updating it anymore, which is no ideal solution anyway. Now that those packages have been officially removed, I'll try to upgrade everything to the newest version and to have the Wiki running with that. Sorry for the downtime.

I'd thank your post too because it was very useful and very gracious of you to inform us of this, but I don't want to be a part of the herd.

[momfreeek]

Yah, thx lch for the wiki. I can't imagine playing dom3 without it.. I'd be totally lost ^^.

The archives on waybackmachine still seem fairly usable as a reference:

http://web.archive.org/web/http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Main_Page

[Calahan]

I'll add to the eulogising of Lch while I here. It took me a while to get used to using the Wiki, mainly due to getting used to the fact a useful and accurate Wiki existed, but I find it a great reference source now, and often saves me having to sift through my notes or DB when looking for fine details.

So thanks Lch for all the work you did putting it together in the first place, and thanks for maintaining it like you do for all the community (that'd you've been too rare a guest of in recent times :()

[Rick L]

I have been a reader and contributor to the Wiki for some time, but for the last few days I get a page not found error when I try to go there. Anyone know what's up?

[legowarrior]

The Dominions 3 Wiki is undergoing updates and has to be offline for some time. After upgrading, a very old bug in the MediaWiki software persistently denies all attempts to fix it. I did manage to circumvent it the past two years by keeping upgrades to the PHP version back and not updating it anymore, which is no ideal solution anyway. Now that those packages have been officially removed, I'll try to upgrade everything to the newest version and to have the Wiki running with that. Sorry for the downtime.

I think this answers your question. It is 5 posts above what you wrote.

[Rick L]

I have been a happy user and contributor to the Wiki for a while, but it seems to be down now. I haven't been able to sign on recently. Anyone know what's happening with it?

[Soyweiser]

I have been a happy user and contributor to the Wiki for a while, but it seems to be down now. I haven't been able to sign on recently. Anyone know what's happening with it?

Wow you really have trouble reading don't you? It is still broken like Lch said. You basically asked the same question last week and got the same reply.

Apparently it is a bit harder to fix than originally thought of. Relax, and wait. It will probably be back, ad if it is down for good, well just ask Lch for the backups and try something else.

Also, your message is even incorrect. Not being able to sign on implies that you can reach the page. Which isn't true, as the wiki has been unreachable.

[legowarrior]

I thought about reposting my answer, but I thought that maybe I didn't understand the question the first time. Still, patience young grasshoper.

[John_Madlock]

Damn, I hope it will be back.

[Rick L]

Sorry for the duplication. I didn't see my original post and decided I had done something wrong when I submitted it.

[brxbrx]

You guys thought about enabling anonymous editing?

[Soyweiser]

That only invites more spam.

[lch]

Hello all,

the Wiki is up and running again. We had this purple bog beast infestation in our home, and although our experts were already on the case, we had to devote all our free time to those experts, too, you see...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6633593/bogbeasts.jpg

Okay, jokes aside, I am very sorry for the long downtime. When the captcha extension made trouble I turned the web server off, thinking that I could get to fix that problem soon - which regrettably was not the case. Yesterday I did some upgrades to the underlying operating system and since I started the Web server again, with the Wiki still in its defunct read-only state, hoping that I could run some reparations before announcing "The Wiki is back" to the outside world, I already received an email from llama and even some donations from community members. Those donations will go into the "new HDD for the Wiki" fund, thanks a lot.

(tech talk mode on)
Now that I had a closer look at the situation, the problem was that the Recaptcha extension was being incorporated into the official MediaWiki code, and those updated files have been pulled through SVN updates like they should. The configuration files still linked against the files from the old recaptcha library, though, and those started to fail working correctly at some point. Pretty resistant to any hotfixes. Now that I had enough distance to this, I finally noticed the misconfiguration.
(tech talk mode off)

I will work some more on the underlying Wiki software when I find time for that, but right now you're invited to start using the Wiki in its current form, and please report if you receive any other errors.

[Hrum]

Congrats lch!

And thanks for all your work on the wiki.

If you didn't already know how much everyone gets out of the wiki, you can tell how much we love it on the rare occasions when it's unavailable. As anyone who has any background in IT stuff knows, this is normal for all of us users - we express our love for the service you provide by kvetching when it is temporarily unavailable. The enthusiasm of the kvetching is a reasonable gauge for the intensity of our love. :)

[JonBrave]

@Ich,

Many thanks for your work, and the return of the site. Now that I've seen the photo, I had not realised that you were so young when I asked in a post about how long the site was down, may I say your IT skills are remarkable for someone of your age. :)

[oldrocker99]

I ponied up $5, intend to contribute more, and invite everyone else to do the same!

[Grimgor]

Great to have the wiki back, in any form! Thanks Ich, for the great work!

[lch]

I didn't have much time to write something that night, but I'll try to answer some comments now. I'll answer them here to keep all things concerning the Wiki in one thread instead of having it scattered across multiple topics.

Apparently it is a bit harder to fix than originally thought of. Relax, and wait. It will probably be back, ad if it is down for good, well just ask Lch for the backups and try something else.

It was mostly lack of time and ambition - look at that pink bog beast pic... I could have and should have left the Wiki in its read-only state, but when I turned the web server off I really thought it was better to provide no service than to provide crappy service. I wasn't sure if the database and system would suffer and might become corrupted while people tried all kinds of things to deal with this, too, which was another reason to turn it off.

Please don't shout at me for asking this... :) How/why is the website actually down during "fixing" whatever was decided to be fixed..? Any website you know of, they/owner leave current system up while they make changes for new one, then go live. This baby's been gone for weeks & weeks, what can be so difficult?

You know, that would be exactly what I'd have asked if I was in your situation. There should be a "live" version and a "testing" or "development" version of a website, and changes should only be pushed from the "dev" to the "live" version when they're finished. When I was working on web design things, I always kept things that way. With the Wiki, I haven't done such a setup, mostly because it was overkill and because I am usually not working on the live code, but just install and upgrade code from the official SVN codebase now. When I started on the Wiki, I didn't need such a setup because nobody knew about it and I was free to do whatever I wanted to do without the need to have a working "live" version while I'm developing. Now that there is some customer/user base who needs to access the Wiki even when I'd need to work on it, I would favor and use such a setup, yes. In case I ever intend (and have time) to work more on it, I think I'll work on a cloned version like you have considered, yes.

This is excellent news. Has anyone thought of transferring the wiki to a free wiki farm? We'd have to deal with advertisements, but otherwise it would be both faster and free (like this one (http://wikkii.com/wiki/Free_Wiki_Hosting)).

I have considered hosting the Wiki on a free Wiki farm when I started building it, of course. None of those that were around at the time seemed to offer what the Dom3Wiki demanded, though. Usually "free" either means that you have to live with a limited, crippled version of usually an upgradeable (for a cost) package, or something that makes money from advertisements. Since many things that I used on this Wiki have always been very experimental, which included Semantic MediaWiki at the time, I couldn't use a host that doesn't allow full control over the system, and one that makes money from ads was out of question, too. The StrategyWiki was the example of what the Wiki might look like then, and even the people that build up the Dom3 section of the StrategyWiki, like Horst F. Jens, have been very unhappy with the amount of advertisements that is exposed there now. Sure, you won't see most if you use a good ad blocker, but not everybody has that. I rather want full ownership and full control of my site than having to live with a contract that I don't like. Before the StrategyWiki was there, people asked Shrapnel about hosting a Wiki themselves, I have heard. But they would need more staff to be able to do that, which means that they won't do it, because they can't.

I have considered to have the Wiki hosted on a free webspace provider, too, of course. Why I didn't use one is mainly the same reason why I am cautious of free Wiki farms: I don't trust them to live very long. I am into Web hosting since a little over 15 years now, and I've used some very cool free web hosts during that time. I've seen dozens of those free webspace providers fall and vanish over time. Very large ones, too, with ten thousands of users and many more sites. There is no such thing as a free lunch, there has to be a way to pay the bills, and at some point a free web space provider might decide that it's no longer possible to keep things free, might it take one year, two years, five years or more. Even Wikipedia regularly has to ask people for money from donations to be able to sustain itself, and it's a lot of money that they need.

I would want that the Wiki would be more performant, of course, and I'd have been really glad about the offers for hosting it that I got from people here now when I started. What I want most, though, is that the data is safe, and by now I very much want to have physical access to the box in order to ensure that. Maybe the Wiki will be transferred into the hands of somebody else who I can entrust with it later. I hosted the Wiki from a Pentium III in my office in college at the start, I have since upgraded it to a notebook that I had left over, stored in the cellar at my home. How fast or slow the Wiki is might either be because of the hardware, be it CPU or memory, or because of my DSL connection. I don't have the spare money to upgrade it to something better, and I won't hold it to ransom to force people to cope with those costs. It is, as somebody else wrote, solely there out of goodwill. If I would consider the productive time alone that I put into creating it, it should never have seen the day of light. That would surely have been better for me. :) As you might have noticed, I am very much retired from the Dom3 scene. The Wiki still is still far from being as cool as I wanted it, and unfortunately I'm lacking the time and dedication that I had as a bachelor to make it much cooler. But I'll keep the Wiki up and support it as long as I can, and I'm especially thankful to those community members that spend their time to expand and update it and make it better. Seeing that it is being used like that is even better than any thanks or donations thrown my way.

[Soyweiser]

Thanks for putting the time in to put it back up. I'm also happy that you are all right. With everything disappearing I was a bit worried.

Now I have to make good on all those promises I made about stuff I put in my to do list. :)

Thanks for hosting it again!

[Vanguard X]

*CHEERS!,YAY!* Thanks a bunch! :D

[JonBrave]

Please don't shout at me for asking this... :) How/why is the website actually down during "fixing" whatever was decided to be fixed..? Any website you know of, they/owner leave current system up while they make changes for new one, then go live. This baby's been gone for weeks & weeks, what can be so difficult?

You know, that would be exactly what I'd have asked if I was in your situation. There should be a "live" version and a "testing" or "development" version of a website, and changes should only be pushed from the "dev" to the "live" version when they're finished. When I was working on web design things, I always kept things that way. With the Wiki, I haven't done such a setup, mostly because it was overkill and because I am usually not working on the live code, but just install and upgrade code from the official SVN codebase now. When I started on the Wiki, I didn't need such a setup because nobody knew about it and I was free to do whatever I wanted to do without the need to have a working "live" version while I'm developing. Now that there is some customer/user base who needs to access the Wiki even when I'd need to work on it, I would favor and use such a setup, yes. In case I ever intend (and have time) to work more on it, I think I'll work on a cloned version like you have considered, yes.

Dear Mr Ich,

I think some people didn't like how I asked! I'm glad to see you take it the way it was intended :)

Here's what I don't get/is sad. Your Wiki is, or should be, 99.9% static text. No offence intended, but as I recall it's just clicking on links to other pages (little if any interaction) --- which is fine, and as it should be. A few years ago, as I recall, the site would have been some pages & links, and that could be plonked anywhere. Nowadays, it seems, you all need "engines" & "scripts" to deliver your sites. Hence all the issues about your site being "down". That's the bit I don't get? Let (suitable) pages be just static content, or if necessary generate it at some point and save/offer that?

[Soyweiser]

"stop" "misusing" "quotation" "marks"

And you are wrong. 99% of the good sites out there are not just static pages. Without scripts it would not be able to edit them.

[JonBrave]

sorry, don't get either of your points

[Admiral_Aorta]

He's saying that it is impossible to have a wiki that is "99.9% static text" because the editing function requires scripting. also lol at the concept of pure html in 2012.

[Soyweiser]

http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com And

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/

[momfreeek]

Without scripts it would not be able to edit them.Oops, this does not make sense.
http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com And http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/Oh dear, why the unnecessary capitalization?

Perhaps this will help:
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Grammar-Nazi


ok, I'm just being an *******, sry :p

[brxbrx]

Without scripts it would not be able to edit them.Oops, this does not make sense.


What he means is that the way a wiki works is that anyone can edit it, and if it were just text, this would not be possible.

On a wiki, you can edit an article and add your own information. You can create internal links to other articles and transclude certain pages onto others.

Take a look at how Wikipedia works, and please leave the 90's for the 21st century.

[lch]

Here's what I don't get/is sad. Your Wiki is, or should be, 99.9% static text. No offence intended, but as I recall it's just clicking on links to other pages (little if any interaction)
Like others already wrote, far from it. It's probably pretty close to the other way around. Almost everything, including in most parts the graphics, is dynamically generated. There are caching mechanism in place, especially for the graphics, so that it doesn't have to be generated completely if there is a hit, of course. But what is stored in the MySQL database is something called Wikitext, which is being rendered into what you see on your screen. The Wikitext is just some very sleek text with Wiki-specific markup which aims to be very readable even when you edit the source code in the editor, instead of HTML for example, where your actual text can get lost in all the tags and markup it carries. And unlike HTML, that Wikitext has to be parsed by the server, not only on your side by your browser. That whole Wikitext runs through the MediaWiki parser before you see it, and MediaWiki, the Wiki software, has some very wicked Templating mechanism built-in, too. It's a very complex Turing-complete language, if you want, which differentiates it from a WYSIWYG Content Management System where you use a finite set of tools. Oh, and the MediaWiki software itself with the included parser is programmed in PHP, which is an interpreted language that has to run through a PHP parser at runtime before it is being executed, too. So there are a couple of parsers simultaneously at work at the server on different levels whenever the Wiki has to spit something out on your screen.

Of course, the aim is to keep the actual rendering low as much as possible. Which is why I am using something called APC, Advanced Parser Cache, to always keep the things which are used the most in memory. And theoretically, all the rendering should only be necessary if somebody makes a change to one of the pages. But there's just not enough memory to keep all the thousands of pages in memory at once, which is why you do have those load times (and sometimes it seems to get stuck at some point, I don't know why). When I wrote that the Wiki is probably slow either because of my net connection (I doubt it) or the server hardware (quite possible), I forgot one other thing: It might very much be slowed down by the design, too. I am using extensions, like SMW, Semantic MediaWiki, which could probably be used better. I'm using Templates that could probably be optimized. A couple of pages could probably be formatted in a better way, and most of all: The unit pages, which I'm guessing are being accessed the most, are using a design which is maybe not very cache-friendly. It accesses an internal MySQL database of stats and values quite similar to Edi's Dom3DB which I separated from the MediaWiki articles so that I'd have it easy to update those stats and values when a new update to Dom3 changes them. Back when the Wiki was developed, there were more or less regular updates every half year, and quite a lot of little data changes could happen in a patch. Populating that data into the Wikitext from the unit articles would be painful manual labor, or I'd have to write my own parser/robot to find and change that information, so I wrote a MediaWiki extension which grabs that data from another internal database instead. Nowadays Dom3 is pretty much final and there haven't been any major patches to the content lately, so such a setup is not as necessary as it seemed to be at first, and I could probably lose that design. I didn't knew about the power of Semantic MediaWiki when I started this design, too, and I probably could have dismissed this strange design from the start. Like I wrote in my opening post, I think there's probably a lot more powerful stuff to be harnessed from SMW, but I lack the knowledge and the time to learn it outside of a paid work experience myself now.

I'm still hoping that a SMW wizard might come by at some point, weave his magic wand and suddenly everything will just be beautiful and lightning fast... ;) In the meantime, you'll have to live with things the way they are now. Not ideal, but you'll have to cope.

[momfreeek]

Without scripts it would not be able to edit them.Oops, this does not make sense.


What he means is that the way a wiki works is that anyone can edit it, and if it were just text, this would not be possible.yeah, I knew what he meant, I was just being a counter-grammar-nazi.

[Soyweiser]

Without scripts it would not be able to edit them.Oops, this does not make sense.
http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com And http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/Oh dear, why the unnecessary capitalization?

Perhaps this will help:
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Grammar-Nazi


ok, I'm just being an *******, sry :p

Thank you for pointing out the mistakes. I would edit them, but sadly the forum doesn't allow me to edit posts past a certain time frame.

[Soyweiser]

What he means is that the way a wiki works is that anyone can edit it, and if it were just text, this would not be possible.yeah, I knew what he meant, I was just being a counter-grammar-nazi.

Brxbrx has correctly inferred the meaning of my badly written text.

Momfreeek, would you say you are just trolling here now?

[momfreeek]

no, there was a point. Not on topic but thats in keeping with your own "advice".
Perhaps this will help:
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Grammar-Nazi

I thought steps 2, 5 and 7 seemed relevant.

Just a little forum riposte, I don't mean to be belligerant.

[JonBrave]

"stop" "misusing" "quotation" "marks"

And you are wrong. 99% of the good sites out there are not just static pages. Without scripts it would not be able to edit them.

@Soy
I use quotes (among other things) if the word I'm using is not exactly right. When I say "scripts", I know it might be scripts, or programs, or transformers, or whatever. I don't know if his site is really "down", maybe it's running fine but not available. Seems like standard English usage to me as long as I can remember. You're probably pleased that "Waterstone's" got renamed (or perhaps you'd prefer Waterstone's).

@Elsewhere
As for the points about the (Dom3) Wiki content. Yes, I do realise (especially e.g. with Wordpress) that most stuff is delivered dynamically --- and so much the worse for delivery speed and processing usage. My point was that, as an information source with loads of text and little if any interaction, the content is static in nature. When I read the pages that's what I'm accessing.

At times you ask questions here with no intention other than an innocent & polite query for information and you get shouted at.

[Admiral_Aorta]

little if any interaction
except for that whole users can edit pages thing

[brxbrx]

little if any interaction
except for that whole users can edit pages thing

He doesn't seem to understand what a wiki is.

"A wiki is a website which allows its users to add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor. Wikis are powered by wiki software. Most are created collaboratively. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki)"

[momfreeek]

@Elsewhere
As for the points about the (Dom3) Wiki content. Yes, I do realise (especially e.g. with Wordpress) that most stuff is delivered dynamically --- and so much the worse for delivery speed and processing usage.A couple of other things that maybe you're not taking into account:

1. I could be wrong but I'd be surprised if you aren't using far more power to download and view the site than is used to serve it. All that messing about powering the monitor, rendering html into boxes and text on a square page and smoothing the edges of letters. Parsing a script and piecing together a few lists of characters from a database is not such a big deal. Thats not to say its not worth optimising server usage and the (widely used) solution that turns dynamic content into static content is "caching".

2. Developer time is (in general) far more valuable than processing time. Whatever solution you might think is worthwhile to make the site work better, it would perhaps make far more sense to simply buy better hardware to run the existing, working system, especially for a site used by relatively so few people.

[Soyweiser]

@Soy
I use quotes (among other things) if the word I'm using is not exactly right. When I say "scripts", I know it might be scripts, or programs, or transformers, or whatever. I don't know if his site is really "down", maybe it's running fine but not available. Seems like standard English usage to me as long as I can remember. You're probably pleased that "Waterstone's" got renamed (or perhaps you'd prefer Waterstone's).


Yeah, but that is wrong use of quotation marks. It is used to indicate either a quote, or sarcasm. There is no way for the reader to know if you mean it sarcastic, as something you are unsure about etc.

So it would be better if you would have just written. scripts(*)

*:unsure if this is the correct term.

This sentence : "I don't know if his site is really "down"," is really hard for me to understand fully. I don't really see what you can mean with "down". I assumed you just used the quotes wrong.

And yeah, I was acting like a little schoolgirl. My bad :D. I get defensive about the wiki... :P

[JonBrave]

@Soy
I use quotes (among other things) if the word I'm using is not exactly right. When I say "scripts", I know it might be scripts, or programs, or transformers, or whatever. I don't know if his site is really "down", maybe it's running fine but not available. Seems like standard English usage to me as long as I can remember. You're probably pleased that "Waterstone's" got renamed (or perhaps you'd prefer Waterstone's).


Yeah, but that is wrong use of quotation marks. It is used to indicate either a quote, or sarcasm.

I believe common usage of quotation marks extends to a lot more than those two, and do not agree with you at all. How about, you use them the way you like and I'll use them the way I do? :) After all, this is English not French...


And yeah, I was acting like a little schoolgirl. My bad :D. I get defensive about the wiki... :P
I get defensive about my punctuation ;)

As for the original missing-wiki issue. I do understand that it requires processing to generate a wiki page. I do understand that allowing the collaborative editing requires processing. For my part, I only want to read the wiki, I accept that altering is unavailable for a while. In general, pages are accessed a lot more by readers than writers (hopefully). I had assumed, perhaps, that it would be easy to generate static pages somewhere --- 100% precisely in a situation like this where wiki (or whatever) software had issues.

Where I work has recently changed over the company web site (hosted externally) from static, actual pages to Wordpress with database. Yes it is better for developers etc., I understand that. But when for whatever reason there is an issue with page retrieval or generation, my (potential) customers who just want to browse really don't care, they'd have been better served with static content and less to go wrong. There's a difference in requirements for OLAP versus OLTP.

Finally, of course I am not complaining or being ungrateful to Ich and others who maintain it. And I never meant to upset or annoy anyone!

[Soyweiser]

That isn't how language works. You cannot just use stuff wrongly because you think it works a different way. That way you generate confusion and ambiguity. And as the main objective of language is easy communication. You are misusing language in the most horrible way.

I think Lch already explained that the wiki pages are cached normally. But that he just doesn't have enough hd/memory to keep the entire site cached the whole time. (Also, if dynamic pages have a problem with loading, you want to cache them, not make them static).

Also, in the case of the wiki, you get what you pay for.

And never listen to what your customers say, look at what they do. (Which is a great lesson in life generally. Replace customers with whatever you want. (gamers/family/friends/aliens/etc).

[momfreeek]

But when for whatever reason there is an issue with page retrieval or generation, my (potential) customers who just want to browse really don't care, they'd have been better served with static content and less to go wrong.It sounds like you've got some specific problems that needs fixing asap. In a system with 1000 things that could go wrong its no surprise that its the latest change that has problems.


That isn't how language works. I'd say it is. Language is constantly evolving, ambiguity is rife anyway and context is important. Its not a system crafted to perfection, its an evolution of common usage from Ye Olde English. You won't find a smiley in an english textbook ;-)

Common usage is far more important to understanding than absolute rules (FYI: you should NEVER start a sentence with "And" :p).

[JonBrave]

That isn't how language works. You cannot just use stuff wrongly because you think it works a different way. That way you generate confusion and ambiguity. And as the main objective of language is easy communication. You are misusing language in the most horrible way.


I'm not misusing language or using stuff wrongly, and certainly not "in the most horrible way". I don't misuse quotation marks, I have no idea why you think your rules are correct or you think yourself an arbiter on this matter. Instead of you telling me how to write, shall we just leave the matter alone. I've always enjoyed the content of your posts.

[Valerius]

Lol, JonBrave I have to say I interpreted your comment as meaning "lch says the site is down but that's probably just another one of his lies - I doubt he even has a 'kid'". ;)

But thanks to lch and everyone else who keeps providing services to the Dom3 community despite no longer being an active player - since they are of course under no obligation to do so. Llamabeast provides one of the two main MP servers and manages CBM and how much does he even play these days? And Gandalf has spent years running the other main server and doesn't even like the MP crowd. :p

[JonBrave]

Lol, JonBrave I have to say I interpreted your comment as meaning "lch says the site is down but that's probably just another one of his lies - I doubt he even has a 'kid'". ;)

Hi Valerius. Is it me or everyone else who's barmy? ;)

Originally I said:
Any website you know of, they/owner leave current system up while they make changes for new one, then go live. This baby's been gone for weeks & weeks, what can be so difficult?
The "baby" is referring to the web site. Then Ich posted a photo of his baby (which I think is why he said he had been so busy!:)) --- seems to have been removed from his post now --- and so I said:
@Ich,

Many thanks for your work, and the return of the site. Now that I've seen the photo, I had not realised that you were so young when I asked in a post about how long the site was down, may I say your IT skills are remarkable for someone of your age. :)
Which was supposed to be a humorous intimation that the photo might have been of himself (it didn't say), and I was impressed that a baby could write the wiki...

[Soyweiser]

But when for whatever reason there is an issue with page retrieval or generation, my (potential) customers who just want to browse really don't care, they'd have been better served with static content and less to go wrong.It sounds like you've got some specific problems that needs fixing asap. In a system with 1000 things that could go wrong its no surprise that its the latest change that has problems.


That isn't how language works. I'd say it is. Language is constantly evolving, ambiguity is rife anyway and context is important. Its not a system crafted to perfection, its an evolution of common usage from Ye Olde English. You won't find a smiley in an english textbook ;-)

Common usage is far more important to understanding than absolute rules (FYI: you should NEVER start a sentence with "And" :p).

then im now declaring the end of punctuation no more capitalizations points commas or other bull we can make up the rules of language while we go along never mind that it is the job of the writer to be understood not the job of the reader if you make your readers work to understand your language you have failed but i agree im just being a twat and and doesnt create ambiguity it is just ugly but it is part of my write like you talk style which is horrible

ps doesnt apply to certain types of literary work but that is irrelevant

[momfreeek]

I said "evolution" and "common usage".

Every word and contextual device was invented by someone at some point.. but if its crap and no-one uses it, then its not going to become common usage is it?

Tell me what you think of the smiley :-)

[momfreeek]

Its all here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark
History

from:
In Early Modern English, quotation marks were used only to denote pithy comments. They first began to quote direct speech in 1714. By 1749, single quotation marks, or inverted commas, were commonly used to denote direct speech.[5]

to:
Signaling unusual usage
Quotation marks are also used to indicate that the writer realizes that a word is not being used in its current commonly accepted sense:

Crystals somehow "know" which shape to grow into.
In addition to conveying a neutral attitude and to call attention to a neologism, or slang, or special terminology (also known as jargon), quoting can also indicate words or phrases that are descriptive but unusual, colloquial, folksy, startling, humorous, metaphoric, or contain a pun: Dawkins's concept of a meme could be described as an "evolving idea".

People also use quotation marks in this way to distance the writer from the terminology in question so as not to be associated with it, for example to indicate that a quoted word is not official terminology, or that a quoted phrase presupposes things that the author does not necessarily agree with; or to indicate special terminology that should be identified for accuracy's sake as someone else's terminology, as when a term (particularly a controversial term) pre-dates the writer or represents the views of someone else, perhaps without judgement (contrast this neutrally-distancing quoting to the negative use of scare quotes).


Thus, that you misunderstood was not a fault of the writer. But misunderstandings happen, and clarifications are given. And then all is understood which is the goal of language.

[Soyweiser]

Its all here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark
History

from:
In Early Modern English, quotation marks were used only to denote pithy comments. They first began to quote direct speech in 1714. By 1749, single quotation marks, or inverted commas, were commonly used to denote direct speech.[5]

to:
Signaling unusual usage
Quotation marks are also used to indicate that the writer realizes that a word is not being used in its current commonly accepted sense:

Crystals somehow "know" which shape to grow into.
In addition to conveying a neutral attitude and to call attention to a neologism, or slang, or special terminology (also known as jargon), quoting can also indicate words or phrases that are descriptive but unusual, colloquial, folksy, startling, humorous, metaphoric, or contain a pun: Dawkins's concept of a meme could be described as an "evolving idea".

People also use quotation marks in this way to distance the writer from the terminology in question so as not to be associated with it, for example to indicate that a quoted word is not official terminology, or that a quoted phrase presupposes things that the author does not necessarily agree with; or to indicate special terminology that should be identified for accuracy's sake as someone else's terminology, as when a term (particularly a controversial term) pre-dates the writer or represents the views of someone else, perhaps without judgement (contrast this neutrally-distancing quoting to the negative use of scare quotes).


Thus, that you misunderstood was not a fault of the writer. But misunderstandings happen, and clarifications are given. And then all is understood which is the goal of language.

[citation needed]

[brxbrx]

this is a ****ing ridiculous pissing contest. Just give it up and let it rest.

[momfreeek]

yeah, surely we understand each other soy? thats the goal isn't it?

But I do enjoy these battles on strategy game forums even if its contrary to the purpose of discussion ^^

[Valerius]

Hi Valerius. Is it me or everyone else who's barmy? ;)

I'd prefer not to step into the grammar war but I think many people would view down being in quotes as expressing skepticism about why the site was down. But this is kind of an absurd debate, so regardless of whether the site was down or "down" we can all be happy that it is now unequivocally up. ;)

[lch]

As for the points about the (Dom3) Wiki content. Yes, I do realise (especially e.g. with Wordpress) that most stuff is delivered dynamically --- and so much the worse for delivery speed and processing usage. My point was that, as an information source with loads of text and little if any interaction, the content is static in nature. When I read the pages that's what I'm accessing.
It would be possible to make a static version of the Wiki, yes. Finding out which parts have been updated and maintaining this static version by refreshing the updated articles would be some challenge. The other alternative would be to spider through the whole Wiki content on regular intervals. I have no intention of doing either by myself, because it has very limited to minimal use, takes too many resources, and because others are already doing this. You can always access the Internet Archive's mirror of the Wiki pages:
The Wayback Machine (http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Main_Page)
Click on the sphere with the latest date and start browsing the Archive.

I think somebody made, or wanted to make, a program which displays the most interesting Wiki pages concerning unit stats etc. in some offline viewer. Some kind of unit editor, I think? My memory might be playing tricks on me. There is another website about data on magic spells, too.

reverend has been converting the nation references into downloadable and printable PDF manuals, see the Nation Reference - ALL AGES (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45452) for more info. The content might be slightly outdated, though, of course. While looking for these files, I stumbled over a Russian Dom3Wiki, where people started converting some of the Dom3Wiki contents to Russian. :o

There are MediaWiki extensions which allow people to add articles to a collection and then generate some PDF (or other format) file like reverend's nation references. I might install this at some point, maybe.

Finally, there are extensions for hosting/displaying/browsing "offline Wiki" contents, which take a dump of the Wiki database and then display this, without the ability to edit anything. This might make sense if somebody with no internet access wants to access the Wiki contents during a plane flight or so, or in case the Wiki is down and one wants to have a read-only copy, but I think rather then trying to implement this I'll use my time to fix the Wiki completely if it is broken, and for all other purposes The Wayback Machine (see above) should be an adequate solution.

[lch]

The Dom3Wiki is down due to a power outage. It might take a day or two until the electrican can fix this. No data is lost. Please be patient for the Wiki to come back.

[Soyweiser]

Wiki is back. (been back for ages).

[sansanjuan]

Over 200k accesses. What a fine service.

This page was last modified on 22 September 2012, at 11:49.
This page has been accessed 200,956 times.
Privacy policyAbout Dom3WikiDisclaimers

ssj

[jimbojones1971]

Over 200k accesses. What a fine service.

This page was last modified on 22 September 2012, at 11:49.
This page has been accessed 200,956 times.
Privacy policyAbout Dom3WikiDisclaimers

ssj

Yes, the wiki is a most wonderful service indeed - thanks Ich :-)

[Larz]

I have been trying to update the wiki but it now appears to require email confirmation for edit access. I tried requesting access and even changed my email address and tried requesting access again but I never get the confirmation email. Any idea how to resolve this issue? Thanks.

[brxbrx]

I'm stopping back into this thread because I get the impression that JonBrave still hasn't learned what a wiki is, and why it can't just have static text.
A wiki is defined not just by user-generated content, but by the fact that content can be dynamically changed by anyone (depending on site-side restrictions).
This is why a wiki cannot simply have static text, or even plain .html
A wiki is meant to allow users to modify pages. Static text makes that a lot more difficult.

[JonBrave]

Thanks for trying to enlighten me :)

I never suggested a wiki should have static content. All I ever said was, I was surprised no "snapshot" was available, when the site was down, which meant there would be no editing anyway. Read-only, of course; doesn't have to be perfect, all I want to do is read. I am now aware that I can try searching some archive sites, which is better than nothing.

[Soyweiser]

There is not because the amount of programming time (and interest) is limited. At least available to the dom3 community.

[lch]

I have been trying to update the wiki but it now appears to require email confirmation for edit access. I tried requesting access and even changed my email address and tried requesting access again but I never get the confirmation email. Any idea how to resolve this issue?
Hello all, long time no see - the site tells me that my last activity here was half a year ago. You all are probably aware that I am not active in this community anymore, the only reason being that I have no more time for that. I've kept the Wiki running, though I haven't looked at it much lately, and again I thank Soyweiser for his tireless work on the site.

I am aware that new users aren't activated anymore, but I have had no time to go in and fix that, sorry for the hassle. I won't have much time to care about this in the future, too, but I hope that I can address this at some point. What surprises me even more is that apparently even though users can't confirm their accounts anymore, now and then there are still spam bots slipping through which still manage to leave some spam on the Wiki. If they can confirm their accounts, why can't other users do that? Strange... In the meantime, I did ponder ways to prevent spam bots from registering. As there are a couple of them that can easily be identified (by a human) from their registered user name, looking like "<firstname><lastname><randomchars><somenumber>", I started working on a module which would automatically ignore registration attempts with names like that. This would just be a temporary fix in the weapons race with spammers ofc, and I didn't get to complete the programming, testing and setup of this.

Ideally, I want to disable user registration and have it replaced by an application system. I already did some research on this, probably half a year back, and found out that there exists a wondrous MediaWiki extension called ConfirmAccount which would allow just this. In order to get it installed, the Wiki software has to be updated to the latest version, though, before it isn't stable for the current one, and this always requires some amount of work by hand, there's no "install update" button that I can click. So, my ToDo list for the Wiki looks like this:
1. Upgrade to 1.17
2. Install and enable ConfirmEdit extension
3. Tidy up the old user accounts

Now, something else. There were two donations to the Wiki site, one at the start of the year and another one a week or two back or so, thank you to the donors. I am using the server that is running the Wiki at home for nothing else but hosting the Dom3Wiki and through some occurrence I have started pondering just how much this hosting costs me. The costs were zero when I still were able to host this at the university, but I am no longer able to do this since years. One factor of the costs would be the monthly costs for internet access, though we're running this from our home and can use the existing internet connection that we have, anyway, so we can ignore that. The other factor is power consumption and I have never looked into that, but I have now, and to be honest, it did surprise me. The Wiki is hosted on a laptop with a 72W power adaptor. The server is running all the time, electricity is about 25 cents/kWh as a ballpark number, I don't know exactly, but according to Wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strompreis#H.C3.B6he_des_Strompreises_.28Haushalts strom.29) this is about right. Putting those values into an online electricity cost calculator (http://networking.ringofsaturn.com/Tools/serverpowerusage.php) results in costs of about 157 EUR per year, and with a projected 28.5 cents/kWh for this year according to that Wikipedia table (power ain't cheap in Germany, folks!) this is trending towards 180 EUR per year. I was really surprised by those numbers, and after previously ignoring alternatives to hosting from home, I am now looking into having the Wiki hosted elsewhere. Professional solutions cost money, of course, and a first look into Wiki hosters showed me that I'll pay about the same for professional hosting - no longer for the electricity, but for the software etc. While the pledges that llamabeast's wonderful PBEM server has collected are exceptional, I don't expect that donations will cover the costs of that.

One Wiki hosting company called Wikkii.net stands out, as it is offering free Wiki hosting. Who knows for how long, but what I know right now is that what they ask for is very reasonable: Have their banner displayed, next to the unobtrusive default MediaWiki one on the bottom right of each page. It's no popup, nor will there ever be one according to their FAQ, so while the Wiki operated with zero advertisement so far, I'd be very willing to have the Wiki moved there for the prize of one small 88x31 pixels graphic being displayed on every page. The best thing is that disk space and bandwidth isn't limited and the hoster leaves a lot of options to configure the Wiki open to me, instead of having multiple levels of options to choose from, and having to pay more for the better ones. Providing solutions like that means that if there are lots of other users of this hosting then load times might increase for the Dom3Wiki, of course, but I expect that these people know how to deal with that. I've had a look into a site hosted by them, the Asheron's Call Wiki (http://ac.wikkii.net/) (with an interesting history to it (http://ac.wikkii.net/wiki/ACCWiki:About)), and browsing around that Wiki has shown me that it seems to be very usable and the advertising banner is indeed not annoying at all when doing so.

I'll be interested in getting some feedback from you guys what you think about that, feel free to respond here. If you want to contact me directly, then please don't send me a PM here, but instead click on my name next to that red "offline" button and send me an email to the email address which is being displayed in the comments on my page. Thanks!

P.S.: Please don't think that I intend to pull the plug on the Wiki. I do plan to preserve the Dom3Wiki and I will continue to host this from home until I have found a viable new home for it. Glad that you like the Wiki!

[Valerius]

lch, thank you not only setting up the wiki but continuing to keep it running after you have moved on from Dom yourself (the same goes for everyone who keeps things running though they may no longer be active themselves). At first I didn't use it much because I was so used to using Edi's db as a reference but over time, as more things have been added, I've grown to appreciate it as a resource. It would definitely be a shame to lose it and I think your idea to move it to a hosting company is a good one.

What I'm wondering is, after the wiki has been migrated do you think it would be worthwhile to have a backup admin in case you no longer have the time to work on it in the future (though I think that the creator of something has the right to control it and if you would prefer to not to do so I can certainly respect that)? As you noted, Soy has put a lot of work into the wiki and comes to mind as a backup admin. Also Edi, as an unofficial representative of IW. The other thing is that you are among the most tech savvy of Dom players and I'm not sure just how important that factor is in being able to maintain the wiki.

[Edi]

Important as the wiki is, I have to decline. I do not have the time or resources to put into it on top of running the Desura forums and moderating this place (light as the traffic is these days). If I add the wiki, there are simply too many things to keep an eye on and then all of them would suffer.

[Soyweiser]

There was one user who registered a while back using the normal channels, I think the registration issues have been cleared up.

Odly enough, I recently got an offer at a shared server, which I declined. At 5 bucks a month, I could get shared hosting at that server.

I have no clue how much traffic the wiki attracts. But I would be able to provide hosting for it.

Sadly this would mean two things, A, further decreasing the anonymity of my soyweiser handle, and B, recurring financial obligations of my part. (I'm a poor mofo atm).

But I could be able to host it if the traffic isn't to high.

[Gandalf Parker]

As has been standard, any Dom3 project can be hosted on the Dom3minions server. Longest running, most stable, full login server. :angel

I can vouch for lch. He had full administrator privileges there for quite awhile. Not only is that full identity disclosure but he had access to all of the packet traffic passing from everyones computer on my home network and my emails going back to the 1980s. I had no problem with it.

[Joku]

Sorry about necroing this, but has anybody heard anything from lch? I contacted him about hosting wiki about six months ago. He replied to my first email, but I haven't heard anything from him since then.