Utility: Official release of the unofficial Dominions 3 Wiki

[momfreeek]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

@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]

Originally Posted by 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. 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 . I get defensive about the wiki... :P

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

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...

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

And yeah, I was acting like a little schoolgirl. My bad . 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!

[momfreeek]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

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.

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

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" ).

[lch]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

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
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 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.

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.

[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]

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.

[Admiral_Aorta]

little if any interaction

except for that whole users can edit pages thing

[brxbrx]

Originally Posted by Admiral_Aorta

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."