The Transport Tycoon Wiki

[orudge]

A few months ago, I solicited feedback on a possible unified Transport Tycoon Wiki, merging the TT-Forums Wiki, the TTDPatch Wiki and the OpenTTD Wiki. Those plans have changed slightly, but I'm now pleased to announce that the Transport Tycoon Wiki is open for business!

It currently consists of the old TT-Forums Wiki, plus the TTDPatch Wiki. There are currently no plans to merge the OpenTTD wiki in. It needs a lot of work to tidy it all up and reorganise it (for instance, there's no table of contents for the TTDPatch wiki, and it all needs reformatting. Also, it needs a new logo!), but hopefully by publicising it, you can all get stuck in! Note that it was not possible to import certain pages from the TTDPatch wiki - primarily the German and Russian pages (my converter kept barfing on them). They can be imported manually if desired.

Note also that the NewGRF specifications have been split off into their own wiki. These can be found here. All specification pages from the TTDPatch wiki have been imported, and the folks on the #openttd IRC channel are currently debating how best to tidy them all up.

Both wikis use the TT-Forums user database. Simply sign in with your forums details, and you should be in business! Note that users with certain special characters in their username may not be able to log in, due to MediaWiki restrictions. If you find you're unable to log in, send me a private message and we can see what can be done.

The old TT-Forums wiki is now closed permanently. The TTDPatch wiki is still available, but the edit page is disabled.

If you have any queries or problems, please don't hesitate to ask!

[hgnmu128]

The Manual of Style page needs to be expaned (created?) urgently, since there is no convention as to editing a page, formatting, sections, page titles etc, apart from the general Wiki standards. Also, most pages ported from the TTDPatch Wiki have the page title without spaces, then description in bold italics ('''''), then name with spaces in it as a section main heading and then description again, and then the page content, without sections at all. Can any minimal set of rules (or MoS) be put in place so that the initial rummage is relaxed a bit?

[michael blunck]

I'm now pleased to announce that the Transport Tycoon Wiki is open for business!
[...]
Note that it was not possible to import certain pages from the TTDPatch wiki - primarily the German and Russian pages (my converter kept barfing on them). They can be imported manually if desired.
[...]
The TTDPatch wiki is still available, but the edit page is disabled.

This is all a big mess. Please make the TTDPatch Wiki editable again ASAP.

regards
Michael

[PikkaBird]

This is all a big mess. Please make the TTDPatch Wiki editable again ASAP.

Indeed, but what needs to happen is it needs to be un-messed, preferably by one person with a lot of time on their hands so it can be done consistently.

Editing the TTDPatch Wiki won't do you much good since when that wiki is shut down, any changes you make there as opposed to on the new wiki will just disappear.

[michael blunck]

Indeed, but what needs to happen is it needs to be un-messed, preferably by one person with a lot of time on their hands so it can be done consistently.

Aha. So tell me, what´s the use of ruining a perfectly running system only to be forced to built it up anew?

Editing the TTDPatch Wiki won't do you much good since when that wiki is shut down, any changes you make there as opposed to on the new wiki will just disappear.

Why should it be "shut down"? I don´t see any reason nor entitlement for this to happen.

The only point I see is that it´s hosted on Owens server at the time being. It could as well be moved elsewhere. It´s not that it´s Owen´s property.

regards
Michael

[Hyronymus]

I presume convenience for both the OpenTTD and TTDPatch wiki users was the origin of this merger. And usually such mergers between different software packages end up in an initial mess. But will it really be 'smart' to keep the old Wiki open for edits because in the end anything that you add to the old wiki will need to find a place on the new one too. You will be doing your job twice then.

[orudge]

The old wiki can still be browsed, it just can't be edited - otherwise things may potentially get out of sync, which wouldn't seem to be a good thing. As for my "right" to do this or not, Josef agreed to the merging of the wiki, and in the long run it would seem to be the better plan.

The NewGRF wiki is already starting to look nicer, and I hope to myself spend some time going through everything on the normal wiki and trying to tidy it up and organise it.

[planetmaker]

The Manual of Style page needs to be expaned (created?) urgently, since there is no convention as to editing a page, formatting, sections, page titles etc, apart from the general Wiki standards. Also, most pages ported from the TTDPatch Wiki have the page title without spaces, then description in bold italics ('''''), then name with spaces in it as a section main heading and then description again, and then the page content, without sections at all. Can any minimal set of rules (or MoS) be put in place so that the initial rummage is relaxed a bit?

You're totally right about the point that a consistent style and thus a style guide is needed. But as with anything new (what you saw was basically the raw form of the conversion from tiki wiki to mediawiki w/o any manual edits, and even the original tiki wiki pages didn't always follow quite a common style), the ways first have to be established. The WIP for a style guide is meanwhile here, but of course still needs a lot of extension and clarification.

[George]

It is almost impossible to see the change of the NEW GRF spec for the last month. Because the list of changes during last two days takes a screen.
Comparing also looks bad. For example http://newgrf-specs.tt-wiki.net/index.p ... &oldid=304 I do not know how you see, but I can't reed this diff. These tons of special symbols makes it unreadable!
Are there any options to make this new wki more user friendly?

[hgnmu128]

The WIP for a style guide is meanwhile here, but of course still needs a lot of extension and clarification.

A *lot*. And that is just a detailed StyleGuide for a NewGRFSpecs Wiki, and the Other Pages section isn't dealt with in detail anyway. IMO it needs to be expanded to a StyleGuide for the entire wiki, and NewGRFSpecs can be made a subsection.

George: Diffs used to display   as ' ' and &gt as '>' as far as I'm aware. Maybe the direct shift from TikiWiki to MediaWiki is the problem, like planetmaker said.

And Owen:

Set $wgLogo to the URL path to your own logo image.

[jvassie]

Indeed George, as hgnmu128 said above:

  is the HTML code for a non-breaking space, ie a ' '
" is the HTML code for a pair of quotation marks ie ' " '

These will be resolved as edits are done manually. There are lots of incompatabilities between Tiki Wiki (the old style) and MediaWiki (the new style).

Also Owen, looks like the wiki could use a Favicon, perhaps use the same one as TT-Forums as a temporary measure?

[orudge]

And Owen:

Set $wgLogo to the URL path to your own logo image.

I know. I haven't got a nice logo yet, once I do, I will update it. Same with the favicon, and various other things.

Users with underscores in their name should now be able to log into the wiki, by the way. If you have any other crazy characters though, you may still have problems, and it may be the only solution to that is to change your username here.

[George]

George: Diffs used to display   as ' ' and &gt as '>' as far as I'm aware. Maybe the direct shift from TikiWiki to MediaWiki is the problem, like planetmaker said.

for me, as the wiki user, it does not matter why there is a problem. For me it is important to have the possibility to get information. With new wiki a can't do it. At least now. I CAN'T READ SUCH DIFFS. They are in computer aided format, not human-aided format. And I DO NOT LIKE THAT!

As for the merging ... ECS wiki pages now looks like a piece of s***. WHO would return them back to readable form? I do not want to spend time on that again, I did it once on the old wiki. :VERY ANGRY:

Unless there are persons, who are ready to spend their time on repairing the pages, which were exported to the new wiki, and fix those page according to the new StyleGuide, I want to agree with MB. Leave the old wiki working.

[frosch]

The WIP for a style guide is meanwhile here, but of course still needs a lot of extension and clarification.

A *lot*. And that is just a detailed StyleGuide for a NewGRFSpecs Wiki, and the Other Pages section isn't dealt with in detail anyway. IMO it needs to be expanded to a StyleGuide for the entire wiki, and NewGRFSpecs can be made a subsection.

The NewGRF specs wiki is completely separate from the TT-Wiki. So the StyleGuide on the NewGRF specs wiki only deals with NewGRF Specs.
These components of the wiki have quite different requirements. E.g. the specs are mostly developer maintained, 'recent changes' is quite impotant for keeping several tools in sync, and the whole stuff is only English and not meant for translation.
OTOH manuals and tutorials could be translated and are generally of different struture. Thus they are separate.

[George]

Have you seen this http://newgrf-specs.tt-wiki.net/wiki/CargoTypes ?

Who can read it and who would repair it?

I see someone invented a huge amount of work. But did he found persons to do that work????

Definitely I DO NOT WANT TO BE ONE OF WHOSE, WHO WOULD DO THIS JOB.

[orudge]

People are working on tidying everything up right now, George. You can join in the discussion on IRC (#openttd channel). It'll take a little while to do everything, but in the long run, it'll be better, as we'll be using software that is actually maintained and that people are - for the most part - more familiar with. In the mean time, the old wiki is still accessible. I wouldn't have blindly moved everything were there not at least some kind of a plan to make it all work nicely.

[jvassie]

Have you seen this http://newgrf-specs.tt-wiki.net/wiki/CargoTypes ?

Who can read it and who would repair it?

I see someone invented a huge amount of work. But did he found persons to do that work????

Definitely I DO NOT WANT TO BE ONE OF WHOSE, WHO WOULD DO THIS JOB.

George calm down.. Typing in capitals isn't going to solve anything, and just lowers people's respect for you.

PlanetMaker has already done a huge amount of work on updating the new wiki manually, amongst edits from several other users, myself included. You don't see him complaining, instead just getting on with it. By all means, no one expects any other person to do anything here, this is after all a voluntary community and your free to help as much or as little as you so wish.

Perhaps if you'd rather not spend the time on making edits yourself, why not keep your own log in a .txt file or some such, and once you have noticed the appropriate page has been updated, add your changes in then. Yes I appreciate this isn't ideal, however there are ways around it, and most importantly of all, posting angry responses in this thread isn't going to solve anything.

Owen, a shame logomaker doesn't seem to visit us anymore!

[hgnmu128]

for me, as the wiki user, it does not matter why there is a problem. For me it is important to have the possibility to get information. With new wiki a can't do it. At least now. I CAN'T READ SUCH DIFFS. They are in computer aided format, not human-aided format. And I DO NOT LIKE THAT!

Aided? I get it, anyway. And one thing: Computers don't care what you like or what you like not. See this: http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~dcb/courses/CS30 ... humor.html [NOTE: it is just an imaginative representation]

As for the merging ... ECS wiki pages now looks like a piece of s***. WHO would return them back to readable form? I do not want to spend time on that again, I did it once on the old wiki.

That was one hell of a ... erm ... complaint, should I say? We know you helped a lot with the old Wiki, and appreciate your work and won't force you into doing it again or anything. As for the time, I think there are a lot of users who would be willing to spend it on refining the Wiki pages. Rest assured, Owen will find a solution (... before someone else does, or vice versa, or whatever).

Leave the old wiki working.

...until everyone is satisfied with the new Wiki's status. And the old one should be left uneditable IMO, it would be a lot of work if 20 editors edit the old one and 15 edit the new.

And like the Elder Gods said above, everything is gonna be alright.

frosch: That was dumb from my part, sorry for that. And I do agree with you.

[orudge]

My suggestions for updating the TTDPatch manual. I'm starting work on those pages, we'll see how I do.

[michael blunck]

As for my "right" to do this or not, Josef agreed to the merging of the wiki, and in the long run it would seem to be the better plan.

Could you please document what Josef definitely agreed to? From my conversations with him, it was still undecided how to proceed in detail.

Apart from that, it´s not sufficient to get only Josef´s agreement to "use" the former TTDPatch Wiki content as you like. Instead, you´d need the agreement of the various content authors. And personally, I do not agree to get my input taken over into that "new Wiki". In consequence, all that input has to be removed from it ASAP.

In fact, I am strongly against "cannibalizing" the former TTDPatch Wiki for no good reason. Especially, because your project did not turn out to be that "grand solution" (i.e. including the OTTD Wikis) discussed in the beginning. In fact, now it´s just "the Emperor´s new clothes" w/o any improvement, but even worse.

I personally don´t like the MediaWiki style, and many of the once mentioned shortcomings of TikiWiki had been repaired during the last couple of months, e.g. the missing support for translations. So now, there´s no reason to destroy a functioning project just for the reason of "unifying" it with a totally insignificant other project (your obsolete "TTD Wiki").

In the last couple of weeks, much work has been put into (ECS) translations, and I am totally against this being "stolen" by another project. In the end, it´s the opinion of the original content authors which is of relevance here. It´s not the opinion of random posters in this thread, which have never contributed one line of text to the TTDPatch Wiki.


Granted, given the actual situation of a parallel existence of TTDPatch and OTTD, one could imagine a "united Wiki" for both TTDPatch and OTTD. I´m not against such idea, but apparently, the ongoing "unification" has nothing to do with that. And that´s why I am strictly against the ruining of a project which myself and a relatively small group of other people have been put a lot of work into, for a really obscure reason.

In conclusion, these are my requirements:

- writable access to the TTDPatch Wiki for keeping it alive. In case you´re not willing to host the current TTDPatch Wiki anymore, the release of the data base to set up that Wiki on another server in its current form,
- removal of all my input in your "new Wiki".

regards
Michael