Suggestion: create a "spoiler-free" section of the TMW wiki

[Frost]

Players are often referred to the wiki to learn essential information about the game: how different items compare (Scythe vs. Short Sword), what quests are available, how to obtain armor, and so on.

Much of the current wiki contains full "spoiler" information such as how to answer quest questions, what formulas are used to calculate damage, which sequence to do quests in, what the invocation is for each magic spell, etc.

I propose that a section of the wiki be created where players can look up basic information without being told so much detail that the "story" of the game is lost.
For example (obviously this text would be reformatted for wiki):

BONE KNIFE QUEST
There's an old adventurer named KFahr [Image of KFahr] in the bar in Hurnscald. Buy him a drink and listen to his stories. If you're high enough level, he'll ask you to do a quest for him. When you're successful, he'll give you his Bone Knife.

[Kether]

I do agree with what you said.
I'm still a great user of the wiki, always encouraging newbies to go there, but, while it's extremely useful, it also kills all the mistery and the (real) gaming atmosphere that you usually enjoy in a RPG game, making newbies applying technical solutions without really searching the right way to carry out successfully the given quests, and, by this way making them ignore a big (and very pleasant) part of the ambiance that developers wanted to give to this imaginary world.

I've also been a small contributor of this wiki (I'll be back, Ali-G ) and we already had words about it with Ali-G.

This "spoilers free pages" could indeed be a good compromise since the motivated players will always find a way to quickly accomplish the quest's aims (by browsing TMW or guild's forums, or GIT).

So, it's a question of compromise between what should be told a minima and the almost fully dispensed datas tied to the quest, as it's currently done.

This said, I wonder how it could be possible to "separate" current quests pages (containing almost the whole datas) and other spoiler-free pages (if I understood well what you said) ?
In an other way, it could be decided that, for every new quest, the full datas wouldn't be given on the wiki until a period of x months ?
The new Kimarr quest (which I didn't do yet) for raging skill is a good example of it : maybe the formula of the fluffies ratio shouldn't be mentioned in the wiki ?

[Crush]

I once read a very interesting HTML walkthrough for Monkey Island 2 (for the kids: that was an awesome point and click adventure we adults used to play when we were your age).

When you looked up a puzzle on that website, it would only describe the situation. A click showed you a very vague hint what the puzzle is about. After another click it would give you a more useful hint, then the solution, and finally an explicit step-by-step instruction.

When I played it a few years ago, I was completely desperate a few times. But when I got the solution from that website with only two additional hints it still felt like an accomplishment.

[Bertram]

(for the kids: that was an awesome point and click adventure we adults used to play when we were your age).

We're still not that old, pal.

[Frost]

Could something like the JSpoiler (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:JSpoiler) or Spoiler (http://vanishingpointwiki.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Spoiler) plugin be added to the TMW mediawiki? That might let people read the story and then click on "hints" as they wish.

That's not a perfect solution -- not least because paranoids like me use NoScript -- but it seems less inelegant than trying to basically fork off a non-spoiler wiki.

I created a rough example at http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/ ... nife_Quest

[twiistedkaos]

You could probably use a hover text to show a spoiler. Without having to install anything. An example:

Code: Select all

{{H:title|This is the hover text|
Hover your mouse over this text}}

I like your idea on the non-spoiler version though. I just started helping out with this wiki, so If you'd like help with this idea let me know. Best way is to PM me

[Alige]

If the "spoiler" is a button you can open by clicking on it, I fully support this idea!

[twiistedkaos]

Well looking at the source for the spoiler extension, it's a link that uses DOM elements to show / hide information. Sort of like an "Expand" or "Read more.." sort of thing.

Edit The plus side of using the spoiler extension is the fact that a non-spoiler section of the wiki would not have to be created. Instead the current quest pages could simply be modified to include the <spoiler> tag.