How can I create an account on the TDM wiki?

[Fiver]

I am really anxious to start working on the wiki. I have been a member on the the forum for over five months, but I have been more active in the bugtracker.

It is frustrating that there seem to be no person or authority to which I can apply for an account, no process for applying, and no clear criteria that must be fulfilled.

So far I have compiled a personal list of things that need be done on the wiki, but I have stopped adding to it because it just seems like double work (compared to just editing directly) and it seems even uncertain that I will get an account in the near future.

Again: please streamline this process so that new volunteers can start contributing as soon as possible.

[nbohr1more]

(Again ) Not that I have the authority to approve / deny this but I think that your odds of approval would increase if you refrained from opening bug-tracker tickets for issues that are "mission specific" and must be fixed by the mission author rather than the TDM Team:

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6540

Your privilege to add to our wiki is contingent on your comprehension of both technical attributes and "standard conventions and policies". That ticket indicates that you don't quite grasp the latter yet.

Normally, wiki contributors have submitted some work such as textures, models, scripts, animations, missions, code, etc.

A valuable tech-demo or asset tends to fast track approval. Otherwise, if your contribution is voted as helpful in a dedicated forum thread that can also speed up the process. Rather than opening a thread about "wiki access", open a thread under TDM main about player concerns or under the Editors Guild about mapper / mission topics that need better documentation.

[Frost_Salamander]

On 4/28/2024 at 1:44 PM, Fiver said:

Could somebody update the article about the lightgem?

1. Add a sentence that a red frame around the lightgem indicates that it is at maximum intensity. (see https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6525)
2. Remove the lingering quotation mark after "Stealth & Shadows".

Update: Dragofer added a sentence about the red frame in this edit, but the orphan quotation mark is still present.

I've removed the orphaned quotation mark.  I agree with @datiswous though that there is duplicate information in this page that is already in the HUD page. Why do we need information about the breath and health indictors on the lightgem page?

Also - your bug reports.  Has anyone given any feedback about the value they provide? (EDIT: nborh1more just replied about the bug reports as I was typing this).

I'm not trying to discourage you, on the contrary it appears you want to contribute and I would hate for you to be spinning your wheels.

 

Edited June 9 by Frost_Salamander

[Fiver]

4 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

I think that your odds of approval would increase if you refrained from opening bug-tracker tickets for issues that are "mission specific"

I referred to my work in the bugtracker mainly as a way to show that I have good intentions. Not that I don't make mistakes. I do. Thank you for providing feedback about 0006540 (feedback which may also then apply to 0006542). I was not aware that Z-fighting (if that is the culprit) was mission specific. I thought it, similar to 0006361, was related to coding or the models. Had I known it was mission specific I would not have logged it in the bugtracker. Feel free to enter them where they better belong (in the forum?), add a comment in the bugtracker with a URL to the new location to those places and then close the issues so that I and others can see what is the proper way to work. I really am trying to do the right thing and I do appreciate your feedback.

The wiki article Reporting Problem describes how to report a problem, but is there documentation on where different problems shall be reported or how to work in the bugtracker? I'd be happy to read it and follow such a guideline. I have looked for it but cannot find it. This is also something I'd be willing to document on the wiki if it does not exist, or link to it if it does exist so that others can easily find it. It is more effective and less friction to write down what is the right way to work rather than correcting someone on a case-by-case basis when they do something wrong but that they didn't know was wrong.

I actually had a private conversation about this with another forum member a few months back and they suggested you had a good grasp of the bugtracker workflow. Maybe you'd be willing to write something down? If you want I can give feedback and ask for clarifications and point out aspects that a new user may want to know. I have a firm grasp of Mantis as a system, but practical use of it may differ between organizations.

4 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

if your contribution is voted as helpful in a dedicated forum thread that can also speed up the process.

The thing is that other than finding, reproducing, reporting and organizing defects, I think one of my strong points is documentation of products and workflows. I want to branch out from there, but I also want to document missing information along the way so that others who wonder the same things as I can easily find it.

 

Edited June 9 by Fiver
clarify

[datiswous]

If you were more active on the forum and doing beta testing for example, you would know such things. Logically I think people get very active on the forum and submitting things, but seeing this as a path to getting a wiki account is unwise. There is no direct path to that. At least that's how I see it.

[Fiver]

Any project or organization that relies on volunteer work benefits from harnessing what each participant offer. In the case of TDM, some people write code or scripts, create assets or animation or missions, write on the forum, etc. Others (like myself) do testing or write documentation.

I was under the impression that this project was open to contributions also when it comes to documentation (hence this thread). And, as I understand, it was open at least at some point in history (and multiple wiki users never made a single edit). I believe this was changed to avoid spammers. That is understandable, but once it has been established that a new contributor is not a spammer and instead shows a genuine interest to contribute, is there any good reason not to let them do so?

As I wrote earlier in this thread, I have demonstrated that I am familiar with wiki formatting and that I have good intentions. Also, any mistake on the wiki is easy to revert.

If it makes any difference I can limit myself to one edit a day the first month and start doing minor edits like fixing spelling, formatting and linking.

[nbohr1more]

1 hour ago, Fiver said:

Any project or organization that relies on volunteer work benefits from harnessing what each participant offer. In the case of TDM, some people write code or scripts, create assets or animation or missions, write on the forum, etc. Others (like myself) do testing or write documentation.

I was under the impression that this project was open to contributions also when it comes to documentation (hence this thread). And, as I understand, it was open at least at some point in history (and multiple wiki users never made a single edit). I believe this was changed to avoid spammers. That is understandable, but once it has been established that a new contributor is not a spammer and instead shows a genuine interest to contribute, is there any good reason not to let them do so?

As I wrote earlier in this thread, I have demonstrated that I am familiar with wiki formatting and that I have good intentions. Also, any mistake on the wiki is easy to revert.

If it makes any difference I can limit myself to one edit a day the first month and start doing minor edits like fixing spelling, formatting and linking.

Can you try providing a few more examples of intended wiki changes / additions ?

The last example was pretty redundant to existing documentation. If you didn't have some reasonable bug tracker entries I would ask you to participate in a Turing Test.

[Fiver]

1 hour ago, nbohr1more said:

Can you try providing a few more examples of intended wiki changes / additions ?

Sure!

[[FAQ#Troubleshooting]] the link to the forum is wrong, change it to https://forums.thedarkmod.com/ (or use same value as set for variable "Discussion forum" in the wiki menu instead) This seems important and has been on my list for a long time.

The following changes are small but should be uncontroversial:
* [[The_Dark_Mod_-_Compilation_Guide]]  "Linus distro" -> "Linux distro"
* [[The_Dark_Mod_Gameplay]] in section See Also, add a link to [[Bindings and User Settings]]
* [[Bindings_and_User_Settings]] change "DarkmodKeybind.cfg" to "DarkmodKeybinds.cfg"
* [[Installation]] add definitive article to the first two bullet points.
* [[Installation]] "When the game doesnt start the first time, the game create logs." -> "If the game doesn't start the first time, the game creates logs."
* [[TDM_Release_Mechanics]] "will be heavily changed of even removed by" -> "will be heavily changed, or even removed, by"
* [[TDM_Release_Mechanics]] "links to bugtracker as especially welcome" -> "links to issues in the bugtracker are especially welcome"
* [[Fan Missions]] change the redirect (from the category) to the article [[Fan Missions for The Dark Mod]]
* [[FAQ#What_is_The_Dark_Mod?]] create a sub-header "Which license does TDM use?" and link to https://svn.thedarkmod.com/publicsvn/darkmod_src/trunk/LICENSE.txt

I would have linked to https://github.com/fholger/thedarkmodvr/wiki/Gamepad-support from [[Bindings_and_User_Settings#Gamepad_Default_Bindings]] when I learned about it in January and I noticed it was missing from the wiki article, but the article has since been updated (by you, actually) in April.

[Fiver]

After that, I could expand the documentation about gamepad bindings in [[Bindings_and_User_Settings#Gamepad_Default_Bindings]]. I play TDM almost exclusively with a gamepad, and I could add, and link to, information that I was looking for myself when I started playing and made the custom configuration for my gamepad.

[Fiver]

I could also populate the lootlists (at least the most necessary objects) in [[Training_Mission_(OM)]], [[A_New_Job_(OM)]], and [[The_Tears_of_Saint_Lucia_(OM)]] which are currently empty.