There are a bunch of error messages on the main page.
ifwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page
Edit: Whatever was wrong appears to have been fixed.
I mentioned it on ifMUD and baf fixed it. I think it involved upgrading MediaWiki.
It’s also funny that nobody is updating the competition news section. Guess we’re going to have Shufflecomp and Twiny Jam as the upcoming comps forever. 
On the discussion page of the main IFWiki page, I’ve posted an idea for making it easier to keep the news up to date (assuming people still want to have both archived past events, and actual current events displayed on the main page). I’m not sure what’s possible, but I was thinking that if there were a page of events in a format that lent itself to a faux news feed, and a box on the front page that always displayed the last N lines of events, you wouldn’t need to update the events as often, and you wouldn’t also need to add those events to a separate archive section.
So rather than “recent” and “upcoming,” things would be listed by date, and as new events were added, old ones would get pushed off the front page automatically.
(Not that there’s anything wrong with the current layout, but I wondered if reducing the amount of maintenance needed would make it more likely that things would be kept current.)
I like this idea bg – you might get some more insight on the layout from here, ifwiki.org/index.php/Talk:Main_P … _notice.3F
Interesting, thanks. From that discussion I’m not sure if keeping a record of past “Current Events” is seen as valuable or if it was just a side effect of wanting to have the currently-current news available.
As far as maintenance of the Competition News portion goes, I revised it this morning and it only took 10 minutes or so to catch up with the past couple months. (Sorry for the inactivity on my part.) Competition pages are more involved, and it looks like a few folks are involved in creating and revising them. Those I feel are a very nice thing to have - especially instead of a dead link.
Yeah, the Current Events list is a bit dusty, and your ideas for resuscitating it sound pretty neat. I’d definitely use it to assist in (manual) editing other parts of the wiki. I have no experience in programming so I’m not able to help you there. And I’m not opposed to your idea for revising the Comp News template to make it all automagically. I might write some thoughts on that in the discussion page.
Yeah, even if people are in favor of the idea, I don’t know how one would go about setting it up.
(BTW, I didn’t mean any of this to be implied criticism of wiki editors. I recognize people have limited time and it seemed like a way to possibly make life easier.)
Ok, bringing this up again because I’m revisiting the idea of trying to reduce the amount of maintenance needed to keep the Competition News/Current Events up to date on IFWiki. It sounds like people would like to have current news on the front page, as well as current and past news on a separate page. Here’s a way to do it that–while not totally automatic–is very easy and quick to adjust.
The “Current Events” page would look something like this:
ifwiki.org/index.php/User:Bg/CurrentEvents
A portion of this would automatically show up on the main page under “Competition News.” To adjust the portion that would show up on the main page, all you’d do is move the tag. Right now the tag is before January on the CurrentEvents page above, so the portion that would show up on the main page would be from January on, like this:
ifwiki.org/index.php/User:Bg/sandbox3
So you’d never have to edit a special template just for the main page. Adding stuff to the Current Events page would automatically add it to the Competition News on the main page.
Any thoughts/suggestions? I am posting here mostly because if I post it at IFWiki, I’m not sure how many people will actually see it.
EDIT: Also, does anyone want to update the front page article on IFWiki? Among other things, it’s listing Versu and Varytale as exciting new platforms, which is kind of sad. 
I can edit to remove obviously out of date stuff but I don’t know about adding new material.
It would be neat if a bunch of us could assume a small maintenance role for various parts of IFWiki. I’d be up for it, if someone divided the responsibilities. And stuff like keeping the front page up to date would be cool. The problem is–nobody just up and does it.
The thing is I find myself editing the wiki every 3 months but would like excuse/motivation to do it a bit more and know that my changes matter. I bet others feel the same way. And I think editing the front/news page as you outlined would be one of those tasks.
General question, not meaning to be snarky here - what is the most useful function of IFWiki? What does it do better than other places?
As a relative newcomer, I’m seeing that I already have four accounts in four different places to discuss IF (here, IFDB, the IFMUD, and my regular gaming forum on occasion). I’m the sort of person who doesn’t tend to go for more account proliferation than can be helped, and the WIki is edit-by-user-only. What sort of things might I be doing there that could not be done elsewhere?
Sounds like it’d work bg.
As for the front page article, what if instead of a whole article it was a pull quote and link to a current good blog post or something like that? Emily Short had a nice one on the IF timeline recently.
Well, you can read a bit here about how overlap with other IF sites is not necessarily seen as a negative: Metasite for submitting to all three major community sites?
But to answer your question, my understanding is that IFWiki was intended as a place to organize and link to community knowledge, particularly about craft, theory, and history. It’s also a glossary and reference for things like e.g. what an interpreter is, what the various interpreters are, what are common tropes and puzzle types in IF, etc. There’s also info about community members and their roles–who organized which competitions, who writes reviews and where to find them, where to find a particular member’s web site, etc.
Ok. I’m not sure whether to wait for more people to chime in, or to just go ahead and set something up. One thing I’d need to figure out is whether to try to combine it with the old “Current Events” page, or just start a new page, in the new format that includes a link to the old one. The latter would be easier i think, especially since the focus has basically narrowed from events of various kinds to competition news. So maybe the new page should have a different name?
That sounds good to me. As far as I’m concerned, anybody who wants can go for it. Not that I have any sort of authority as far as IFWiki is concerned. 
If it helps, the four places you’ve mentioned are indeed active places where discussion can be held. IFWiki, on the other hand, is more of a resource to be referenced when you want to look something up. There’s tons of interesting stuff in there, just like there’s tons of interesting stuff in the archive, just like there’s tons of interesting stuff in the dictionary - you check what you want, maybe promenade a bit if the links are interesting enough, then you’re done until next time you want to look something up.
Also, where IFDB is all about games, the wiki is also about people and theory discussion.
Mind you, when I put it like that, I kinda don’t see the value of a very dynamic front page… I mean, when you go to Wikipedia, do you jump straight to what you want or do you take a moment to see the front page? I’ve the IFWiki as one of the possible search engines I can use on my Firefox browser, so I just type what I want into the box and go straight to the article. Never ever see the front page…
Thanks for the clarifications! My question has been answered.
(although in agreement with your comment, Peter, I don’t think I’ve looked at the front page of Wikipedia for about eight years. I use Google to look up any articles there I might fancy.)
Ok, I’ve gone ahead and made the new page. Improvements can probably be made, but it’s a start.
Maybe we need something like Github has, where it tells you how long your current editing streak is.
Ha ha. That would work on me. The thing is–small rewards can and do work & it’s up to us to leverage them! It’s why fitness trackers are a big thing. And I really do think that when I do something just to get a day registered, I’m motivated to do more if it was half-hearted in the first place.
Interesting! Thanks!