What would you like to see on IFWiki? (Survey)

Hi everyone. To follow up on this thread about the future of IFWiki, I’d like to gather information about what people would like to see prioritized on IFWiki. Here’s a 10-question survey about it, with a space for comments at the end. You can skip any questions you don’t have an opinion about, or that you don’t want to answer.

Edit: The survey is now closed. Results are posted starting a few posts down.

Thanks to all who have responded so far! I’ll probably leave the survey open 'till the weekend at least.

Just a reminder that the survey is still open. Responses have (for the moment, at least) stopped coming in, so unless someone wants me to keep it open longer, I’ll probably close this tomorrow-ish.

Thanks so much to all who participated! There were 37 survey responses!

I’m posting a summary of the results here for informational purposes. My intent is not to put limits or stipulations on what people contribute. People are as free as they have always been to edit/add whichever kinds of pages they want to. But I personally am finding it helpful to know what people prioritize, and I thought others might be interested as well.

The freeform comments are summarized and paraphrased to help preserve anonymity of respondents. (This is not to say that I know who the respondents are.) If you recognize something as your own and I’ve misrepresented it somehow, please feel free to let me know.

Results:

(Questions 1 to 6 allowed people to rate an item’s priority on a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 being at the low priority end of the scale and 3 being at the high priority end of the scale.)

question1.png

  1. Updating existing pages about authoring systems and interpreters (Examples: ifwiki.org/index.php/Inform) should be…

(low priority)
1: 8.3% (3 votes)
2: 44.4% (16 votes)
3: 47.2% (17 votes)
(high priority)

question2.png
2) Adding new pages about authoring systems and interpreters should be…

(low priority)
1: 16.7% (6 votes)
2: 38.9% (14 votes)
3: 44.4% (16 votes)
(high priority)

question3.png
3) Updating existing pages about craft and theory (examples: ifwiki.org/index.php/Theory) should be…

(low priority)
1: 8.3% (3 votes)
2: 33.3% (12 votes)
3: 58.3% (21 votes)
(high priority)

question4.png
4) Adding new competition pages (example: ifwiki.org/index.php/21st_An … ompetition) should be…

(low priority)
1: 5.4% (2 votes)
2: 27% (10 votes)
3: 67.6% (25 votes)
(high priority)

question5.png
5) Adding new pages for individual works/games that ARE referenced on a competition page (or any ifwiki page other than the author’s page) should be…

(low priority)
1: 32.4% (12 votes)
2: 40.5% (15 votes)
3: 27% (10 votes)
(high priority)

question6.png
6) Adding new pages for individual works or games that are NOT referenced in competition pages (or any pages other than the author’s page) should be…

(low priority)
1: 51.4% (18 votes)
2: 40% (14 votes)
3: 8.6% (3 votes)
(high priority)

question7.png
7) Pages about people can have sections for author credits, tech credits, organizational credits, review and article credits, links, interviews, and the like (Example: ifwiki.org/index.php/Andrew_Plotkin). In the author credits section…

  • it is important to list all works/games authored by that person: 33.3% (12 votes)

  • it is important to list the works/games authored by that person which are referenced on other pages (basically, competition pages): 22.2% (8 votes)

  • it is not important to list works/games authored by that person. A link to the person’s IFDB page or an IFDB search for that person’'s works/games would suffice: 38.9% (14 votes)

  • Other: 5.6% (2 votes)

(“Other” responses were along the lines of “It depends on the circumstances; people can add things that are missing” and “It’d be a nice feature but it’s not some all-important thing”)

question8.png
8) When it comes to new game/work pages, it is better to deal with limited time by…

  • creating pages with minimum information (e.g. Title, Author, Release date, IFDB link, and maybe one or two other pieces of info) so that more pages can be made: 63.9% (23 votes)

  • filling in most of the information in the game page style guide (scroll down past question 9 to see the elements) even if this results in fewer game/work pages being made: 5.6% (2 votes)

  • not creating new game/work pages, and focusing on other kinds of IFWiki content instead: 30.6% (11 votes)

  • Other: 0% (0 votes)

question9.png
9) Within a work/game page, which items should it be a priority to include? (Scroll down to see example images.)
(This question allowed people to choose multiple options.)

A) Award icons: 58.3% (21 votes)
B) Icons for genre, setting, and type of IF: 41.7% (15 votes)
C) “How it Begins” summary: 22.2% (8 votes)
D) Notable Features section: 47.2% (17 votes)
E) Cover art: 22.2% (8 votes)
F) Infobox text: 30.6% (11 votes)
G) Title, Author, Release date, and Platform/Authoring system (as text): 66.7% (24 votes)
H) Serial number line: 5.6% (2 votes)
I) IFID (interactive fiction identification number): 13.9% (5 votes)
J) IFDB link: 75% (27 votes)
K) Competition and placement (as text): 44.4% (16 votes)
L) Download link: 30.6% (11 votes)
M) Testers: 16.7% (6 votes)
N) Details for multiple versions: 22.2% (8 votes)
O) Review links for individual work/game: 61.1% (22 votes)
Other: 5.6% (2 votes)

(“Other” responses mentioned source, walkthrough, hints, and tag line.)

question10.png
10) Any comments/suggestions you have about IFWiki: (There were 10 responses)

Information people said they tend use IFWiki for, or that they think that IFWiki does well, includes information about:

  • competition entries and results, award results
  • lists of reviews of competition games
  • tools
  • people
  • items that aren’t easily categorized (e.g. the IF Theory Reader).
  • theory
  • on individual work pages: links to reviews and hints

Regarding lists of competition reviews, it was also pointed out that it’s possible these reviews could be gathered elsewhere, maybe using the Editorial Reviews feature on IFDB, or listing them in some other place, especially since reviews for a particular comp may be meant as a more immediate resource, as part of comp-related discussion. (I think–though I’m not sure–that the implication here is that this would be a way of allowing these reviews to be collected quickly even if there were no wiki page (yet?) for a particular work.–bg)

Kind of information people said they tend not to use IFWiki for:

  • game information (because IFDB is more complete, more easily edited)

Kinds of content people said they’d like to prioritize:

  • things that IFDB doesn’t keep track of
  • among elements on an individual work page, possibly IFIDs (in addition to the things that had been chosen in question 9)

Things people said they would not prioritize or do not see as useful:

  • work pages/basic game info that can be found elsewhere

Technical suggestions:

  • maybe to add pages for including RDF data.
  • to look up Semantic Mediawiki (for autofilling reference lists and such).
  • that wiki maintainers focus on developing templates and tools, e.g. for automatically backing up the wiki, or dealing with dead links, or getting game info from IFDB.

Other observations:

  • It’d be nice to include as much info as possible on IFWiki. The limited resource is time, not space, and individual contributors will focus on whichever things they think are important.
  • IFWiki is an excellent resource.

(And to whoever said thanks, you’re welcome.)


Once again, thank you very much to everyone for your responses!

1 Like