quote works for me.
My thought was (and still is) that if my site disappeared like the others, the game could still exist and someone else could easily remake it. Getting the old Cobra Cards working was only possible because the owner was gracious enough to provide me with a filesystem and database dump after the domain was already gone. If for some reason I stopped supporting this website, it would likely be the sort of situation where I wouldn't be able to do that myself. So basically it's a contingency plan.
So like, I get this, but if the wiki were in a format that was used by the most popular wiki software in the world, anyone would be a database dump/import away from doing the same thing. That's not
that much different from an FTP link to a bunch of loose files. A bunch of loose files that require an archeologist's chisel to figure out how they work.
I haven't looked into other Wikis for a while but my gut instinct is that upgrading DokuWiki and fixing the various issues would be a lot less time consuming than recreating the wheel, so that's likely the approach I'd take for now.
You'll recall when I generated all the card articles in the first place. The export/import process would require something similar, only made easier by the existence of the wiki files as they are now. 1- prop up mediawiki. 2- write bot to read dokuwiki files and translate them into mediawiki articles 3- run bot 4- there is no step 4.
I say this having already written a mediawiki bot for the Artifact wiki (which did the same exact process, except analyzing data ripped from the game files as opposed to an existing wiki's text files). It was slightly more complicated even, since it had to be able to
re-export and edit the articles in-place when game files updated with new info. This is a piece of cake in comparison.
Once a code base has gotten old enough, it can quite literally be easier to start over with a new one, particularly if that means that more than 1 person is involved with the guts of it.
Edit history and uploads being broken isn't intentional. As for the card data... I do want to keep a vetting process there as it's my goal for this site to be as accurate (as possible) and we don't have a team of editors or moderators that can review changes.
Respectfully, I disagree. Dictionary and Phallen have done wonderful sustained effort on the wiki over time, and had email notifications actually worked I would have responded as soon as I got any. There are people who could do this.
And even if we all didn't check the queue for a month, it's a *much* better state of affairs for a new, excited, energetic member to submit a bunch of edits to a queue that can then all be reviewed and utilized once someone wakes up a month later, than for that person to just be completely stonewalled, unable to contribute, they lose the spark and we lose a high potential member.
I'm working on adding the Hobbit Draft cards (soonish) and 2E (if/when I get the the card text). It's possible that we could have a small team with permissions to add cards but because of how it works currently, that would require FTP access at least or possibly SSH.
2E might be dead in the water, I would take a look before going through the trouble. I think someone said the project imploded and is only half-finished, not sure.
Regarding the posting limit: we used to get a LOT of spam accounts... is that no longer the case? The Wiki has its own account system but I changed the code to use the TLHH login and cookies to keep things simpler. Another custom hack that I'll have to look into if I upgrade either the Wiki or the forum or both.
This might actually be a case of the existing restrictions working so well that it looked like they were doing nothing, since nothing ever got through. I defer to your judgement in that case, but it's a shame when new excited members have to be turned aside.
SVG support--not sure but maybe an upgrade will improve that? Is it an issue with embedding or the files can't be uploaded or rendered or...?
It's a dokuwiki plugin that has to be installed, I believe. It was brought up a long time ago when we were setting it up, but time has only treated those dinky little gifs worse.