Community wiki

[Rastar]

In my humble opinion, a community wiki for Leadwerks 3 is sorely missing. While there is a lot of great information here in the forum and in the documentation section, it is often scattered over many threads, and the search function isn't of great help. Also, I think people are more willing to write a short paragraph in a wiki about some new revelation they had rather than open a thread in the forums (looks a bit like boasting somehow ).

 

So: I call upon creating a new Leadwerks wiki! I guess there would be two options:

 

1) Official wiki provided by Josh. AFAIK there was one for LE2 that was closed down at some point, can't remember the reason, though.

 

2) An unofficial wiki on some remote page. Would have the benefit that Josh does not have to somehow feel responsible for its content. I would volunteer to set it up and even pay for the hosting if there is no suitable free solution.

 

Whichever version it will be, I think this would be of great value to the community and take some of the documentation burden off Josh's shoulders.

 

What do you think? Anybody in? @Josh: Which solution would you prefer?

[beo6]

I think the main reason that the old wiki was closed down was because there was a lot of spam added and Josh didn't wanted to have his time wasted cleaning it up. But the wiki is still readable somewhere.

[gamecreator]

The old LE2 wiki is here:

http://www.leadwerks.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

 

For Leadwerks 3, considering Josh never mentioned creating one and he shut down the old LE2 one at one point due to spam (and it took months to get back up), I'm 99% sure he'd prefer one he didn't have to moderate. I would prefer the same considering he has plenty of other, more important things on his plate.

[codeape]

Maybe the wiki could be read only for anonymous users and registered users that are not in the Developer group. This would avoid spam.

[paramecij]

Spam is a very poor excuse ... is there any spam on the forums? (excluding YouGroove) And if there is, shouldn't he close down the forums as well? .. IF it really is such a big problem, then just manually approve contributors, appoint a mod or two, or something. The value wiki style documentation provides is well worth the hassle I believe.

 

Spam... come on...

[gamecreator]

The wiki is nice and all good engines provide one but it's far from the highest priority, especially since the community can make one itself. I'd personally much rather have 3.1 and networking.

[Josh]

Users can add articles to this:

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/tutorials/

[Rastar]

I know, but that format doesn't suit the smaller bits and pieces very well.

 

So, I gather a community-made unofficial wiki would be the preferred choice. However, the feedback has been a bit feeble up to now so I wonder if there is enough interest?

[codeape]

I'd personally much rather have 3.1 and networking.

 

Indeed.

[AggrorJorn]

I think it is a good idea. However I would suggest going for an external wiki rather then having an official one. That way you are more free in what you can do. It can't hurt to have external websites with good info about Leadwerks. I think it would be best to host your own. Doesn't cost much and mediawiki (and others) are free install-able frameworks.

[cassius]

Keeping the docs up to date has always been a problem with le due to the small number of people on the job and the desire to do things with more priority, but an unofficial documentation source could be usefull.

[shadmar]

Go for it. Lets see how it works out.

Maybe ask Josh for a linkback in the community menu?

"Community Wiki" for example. So it get used.

Maybe store/share backups with a second member in case Raster gets hit by a bus.

[Rick]

Can we have external wikis on how to use LE? I always thought people needed to be developers on this website to see the docs (since the new site anyway, before the old wiki days)? Maybe not but I thought it was a form of making it harder for people who pirate the software to work with it since they wouldn't have access to any docs on it.

[gamecreator]

If you log out and look around you'll see all the documentation and tutorials are available. Only some of the forums are not. Even in the past, the LE2 wiki was available to everyone. There was an exception: some of the PDFs and videos were locked but I believe even that restriction was lifted at the end.

[Rastar]

OK then, I'll set something up. Gonna take a couple of days. I would suggest we have more than one administrator (also regarding the backup issue) so please PM me if you're interested.

[paramecij]

.. I think it would be best to host your own. Doesn't cost much and mediawiki (and others) are free install-able frameworks.

 

I don't think this would actually be best, because knowledge needs to congregate not dissipate, and It doesn't have to be a real wiki, so no need to install anything.

 

We just need a simple and elegant way for the community to contribute new and enrichen old documentation.. without having to go through (of what could quickly be) 50+ pages of http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/tutorials/ style articles..

 

Another thing is that a lot of great knowledge is accumulated in the forums but it quickly gets buried and forgotten, then the cycle repeats itself, a common problem/missed opportunity for which I haven't seen an effortless mechanism for propagating such knowledge.. which is a shame because some of it could be turned into an article with a bit of work and a lot of them could be added at least to a giant FAQ or something..

 

 

 

Current documentation is okay-ish, the layout could do with a better hub page along the lines of portal for the community section, and the whole command reference tree could be a level shallower or at the least provide links to functions from the same category OR ideally, have a collapsable tree list of all the commands in a bar on the left, so one can jump from function to function in a single click.

 

While one can post additional remarks and sample code to the API docs via comments, I'd personally be much more comfortable and inclined to do so if I knew that other people/editors can correct and tidy it up some more if need be.. that's what the whole point/idea of a wiki is I think - many people editing a single page/entry, having their internal discussions and whatnot, else it's just forum style postings that can quickly bloat the docs..

[cassius]

a better search engine in the forum would help find info that's got buried in itspast pages.

[paramecij]

True. But some things are hard to search for, or you don't know what to search for, or even that you should be searching for it.

 

Just a quick illustrative example.. If I post a few tips or an alternative way to do X in LE more efficiently, and you check back to the forums a couple months later, it's unlikely you'll find about it, you won't search for it because it's already working for you and it hasn't occurred that it could be done better or that someone posted about it between your visits, even though such a method would greatly benefit you...

[Admin]

We do have something like this in the werks. Stay tuned.

[AggrorJorn]

We just need a simple and elegant way for the community to contribute new and enrichen old documentation.. without having to go through (of what could quickly be) 50+ pages of http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/tutorials/ style articles..

 

which is a shame because some of it could be turned into an article with a bit of work and a lot of them could be added at least to a giant FAQ or something..

 

Currently there is no such system, so I don't think it can hurt to have our own. Plus, it will cost Josh time to fiddle around with the website/tutorial section, while his skillset would be of better use on developing the engine.

 

There is a FAQ which gets buried deaper and deaper in the forum. I could place it in the tutorial section or in the asset store, but it will be forgotten eventually.

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/7091-leadwerks-3-faq/page__hl__faq

[Rastar]

I'm a bit mixed about this myself. Right now, the Leadwerks pages are the "one-stop shopping mall" for information, and this would get more complicated with an external wiki. Especially for longer articles you would have to decide if they should go in the official tutorial section or in the unofficial wiki, and you'd have to places to look for answers to your questions.

 

On the other hand, such things are very fragile. To generate an avalanche effect it must be easy to find information and easy to put it in. The current pages don't meet that requirement. Also, there are two additional benefits of external pages: If there are several web sites about the engine and an active external community it shows that there is impetus behind Leadwerks that goes beyond its creator. And, of course, we would be a little more free in what we can write.

[paramecij]

It has been mentioned several times that Josh doesn't have the time and that it could be better spent on other things - with which I totally agree, Josh should put all his energies and focus into the engine until it's complete. This can sometimes be a signal that the company needs growing but in this case he could just hire a freelancer for the task, or recruit a few willing bodies from the community.

 

@Aggror, that's why the documentation needs a hub/portal/front page where stuff like a FAQ can have a permanent and visible link. Rastar is right about the avalanche effect, separation can hurt us if we don't have enough momentum, which is very likely since the community isn't THAT big. We can make a prototype of such a system on our own, while Josh fiddles with 3.1, but it would need to be tightly integrated into the official docs eventually or it will be condemned to a slow death.

[Rick]

I say go external. I've used Allegro before and the external docs were way better and updated more often and had more examples for game related stuff, which I think is something we would all like to see more of. It's nice to know what a function is and does, but it's also nice to see some examples of more game related tutorials/examples. Maybe in the code examples functions becomes links back to the offical docs here? That would probably be ideal. Not sure how hard that would be to have it automatically do though.

[AggrorJorn]

Just a reminder that there is an external wiki now. Any help is welcome.

http://leadwerks.wikidot.com/

[YouGroove]

You could add usefull code like :

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/7665-turning-objects-towards-other-objects/

 

Vec2 v = entity0->GetPosition(true).xz() - entity1->GetPosition(true).xz();

float angle = Math::ATan2(v.y,v.x);

entity0->SetRotation(0,angle,0);

 

(There is more stuff code in programming section that could be in wiki snippets)

 

Another point, this WIKI could be in LE3 site under "Documentation".