Oolite Bulletins

Split from Screenshots thread

Awesome effort, Gimi - a beautiful desktop image.

I think this image should be linked from the oolite.org site.

Selezen wrote:

I think this image should be linked from the oolite.org site.

I think a lot could be done to the oolite.org site. It is so thoroughly out of date now it needs a major make-over. It really doesn't give an accurate idea of what Oolite is/can be like today.
In particular there are several problems with the Gallery page, which should be our 'shop window'. Some of the 'Built-in' images seem to feature an OXP HUD which they probably shouldn't.
Much more seriously though, there is a link on this page to 'Expansion Packs'. This page is a serious disappointment. It contains only eight images and features just five OXPs, plus a mention of the 'localisations'. Sadly, it is totally un-representative of the range of OXPs now on offer, and really does need a serious overhaul if it is going to do this great game justice.

Gimi wrote:

<stunning image was here>
This thread is a bit too quiet.

Er, wow. Now I need a new computer.

Smivs wrote:

blah blah oolite.org is crap blah blah.

Sorry if that seems blasé...

Maybe oolite.org could be more closely integrated with the wiki...? MediaWIki has loads of plugins that export content through various methods of feeds (RSS etc) which could provide live content. PHPBB has much of the same, and the oolite.org site could function as a dynamic portal to both with a relatively small amount of work, I think. There are various PHP scripts that can read from other sites and accept information from other sources (like bbs or wiki sites) so the back end code of oolite.org could feasibly be modified to do this.

Likewise, instead of directly linking people to pages on the oolite.org sites, ultimately it would be advantageous for all links to point to the dynamic content of the wiki or this forum. A forum page with the latest download link and latest test version would be maintained here (I think that's practically done now anyway) and that forum thread would be linked from the "Latest Downloads" link on the website. And other magic could be done.

Thoughts anyone?

Interesting ideas. Deserves it's own thread: oolite.org.
Suggest split.

Who maintains the oolite.org site anyways? Our site management seems split across three teams: oolite.org, forum, wiki.

Selezen wrote:

Who maintains the oolite.org site anyways?

Me. (All project developers have write access through BerliOS shell accounts.)

Selezen wrote:

Our site management seems split across three teams: oolite.org, forum, wiki.

Remember, EliteWiki isn’t “ours”.

Yeah, I know the wiki belongs to Winston - anyone seen him lately? He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. I've emailed him a couple of times to ask for some plugins to be installed to the Wiki but he hasn't responded.

Since you own the oolite.org site, how do you feel about the concepts discussed above?

I have absolutely no interest in anything that would increase the maintenance burden of the web site or other ancillary stuff. In particular, this includes any web content that needs to be kept “fresh”. I do enough of that on paid time. (Before responding to that, please be advised that it’s very easy to make long-term commitments about this sort of thing, and surprisingly hard to keep them. If anyone wants to propose changes to the static content, the whole thing can be found here.)

Winston’s attitude towards EliteWiki and Giles’s to the forum are much the same, and in particular there’s almost zero chance of anyone wanting to install plug-ins.

I don’t see any benefit to pointing downloads to the forum.

A shame, is that. Unsurprising and completely understandable... but a shame, nevertheless!

El Viejo wrote:

A shame, is that. Unsurprising and completely understandable... but a shame, nevertheless!

And is also the reason some of us were given hack-and-slash superpowers... (at least on the forum)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

hack-and-slash superpowers

So eloquently put, el cuervo!

Ahruman wrote:

there’s almost zero chance of anyone wanting to install plug-ins.

As an admin on the wiki I get asked relatively regularly about username and password maintenance. There are no facilities on the wiki for those, not even to change a user's password if they forget it. I have also had requests to delete accounts and reassign articles to a new account, but again can't do that without either a plugin or direct access to the DB (which ain't never gonna happen).

I also wanted to install a plugin that allows export of articles to PDF, so that people could create ebooks from the more involved articles (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Pdf_Export). But that was just my idea...

Selezen wrote:

As an admin on the wiki I get asked relatively regularly about username and password maintenance. There are no facilities on the wiki for those, not even to change a user's password if they forget it. I have also had requests to delete accounts and reassign articles to a new account, but again can't do that without either a plugin or direct access to the DB (which ain't never gonna happen).

As an admin on the wiki I’d also quite like better user management. Also ParserFunctions. But Winston has previously indicated that it ain’t gonna happen, and having maintained several small wikis I understand his position – it tends to be dull maintenance fiddling interspersed with bursts of excitement that are invariably badly scheduled.

Ahruman wrote:

Winston has previously indicated that it ain’t gonna happen, and having maintained several small wikis I understand his position – it tends to be dull maintenance fiddling interspersed with bursts of excitement that are invariably badly scheduled.

That's a shame.

I'd posit that the members of this forum probably wouldn't class the Elite wiki as a small wiki - in my opinion it's one of the better maintained and best organised fan wikis. It's certainly head and shoulders above the majority of wikia sites.

I think we have a very engaged and quite sizeable community here, and the "product" we all participate in is something special. Giles and yourself (and the rest of the dev team, and the myriad OXPers or course) have created a game that is bringing new players and new contributors on a daily basis. And still it has remained a friendly, responsible and vibrant community. That's BLOODY rare on the internet and I think that our "face" should reflect that.

The question, as you hint, is whether or not that can be done with the minimum of effort on everyone's part.

I have a couple of theories (oh, big surprise there then).

Oolite.org's design and structure is wonderful, but the accessibility to add content isn't great. Building a simple CMS around that design (or using the main elements of that design in an existing CMS template) would allow content to be added quickly and easily. Users with access to that site's CMS could then add or modify content as necessary, but some sort of approval system should be proposed. It would also allow the quick (three clicks in some cases) creation of "Galleries" that could easily be updated with new media (in the spirit of the thread's title).

Can the wiki be ported or mirrored? Could we transfer the content and/or database to another server that more than one person can have admin access to? My main worry here is that if the database or the wiki server goes down, then there's no guarantee that it could be brought back again (for example, if Winston is unavailable / on holiday / ill / dead (perish the thought). It might even be feasible to put the wiki under the oolite.org banner rather than the alioth.net banner for "consistency".

Moving the forum <censored due to the death of Selezen under the can of worms that just fell out of the sky>.