Oolite Wikipedia - some issues
Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 3:04 pm
Can't help but notice that the only effective method to whizz around the wikipedia is by using the search function.
If, for example, one tries to read about Tionisla, one finds a choice of the following:
Tionisla: basic information page which to my untutored eye seems relevant to Elite Dangerous rather than Oolite
Tionisla (Rough Guide): an entertaining description of the planet and graveyard.
Tionisla Chronicle Array: on the edifice - and its originating OXP
Tionisla Orbital Graveyard: on the fictional source and the 3 OXPs
Tionisla Reporter: On that OXP and its attendant mission
Tionisla Rising: on the fiction by Dylan Smith/Winston
If one then wanders about a bit further, one may even stumble upon Sector 1/Tionisla which escaped the indexing function. That is linked to the Galaxy 1 description page as well as a general description of the planet.
Criticque of Pure Thought
• The pages are not categorised in a way explaining what they are really about (see confusion over ED below)
• The pages are not linked to each other, making navigating between them rather tedious.
• The search box disappears once one has chosen one's choice, making the process of returning and selecting another choice tendentious & tedious - and militating against the process. If one just presses 'return' then one is delivered forthwith to the first choice adumbrated upon below (which is of questionable utility to a neophyte, unless they defect to ED instead).
Criticque of Applied Thought
Tionisla really needs some sort of 'gubernatorial health warning' that it is relevant to ED (and presumeably the various Frontiers - assuming any real distinction between them) rather than Elite & Oolite. It has no links to any of the other pages.
Tionisla (Rough Guide) Oolite lore. Links to Tionisla Orbital Graveyard only. There is also a line of links to local systems, viz: Neighbors (7.0 LY or less): Xeesle, Zaonce, Isinor, Bemaera, Zaalela, Qutiri; note that only Zaonce, Isinor and Qutiri link to the relevant pages (because they are the only ones mentioned in the 'Rough Guide'). No links for the others. If one does succumb to temptation and type any of their names into the search box, one is instead presented with a magnificent work of art festooned with brackets, parentheses and equals signs which require Cody's many millennia of post-graduate study in the realms of grammarie and cryptomancy to decipher.
Tionisla Chronicle Array: whilst informative, has no links to any of the other pages - even the Tionisla Reporter!
Tionisla Orbital Graveyard: Uses the acronym TOGY without explaining it (unlike the Rough Guide, above). No links to any of the other pages. Does not mention that TOGY is half-way between Tionisla and the Sun.
Tionisla Reporter: Again, no links elsewhere - even to the Tionisla Chronicle Array
Tionisla Rising: Again, no links - even to Tionisla - despite its being set in the Frontier version of the Ooniverse (there are no obvious references to either TOGY or the Reporter - but it was written in 1999 (5 years before Aegidian et al published Oolite). This probably counts as Frontier Lore (one assumes that ED has ignored it).
Sector 1/Tionisla: This ought to be the one that the search function directs one to. It is the proper introduction to the System - in terms of both lore and Oolite gameplay. It has links to the Rough Guide page and to TOGY as well as a dead link to the Tionisla Chronicle. None of the other pages link to it, needless to say.
Criticque of Judgement
To repeat, there are issues here which should be relatively easy to sort out. But they do require either frogmarching the individual page authors to set their respective houses in order (assuming that their souls have not transmigrated to the Abyss that is ED) - or else allowing a copy-editor to run riot. We seem to have four poorly connected sets of Tionisla pages lurking in the wikipedia: Oolite gameplay, Oolite OXPs/lore, Frontier/ED gameplay reference & Frontier lore.
___________________________________________________________________________
When I started faffing about with Oolite a couple of months ago, I found myself marooned in a Cloud of Unknowing. I was using the wiki quite extensively to try and work out what the dickens was going on and how everything fitted together. Not being a demented devotee of the silicon chip (I am blessed with an extensive library whose use I prefer), I confess to having found all this supremely mistifying. I can well imagine that various of our erst-while colleagues of the younger generation may well have found the ensuing confusion conducive to pursuing other interests instead.
I"d be happy to put in a little time to try and sort out some of this (adding in page-links and categorisations - rather than embarking on a radical rampage of deletion or alteration of all the text in sight) if there was some way I could get access to the wikipedia.
If, for example, one tries to read about Tionisla, one finds a choice of the following:
Tionisla: basic information page which to my untutored eye seems relevant to Elite Dangerous rather than Oolite
Tionisla (Rough Guide): an entertaining description of the planet and graveyard.
Tionisla Chronicle Array: on the edifice - and its originating OXP
Tionisla Orbital Graveyard: on the fictional source and the 3 OXPs
Tionisla Reporter: On that OXP and its attendant mission
Tionisla Rising: on the fiction by Dylan Smith/Winston
If one then wanders about a bit further, one may even stumble upon Sector 1/Tionisla which escaped the indexing function. That is linked to the Galaxy 1 description page as well as a general description of the planet.
Criticque of Pure Thought
• The pages are not categorised in a way explaining what they are really about (see confusion over ED below)
• The pages are not linked to each other, making navigating between them rather tedious.
• The search box disappears once one has chosen one's choice, making the process of returning and selecting another choice tendentious & tedious - and militating against the process. If one just presses 'return' then one is delivered forthwith to the first choice adumbrated upon below (which is of questionable utility to a neophyte, unless they defect to ED instead).
Criticque of Applied Thought
Tionisla really needs some sort of 'gubernatorial health warning' that it is relevant to ED (and presumeably the various Frontiers - assuming any real distinction between them) rather than Elite & Oolite. It has no links to any of the other pages.
Tionisla (Rough Guide) Oolite lore. Links to Tionisla Orbital Graveyard only. There is also a line of links to local systems, viz: Neighbors (7.0 LY or less): Xeesle, Zaonce, Isinor, Bemaera, Zaalela, Qutiri; note that only Zaonce, Isinor and Qutiri link to the relevant pages (because they are the only ones mentioned in the 'Rough Guide'). No links for the others. If one does succumb to temptation and type any of their names into the search box, one is instead presented with a magnificent work of art festooned with brackets, parentheses and equals signs which require Cody's many millennia of post-graduate study in the realms of grammarie and cryptomancy to decipher.
Tionisla Chronicle Array: whilst informative, has no links to any of the other pages - even the Tionisla Reporter!
Tionisla Orbital Graveyard: Uses the acronym TOGY without explaining it (unlike the Rough Guide, above). No links to any of the other pages. Does not mention that TOGY is half-way between Tionisla and the Sun.
Tionisla Reporter: Again, no links elsewhere - even to the Tionisla Chronicle Array
Tionisla Rising: Again, no links - even to Tionisla - despite its being set in the Frontier version of the Ooniverse (there are no obvious references to either TOGY or the Reporter - but it was written in 1999 (5 years before Aegidian et al published Oolite). This probably counts as Frontier Lore (one assumes that ED has ignored it).
Sector 1/Tionisla: This ought to be the one that the search function directs one to. It is the proper introduction to the System - in terms of both lore and Oolite gameplay. It has links to the Rough Guide page and to TOGY as well as a dead link to the Tionisla Chronicle. None of the other pages link to it, needless to say.
Criticque of Judgement
To repeat, there are issues here which should be relatively easy to sort out. But they do require either frogmarching the individual page authors to set their respective houses in order (assuming that their souls have not transmigrated to the Abyss that is ED) - or else allowing a copy-editor to run riot. We seem to have four poorly connected sets of Tionisla pages lurking in the wikipedia: Oolite gameplay, Oolite OXPs/lore, Frontier/ED gameplay reference & Frontier lore.
___________________________________________________________________________
When I started faffing about with Oolite a couple of months ago, I found myself marooned in a Cloud of Unknowing. I was using the wiki quite extensively to try and work out what the dickens was going on and how everything fitted together. Not being a demented devotee of the silicon chip (I am blessed with an extensive library whose use I prefer), I confess to having found all this supremely mistifying. I can well imagine that various of our erst-while colleagues of the younger generation may well have found the ensuing confusion conducive to pursuing other interests instead.
I"d be happy to put in a little time to try and sort out some of this (adding in page-links and categorisations - rather than embarking on a radical rampage of deletion or alteration of all the text in sight) if there was some way I could get access to the wikipedia.
