FEWiki Suggestion/Complaint Thread

[Otherarrow]

Hello there! I am Otherarrow, and, relevant to this topic, I am one of the admins at the Fire Emblem Wiki over at Wikia (or Fire Emblem Wikia. Both names have been used). I've come to realize over the years that getting feedback on just the wiki itself is pretty much impossible, so I decided that I'd ask the community here (as disasterous as that may be).

So yes, give me your suggestions on how we can improve the wiki, ideas about things we can try, and complaints about what we are doing all wrong.

As some of you may have noticed, I first brought this up in Xenomic's thread about Awakening screenshots and icons and such for wiki, but the moderation suggested I make my own thread (espcially after that derail. Sorry about that Xeno).

(While we are on the topic, don't bring up King Marth for the time being. It would just be redundant at this point.)

So there we go! I apologize in advance for any unpleasentries from my end.

EDIT: I can't believe I have to specify this, but I don't count "your wiki sucks, just give up" as valid critism. If you insist on stating that, at least say "your wiki sucks, just give up, but if you insist on it, you can improve things by doing etc etc".

Edited February 23, 2014 by Otherarrow

[Klokinator]

Well I actually do have some criticism about the site design, so take it with a grain of salt.

While most people don't believe in competition in the strictest sense, the fact is that FEWiki is competing with the other FE wiki. Meaning, this one. http://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page (I think you guys have way more activity so it's more like they're competing with you, but let's ignore that point.)

I actually like their site design way more, aesthetically speaking. The rounded edges compared to your harsh squares, the nice color shades compared to yellow on white, some other misc things. One thing I like about your site though is that the navigation is way better.

[spoiler=Yours]

DAT NICE SIDEBAR

[spoiler=Theirs]

dat... clusterfuck.

Even though it's a clusterfuck though, I never have any issue finding related pages to something I'm looking at. Also the issue of how nice they look compared to you strikes me when I go to an actual page.

[spoiler=Theirs]

Theirs has nice rounded edges, a list of the developers and important people, etc on the right, as well as a list of contents closely resembling Wikipedia's LoC. It also has a nice tidbit about what the title of the game directly translates to, and links to every character and place of note mentioned (Even if they're red because the pages haven't been made yet).

[spoiler=Yours]

Yours is flat and text heavy. Not enough catches the eye, aside from a picture which is standard for wikis. You do have actual pictures in the gallery at the bottom (Not in screenshot) while they don't, but that's more because they're a less active wiki. Yours, not so much. I do like the Pictures link on the right side of yours though, a list of all images in the wiki is easy to find and fun to look through.

I do feel that looking at what your competitor does "wrong" to see what you can improve on is an important step in making your own site better, and so is looking at their site to see what they do right to see if you can't (shamelessly?) copy it on your own. If it isn't broke, don't fix it?

[Otherarrow]

I have to admit, the other site does look rather nice, at least aestheticly, and their game template does do a much better job than our...picture. Of course, In the topic of rounded edges and such, I have next to no knowledge of wikicode (most of the code I do handle is sporked from elsewhere, admittingly) so I would have no way of knowing how to do that aside from sporking that code too.

The table of contents pops up automatically when enough sections are on the page. So that is just a matter of expanding the article! (...Yeah, in hindsight, our Gaiden page is pretty sparse. Well, it's always been but now that we have actual content and info and have had for some time...) I do think we should have some sort of game info template, and I am surprised it hasn't come up before. I am not sure if I am going to spork their template exactly, that would probably just come off as too blatant.

I get that the color preference is subjective, but I admit, I don't really like their choice of colors. Maybe it's because I never really associated such colors with Fire Emblem, but part of it is that there are a lot of wikis with those colors. Ours aren't exactly unique either, but shrug. What would you recommend? I can see how it would be troublesome to find something representative but still actually readable.

I will be honest, forgive me if I am ignorant on some of the visual issues with our wiki. I use the Monobook skin exclusively, but the default (and the one visitors see) is Oasis (or whatever they are calling it now). I admit, I have been slow to pick up on how the Oasis skin looks or its features in the past (for instance our Oasis skin background used to be much worse and I didn't notice until someone came by suggesting the replacement) . But that is no excluse for the yellow brown blocks on the main page (or the solid grey character templates, which I do like but will admit is not the most visually stimulating).

[Klokinator]

Personally I think a red/blue combination would look good, if tempered correctly. Most lords in FE have red hair or blue hair and it's a very fire emblem-y combination. Not many sites pull it off (or try...) but when done correctly it can be less Mario and more FE.

TM actually uses a red/blue theme and I find it to be extremely appealing, visually speaking. We actually use I think green a lot on one page to make a separation distinction but otherwise we hold to blue/red combo 99% of the time.

P.S. What does the Monobook layout look like? Maybe it could be the default theme instead of ugly yellow?

Edited January 24, 2014 by Klok

[Otherarrow]

Monobook? The best way I can explain it is that it resembles Wikipedia's skin from a few years ago. Basically, a more primative Wikipedia skin. The background is set to just plain white, and the most we have for decoration is the logo, but the sidebar is more handy and not hiding behind menus and such (also, I actually have something set up there...) That won't help the brown yellow of the front page though, as that is just the page itself.

Red and blue eh? Hmm. I'll mess around with it. (Tanas Manor looks pretty nice btw.)

[bookofholsety]

suggestion: give up. the wikia is a poorly written lost cause

for the sake of comparison, here's a few pages on the wikia and their non-wikia counterparts

FE6: wikia / non-wikia (the non-wikia one isn't even COMPLETE and it's already better than the wikia one)

Arvis: wikia / non-wikia

sages: wikia / non-wikia

Falchion: wikia / non-wikia

Luna: wikia / non-wikia

Grannvale: wikia / non-wikia (see also: almost every page linked on each; seriously the non-wikia one's fe4 coverage is superb)

FE4 chapter 6: wikia / non-wikia

dismounting: wikia / non-wikia

class changing: wikia / non-wikia

spotpass: wikia / non-wikia

also jesus christ have you seen what passes for acceptable screenshots on the wikia? that's just embarrassing

the other wiki is incredibly spotty in the quality of its coverage, has a fuckton of stubby pages, is far less active and could benefit from some attention to bring the rest of it up to scratch, but the fact of the matter is that at its best, the content is presented far, far better and more coherently than the best the wikia has to offer. pretty much the only advantage the wikia has over the non-wikia one is that its header is a lot shorter, which is much appreciated (one of my pet peeves is ridiculously bulky headers which take up half the screen on most computers)

honestly half the problem here is the wikia platform itself. there's a very good reason so many wikis have jumped ship from it, and hell that's the entire reason the non-wikia FE wiki exists in the first place. the wikia may have more expansive coverage, but the non-wikia one's quality control - while far from perfect - is significantly better. in a perfect world we'd have something as actively worked on as the wikia with all the consistency and high quality of the non-wikia one's best, but alas, we don't

also, your archetypes page literally calls Katarina an Est-archetype. i don't care about anything else; i will always laugh my ass off at this

in conclusion, lolwikia

Edited January 24, 2014 by bookofholsety

[Otherarrow]

Yeah, I kinda knew that I'd get some "just give up" responces, but those don't help anyone. (and I am actually pretty proud of our Arvis page. Sure, it isn't as flashy but that alone doesn't make a good page). Also, seeing as I wrote most of the FE Wiki stuff, saying that it is a poorly written lost cause and that I should go elsewhere is just inviting me to turn the other place into a poorly written lost cause.

Anyway, those shitty screenshots are indeed shitty, but they are basically placeholders, as we need the images but no one has uploaded them. It's not like images just magically appear you know. I've been wanting an excuse to delete them for a while, but no one has actually provided any sort of replacement. Call me stupid, but I'd rather have crap over nothing. (also, the Thor Hammer one was one I thought I deleted with the recent purge of unneeded crap, but it must have missed my sights, sorry). But as this was the only actual valid crtique you gave, even if snidely, I will go ahead and do it. Thank you.

The Archetype page has always been a shithole. I used to patrol it regularly, but idiots keep adding stupid shit constantly and I just gave up. I've been considering just reducing it to what we know is an archetype example by what was given by a recent artbook (...I forgot which one. I want to say the Anniversery book), but shrug.

Sorry for my rudeness in all of this, but thanks for nothing. Personally, it looks like the major advantage the other wiki has is looks. Not even presentation specfically, but looks. It has nicer templates. It looks nice. Personal habits of mine revolving around fair competition prevent me from giving it a indepth look though, so sorry if I insulted any editors of the other wiki.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Otherarrow

[Tables]

My main issue with the FEWiki is that fact checking, and presentation of information, tend to be rather poor. For example with the former, the Leila article lists her SPD growth as 80% instead of the correct 0%. Or look at the Luna page, which is mysteriously missing FE8's edition of the skill (Pierce). Also on a style note with this page: the overview description focuses entirely on the FE4 incarnation, while... what the heck is up with the description of the picture?

For the latter, just try to compare the stats of a Killing Edge to a Shamshir in FE8. It's just impossible to do reasonably. Or try to compare the bases and growths of Kent and Sain. Or even just look up the Cavalier class base stats.

I'm often on Twitch talking to people on various FE streams, and whenever people cite facts from FEWiki, I often find they get things wrong, or can only find information very slowly, and I always end up telling them to get facts from SF instead. The wiki seriously lacking in comparison. It might be better at dealing with non-fact things, but I rarely find myself needing to look stuff like that up.

I think probably the other thing I'm trying to get at here is, what is the wiki trying to do that SF doesn't do?

[Otherarrow]

We've been considering Pierce a separate skill. Do you think we should just merge them? (No, I don't know what was up with that caption, I am sorry for never noticing that. As for the overview...I don't get it. It's not like Luna has a varied history of different effects. I've made it more general, but there is only so much you can do without making the rest of the page redundant IMO.)

Sorry if this makes us look like (more) hacks, but I am pretty sure most, if not all, of our stats come from Serenes. Stuff like Leila's wrong growth was probably just typos/oversights that folks failed to catch. Sorry. Those are just plain goofs. So yeah, I admit, the fact checking isn't the best. You are right there.

I don't understand the Killing Edge/Shamshir comment or the Kent/Sain comment. Both things being comparied have pages. Both have sections for those games with stats. You compare the stats on the two pages. I don't know how nessicarily to improve on that. Well, there is one thing: I think at least Awakening has all the stats for all the weapons from that game together on its weapon list page, and we should probably do that for all of them for easier viewing. (As for class bases, we just flat out don't have them yet. I'm sorry. This is a gap in our coverage, plain and simple.)

What does the wiki do that Serenes doesn't do? Well. Huh. I guess...the wiki tries to write about the things alongside the stats while Serenes, with a few exceptions, has just the stats and data staight out. Which is more preferabe, well, OK Serenes is superiour to the wiki and without it the wiki wouldn't be anywhere as good as it is now and I do recommend it more, but in a parallel universe where the wiki was actually somehow comparible in quality while still retaining the same style of presenting content, which is preferable depends on what the reader is looking for.

I'm sorry, I responded to your post with mostly confusion. I am no help at all.

Edited January 24, 2014 by Otherarrow

[Xenomic]

"I don't understand the Killing Edge/Shamshir comment or the Kent/Sain comment. Both things being comparied have pages. Both have sections for those games with stats."

He's referring to them being on the same page to compare. You'd have to go to two separate pages to compare something from the same game (which I've always had issues with myself even on the Final Fantasy wikia). The problem though is it'd be really redundant to have the same information in multiple places...hmmm.

[Klokinator]

I think the problem is that you guys ar presenting information, but you're not looking at it from the pov of the viewer, the person who wants to look up something.

For example, before we ever even made TM, Boo and I had to decide what would make us different. Serenes Forest already does a good job presenting information for people to see. We could make it prettier, give it a fancier layout, but does anyone really care about that? Don't get me wrong, I think SF's information presentation is barebones and ugly sometimes (For example this page lists everything by release date and not game date, the text on the left is hard to see against the BG, it's tiny, the headers don't really stand out nor do the titles of the games, the alignment is wacky, and the plaintext for weapon names is very monotonous and difficult on the eyes) but EVEN so, even if we just make ours prettier and beautiful and we code the most fantastic layout ever, will that attract viewers? I don't think so. Obviously it'll attract some but not that many considering the effort spent.

So we started thinking about how we could format our pages to present information in the most logical ways possible. We saw that SF and FEwiki and pretty much every other FE site lists skills in FEA alphabetically, which is the obvious choice, but we decided to list them by class instead. If that doesn't make sense to you, consider that most people are interested in knowing what skills they'll get on a reclass in FEA and therefore this becomes the more logical choice. We noticed that sites don't really have a consistency with listing character order in a game (It's generally just by chapter and then within that chapter doesn't matter) but we decided to go by recruitment order and when exceptions arise like two units recruited at once, we either go by their name alphabetically or by level (Lower leveled comes first) but I actually forget the exact criteria we used for tiebreakers.

My point is, we thought about what we wanted to accomplish with each page we've made and what unique features we wanted to code, and as such that has made us focus on what is really important to us; efficiency. We also wanted features, so Boo coded the FE4 Children page (Seriously just take a look at that and marvel at it, I'm still shocked at how easy it makes FE4 pairings) and the FE13 Shops page and some other pages such as that.

At this point we're done with most of the difficult stuff and we're just filling out the tedious stuff. You could say our period of fun is over and now it's time to work. So personally, my recommendation to you is to rethink the goals of your site and how you can improve on what's currently out there. Honestly, if the answer is "you can't" then I do think calling it quits is a good idea. Of course, as long as there are people willing to contribute, there will be a wikia. If however, you realize that you can really overhaul the site and bring it up to speed, more power to you. There have been some good points made in this thread and I hope they guide you in future endeavors.

[gringe]

I find a lot of the grammar and spelling on the Wikia to be pretty poor and a lot of the articles are filled with opinions or baseless assertions. I find this pretty common in Wikis written by very young people. I don't mean this as a personal offense, but judging by your posts here, you're not the best person to be authoring or checking articles. I think you should find a grammar and spelling Nazi who's also willing to weed out the needless information and get an article strictly to the point with as little opinion or rambling as possible.

Thinking about it a little more though, I really question the value of a Fire Emblem wiki to begin with. I mean, most of the information is catalogued if not on Serenes Forest then elsewhere on the Internet. Things only really change when a new game comes out, which isn't very often, so does the series even need a database that can be edited by anyone?

Edited January 24, 2014 by gringe

[RJWalker]

The way character stats are presented is really due for a complete overhaul. It really looks ugly.

That does not look good or well organized.

[VincentASM]

Having followed FE Wikia for ages, I'm kind of indifferent really.

However, I do believe it serves its purpose well as a general to-go place for casual users, mostly. I bet people just getting into the series or have general knowledge love checking out the pages about characters and whatnot.

Trouble is the quality of the pages varies tremendously, which can't easily be helped. On one hand, FE Wikia has a ton of contributors, but probably not enough in relation to the sheer number of pages. This also causes an issue with accuracy, as not enough experts are around to notice and fix mistakes.

I think the way to go is to look at what pages and type of pages are most popular and work on improving those. Sadly, I can't find the page for FE Wikia, but we have one on SF's wiki--apparently the FE13 DLC and story scripts are most popular (which makes sense given it's a popular game and the script is hard to find elsewhere gotta hand it to the awesome people who worked on those pages), for example.

[Xenomic]

From what I've seen, there's about 3-5 people that edit the wikia daily, or at all. I don't see very many people editing it whenever I'm one, and I've gone hours where I'm working on it and see nobody at all (outside of Otherarrow who helps here and there with putting things where they belong, deleting stuff, and the like that needs to be done). So it really falls down to nobody really editing it, hence the questionable quality of pages and the lack of information. I'd help out with making pages more spiffier, but A) I'm still new to the series myself, only have recently completed FE8 and B) Not knowing everything about the series like I do with the Final Fantasy series, therefore I can't put information where it belongs without looking it up elsewhere which can also result in having wrong information.

I could probably whip something up for the tables by borrowing code from the FFWiki, as I have an idea of what to do with the tables, but I'll leave that up to Otherarrow if he'll let me do that or not. It'd require a lot of work though as it'd have to be done on a looooot of pages and whatnot.

Again, one of the major problems is wikis can't really show everything on one page, such as all characters, without presenting the information that's already present on a character page multiple times (i.e. having say, Tiki's Awakening stats on both her main page and on a "List of Characters in Awakening" page). Unless of course, people would rather it be that way??

[Otherarrow]

From what I've seen, there's about 3-5 people that edit the wikia daily, or at all. I don't see very many people editing it whenever I'm one, and I've gone hours where I'm working on it and see nobody at all (outside of Otherarrow who helps here and there with putting things where they belong, deleting stuff, and the like that needs to be done). So it really falls down to nobody really editing it, hence the questionable quality of pages and the lack of information. I'd help out with making pages more spiffier, but A) I'm still new to the series myself, only have recently completed FE8 and B) Not knowing everything about the series like I do with the Final Fantasy series, therefore I can't put information where it belongs without looking it up elsewhere which can also result in having wrong information.

I could probably whip something up for the tables by borrowing code from the FFWiki, as I have an idea of what to do with the tables, but I'll leave that up to Otherarrow if he'll let me do that or not. It'd require a lot of work though as it'd have to be done on a looooot of pages and whatnot.

Again, one of the major problems is wikis can't really show everything on one page, such as all characters, without presenting the information that's already present on a character page multiple times (i.e. having say, Tiki's Awakening stats on both her main page and on a "List of Characters in Awakening" page). Unless of course, people would rather it be that way??

I'd be down with you doing something with the tables. It'd require a lot of work, true, but so does everything to a degree. No use putting it off, and yeah the tables have gotten kinda ick (what with the odd conversion from white to drab grey and problems with Oasis squashing them).

And yeah, we don't really have a lot of regular editors, at least not any more. A few familiar faces come and go, but it's rare that the wiki gets busy, if that makes sense. (which makes the comments about the other wiki having this wiki's activity kinda "sure whatever" to me. I guess you meant our activity at it's highest?)

Actually, thinking on it, I can see the use for the stats being in multiple places. One place so you can compare with other units of the same class, and on the page itself we go more in depth into growths, modifiers, reclassing, etc (and comparisons to past/other incarnations in the case of units like Tiki). Yeah, it's redundant, but a convenient redundancy. If that makes sense.

As for the other posts, I've been reading them and making note of what they said. I just don't really have anything meaningful to say at the moment. Sorry about that.

[Xenomic]

http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/User:Xenomic/Sandbox

Example of the template I made for the FE13 characters. Second table is the original, bottom is the one with my current template. What do you guys think?

In addition, I was thinking of having the table merge the Normal/Hard/Lunatic stuff, but that would make it too congested...

[Klokinator]

The new table is better, yes, but it doesn't show STR/SKL/etc above the numbers so it's more confusing.

Edit: Here's how TM does it. Maybe this'll help? http://tanasmanor.net/games/fe13/characters/

Edited January 24, 2014 by Klok

[Xenomic]

I just updated the table so give it another look. Trying not to copy from TM sadly (meaning I've no idea how to incorporate Hard/Lunatic mode stats into the table, nor Growths).

[Klokinator]

If you just put another row above your template, with the first row saying "Class Name" and the other rows being for STR/SKL/etc and identifying the numbers below them, see how that looks.

[Xenomic]

How does it look now?

[Otherarrow]

Hmm. I will say I personally think it looks better the other way, if only because there is a lot of empty space in the top two bars. On the other hand, it causes the stats and equipment and such to fit in on the remaining two rows rather nicely and evenly. So I can see it work either way.

[Xenomic]

I'm thinking the other way is best from looking at it.

Also, I know how to deal with the Hard/Lunatic stuff. Just make multitabs like on the FFWiki!

[Klokinator]

Yeah this new way is the best so far. I like it. You can even show lunatic bonuses right under the main stats!

[Xenomic]

Actually, I think I have a way of handling this, once I figure out how the FFWiki does multitabs. >_<