Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
WIKI RESTRUCTURE PROJECT There's a lot wrong with the site wiki. Let's fix it. Full draft and discussion: Wiki: HomePages/Samsara/Drafts Last major update: August 14th, 2023 This is a pure draft, anything on that page is subject to change and nothing there should be considered finalized or in-progress. If you'd like to weigh in on something and you're not already an Editor, let me know and I can give you the role, or post here and I can port it over. Current plans: Wiki: HomePages/Samsara/Proposals Last update: August 17th, 2023 Anything here is what I am actively planning on working on. As such, they should be prioritized in discussions as they will likely be finalized and acted upon within a week or two.
Relevant thread content as it was posted on April 1st, 2022 is below. AKA, "Samsara posts another stickied thread in Site, to the surprise of literally nobody". AKA, "Samsara posts an important thread on April Fools' Day, to the surprise of literally nobody". TASVideos has undergone a pretty huge amount of change, lately. We updated the site itself, we updated a lot of site policy, and things will be continuing to change as we continue moving the site forward. However, there's a pretty substantial relic of the past that's a lot harder for us to change, and that's A REAL HECKIN' LOT OF WIKI PAGES. There are a lot of pages with outdated information, pages that are no longer necessary, page translations that need to be updated to reflect rewrites and revisions, dead pages, orphans, pages with modules from the old site that are no longer supported (or implemented differently) on the new site, pages that are in desperate need of reworking and reorganizing... Basically any problem you could have with a wiki apart from vandalism is one that we currently have. Given that a lot of this stuff is subjective, it's hard to find it and correct it in the wild, so that's what this thread is for. This thread will be for tracking and discussing such pages. If you'd like to help out more directly, feel free to ask for the Editor role! No real requirements, apart from being a trustworthy person who won't misuse the privilege.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Memory
She/Her
Site Admin, Skilled player (1553)
Joined: 3/20/2014
Posts: 1765
Location: Dumpster
I'd just want to point out despite the date that this is not an april fools joke.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Darkman425
He/They
Editor, Judge, Skilled player (1290)
Joined: 9/19/2021
Posts: 263
Location: Texas
Taking a solid look at the incredibly nightmarish List of Ideas page and it would take quite a bit of work to make it all tidy and usable. The forum wishlist threads linked within should probably be at the forefront of what's seen first and probably what would stick around should the page stay. Someone wanting to see X game get done enough to make a wishlist post might just be enough to give someone motivation and that seems at least valuable enough to make a hub for those threads. If the game lists could stick around, they're better off in separate pages rather than crowding one big page. This is definitely egregious considering that some systems do have their own pages while others are crammed into the page. The lists themselves could be trimmed down from maybe cutting out games that already have proper publications or just games that actually are suggested in the wishlist threads, though the latter can still be horribly bloated regardless and also a headache to maintain cleanly.
Switch friend code: SW-2632-3851-3712
MESHUGGAH
Other
Skilled player (1917)
Joined: 11/14/2009
Posts: 1353
Location: 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝑦𝔞𝔯
Just found this thread. I've been made a lot of investigations lately about wiki pages on what information can be seen and other relevant things like planning a better navigation for the visitors. TL;DR: I have ideas and already started working on this months before. My idea is pretty straightforward and sounds easy, currently I'm just a little bit overwhelmed by the volume of pages and information while figuring out orders and average visitor intuitivity. 1. Revamp ArticleIndex - This is the starting point of the TASVideos Wiki for those looking for information - Audience order of visiting this page: staff members, community members and then every else visitors - Here is my current state, heavily work in progress of my suggested version: https://tasvideos.org/HomePages/MESHUGGAH/CheatSheet - Here is what I think needs to be ironed out and how to improve it for future readers: a. Increase coverage of wiki pages b. Add elaborations and details to pages listed c. Offer heading based list as well. There are many overlapping contents that makes some categories seemingly bloated. Either this would require more tabs or what I'm suggesting. 2. Defining Wiki page statuses (this thread) - Information needed but not accessible at the moment to work on this: Page hits, visitor page visiting behaviours - There should be a simple objective based checklist to filter down based on: a. Unique and/or Duplicate content (Disorganized, content or page need to be reorganized) b. Outdated because of maintainer of page (Outdated because maintainance is hard, for example some of my projects like SDATASes) c. Outdated because of TASVideos 2.0 (Disorganized, content or page need to be reorganized) I hope my points are understandable. Feel free to write your thoughts. In the mean time I will continue working on my ArticleIndex revamp
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
MESHUGGAH
Other
Skilled player (1917)
Joined: 11/14/2009
Posts: 1353
Location: 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝑦𝔞𝔯
Oh, actually I have some TODOs already written that require editing System Pages: System Pages TODOs - https://tasvideos.org/System/PrivacyPolicy page should be moved to avoid system page warning shown as this page is intended to be standalone - https://tasvideos.org/Account/Register remove text Register, change . to !, Remove below - https://tasvideos.org/Account/ForgotPassword change . to ! - https://tasvideos.org/Activity change description to reflect this: Activity of judges and publishers
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Memory
She/Her
Site Admin, Skilled player (1553)
Joined: 3/20/2014
Posts: 1765
Location: Dumpster
My sorta plan currently is to make almost everything parents and subpages to take advantage of the site map and built in subpage lists. Pages related to a given topic would be Topic/X. Example: Judging/JudgingGuidelines I haven't really gotten started on moving stuff around yet, mainly because updating links is kinda a pain but it's definitely something to keep in mind.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
MESHUGGAH
Other
Skilled player (1917)
Joined: 11/14/2009
Posts: 1353
Location: 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝑦𝔞𝔯
Wow, that Site Map page will come in handy for sure! Is that page automatically generated or it's a hand-written list of pages? Asking since I don't see the usual wiki buttons on bottom of the page. The Site Map shows the structure of pages, which means it's a "complete" Page / SubPage format of the wiki content which is already distributed as Topic / SubTopics. Will reconsider what I really want to achieve with ArticleIndex revamp. I think it makes sense to have an ArticleIndex similar to the SiteMap (header and subheader with notes) based over the tabbed one. Ability to see all at once and jumping through the usage of Table of Contents links over clicking on tabs and finding visually or with CTRL+F. I think moving pages from one place to other should be the last step of reorganizing the Wiki.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Memory
She/Her
Site Admin, Skilled player (1553)
Joined: 3/20/2014
Posts: 1765
Location: Dumpster
MESHUGGAH wrote:
Wow, that Site Map page will come in handy for sure! Is that page automatically generated or it's a hand-written list of pages? Asking since I don't see the usual wiki buttons on bottom of the page.
Automatically generated.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
GMP
He/Him
Editor, Reviewer, Active player (394)
Joined: 5/22/2020
Posts: 197
Location: Chennai, India
I personally think ListOfIdeas is a cool page, especially if its maintained in proper sync with the respective wishlist forums. However yeah, posting the whole library like its done for some of the systems is not ideal.
Experienced player (690)
Joined: 11/23/2013
Posts: 2232
Location: Guatemala
I just want to mention that Neko Project 2 isn't in the "Preferred Emulators" list on the Wiki: EmulatorResources page on the site, despite the site now accepting PC-98 TASes. It's only present in the Sub-pages section at the very bottom of the page.
Here, my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dekutony
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
dekutony wrote:
I just want to mention that Neko Project 2 isn't in the "Preferred Emulators" list on the Wiki: EmulatorResources page on the site, despite the site now accepting PC-98 TASes. It's only present in the Sub-pages section at the very bottom of the page.
Added.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Post subject: "Platform: ..." in LTM format
Sand
He/Him
Player (143)
Joined: 6/26/2018
Posts: 174
LTM movies, by default, have the system set to Linux. You can override the default by adding a line to annotations.txt like:
Platform: DOS
However, I did not find the Platform: ... syntax documented anywhere. I discovered it by downloading and inspecting a few LTM publications. The places I checked were: I suggest that Platform: ... be documented in at least one of the above pages. The submission where I noticed this is Thread #23925: #7943: Sand's DOS Mixed-Up Mother Goose in 25:51.83.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
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Posts: 11475
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Sand wrote:
LTM movies, by default, have the system set to Linux. You can override the default by adding a line to annotations.txt like:
Platform: DOS
However, I did not find the Platform: ... syntax documented anywhere. I discovered it by downloading and inspecting a few LTM publications. The places I checked were: I suggest that Platform: ... be documented in at least one of the above pages. The submission where I noticed this is Thread #23925: #7943: Sand's DOS Mixed-Up Mother Goose in 25:51.83.
Done. I have no idea how we missed this initially.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced player (690)
Joined: 11/23/2013
Posts: 2232
Location: Guatemala
Atari Jaguar/Jaguar CD, BSX, TIC-80 and 64DD are not in Wiki: EmulatorResources since the release of BizHawk 2.9. Also Wiki: Platforms hasn't been updated in over a year, meaning platforms like Flash, PC98, PICO8, MacOS, and the other platforms I mentioned above are not present on the page either.
Here, my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dekutony
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
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Did some updates, too tired to add the rest.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
Hopefully this is the appropriate thread for this issue: The image links on Wiki: GameResources/NES/LegendOfZeldaOutlands are broken for me. I probably have the originals on an old hard drive, if you want them.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Dacicus wrote:
I probably have the originals on an old hard drive, if you want them.
Yes. Fixed by adelikat.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced player (690)
Joined: 11/23/2013
Posts: 2232
Location: Guatemala
There's still no 2022 awards page in Wiki: Awards.
Here, my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dekutony
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
dekutony wrote:
There's still no 2022 awards page in Wiki: Awards.
This was fixed a few days ago.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
The information in "The rating system" tab seems to be outdated when rating a movie. It talks about dropdown menus and hyphens, but there's nothing like that. How can I give [5332] NES Color a Dinosaur "four color theorem" by warmCabin in 08:11.72 the 1337/10 it deserves when the instructions don't even make sense?
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Moderator, Senior Ambassador, Experienced player (907)
Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014
The Wiki: Tasbot page is also horribly out of date and there were more topics than could fit reasonably on a single Wiki page so https://wiki.tas.bot was created to specifically address console verification and charity event TASBot aspects but it's facing the same issues described above, which is to say, there's a lack of folks who have an interest in editing the wiki. :) Needless to say, I'm aware this page needs help and we'll figure something out eventually.
I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
Bigbass
He/Him
Moderator
Joined: 2/2/2021
Posts: 190
Location: Midwest
dwangoAC wrote:
https://wiki.tas.bot was created to specifically address console verification and charity event TASBot aspects
Any console verification topics that don't directly involve TASBot, should remain here, not on wiki.tas.bot. Last year I reworked Wiki: ConsoleVerificationGuide to provide more details about each step of the verification process, and have made a few updates since then. There's still parts missing, I only have so much time/energy for projects. Plus some parts, like the Console Specifics section, needs more research to write properly/accurately.
dwangoAC wrote:
there's a lack of folks who have an interest in editing the wiki
That will always be a problem. Writing documentation, especially in one's free time when other projects could be worked on, isn't something most people have motivation to do. Additionally, the kind of information that would be written on these pages, can't be written by just anyone; it needs someone who understands the subject matter. In the case of console verification for example, there are very few people capable of adding to the wiki(s), since so few people do regular console verifications. Or in the case of TASBot's charity work, it requires someone who is familiar with the events TASBot has been apart of, or knows how to research such details.
TAS Verifications | Mastodon | Github | Discord: @bigbass
Moderator, Senior Ambassador, Experienced player (907)
Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014
Bigbass wrote:
dwangoAC wrote:
https://wiki.tas.bot was created to specifically address console verification and charity event TASBot aspects
Any console verification topics that don't directly involve TASBot, should remain here, not on wiki.tas.bot. Last year I reworked Wiki: ConsoleVerificationGuide to provide more details about each step of the verification process, and have made a few updates since then.
That's totally fine with me - we'll generally have some overlap but that's not an issue at all.
Bigbass wrote:
Additionally, the kind of information that would be written on these pages, can't be written by just anyone; it needs someone who understands the subject matter.
Or a tech writer who can interview subject matter experts, but that's its own skill that's also hard to come by some days. :)
I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
Editor, Active player (458)
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Posts: 240
dekutony wrote:
Atari Jaguar/Jaguar CD, BSX, TIC-80 and 64DD are not in Wiki: EmulatorResources since the release of BizHawk 2.9. Also Wiki: Platforms hasn't been updated in over a year, meaning platforms like Flash, PC98, PICO8, MacOS, and the other platforms I mentioned above are not present on the page either.
Should all be up to date now. Some of the Platform descriptions are a bit short, but I didn't feel like adding "It was a commercial failure" to half of them.
Editor, Active player (458)
Joined: 2/11/2018
Posts: 240
I've been doing various things on the wiki but would like to address the starting point for all to-dos: updating the TODO page itself. What needs to be done and how will it improve the site?