Dungeons and Dragons Wiki:Discussions/Wikia Merge

SRD and the Update

I'm confused. I understand you're trying to put up some of the SRD, but there's a really fantastic SRD done in full cross linked HTML at http://www.d20srd.org/index.htm, can we just remove all the 3.5 stuff on the front page, and link to that site instead? Giving us more room for setting material and 4th Edition ideas? [6-3-2008]

I was under the impression that Wikia didn't put any sort of limit on the sizes of its wikis. So you could easily include all of the SRD and still have room for 4th edition stuff. In fact you could (and should) also include 2nd edition, 1st edition and OD&D stuff. All of this stuff is Dungeons and Dragons and if you can attract wiki-editors who are into this old stuff, they could be given a section of their own to get on with.

Games like OSRIC (which is to 1st edition AD&D what the SRD is to 3rd edition D&D) have created Open Game Content for retro-gamers. As far as I know, nobody has yet taken that OSRIC OGC and turned it into a hyperlinked resource similer to the Hypertext d20 SRD. There are two OGC systems that do a similar thing for OD&D. Labyrinth Lord and Basic Fantasy Role Playing.

So if the owners of those systems are happy to work with you, this wiki could become a valuable reference source that allows people to understand the rules of retro versions of D&D.

On the other hand, you could also be wikifying more 3rd edition content. There are a number of 3e netbooks, that create OGC that expands on the SRD. All of that could be harvested to create something that goes far beyond what the Hypertext d20 SRD website does. You would need to be careful about any products containing PI (and include a copy of the OGL), but this is something you could do, if you wanted to.David Shepheard 00:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Official worlds

Just browsing through and noticed that the list of offical D&D worlds doesn't include Kingdoms of Kalamar. Solers 07:11, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for adding it! --Radaghast 23:45, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Inclusion

How much should we include? just pure Dungeons and Dragons? Or should we also include direct offshoots such as Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms? We need to have a plan before we can really do anything big.--Vercalos 07:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

And is it just me, or is much of this stuff taken directly from www.d20srd.org?--Vercalos 03:16, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

It looks like a lot of it is. The content is under a free licence, so that's not too big a problem. We can make an exception to the GFDL-only rule for this wikia to include the Open Gaming License. But pages do need to be carefully marked (there is a notice at the top of them, so that's a start) and we need to be sure that we are complying iwth all the terms of the licence. And, of course, there is no point in this wiki just being a mirror of another site - we need lots of good original content too! But that will come with time :) -- sannse (talk) 08:19, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

We might need that exception; the OGL 1.0a is not a copyleft, but my guess is that section 8 ("... You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Game Content.") could be incompatible with the GFDL.

Meanwhile, even though I have almost no knowledge about Dungeons and Dragons, I was hoping that this wiki could become a companion resource with Wikihack, a wiki about the NetHack computer game. Several things in NetHack (the six attributes of strength, dexterity, ...; the armor class system; the alignments of Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic; the gelatinous cube; ...) come from D&D, and the Main Page says that this is the wiki for "original pictures and descriptions on the races, creatures, spells and more". --Kernigh 04:54, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I think Nethack rather like Dragonlance or Norrath... It's a world based off of Dungeons and Dragons... So we might include a NetHack subsection... but there is at least some content that isn't Dungeons and Dragons related in NetHack, that I've noticed....--Vercalos 04:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

That sounds a good solution - having a Nethack section that can link into the main articles where that fits, but still keeping the main articles showing the "official" world. Where there are differences, then you can just put in another article "Nethack weapons" or a pseudo-namespace like "Nethack: Weapons" -- sannse (talk) 09:15, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Mmmk.. I just wish I had something to contribute, you know? Aside from formatting stuff..--Vercalos 06:41, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

 :) just jump in and add whatever you know or can learn from reading around. The more you add, the more likely that others will join in and add more! -- sannse (talk) 14:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Encouraging content

As a visitor to this site, I have a couple of suggestions that may help you achieve your mission. Firstly, do complete adding wikified d20 SRD here: it will help people write original content: for example I could write "Prestige Class: Dodge Fighter. Prereqs: Fighter level 7, Dexterity 17..." The more I can link to to reference my work the better.

Also, if you want to encourage specific types of content, set up a skeleton structure for them and add links to the main page. For example, you could make an organised gallery for original artwork, or a structure for adding different types of new prestige class, original NPCs, maps, campaign settings or whatever you're looking for. Good luck! 210.55.250.226 22:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

D&D Wiki

Are you guys trying to get material to be like D&D Wiki? Or what is this site exactly....? --166.70.232.84 03:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure.. I'm just a moderator that came on after the founder virtually abandoned it. I've tried to add some info, paraphrasing and all that, but I just don't have the time or the knowledge necessary to get this place going. The best I can do is repair vandalism and block vandals.--Vercalos 07:23, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

What if you guys talked about maybe working together, like this site as a news and SRD, and maybe a place to hold campeigns(i'll be making a loggin soon) i'd be willing to work on the campeign part, and they could do homebrew stuff?? I haven't talked to them yet though. --72.84.80.42 07:27, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget that the material of D&D Wiki is available to be reused here, as long as everyone who wrote material over there, gets a credit over here. If this wiki and D&D Wiki were going to have a 75 percent overlap, there is no reason why both wikis couldn't borrow each other's material to boost their page counts and become more valuable. Once the common pool of material is mostly established, both wikis could branch out into the non-similar areas that the other wiki doesn't want to cover. (For example if one wiki stuck to canon, the other could include both canon and homebrew. Something like that would give both wikis different appeal to different readers. And there would be a point in a reader wanting to bookmark both sites, so that they could compare both types of information.) David Shepheard 00:33, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

4E

What's our plan? Do we rearrange the front page to have 2 sections --- 3.5 SRD and 4E SRD? Feels like we aught to break everything out as well: 4E Adventures, 4E WotC boks, etc.

Save vs. death ray 15:45, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikia Gaming IRC channel

Hullo! I am Kirkburn, your friendly local Wikia Gaming Helper!

You may be interested to know there is a Wikia gaming IRC channel, #wikia-gaming on chat.freenode.net, where you can hop on, ask for help from users of other gaming wikis, or offer your own experiences. If you are not familiar with IRC clients, you can access it from http://irc.wikia.com/gaming.

Different people may be on sporadically, but we organize weekly chats at a fixed time so we can get the most number of people online at the same time to ask and answer questions, or just to hang out. The admins of some of Wikia's biggest gaming wikis (e.g. WoW, Halo) often attend them. You can find the time for the next chat by following this link. Template:W:Next gaming IRC chat

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me! Kirkburn (talk) 17:13, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Kingdoms of Kalamar. Solers 07:11, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for adding it! --Radaghast 23:45, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

What should be included here?

I would like to take up the Inclusion-thread from above and divide it into questions to get a clearer picture what really belongs into this wiki. Is this ok here or should it better go to Questions & Answers? Thanks for discussing! Daranios 20:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Only official (= published) material, or homebrew as well?

As D&D Wiki is an already established site specifically for homebrew material (if I got that right), I would vote for official material only. This could also be a clear dividing line between the two wikis. Daranios 20:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I would vote to include anything published for any D&D game, including non Wizards/TSR stuff, and d20 stuff for D&D. Why not?  :) I would not include anything for non-D&D games, although we could consider including some stuff for intentional knock-offs like Hackmaster? I would definitely not include homebrew stuff, as I think there are other wikis to cover that sort of thing. BOZ 16:22, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

There are plenty of places on the web for players and dungeon masters to put their home-brew stuff in, but I don't see that as a reason to forbid posting unpublished material. As BOZ put in a comment above, "why not?"! --Radaghast 17:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Published material only I say. Hackmaster would be somewhat ok, but not everyone's Netbook. Maybe an article on netbooks in general though. Webwarlock 17:48, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

If people want to be strict with published materials, we can link to ebay and let people buy the originals. A wiki limited to published material would also be infringing on copyright. We can have articles about some high profile NPC's that are in the Greyhawk, Dragonlance, or Mystara worlds, especially for quick reference, but expansions of the core materials that show how that NPC would interact with characters of various levels would be important. Chadlupkes 01:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with the statement, that a wiki about published material only would be of little use and an infringement of copyright. Of course one has to be careful, but as an encyclopaedic reference, this wiki would be useful without replacing the original material. An example that works is the Forgotten Realms Wiki. As said above, there already is a place where to place homebrew material, the D&D Wiki. If I got that wrong, please let me know. If not, why have two wikis that do the same? Daranios 15:45, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

No two wikis will have the same information unless the same people do the work on both. dandwiki is popular because they encourage expansions of the game material. I understand the difference between an encyclopedia and a homebrew extravaganza. We also need to keep in mind the difference between TSR and the gaming community. I would be as interested in articles about the NPC's in Dragonlance with information coming from all of the various books and modules as I would be in learning how to start a new "Dancer" class of character. Let's see where it goes. The worst thing we can do is to debate things until the Xorns come home. Chadlupkes 16:06, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Unforturnately, Chadlupkes is right - 4E license is even more strict in this sense than OGL. Just re-telling what's in the official rulebooks is not only boring, it is also illegal. Chris Pramas (head of Green Ronin) had to even cancel one of the announced products recently (action cards, if I'm not mistaken) because of that. --Radaghast 18:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I was hoping the result of this discussion might go into a guideline to know what I have to expect here and to get the answer to the question: Are you guys trying to get material to be like D&D Wiki? Or what is this site exactly....?

Would such a guideline be too much regulation?

Anyway, more thoughts/arguments why I am for "articles based on published material only":

- Here it's not (mainly) about rules, it's about encyclopaedic summary of information. I guess the dividing line between summary and copyright infringement is small, but it can be done (that's the basis of wikipedia, right?).

- Homebrew and published material should not be mixed at all, or very clearly distinguished. Anything else would be a source of confusion and disagreement for people basing part of their game on information here.

- Sometimes homebrew material maybe better than published one, but the latter has at least undergone a redactional process - and it is part of a defined codex of material instead of "anything goes" (which may not be the worst, but:)

- If I was looking for a new "dancer" class I would go to D&D Wiki, if wanted to know what the heck a Rilmani is, I would look here.Daranios 19:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The question is what will make this WIKI unique and draw people to it. As of now I’m focused on 4.0 and its development as a mature role-playing game. This includes 3rd party support along with the new WOTC books. Under the GSL you can no longer copy material like what was done under the SRD, but new material can be created for both home brew and small press purposes. There is also a set of fan site rules coming that should address some of the issues for this site.

Does DnD:About look like the guidelines you want to see? --Radaghast 18:36, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it looks good. I though that was the guiding principel to the site. Quode 20:07, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Allow for pocket over-views with links, some sample material etc. Allow for the creation of campaign material that may allow a draw to develop.Quode 18:45, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, wow, DnD:About is just what I was looking for all along, but I overlooked it. Is it possible to place a link to DnD:About or DnD:Policies and guidelines in general on the main page, maybe next to DnD:Mission Statement? It seems to me to be vital piece of information for any author here.

Not wanting to make a revolution or something, but are the guidelines there definitve or still under discussion? Daranios 19:30, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Only Dungeons & Dragons, or D20 as well?

I would be happy with solely content about D&D, as D20 includes such a variety of themes (e. g. Star Wars). Daranios 20:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

This is definitely a D&D Wikia, not d20 Wikia, since d20 is indeed also about Star Wars, BESM, Call of Cthulhu and whatnot. On the other hand, there's plenty of fantasy stuff out there that style-wise fits quite well with hardcore D&D: Arcana Evolved, Iron Heroes, Legends & Lairs, Blue Rose, Swashbuckling Adventures, Grim Tales, Dragon Lords of Melnibone, Conan RPG, Sword & Sorcery, etc... Anything that is not called D&D only because it changed one too many rules or for legal reasons, is mighty welcome here. --Radaghast 17:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this wikia should be strictly D&D material. If people want to time-warp into a galaxy far, far away, we can show them where to find useful information elsewhere. Chadlupkes 01:52, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Only Wizards of the Coast and TSR?

I would prefer to stick to stuff from Wizards and TSR. If material from other publishers is included, a header or something like that to distinguish it might be helpful. Daranios 20:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I actively disagree. Hundreds of sourcebooks by Malhavoc Press, Green Ronin Publishing, Necromancer Games, Avalanche Press, Bastion Press, Fantasy Flight Games, Goodman Games, Privateer Press, Troll Lord Games and other publishers are just as good as WotC stuff, and quite often even more creative (at least it was the case with 3.5, I'm not sure how things will work out for the new license they have for 4.0). --Radaghast 17:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

This is a users wiki, not a Wizards/TSR wiki. If people want to add material that would apply to adventures that characters can have beyond the TSR worlds, I would say that's fine. We can distinguish them on the pages as not sourced from TSR writers, but we should allow it to be included here. Chadlupkes 01:55, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Only "Core" D&D, or campaign settings as well?

It seems good to me to include material from the various campaign settings as well, as they are a central element of D&D. Again it might be nice to distinguish articles with a header or something designating the setting it refers to. Daranios 20:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is a good point (both of them, actually). Right now most articles about setting-specific stuff belong to the corresponding categories. --Radaghast 17:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Categories and header graphics are important. Chadlupkes 01:55, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

What about existing wikis?

I know about Forgotten Realms Wiki (very large, also includes Al-Qadim), Eberron and Spelljammer Wiki on Wikia. I think it doesn't make sense to try to duplicate their material here. I would find it ideal if one could find their articles with the search engine here as well, though, as they definitely belong to D&D. Maybe it is possible to integrate the All pages pages from those wikis here. I have no idea how this could be done, though. Daranios 20:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I can import as many articles from other websites as needed, but it seems to be better to just link to them since they are evolving and being maintained elsewhere. For example, we can have a Forgotten Realms article that lists the main features of the setting but links to the FRWikia for the details. --Radaghast 17:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I would hold the same true for the Greyhawk Wiki as well. Webwarlock 17:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Create a list, and we'll use them as jump-off points if people want more specific information on those worlds. I believe this wiki should be where we explain the core rules, races, spells, etc. that are not world specific, and also give a place for us to add information about worlds that don't have their own place. Chadlupkes 02:00, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Another point I want to add here: from my experience on this and other wiki-sites I can say that it pays off to import foreign content if we are planning to extend it. For example, we can import some Wikipedia article that is Ok there but too short for this place, and add more details while we work on it. If the original is evolving and the local copy ain't (like it would turn out for FR Wiki content), we should link instead. --Radaghast 18:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for namechecking Spelljammer Wiki. It is still fairly small, but it is nice to see that it has been noticed by other wiki-editors. One thing about linking (rather than creating your own articles) is that the objectives of your wiki may or may not be the same as the objectives of another wiki. For example on Spelljammer Wiki, I am pushing for the wiki to be a canon encyclopedia with the emphasis on providing citations to specific sections in the books that the information comes from. If you wanted to go beyond that (and perhaps wikify some of the great fanon material from Beyond the Moons) you would need to do it elsewhere.

One thing you might want to consider, is creating a 'portal' for each campaign setting, that includes links to the wikis you have mentioned, but also includes links to the 'official site' (or if there is no official site - the leading fan site). You could also include a full list of products within that campaign setting (as that is stuff that you could import and not need to update). Over at Spelljammer Wiki, most of the product articles include details on how to buy the commerical PDFs (these are not affiliate links and are only there to help people find pages where they can obtain products). You might want to consider how you might want to present a full list of D&D products (of every edition and every campaign setting).

If you do create 'portals' for each campaign setting, tools to search other wikis could be included on those pages. You might need to ask the Wikia staff for help, but could probably get them to allow you to create interactive forms that allowed people to search other wikis or other non-wiki websites. An uber search page, that allows people to search Greyhawk Wiki, Canonfire!, the official Greyhawk Mailing list (from WotC), the Canonfire Forum and the WotC forum for Greyhawk would be very useful as a 'homepage' for fans of that setting.

Even if the Wikia staff can't (or won't) help you with search forms you could add URLs like this:

http://www.google.com/custom?domains=spelljammer.wikia.com&sitesearch=spelljammer.wikia.com to allow people to click on a link to search a 'rival' wiki with a subdomain. A few minutes of hacking the URL will let you replicate that with other campaign setting wikis. (Sadly the wikis with directories, instead of subdomains are less easy to do.)

Good luck! David Shepheard 01:06, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

After I have asked Wikia's staff, I have not found a direct way to link related wikis, so I have created the lists proposed by Chadlupkes for Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Eberron and Greyhawk Wiki, as well as one for the D&D project at Wikipedia.

Do you think we should also create pages like that one for subjects of one of the other wikis? In my opinion, that would be nice, although it is not very important. I would also propose to strife to create links directly to other wikis, e. g. like the link to Zakhara in the Al-Qadim article. What does anyone else think?

Should this be written down in the DnD:Policies and guidelines? Daranios 10:59, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

And one more question: What about source material? Should articles about sourcebooks from campaign settings covered by other wikis be included, or should we refer to those wikis, or should we refer to the existing TSR Archive, which is very comprehensive (except for 4th Edition)? Daranios 16:25, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The rule of thumb here is to include some basic info that should be enough for a non-excited reader to get the basic idea, and complete that with links to more detailed articles in more specifc wikis. --Radaghast 16:16, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Source labels

As a result to the discussions above, I have created a label for articles based on TSR/Wizards's Material. Please have a look at it at Kurtulmak. Before getting on and creating labels for different companies I would like to discuss:

• Is it okay like that?
• Should we distinguish between TSR, Wizards of the Coast and both, or not?
• What should the label for "homebrew material" be? At the moment that is the only phrase I can think of. Maybe there is a better one?

Daranios 10:59, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, sounds ok to me. TSR/WotC distinction doesn't seem crucial to me, since it's easy to see which one we're talking about by looking at the year. Homebrew material label should look like "this article is based on material by: John Doe", with a link to either John Doe's user page here on this wiki, or an external link to his webpage, preferably the former. --Radaghast 16:16, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Merge D&D Wiki and Dungeons & Dragons Wiki?

I noticed this wiki is mostly inactive. I have a much larger and more active wiki on wikia, the Dungeons and Dragons wiki. I was wondering if you would be interested in merging your content into our wiki, so it gets a wider audience. I don't see much of a reason to have two wikis with the same purpose. Surgo 20:15, September 5, 2009 (UTC)

This wiki has some periods of activity and inactivity, right now it's very quiet, I give you that. Of course, there is no reason to keep two wikis with the same topic, and we should certainly merge. Can you tell me why did you create a separate wiki and didn't want to contribute here in the first place? And second question, more technical — do you perhaps want to keep this domain name as it is shorter and has internationally prefixed subwikis? --Radaghast 14:36, September 6, 2009 (UTC)

We actually came from another wiki that was already established, and already had between us movers the number of articles you see on our wiki (over 6000). We did not move to this wiki because we saw it as inactive, and we were unwilling to set up base anywhere where two of our own could not be bureaucrats (we moved after the owner of the old wiki (http://www.dandwiki.com) basically told everyone to go fuck off -- which we did, with every last active administrator). This was before we learned about adoption procedures (though with a semi-active owner here, it's unlikely they would have let us adopt immediately and not to mention that would have been quite insulting to you but see the next paragraph). Quite simply though, we weren't willing to be under anyone's thumb but our own again. Plus, slightly more technically, we wouldn't have been able to edit the styles and layout to our preference (those pages are admin-locked), and no offense but we really weren't digging the color scheme and general layout over here.

Also, we weren't aware you were actually active. As far as we could tell at the time, the last time anyone cared about this wiki was a long time ago (and as I said, before we learned about adoption procedures). As for question #2, not sure, I'd have to discuss it with my people. But anyway, as a practical matter, your stuff on this wiki would definitely get a much wider audience if you feel like copying it over to ours too. Surgo 19:29, September 6, 2009 (UTC)

If you want, feel free to step into our chat room -- the link is on the sidebar of our wiki. Surgo 20:18, September 6, 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to jump in on a talk page, but as far as I understood, Dungeons and Dragons wiki collects homebrew material. DnD wiki here also welcomes homebrew material, but at the moment there is an emphasis on information about published D&D material. Because of that difference I am not sure if merging the two makes sense. Maybe we should advertise each for the other wiki with the regard to that difference? Daranios 20:27, September 8, 2009 (UTC)

Dungeons and Dragons Wiki also collects information about published material, and frequently links to it in the homebrew material. Surgo 00:11, September 9, 2009 (UTC)

Part of what I have been doing here was to look for a clear and easy way to distinguish between homebrew and published material (and that subdivided into material by TSR/WotC and other companies). Someone who, like my group, wants to stick to published material in order to keep some kind of overview should be easily able to do so in a D&D wiki. If that was the case at Dungeons and Dragons Wiki, I would support merging in order to save double work and to get a wider audience. At first glimpse, I did not see my way through Dungeons and Dragons wiki yet. Daranios 16:38, September 9, 2009 (UTC)

We had a publishing framework on the old wiki, which wasn't perfect. When we moved wikis, we left most of that behind (though we have a few books). I really want to get that back, and have a dedicated navigation section for publishings and information about them. We are very interested in porting your publication information over to our wiki and making its navigation and indexing significantly better. Surgo 17:57, September 9, 2009 (UTC)

I guess we could figure out a way to combine the two wikis well, so I would, as I said, support merging. If there was a merging, did you, Surgo, decide if you would like to keep this wiki's domain name? What do you think, Radaghast? What other questions would have to be answered before merging could be done? Daranios 15:25, September 30, 2009 (UTC)

We'd keep both domain names I imagine, though dnd.wikia would probably be the main one. However if there is a technical issue that prevents a merger, I'd rather merge the smaller domain into the larger (and it's pretty clear how that would work). We'd also aggressively change the old page templates and add new ones to this wiki's stuff, I imagine, to allow for more robust information display and better search capabilities. If you want to talk about this in actual real-time, please step into our wiki's chatroom! Surgo 01:05, October 10, 2009 (UTC)

Anyone else want to chime in here? Daranios? Speaking of which...what exactly do you guys want to keep in terms of content? I'm honestly having trouble navigating the content here so I don't know what *is* here. Surgo 15:55, October 21, 2009 (UTC)

I would also be interested in any other opinions. And Radaghast should have the final say, though he has been away a few weeks now.
A good place to get an overview about what is here would be DnD:Categories. If the wikis merged, I would vote for keeping more or less everything. The few pages dealing with the organization of the wikis would have to be merged. And I recently encountered the rests of "wiki roleplaying campaign" here, that has been abandoned and which I could do without.
Otherwise I would distinguish the content of this wiki real-world info (writers, companies, books...), rules information and published in-game information. And then there is homebrew stuff, which could be integrated into the (as far as I can see) well-organized system of Dungeons and Dragons Wiki.
What I mainly do not understand about that wiki: In my opinion, categories should be more or less organized like a tree, so you can easily browse up and down, like it is done here. Is that the case in Dungeons and Dragons Wiki, too, or do you do it completely differently? Daranios 19:41, October 23, 2009 (UTC)

Categories on the Dungeons and Dragons wiki are organized a bit more like a bush than a tree :P A homebrew monster in 3.5 would have Category:3.5e, Category:User, and Category:Monster (and Monster would itself be a subcategory of 3.5e and 4e). It's done in this bush-like fashion for better querying through DPL and Semantic MediaWiki. You can drill down through the categories in the fashion you said on our wiki but...we firmly believe that clicking through the categories is annoying to the user and does not provide as much information as one one need on each page, so we are replacing that functionality with a new MediaWiki extension (which I am in the process of writing) that does the "drill down" thing but in a way that the user finds more intuitive and provides excellent, fine-grained searching (so when you go into the PrC category you can then search for all PrCs with minimum level 7, for example).

We also make extensive use of semantic properties as a replacement for many categories. We used to use many more categories than we do now, and are in the process of removing several categories and replacing them with properties set by page templates (especially on equipment and monster pages). This is being done via bots.

I've also looked at the category list you provided -- it looks like "Gaming Terms" would basically be cut (because we have a fully transcribed, linked, and redirected SRD that defines everything you have there and more) and some stuff from your "In-game Terms" list would have the categories mutated a bit (mostly just add the "Fluff" or "Description" or whatever-we-settle-on category). We would find the Published Material most useful. I think if we merge you guys, we could add a very large amount of navigatablility and sortability to the data you currently have, not only just by virtue of the infrastructure we already have in place to do this but also with the two extensions I'm developing for MediaWiki that really nails the "search and index" problem. Surgo 17:35, October 24, 2009 (UTC)

So yeah, if you want help merging articles, let me know what you want to merge and I'll get it done. No need to keep fractured userbases around. Surgo 18:58, November 10, 2009 (UTC)

Hi all, we're delighted to see your communities discussing a merger -- while we allow duplicate wikis we always feel that popular topics are best served when everyone's working together in one place. As a long-time D&D player myself I would be thrilled to see what you can come up with together.

Let us know (via Special:Contact) if and when you feel you're ready to move forward, and what you want the final result of the merge to be -- we can move articles from the smaller wiki into the larger or vice versa. We may be able to move articles more easily behind the scenes than having you use Special:Export and Special:Import, and we can also perform the appropriate renames and redirects so you have the sitename and domain name you all agree on. (both dnd.wikia.com and dungeons.wikia.com would continue to get people to the merged wiki.)

Another thing to keep in mind is that we can provide custom namespaces if you need organization tools other than categories and templates to separate published information from homebrew -- we're happy to help in any way that will make the proposed merger easier. Thanks! — Catherine<staff/> (talk) 18:39, November 15, 2009 (UTC)

Update note: we're getting a Publication: namespace, after that everything should be easily merged (and I will do just that), as well as our own publication information that will go into that namespace. Surgo 15:22, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to start merging stuff as soon as we get that Publication namespace. It's not as simple as Special:Export/Import, I'm afraid, as the stuff on here needs to not only be copied over, but also set the appropriate template (Publication Infobox) which displays some key information that is sometimes lacking here and also sets semantic properties (for better searching and indexing). Surgo 03:50, November 17, 2009 (UTC)

From reading the above I see that the userbase of this wiki expressed concern with a merge - but Surgo has went ahead and spearheaded the merge without their support. Is this true? 04:02, November 17, 2009 (UTC)

Could you please quit bringing your external baggage into discussions like these, and cease with the wild accusations? This has been under discussion for months and agreed upon by all parties. Surgo 04:05, November 17, 2009 (UTC)

I'm asking valid questions with no baggage - just concern. Could you provide the diffs where the above parties of this wiki agreed with the merger? 04:09, November 17, 2009 (UTC)

All those concerns have already been addressed -- read this thread (since it was copied from another page, there is no diff on the main page). Of course, Daranios and Radaghast are welcome to chime in and I really wish they would, because their help in this process of copying information over would make it go much more smoothly and efficiently. Surgo 04:17, November 17, 2009 (UTC)

Unless you meant to provide a link to a thread when you used the phrase "...read this thread..." then I must continue to disagree. The two dnd.wikia users discuss this with you, come to understand, but do not agree and still have some concerns at their last involvement with the discussion. To continue to spearhead a merge without completely finishing that discussion first is wrong. 04:22, November 17, 2009 (UTC)

I would agree to merge and solve all open issues together in good faith during the process (and/or during the preliminary how-to-merge-discussion), if Radaghast as sysop here agreed, too. I hope he will tell us his opinion in the not-too-far future. I am afraid I can only devote little time here at the moment because of "real"-life-reasons. Daranios 18:40, November 17, 2009 (UTC)

It probably goes without saying, but Radaghast will of course be an admin on the merged wiki. Surgo 20:47, November 17, 2009 (UTC)

Luckily the internet isn't going anywhere, so we can afford to not rush and wait for the admin here to support or decline. 21:54, November 17, 2009 (UTC)

Radaghast, Daranios -- I realized that we just wouldn't have the manpower to merge everything manually (especially in the case where we have the same articles), so I'm in the process of writing a bot to merge all the stuff in automatically. There will probably be a couple hiccuped articles but most stuff should be good. Surgo 17:09, November 22, 2009 (UTC)

Having a bot doing the work sounds a lot better to me than having to do it manually. Is there any Wikia routine or something for merging two wikis? And the question which of the two domains would be preferably (dnd here is at least shorter!) is not yet answerered, right? Daranios 18:44, November 22, 2009 (UTC)

Both domains will go to the same place. The "Wikia routine" (not sure what you mean by that) is taking one wiki's content and importing it into the other wiki, then the first wiki gets closed and redirected. The bot I'm working on does the take / merge content thing. Surgo 23:24, November 22, 2009 (UTC)

Merge Status

I've been working slowly on the bot due to my term finishing up (I'm in graduate school). Once it's over things should go quite fast. Surgo 04:53, December 1, 2009 (UTC)

Glad to see that my inexcusable absence during the last months have not stopped you guys. As I said, having two wikias on one topic is absurd and we should agree on any sort of merger as long as the useful content from both wikias end up in one place. (We also had some weird moments with dandwiki.com, so let them be). Probably the best way to ensure that will be to bot-copy everything from here over to you (since you seem to have more content) and then slowly process it there to integrate completely into your category structure, template use patterns, naming conventions, etc. If you decide (I haven't found an answer, perhaps missed it?) to take this prefix (dnd:), we can probably ask someone from Wikia Stuff to do the renaming (or perhaps even aliasing?). Do you need any help with the bot? Or is it already done? --Radaghast 13:29, February 11, 2010 (UTC)

Good to see you back here again! Daranios 20:09, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

Welcome back, Radaghast. A lot of the merge is difficult because there's such sparse information and different naming schemes -- much has to be done manually, and I just don't have the time to do it. Surgo 05:10, February 21, 2010 (UTC)

Make a plan, let's do it all together, just like it should be done in a wiki ;) --Radaghast 12:58, February 26, 2010 (UTC)

Publications first. Check out the stuff in Category:Publication on my wiki -- your wiki has a bunch of info on publications that we don't have up yet. If stuff could be massaged into that format, that'd be great. Surgo 23:59, February 26, 2010 (UTC)

Just a quick ping, to see if anyone here is willing to help out with the transfer? Surgo 23:29, March 27, 2010 (UTC)

I am there to help as time permits (I am through with my labelling round, but there's real life). Can the tools sugested by Catherine above help us? I would be happy if we made a plan like Radaghast suggested first, though. Daranios 19:56, March 30, 2010 (UTC)

My plan is basically -- get all publication information merged, then worry about the rest piece-by-piece. The publications are the big thing missing from our wiki, so that's the easiest step and the most natural to do first. Surgo 02:45, March 31, 2010 (UTC)

As I see it there are three kind of information here: "Homebrew", published, and real-world, including authors, companies and books, which are most important to your wiki. When I first came here I was mainly interested in articles about "in-universe", published articles, like Rilmani, etc.. I spent quite some effort to help distinguish these categories for those people who want to, and I would greatly appreciate if that would not go to waste. Do you have/plan to have policies, special categories or labels for such articles? The content requirements for homebrew articles, for instance, aim for balance, while articles based on published sources would aim for accuracy and referencing. We could just start out with articles about publications, I also try to formulate a plan below. Daranios 20:10, March 31, 2010 (UTC)

SRD spells titles

Recently a number of spells from the SRD have been added with article names SRD:Spell name. This is a convention that seems to be in use at Dungeons and Dragons wiki. Should it also be used here or should those articles be moved to the respective spell's name? Daranios 20:04, January 16, 2010 (UTC)

Merge plan

A suggestion how to go about merging this wiki with Dungeons and Dragons Wiki:

1 Establish policies for content not yet covered in the new wiki, like articles based on published information.
2 Find out, how to move content:

• Can tools like Special:Export, Special:Import or custom namespaces help?
• Should all articles be moved first and specially labeled or be put into a special category, then adapted to the new wiki one by one?
• How to treat articles with the same names (if any) in both wikis?
• Anything else?
  

3 Put some kind of "Under construction" sign at both wikis, to avoid loosing edits while moving articles.
4 Move articles according to agreed standards. Should it be done by category, alphabetically, or in another way?
5 Redirect "old" wiki.
6 Adapt transferred articles to fit into "new" wiki.

What does anybody think? Daranios 20:26, March 31, 2010 (UTC)

Some replies:

• The in-universe articles will certainly have a place on our wiki. We'll need to make a new namespace for them, though.
• Special:Export/Import will be basically useless. We have different formatting conventions, and the imports will often need to go into a new namespace. For this reason, we shouldn't just move all articles first and then special-label them -- they should be moved piecemeal. This prevents any name conflicts.
• Articles should never have the same name on both wikis. In-universe articles here get their own namespace. Publication articles get their own namespace. From what I've seen, nothing homebrew would even get past our incomplete policy.
• Under construction won't be needed on dungeons.wikia (to be honest it's been under construction since it opened), but people should definitely know to put their edits on dungeons.wikia to avoid them getting missed in the transfer.
• Finally, articles will often need to be moved by hand. They should be done categorically, but for every category there needs to be answered this question: "how is this category of articles going to be indexed?" The answer by the category is not good enough, because in my experience many users hate to browse by categories. There should be good and descriptive index pages that point to all the articles in the category that get transferred.

So yeah, that's my two cents. Surgo 02:24, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Okay. I would have some more questions and suggestions:

• I have seen that articles about books, etc. would go unter Publication:Name of Publication. What namespace (if any) would you suggest for articles based on/summarizing published information? It will be SRD:..., if appropriate, but for the rest?
• Do you already have guidelines how to treat such information? Could you please point to where one could get an overview over the existing guidelines at Dungeons and Dragons Wiki? In what way do you use categories there? Would you agree that both main page and guidelines at Dungeons and Dragons Wiki would have to be slightly adapted to state the articles based on published information will be wanted there?
• Maybe those homebrew articles existing here, that are not up to your established standards, could be treated like unfinished articles at your wiki? How do you treat such information there?
• I just saw that Catherine suggested above, that moving one wiki to another could be done behind the scene instead of manually. Also, even if that was not possible, the Export/Import tools would have the great advantage compared to manual copying, that they would keep the article histories, which might be interesting in many cases!
• I also still have a fondness for the idea of first copying everything, then adapting, compared to doing it piecemeal, because it would keep the transition period of having an wiki that is no longer used normally but in the process of moving short. Adaptation could then be done without any time pressure and without the risk of loosing content. Again, maybe this problem dissolves, if we can do the movement with the help of the Wikia people. Daranios 09:02, April 5, 2010 (UTC)

Some answers.

• We'll need to come up with a name for such a namespace -- any ideas?
• As people move categories over, I'll direct how to re-categorize them if it needs to be done at all. I suspect in most cases it does not. Fluff articles would generally just belong to their campaign setting as a category. Every new fluff article requires a summary property -- which is a one-to-two-sentence summary of the article contents. This appears on a navigation page. Once a category is moved over, it needs a navigation page to go with it so people can actually find the information. To see the way we do this for homebrew, see the 3.5e homebrew navigation tree. The more fine-grained and in-depth the navigation page, the more categories and properties each article needs to set. The navigation page should be as fine-grained and in-depth as makes sense to a newbie who is looking for useful information and no less.
• Unfinished articles on our wiki get deleted after a single week. We encourage people who make unfinished articles to move them to a sub-page of their user page, where they are unconnected with the general navigation structure of the wiki and are not subject to the week-long period. We are extremely strict about this, and it goes for any article -- not just homebrew. Larger project articles like sourcebooks get a month's time instead of a week to shape themselves up.
• There's no "behind the scene" work that is going to create semantic information, properties, and a decent navigation system out of nothing. That is where the majority of the merge work will lie. Talking about Special:Export/Import (which you can use to preserve history if you really want to) is really a red herring, because the actual act of copying stuff over isn't where any work even has to be done.
• What you can do here is see if it's possible to copy everything into a temporary namespace, and then move stuff piecemeal out of that namespace. It would be basically unnavigable, but no less so than this wiki is right now. If we do this we won't be so strict with the week-long incomplete period in that namespace. Surgo 22:34, April 5, 2010 (UTC)

• Copying all articles here into a namespace like DnDWiki: at Dungeons and Dragons Wiki and then moving them into articles fitting into your existing scheme is what I personally would like best. This wiki does not place any time restrictions on articles until when they have to be finished. If one wants to place a time restriction on articles moved into a DnDWiki: namespace at all, it would in my estimation at least need to be a year, depending on how many people would join the adaptation work. This should however be no problem, as there are nor article number restrictions here on Wikia and as those articles would not interfere with your established navigation.
• As for the namespace for articles based on published material: Published: probably would cause confusion with Publication:, and it does not sound very good I think. Canon: comes to my mind. Do you think that is to large a summary for articles based on published sources by many different companies, though mainly by TSR/WotC?
• Requiring at least a one-to-two sentence summary from any article seems sensible enough to me. Stating the sources for non-homebrew articles would also be preferable. Do your standards specifically require anything else?
• Some more questions: Do you use a category tree or something like that at all, or do you organize all that with navigation pages like then one you mentioned? Would the categories used here, if copied to your wiki, cause any confusion with your categories? How do you handle articles were the creator is not around and which has not been adopted? Do you want to use this system of adoption for "canon" (used as a working title) articles or not? (I noticed you did not use it for a "real world article" like Wizards of the Coast.)

Daranios 18:20, April 6, 2010 (UTC)

• While the timeout period won't apply to articles that are copied over from here (though I'd probably set up a 6-month timer on them -- a year is excessive), any newly-created articles on the wiki, no matter what section they are in (homebrew, canon, whatever) will be subject to the incomplete period. We are very aggressive with making certain that only complete, usable, and readable material is available on our wiki. If one wants to create an incomplete article, they can do it in a subpage of their user page and have it contain no categories -- this is what we already have people do when they want to work on an article slowly and won't finish it within a week.

• I think "Canon:" is a great name, and will request the namespace be added ASAP.

• As for what our "standards" require -- it depends on the article type. Some articles, like sourcebooks, only require the one-to-two-sentence summary because that's all that shows up on their navigation page. Others, like homebrew classes, have no fewer than 10 properties that must be set per page -- because that's what is helpful when it comes to searching and navigation. What's required depends on the section. Most "Canon:" articles probably only need the summary.

• Categories are only really used to aid the automatic generation of lists -- which is what our entire navigation structure is, enhanced dynamic lists. That's what every navigation page I linked to so far has been (check out the source code of those pages for examples). (The decision to use special navigation pages instead of categories was made from the beginning, when we realized that category trees were the most useless organizational structure ever devised for human browsing -- very few people actually use category trees to browse. Thus, we use categories insofar as they are helpful to generate dynamic lists, and no farther.) Whether or not copied categories would cause confusion is a question I can't answer without knowing which categories are in question specifically -- there is probably going to be some overlap, and some rethinking that will need to be done.

• Articles where the creator is not around, the article has not been adopted, and the article is not finished results in the article being deleted. We do not have incomplete articles on our wiki, period.

• I'm not sure what system of adoption you are referring to -- I don't think I ever mentioned one. Anyone can adopt an article they want to finish. Also, the page you linked is an old navigation page that isn't supposed to exist on our wiki anymore...not sure why that's still there. (The Publication namespace has been undergoing a bit of an upheaval, and not all navigation pages for it have been created yet.) Surgo 20:21, April 6, 2010 (UTC)

• I now learned from wikia's staff, if we would like to get the articles from D&D Wiki to a namespace like Dndwiki: at Dungeons & Dragons Wiki, we would have to do the following: Create that namespace in both wikis, move all articles here at D&D Wiki into the namespace, then Export/Import those articles into Dungeons & Dragons Wiki. I would be happy to do the movement part, but as of now I do not have the necessary admin rights to help with the Export/Import.
• Ah there was a misunderstanding: I thought that Wizards of the Coast was meant to be an article about the company, not a navigation page." As for what I meant by system of adoption: I have seen at your wiki, that you always have a template with either the author, or an adoptive parent "responsible" for homebrew articles, but not for SRD: or Publication: articles (and I guess for "real world articles" like those about companies or authors), which seems a good idea to me. But what would happen to a, say, finished article where the author is no longer around?
• Putting a six-months timer on pages seems okay to me for the time being, but at the end of that period one would have to have a look, if the remaining articles are useless, or if there had just not been enough time/manpower to adapt them. If that were the case, the period would have to be extended.
• Sorry, I seem to be a bit slow on the uptake as far as your navigation pages are concerned. They seem quite handy to me, but apart from the links to SRD: and UA: on the upper left hand side of the main page: How can I find those navigation pages? Is there an overview navigation page or something? Is there a link on the main page I missed? Daranios 19:19, April 8, 2010 (UTC)

Merge plan 2

To summarize the discussion above (from my point of view, at any rate) and propose a new version of a plan for merging:

• Request a namespace like Dndwiki for both wikis.
• Slightly adapt main page and guidelines of Dungeons and Dragons wiki to include content like articles based on published material.
  
• Put some Under construction sign on the main page here to inform about the merge.
• Move all articles here to Dndwiki:Article name (Is this possible simply with the move option?)
• Move all articles form D&D Wiki to Dungeons & Dragons Wiki with the help of Special:Export and Special:Import; solve arising problems during this process.
• Redirect "old" wiki.
  
• Adapt transferred articles to fit into "new" wiki.
  

Again, what does anybody think? Daranios 19:31, April 8, 2010 (UTC)

I sent off a request for the namespace on dungeons.wikia, and asked if they could just move everything transparently behind-the-scenes (so no export/import required). Surgo 20:19, April 11, 2010 (UTC)

I can now push the button that will automatically move every page into the new namespace on my wiki at any point. Surgo 17:57, April 15, 2010 (UTC)

Err, crap, seems like that's one page at a time. I can either move the pages you tell me to move, or I can wait for them to get back to me about maybe moving everything at once. Surgo 18:45, April 17, 2010 (UTC)

Could you perhaps tell me what you had to do to be able to move pages into the new namespace, I would be happy to move all pages here individually into a new namespace like "Dndwiki", given enough time, while you could adapt the main page and guidelines of Dungeons & Dragons Wiki to fit to the enlarged scope. If you could also please give User:Radaghast and me admin rights at your wiki, we could then Export/Import all categories from here to your wiki together.

I also made a proposal for a slightly different wording of your main page that might fit on the bottom of my user page. It does not yet include any links to expanded guidelines. Daranios 08:39, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

To pull a page from this wiki into my wiki on a new namespace, all you need is Special:Import, it's an option there. If you sign up for my wiki, I'll give you admin rights so you can do it. I'll comment on the wording change when I have more time. Surgo 16:19, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

I have created a user page at your wiki now. Daranios 10:12, May 30, 2010 (UTC)

You have admin rights now. Go forth and import! Remember to make sure every imported page lands up in dnd.wikia. Don't import templates yet -- most templates we'd have duplicates for, the ones that don't will need to be inspected anyway. Surgo 16:01, May 30, 2010 (UTC)