Winfield

We are still designing the core of the Wiki. I'm putting a big focus right now on making the Wiki compatible in features to http://en.wikipedia.org . So if you are a Wikipedian, you'll feel right at home in the UO Community Wiki. Same methods, same templates, mostly the same extensions, etc. etc.

There's another great advantage to following Wikipedia methods. There are hundreds of help files for Wikipedia (and it's base program called MediaWiki), including video tutorials in some places. That means we don't have to create many help files, except those specific to UO Community Wiki ... like how to publish a character biography, find all the uncompleted articles (called Stubs) for establishments and maps, and add your Player Gathering event to the historical timeline and U.S & world map.

I'm shooting to roll out the live main site and Chesapeake site by April 15th, but might be April 30th depending on the "dreaded tax season". Before then, we would like more contributors to get info into the Chesapeake Test site. Rolling out a sparsely populated Chesapeake wiki may not demonstrate the great potential of this system.


Here's our current draft ABOUT US information:

UO Community Wiki (also known as UOCWiki) is an Encyclopedic Reference Wiki for the MMORPG Ultima Online's (UO) Community of Players. Site content deals with what the players do in UO on a particular Shard and across Shards.

• UO players from different Shards can have a shard-specific subdomain (subWiki) here to keep their information current and separate from other Shards. A Mage Tower on Chesapeake will therefore be documented differently than a Mage Tower on Sonoma; both will be called Mage Tower, but on different Shard subWikis.
• UOCWiki and its SubWikis are backed-up regularly. There is also a Survivorship plan ensuring this system will be online for many years to come.
• UOCWiki is not-for-profit as a Cooperative. UOCWiki currently does not have specific legal status.

What can be Documented here?

• This is the right place to maintain character biographies, write stories, describe player towns, document establishments, describe alliances, build a shard history, record historic events, and much more. If players do something in the UO game and we don't want to forget about it ... add it to the UOCWiki system.
• This is not the right place for documenting UO capabilities, UO clients, game mechanics, or the in-game world (called the Realm) in general, such as dungeon maps or item and monster descriptions (see UO Guide). It does not function as a news service, forum system, or calendar system since these capabilities are on other UO official sites and fan sites. We do not want to duplicate effort here.
• Copyrighted Information may be placed in UOCWiki ONLY with permission from the copyright holder.

Oh, we are working to permanently archive certain media files, like contributed talk shows and interviews (e.g., the UORadio files). This will likely be on a more robust media server than a wiki server.

Anyone interested in our UOCWiki efforts, want to get involved while we create and test the system, please PM Winfield, Silverfoot, or Nexus here on UOForums.

Winfield

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Statehood and Cities of PaxLair (Chesapeake): http://www.paxlair.com

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Winfield

New front page on http://www.uocwiki.org showing latest status.

May 5, 2008

We are currently developing a framework for UO Community Wiki (UOCWiki.org) that lets Ultima Online Player Communities record their Shard specific information. This is designed for Encyclopedic information that is unique to a specific UO Shard Community. We are not designing this to replace other UO online references, forums, calendars, guild web sites, or other fan sites.

We are in the process of installing and testing the UOCWiki.org program on the server that also hosts UO Forums. The installation is MediaWiki that is also used for Wikipedia. We are venturing to have most of the same capabilities, templates, and methods that Wikipedia uses.

Our design is intended to have separate Wikis for each UO Shard to document their Shard's history, biographies, houses, events, etc. Yet every user will be able to log in just once, and access all the UOCWiki Shard wikis. Our first design is for Chesapeake Shard, but since some testing is already done, we will likely create several Shard wikis at the same time.

Our management plan intends to have a "survivorship plan" with three years of funding to keep the UOCWiki.org system operating if certain key individuals depart this effort. Therefore, a board of trustees will be in place.

If you are interested in participating in the development of UOCWiki.org, please contact Winfield through private message on UOForums. We also have a UOCWiki message forum on UOForums.

Sincerely,
Winfield

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Statehood and Cities of PaxLair (Chesapeake): http://www.paxlair.com

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Warsong of LS

looking forward to what this could be. Nice to see histories of other shards.

always wonder about other shards, since I only play on one.

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Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment

Nok

Hi Winfield,

Looking forward to it too. News item.

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Winfield

I'm looking forward to it too. Several of us just visited Baja and saw a LOT of their history. Took over 150 screen shots of at least 15 historic locations, some of them uniquely built by the gods. I have a 6 hour journal of information and conversation. And the history that their veterans have in their heads is profound.

I can't promise when the UOCWiki will be live for the shards, but hope to have basic functionality up by June 1st with each shard having their own wiki, at least English language ones. I was out most of March and April so development and testing slowed down.

So far in testing, the concepts of using wikipedia.org as a baseline for collaboration methods is very sound. They also provide robust formatting templates, autocategorization, help systems, etc. It's tedious work to install, test, and adapt such things, as everyone can imagine.

We'll get there and am really looking forward to it.

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Statehood and Cities of PaxLair (Chesapeake): http://www.paxlair.com

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Nok

I heard about the Baja visit, and that it went really well! I wanted to be there for the visit, but wasn't home that day. There are some very unique places on Baja, and some old legacy guilds still around. Hope you got to visit them all.

When UOCWiki goes live, I'll have some entries to add too.

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Winfield

May 11, 2008

We are making progress on the installation of UOCWiki located at Main Page - The UO Community Wiki .

Technical Progress:

• MediaWiki 1.12.0 is installed with most Wikipedia extensions.
• The main UOCWiki site is online, but we aren't accepting user accounts yet. We are configuring help files, templates, categories, etc. according to Wikipedia methods.
• Next Step: Configure and test UOWiki Meta/Common subdomain for central repository for templates and common images (just like Wikipedia does). Then create Shard wikis as sub-domains using a common Username login system (already tested).

Community Progress:

• Winfield plans to have a Ventrilo or TeamSpeak discussion sometime this week. People from some shards have already shown interest. This will be a "conceptual" discussion about UOCWiki ideas in general, not very technical. If interested in participating in the discussion, please reach Winfield via PM here.

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Statehood and Cities of PaxLair (Chesapeake): http://www.paxlair.com

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