A compendium

[Kver]

As I was discussing with Frosted yesterday, there is a need to "archive" so to say old guides and theorycrafting threads, but it is also necessary to keep accessible those sources which might hold value today.

We could build an archive forum for the threads easily, but that does not provide us with anything useful for the latter. There are a few possible ways to go about this: first of all there is just making threads and copy those over, but this means that the archives will become crowded and hard to navigate. We could build a wiki and do something like Lhivera's site. The downside is that it requires setting up, and probably people full time on the job, for something which won't be used that much. The last possibility would be making it part of the main website once that is done, but that means more work for me.

Either way we are going to need at least 1 person who can keep track of everything and point out what should be archived.

P.S. no anecdotal discussions about archiving, I want practical solutions.

[ZomgDPS]

I want practical solutions.

A (imho) potential practical solution could be to leverage already existing infrastructure, such as the existing wikis out there.

Wowpedia or Wowwiki, whichever one, already has class specific sections set up and can (perhaps) be considered "long term" enough to serve purpose.

Though I guess the key is if where the information actually lives is important. If its not, then it shouldn't be too taxing (relatively) to set up a section under mages and keep the info updated there. Sure it would probably require constant effort/updates, but that would be the same under any schema.

[Kver]

I want practical solutions.

A (imho) potential practical solution could be to leverage already existing infrastructure, such as the existing wikis out there.

Wowpedia or Wowwiki, whichever one, already has class specific sections set up and can (perhaps) be considered "long term" enough to serve purpose.

Though I guess the key is if where the information actually lives is important. If not, then it shouldn't be too taxing (relatively) to set up a section under mages and keep the info updated there. Sure it would probably require constant effort/updates, but that would be the same under any schema.

I can quite easily build a wiki here, or just make a special archive forum on archives.altered-time.com. I agree that it'll always require identical effort, I'm primarily concerned with accessibility of said systems. I want people to be able to enter 'ignite' and get all relevant pages. At least, I want them able to easily find them through clicking max 3 deep, rather than reading an entire topic.

[Crabmodem]

On the guitar forum I run we take all old but still informative threads to a special section called epic threads. They still come up in the search and people can find them quickly since it only has the best of the best capped threads.

[ZomgDPS]

I want people to be able to enter 'ignite' and get all relevant pages. At least, I want them able to easily find them through clicking max 3 deep, rather than reading an entire topic.

It sounds like you need a librarian.

We have pretty much the exact thing on our guild forums. Basically a wiki with tons of reference material from old posts and patch notes and so on. Though we have a guildy who serves as our Librarian pretty much full time. He sorts and structures the data, categories, and cross links and keeps it all updated in a way that makes it quite easy and intuitive to search through.

So yea... if you were looking for some underlying software back end that does it for you, I'm sure there is some php module out there that does, though in the end, the 'set up work' might end up having more to do with coming up with a sensible data and categorization schema rather than finding a software silver bullet.

[Kver]

We would actually need to have somebody incredibly good at theorycrafting(and thus able to distinguish bad from good, etc.) who can be the "librarian" you speak of though. A wiki, a subforum, it all works for me, but it needs to be maintained.

[nathyiel]

We would actually need to have somebody incredibly good at theorycrafting(and thus able to distinguish bad from good, etc.) who can be the "librarian" you speak of though. A wiki, a subforum, it all works for me, but it needs to be maintained.

It can be easier to have Lhiv to keep is blog up-to-date (wiki/calculator) ...

[Lissanna]

We would actually need to have somebody incredibly good at theorycrafting(and thus able to distinguish bad from good, etc.) who can be the "librarian" you speak of though. A wiki, a subforum, it all works for me, but it needs to be maintained.

It can be easier to have Lhiv to keep is blog up-to-date (wiki/calculator) ...

Easier for everyone but Lhiv. lol

[Kver]

We would actually need to have somebody incredibly good at theorycrafting(and thus able to distinguish bad from good, etc.) who can be the "librarian" you speak of though. A wiki, a subforum, it all works for me, but it needs to be maintained.

It can be easier to have Lhiv to keep is blog up-to-date (wiki/calculator) ...

Easier for everyone but Lhiv. lol

Yep. I realise that that will never happen

[nathyiel]

A quick useful confirmation :

Lhivera ‏@Lhivera
@Nathyiel @Frost1129 "Increased by x%" wording is always multiplicative in Warlords. See new theorycrafting thread in alpha forum.

So in short, a brainfreeze Frostfirebolt will do with 20% perk and 25% buff :

Code: Select all

base_damage *1.2 *1.25

[ZomgDPS]

Talking about dataz and compendiums. Whoever will take charge of this compendium should probably add this post somewhere:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic ... ?page=1#16" target="_blank

While most of the hit or miss stuff may end up not applying too much, it will help in the immediate timeframe by allowing us to compensate for the damage scaling that happens per level during testing.

[Berlinia]

Maybe someone start checking the old WoD bta threads and add them to the archive?

[Kver]

That's perfectly fine if somebody wishes to volunteer. That person can get into contact with me so we can figure out the juicy details.