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I saw an interesting sticky in the Trackmania Forum in their Tech support subforum. It was entitled "To get your questions answered properly, read this". It contains a list of things that should be included in a "need help!!" post, such as error logs, system info, etc. that can help with tech support (or in our case, modding) issues.

I believe a similar topic/sticky should be made in the modding forum, because I believe it would help some of the new modders to know what to post, and help the veteran modders helping them by providing them with sufficient information to diagnose/fix said new modder's problem.

Do you guys think this was a good idea? I didn't want to make the post myself, in case it was not well received.





Here's the post from the TM forum:

It would be a good idea. The only thing I can see happening is someone posting how to get that information...

So if you include that in the post it would work

That's pretty much what the FAQ and Munge Error threads do. We just need to update them as needed.

From what i've seen, many(not all) of the new modders that come here rarely ever take the time to look at the sticky threads or search for their answers before they even post, but there's nothing we can do about anyone's laziness, most are looking for a "quick" answer which is also why there are well over 3000 topics in the SWBF2 Modding forum, and most of those are "rinse and repeats" of one another and they clog up the forum making the more important info even harder to locate.

Which was why I used to push for a modding wiki. Wikis are better suited for conveying/sorting information then topics in large forums. The larger a forum gets the harder it is to find something and the more intimidating a new user feels. It should be just as easy to find something in a large or small wiki and new users can pick any page and get real information, compared to picking a random topic and getting almost nothing useful.

(however, I wouldn't have time to largely populate a new wiki if one were made)

Judging by a modding wiki for another game I play (its a transportation game, go figure ) they're not particularly helpful.

What I've found is that the wiki was not frequently updated with the latest information because people were too lazy to update it and spreading information is easier through forums.

We actually had a Wiki back in the day, and it was extremely helpful. That is until some moron thought it would be funny to ruin all of the pages (so we pulled it).

AceMastermind wrote:From what i've seen, many(not all) of the new modders that come here rarely ever take the time to look at the sticky threads or search for their answers before they even post, but there's nothing we can do about anyone's laziness, most are looking for a "quick" answer. . .

Couldn't have said it better myself. You could post the answer right in front of a n00b's face and they wouldn't even look until you said, LOOK! Here's the answer!

And people wonder why we get irritated.

AceMastermind wrote:From what i've seen, many(not all) of the new modders that come here rarely ever take the time to look at the sticky threads or search for their answers before they even post, but there's nothing we can do about anyone's laziness, most are looking for a "quick" answer. . .

Indeed. There lies the problem.

Well I think a wiki would be an interesting idea. It'd be more of an information database, which would be way more helpful for people who don't know how to do something and are smart enough to actually use the wiki. Some tutorials are just random topic discussions which are hard to understand. Other information is just so spread out in the forums it's hard to gain knowledge without actually reading each thread as it rolls in. Yes it's a daunting task to create such a wiki, but I think it's worth consideration.

I agree on a wiki.. Still n00bs will be lazy, and won't read the answer.. The only thing though, is that they can't spam their question in a new topic without punctuation (? ) and stress us out like that, breaking more then 5 rules in 1 topic which was already answered...

Also, with a wiki, you do lose the 'forum atmosphere' meaning communicating to peoples and making friends...

Goodbye my last social life which was on the computer

Yeah, I was thinking though that maybe we'd keep a forum, we still don't know everything about the game yet, so topics and discussions still need to take place.

Yet, we can dump our knowledge into a wiki, the easy knowledge, how to create a side, unit, etc. Odds are, if a noob is so nooby and stupid, they'll end up not being able to make anything. Now if a newb comes along with some smarts, he should be able to use the resources in front of him to learn and expand upon himself.

I'd say whether with a wiki or a forum, a noob wouldn't get anywhere. But a newb may benefit from a wiki. (noob being not smart, rule breaking; newb being just a new guy who is smart enough to help himself)

EDIT: with http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia you can create your own wikis for free (I think).