How can we make wiki editing more focused?

I've been getting back into wiki editing the past week or so, and one thing that I've really noticed is how discombobulated the system is. Even looking at the top games for each decade, several of these pages contain opinionated writing, poor grammar/sentence structure, run-on sentences, second person, poor formatting, etc. I mean, we have lots of great information, but it's not really contained very well. Is there some way that we could start... I don't know... initiatives? The wiki task feature is great, but it's only for staff/mod implemented pages that need work. I mean, I've found dozens more pages that need work that don't require specific knowledge of that game.

Right now, my initiative has been browsing the games attached to the SNES page, and adding information for any page that's missing a main image or a developer, as well as cross checking with lists of every SNES/SFC game released on Wikipedia and Moby Games. That needs to be done for literally every platform on Giant Bomb, because we're still missing tons of games.

I've started keeping a list of games here that I feel need work in some way, giving a brief description as to why they need touching up. I'm just going to continue adding pages to this list that need work as I run across them in my wiki travels. Would anyone be interested in helping out? It's a lot of work for one person. Here's what I have so far, perusing the 1990s section of the top games for each decade:

These Need Work

These pages have poor grammar, formatting, need updated information, are poorly written, contain second person, opinionated, etc.

	1. Super Mario Kart Reads like a fan gushing over it in several parts, poorly written. Also written in past tense, for some reason.
	2. Sonic the Hedgehog Second person
	3. Super Mario World Formatting, misguided information (e.g. information about Super Mario Advance)
	4. Pilotwings Formatting
	5. F-Zero Could use some images in the wiki article
	6. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Grammatical touch-ups
	7. Streets of Rage 2 Broken images
	8. Star Fox Image formatting
	9. Sonic CD "Time Attack Mode" section completely missing

Maybe we also need some more rules that help out the constancy? I mean, I've run into a ton of pages that are really well done, and uniquely written, and I don't want to ruin that, but little stuff like differences between saying "Plot," "Story," "Storyline," "Plot Summary," etc. I think we could outline what is expected of a wiki page a little better. Most new users have little to no direction as to what is expected in a page, in terms of formatting.

More people just need to be aware of the wiki guidelines, as poorly documented as they are. That means:

• No subjective gushing/trashing in the articles.
• No use of second-person. Articles should be written in third-person.
• Judicious use of images. The image galleries exist so that the articles don't have to become galleries themselves.
• And so on.

Beyond that, issues you've pointed out are mostly minor flaws that are easily correctable. Grammatical mistakes happen, images break, and so on, but these are things that can be fixed without pain.

@Hailinel: Yeah, that's definitely what's needed. A better outline for new users telling them what is expected and how to do it. Maybe even showing it to a user on their first attempt to edit something?

@StarFoxA:

I think it's great that there are people like you caring about the wiki like that :)

What I noticed is that the wiki generally needs a lot of work, not only need existing articles a work-over, some entries have to be written in the first place.

I made a list of articles I came across that lack information: http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/morrow/wiki-articles-that-need-some-work/46-73081/

It would be great if some people, preferreably native English-speakers with a good vocabluary, would look over the entries. The Mods could make a contest or something to determine these people and give out little prizes as a motivation. Just a suggestion, though.

I joined the site about two months ago and greatly enjoy contributing to the wiki. I try to add quality entries, but I'm not a native English speaker nor do I have experience with writing articles... so I'm pretty insecure.

And as a rather egoistic matter, I would be really glad if someone with good English could look over my recent Alex Shepherd article.

I did my best, but as I already mentioned, I'm not a native English speaker and have some issues with tenses.

I've been wondering if a standard should be created. Overview, gameplay, story, etc. sections would already be in place, and we could only add subsections. Perhaps a list of simple guidelines should pop up any time someone edits a page. It may be annoying, but it would make people pay attention. Also, we need a separate section for soundtrack information.

@Morrow: I totally agree that more pages need to be looked over for language correction. I'll admit, not even the pages I have written are the most grammatically sound. The problem with the point system is that it encourages big entries, yet discourages editing for content.

@BoG:

That sounds like a great idea. That way, every article would have a similar structure. You could still add sub-parts under gameplay, for example, if anything stands out.

I think every character page should have standard parts like Overview, Personality, Background and Plot, with parts like Other Information/Trivia/Quotes as an optional addition. That would greatly add to the visual appeal of an article.

@Morrow: Hey, to your credit, I didn't realize you're a non-native English speaker until you said so. I'd be glad to look over that page you linked to at some point.

@BoG: Yeah, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. We really have no easily viewable standards in place that a user trying to edit a page is guaranteed to see.

@StarFoxA said:

@Morrow: Hey, to your credit, I didn't realize you're a non-native English speaker until you said so. I'd be glad to look over that page you linked to at some point.

Well I'm trying :) And thanks, that would be great ^^

@BoG: Yeah, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. We really have no easily viewable standards in place that a user trying to edit a page is guaranteed to see.

Although one would think a new, unexperienced user would look at other articles to get a general idea of how an article should be written. At least I did that... because I had like, no idea ^^;

Jeff has said when they update the site later this year he wants to have a review of wiki policy that includes input from regular wiki contributors. So keep a note of any ideas you have as they may well come in handy.

@Morrow: Just glancing over the Alex Shepherd entry. A few things.

• The personality section reads like a bullet point presentation. Every sentence feels like it's stranded on an island, with no connection to the sentences before and after it.
• This is probably a matter of taste, but almost every sentence in the entry starts with either "Alex" or "He".
• Single sentence paragraphs. Either flesh them out or merge them.

More details:

Some word choices seem... unnatural. "He shows a certain sensitivity regarding his brother." "He never stops struggling to survive and protect the ones he cares about." "He also shows romantic feelings for Elle Hollaway" (it's either "show affection" or "have feelings for", as far as I know), "He also wanted to become someone strong and capable of protecting people, most prominently his brother Josh" ("importantly" is probably a better choice of words here).

Don't be afraid to elaborate instead of trying to put everything in one sentence.

Some small spelling mistakes: "this doesn't stop him from helpingother's (others) in need", "Buteverytime time (every time or everytime) Alex gets close to him, Joshua runs away".

Just small things. We non-natives should stick up for each other.

@BoG said:

I've been wondering if a standard should be created. Overview, gameplay, story, etc. sections would already be in place, and we could only add subsections. Perhaps a list of simple guidelines should pop up any time someone edits a page. It may be annoying, but it would make people pay attention. Also, we need a separate section for soundtrack information.

@Morrow: I totally agree that more pages need to be looked over for language correction. I'll admit, not even the pages I have written are the most grammatically sound. The problem with the point system is that it encourages big entries, yet discourages editing for content.

I think that the wiki task system has been good in helping to promote improving pages through point bounties, but from my experience, it has its own problems:

• Moderators seem content to assign bounties only to pages that strike their fancy, and ignore most of the task suggestions posted in the task suggestion thread.
• Tasks remain open for far too long; I've seen more than one task ready for closure that has remained unresolved for weeks, if not months.
• There have been times when I've poured a lot of work into a task to be rewarded with zero points. What?

@Hailinel: It's also limited by the fact that moderators also have to concern themselves with maintaining the rest of the site, so improving the wiki isn't on the top of the list.

@Hailinel said:

• Moderators seem content to assign bounties only to pages that strike their fancy, and ignore most of the task suggestions posted in the task suggestion thread.

• Tasks remain open for far too long; I've seen more than one task ready for closure that has remained unresolved for weeks, if not months.

• There have been times when I've poured a lot of work into a task to be rewarded with zero points. What?

• I've seen some pretty random games get a tasks....Ninja Master and Puzzle Panic are a couple examples, so I wouldn't say they always create bounties based only on pages they are interested in....and if anything I think they pick games based on there popularity rather than if they strike their fancy, which makes sense because if we want to create a good image we need to start with the pages that will get the most user traffic......and whenever I've suggested something in that thread it was made into a task, but I usually PM Marino directly when I feel like a specific task needs to be made.
• Tasks close automatically after 3 weeks or so, I believe .
• Must have been an honest mistake on their part, you should have tried PMing them to ask.

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

@Hailinel said:

• Moderators seem content to assign bounties only to pages that strike their fancy, and ignore most of the task suggestions posted in the task suggestion thread.

• Tasks remain open for far too long; I've seen more than one task ready for closure that has remained unresolved for weeks, if not months.

• There have been times when I've poured a lot of work into a task to be rewarded with zero points. What?

• I've seen some pretty random games get a tasks....Ninja Master and Puzzle Panic are a couple examples, so I wouldn't say they always create bounties based only on pages they are interested in....and if anything I think they pick games based on there popularity rather than if they strike their fancy, which makes sense because if we want to create a good image we need to start with the pages that will get the most user traffic......and whenever I've suggested something in that thread it was made into a task, but I usually PM Marino directly when I feel like a specific task needs to be made.
• Tasks close automatically after 3 weeks or so, I believe .
• Must have been an honest mistake on their part, you should have tried PMing them to ask.

There are currently pages in the task queue that have been open for over a month.

@Unknown_Pleasures: Haha! Puzzle Panic! That's the game you said "there is literally no information for this game on the internet" and I was like "Challenge accepted!" Good times.

I always create wiki tasks for new releases that I don't think have enough info and, generally, uncompleted tasks are closed after a month.

@StarFoxA: Haha yep that's why it stuck in my mind, too bad probably nobody other than us has read the page. :P

I think creating a guide on how to properly make wiki edits and making it easy to find and view (unlike Jeff's style guide) is a good start.....that would hopefully decrease the amount of garbage that gets written so we can focus on writing new pages rather than having to correct the mistakes of others.

Bounties on the front page, better system for assigning bounties. Something to make people interested.

@mracoon said:

I always create wiki tasks for new releases that I don't think have enough info and, generally, uncompleted tasks are closed after a month.

And that's cool, believe me. But I just remember back when the task system first came into being and seeing more tasks for older, more obscure games. But then I also remember the time that he queue was dominated by the entire Mortal Kombat roster, with no tasks given for, say, King of Fighters, or the more obscure Street Fighter characters, and so on. Maybe this is just my perception of it, but the task system these days seems more or less dominated by recent releases, concept pages that moderators find particularly hilarious, and plagiarism clean-up, with maybe one or two user suggestions sprinkled in on occasion.

@mracoon: Speaking of, when is that blank task getting deleted? It's been there for like two months now.

And are the days of "Wiki Task Initiatives" over? Because those were a great way to get a bunch of tasks for things ranging from obscure to well-known.

Also, those League of Legends characters have been tasks for far too long. Maybe it's time to give up. (NEVERMIND, THEY WERE GONE BEFORE I SAID ANYTHING!)

I feel like I want to rip my eyes out every time I read an article in the wiki. There's definitely way too much gushing/trashing, 'comedic' captions, abysmal grammar/spelling, etc...

Anyway, I think we might really need to flat-out remove the points system; it seems as though a lot of people fill the wiki with shit, purely for the sake of gaining points. Also, I think we have to get a history feature soon, even if the history system is unpolished; at the moment, there is very little accountability. Another thing is, that any person with 1000+ points can essentially do whatever they want; perhaps the mods could hand-pick people to become trusted wiki editors instead.

@BeachThunder: At the very least, I think that the point limit for unfiltered editing should be raised tenfold.

@BeachThunder said:

I feel like I want to rip my eyes out every time I read an article in the wiki. There's definitely way too much gushing/trashing, 'comedic' captions, abysmal grammar/spelling, etc...

Anyway, I think we might really need to flat-out remove the points system; it seems as though a lot of people fill the wiki with shit, purely for the sake of gaining points. Also, I think we have to get a history feature soon, even if the history system is unpolished; at the moment, there is very little accountability. Another thing is, that any person with 1000+ points can essentially do whatever they want; perhaps the mods could hand-pick people to become trusted wiki editors instead.

Hand-picking wiki editors is the worst idea. The idea of a wiki is that anyone can contribute; not limit contributions to a select few members of a wiki master race. If you see something in a wiki page that needs improvement, then improve it. Make the page a better example to go by.

Yeah, I want to do more task initiatives but it's hard to find good themes. If the theme is unpopular then nobody completes any of the tasks and if the theme is popular then most of the pages are filled out already. If you guys can tell me some good themes which have a couple of pages that need attention then I'll gladly a them to the task queue.

@Hailinel said:

@BeachThunder said:

I feel like I want to rip my eyes out every time I read an article in the wiki. There's definitely way too much gushing/trashing, 'comedic' captions, abysmal grammar/spelling, etc...

Anyway, I think we might really need to flat-out remove the points system; it seems as though a lot of people fill the wiki with shit, purely for the sake of gaining points. Also, I think we have to get a history feature soon, even if the history system is unpolished; at the moment, there is very little accountability. Another thing is, that any person with 1000+ points can essentially do whatever they want; perhaps the mods could hand-pick people to become trusted wiki editors instead.

Hand-picking wiki editors is the worst idea. The idea of a wiki is that anyone can contribute; not limit contributions to a select few members of a wiki master race. If you see something in a wiki page that needs improvement, then improve it. Make the page a better example to go by.

I'm not saying have it only open to a handful of people; I'm saying that people with full access should be handpicked (like what we've got now with people that are over 1000/5000 points).

One page that I found that really bugged me was the Sims 3 page, some one listed every peice of content for that game including Every single DLC you could get from their website. Discribing everything.

the thing is the beginning of the article hadent even been updated for the release of the game. some one just keepet adding content.

@StarFoxA: I actually really dig the idea of going system by system for the time being, focusing on being a comprehensive source of SNES information (or Genesis, or NES, or whatever) and then moving on from there. It seems like it could definitely help to compartmentalize like that for improving a wiki this massive, otherwise it becomes too daunting a task.

It'd be sorta neat if we had some kind of table in the guides section with every game for a particular system and how sufficiently (or insufficiently, as the case may be) detailed each of their wiki pages were that anyone could tick off once they were done with a page, sort of like how those FAQ Completion projects are tracked. Then again, it'd be less neat for whoever has to make that guide.

@Mento said:

@StarFoxA: I actually really dig the idea of going system by system for the time being, focusing on being a comprehensive source of SNES information (or Genesis, or NES, or whatever) and then moving on from there. It seems like it could definitely help to compartmentalize like that for improving a wiki this massive, otherwise it becomes too daunting a task.

It'd be sorta neat if we had some kind of table in the guides section with every game for a particular system and how sufficiently (or insufficiently, as the case may be) detailed each of their wiki pages were that anyone could tick off once they were done with a page, sort of like how those FAQ Completion projects are tracked. Then again, it'd be less neat for whoever has to make that guide.

That's... pretty genius. I'd be willing to work on that, either as a guide or as a list.

Edit: I'm doing it now, I'll probably make it public later when I've made some progress.

I was working on only Game Boy Color pages for a while, but ended up getting side-tracked and haven't really returned to it. Maybe I will try and go back to working on that again.

I also would really love a little more guidelines, I don't think it has to be super strict but more guidance would be great for a more uniform wiki.

@Mento: Okay, here's what I'm working on, what do you think so far?

@StarFoxA: Looks good. Hopefully the guide doesn't become such a huge amount of hassle that people tire themselves out before getting to the actual wiki improving side of it.

I'm honestly not entirely sure what is a terrible wiki page and what isn't, since I'm usually not content with undoing someone else's work unless it's really unacceptable, so I don't see myself adding many pages to that guide. I'm happy to work on any of the pages that show up there, though.

@BeachThunder said:

@Hailinel said:

@BeachThunder said:

I feel like I want to rip my eyes out every time I read an article in the wiki. There's definitely way too much gushing/trashing, 'comedic' captions, abysmal grammar/spelling, etc...

Anyway, I think we might really need to flat-out remove the points system; it seems as though a lot of people fill the wiki with shit, purely for the sake of gaining points. Also, I think we have to get a history feature soon, even if the history system is unpolished; at the moment, there is very little accountability. Another thing is, that any person with 1000+ points can essentially do whatever they want; perhaps the mods could hand-pick people to become trusted wiki editors instead.

Hand-picking wiki editors is the worst idea. The idea of a wiki is that anyone can contribute; not limit contributions to a select few members of a wiki master race. If you see something in a wiki page that needs improvement, then improve it. Make the page a better example to go by.

I'm not saying have it only open to a handful of people; I'm saying that people with full access should be handpicked (like what we've got now with people that are over 1000/5000 points).

And I think that's still a bad idea. Showing favoritism isn't the way to go about this.

@Mento: What I'm doing is just listing every single game in there and then giving it a rating out of five based on whether or not it has a wiki article (how well it's formatted and written, if so), screenshots, releases, general information, page attachments, etc.

One thing that I think needs to be improved upon in the next site redesign is featured pages. I feel like I don't know anything about 99% of the concepts* so there is no way I could link them to other pages. If there was a featured concept of the day on the front page not only would site visitors learn more about the concept but they'd see the wiki more and probably add to it. The more the community sees the wiki the more they'll learn and fill in what's missing.

*This is a particularly big problem with concepts more than the other wiki page types because concepts are ideas. There is a wide range of possibilities and sometimes they might be named differently than you'd expect. Another possibility is that no one has thought to make that page yet because ideas can be subtle; unlike objects which are things that you can plainly see in the game and are obvious to add to the wiki.

@mosespippy said:

One thing that I think needs to be improved upon in the next site redesign is featured pages. I feel like I don't know anything about 99% of the concepts* so there is no way I could link them to other pages. If there was a featured concept of the day on the front page not only would site visitors learn more about the concept but they'd see the wiki more and probably add to it. The more the community sees the wiki the more they'll learn and fill in what's missing.

A "Page of the Day" feature has been something I've wanted to see since Giant Bomb launched.

@Irvandus said:

Bounties on the front page, better system for assigning bounties. Something to make people interested.

Good point, but I hope something like this won't make people hunt for points and write just something to get them... the focus should still be quality.

@Hailinel said:

@mosespippy said:

One thing that I think needs to be improved upon in the next site redesign is featured pages. I feel like I don't know anything about 99% of the concepts* so there is no way I could link them to other pages. If there was a featured concept of the day on the front page not only would site visitors learn more about the concept but they'd see the wiki more and probably add to it. The more the community sees the wiki the more they'll learn and fill in what's missing.

A "Page of the Day" feature has been something I've wanted to see since Giant Bomb launched.

Oh my god, me too. The lack of exposure to the wiki is unbearable!

@Dagbiker said:

One page that I found that really bugged me was the Sims 3 page, some one listed every peice of content for that game including Every single DLC you could get from their website. Discribing everything.

the thing is the beginning of the article hadent even been updated for the release of the game. some one just keepet adding content

I think it would be good to have separate articles for DLC. Thinking of the New Vegas DLC specifically, some content is quite lenghty with it's own story. I think that deserves an extra page. Just my two cents though.

@Hailinel said:

@mosespippy said:

One thing that I think needs to be improved upon in the next site redesign is featured pages. I feel like I don't know anything about 99% of the concepts* so there is no way I could link them to other pages. If there was a featured concept of the day on the front page not only would site visitors learn more about the concept but they'd see the wiki more and probably add to it. The more the community sees the wiki the more they'll learn and fill in what's missing.

A "Page of the Day" feature has been something I've wanted to see since Giant Bomb launched.

That's a great idea :) It would also show examples of good/ideal articles.

I do like the idea of the DLC tabs allowing the users to input more information, the tab is there already but for some games the DLC is substantial enough to warrant a more fleshed out page.

@bobafettjm: I typically talk about DLC in the main wiki page, and some DLC gets its own page, like Shivering Isles.

@StarFoxA: Yea I have done the same, but I think the pages would be cleaner with the DLC info on a page under the DLC tab. Especially now with DLC getting bigger and bigger, and not all DLC gets a retail release like Shivering Isles.

I think the wiki would benefit from a "main page" of the sort seen on many other wikis. It should be easy to navigate to from wiki pages, and act as a central portal for users who are interested in contributing to the wiki. This main page could have links to:

• A manual of style, containing the policies, content and  formatting guidelines seen in this thread, the "Wiki FAQ" thread, and various other stickied threads in this forum.
• The "Important Stuff" that's currently down near the bottom of the "Wiki FAQ" post.
  
• Featured article/article of the day, also suggested in this thread.
• Wiki tasks. These are currently linked to under "Help" in the site navigation, which doesn't make that much sense.
• Possible user-driven projects to improve pages, as suggested by the original poster of this thread
  

@Prestige said:

I think the wiki would benefit from a "main page" of the sort seen on many other wikis. It should be easy to navigate to from wiki pages, and act as a central portal for users who are interested in contributing to the wiki. This main page could have links to:

• A manual of style, containing the policies, content and formatting guidelines seen in this thread, the "Wiki FAQ" thread, and various other stickied threads in this forum.
• The "Important Stuff" that's currently down near the bottom of the "Wiki FAQ" post.
• Featured article/article of the day, also suggested in this thread.
• Wiki tasks. These are currently linked to under "Help" in the site navigation, which doesn't make that much sense.
• Possible user-driven projects to improve pages, as suggested by the original poster of this thread

Good suggestions :)

I worked on both the Spriggan Powered and Tetsuwan Atom pages to fill them out better.

I think it would help to have a single, easy to find list of standards to look at. It's cool when you start wiki editing as your submissions are moderated, so if you do something horribly wrong, the mods will just reject it. But when you get the free ability to edit without moderation - which I think is a good feature - you don't really have anything to check your edits up against except sort of common sense things (like no plagiarising, no rotten spelling/grammar etc.). I always get a bit confused on what the policy is on plot spoilers in a plot synopsis section of a wiki page for instance, or on a character page. Do you have to warn there'll be spoilers or what? It's not consistent so it's hard to know which to go for or what people expect when they go and read an article. 
 
As for themed wiki tasks, which was mentioned earlier? Somebody asked if anybody had any ideas - well, I do: Pokemon (or more specifically, Pokemon character pages). Some of those pages make no sense, they read like they've gone through Babelfish, plus I'm not sure how relevant some of the information there is. Examples:
 
http://www.giantbomb.com/ash-ketchum/94-716/
http://www.giantbomb.com/misty/94-2215/
http://www.giantbomb.com/brock/94-5766/
 
Some pages could also do with being filled in, still on the Pokemon theme, for example:
 
http://www.giantbomb.com/dawn/94-9367/
http://www.giantbomb.com/officer-jenny/94-5765/
 
Even if it's not much, I'm sure we could find a bit more information for those pages.
 
Does that count as enough for a themed wiki task?

@StarFoxA: Well, i'll start doing some work on these pages, and you tell me if it is any good :)

@StarFoxA:Edited the Super Mario Kart page. Everything from overview to drivers is my work. I can't believe i only got a point for that!

This is a good initiative, personally my biggest wiki pet-peeve is people inserting their own opinions into the articles. Makes the whole thing look unprofessional and reduces the respectability of the site as a whole. Please stop doing it people. I search a wiki for factual information, not your opinion. I'll make an effort to tidy up some articles.

Another feature that really would help is some sort of set structure to each type of article. E.g Every game page could have an 'Overview', 'Story', 'Gameplay', 'Other' section to fill in. Giving people a blank page to work with often leads to poor formatting and sometimes full-on walls of text.