Wiki Points

Wiki Points are points you gain from expanding the games database by doing a lot of different things such as writing articles, linking games together and uploading images. In this guide I'll share with you how I think you can get the most amount of points as quick as possible without abusing the system. Should I write something wrong or miss anything please point it out and I'll update the blog, who knows, maybe this will work out as a decent guide for both newbies and more experienced users. What I will not write or explain here is how to use the system, please click the help button on the top right of the website for that.

Writing Articles

Writing full articles is a great way to get a lot of points at once, if your English skills and knowledge about the game is sufficient you can get a lot of points by writing articles. Make sure you do not copy content from other websites, including wikipedia, wikia or any similar pages as the Moderators will not approve it. Even if you were the original writer of the content it's important for the GB crew that their articles stand out from the mass so make sure to mix up the words if necessary.

The obvious way to do submit articles is to write full length description about games, but with the GB database you have a ton of other pages you can write articles for such as game characters, franchises, objects, concepts and more. Find something that interests you and share your opinions. Make sure that you use proper formatting as well.

The problem with writing articles however is getting them accepted by a moderator. While a well written article can net you several hundred points getting someone to approve them will take a very, very long time and if you want to race to 1,000 points this is not even close to a good approach. It might go a lot smoother once there are more moderators, but as it stands now you are better off doing other things.

If your goal is to get attention from the GB staff to be named a moderator writing articles is probably an excellent way to go however, as it's a great way to share your knowledge about games, your dedication to the site and English skills.

Uploading Images

Uploading images to the site is an easy way to get points, it wont help to upload them to your profile though, you need to attach them to games or other pages to get points for it. The most important thing to remember is to avoid any images with watermarks as they will not be accepted on the site.

To quickly add images first upload them to your account. The best way to do this is to add all the images you want to upload to a folder on your computer and adding them all at once, then go to the page you want them added and link them there.

With the new system implemented to let users approve images the wait seems to be substantially shorter than before, while uploading images might not net you as many points as adding related pages to games it's a decent way to get some points without too much effort. Also, don't forget that you can add images to more than just games, other pages such as concepts, characters, objects, etc can also have images attached to them, allowing you to get more points out of a single image if you attach it to more pages.

Related Pages

Related pages are the different content on the website which directly relates to the page you are looking at now. For a game this can be franchise games, similar games, objects, concepts, characters, concepts, locations, etc. By locating a game or page which hasn't gotten a lot of attention you can very quickly get a ton of points by adding everything which relates to this.

Games

By finding games which hasn't been given a lot of attention you can get a lot of points by adding similar things to it. Since it can be hard to remember everything related to the game it's a good idea to browse through the list of concepts and objects to find things which relates and add them. Similar games is also a good way to go, but remember not to add franchise games there as they are already listed under franchise.

The quickest way to add related pages to games is to edit the overview page as you can add everything from there as apposed to going to a specific section each time. It also makes moderating your submission easier as they are all in one edit.

Concepts and Objects

The most obvious thing here is of course to add a bunch of new games, the best way to go about this is to find a new concept or object with a lot of missing games or a very wide topic such as health, gun, sword, etc which can have several thousands games related to them.

You can also request new pages to be added, but it usually takes a while to get them through and someone else might get to add games before you. This is hopefully a system which will be refined later so you can add games, write an article and other things at the same time as requesting the page so you can get more points out of being the person who came up with it.

By browsing through the less active pages you can easily find things you know a lot about and add things to get a lot of points quickly.

More Obscure Pages

The more obscure pages such as people, locations, characters and more can also have related pages added to them so you might be able to find a lot of different ways to link things together and get points through it. I might expand a bit on this idea later, but for not I suggest you take a look around the less active section of the website and look for efficient ways to add to them.

Credits

A great way to get a lot of points is to browse through games and add credits to them, you don't even need knowledge of these games as most of the credits can be find by using Google. Adding credits will net you points in linking people together, adding people to the games and the games to the people. You should also take the opportunity to suggest new people to the database if you run across someone not already in there.

While this is a good way to add content most people haven't it can be a bit boring and doesn't really contribute much useful information to the site, another downside is the fact that the moderation time for credit submissions are a lot slower than say related pages as they require confirmation. Just like with articles adding credits can probably net you a lot of easy points, but the time it takes to get them simply aren't worth it at the current state.

Conclusion

I am of course missing quite a few things from this blog as I simply don't have the time to add more to it right now. As it is now though it should give a good, if brief and missing overview on how to get some quick points. I will add several more methods later and hopefully some of you can help out too. If you know good and easy ways to gain points please don't keep them to yourself, the more who knows how to do things the quicker the site will grow into the ultimate gaming encyclopedia so lets all try to help out each other the best we can.

Currently the quickest way to gain points is by linking pages together with the related pages system, so go out there and do your part!

Several times the GB crew has said that the quickest and best way to gain Wiki Points is to write entire articles for games and other pages as they will give the most points. While it's probably true that they will give the most points it is no where near correct that writing them is the fastest way to get to the 1,000 mark.

As it stands today writing an article takes the most amount of effort and even longer to get approved. I'm not sure if it's just my writing being horrible, but my article for Supreme Commander has been pending now for almost 3 whole days while my submissions to concepts and objects are flying through. If you want to gain points quickly I recommend staying clear of writing articles until you are above the 1k mark as it simply takes to long for them to get through.

I'm sure this will be solved once the moderators get on top of things, but the way it stands today it seems articles aren't anywhere near a priority.

Has anyone else written any complete articles yet?

School is starting next month and I'm laptopless (no pictures, please!) so I've been thinking a lot about what computer to get to fill the void.

I wanted a lightweight easy to handle laptop preferably with some decent storage space and Windows XP. I also however, wanted a laptop to play games on when I'm not at home, act as a simple media center to play a movie or game and most importantly have enough power to do what ever I wanted, where ever I wanted.

Theres obviously no way I can fulfill both wishes with one laptop, especially not with my budget and Norwegian prices (highest in the World?) so I started my search for two computers instead. One school, work and general boring stuff and another for entertainment and maybe even to send a message that I'm serious about computers (which I am).

The Asus EeePC really interested me, it's a small laptop which is very cheap, yet I really didn't like the design, it had quite a few limitations and wasn't exactly what I was looking for.


I decided to try the Acer Aspire One instead.
The version I went for has a 80GB hard drive and comes with Windows XP it costs only 500 dollars which is one of the cheapest computers I've ever seen and suits my needs for something quick and easy perfectly.

For the gaming computer I obviously needed something with a bit more power and after looking around one computer stood out from the rest and for seemingly no reason has better hardware and a lower price than the competition. As a bonus it also looks awesome! There is one bigger version of it which has a 18inche screen, (mine has 16) but I feel that is a bit too large for a laptop, I want to be able to move it after all.




The Acer Aspire 6920G
Windows Vista Ultimate
16 inch widescreen
GeForce 9500GS 512MB
4GB RAM
320GB HD
Blu-Ray Player
And more...

I got this for 2,000 dollars, again really really cheap.

 

I just created my first graphic for this site and uploaded it.


Unfortunately for me however the site compressed the image and made it all blurry, now I feel I'm in need of glasses!

It took great care and compassion to decide on the level of blurriness in my profile image. 0.5 pixels for the rays, 10 pixel feather for the drop shadow, with another 0.5 pixel blur on top, outer glow set to multiply with very great care taken into the details and now it's all a blur to me.

I think we must either be allowed to link to off-site images or get uploads with full detail or I'm afraid my images will be worth nothing here.

It's not a big deal for this thing since it obviously was a blur to begin with, for other images however it could be quite horrendous!