How would you revitalise the wiki?

Hey gang,

Over the last ten or so years, I've noticed how the wiki pages for modern games are bare bones as. When you look back on pages like Persona 4, or Diablo 2 or something, their pages are spectacular. Look at something like AC: Odyssey and you'll see there's NOTHING on there.

If it were you, how could you change it to make people actually care about the wiki again? Cause atm, it feels like even the staff don't give a shit, save for MAYBE Jeff, and I get the feeling only because it's kind of his baby

I think Jeff is the only one who's cares about the wiki at this point, whit stuff like wikia/fandom being more successful, i would have stopped supporting it as there's almost zero community support to it. The only thing it got going is Twitch using it as a back end and dev's crying about why there game isn't on the wiki. Definitely a solid question. But i feel the wiki is super death.

RIP WIKI.

As someone who tried to get people to care about the wiki, I can safely say that the wiki is pretty much kaput. Without a solid base of dedicated editors and a clear style guide, the wiki will remain a sad place.

See that's another thing I don't get. Take this page for example.

There's NO INFO on there, but you still have 3k points?

There were a few games in the past that I felt somewhat interested and knowledgeable about to edit the wiki for them but I dunno. It's a lot of factors really. One of the main issues is that over the years the site has become less user oriented, from both the staff and site standpoint. Usability is at an all time low. Jeff and the gang don't shy away from harsh words when it comes to describing stuff so I'll be frank and say this newest redesign is nothing short of a disaster - like XB1 UI level bad. In the past there were quests, there was some weird leveling up system, the staff was interacting with the user base. These days it's more of a video outlet. It's hard to care about the wiki when the site itself seems to have moved on from it. There are some other personal reasons I have that I won't get into but over the years my overall enthusiasm for the site has gone down a bit. I still like the doods a whole bunch and enjoy a decent chunk of the content they produce (and there is a lot of it) but I'm just not nearly as invested as I was. The most I do is gather up the effort to write a review for a game that I feel strongly about one way or another. The wiki? Ehh I dunno. I guess I could fill in large swathes of the BELOW page because I spent an excruciating amount of time with that god forsaken game, but I just don't have the drive to do it.

Drastic change is required at this stage to have any real hope. User engagement appears to be practically nil these days and a wiki that isn't even the front page of its' own site is doomed to fail imo.

I think at this point it's 100% clear that user side of Giant Bomb is dying a torturous death from lack of engineering resources/focus and frankly has been for 6-7 years now since the sale. I don't fault that decision as I'm well aware that the banner ad market never really recovered and it's clear where they make their money these days. Quests apparently were a failed attempt to monetize the wiki as well.

Thus I think it's in the best interests of both components of the site to separate. That's only been made more starkly clear with the new redesign (again I don't blame them, you want to invest in what works for your business. Throw good money after good. The gang is real good at the personality stuff). The Personality aspect of the site is probably hindered by weighed down by even having to spend mental focus thinking about anything other than that. GB clearly makes almost all their money off subs who come for the video and audio content and probably gets a far greater ROI for their time when they focus on what they do well. The wiki is something that is a living breathing database that needs constant attention to remain viable, now more than ever in the era where 3k + games get released every year just on Steam alone.

Couple options I've pondered whether they would help or would even be possible

1. Sell the Wiki to an outside party-
   1. Might be unpalatable for sentimental, legal, economic reasons
   2. Positives might be it might be able to use the business model of a different company better (able to fund it through Patreon using donation drives ala Wikipedia etc) that wouldn't be viable at CBSi
   3. Maybe Twitch or somebody big who uses the API wants it. I dunno
2. Make the wiki and user blogs/lists/reviews part of GameFaqs instead of Giant Bomb
   1. Gamefaqs is basically the database aspect of the CBSi game sites already, this sort of thing is their sole focus
      1. Release Data and Genre data are already present in the GameFaqs pages, guides are too obviously. Something GB's wiki once sort of had. A lot of the content is pointlessly duplicative in their current states. It never made sense to me that I'd have essentially consult gamefaqs to fill in blank release dates here.
      2. Gamefaqs community seems to be considerably larger and more active than GB's, much larger pool to recruit and continually find new editors.
      3. the Wiki would likely enhance what they already try to do over there and fits with their core mission better than GB's
      4. Their business model is already focused on text based content
      5. Gamefaqs already has plenty of user reviews and active forums. Blogs and whatnot would likely fit in well over there
      6. The Wiki would likely get more regular attention over there and basic upkeep/refresh needs would be more likely to be met.
   2. Some potential Downsides
      1. Probably an unbelievably massive project to try to integrate the two databases
      2. Gamefaqs probably has a different philosophy about to handle information. May be incompatible with existing info in the wiki
      3. Gamefaqs existing community would likely clash socially with what remains of the Gb community. (there's been subtle and not so subtle digs at them by some users here over the years)
      4. Jeff may not be allowed to be involved or not want to be involved with it anymore. Not many people have his breadth of knowledge or expertise. His involvement with the wiki is hugely beneficial even if it's just in an advisory capacity.
      5. gamefaqs leadership may not want the wiki
      6. I'm sure there's tons of challenges that I'm not aware of, since I don't work there or know anybody personally at either place.

Whatever happens to the Wiki whether it stays here or something else happens, I think for it to have any chance to revive it needs these things bare minimum

• It needs to be front and center on its own site. You can't expect people to use something or know something's there that's not even the focus of its' own site.
• It needs constant engineering focus, to change with the times. Video games themselves change and the wiki needs to adapt with them. There will always be new challenges and new ways to sort information. Some examples of the changes to video games since the GB wiki was launched, subscription services like Gamepass, PS Now, PSN+ etc. The flood of indie games hitting Steam every year making it impossible for a handful of active contributors to keep up. New genres like Battle Royale games. Thus a wiki must be able to accommodate such new challenges and most critically do so in a timely manner. A wiki cannot thrive on autopilot. It can't have engineering fixes to core features take years to address, same goes with editorial decisions.
• On that note, it needs to be reliable. I've learned tricks on how to not lose my work, but there's plenty of times I've lost paragraphs I've typed due to CSRF token issues and/or other glitches. Or seen associations break etc. That's extremely extremely frustrating.
• The editors need to believe their efforts are going into a project that is active and successful. Nobody wants to spend hours putting info (for free no less) and research into a dying endeavor. Maintaining editors' passion and goodwill is essential to keeping a wiki alive. These people are volunteers, if they aren't happy and enthusiastic they likely won't contribute much.
• It needs constant engagement with staff, who oversee and try to direct activity to fill in areas where information is incorrect or incomplete. A staff who actively use, like and promote the wiki and communicate with users on a frequent reliable basis. To provide guidance about things like Style guides and set examples on how pages should be built. Also to settle disputes, we haven't had too many edit wars here that I know of but a lot of successful wikis do have to navigate things like that. When the wiki was rolling we had things like tasks and a functioning point system to help making editing more fun and focused.
• A monetization model that supports it financially. Maybe that's patreon, I doubt it's banner ads. Whatever it is, A wiki needs staff and staff costs money.
• Probably looser standards when it comes to allowing indie game makers to fill in their own pages. While pages absolutely shouldn't be ads, to be frank with the flood of games released now the bigger issue is manpower to just even fill pages. I think that's true for any wiki. It wouldn't perhaps to be so horrible to harness some of that desire to let game professionals fill in some of their own pages (at least initially). Maybe a new wiki could be used in a way akin to IMDB and be a place where professionals can make their own personal pages to network etc.
• It needs to have value to the user/editor beyond just being information. At Gb probably the main benefit the wiki currently provides is the List function (which is fun!). But it'd even more useful if it was tied into more systems that provide value to enthusiasts (like guides, achievement tracking, collection tracking, backlog tracking, how many hours to complete a game etc etc). Be a tool for them to be selfishly interested in improving because they themselves are using it.
• If it stays at GB , it's probably going to a consistent promotion campaign to win people back over, and it will probably need that for at least a couple years. A fullblown Relaunch event to start and then keep it rollin. Not only would these changes have to be made and shown to be durable over a long period of time (so that people trust it's going to continue), but you'd have to get people to even notice you are addressing it somehow.

EDIT: I forgot to add the above isn't intended as a personal criticism of anybody. I know there have been plenty of folks who put in absolutely herculean efforts into the wiki and still do, especially some of the mods. Running a website with as a broad of focus as Giant Bomb is just a really hard thing to do, even harder with such a small staff. Times change too, what made sense in 2008 may not make sense in 2019.

CSRF token issues keep me from doing a lot of extensive work on any aspect of the site anymore. As mentioned elsewhere, I'm just not sure the impetus or the resources are there to properly gut and fix anything on the user side of things. I hope I'm wrong about that, but since the Sea Serpent redesign, it's been the norm for things to slowly downgrade on the forum/wiki side of things while chat and video improvements are implemented. I've seen engineering say something to the effect that the forums and wiki aren't drawing enough hits to be a priority, which is exactly the sort of attitude that drives people away from using those aspects altogether and creates something of an ouroboros. We can't get enthused about something that won't get fixed.

No info you say?

https://www.giantbomb.com/despicable-me-minion-rush/3030-43462/credits/

@bobafettjm: holy cow! That's impressive work man

Fair

I would love if the wiki received renewed attention and there was more incentive for contributing. I would probably spend some time myself pitching in if this was the case.

However, I think the ship has probably sailed on this.

Two words: Boobs.

Seriously though, free premium memberships and/or merch to users who generate a certain number of staff approved wiki points? Or just give up.

@htr10: You might be on to something. Featuring a user every month or so and giving them, say, three months worth of free premium access or something might be an awesome way to reward wiki work.

Hmm, making it relevant (again) will get some people to take interest in it. But to get people to invest time to make it relevant again needs it to be relevant in the first place.

Or, yes, as above. Paying hard working wiki editors with premium time or other stuff is probably a good idea. If it's worth it for Giant Bomb to have an updated and relevant wiki this day of age that is.

Yeah the new site design is pretty clearly a mobile site, which it's pretty good at, the only difference between what you get with desktop and mobile is the top bar is different. It's pretty clearly meant for portrait screens, on landscape it's verging on hard to look at.

There's also probably not much financial incentive to promote or stimulate the wiki, an unusually large percentage of giant bomb users seem to be subscribers (compared to most similar sites), and they don't see ads so there's no ad revenue from them being on the wiki.

@phos: But is it good at being a mobile site? Throughout the years i've been using 3 different giantbomb apps that all did a way better job at giving me access to all the content than this site could ever do. Are there people that prefer using the site over the list-based apps if they're on mobile? I guess if you're a new user, you're not going to find the apps before the site, so i can see how this might be an improvement on the old site, but still.

I don't feel like the current site is great for mobile. It's so hard to find content that have fallen off the carroussels, and the thumbnails are very nondescript given that this ain't netflix where every boxart is designed to tell you what the movie is generally about. The shows art is somewhat trying to help with this, but it just leads to content being shown on the page with the showart in one place, while it's shown with a thumbnail of the content in another place. So now you have the same content with two different appearances show up and clutter your carroussels.

The shows idea makes sense for playthroughs, but doesn't fit well with how people tend to watch UPF's and quicklooks. By obfuscating the decks & game links in favor of focusing on the mostly same-ish visuals of the studio's, it has become harder to figure out what is new. And the size of the topbanner makes it so that all you can see on the mobile frontpage is this one piece of content. That's not how you quickly communicate to new users what this site is all about.

This is all quite off-topic, but i was reading through the thread and the idea that this is what a good mobile site looks like just didn't jive with me. :P

I agree with what @slag said. Wiki side needs to adapt to current trends, constantly improve and needs to change or it’ll slowly dies.

Here are my thoughs on how could the wiki improve just a little bit.

• Add regions (UK could be changed to PAL reg. or EU), genres, themes, [requested] platforms
• Make alias category editable by users
• The object category is useless and I think we should get rid of it. Same for the guide.
• The concepts category is unclear. There could be some toggle that would show for example just gameplay mechanics, protagonist characteristics, events...
• Merge platforms i - phone/pod/pad into iOS, PS3/Vita Network into PS3 and Vita, 3DSE into 3DS... (I know there’s not a magic button for this, sadly.)
• Rebuild the point system
• Game releases edit should be accessible from front game page
• That fun things such as game length
• If a game is in early access or got final physical/digital release or has been canceled

There is needed a lot of coding, approvements, reviewing but looking how many people viewed this thread I think they still do care about this side of GB. In the hope of respond from the staff regarding this situation and their future plans for wiki I’ll tag some of them here @nuclearwinter, @mento, @jeff, @marino, @danauer, @mracoon, @zombiepie, @danryckert, @brad

Sorry to bring back this thread, but we haven't heard anything about it. I was wondering if maybe it is time to add a new mod to the team that can maybe focus on wiki tasks? I have been noticing requests sit for a while some times with no movement on them. The current mod team is fairly small for a lot of work so I can certainly understand. another way to alleviate this might be to let users with a high point amount change some things like releases, delete images, change/add an alias, ect.

I was just wondering if this might be one reason traffic on wiki editing has slowed down? If not, then I would really still try to narrow down how we can help revitalize it as I love this wiki. I also agree with most of what @kaigan_sake suggested.

Now more than ever I think it's more a matter of the community side of the site dying a slow death. Barely any activity on these forums and yah, you look at new games like Control or Gears 5 and they have barely stubs. I was never one to actually fill out the Wiki, but it goes to show that a ton of people moved on and there is a skeleton crew of dedicated users that regularly interact with the site - everyone else is just here for the frontpage video content.

I've heard some theories one why everyone left but I always do wonder. I really liked the community but it's a shame when the newest games have threads that get maybe 5 posts per day.

@humanity: Yeah I've been hopping around to some of those pages for high profile releases and giving them some love. I'll always believe in the wiki even if the on-site community is a fraction of what it used to be.

I think I remember Jeff saying somewhere recently that they were considering bringing back some form of Wiki Tasks. That's an old favorite of mine from the site's past that would be fun to have again.

I think the wiki is probably dead in the water at this point. It's not impossible to revitalize, but it would take way more effort and investment than it's probably worth for CBSi. It'll still stick around though, if only because Twitch uses the API for its back-end database.

I also have some theories on why the community end of the site ended up the way it has, but I've also come to terms with the fact that things are never going to go back to the way they were. I still post here and there because I'm attached and I don't know where else to put blogs on the internet in 2019, but there's always this lingering fear that any well thought-out post that takes me time to write is going to be seen by three people.

I mean, shit, I finally gave in this year and made a ResetERA account. The Giant Bomb community thread over there is sort of a nightmare, but it also gets more posts in an hour than these forums get in a good day and has plenty of recognizable names from "the old days." There's also the GB Unofficial Discord, which is generally much friendlier and is plenty active.

I have some pretty clear ideas what happened to the community. If you've been around for a while, it's pretty obvious

The site redesigns have destroyed my community interaction, and the fact that 7/10 times they'll use Wikipedia over their own site when looking for info. That killed any desire to add to it any more.

What wiki?

I too, really miss the wiki. I remember finding the site back in 2009, when I was in college, and adding quite a bit to old games that I really enjoyed. It was just a lot of fun completing the quests, earning points, etc.

I also miss the more active message board that Giant Bomb used to have. As others have mentioned, I guess you can't go back, but it's still a shame.

It's a bummer the wiki is still a pain to use. I love a lot about the designs of this site but trying to put together a comprehensive article is not one of them. Images don't go where you want, texts and shit never line up correctly. It's just an exercise in frustration. I used to edit some games on my older account but ultimately just gave up, and when Jeff said they were in the process of reworking the wiki and making it better I've been patiently waiting for what seems like years now.

@bonelessspirit: I feel like I need to ask a half dozen questions nowadays to edit things on the wiki and I used to be a freakin' moderator. Ease of use definitely has to be a focus. I almost feel like gutting the whole thing and starting over with it and the forum might be the best route forward eventually if they really want to root out all the problems.

@sparky_buzzsaw: seeing how the redesign efforts are going and their proclivity for fixing one thing while breaking two others, if they were to break down the wiki and start making it from scratch we would never see it work again.

Giant Bomb is a live stream website now, I don't think that's in contention at all. It's like you said, it doesn't help that it feels like we've been promised a robust wiki update and forum update for what feels like years.

If you wanna be "in" with community interactions nowadays, it's the discord, but the userbase on GB has become so ubiquitous and faceless nowadays that it's hard to really pick anyone out as "Oh I remember them"

I know this is asking a lot, but I bet new life can be injected into the wiki community if they brought back and incorporated the achievement system for wiki activity.

@sombre: I dunno I broke down and made a ResetEra account - kind of ridiculous that you can't just use a Gmail account but whatever I guess it helps with spam.. and boy that GB thread is not exactly what I was looking for.

Discord is it's own weird thing and honestly I prefer forums for longer form content than an active chatroom.

The site is living on the video alone now. You pull up the wiki for Gears 5 and it's basically a stub - for Gears 5 - a big name game from a well known franchise. It doesn't help that, as someone mentioned above, whenver the guys themselves need to find some info they just Google it. I mean I can't blame them really. We just got embiggen back again, and it's completely broken. I can only imagine how the Wiki would work if they started "improving" and redesigning it.

I've never posted or looked at the forums before (or interacted with the community at all, really), but I guess I should have seen this before I started making a bunch of edits. I guess I share Jeff's ideals that there's something meaningful about trying to create a definitive database of every game with information that's useful to people who play and care about games, so over the past couple days I've started making a whole bunch of edits to entries, along with adding new games, franchises, and companies. But if it's all for naught, then I guess I'm the fuckin dope.

Having the wiki be exhaustive takes a lot of effort combing through store pages and company sites to get proper info, let alone actually sitting down and writing out a whole original description for it. This is the sort of stuff that people would be paid for, and there isn't the kind of gravitas and social importance to the GB wiki compared to something like Wikipedia or the immediate usefulness to fans like individual game wikis to make people be willing to put in substantial effort for free. Earlier posters I think have the right idea that having an extrinsic motivator is probably the way to go here - something like adding 1000 points of verified info a month getting you free months of premium would essentially be indirectly paying people money for adding to the wiki, likely adding a serious incentive, at least to someone like me who had premium bought for me and is largely not very interested in paying more for it.

The problem is that the GB wiki is irrelevant compared to all the fan wikias, or even vanilla wikipedia.

Back in the early 10's, we were seen as this huge repository for data, and were well respected for having very dedicated people making pages. Now that the focus is clearly on live streams, and the first 2 hours of any old garbage that comes out, it's clear that the wiki is a relic of a time passed.

@sombre: That and also whenever you want actual in-depth info about a game you typically go on Fextralife or Wikia where extremely passionate people are filling out pages for a single game in vast detail in a way that GB could never really compete with.

Where GB can compete regarding the wiki are basically old and forgotten games from the 8/16 bit era and even earlier. It serves a much better purpose as a museum for older titles than an up to date repository of information.

But what CAN Giant Bomb do, and what ARE they doing to incentive this?

@klaxwave: Well, there ARE people like me who appreciate you doing the work. I am just afraid there are becoming less and less of us. I am still working on the wiki fairly regularly as I feel like this thing could and SHOULD be amazing.

Of course there are issues like editing credits essentially broken and has been since the last overhaul. I have mentioned it multiple times with not even so much as an acknowledgement they even saw the comment.

I don't have a whole lot to add to this thread but I still work on the wiki pretty regularly and would simply like to see some of the small issues be fixed that have been introduced after various site redesigns. Like not being able to add more than one developer on a release entry when you first create it or not being able to fully edit a person's credits on their actually page (currently you have to go to the game page to classify them as a designer or anything). I'd also like to be able to do more things like add aliases or delete images like @bobafettjm mentioned previously.

Like people are getting at, in certain respects stuff like fan wikis, Mobygames, and even Wikipedia proper has GB beat when it comes to detailed information. In those cases, the "only original content" requirement hamstrings the ability of the GB wiki to even begin to catch up because we essentially have to rediscover the wheel by restating and reformatting the stuff that is already available and googleable. We should be willing to admit when we're simply not going to match the detail there, and actively encourage direct links to those other sites deemed reputable enough so that it at least functions as a referral point for people who end up here and want more info.

That said, the mission statement of the wiki should be to provide a practical, Encyclopedia Britannica-esque overview of what these games are so that people who have a solid functional knowledge of games can have a meaningful gamer-oriented context, along with vetted "further links" to guide the reader towards places to get deeper information. For example, if you google specific details about classic Doom, you'll find two competing wikis: the Doom wikia and doomwiki.com. The wikia has been almost entirely abandoned and most of the admins and editors have gone to Doomwiki, making it the definitive encyclopedic source for Doom. In this case, GB directly linking to the Doomwiki would help people unaware of those details to have a useful place to go rather than going to somewhere that could misinform. The problem is that this would almost certainly need the development of a Wikipedia style "talk" page for knowledgeable users to discuss and come to a consensus about those details behind the scenes, and as far as I'm hearing, there probably won't be any more updates to this stuff. Maybe this is something the page's forums could be useful for.

If there's nowhere else useful for a reader to go, then that's where the wiki can really shine by essentially being the only site to truly bear witness to these underrepresented games. I think my writeup of Frantic Dimension is an example: this tiny free indie game will probably almost never be searched for online. But if, in some unknown future, someone would wish to know about this game, there is at least one detailed explanation about it online to give it context.

There are certainly blue sky wishful thoughts of what could be done to help foster wiki participation: having a page dedicated to entries with little to no info including entries with no "releases" attached to them arranged by platform; bounties that could be put down offering something like multiplied wiki points for games that someone declares are worth adding info to; the aforementioned premium-for-wiki-work pseudo payment system, etc.