unforum

[jitterBox]

[META] New web-based tools for ARGs

[sherpa]

A Wiki and weblog combined (I add in the weblog, or effectively an announce-only mailing list, because of the email aspect) can do all you say, and more. It's a question of how you use it. If the Wiki had been the same throughout, you would see a goldmine of well-organised information, files, tools and SPEC, with talk pages on each major topic to organise debate. Unfortunately, through nobody's real fault, the Wiki died and starting again has stopped all that. (half the people on the forums seem to believe it's still dead!)

[gkscotty]

*delurks*

An idea I just had right now would be a framed setup for browsing ILB and discussing it. Imagine two windows - the top one displays pages from ILB. The bottom one watches what the current top page is and automatically changes to display a discussion thread/wiki page about this page. So if you go to the yellowbrickroad page then the bottom window automatically changes to discussion of yellowbrickroad.

[aliendial]

I actually don't regret the wiki impairment. I know people like many things about that tool, but I find even well-managed wikis are not intuitive because they are of necessity set up and run on a voluntary basis and too many people hang things off of it. So even without the wiki dying it already has so many drawbacks.

The wiki tool was proffered long ago in the ARG community as a substitute for the wonderful Trail written and maintained by the cloudmakers.org group (mostly the yahoo list mods for that game). That trail had a limited number of chefs, much more consistency and organization. And it took a hell of a lot of work because it was all manual. The wiki just does not compare. But it certainly saves energy.

So, as jitterbox rightly recognizes, the better approach requires a LOT more work and requires a group to step up and take a hand - start an organized trail, archive and index everything that happens, present it in a sensible fashion so anyone can check past events and a newbie can walk through the story to date with relative ease.

(Of course there's no real substitute for keeping up with the game as it moves, and for that the forums are as good as anything. It's pretty easy to decide what you really need to read and what you don't to figure out where game play is, once you've been here for a while.)

I will be first mod to admit I can't make the kind of commitment a Trail would require. We're over my limit just on the DC axons. But if you (that's the royal "you") can get a group together with the time and the cred to pull it off, give it a shot!

[vpisteve]

I'm in agreement. The WIKI has quickly become very cumbersome, and tough for new folks to grasp. I love the concept though, and always wondered how it would be used in real life during an ARG.

Admittedly, I'm a big fan of the Guide/Trail concept. The Guide being a chronological narrative of the story so far, and the Trail being an organized repozitory of all puzzles, files, etc. It's basically a living index.

Rowan is doing a bang up job maintaining a Guide, thebruce has a great Timelines page, but what we're missing right now is a good Trail.

There are a couple great examples of what I'm talking about here and here. This type of thing has historically been a real valuable resource. So..........anybody want to take it on?

[MarauderIIC]

I noticed the trout thing as well. But it's just impossible to keep up. And how can one keep up by reading all 31 pages of every topic?

Something I think might improve organization, although I have no idea how to go about it, would be a summary page on the first page of a topic.

As a case in point -- the .wav ordering threads. Although it's really easy to do this kind of thing on your own, if you're unsure where something goes, it's not always a cinch to find out. As a bit of detail, I did a search for exclusive_license at one point, and didn't find a list of .wav files. I found a transcript or two. So I posted an updated list including it and got trouted :)

Or maybe I used the search function wrong and the text blurb underneath the returned topic is only stuff from the first page. :)

But see, if the first page of the topic had included an order of .wav files that was edited to be kept up-to-date, it would be a lot easier. So, either the topic starter would have a whole lot of work to read his whole thread, a mod would edit it (lots of work for a mod :/), or maybe as an automated system people could vote for a post in the thread that is a good summary so far. And can change their vote in order to keep the summary up-to-date. Maybe automagically add a link to the end of a post. Sort of like a dynamic automatic quick-reference board. The problem with the quick-reference board is that you can't keep up :)

But, the voting thing requires editing of the board source.

IMO it's a neat idea, but impractical. Thought I'd share anyway, though.

Edit - I meant "every topic", not "a topic"

[inio]

For something as active as an ARG, I think a hierarchical comment system of the type slashdot uses might be more appropriate. The problem with a flat comment list like we have now is conversation forks away from the thread subjet and you end up with multiple conversations going in parallel. The moderation could also be useful for reducing the impact of trout.

[krystyn]

I almost wonder if Mos will continue to update his Labyrinth file for this game ...

It's not a trail-type thing, but it sure could be a handy file to have off-line for your own perusal ...

http://www.habitualindolence.net/labyrinth

[Scumbag]

I disagree with a few of your thoughts -

First, I think the effective tools for something like this are web-based. I say this for the most practical reason: I don't want to have to download anything just for a puzzle like this.

I do agree, however, that a forum isn't perhaps the best route. For every time doing a search helps you find, immediately, what you want to know, there's 9 times that spat out so much that it was useless.

Overall, though, I don't think there's a perfect

One more thing - I think the Guide someone linked to needs a bit of editing. Still some vestigal "this has little to do with Halo" and some complaints that its merely just a lot of axons aren't prolly supposed to be in a guide.

[aliendial]

inio, I think if we had hierarchical threads it would quickly become like the wiki - too many places to look, greatly enhanced risk of the same conversations going on in multiple places. I think the flat style is better for that reason. But no tool is perfect.