unforum

[SuperJerms]

I agree. Since this was said a couple of times, including at the start of this thread, I want to hilight something:

[colin]

[krystyn]

I recall several nights where people would revert the history, only to have it all wiped out again by some 133+ 14/\/\3r 15 minutes later.

A rather sisyphian situation, if ya ask me.

[thebruce]

hehe

well, a batcave would be an interesting idea...
personally, I use the forums more than anything else at this point, because I use the 'view last posts in this category' page, for the entire haunted apiary discussion forum... it takes time, but I see ALL the new posts and threads that occurred since my last visit/view, and checking back every couple hours, I've got around 10 threads to check... so I'm up to date on anything out there, and I'm confident that any new discovery made at some other source will at some point be posted here... when it came to puzzles, there was one thread where the discussion was raging, and I kept that open, refreshing for new posts... soon's there was something new, alt-tabbed back to the firefly page, and updated the content... same thing with the axons - I keep my axon plot main page open to link to the pages still with open clips, waiting for the times to come, then keep checking until a clip is unlocked, save it, transcribe it, update any relevent pages...

That's how I work through the ILB game... fireflies has a mailing list, so some spec is brought to light there, but then, I rarely do any spec... so the spec I see is what's posted on the forums, and anything official is eventually posted there too if from some other source...

So really, it's just a matter of finding what combination of sources best suits your taste...

if you think about it - NetNinja vs Fireflies is pretty much the same as Open Source vs Closed... both have their benefits and drawbacks... it all depends on what purpose you want to focus more on... netninja may have much more input and much more info, but unless someone puts the time in to manage it, moderate it, organize it, it just becomes a big convoluted mess... so you could think of fireflies in a way as the 'organized' wiki... instead of trying to manage the open content of netninja (and all the other sources) in their own places, we organize it in a source that can't be changed except for the organizers... so obviously we hope that our organizational result is satisfactory for public reference...

as for who decides what gets entered? anyone can... it's not like we fireflies reserve the sole right to make any changes. If something needs to change, let us know... we're in a sense, the funnels for editing the fireflies wiki... it's still a public forum, but it's funneled through the moderators. Most of the changes occur from our own perusing of the other sources, but if there's a problem or error on any page, all we gotta do is hear about it, and it can change. So don't think of fireflies as exclusive... we're just moderating the source. If you want to moderate yourself, netninja is just for that.

so as I said, netninja is the open source, active resource for people to interact and figure things out; and sure, maintain an enormous database of everything... if you need to find something, chances are you'll find it there. But, it also includes a lot of stuff no one, or most people, will never care to see... but it needs to be somewhere. So, Fireflies is the wiki where we gather all the bulk of major, or official, information... and again, there is no limit, so we could potentially bring over all the spec that was behind a single solve, or things like that; so fireflies still has the potential to contain as much information as netninja... the only difference being netninja is an open publicly maintained compilation, where as fireflies is a moderated compilation. Both have their strengths, and both have their drawbacks.

Kind of like a whitelist vs blacklist. Netninja would be the blacklist - allow everything, but weed out the refuse. Fireflies would be a whitelist - disallow everything, and only allow what's deemed beneficial... Both have their places. Just as the chat, the forums, and other people's resources...

We're one big community, and already everyone has played such an important role, whether it's contributing a line to a possible solution, or becoming the first member of Melissa's crew (props, xnbomb)

Let's not compete, but pull together using each other's strengths...

ok, done

[Extrasonic]

I'm "responsible" for the formation of the Fireflies; I personally invited each member to join and I host the wiki, so let me respond to some of the things that have been said in this thread.

With respect to the technical aspects of the Fireflies wiki - I am indeed using the latest and greatest wiki software, my web server hardware has plenty of horsepower, and my database "lives" on different server hardware (also with plenty of power) than the web server. It's unlikely that I would have a problem scaling to the point where the Fireflies wiki has to deal with the same number of peak concurrent users as this forum (which, let's face it, is never going to happen). This is even more true given that all but 10 of those users will not have write access to the database.

With respect to the usability/navigability of the Fireflies wiki, I suggest that you look here if you're having trouble:

http://ilb.extrasonic.com/index.php/Site_Index

I think this is a very well-organized view of our content. While you cannot get to every page on the wiki directly from this page, you can start on this page and reach every other page on the wiki simply by clicking on links. Clearly I'm a bit biased, but I don't understand what's difficult to navigate about that.

Finally, regarding the "netninja vs. fireflies" issue, I agree with thebruce that we aren't trying to make it a competition. In my mind (and I understand that not everyone will agree) the breakdown is very simple:

- If you want discussion and group participation, then use these forums, the IRC/chat, the netninja wiki, or the other "read/write" sources.

- If you want a reference, then use the Fireflies wiki, thebruce's compilations, and the other "read-only" sources.

Like thebruce (and, quite honestly, all of the Fireflies), I was a big user and fan of the netninja wiki before it got trashed.

What turned me off to it, aside from the obvious technical problems, was that I think the netninja wiki developed a split personality disorder. It was trying to be an encyclopedia for the game as well as play host to a lot of speculation, meta issues, etc.

The world-editing problems with the wiki were not really the "vandalism" (e.g. deleting pages, etc.) since those were easily fixable by reverting to previous versions of a page. The real editing problems were all of the subtle changes - people overwriting other people's research and making it factually incorrect, people editing other people's spec to their tastes and eradicating the original author's meaning/intent, etc.

For this reason, a privately edited wiki (like Fireflies) makes sense to me as an ARG encyclopedia. The forums make sense to me as a home for ARG spec and discussion (everyone can comment on people's theories, but no one can change or delete anyone else's original meaning). I am not sure what the point (or level of success) would be if one were to try to recreate all of the game info that Fireflies has or all of the speculation/community interaction these forums have on a public wiki.

I am all for a "Batcave" (see my avatar) or a whiteboard-type application, but due to the way they're constructed, world-editable wikis would suffer from constant overwrites and other editing conflicts in a fast and furious puzzle solving session if it were used in this regard. I think there's a gap here in terms of ARG tools (i.e. we have no real-time collaboration tool, although IRC/chat is our closest substitute) but I won't elaborate as I'm pretty sure there's another thread in the general forum about that.

I'm sure a public wiki has a place in ARGs - especially if alternatives for refrence and discussion don't exist - but in this ARG, with this much critical mass, I'm not sure I can think of a task that a public wiki is uniquely suited to and can do better than the other, previously mentioned resources.

[SuperJerms]

[Malrog]

Just a point to bring to the discussion:

I like both Fireflies and the Wiki, for different reasons. I made use of the wiki til it died, and I think the new wiki wasn't hugely well publicised and as a result it's not been kept up to date. My point though, is that for an open, editable-by-everyone resource, aside from the malicious types who will try and ruin it, you will also get lots of people (like myself) who really aren't sure how or where to post whatever i t is that they want to say. I know there are readmes and help files and FAQs etc but they all take ages to read through, and if you just want to make a short comment it can be that you think "Well it's just not worth the hassle" and as a result, the place doesn't get used.

Personally I think the ideal resource would be a blank page which can be typed on at any place just by clicking there and typing. (so you could start typing text halfway across and halfway down a page, anywhere really. Other people looking at the page could see the typing as it happens (real time) and can type whatever they want, wherever they want on the page. Pretty much like a big whiteboard. Then you could have one person who "holds the eraser" and can remove trout, and even create summaries of things that have been worked on, so that more space can be cleared for more discussion. I'm thinking mainly about the puzzles that have been around on Tuesday's recently. These, especially for people like myself on dial-up, are basically impossible to keep up with and help with the solving. They go too fast, and people get left behind, or find that they're trouting, etc. A real-time virtual whiteboard like I've described above would be greatly useful, I just don't know how physically possibly it would be (from the coding point of view)

Well, that's just my thoughts...

- Malrog

[rose]

new application

[SuperJerms]

Re: new application

[Malrog]

Well, there's isketch though that's not quite the same thing, but again, if anyone knows code-fu, maybe they could take the bits from that that are useful (i.e. the whiteboard & the chat connected together)

Alternatively there's paintchat, brought to my attention by elvarien in #beekeepers I wouldn't know which places were best, but if you google paintchat you get several thousand hits. It seems the official paintchat site is www.paintchat.co.jp but I can't read Japanese so I have no idea what it's saying! Alternatively you could try this site, it seems quite professional. I've not had a great deal of time to look into this, I'm going to bed once I've written this in fact, but I thought I should bring it up, since this is very obviously what people (including myself) have been crying out for, particularly when going through the solving of the puzzles to get the Rani wavfiles. So if someone wants to do some investimigation and report back maybe we could even test run one of these on Tuesday (assuming we get puzzles then).

Anyone willing?

- Malrog

[AlexofMaceidon]

While I can't specify so much on code-fu subjects, I can bring my own story to the mix here. Personally, I started out in this game after the wiki was in full swing, (early september), took one look at the wiki, and found other sources to inform myself from. Sence then I've tryed to go back to the wiki, and I just can't sort through all that... stuff. For me, netninja is just too big for someone coming into the game to follow. Yes there are quick start guides, but those are 3 page documents that answer questions like "What is ILB?", if you want to go more indepth then that, previously you could either discover it all for yourself, or go to the wiki.

IMO, Fireflies serves a very good purpose if only to give something much smaller for the greenhorns (not noobs, but by no means fully informed) to swallow, because of its very nature. Every firefly that has posted has said the same thing, this is not an elitist thing, this is just the people who we think are more inclined to post just the commonly excepted facts, something that the incoming noob requires so dearly.

If your just skipping through my post, maybe you'll just catch this next sentence, because it is quite important.

FIREFLIES' EXISTANCE DOES NOT REPLACE NETNINJA. *the previous statement was uppercased not because I am yelling, but instead to make it more visible to people just scrolling by*

Honestly, its just adding to the mix of resources, if you don't like it, I'd say you shouldn't use it. I, for one, am going to go educate myself further on these "axon" thingies.