The Wiki Forward

I expected crickets.  I said it was a bad idea.

Since Sunday's offer, I have spoken to four would-be members of the wiki.  As of now, two have jumped on and I have every expectation I will see the other two.  All four are long-time visitors to the blog and all four made a point of letting me know they had bought How to Run and my other books (see the sidebar). This is terrific!

I put up a very short youtube video on making pages in the wiki, if any of the members haven't seen it yet:



The wiki is quite simple to use, but please let me know if there are any other videos that I should make.  I am going to create one about loading a graphic onto a page that should be up later today.  There are plenty of other wikispaces tutorials around.

Most of all, I want both the members and the casual readers to get something more out of the wiki than I can deliver right now.  People are heading there in droves (275 & 250 unique visitors this past two days!) so there is definitely an interest.

For the moment, I want to wait a week before taking on anyone else, if you're thinking of coming on in.  Once this change gets settled a bit, once I start to figure out what the problems are going to be, I'm sure that the great people I have spoken to already will be instrumental in keeping the source material safe and protected - and that is my main concern, of course.  I have been wonderfully reassured on that front and to the members, I say thank you for that!

I want to put on the blog - because I did not float the balloon on the original post - that I am encouraging members to put up their own material, so long as it doesn't change a message that I've already created.  I would like the wiki to present one functional structure that will serve as a resource (letting people home-rule it to their heart's delight off the wiki), not just another dogpile that offers 11 ways to run a combat system.  There are hundreds of aspects that the game needs to be specified without reinventing the wheel over and over.

As well - and this is a memory issue - I do want to minimize unnecessary images.  I have 3 GB to work with one wikispaces - plenty of room if we concentrate on text and content, not flare.  Tables are great - but whenever possible, keep 'em tight, aesthetic and as low on KB as possible.

Towards that end, if any of the members want me to give them specific tasks to undertake, then please do not hesitate to ask.  I can't promise that they'll be easy, but I'm sure I can come up with some kind of job that needs to be done that I'm not addressing - or that I've made a half-hearted attempt at that someone else might enjoy more.

For example, I'd like an individual page for every monster, with stats and habitation ranges for my world - the real Earth, the place where we all live.  Describing an environment on Earth will be helpful for every player who is trying to figure out where creatures would dwell on their fantasy world - because, after all, we steal everything from our experience with this planet.

Welcome.  I think the next year is going to be great.