Naturally, because of this, I think it's an achievement.
My earlier attempts to bring others on board, however, have been troublesome. Not to sound ungrateful, but some who dove in did so with very much experience in wiki building while assuming that I did too — while, in fact, I'd spent about one month with the program. They rushed in to build formatting that I was not trained on and did not understand, "to save me time," while creating changes I could not adjust on my own without literally deleting their work and mine. The issue arose, I think, because while a format like wikipedia can be casually messed with, because (a) the actual information is not structurally applicable to another usage other than pure interest; and (b) because there will always be someone else that's informed to come along and make repairs — my wiki is very much structural to a specific purpose and no, there's no one who can fix it like I can, because I'm the only person who clearly sees how the structure has to function without breaking the game. That was not made clear at the outset and it made for bad feelings and an abandonment of the project to entirely my hands.
Yet people have asked to help. And I am, unquestionably, wallowing in the size of this thing.
The easiest useful contributions are those that don't change content, but rather sharpen it in the most obvious ways: adding links, correcting bad links, fixing spelling, making passages clearer without changing the substance. This is what I spend a lot of my time doing, especially with content like spells. It is easy enough for me to take a spell that was added to the system 4 years ago without any formatting whatsoever, like this one, and simply plug it into with chatGPT with the specific instructions: "rewrite for clarity." I use this exact phrase because it gets good results. Chat will then tidy up the order of the words, not change their meaning, and churn out a fairly good copy that will serve fine as game rules, which it only needs to be. I usually then remove the Oxford comma (a stupid fucking unnecessary writing convention), straighten the curly quotes (which chat will not stop using), correct the American spelling to Canadian (because I am Canadian), add links where I see then, then add an image by saying to chat, "Make an image that fits this spell."
Images are an issue. Because it's D&D, Chat wants to make every image something underground or in a cellar, in smeary "painterly brushstroke", with forty shades of brown for contrast, usually replacing 16th century clothing with 19th century. If the picture is outdoors, chat wants gray clouds against a gray sky, with dull brown-green plants, grey-brown buildings and grey-brown people, pushing things around on grey-brown scenery. And, again, as though its painted by someone whose learning to paint for therapy purposes.
To create a better picture, I usually have to tell chat to make the sky blue, the grass and plants green, the people occasionally in a piece of clothing that's yellow or red (but not yellow-brown or red-brown, which chat will always default to), and often use the following instruction: "imagine that I got into a time machine, went back in time, took a picture of the scene, came forward and am now using that picture; give me that kind of high fidelity realistic imagery." This generally helps with the smeary brown, but not always. Sometimes, chat has to be sworn at several times before the system realises that I'm "serious" about my request.
The text in a page like the one linked above can also be made better by asking chat to "expand" the text. Not some other word, which will produce a different result from the one I want, since the last thing I need is more adverbs and adjectives and meaningless redundant sentences if chat is asked to "make it longer." Expand suggests, apparently, "use some things you know about the spell here and roll those into the text. These things then need to be carefully looked at, to make sure chat didn't change the meaning of the original, because chat WILL do that. But if the original is kept for comparison, then it's easy enough to cut sentences out of chat's expansion and reimpose the original wording if need be.
Additionally, if the content is a trifle dull, I find asking it to "enrich" the text is best. Otherwise, chat will load the text up with metaphors and similes, which is most enjoying. "Enrich" seems to produce small side reflections that are useful and almost always practical in some manner, so that chat isn't fucking with the language, but actually addressing the content of the sentence. This is very helpful. Words like "expand" and "enrich" can be used together, as it, "Rewrite for clarity, enrich, expand," and chat will do this without drastically slaughtering the work in a decorative, purple manner. I have arrived at these specific words after A LOT of effort.
Helpers willing to do this with the wiki would not need to invent game rules or understand the entire system to contribute meaningfully. They can take old text, preserve the original, run one of these specific operations, compare results, strip out drift, and return something clearer or fuller without altering the rule’s intent. That is a concrete category of labour. But that would mean trusting that I'm not giving prompts randomly. I'm being extremely particular about details, not just what I'm asking chat to create, but also what part of what chat creates that I'm willing to put on the wiki that retains the trust of the original while improving the presentation.
If someone wants to help with that, and show they're capable, THEN we can talk about the creating of base level sage abilities and writing spells from scratch, which I believe are learnable things for those who are willing to let themselves be taught. I don't want anyone who wants to come in and "fix" things to "help" me. I would like apprentices who can follow basic instructions and do ordinary work.
If you want to consider yourself for the task, you can use me for your resume and I'll make arrangements to give you access. Please be adaptable.
The easiest useful contributions are those that don't change content, but rather sharpen it in the most obvious ways: adding links, correcting bad links, fixing spelling, making passages clearer without changing the substance. This is what I spend a lot of my time doing, especially with content like spells. It is easy enough for me to take a spell that was added to the system 4 years ago without any formatting whatsoever, like this one, and simply plug it into with chatGPT with the specific instructions: "rewrite for clarity." I use this exact phrase because it gets good results. Chat will then tidy up the order of the words, not change their meaning, and churn out a fairly good copy that will serve fine as game rules, which it only needs to be. I usually then remove the Oxford comma (a stupid fucking unnecessary writing convention), straighten the curly quotes (which chat will not stop using), correct the American spelling to Canadian (because I am Canadian), add links where I see then, then add an image by saying to chat, "Make an image that fits this spell."
Images are an issue. Because it's D&D, Chat wants to make every image something underground or in a cellar, in smeary "painterly brushstroke", with forty shades of brown for contrast, usually replacing 16th century clothing with 19th century. If the picture is outdoors, chat wants gray clouds against a gray sky, with dull brown-green plants, grey-brown buildings and grey-brown people, pushing things around on grey-brown scenery. And, again, as though its painted by someone whose learning to paint for therapy purposes.
To create a better picture, I usually have to tell chat to make the sky blue, the grass and plants green, the people occasionally in a piece of clothing that's yellow or red (but not yellow-brown or red-brown, which chat will always default to), and often use the following instruction: "imagine that I got into a time machine, went back in time, took a picture of the scene, came forward and am now using that picture; give me that kind of high fidelity realistic imagery." This generally helps with the smeary brown, but not always. Sometimes, chat has to be sworn at several times before the system realises that I'm "serious" about my request.
The text in a page like the one linked above can also be made better by asking chat to "expand" the text. Not some other word, which will produce a different result from the one I want, since the last thing I need is more adverbs and adjectives and meaningless redundant sentences if chat is asked to "make it longer." Expand suggests, apparently, "use some things you know about the spell here and roll those into the text. These things then need to be carefully looked at, to make sure chat didn't change the meaning of the original, because chat WILL do that. But if the original is kept for comparison, then it's easy enough to cut sentences out of chat's expansion and reimpose the original wording if need be.
Additionally, if the content is a trifle dull, I find asking it to "enrich" the text is best. Otherwise, chat will load the text up with metaphors and similes, which is most enjoying. "Enrich" seems to produce small side reflections that are useful and almost always practical in some manner, so that chat isn't fucking with the language, but actually addressing the content of the sentence. This is very helpful. Words like "expand" and "enrich" can be used together, as it, "Rewrite for clarity, enrich, expand," and chat will do this without drastically slaughtering the work in a decorative, purple manner. I have arrived at these specific words after A LOT of effort.
Helpers willing to do this with the wiki would not need to invent game rules or understand the entire system to contribute meaningfully. They can take old text, preserve the original, run one of these specific operations, compare results, strip out drift, and return something clearer or fuller without altering the rule’s intent. That is a concrete category of labour. But that would mean trusting that I'm not giving prompts randomly. I'm being extremely particular about details, not just what I'm asking chat to create, but also what part of what chat creates that I'm willing to put on the wiki that retains the trust of the original while improving the presentation.
If someone wants to help with that, and show they're capable, THEN we can talk about the creating of base level sage abilities and writing spells from scratch, which I believe are learnable things for those who are willing to let themselves be taught. I don't want anyone who wants to come in and "fix" things to "help" me. I would like apprentices who can follow basic instructions and do ordinary work.
If you want to consider yourself for the task, you can use me for your resume and I'll make arrangements to give you access. Please be adaptable.
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