EQ Legends - P99 Wiki Request

[xmaerx]

Hello!

I had been talking to two others interested in planning out a "springboard" for the EQ Legends server wiki. The expectation is that this new server will take quite some time to escape the Classic-Kunark-Velious timespan that P99 has extraordinarily well documented.

The goal would be to fork and curate the P99 Wiki, retaining all of the "content" which will be identical (Quest chains, zones, maps, mob locations, drop tables) and building on top of it with the custom mechanics and content that may exist on this upcoming server. This would also allow us to retain a familiar format for anyone playing on both servers, since the layout, page flows, navigation etc would be consistent across both wikis.

There are some challenges with this approach that we have outlined, but ultimately starting from scratch would result in thousands of hours of work before the wiki would be useful (The P99 wiki took over a decade, for example), and I suspect people would just "settle" for the P99 wiki at best, for something it isn't intended, or at worst, make edits to it that don't apply to P99 (This is also an issue with the existing EQ TLE servers and their lack of a carefully dedicated wiki)

I spoke with the current maintainer of the P99 Wiki and he had mentioned seeking public endorsement of such a thing -- since the wiki itself is entirely public contributions. That's totally fair.

So this is the wide-net request to anyone who has contributed, in large or small part, to the wiki: Any vocal opposition to spring-boarding the EQ Legends wiki with a partial DB dump of the classic EQ content from the P99 wiki?

[loramin]

Originally Posted by xmaerx [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Hello!

I had been talking to two others interested in planning out a "springboard" for the EQ Legends server wiki. The expectation is that this new server will take quite some time to escape the Classic-Kunark-Velious timespan that P99 has extraordinarily well documented.

The goal would be to fork and curate the P99 Wiki, retaining all of the "content" which will be identical (Quest chains, zones, maps, mob locations, drop tables) and building on top of it with the custom mechanics and content that may exist on this upcoming server. This would also allow us to retain a familiar format for anyone playing on both servers, since the layout, page flows, navigation etc would be consistent across both wikis.

There are some challenges with this approach that we have outlined, but ultimately starting from scratch would result in thousands of hours of work before the wiki would be useful (The P99 wiki took over a decade, for example), and I suspect people would just "settle" for the P99 wiki at best, for something it isn't intended, or at worst, make edits to it that don't apply to P99 (This is also an issue with the existing EQ TLE servers and their lack of a carefully dedicated wiki)

I spoke with the current maintainer of the P99 Wiki and he had mentioned seeking public endorsement of such a thing -- since the wiki itself is entirely public contributions. That's totally fair.

So this is the wide-net request to anyone who has contributed, in large or small part, to the wiki: Any vocal opposition to spring-boarding the EQ Legends wiki with a partial DB dump of the classic EQ content from the P99 wiki?

Do it late at night and throttle your scraper (even late night folks shouldn't lose access completely).

As long as you do that (ie. as long as you are considerate and thoughtful about how you do it), I doubt anyone will have any issue.

[BradZax]

as long as on the front page there is some special thank you to project 1999 so its never forgetten and forever branded into the soul of everquest.

[Swish]

My updates have only been minor aside from a cleric solo guide written over a decade ago. If any undead focused enjoyers find any merit in it for EQL I hope it helps.

Would we be able to update our guides on there?

[xmaerx]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Do it late at night and throttle your scraper (even late night folks shouldn't lose access completely).

As long as you do that (ie. as long as you are considerate and thoughtful about how you do it), I doubt anyone will have any issue.

Yep! We would ideally just get a thumbdrive-style clone of the existing wiki db sans logins instead of having to scrape the site at all, which is way easier on the site than either scraping or utilizing the mediawiki export/import functionality (which is the fallback plan).

The main concern was providing credit where it's due for all the work that's gone into the P99 wiki over the years. Taking that approach would retain all of the edit history, including contributors [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Unlike the P99 wiki, it wouldn't be hosted by nor owned by the project. This means we're still free to attribute the efforts of the P99 community, despite the EQLegends project itself clamping all emulator mentions, including P99.

In theory, we will likely chunk things into three baskets: Stuff that we've verified to be applicable to the new server (zones, quests, mob and item lists), stuff that likely is not applicable without some edits (guides, mechanics), sticking a banner at the top making that obvious. And then a third basket that is specific to P99 that we just discard (patch launch timings, install guides, etc) This should give people a clear path to contributing without having to start from scratch.

[WarpathEQ]

The original wiki is effectively dead so I would be most concerned about understanding why it consistently doesn't function and ensuring that any future iteration you build doesn't succumb to the same short comings.