Hey thanks for working on the weapons area of the Wiki. I'm going to be focusing mainly on the Animal section. Just letting you know so we don't change each others stuff on accident. :D
Feel free to check out how to connect with me on my profile page!
-DJ
Hi, I saw -- fun stuff! I'm a huge fan of trying to simplify / document the SMW logic. I responded to your notes on the old training table here but I'm not sure you got it. I'm afraid I don't understand wiki messaging too well. https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Template_talk:TrainingTable
Ahhhh yea! I just read it. Makes a lot of sense! :D I basically just rebuilt the entire Training Table template from the ground up, and made it super simple to use. I come from a PHP background in programming, and so I use cookies and sessions often. So I thought that the template, should be a "blank slate" and relies on manually setting the values. Seeing the values actually being set on the specific animal page itself, makes it easier for someone who is new to editing (like me) understand "hey, ok, so these values are being set here. Well, things changed with the animal, let's just change the values real quick and hit save". I think I wrote the documentation semi clearly. Hopefully this change is like good, needed, or wanted.
I'm new to editing on a wiki, so I'm still learning the syntax. My end goal is to connect contributors together in an easier fashion. (This is one of the reasons I never saw your reply on that page.) So I set up a Rimworld Wiki Discord. Specifically for the Wiki. Not for the game itself. This hopefully will keep people connected in more of a real time nature instead of "leaving a sticky note" for someone, who might not even see it. Like i did.
What are you thoughts on the change now that it's all done and functional? I spent like 2-3 hours last night making all the changes for every animal on the list of animals. They all should now be updated with their current training status as of 1.1.2610.
Also, I would like to make a suggestion to you. On your User page, can you create a list like I did on my user page of all the things your currently working on, or focusing on? Future projects? That way we can like keep track of the thoughts of what we each both working on?
Hopefully this all makes since. I'm really new here, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes or anything. I just notice some really confusing "code/syntax" and I want to make it readable and/or easier for anyone to edit, rather then spending like 2 days trying to figure out what all this stuff means. I feel as though there aren't alot of contributors due to how confusing it is to get started.
#sorryForTheRant
DJ-
The rant is very welcome -- I only started contributing last year and it took me quite a while to figure out how the hell the SMW logic works. It doesn't help that the Wiki has two separate systems for defining properties for an in-game object (Template:Infobox main and Template:Define, both of which were / still are extremely poorly documented).
Good idea on the user page list of projects. I added something with a few ideas of things I'm tweaking now / may fix in the future.
I strongly agree with your assessment of the difficulty of getting started with this wiki and resulting lower than expected number of contributors. Many of the templates on this wiki are a mix of outdated, undocumented, or just plain broken.
I think Template:Infobox main has the right overall approach, it just needs to be (a) simplified and (b) documented significantly better. I added a small blurb at the top of that page trying to explain how it works in a bit more detail, and I'm considering adding more pointers to that template in getting started guides, since it's been the most helpful artifact for me in understanding the SMW system this site uses.
For now, I think it makes sense to update the documentation of Template:TrainingTable to reflect that the properties in question must be set by either Template:Infobox main or explicitly set on the page. I think long term the right way to do this is to derive trainability properties like Infoboox main does, since that avoids hardcoding. But I don't think leaving the hardcoded values does any harm.
Don't worry about stepping on toes either -- given how messy / broken many parts of the wiki is I would rather have enthusiastic toe stepping than a lack of contributors.