Is there, or are there plans for a FFXIV wiki?
Is there, or are there plans for a FFXIV wiki?
Good question. What are the sources so far? I assume there are other planned wikis out there already.
There has been some discussion in passing, but nothing tangible to my knowledge. It would be quite the project to undertake, but I imagine if there were sizable interest combined with a reasonable core of dedicated people to get it started, it might just become a thing.
I know our initial plan back in 1.0 was to pick someone else's site to support. But then, of course, 1.0 was shit.
At this point are there any active sites out there that people have found decent?
At the moment, there are no plans to make a FFXIV wiki. First, we could not even make any promises without access to an equivalent of POLUtilis. Second, this site is going to be infinitely more versatile compared to a wiki. This reason is similar to why we outsourced certain information handling to FFXIDB. Different types of sites handle certain data better.
The only obvious defects with the site include stuff they haven't completed. As is, they lack public editing necessary to detail quests and add lore related content. Furthermore, they lack statistical analysis that FFXIDB provides. I'm not mentioning these to knock them because we haven't see their fully developed site. They are points worth addressing though since I'm suggesting that this would ultimately benefit users more than a wiki.
That said, I am curious to learn how they're mining for and adding data to their site.
Infinitely more versatile seems like a bit of an exaggeration. You pointed out some of the advantages of a wiki in the very same post. For example, if they add public editing, then their site will essentially become a wiki.
Looks more like a database than a wiki (Think FFXIAH). Wikis only become semi-competent databases with Semantic Forms extension and even our current wiki doesn't have that because of some coding conflict. As I understand, wiki can hardly mold itself to meet the filtering and graphical demands that website offers. Especially, the wardrobe feature.
I've registered for FFXIVdb.com and it's certainly useful but I do think the XIV community is crying out for an uptodate wiki. Whether of course that's practical or desirable for BG to do, I don't know. It looks like you can comment on the xivdb which is helpful but not edit.
I'll see if I can contact the owner and figure out their plans.
I think at the very least we could probably do a wiki for theorycrafting and endgame strategies. Keep it laser focused and clean.
To me this makes the most sense.
XIVDB seems as though it can fill the void of a wiki, looking up recipes, items, weapons, quests, etc; however, those devs have to decide if that is the route they want to take. The question is though, do we really need a wiki with quest and story mission information fully fleshed out? In XI I remember using the wikis to find quests for specific items, figuring out where to go, but in XIV the game essentially does all of that for you. At this point any Wiki for quests would be best used for telling you what NPC to talk to for beginning a certain quest. There isn't really a need for a step by step guide. It'd be a waste of time.
If any sort of wiki were to exist it would be more beneficial to list various strategies for dungeons, PvP, and raids. Theorycrafting could be useful, but it might be best to leave that to the forums because of the fact that players won't always agree.
Now the only concern you might have is if if you're wanting to build a wiki that you want a lot of traffic to. If you create a wiki with limited information some users may go to another wiki that decides to have as much content as possible. Also, we all know that people will eventually just copy and paste from one wiki to another. With that said, BG already has a userbase established, so that probably wouldn't be an issue for a BG wiki. Although, I could certainly see it as an issue for people to complain about.
As for what's already out there for XIV resources.
www.xivdb.com
www.xivmodels.com
www.xivpads.com
All of which are related and using similar software.
There's also all of these,
www.eorzeapedia.com - Wiki resource
www.eorzeareborn.com - Guides?
http://ffxiv.zam.com/wiki/ - Wiki
http://www.disciplesoftheland.com/ - Wiki focusing on DoL?
http://orcz.com/Category:Final_Fanta...A_Realm_Reborn - Wiki
and Gamebreaker announced a community site they're working on,
www.xivnation.com
I suppose /r/ffxiv on Reddit has a wiki page as well, but it's far from what players might actually find useful.
Now I'm sure there is even more sites out there, but it seems as though the all encompassing wiki is being taken care of by several places. Although, from what I've seen of some of them so far I can't say I'm too impressed of their layout/design. The only one that I'm actually interested in succeeding is XIVDB, but I just hope they aren't spreading themselves too thin having three sites at once.
I see Zam bought ffxivdb http://ffxiv.zam.com/story.html?story=32894
One of the problems with doing a wiki for ARR is that there are a lot of things which are answered very directly by the game itself. For example, missions and quests are incredibly straightforward compared to FFXI, with the target destinations shown precisely on your map, and so something like destination coordinates or NPCs to which you need to speak aren't really relevant. As said above, there are some specific uses I can see it being helpful for, but not to the same extent as a wiki helps with FFXI.