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@Meneth: Could you get someone to look at the issue that I mentioned in post #63 of this thread? There's also a link to the corresponding bug report there.
(It would be nice if at least version 1.4 would come with a fix for this.)
It's a known issue. Not much I can do to get it fixed.
 
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There will be a contest when Together For Victory releases, which should help get the wiki updated.

On these competitions, is it worth giving it a week or two after the launch (perhaps not this time, but generally)? Only the betas will have played enough of TfV to update the wiki with much in the way of confidence initially, particularly for anything deeper than the statistics players would be able to read in tooltips in-game in any event. It'd also be handy to have some idea of what needs updating, and coordination in updating - I'm happy to update bits and bobs, but I've got limited time and capacity, and the current job now would involve:

- parsing the wiki to find out what needs updating;
- go off and gather the data;
- potentially finding someone else has updated it before I get back.

This was my experience when I did put some information together that could have been useful to the wiki (naval unit stats). I put the information together for my own benefit as well, and before the release of 1.2, so it was no skin off my nose when I checked and the wiki already had it sorted, but it highlighted the fact that any work I did on the wiki could well be wasted effort.

So what I find is that I'll only update the wiki if I go there to find something, and find it isn't there and so see a need for updating (which I've only done once, to some obscure modding-related thing). There's a huge amount of ineffiiency in the current set-up, which I'd imagine leads to limited wiki updates.

At the end of the day, a free-for-all wiki will never provide as good a coverage as something that has a degree of coordination and editorial oversight involved. It's no biggy for me (I know my way around the game well enough), but I'd think for games as complex as those produced by PDS, where the wiki doubles as the manual, that a bit more attention paid to the wiki would be good long-term for the customer base.

That said, let's have a look at the current state the wiki is in (I generally only go there for console commands myself, so I wouldn't know).

OK - if this doesn't highlight the issue, nothing will. The Beginner's Guide (possibly the single most important part of the wiki) was last updated for pre-release. The first link on the menus, and the first link that new players are likely to hit, hasn't been updated for over six months (and I'm afraid it's a pretty large undertaking, so not something I'd sign up to fixing at least before Christmas).

The second of the 'important links', Mechanics, is also last updated for pre-release.

Countries has been updated for 1.0

Console commands for 1.0

User interface for pre-release

Keyboard shortcuts for 1.1

In short, despite it being months since the release of 1.2, not a single one of the important links at the top of the wiki is up-to-date, and the most important links haven't been updated since before the game was launched.

If that doesn't suggest a need for a different approach (if the aim is to have the wiki as an effective tool for new players to understand the game), then nothing does. If, on the other hand, the wiki isn't supposed to be the key reference tool for new players, then a game of the complexity of HoI4 probably needs something else that is.

Edit: Sorry - this post changed form somewhat while being written - I do think leaving some time between patches and running the competition would be useful, but I think the results of the wiki approach to-date suggest that there are far more fundamental issues that need resolving.
 
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On these competitions, is it worth giving it a week or two after the launch (perhaps not this time, but generally)?
For EU4, having it start at the same time as the expansion release has worked very well.
It'll last 10 days, so people will have some time to learn the new stuff during the contest itself.
. It'd also be handy to have some idea of what needs updating
The contest will include a lot of specific pages that need updating, and more general categories.
You can read the current contest draft here: http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Hearts_of_Iron_4_Wiki:Contest

Going by the other wikis, the normal trend is that wikis stagnate a bit between expansions. In part due to slowly declining player numbers, and in part due to not that much changing outside expansion patches.
With this contest, the hope is to get the HoI4 Wiki out of that slump, and establish a more solid baseline that is easier to keep updated.
 
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For EU4, having it start at the same time as the expansion release has worked very well.
It'll last 10 days, so people will have some time to learn the new stuff during the contest itself.

The contest will include a lot of specific pages that need updating, and more general categories.
You can read the current contest draft here: http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Hearts_of_Iron_4_Wiki:Contest

Going by the other wikis, the normal trend is that wikis stagnate a bit between expansions. In part due to slowly declining player numbers, and in part due to not that much changing outside expansion patches.
With this contest, the hope is to get the HoI4 Wiki out of that slump, and establish a more solid baseline that is easier to keep updated.

That's helpful :) (cheers, I didn't think of looking for a contest page), but some of those pages are still a fair bit of work to commit to when it's not clear someone else might be working on it in parallel (under the current system, I wouldn't dream of working on something I couldn't rip out in a half-hour or so, too much chance of wasted effort otherwise). Still, if it works, well and good - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm afraid there's almost no way I'll be able to help out during the comp (I'm already partially into the run-up to Christmas), but I'll try to remember to keep an eye out for that 'pages that need work done' in January.
 
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In the contests I've been involved in I haven't seen any edit clashes. If you are worried about that sort of thing then you can copy the text to your user page (or a subpage thereof) and edit at your leisure. Once the fixes have been made you can then copy the updated text back over the original article. This way you can see if someone else is editing the article too.

I also suspect that a number of the pages haven't changed since release and the only thing needed it for someone to confirm that this is the case. Its a very good way of earning tickets quickly for the raffle.
 
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In the contests I've been involved in I haven't seen any edit clashes. If you are worried about that sort of thing then you can copy the text to your user page (or a subpage thereof) and edit at your leisure. Once the fixes have been made you can then copy the updated text back over the original article. This way you can see if someone else is editing the article too.

I also suspect that a number of the pages haven't changed since release and the only thing needed it for someone to confirm that this is the case. Its a very good way of earning tickets quickly for the raffle.

Probably easier for me to wait until contest is over - far less chance of a clash then. Am a little surprised there's no check-in/check-out system (unless I've missed it) - would make coordinating much easier. Some potential for abuse if people check out then do nothing, but you could dock tickets or something for that to dissuade it. Where I'm coming from is that if we tried to (not) organise large documents at work the way the wiki is (not) organised, it'd be a bloody awful mess, but it may well be the case that traffic is low enough in terms of the wiki, even during competitions, to get away with an low-org approach. As per previous post, I'll sit out of the comp and memory-willing give it a gander in Jan.
 
The last updated info appears to cover the entire topic, or page. So when I fix or update something but can't verity that the whole page is current, it would be a misrepresentation to change the update level of the page. However, I'll often make a note as to my amendment that it is as of a particular patch/expansion, which provides good information and is a cue to further updates.

I don't know what this contest is about, but unless the rewards are getting questions answered by devs for free to help update the wiki I'm not at all excited.
 
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So when I fix or update something but can't verity that the whole page is current, it would be a misrepresentation to change the update level of the page.
Part of the contest is moving much of the versioning to the section level, to make this kind of situation easier :)
 
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Part of the contest is moving much of the versioning to the section level, to make this kind of situation easier :)

Hurrah!

The prizes are now up on the contest page: http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Hearts_of_Iron_4_Wiki:Contest
The contest itself will be live the moment the patch is. There'll be another thread specifically for the contest soon after.

I'm disappointed. It's just cool stuff. I want solid answers to game mechanics questions.
 
@Meneth

I've updated the naval section of the France page and added some division name suggestions (for people who want divisions in the correct language) that I use in Vanilla+.

I will update the pages for the other major nations accordingly, if that's okay.
 
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@Meneth

I've updated the naval section of the France page and added some division name suggestions (for people who want divisions in the correct language) that I use in Vanilla+.

I will update the pages for the other major nations accordingly, if that's okay.
I don't see any problem with that.
 
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I am working on the USA pages. If anyone is paying attention. I also have the beta version going on my laptop and of course playing the USA.
 
The intro pages don't do well to reveal the scope, depth and value of the Wiki. Flagging Wiki work in a signature might help to get more views of useful pages.
 
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I'm still planning to do a bit on the wiki in Jan, but having a look post-contest suggests that a contest isn't enough to get the job done. I've just looked at the six flagged "important pages", and clicking through, every single one is still out-of-date (by how much I can't say - I'm scanning to see how effective the contest was at updating, not the quality of the content at this stage). Many of the important links are up-to-date as of "Pre release". The most recent is updated for 1.1. The next section is pretty good (although air war is still 1.0 - when it is likely, given the limited changes to air warfare since launch, it would be a pretty easy update to 1.3). Naval units, despite the stats being at least update for at least 1.2, is still flagged as pre-release (at the very least, once I've got time in Jan, I'll give this a look). On the other hand, scanning (I may have missed it, but I couldn't see anything, and definitely no headings for it) the 'up to date' for 1.3 section on battle plan, there's no mention of the new Spearhead feature (let alone how it works - the only reference I can see to the feature is in the list of 1.3.1 patch notes).

The Wiki does a lot of things well, has a stack of content, and for me, personally, it does everything it needs to. However I'm just not sure it's sending the right signal to a new player of the game. If I clicked on the wiki of a game, that was meant to act as a manual, went to the beginner's guide and saw it hadn't been updated since pre-release, I wouldn't see it as a good reflection on the game. I think having contests and volunteers update is a useful thing, but the evidence suggests that without some kind of curating force beyond the volunteers, it's likely to continue to have missing and out-of-date (at least in label, and for a new user not having certainty that what they're reading is relevant to what they'll be playing is important) material. Whether this is an issue or not depends on the goals of what the wikis aim to achieve, but now that they have a semi-official status, I would have expected something a bit better.

Note, this is not a slight on Meneth or any of the other wiki contributors - to get the wiki up to the standard (and I'm not saying this is the standard it needs to be at) I'd want it at if I was responsible for it would be multiple weeks' work, and expecting that of a volunteer, however closely linked with Paradox, is inappropriate and unrealistic.
 
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Totally agree with @Axe99.

I understand the thinking behind a fluid, evolving wiki as opposed to a manual that is outdated by v1.1 (if not before), but if you're going to go down that route then at the very least I'd have expected consistent developer involvement.

Hopefully this is something that gets sorted in 2017 -- if the idea is to adopt this system for all future Paradox games, it seems like a good idea for someone on the company payroll to be working on these things with some regularity.
 
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