Comprehensive Lore Database?

[Lusavari]

Well. I'm all for helping to build the community, Moose. The discussion then comes to how do we translate anything into a compendium. What we need is a way to organize things like people's notes into a legible and coherent system. Obviously, as you've kind of implied, the wiki structures already in place are the best bet to creating something like this. I would first suggest organizing volunteers and those of us pretty dedicated to the forums into a collective to transcribers.

The problem then becomes, as you said, fragmentation. The best way to deal with this is "What's agreed upon" followed by a very limited speculation area that follows popular theories and ideas (i.e. some say.....). You really have limit that only to the two most prominent theories. Three if necessary. If we really want to do something like this, we do need to recruit some people who are willing to dedicate time to the effort and collect descriptions of things. I personally would love to join the cause for Heavensward.

One thing FFXIclopedia and Gamer Escape have ALWAYS had above most any other wiki (and for the most part, Final Fantasy Wiki) is they have some of the absolute best navigation and menus of any game wiki out there. What I would like to see though is something like Mortal Kombat's wiki has: http://mortalkombat.wikia.com/wiki/Kuai_Liang

You can see multiple tabs for each page. That Sort of begins to set up (of course, a wiki within a wiki) a page where you can read lore separate from other information and easily navigate to link certain lore topics.

[Anonymoose]

The discussion then comes to how do we translate anything into a compendium.

When using a traditional wiki as a base, the best idea I could come up with was to use the mechanic pages as a foundation (having lore simply included on the pages for everything that's already there while only needing to create pages for things that only are lore), and then moving a "step up" and simply organizing directories (pages or navs) that link to them categorically. For example, directories for mechanical categories would focus on narrowing down things like [Gear > Head > Worn by NIN > Has DEX] whereas lore directories would basically be pages set up like the Table of Contents of a World Of... book (Atlas, Races, Cities, Factions, Characters, Beliefs, Bestaiary) that link back "down" to those pages.

One thing FFXIclopedia and Gamer Escape have ALWAYS had above most any other wiki (and for the most part, Final Fantasy Wiki) is they have some of the absolute best navigation and menus of any game wiki out there. What I would like to see though is something like Mortal Kombat's wiki has: You can see multiple tabs for each page.

They way the Mortal Kombat wiki did it is actually pretty clever. Though it looks like each page includes "tabs," each page really just has a bar at the top linking to all of that page's subpages. Liu Kang/Moveset is on an entirely separate page from Liu Kang, but both pages have the same navigation bar. Notice how below "Liu Kang/Moveset" there's a small link back to the "Main Page" of the "Subpage?" It wouldn't be difficult to emulate at all, though it might take a while to standardize (the biggest perk being that GE uses a lot of DPL, which makes individual pages very expensive; this might alleviate that and thus that might be good incentive for Gahoo). Our standard nav, though, is about to get a boost even now, as a new version of the site drops soon (after many, many requests the website be wider than Wikia, and thus wider than GE has been since becoming unfettered to the way Wikia displays). Fusionx recently showed off the basics of what the "extended nav" (Opened Recent Posts > Site Nav > Wiki Nav) looks like (in development).

The best way to deal with this is "What's agreed upon" followed by a very limited speculation area that follows popular theories and ideas (i.e. some say.....). You really have limit that only to the two most prominent theories. Three if necessary.

I've always loved how the Wiki of Ice and Fire handles this. Only confirmed, cited information makes it onto biographies and summaries, and, if prudent to understanding, Theories are listed on one of the page's subpages. Any theory anyone can make a real case for with cited evidence is included in descending order from most evidence to least. Everywhere there's lore on the main page and someone has unconfirmed theories about it, the top of the lore section has a small, "See (Pagename)/Theories)" link, and it gets whittled down until there's more to cite the main page. I love theories - fanon bothers me.