Badges Awarded.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

AC2 wiki exists but it cannot be browsed just searched. And the search may or may not deliver whatever is searched. And some relatively new people may just not be able to formulate what they want to search. That results in a pretty sad situation when tons of valuable content just sit there unfound.

Yes, that is what I had in mind. The most top level directory that leads to all AC content scattered across the net. These leads could be links (this site or external) or just plain articles. Most likely links as a lot of content is already out there.
The AC2 resource center (http://alphacentauri2.info/ResourceCenter/) and wiki directory (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Main_Page) do the job but they a little bit not the top level one 😉 and they are TWO separate entry points and they are quite short in directory aspect too. Maybe we can keep expanding it/them. My thought was to let people modify and expand the directory of this top level site because it is not a single man job.

[bvanevery]

For AC2 wiki, are you thinking about browsing by casual noobs?  Or browsing by hacker experts?  Because I don't think there's any problem for the latter.  If you're determined to bend the wiki to your will, the left sidebar has a "Toolbox" menu entry.  I didn't even know what was in there, only that wikis have certain things somewhere if I want to get at them.  Sure enough, there's a "Special pages" listing.  You can get all sorts of info, like Categories, Uncategorized stuff, all pages, dead-end pages, etc.  I've randomly run into those sorts of things just looking at a specific page long enough.  The wiki mechanisms are not a problem for someone determined to create or reorganize a lot of content.

In contrast, what do noobs want?  There's a Datalinks sidebar on the right.  And I'm not averse to using a Search function.  Or telling other people to use a Search function.

Do you think there's great content hiding on the wiki somewhere, that noobs need to see, and can't find themselves?  I'd be interested to know what those burning items are.

I have my own biases.  I usually want to know about some gory innard of the game, like how a probe team mind control formula actually works.  Somehow I do tend to find the wiki page about what I'm looking for.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

For noobs mostly if we plan to attract new blood.

[EmpathCrawler]

Oh that's why I have icons now. Thanks!

In contrast, what do noobs want?  There's a Datalinks sidebar on the right.  And I'm not averse to using a Search function.  Or telling other people to use a Search function.

Do you think there's great content hiding on the wiki somewhere, that noobs need to see, and can't find themselves?  I'd be interested to know what those burning items are.

I have my own biases.  I usually want to know about some gory innard of the game, like how a probe team mind control formula actually works.  Somehow I do tend to find the wiki page about what I'm looking for.

Earlier this year I started playing again after a few years so I often needed a refresher. The wiki was both helpful in some ways and endlessly frustrating in others. There are some very good pages like Social Engineering and then there are fairly useless pages like Morale. The latter is the first hit when you search for "Morale" but I was looking at a treatment of the combat morale system not MORALE. I've been trying to fix the parts that I found lacking. It tries too hard to directly mirror the Datalinks which doesn't work because the Datalinks pages were designed for the specific in game interface. Its strength is the albeit poorly organized technical deep dives.

There are two other wikis that dominate Google search results. One is a Civ-based wiki with SMAC content as an afterthought, but the other one is quite nice: https://alphacentauri.gamepedia.com/Alpha_Centauri_Wiki

The OpenSMACX project is a huge potential boon for the wiki because all of the messy backwards engineered guesswork can be replaced with solid data based on the actual game code. For example compare an old version of this page with where I have it now.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

but the other one is quite nice: https://alphacentauri.gamepedia.com/Alpha_Centauri_Wiki

This is an exceptionally good - all in one place - tabulated - info. I use it pretty often. But this is yet another resource that I have to search for though *google* and may never discover if unlucky. I usually don't advocate any structured information organization leaving it to self organizing. However, in this case the total amount of content is so huge and so difficult to find and so valuable for many (from newbies to modders) that I believe it would be a exceptionally great for users.

Another question is how many of them out there? I probably should ask about this on reddit.