A small rant on shmup wikis

[Magma Dragoon]

I find it sad that practically all wikis on shmups are either outright abandoned or have just one or two editors doing sporadic edits. Back in the day they would have at least a handful of editors, but they're all gone.

I thought that with the recent resurrection of the genre they would get some movement, but they're still abandoned, even the Darius Wiki, despite the recent release of Chronicle Saviours. I think this disinterest says a lot about the current state of this genre.

[chum]

I use the Chinese Touhouwiki for checking on records, since on the English one I imagine they just update secondary shit.

[qmish]

Wikis is one of disappointments of modern internet for me. Well-made websites were better.

It's also important that it should be certain persons with knowledge who makes content and not random anonymouse users.

[microfolk]

I wanted so bad to contribute to the Hellsinker wiki when I'd learn the game better but it has been down for more than a year now? That's really sad.

[ProjectAKo]

What's really disappointing is how little information remains of really old games, both historical info and tricks / high scoring knowledge. So far gemant is the only person I've ever heard of who has found out lots of info from old issues of magazines. Googling a lot of games in either language is damn near useless. Even on the bowels of 2ch you usually can't find anything about a game like Sand Scorpion or ZZZ. All those years of playing and grinding the game out and the knowledge from it are just lost forever.

Also lol at the sonic wings wiki. I'm not sure why there seems to be huge edit wars going on there, and the wiki owner has disabled comments on their talkpage so I can't even contact them.

[Magma Dragoon]

Wikis is one of disappointments of modern internet for me. Well-made websites were better.

It's also important that it should be certain persons with knowledge who makes content and not random anonymouse users.

Fansites were doomed as soon as blogs came into being, and wikis just cemented that. Fansites need money to be maintained and are usually a one-person venture. No wonder lots of good fansites have disappeared already.

As for anonymous editing, it can be disabled.

Also lol at the sonic wings wiki. I'm not sure why there seems to be huge edit wars going on there, and the wiki owner has disabled comments on their talkpage so I can't even contact them.

I thought it was abandoned too? Is the admin still active?

[gs68]

Darius wiki is outdated at best and has terribly immature writing at worst. To be fair, a lot of the content was exported from a now-defunct fan website.

[ACSeraph]

I think it would be awesome if we revamped and modernized the front end site (Marc's shmups website) with contributers from this forum. If we did something to shmups like what was done with SRK we could really have a valuable source of information and news. Even without a ton of new releases it would be easy to create compelling content about older stuff and the new discoveries our members here have made or even just the old lore to spread the word. You mentioned Sand Scorpion, well, how hard would it have been to write up a good feature about the game and all the techniques being discovered during TRP-STGT, high level replays etc. that we could post on a front-end news blog type site?

There are a lot of problems with using random wikis scattered all across the net. What shmups needs is a hub site. We can make it happen. We are in the best position to make it happen. If anyone was seriously interested and dedicated to the venture, I would happily contribute in any way possible.

[DJ Incompetent]

Soooo, all'y'all gonna go harvest all the old fading info and dump it here? http://shmups.co.uk/

You look motivated. You won't be in 10 minutes. But ya look motivated.

[vvv_stg]

Soooo, all'y'all gonna go harvest all the old fading info and dump it here? http://shmups.co.uk/

You look motivated. You won't be in 10 minutes. But ya look motivated.

Well, it would be good if the CAPTCHA on the account creation page actually worked, for starters.

[ACSeraph]

Soooo, all'y'all gonna go harvest all the old fading info and dump it here? http://shmups.co.uk/

You look motivated. You won't be in 10 minutes. But ya look motivated.

IMO we don't need an information dump. We have that. This forum is essentially that (though maybe not as organized as it could be).

What we need is hype. A constantly updated site that features and archives info on these games, and tracks and features whats going on in our community at any given time.

Someone shows off a new bad-ass technique for some obscure game? That kinda vid should be featured on a front-end site, not buried away in a high score thread or left to rot as a footnote in a dusty wiki. I'm motivated, but I'm not motivated to take a shmup dump.

[Magma Dragoon]

Darius wiki is outdated at best and has terribly immature writing at worst. To be fair, a lot of the content was exported from a now-defunct fan website.

This is the main problem with small wikis, they just copy content from somewhere (just take a look at the Shikigami no Shiro Wiki, they just copied the character descriptions from the HG101 article).

Yes, the Darius Wiki is VERY outdated. I been making some small edits here and there and rewrote Electric Fan, maybe I'll rewrite some more stuff there. I'm also trying to motivate myself to do something on the Gradius Wiki, I adopted it and revamped everything, but the place is still as dead as it was.

[rjosal]

I agree and would like some or 1 nice wiki. The same can be said for arcade in general. Most of the best knowledge is buried in forum threads, and so I and I expect everyone else just kind of learns as they go. Forums are good for discussion, wikis are good for conveying important information usually about how something works or how to do something. We use them extensively in the field of software.

[gs68]

I suppose I should take the time to pitch in, if I have the willpower to also edit remywiki and a certain wiki about tropes.

[ryu]

What shmups needs is a hub site. We can make it happen. We are in the best position to make it happen. If anyone was seriously interested and dedicated to the venture, I would happily contribute in any way possible.

I've been thinking that forever, always wondering when someone else would bring the idea up.

Problem is you need someone with the dedication and free time to develop such a website, which can take easily take months to put together.

[ciox]

This does sound like a nice idea, it could serve as a "twitlonger" for the shmups twitter for one.
As an aside it's worth mentioning that there's two regularly-updated "shmup frontends" out there and that they're both french and built around forums oddly enough, could be an example
http://shmupemall.com/
http://www.shmup.com/

[qmish]

Fansites were doomed as soon as blogs came into being, and wikis just cemented that. Fansites need money to be maintained and are usually a one-person venture. No wonder lots of good fansites have disappeared already.

As for anonymous editing, it can be disabled.

Another thing with fansites, is unique layouts they have. While wikias etc. mostly look the same.

I'd say it's part of general "standardizing" we have everything now. Social networks, wiki, other services... Everything is about "quantity of look a likes". Even if we point at movies and games - people don't wanna superheroes from Mars, they want "everyday men" as their protagonists.

[Xyga]

Fuck blogs, wikis, social networks, autoplays, limitless article comments, etc.
The internet was still good-enough for me about a decade ago. Now it's bloated shit full of people exposing their personal lives, horrible design, and nazi comments.
The only real improvements I'll aknowledge are HTML5 and ad-blockers.

Most wikis take the dust early because they're too much work for too busy/bored people, like most of today's internet contents and interests wikis are ephemeral, even if they're not supposed to be.

Why ? If you talk with people about anything related to the internet you realize for an enormous portion of the masses it has become like TV.
The entire interned could be erased over night and refilled every day with an entire new set of shows and contents, people wouldn't notice or worry about it, especially the younger born when the internet was already a thing.

It's only us old farts who care about preserving things and making stuff we have an attachement for comprehensive and permanent.
As I see it making a genuine thematic website with original and solid contents today is like building a clean island over an ocean of diarrhea.