AT Database?

ubarose wrote:
... We have a family Wiki and my 8 year old knows how to create and edit pages, so I'm thinking you bozos could handle it. [/quote]

Now you're getting a bit optimistic - some of these trigger-happy ATers are top-of-the-range bozos !

Seems like the consensual feeling is "we don't want to be a full-blown database, but we would like reference pages on AT games for anyone arriving at this site and wanting to know a bit more about these games we bow before".

That sounds pretty good to me - I vote we let the crew mind-meld for a period and produce a prototype that is exactly what we asked for ... and then be savagely torn to pieces by fickle F:ATies.

I like the idea of the wiki to have a small database of AT games. I think the feature I miss the most from BGG here is independent forums for each game.

As a positive example, there is the icehousegames wiki ( www.icehousegames.org ) with pages for all the icehouse games (with rules, comments, etc...), or the piecepack wiki ( www.ludism.org/ppwiki ), with all the games and comments about them too. None of those sites are trying to replicate BGG in any way. I think as long as the web site is about a special type of games, the db should be ok, and is actually quite useful.

This wiki business also reminds me of my failed attempt at a boardgame wiki, which was too general (and redundant) to be of real value, but I think the idea as applied to AT games would be great.

-Jorge

Some kind of intro to AT would be nice for newcomers. Rob Martin's Ameritrash list rehashed would look great here.

I like the idea of a wiki, too, if it can be linked to user comments (would that be in the wiki itself or be set up as a separate forum?). And I don't think it has to be an exhaustive list of all AT games (if thats even possible) like the BGG database. Maybe just shoot for the top 50 or so at first and decide where to go from there.

I do worry about the possibility of an open wiki getting trashed, but sometimes you just have to take your chances.

Big question....who decides what can be included in the database? I assume there has to be some criteria of inclusion so that people aren't defining AT games simply as those they like vs those they don't like.

BillN

I think all of you are smarter than that. I give the people who read our site a lot of credit as being intelligent and passionate.


It's okay to like a Euro-fied game without feeling the need to try and pull it into the AT camp, or justify it that way. AT is just a kind of game that also shares something in common with a particular kind of culture. It's a way of defining a certain style of game. And the wiki would be an extension of that.

I'm pretty sure that once a page gets where you want it, you can lock or semi-protect it to avoid someone trashing it. Maybe that's what we could do, one page or game at a time.

Ken B. wrote:

I'm pretty sure that once a page gets where you want it, you can lock or semi-protect it to avoid someone trashing it. Maybe that's what we could do, one page or game at a time.

Normally wikis save the whole history of the page with all the changes that were made to it, so it's easy to see who did what and to roll back to an earlier version of the page if someone trashes it.

-Jorge

maka wrote:

Ken B. wrote:

I'm pretty sure that once a page gets where you want it, you can lock or semi-protect it to avoid someone trashing it. Maybe that's what we could do, one page or game at a time.

Normally wikis save the whole history of the page with all the changes that were made to it, so it's easy to see who did what and to roll back to an earlier version of the page if someone trashes it.

-Jorge

Yeah, but we're not going to want to have to be doing that ALL THE TIME.



Though if you guys become truly partners with us on this, I guess we'd have plenty of help, wouldn't we?

*Grin*

That's the nice thing about wikis. Eveerybody can edit and fix these kind of problems. You see that all the time at the icehouse wiki which was targeted by spammers recently.

-Jorge