Meta:State of the Wiki 2017-04

From Granblue Fantasy Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Preface

Thank you to everyone that filled out the gbf.wiki survey in early April. We had over 1000 respondents which will help us immensely with improving the wiki.

The survey was originally intended to gauge a potential redesign for the main page as well as the wiki overall. However, the response to the last optional question “Do you have any comments or suggestions for improving gbf.wiki, design or otherwise?” were very eye-opening and warrants a formal response to some comments.

Before diving into the user-submitted suggestions, we’ll address one commonly expressed criticism about the wiki, and then present the data for the three required questions. In total, there were 1010 submissions after some duplicates were removed. There may be duplicates that we didn’t catch, but we received so many responses that any potential skew is negligible.

Why is the wiki so slow to update pages?

This is not well-known, but there are only 3 wiki admins and less than a dozen semi-regular wiki editors that help contribute info and data to the wiki along with occasional contributions from anonymous users. That simply isn’t enough people to fill out wiki for a massive mobile game with 3 years worth of accumulated content. Currently, the admins’ main priority is ensuring the latest event, character, and item data is on the wiki. Unfortunately, this cuts into improving or completing other older parts of the wiki such as raid battle data, item pages, main story quest pages, and new player guides. Additionally, we are simply volunteers. We are not paid to maintain the wiki and we do so for our own reasons when we can spare the free time.

We are also aware of the various Japanese websites that we can source data from such as gbf-wiki and gamewith, but even transcribing data is very time consuming.

We are understaffed and we absolutely need the community’s help in filling in pages and making corrections. If you are interested in becoming a wiki staff member, see the staff recruitment section below.

Main Page Design

Users have a favorable view the current main page, but there’s room for improvement. The admins feel the same way. From these results, we will try to maintain a clean and simple main page style while improving links and directories to relevant pages. Further details of a main page revamp will be discussed in a later section.

Overall Wiki Design

Users are also generally favorable of the overall wiki design, but it could be improved. There were also a few comments from question 5 stating that they prefer to keep the current wiki skin and were worried about gbf.wiki switching to a wikia-type design. Rest assured, we are keeping the mediawiki Vector skin. We also wish to spruce up the wiki visually so that it doesn’t look so plain. Further details will be discussed in a later section.

Desktop and Mobile Browsing

A little more than half of the respondents want a more mobile-friendly wiki. Due to our limited staff, we cannot allocate enough time and focus to immediately begin optimizing for mobile viewing without sacrificing focus on other wiki projects. However, we can be more mindful of mobile users when designing new pages and templates. The Main Page is one of the worst offenders for mobile viewing so we will hopefully improve it with the eventual Main Page revamp.

We ask that people use the View Desktop Mode option when browsing on smart phones until a more mobile-friendly design is implemented. There were at least several responses to the “Other” field that mentioned this option was sufficient for browsing gbf.wiki.

Existing Wiki Design Examples

(Optional) Are there any existing wiki designs that you think would work well on gbf.wiki? Please name or link to any examples.

81 out of 1010 people responded to this optional question. We received links to various existing wikis with some sites being mentioned multiple times. These sites include:

We will not be copying these sites exactly. Instead, we’ll look at parts that we think would work on gbf.wiki and implement what we can in our own style.

Comments and Suggestions

(Optional) Do you have any comments or suggestions for improving gbf.wiki, design or otherwise?

202 out of 1010 people responded to this optional question. These comments were very insightful and will help determine how we will prioritize wiki projects. We've selected a few to publicly address.

Tabs flooding browser history

When you click on the mlb art from characters you have to go back multiple times to get on the last visited page (I know this might be hard to understand but I don't know any better wording for this)

Tabs have been fixed and should no longer flood your history when going back in your browser.

Partial matches for search bar

The search bar could be improved. Currently the auto-complete is unable to pick up pages if you type the words out of order (e.g. "Jug" will not bring up any results)

The search bar has been fixed and now provides auto-complete suggestions for pages with partial matches.

Flip chests in drop tables

Only thing I hate as a new player is that, in raid drop sections, you merged the gold chest/flip chest panels. For an unexperienced player, this makes trying to determine how rare a drop is really difficult.

The gold and flip chest drop table should be separated on a boss page.

Chests “flipping” have absolutely no bearing on the contents of the chest. See the Flip Chest page for more information.

However, we are slowing adding proper drop tables to popular content, which are separated by chest rather than quality. For an example of this, see Omega Raids.

Drop rates

Drop rate percentages for non-event raids would be nice.

Similar to buff/debuff values, drop rates are estimated using large amounts of drop samples. There are Japanese groups dedicated to finding these estimates for general cases, but this is just not viable for all drops.

As time allows, we may add some drop rates to the chest based drop tables from the previous questions.

Comment system

IF POSSIBLE THE COMMENT SECTION UNDER EACH PAGES LIKE TOWER OF SAVIORS WIKI IS NICE

We’ve implemented a new commenting system for all wiki talk pages. The interface is similar to that of traditional commenting systems and can be found for every existing page on the wiki. We hope that this will help facilitate discussion on the wiki.

Japanese character names

Include Japanese names in katakana on the character pages.

Katakana names can already be viewed by expanding the “Extra Data” below the character template on the character page. A character template revamp is on the list of future projects which should display more meta data by default.

Navigation and page inter-connectivity

this wiki just need a bit more inter-connectivity with other information and pages such as materials (locations!) bosses and other tidbits like est drop rates.

We will take steps to improve inter-connectivity between pages such as more Navboxes and improving current directories.

Buff/debuff values

More detailed info about warious things eg.buffs/debuffs on some characters/classes pages like how much does it do, not just DEF down/up this dont tell anything.

Although there is a lot of data that can be gleaned from the game’s json files, exact buff and debuff values *cannot* be datamined. Buffs and debuffs are determined server side. Finding exact buff/debuff values requires testing in practical environments with a large-enough sample size. In general, the wiki admins do not have the time to do these types of tests and instead rely on Japanese sources for exact values. And although these buff/debuff values can be transcribed from these sources, it is still a time-consuming process which is still underway.

Additionally, exact data for SR and R characters on Japanese sites just aren’t as thorough as SSR characters. Most non-SSR characters have very little exact values which, consequently, affects gbf.wiki’s SR and R character pages.

We do plan on adding this information eventually, at least for the more popular buffs and debuffs.

Damage calculator

Damage calc
Weapon grid generator
Either main link or built in to the wiki

There were multiple requests for a damage calculator on the wiki. The simple answer is: no. There are already other fully functional damage calculators out there such as motocal. Instead, we will try to do a better job at redirecting users to the appropriate resources.

Lore

The character profiles should have more than just their stats.
More attention has to be paid to the characters from a plot perspective. These characters have backstories; and many of them are actually quite complex. Anyone who wants to know who the person behind the fabulous artwork is, is currently slated to be disappointed on nearly all counts

Can we have some flexible template where we can record more trivia information? The only thing this wiki lacks is extensive trivia, and granblue fantasy is game with huge focus on characters. We need more random information about each characters other than the game mechanics.

Admittedly, the wiki does not do a good job with lore-related information and we would like to change that. But again, due to how few wiki staff are available, the admins *must* prioritize game data before lore and fluff.

We will instead modify the character pages to facilitate more lore/fluff and allow users to contribute more to the character pages besides game data. This includes, but is not limited to:

  • Basic profile/background/etymology/trivia
  • Fate Episode scripts
  • A dedicated page for each character’s anime counterpart
  • Gallery

However, lore-related projects *must* be a community effort. There are still many game-related pages that still need to be worked on by the admins. We want to recruit staff members dedicated to overseeing character lore as well as anime-related lore. If you are interested in becoming a staff member, see the section below.

(Please refrain from submitting the listed lore-related items to the character pages until the new character page standard is implemented.)

Granblue Anime

Try to include some news such as GBF anime(the bluray tokuten)

In addition to adding a news box on the main page, we want to facilitate anime-related news and pages on the wiki. However, the anime itself is considered fluff on the wiki and the admins need staff/users to help cover anime-related items.

Localization redirects

Maybe make localization redirects more consistent. For example Chevalier redirects to Lumi, but Chevalier_(Raid) won't redirect to the Lumi's raid page.

Better weapon profile description, journal search, japanese names for characters bosses, etc for easy search (is hard to remember Kumuyu's and Kukuru's english names for example).

We've created more redirects after receiving these comments. Entering these names in the wiki search box should redirect you to the appropriate page. A small list of examples include:

There are others redirects already available as well. If there isn’t one, feel free to request it or create the redirect yourself. We’re open to Japanese name and even nickname redirects as long as they’re not offensive or memes.

Include Japanese names for eternals characters

Redirects using the Japanese names of the Eternals characters have been implemented for as long as the wiki has existed.

Main Story quest data

Adding in more information on the quest battles regarding enemy information. Fate/Grand Order has a very comprehensive list on main quests, free quests, and events as they come into play. This allows a player to research the battles and come up with more viable strategies.

Data for main story quests has been very weak on the wiki for a long time. Although much of this data is already gathered on gbf-wiki, the data still needs to be verified as well as obtaining the localized names for monsters.

MSQ data is a very daunting project and will require more people than we do now.

At the very least, we will add battle data for major story bosses such as Pommern, Yggdrasil Malice, etc.

Translating voiced lines

Have some the Japanese Lines on the main menu/home page of character translated. I would like to know what are saying to me.

I think it would be cool to have translated character dialogue on each character's page like on the Japanese wiki! For example, what a character says outloud in battle during their ougis, or skill use, stuff like that. (But I understand that translators are lacking in the English fanbase so don't worry too much about adding something like this anytime soon. it's just an idea for the far far future)

We simply don’t have any dedicated Japanese translators currently on the wiki staff.

Main page timers

Fix the timers on the main page

A proper countdown timer for the main page is in the works. Main page timers were only updating for users that were logged in to the wiki. For now, a timestamp based on your machine’s clock is displayed for an event’s end time.

We are also fixing the daily schedule since the current one is very broken.

Summary of future plans

Short-term goals

These are goals that we think are attainable within a reasonable time frame:

  • Improve new player pages and feature directories more prominently
  • Fill in data for incomplete raid battle pages.
  • Facilitate user-submitted strategies (such as character EMP builds and weapon grids)
  • Revamp main page (with eventual news feed)
  • Facilitate character lore (including NPCs) and Granblue anime pages
  • More information for status effects
  • Game updates log
  • Improve page interconnectivity
  • Battle data for MSQ major bosses
  • Improve the graphic design of the wiki

Long-term projects (no ETA)

These projects need to be put on the back burner until other high-priority projects are complete, but if anyone else is interested in these projects, please contact the admins.

  • Voice clip archive for each character (akin to Kancolle wiki)
  • Mobile optimization
  • Trophies page
  • Better table filtering/search
  • Better weapon tables (after filtering/search)
  • Crew recruitment section

Staff/Volunteer Positions

If you are interested in helping out the wiki, we have sections that specifically need people overseeing them:

  • Lore - responsible for creating and maintaining character lore pages
  • Anime - create and/or maintain anime-related pages
  • Strategy - create and/or maintain strategy-related pages
  • Items - create pages for treasures that still need them
  • News - maintain the main page news feed with Granblue news and announcements
  • General staff - can work on some or all of the above when needed
  • Graphic designer - for wiki graphics

Please contact the admins on the wiki Discord server or leave a comment on the talk page for inquiries or applying.

User Demographics

For those curious, here is the list of top 20 countries that visit gbf.wiki. (Time frame: Past 7 days)

Closing statement from the admins

We’ve received both comments of gratitude and of valid criticism from the survey. We did not touch on every issue brought up in the survey, but we are well-aware that there are still loads of work to be done on the wiki. We will continue to do what we can and improve the wiki. But we ask that the community also continue to help build gbf.wiki to be a better resource for players. Even if you don’t want to be a wiki staff member, you can still contribute to the wiki. Non-registered users may even edit pages. Even correcting small mistakes helps the wiki overall.

Thank you to everyone that visits gbf.wiki and the editors that have contributed. There’s much to do and we hope that people will help each other along the way.

You can always contact the admins on the wiki Discord server.

Retrieved from "http://gbf.wiki/index.php?title=Meta:State_of_the_Wiki_2017-04&oldid=48824"