Still undergoing construction.
Wiki stagnation[]
I just stumbled upon this wiki, and it seems like a great idea. However, I noticed that it's very badly organized, which may be why the last glitch-related edits were made waaaay back in December '09. Now, it would be fairly obnoxious of me to point out an obvious problem without proposing a solution, so here two ideas that I have. Both would require a massive amount of restructuring and reorganization, but
- This wiki needs it.
- Look at Special:RecentChanges. Look at the edits made in the last 365 days. Clearly, anyone still viewing this wiki has nothing else to do, right? :P
So here are my solutions:
Become a directory.[]
Our problem right now is that you are trying to organize and document a very large amount of completely distinct elements. Your current system -- no categories whatsoever -- is chaotic and wholly unfit for the task. Hell, even MediaWiki categories (on a per-game basis) would barely be sufficient. The fact is, you are trying to do something that takes several wikis... using only one. And -- understandably -- you're failing miserably at it.
Wikia has several wikis for specific video game series. Some of these wikis, like Halopedia, actually have articles on several glitches. It may be a good idea to become a directory, linking to glitches covered in the wikis dedicated to their respective series. Essentially, you'd be a listing of glitches documented elsewhere on Wikia. This has several benefits:
- You don't have to figure out how to organize every glitch for every game ever.
- And again, a single wiki is entirely unfit for such a massive task.
- You'd still be a centralized database of glitches. You'd be able to edit glitch articles (since Wikia wikis all share a user database). They'd just be better organized.
- Because the articles are hosted on wikis dedicated to their series, the articles can be maintained by people who have better and more extensive knowledge of the games that contain these glitches. Terminology, level names, etc., are more likely to be accurate, and instructions will probably be clearer.
- So essentially, you'd have two groups cooperating on a glitch article: the people who know a lot about that particular game (the wiki the article is on), and the people who know a lot about glitches in general (this wiki).
Now, how would you go about doing this?
- Find an article for a glitch.
- Find the wiki for its game series, if there is one.
- See if that wiki documents glitches.
- If it does, see if it has an article on this glitch. If it does not have an article on the glitch and the glitch meets its notability requirements, if any, then create the article. If it does have an article, make sure that the article has not been recently recommended for deletion due to notability, etc..
- If there's an article that meets the wiki's requirements, verify any information that we have and they don't -- and if you can, add a reliable source, like a video or screenshot -- and then put it into their article. Cite everything you can.
- Delete our article.
- Repeat the above process for every glitch you have documented for that game.
- Convert our page for that game into a list of links to the glitch articles hosted on the wiki dedicated to its series.
So to recap:
- Have other Wikia wikis document the glitches.
- We no longer have to document them; we become an (impeccably-maintained) listing of glitches documented elsewhere on Wikia.
- We will, of course, host glitch articles that cannot be documented elsewhere due to notability concerns, lack of a relevant wiki on Wikia, etc..
- Cleaner, more easily managed and maintained, and we can still edit glitch articles, they'd just be better organized.
Redo the naming system.[]
Non-notable and non-unique glitches have their "owning" game in their title, parenthesized. So we'd have "Character Stretch Glitch (Halo 3)", or "Placeholders (Okami)". The exceptions would be glitches with a guaranteed-to-be-unique-to-their-games name, such as "MISSINGNO." or "Glitch Pokemon", and glitches whose names are exceedingly unlikely to be reused, such as StarCraft's "Extended Unit Deaths".
Examples of what I mean.
- Anachronistic Dialogue
- Could be any game. Ever. A better title would be "Anachronistic Dialogue (Kartia)".
- Anti-physics Peach
- Could be any game in the Mario series, or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. A better title would be "Anti-physics Peach (SSBM)" or "Anti-physics Peach (Super Smash Bros. Melee" (with one redirecting to the other).
- A Cucco easily going through walls
- Could be any Zelda game. Try "Cucco inside wall (LoZ:LttP)", or "Cucco inside wall (LoZ:LttP SNES)" if the GBA port does not contain the glitch.
- Battle a DP Box, Bad EGG, or an EGG
- It would be far better to document the Pokemon themselves (as "DP Box (Pokemon)", "Bad EGG (Pokemon)", and "EGG (Pokemon)") respectively, and cover the methods for encountering them in their articles.
Conclusion[]
Clearly, this article needs a boost in activity, and that can only come if its contained information is better organized and hence more accessible. Of the two solutions I've presented above, I think that becoming a directory of glitches hosted elsewhere on Wikia is the most doable, the most manageable, the most scalable, and the most maintainable. I'd happily help with the implementation of that solution if one or more admins for this wiki okays it. DavidJCobb 23:00, June 29, 2010 (UTC)