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[News] Establishing Wiki Rules; On GDC '18

Handmade folks,

On Wiki Feedback

After the wiki released at the start of this year, we've had contributions new besides the initial ones (notably from nakst and eisbehr! Looking good.), but a lot of feedback comes from people who would rather have established rules and guidelines before even writing anything. Not having any formal rules was intentional, but I think we've waited enough time and it's time to write them this month.

There have also been concerns about how to trace back to the initial contributor of an article. That can be found on the Revision History of every article. Even so, plagiarism could be an issue and we need to address it.

So our top priorities will be:

  • Flesh Out Writing Guidelines: Includes everything from writing style, the kinds of articles we accept, and which things are strictly prohibited (e.g. plagiarism, inciting flame wars).

  • Create a Global Wiki Moderator role: Having a moderator would help us scan all the wiki articles to make edits as necessary (perhaps deleting misleading information, and giving proper attribution) or to poke the contributor to help them meet the upcoming guidelines.

  • On GDC '18

    I will be around during the week of the GDC, so if you want to meet up let me know. I can't meet every one of you for extended periods (my schedule got filled up), but I should be able to say hi for a few minutes!

    It'd be nice to see the face behind the username.

    Obliged,
    Abner
    Shazan Shums,
    Any news on HMN tutorials Abner ? Being waiting for it for a long time.
    Abner Coimbre,
    Hey,

    We haven't forgotten about tutorials. The wiki already has tutorials, and Allen has recently been streaming his work on his. Some of us still have plans for our own written content.

    This is a good time for an important reminder. Tutorials are volunteer efforts -- some are ongoing and others fall through (just like software projects, and this is normal). Anyone working on Handmade Network does it on their downtime, including staff. We have careers and families. We're not a full-time organization.

    To the staff's credit, we generally end up creating what we set out to create. We love this community. But the spectrum of completion times goes from just a few months all the way up to multiple years.

    -Abner