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Ideas how to go forward with entropedia.de

Juliane

Juliane

Old Alpha
Joined
Aug 12, 2008
Posts
981
Location
Germany
Society
Supremacy Reign
Avatar Name
Juliane Emma Morgan
Entropedia is one of the most important tools for a lot of us.
But lately it is often slow or dont work at all.

As was said, atm the tool seems to be in the hand of one guy.
Sure he does a great job, but it is a bit mutch for one person to handle.

In one of the posts in the last week someone had the idea of a github repository. That I like a lot.
ATM entropedia uses ASP.NET, C#, and MySQL. That not so mutch people can write.

So how about we build it new? As community.
Let's say in PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and maybe some AJAX. Those language a lot people should know (tell me if I'm wrong). Maybe we could use a framework for PHP.
If we could get on export of the "old" MySQL Database and go from there.. maybe bit by bit we should be able to do it.

Maybe 711 or Entropia Life would do the hosting?

What do you think? Any ideas?
 
Why invent the wheel when there already is an alternative:

http://www.entropiaplanets.com/wiki/EntropiaPlanets_Wiki

All open source, all free to use for everyone and all based on standard mediawiki software (with a few add-ons like Semantic MediaWiki), no custom stuff that only one person can edit.

Yes it has not as much info as entropedia yet, but if people jump on board that can change in a matter of weeks.
 
Razer said:
Why invent the wheel when there already is an alternative:
http://www.entropiaplanets.com/wiki/EntropiaPlanets_Wiki
Click to expand...

For me it misses some functions, like when you let it show all weapons, you cant tell it to show only those of one planet. And all in all, for me, it is confusing. That begins allready on the menu on the left side.
Dunno maybe all others like it and thats the way to go.

BTW.. who holds it? Not that we go to an alternative only to loose it again.
 
Sure it misses some functions, never said it was perfect, but having the basics there to start with is better then starting from scratch.

In the end it could look like this page: http://www.entropiaplanets.com/wiki/Planet_Calypso_Creatures, click the planet on the top to show the creatures from that planet only and pretty sure adding a icon to show all creatures (regarding the planet they are on) is pretty easy too.

Development is not that quick right now, mainly because there are just a hand full of people working on it, but when more people come in an bring ideas, stuff can pick up pace also because everybody that has basic wiki skills can work on the back-end of it and people just wanting to add data can just do that. Working on getting better ways to add data to it right now, having nice forms instead (part of the Semantic MediaWiki I talked about)

It is hosted and owned by Entropia Planets, which in turn is owned by 4 people, me being one of them, so yeah I am a bit bias, I know.
 
First off all, i personally won't contribute to entropedia anymore unless the data becomes free to use officially ( not that it hurts entopedia that much ). When that is done i will start to mirror the data for my own use, so i'm not that much depending on entropedia's availability anymore. But because ethe content is restrictd in use ( as far as i know ) it can't be used for any projects beside private ones.

Imho entropedia should create a dataexporter and export their data to github as csv or something and make the data free to use for everyone.

When that is done everyone can decide on their own if they want to use it on their own, or it is just a backup in case entropedia is (yet again ) not available.

The even better solution would be an API for Entropia provided by mindark:
1 - Mob API fetch mob info public
2 - Item API fetch item info public if they are at it add correct decay value
3 - Auction API fetch auction data ( readonly!)
3 - Avatar API, set API credentials in settings and fetch
-Avatar skills
-inventory
-Message center
-(...)
with it
People could create their own applications on that base.
 
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Jennson said:
First off all, i personally won't contribute to entropedia anymore unless the data becomes free to use officially ( not that it hurts entopedia that much ). When that is done i will start to mirror the data for my own use, so i'm not that much depending on entropedia's availability anymore. But because ethe content is restrictd in use ( as far as i know ) it can't be used for any projects beside private ones.

Imho entropedia should create a dataexporter and export their data to github as csv or something and make the data free to use for everyone.

When that is done everyone can decide on their own if they want to use it on their own, or it is just a backup in case entropedia is (yet again ) not available.

The even better solution would be an API for Entropia provided by mindark:
1 - Mob API fetch mob info public
2 - Item API fetch item info public if they are at it add correct decay value
3 - Auction API fetch auction data ( readonly!)
3 - Avatar API, set API credentials in settings and fetch
-Avatar skills
-inventory
-Message center
-(...)
with it
People could create their own applications on that base.
Click to expand...

Agree with this. Plus I would love to see 3-d models for use on sites ect. )

Entropedia like most wikis have the .csv download option. You just have to manually get them like I did.
 
I would agree with whoever said that entropiaplanets' setup is a little confusing. I think any alternative to entropedia needs to actually have all the functionality, calculators and so on.

It would be really nice if we could have a central database owned by a reliable group that could be used for the various different websites that use the data.
 
Neil Stockton said:
I would agree with whoever said that entropiaplanets' setup is a little confusing. I think any alternative to entropedia needs to actually have all the functionality, calculators and so on.

It would be really nice if we could have a central database owned by a reliable group that could be used for the various different websites that use the data.
Click to expand...

We are already pushing (in real time) some of the data to various forums.

AUD data to Arkadia forum (link)
Creature data to Cyrene forum and Next Island forum (link)
Mission data to ROCKtropia forum (or questbomb) (link)

And data can be pushed to any website and exported to various data formats as well if needed.

I agree that we should have those calculators etc. we just need to find a way to do them without custom code (or at least open source code), or we would have the same issue as entropedia, meaning that if the coder goes MIA all development stops.

Juliane indeed decided to help us out, which is very cool and having her skills on board will help us a lot, so that is another step in creating a better wiki. Not perfect yet, but getting there.
 
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Razer said:
Why invent the wheel when there already is an alternative:

http://www.entropiaplanets.com/wiki/EntropiaPlanets_Wiki

All open source, all free to use for everyone and all based on standard mediawiki software (with a few add-ons like Semantic MediaWiki), no custom stuff that only one person can edit.

Yes it has not as much info as entropedia yet, but if people jump on board that can change in a matter of weeks.
Click to expand...

Do you have any plans / ideas for this list : https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...d-like-to-see-appear-be-changed-in-entropedia ? Except instances, which I guess you already have. I can't find amps, so I can't ask about how you have / will solve teh decay absorption part ...

Any insights into development?
 
Razer said:
Why invent the wheel when there already is an alternative:

http://www.entropiaplanets.com/wiki/EntropiaPlanets_Wiki

All open source, all free to use for everyone and all based on standard mediawiki software (with a few add-ons like Semantic MediaWiki), no custom stuff that only one person can edit.

Yes it has not as much info as entropedia yet, but if people jump on board that can change in a matter of weeks.
Click to expand...

In my opinion that's not an alternative. To start with, it needs to be on it's own website and whoever owns it needs to do the heavy lifting of getting all the data in there. The community can't be expected to do it.
 
HardWrath said:
In my opinion that's not an alternative. To start with, it needs to be on it's own website and whoever owns it needs to do the heavy lifting of getting all the data in there. The community can't be expected to do it.
Click to expand...

Then you have definitely not understood the concept of a wiki. Do you think that the creators of Wikipedia have added ANY data to it, I don't think so. Do you think Witte has put any data into entropedia, well maybe a little, but most comes from the community

And having it on its own website, I don't see the point in that. It is however already on a different server then the forum.

But if you are looking for a easy URL to remember for the wiki, try this one:

www.entropiauniverse.wiki
 
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remontoire said:
Do you have any plans / ideas for this list : https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...d-like-to-see-appear-be-changed-in-entropedia ? Except instances, which I guess you already have. I can't find amps, so I can't ask about how you have / will solve teh decay absorption part ...

Any insights into development?
Click to expand...

Well most of that stuff is not in there yet and like I said before there is as of yet nothing like the calculators that entropedia has in our wiki, but I'm sure more can be done.

We are working to get the back end done for all the data to be added and reworking most of it with new, improved and easy to edit forms, but that is going a bit slower then we want it to go , because of the very small amount of people working on that. With more people getting involved, either with adding data or working on the back end, that would work as a motivation to develop more as we know better what people want to see and we can brainstorm with the community to get stuff done.

There are a few things that are easy to add from your list (and some we already have). Like I said, no calculation thingys yet.

Make mob damage be a separate object from mobs, so that a mob could have several damage sets
This one was a pain in the butt, but we have that, http://www.entropiaplanets.com/wiki/Creature:Rextelum

Add a new flag, "official" to armors, and add a new set "no official" to armor adviser
Should be easy, when we go to 'Project Armor' we'll add that (we are currently on 'Project Creatures')

Make the amount of bombs used by a finder be a parameter
Again an easy solution, will do that during 'Project Mining'

Make all of the "Add item" selections pop up a dialogue, instead of having you fill in a long scrolling line in a table
Most new stuff we do has a form you fill in, with nicely ordered boxes to add your data. Click the "Add/Edit Creature basics" button on the Rextelum page I linked

Add instances as new subtype of locations to be able to include maps, descriptions, mobs, etc.
Not all of them in, but this is the beacon mission for Calypso, http://www.entropiaplanets.com/wiki/Beacon_Missions and for the other instances (if they are not there yet) anyone can just create a page for that and start putting data on it. We'll help out with layout, structure and technical issues if needed.
 
I think moving the information over to entropiaplanets is the best and quickest solution. The foundation is there already and it doesn't seem to have any downtime issues unlike entropedia. That is just my opinion of course
 
Razer said:
And having it on its own website, I don't see the point in that.
Click to expand...

For one thing, it is tremendously annoying to have to log in to EP Forum if I want to log in to EP Wiki, and that if I want to look at EP Wiki while already logged in with the "Remember Me" feature, I am also considered to have logged in to EP Forum which screws up all of my read/unread/unseen posts there, forcing me to check through forum posts if I don't want to be confronted with incorrect information there.

Plus the fact that the XenForo software that you rave about at every opportunity is utter garbage from the users' point of view, and whatever you use for EP Wiki is equally poor.

Oh and btw you also have almost no genuinely useful data on EP, no way of adding the data and tools that are the most useful parts of Entropedia, and all you really achieved by creating EP Wiki was to take away previously useful contributors from Entropedia, thereby weakening it as a resource in favour of creating a new, even weaker one, which has remained stagnant since it was first created, what is it, 5 years ago?
 
Razer said:
Then you have definitely not understood the concept of a wiki. Do you think that the creators of Wikipedia have added ANY data to it, I don't think so. Do you think Witte has put any data into entropedia, well maybe a little, but most comes from the community

And having it on its own website, I don't see the point in that. It is however already on a different server then the forum.

But if you are looking for a easy URL to remember for the wiki, try this one:

www.entropiauniverse.wiki
Click to expand...

I do understand the concept of a wiki and I understand your point.

My point is that the burden of responsibility for generating in-demand content ultimately falls unto the owner of the website and no one else. The community can't be expected to spend countless hours entering data for someone else's website. The site owner has to get things started and then from there users will be willing to contribute.

The point of having it on it's own website is so it's easy to find, hence the whole DNS concept.

On the URL that you provided above, I don't see any information that's useful to me... In fact, for weapons, all the stats are blank, some weapon names are there, but nothing is entered for them.
 
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Hi Oleg,

there might be some misconceptions, so...

Oleg said:
For one thing, it is tremendously annoying to have to log in to EP Forum if I want to log in to EP Wiki, and that if I want to look at EP Wiki while already logged in with the "Remember Me" feature, I am also considered to have logged in to EP Forum which screws up all of my read/unread/unseen posts there, forcing me to check through forum posts if I don't want to be confronted with incorrect information there.
Click to expand...
Actually, merely logging in shouldn't have any effects to read/unread/unseen posts, just checked and it doesn't have any effects for me. Nevertheless, as a work-around, for 'only' looking at wiki pages you don't need to log in, the data displayed is the same for logged-in and not logged in users. Even editing data is possible without being logged in, but you would have to fill a captcha to save edits, which is unfortunately needed because of nasty spambots.

Oleg said:
Plus the fact that the XenForo software that you rave about at every opportunity is utter garbage from the users' point of view, and whatever you use for EP Wiki is equally poor.
Click to expand...
Most forums users don't seem to share your experience and prefer XenForo over other forum software, which is the main reason why XenForo is constantly gaining market share while vBulletin is constantly losing. Just let the EntropiaPlanets guys know what exactly you find disturbing about XenForo and there might be solutions.

EP wiki is using MediaWiki which has its flaws and peculiarities but nevertheless is considered the best and most popular general wiki software. It's used by Wikipedia and tens of thousands of other wikis and except for some really special cases any other wiki software is considered "poorer".

Oleg said:
Oh and btw you also have almost no genuinely useful data on EP, no way of adding the data and tools that are the most useful parts of Entropedia, and all you really achieved by creating EP Wiki was to take away previously useful contributors from Entropedia, thereby weakening it as a resource in favour of creating a new, even weaker one, which has remained stagnant since it was first created, what is it, 5 years ago?
Click to expand...
Well, comparing Entropedia and EP wiki is difficult because the approaches and basic concepts are quite different, there actually is no "EP Wiki vs Entropedia"...

On EP wiki data is actually added on daily basis, to be precise right now there are 6,788 files and 20,005 pages that have been edited 76,379 times and viewed 13,698,574 times. So there seem to be ways of adding data and people seem to find some value in the data.

It is correct that some features available on Entropedia are not available on EP wiki but it's the same the other way round. Also there are people adding features similar to the ones available on Entropedia, and that already unrelated to Entropedia or EU but due to the fact that it's free open source software.

Regarding editors of Entropedia and/or EP wiki there are little to no overlaps and for sure no editors taken away from Entropedia.

There's no stronger or "weaker" in general, every tool has its strengths and weaknesses and it's mostly about using the right tool the right way for the right occasions. That said, assuming that you have less experience with wiki software than I have, I can assure you that first from a development perspective and when it's "done" also from a user perspective EP wiki would be the better choice for several reasons, for example:
  • it's based on free open source software that's developed by many people around the globe = unmatched dev resources + secure future, consequently EU people could focus on EU related features only
  • everything is properly licensed under CC-BY-SA (same as Wikipedia) so everyone can use all data for whatever purpose, even printing a book and selling it for profit, noone is "owing" anything - it belongs to everyone
  • it's made for sharing data with forums, community websites, apps, etc etc via an API and in various formats such CSV, RSS, JSON, ... a feature which is used by 4 planet partners already
  • it can easily incorporate any kind of content, not just tables but also image galleries, maps, videos, widgets, pdfs, data from external sources, etc etc
  • it's quite flexible in general, and since open source theoretically anything can be changed and added, for example extremely specialized and elaborated tools
Not sure whether my comments can reduce your concerns, just let me know if anything else can be done to clear it up.
 
If you can get Weapon Compare and Armor Advisor to work on EP, then it'll start to be a competitor to entropedia. Is this possible? Or can someone build stand-alone tools for these that use the EP data?
 
Neil Stockton said:
If you can get Weapon Compare and Armor Advisor to work on EP, then it'll start to be a competitor to entropedia. Is this possible? Or can someone build stand-alone tools for these that use the EP data?
Click to expand...

weapon compare is something I have been pushing, and something we should hopefully have soon :)
 
Neil Stockton said:
If you can get Weapon Compare and Armor Advisor to work on EP, then it'll start to be a competitor to entropedia. Is this possible? Or can someone build stand-alone tools for these that use the EP data?
Click to expand...

Hi Neil,

sending a pm since I don't want to "spam" the Entropedia section with EP wiki stuff.
 
HardWrath said:
I do understand the concept of a wiki and I understand your point.

My point is that the burden of responsibility for generating in-demand content ultimately falls unto the owner of the website and no one else. The community can't be expected to spend countless hours entering data for someone else's website. The site owner has to get things started and then from there users will be willing to contribute.

The point of having it on it's own website is so it's easy to find, hence the whole DNS concept.

On the URL that you provided above, I don't see any information that's useful to me... In fact, for weapons, all the stats are blank, some weapon names are there, but nothing is entered for them.
Click to expand...


Yes we have to get things started, I know, and we are working hard to get that done. There is just an order to get things done. I order to get the weapons calculation thing going, we first need to get the actual weapons pages done and at least a few filled with data and then of course the amp and enhancer pages. Once the back-end on those is done, we can do more.

We have weapons in there, just not much from Calypso yet, but some. (Arkadia Weapons, Cyrene Weapons). Getting the rest in is something that has to be done and something we definitely need help with from the community because doing both the back-end development and data collecting caused development to be a little slower then we want it to be over the past years.
 
Siniko said:
Entropedia is getting a rewrite.

Once i have more time to posts i will go in further details regarding the technologies used,

I said in a previous thread, Entropedia will have an API, to give a public access to the communities data.

I took over this project so we can get a brand new entropedia which is long due.

I won't spend too much time explaining myself until i have delivered my work and from there we can discuss.

I'm hoping entropedia should be back up today, working with 711 on that. and will keep you updated.

Thank 711 for his hard work getting Entropedia back up, i could not help since i do not host the server.

The new server for Entropedia will be a LINUX server, and i'm working on data persistence with failovers on multiple data center in case one server go down, entropedia will keep working.
Click to expand...

With Siniko telling that, it seems entropedia will live another round ;)
 
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