Civilization wikibook

[furrykef]

Heya guys! I know I haven't been here for months, but other things, serious and otherwise, had been distracting me from Civ. (I still haven't played a game of Civ3 in months). But I have something to tell you which, I think, is very important to everybody here.

Do you know what a wiki is? (If not, follow the link, which, by the way, is hosted on the world's largest wiki itself.) I have started writing a wikibook -- not a whole lot yet as I'm writing two others and administering another wiki -- that will be a strategy guide to all Civ games (and sufficiently Civ-like games such as SMAC and Freeciv). One reason I have currently written so little is that I know so little! I can read the works of Velo and the other masters, but that alone does not make me a master.

This is where you come in. The beauty of a wiki is that anybody can edit it, create new pages, and essentially do whatever is necessary to improve it. The result, I feel, will be a comprehensive player's guide that will be better than anything you could ever find on GameFAQs, in a Prima strategy guide, or even a book written by a master (such as Velo's SMAC guide). This is because users of a wiki can collaborate, making the content better and better. If you have doubts: this is no hypothetical stuff. This has already been proven. Go to www.wikipedia.org and look up a bunch of stuff. Wikipedia was written, and continues to be written, by thousands and thousands of wiki users. It Works.

The wikibook is here: http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Civ

(BTW, at this exact moment, the amount of content is next to nil. That will change soon! I always make effort to give a new wiki project a starting point. So if you check it and see nothing, but do not wish to write in it yet, check back later. But don't let it stop you: you can start writing any time. Even right now.)

- Kef

[Vince278]

Your kidding, right?

[furrykef]

Why would I be?

[Vince278]

Perhaps it would help if you explain why we would want to.

[furrykef]

The same reason I would think anybody would want to write any strategy guide: to help instruct fellow players on how to be better. Just this work would be a full collaboration rather than the vision of a single person -- although wiki projects often are guided by the vision of a single person, but everybody cooperates to produce a meaningful whole.

- Kef

[Vince278]

Oh. Thats been done here before. Not sure of the link, how long ago, or how far it got; I'll have to research. In the meantime you could probably cut and paste alot of stuff from the Apolyton University.

[furrykef]

I'd have to get the copyrights cleared on that (anything written in the US is automatically copyrighted unless the author explicitly states otherwise or the written text is uncopyrightable). Assuming they wouldn't mind is not enough, unfortunately.

By "that's been done here before", was it a wiki or was it some other collaborative project? I'm a bit biased, but I really think a wiki would go further than other kinds of collaborations because everything in a wiki is just so readily edited. If you find a typo, bad information, or anything you'd like to change, you need only click the "edit" button and fix it right then and there. No muss, no fuss.

In any case I would like to see more information on that...I wouldn't want to risk repeating history.

- Kef

[Vince278]

Originally posted by furrykef
(anything written in the US is automatically copyrighted unless the author explicitly states otherwise or the written text is uncopyrightable).

I didn't think that was true. I thought you would have to put a copyright disclaimer on the work then apply for the copyright itself.

[Tassadar500]

That's what I thought as well.

[furrykef]

This, and the "introduction to copyright" page linked to from there, is probably the most you will ever need to know about copyright -- except when lawyers are involved, of course.

The bottom line, though, is you can't put something in a wiki unless you wrote it yourself, you have permission, or quoting it falls under "fair use". This is particularly true because anything on a MediaWiki website (such as the wikibook) falls under the GNU Free Documentation License, and many people might not want their words to be placed under that license (and legally they can't be unless the author wants them to be).

- Kef

[Tassadar500]

What exactly needs to happen for you to be able to use it?

[furrykef]

You mean the content from AU? Or the wiki?

[Tassadar500]

Content from the AU.

[furrykef]

I'd prefer to avoid the whole problem altogether by summarizing the information, and perhaps linking to the threads instead of their content. Linking falls under fair use unless the author says otherwise, so that works.

- Kef

[furrykef]

Seems the quirks with the wikibook stopped for now; the links to all the currently existing chapters seem to work correctly. Not that there's all that many; about the only "real" page so far is "The Basics", and it's a stub. I assure you lots more will be written soon.

Is there any way I can get in touch with Velociryx? Some of his vast information on SMAC would be extremely useful to add, and his Civ3 advice wouldn't hurt, either.

- Kef