Dark and Light/Contributing

About

The Dark And Light Wiki was started in December of 2005, soon after the release of Settlers of Ganareth. It was created for the purpose of centralizing all information into one complete data source that could be easily updated by collaboration of the Dark and Light community.

Who is this for?

This Wiki Book is for the consumption of the The Dark and Light community.

The Dark and Light community

There are over 270,000 registered users on the Official Dark and Light Community Forums. This means that the body of people who are waiting for the official release of Dark and Light is very likely the largest group of video gamers associated with any pre-released game ever. Such a large audience of people will demand information that, sadly, Alchemic Dream and Farlan Entertainment have been unable to provide. (Many in the community blame this on insufficient Public Relations and the internationalization of the game, while others claim the ever-growing competitiveness of the MMO market requires such secrecy.)

Dark and Light Experts

The nature of this Wiki Book allows for anyone to contribute changes. This means that even experts of the game, including developers and others associated with the development project, can offer information. Due to time contraints, this likely will not happen.

Why Wiki Books?

With a Wiki Book, information can easily be centralized, re-organized, and updated to allow for ever-changing and expanding information to be easily accessed.

Due to the nature of the internationalization of Dark and Light, the Wiki Book server is also an advantage since it inherently supports numerous languages.

But what about...?

Here's a conversation that Malfedor and Caxar had that explains a lot about what this project is for, and where it's going:

[22:45] <Malfedor> Hi, do you have a sec?
[22:46] <caxar> sure i do :)
[22:46] <Malfedor> Cool.
[22:46] <Malfedor> I've been itching to do something about all the errors that've been 
going on recently.
[22:46] <Malfedor> So I created a Wiki to list all of them, plus put a place to contain all 
info possible about the 
  game.
[22:47] <caxar> nice one :)
[22:47] <Malfedor> ...but for now I'm waiting to get AD's blessing on using Wiki Books 
to hold the info.
 [22:47] <Malfedor> Anyways, I'm not sure if it's worthwhile, or if I'm just wasting my 
life on it.
[22:48] <caxar> think its a good idea
[22:48] <Malfedor> I was wondering if you could look at the errors Wiki and let me 
know if you think it'd be useful.
[22:48] <Malfedor> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Dark_And_Light/SOG_Errors
[22:48] <caxar> kk gimme a sec
[22:48] <Malfedor> The main page is at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Dark_And_Light , 
but that's not even close to being finished.
[22:49] <caxar> gonna check both out,brb
[22:51] <caxar> mate seems awesome to me :))
[22:51] <Malfedor> The thing is this: it won't work unless there's people willing to add 
info.
[22:52] <caxar> already bookmarked the site,have to read over later when I?m calm
[22:52] <Malfedor> Wiki's usually are cool, but only the ones that have people adding 
things wind up finished.
[22:52] <Malfedor> heh
[22:52] <Malfedor> Oh, one other thing: Wikis can be localized to language and region.
[22:53] <caxar> but i gonna to add info,anyways we have much free time since server 
downs hehe
[22:53] <Malfedor> Aka: English; German; Spanish, etc.
[22:53] <Malfedor> heh
[22:53] <caxar> ah nice,didnt know that one
[22:53] <Malfedor> That's why I'm doing this now :]
[22:54] <Malfedor> The best wikis have about 10 people adding things for each 
language/region.
[22:54] <Malfedor> Less than that and things are updated.
[22:54] <Malfedor> There's some other MMOs that have Wiki books, but nobody 
updates them:
[22:54] <Malfedor> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft
[22:54] <Malfedor> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/EverQuest
[22:54] <Malfedor> ...so they're basically dead.
[22:55] <caxar> I see. It?s always a prob involve peeps to a free project
[22:55] <Malfedor> Anyways.... my question is this: since you seem to know a few 
things about the game, do you think, in your educated opinion, that there could be 30 or 
so people who'd want to add things to this?
[22:56] <Malfedor> Yeah, you need dedicated people.
[22:56] <Malfedor> When I ran the Podcast, I found that getting people to provide 
information is almost impossible.
[22:56] <Malfedor> There's only a few people who want to add things.
[22:56] <Malfedor> Everybody else just wants to read the info and use it.
[22:57] <Malfedor> (Of course, you can't get the info unless somebody else added it in 
first.)
[23:04] <Malfedor> Anyways, I don't suppose you could guess on how many people 
might add info to that Wiki?
[23:04] <Malfedor> I know I will, and I have others who've volunteered.
[23:05] <caxar> i guess when you try to announce the project, you should be able to get 
20-30 easily
[23:05] <caxar> here at irc,forums etc
[23:05] <Malfedor> Maybe.
[23:05] <caxar> but
[23:05] <Malfedor> It's the long-term that I'm concerned with.
[23:05] <caxar> one thing is having 30 which saying yes and at the end you are with 6 
mates..
[23:05] <caxar> like always
[23:05] <Malfedor> Say, if some information changes in April, do you think people will 
add the new information, or just spend their time playing the game?
[23:06] <Malfedor> heh, yeah
[23:06] <Malfedor> I had that problem with the Podcast that I ran.
[23:06] <Malfedor> Everybody was like "sure, I'll send you ideas to talk about", then 
when I asked for them a month. Later... I got nothing.
[23:06] <caxar> hmm There?s always people who?d really support such efforts;.but gona 
be a hard one finding them
[23:07] <Malfedor> Yup.
 [23:07] <caxar> you waaant to gather all kind of info on that wiki book about dnl? such 
as classes, races, lvl spots etc?
[23:08] <Malfedor> Yeah, eventually.
[23:09] <Malfedor> I want to make the Wiki like the "World of Warcraft Official 
Strategy Guide"
[23:09] <Malfedor> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0744004055
[23:09] <Malfedor> I like that a lot, and it really saved me a lot of time.
[23:09] <Malfedor> Theoretically, you can create something like that in Wiki Books.
[23:10] <caxar> wow! But thats gonna be a mega project!
[23:10] <caxar> a good part of the info you can just copy/past but its still a lot of work
[23:11] <Malfedor> Yeah, mostly it's copy & paste.
[23:11] <Malfedor> I did almost the entire errata page from one post: 
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Dark_And_Light/SOG_Errors
[23:11] <Malfedor> But, the images have to be screen-captured and touched-up.
[23:12] <Malfedor> Those would be hard.
[23:12] <Malfedor> But...
[23:12] <Malfedor> Even if we only did, say, 10% of the whole thing, it would still be 
really useful.
[23:12] <caxar> indeed it will
[23:12] <Malfedor> And, who knows...
 [23:13] <Malfedor> If there was enough done free, Farlan or somebody might do the 
rest.
[23:13] <Malfedor> (To promote the game.)
[23:13] <caxar> im not familiar with wiki,how does the updating work? any1 can or ppl 
must send stuff to you and you 
  update?
[23:13] <Malfedor> It's super-easy.
[23:14] <Malfedor> Just click on the "edit this page" tab on the top, look for the area to 
add info, type in "=== Header ===" with Header being the section, and press enter and 
start typing your information.
[23:14] <Malfedor> Anyone can add new things.
[23:14] <Malfedor> That's the cool part of it.
[23:14] <caxar> ah i see
[23:14] <Malfedor> There *can* be griefing.
[23:14] <Malfedor> But, you can just un-do the stuff that griefers add, since you can see 
the entire history of updates to a page.
[23:15] <Malfedor> (That's what the "history" tab is. You can compare versions of the 
page to see what was changed.)
 [23:15] <caxar> is there something like a super user?
 [23:15] <Malfedor> Yup.
 [23:15] <Malfedor> The super-user is the person who declares himself the super-user.
[23:15] <Malfedor> That's it.
[23:16] <Malfedor> Usually, people who add things let the "super-user"/"Moderator" 
made changes like column size, order, spelling, etc.
[23:16] <caxar> hmm i mean, with special right to delete stuff, or anybody can delete 
content from the page? that wouldnt be nice
 [23:16] <Malfedor> The moderator is just the person who's considered by others to be 
the most dedicated/smart.
[23:16] <Malfedor> There's no special abilities. Anyone can do anything.
[23:17] <Malfedor> Period.
[23:17] <Malfedor> (You don't even have to create an account to change things.)
[23:17] <Malfedor> That's why they're so cool.
 [23:17] <caxar> so how you prevent have dumbassses deleting all the book when the 
feel lie?
 [23:17] <Malfedor> Easy...
[23:17] <Malfedor> You see the recent changes (I get emails whenever there's a change), 
and un-do them.
[23:18] <caxar> ah nice
[23:18] <Malfedor> In a fight between contributors and griefers, it's all about who is the 
most committed to get their changes in.
[23:18] <Malfedor> Whoever makes the last change wins.
[23:18] <Malfedor> Usually, griefers just stop by to grief for 5 minutes and then leave.
[23:18] <caxar> true
[23:18] <Malfedor> So contributors/moderators always win.

Supported Languages

Currently, only English is supported by this Wiki Book.

English

Moderators are

• Malfedor

History

Still being new, there is not much history of this Wiki Book.

Request for Wiki Book Email

On December 12th, 2005, Malfedor sent a request to two moderators of the Dark and Light forum. Here the email:

Sent 12/18/05 7:20 PM EST

Delphis and Medic,
I was wondering if you know how I can request authorization to publish Wiki Book on Dark And Light. A few months back, I started a Podcast to cater to the DnL community's desire to talk about rumors and inside info. The Podcast started off well, but then failed--mostly because we ran out of rumors and info. (We were working with Farlan to get a developer on the show, but our contact eventually admitted that they weren't allowed to say anything at all.)
Since then, I've been following the game from the background [...] etc. I'm usually very involved in any game I play, and I've been looking for a way to do something usefull for DnL, besides contribute meaningless posts on the forum. I think that maybe the best thing one can do, should one have the time and dedication necessary, is to create a Wiki book discussing everything to do with DnL: configuration, errors, class discussion, level walkthough, quest details, beastiary, etc. (As a reference, I'd suggest: World of Warcraft or EverQuest.) I think that Wiki Books would fit this perfectly, as anyone could immediately add any new information they have. (Stratics and other fan sites publish sparse information intermittently, are difficult to read, are badly organized, etc.) Having a well ordered and updated Wiki book only requires a few dedicated moderators to start it off and maintain it, and the willingness of the community to add information they find out. The moderators could then use their judgement to eliminate incorrect or unrequrested information, according to some rules that AD could give us. There's already a couple of us who have the time and knowledge to do that. In fact, the Wiki book could be created immediately.
However, before this is started, I would like to get AD's blessing on the concept. I don't know if there's a plan to publish an official book with this information (like WoW did with their "Official Stragegy Guide"), but there still might be some reluctance with the PR department to deal with this, or perhaps some concern at potential copyright infringements. [...]
Let me know if there's a way to oficially request this. If not, do you know of any way that I can view AD's and Farlan's copyright policies for fan sites?

Thanks for your help,
Malf

p.s. You can find the description of the Copyright protections of information entered into a Wiki Book here.

Authorization by Alchemic Dream

Delphis responed to the above request with the official authorization by Alchemic Dream to allow this Wiki Book to reference all information on the main Dark and Light web page. The email is as follows:

Sent 12/20/05 3:45 AM EST

Re : DnL Wiki

Hello,

Your project has been accepted by AD. You can start your wiki anytime you want.

Cheers! And long life to DnL and SoG!

Moderators

There is only one moderator at this time.

Malfedor

Malfedor was the original progenator of the Dark And Light Wiki, and created the ground work for it to be implemented by the later contributors. He wrote the original email that generated interest in the concept. He continue to moderate all additions and modifications to the Wiki Book.

Malfedor moderates only the English language version of this Wiki Book.

Malfedor can be contacted on AOL Instant Messenger as MalfedorDF and on Yahoo! Instant Messenger as MalfedorDF.

Contributing

The best way you can support this Wiki Book is to add your own touch to it. This is a collaborative project: you, the reader, make it happen.

How can I contribute/add something new/correct wrong information?

If you'd like to add or correct anything you see here, review the page on How to edit a Wiki. You can always feel free to edit the Sandbox, since it's constantly being reset for others to use.

If you find an error with any information in any part of this Wiki Book, feel free to edit it.

If you have new information that you'd like to add, make sure you read the next few sections detailing the process.

Note: when you add an entirely new page to the book (rather than just adding information to an existing page), make sure that the name of the new page starts with "Dark And Light/", including the '/'. If you don't add "Dark And Light/" to the beginning of the name, the index, table of contents, and host of other things will error out. For example, if you were to create a page on "Realms", you'd name it Dark And Light/Realms, and the wiki macro would be typed as [[/Realms|Realms]] which would wind up looking like this: Realms.

What can I add?

You can add any publicly-released fact about Dark and Light and SOG, including testimonials and inferred information. (Cheers to Alchemic Dream for allowing this!) This means you can add:

• Testimonials
• Character information (skills, spells, items, tactics, development strategies)
• Geographic descriptions (maps, walk-throughs, quests)
• Game-play statistics (monster hit-points & elemental weaknesses & experience, item prices, leveling tables)
• Transient information (politics, NPCs, player densities)

You can also add any refence to publicly-released images from Dark and Light, either those stored on the Dark and Light public web page, or any screen shots taken from normal usage of SOG. This means you can add:

• Monster images
• Spell graphics
• Character archetypes

Any information or images from any individual or organization who has freely released it as public domain. (This will be rare.)

Any information or images from any individual or organization that has explictly granted access to their copyright-ed material. These include:

• Alchemic Dream

What can't I add?

This is a Wiki Book, which means that the primary operating goal it must be to make it accessable to anyone without any violations of the law or of contract. Should any added information or modification of the Wiki violate the primary operating goal, the moderators, or anyone available upon noticing the violations, should remove the incorrect added information or modification immediately.

The following list of items are explicitly prohibited in this Wiki Book:

• Personal opinion not backed by known information -- This is an information site, not a discussion board!
• Swear words
• Adult themes
• Copyright violations -- Any information or images taken from an organization not explicitly authorizing this Wiki Book to use it will be assumed to be a copyright violation!
• Information about the Dark and Light beta that violates the beta NDA
• Commercial solicitation
• Spam

How do I know if something's copyright-ed?

This is always a difficult question to answer. Some information can be found in the Wikipedia entry on Copyright violations, but it's not conclusive.

In reality, there is no easy way to tell if something is copyright-ed, and the best action to take is to reject anything that you're not sure about.