You can discuss these changes below.

2004 Wiki Changes and Licensing Discussion

Happy New Year!

Please read the following important information if you are a user of the Game Design Wiki or might want to be.

This morning, 1 January 2004, I upgraded the MoinMoin? software that drives the wiki from version 1.0 to version 1.1. Here are some of the changes that users of the wiki may notice:

• Lots of new pages, especially help pages. (I recommend starting with the new WikiCourse? page if you want to learn more about wikis.)
• The ability to create PowerPoint-style slide shows. (The WikiCourse? is itself a slide show.)
• Improved support for usernames and passwords. Now you can really log in to the wiki, and you won't have to have the wiki email you a link to let you log in, unless you forget your password.
• Random quotes. If you edit the FortuneCookies page, you can add random quotes that will pop up in different places on the wiki. See the RecentChanges page for an example. Copy the code at the top of the RecentChanges page anywhere you would like to have a random quote appear, such as your home page.
• You can force "fancy links" to open in new windows by prepending a caret ('^'). Example:

[^http://ron.ludism.org/ Ron's Info Closet]

• New "fancy diffs" for when you want to see the difference between versions of a page.
• Several bugfixes.
• Last but not least, the wiki "locks" a page while you are editing it so someone else does not accidentally overwrite your changes.

Unfortunately, the feature I most wanted to see in this upgrade, an RSS feed for RecentChanges, is broken with the current version of the software. I have communicated with several MoinMoin? developers, and they are not sure what the problem is. They are working on it, though, and we're not the only users to experience it. I have disabled the RSS feed until someone finds a solution. If you are not familiar with RSS feeds, here is a great introduction:

http://archive.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2003/12/04/rss/

There is one other potential change I would like to talk to users of the wiki about. With the current version of MoinMoin?, it is possible to display something like the following text when a user is editing a page:

By hitting Save Changes you put your changes under the GnuFreeDocumentationLicense?. If you don't want that, hit Cancel to cancel your changes.

If you click on "GnuFreeDocumentationLicense?", it would normally take you to the text for the license, which can also be read here:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt

I have already implemented this on my new Glass Bead Game Wiki, so feel free to play around in the sandbox there to see this feature in action. Please don't add any pages that are not related to the subject of the Glass Bead Game Wiki, of course!

http://www.ludism.org/gbgwiki/WikiSandBox

The terms on the licensing page of the GBG Wiki read,

All data on this wiki entered on or after 01 January 2004 is copyrighted by its author in the year it was entered, and permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of version 1.2 of this license is included below.

In other words, users "own" the copyright to their own text and images, but they make it freely available to the community. This is a standard "free" license that is used widely, not least for most piecepack games. I would like to add this feature to the FIXME Wiki, but I don't want to do so until there has been a discussion of the issue. I will give users on this list until 1 February 2004 to ask questions, give opinions, and raise objections. If there are no serious objections by 1 February, I will implement this feature on the wiki. I hope there are no serious objections; in my opinion, it is important to have a license like this for the data on the wiki because the whole wiki ethic is about freedom and leaving your work open to borrowing and changes by others.

Again, my best wishes for everyone reading this in 2004!

Game on,

--Ron_Hale-Evans?, wiki admin

Discuss changes and potential changes here:

I'm fine with it. GFDL? Okay. -- LionKimbro [[DateTime?(2004-01-21T02:15:43Z)]]