The goal being that everybody is able to contribute, and its existence is known outside of the most limited circles.
If it's none of those things, then I would do all of the setup myself, and still nobody would benefit or contribute... that would just be a waste.
The thing is, the existence of a wiki isn't going to change any of that, IMHO.
It is only useful if it has content, and most people aren't interested in adding technical content in a structured and findable way.
From my POV, the success of Wikipedia, or of any of the fan-wikis, is the existence of a core group of editors and organizers that make sure that the articles are well written and organized.
If there is nobody who has the passion and librarian-mindset to do that, then all that you get is either a mess ... or nothing at all.
That is what has happened (so far) to Arkhan's wiki. He created it (great!), but filling in the content isn't his passion, he'd rather be writing games.
Also, the wiki itself is on that FANDOM site, and since that is a free service, it is absolutely overrun with advertising, which takes up over 50% of the screen and is annoying as f*ck.
Honestly, I'd far rather be looking at Hudson's official documentation in .pdf format (which is searchable).
I mean c'mon ... seriously folks ... does anyone really want to spend their valuable leisure time copying the existing documentation to some wiki???
That would be ...
CPU | 138 pages |
VDC | 28 pages |
VCE | 7 pages |
PSG | 14 pages |
BIOS | 45 pages |
MML-DRIVER | 36 pages |
ADPCM | 11 pages |
PCETECH | 1753 lines |
SGXTECH | 495 lines |
And at the end-of-the-day, all that you'd have would be exactly what you started with, but it would only be available if you have an internet connection, and it would be full of adverts.
May I suggest an alternative to a wiki, that I believe matches more closely with the talents and energy of the people that are likely to actually contribute content?
This forum.
That's right, I believe that we can do as much as anyone here is realistically likely to want to do, just with the stuff here.
The biggest problems (IMHO) with using a forum for useful reference information, are that 1) threads sink off of the top page of any board/subsection, 2) people can only edit their own messages.
I believe that the 1st problem can be solved by having a *moderator* create a thread of links that gets gets stickied and can be updated to point to other threads that contain information.
Creating that "index" thread with a half-dozen-or-so blank messages at the start would allow the *moderators* to organize individual chapters of information that would still be easy for readers to browse and find stuff.
Those links could be to threads, or to individual posts within a thread.
I really don't believe that we have so many people creating reference content here that we're going to be annoying the moderators with constant requests to add stuff to the index thread.
That would allow (for instance), a single overall stickied thread of information links to have a one-line entry/link to a "Translation Candidates & Info" thread, which would then contain individual Game links to threads-or-posts that contain links to the actual information.
I don't believe that the 2nd "problem" is much of an issue with the content that anyone here is likely to write, especially since having each of us editing other people's writing/content is more likely to cause friction than to actually accomplish anything useful.
Allowing each of us to actually create threads about subject/hints/tips/advice/etc that interests us, and then to respond to questions and have follow-up posts within that thread, just seems like something that we're more likely to do.
If we just make sure to leave a blank "placeholder" message or two for index links at the top of our threads that we can edit, then we can organize our own subjects as we create our content.
That would be my suggestion, and IMHO, it could work well.
For instance, we could replace all of the stickied threads at the top of the "Homebrew Development" section with a single moderator-created thread of index links.
This wouldn't have the power of a full wiki ... but I believe that it's something that people are far-more-likely to actually contribute to and create content for (i.e. when Gredler writes up his article about creating art assets).
At the end-of-the-day, there isn't much difference between a forum and a wiki, they are both just different presentations of a database of information.
The ProBoards software that this forum uses seems to support most/all of the formatting options that any of us is likely to use, including file links to Google Drive.