Factorio Forums

I'm not sure if this is the right time to discuss this, and not, if its the right way.
And even if its really needed.

The question is, which I asked me some times since march, when I discovered this game, if there should be some day an "official doc", in which the player can look into, see how something is working and can dig even deeper to see do's or dont's. I know there are different opinions, from "the player should find it out all himself" to "I want to know what's in inserters, how they work and why are they called inserters, even when they obviously put out items? And what is with the fishes?".

My opinion is: if the game will be a success (and I hope it will and everything till now says, it will) then there are many websites, which offer some kind of "documentation", tips&tricks and so on. So in the end, they get the infos from "somewhere". By experience I can say, that I really, really recommend to have that more or less in a controlled order, because otherwise everybody says "hey, look, we have the best informations about the game!" And then everyone is doing its own stuff, no one is really contributing back to the community. Should be avoided.

That's the problem with having no "official documentation" and the only way to avoid that is to have one.

That was point 1.

For point 2 I thought, that some now think "this ssilk is funny, wants to have documenation for an unfinished game..."
I made a mind-map, which is an overview of my current thoughts about the docs. If someone wants I can send him the simple-mind mind-map, but because this is an proprietary format I prefer just pure text. Here are the current results: I'm posting it to invite adding new points or discussing, if this or that is needed, or too much.
For example: I excluded the mods from the official docs, because I mean, it's not part of this docs.

And point 3 is, that I mean, that the current wiki is good enough for that job. I would like to contribute here, mainly it is only hard work, but for example for the list of all items or research I think programs should be used to generate the pages. ... Ok, getting too concrete now.

Perhaps putting some emphasis on the Community Portal wiki page, and using it for this kind of purpose would work for you?
(I'm not on the editor list, and don't have the interest in content creation enough to ask for it.)

I might also suggest someplace like WorkFlowy as a collaborative simple checklist/notepad.
I'm sure there are other options. I just happen to use WorkFlowy personally, and it's intentionally designed as a collaborative tool.

n9103 wrote:Perhaps putting some emphasis on the Community Portal wiki page, and using it for this kind of purpose would work for you?

I put it here, because no one reads the wiki currently and because more brains have more ideas.
And using tools: no I use mainly my iPad and it is hard enough to write so much with it on web pages.

WorkFlowy has a free Android app, I'd be surprised if one wasn't available for iPad (free or not)
Writing in it is no harder than writing on any other note-taking app.

Ok, I give it a try. installed it. Seems, that I need to create some cooperative login now. May take a while... I'm here southeast of Greece islands, in the middle of nowhere with not the best Internet and the beach is much more tempting, than this... but I have a look tonight.

Some ideas since then:

1. Workflowy isn't what is needed.

2. What's needed is a "wiki" on a server/cloud:
2.1 need for pure text, but also needs much pictures to explain the stuff better, eventually also videos.
2.2 some simple control about rights management of the users. The API doc needs other rights than the part of useful layouts.
2.3 possibly discuss is free for everybody, but content only writeable for registered users.
2.4 insert auto generated content (entities, receipts etc. shouldn't be handwritten!)

3. Possibilities:
3.1 something like a free wiki, e. g. WIKIA ( e. g. http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/UEF_T2_Engineering_Station )
3.2 sharing some docs, e. g. via google docs or other cloud services
3.3 using some simpler wiki than media wiki. See this: http://www.wikimatrix.org/ (for me it's not a question which programming language or what server etc. it's a question of how the stuff is installed and (!) maintained!)
3.4 using this forum as a BTN wiki replacement (possible, I used that for some simple stuff, IMHO very bad idea )

Again: I think installing a wiki and make it sure for bots/spam isn't that difficult. The problem is, that such a server needs administrative service; depends on traffic but here I think currently once a week or minimum every month. Installing patches, looking for backdoors... And also a webmaster, which looks into the contents for illegal stuff, set rights for users, creates content, installing new services (together with admin) and many things more. Could be one person but should have some experience with that stuff. Some parts of this packet can be bought, some others needs creativity...

Adding: I put the above pre-docs into my google drive. If someone wants to participate: mail. I won't answer before Tuesday.
@kovarex: it would help, if the old wiki-pages could be made permanent.

wiki wont help as long as there is nothing to do in game

Dude, take your negativity/trolling somewhere else.

I recently joined the Factorio community and only got to see the original wiki for 20 minutes before it was taken down. So I dug around and found that there were 2 other attempts at a wiki but nothing was ever put on them, so I filled out what I know about Factorio on the wikia site since I've used them before and trust that site. So if any of you would like to help contribute to the non official wiki please help make what I've done better.

The plan is to revive the wiki (read only) and we will manually copy paste the non-spammed content to fresh new wiki and let only approved users edit.

@kovarex :
I can contribute to the wiki if you want