Wiki homepage improvement

[Koub]

Following this bit of exchange in another thread :

Also, I'm not blaming anyone, but I think Terraria wiki is superior to Factorio wiki in what's accessible from the front page. Factorio wiki could be improved by reproducing the way Terraria wiki is organised.

Could you make an extra thread with more details for how you imagine the ideal factorio main page? Without considering the expansion for now, I guess.

Here's the way I'd organise the Wiki's homepage (You're allowed to make fun of my Paint skills, but be aware that my drawing/writing is far worse ) :

big picture

Wiki homepage mockup.png (3.09 MiB) Viewed 1842 times

Obviously, there are things that would need additional tweaking, and I'm aware I'm no UI designer, maybe the layout I have in mind just wouldn't work with a game like Factorio.
Amongst the things that help readability (imho) : whenever icons make sense, they help make things way more compact and more ergonomic. Example below, I selected two equivalent things in both Terraria and Factorio Wikis :

Factorio version

2023-10-05 21_41_19-Window.jpg (19.83 KiB) Viewed 1842 times

2023-10-05 21_41_30-Window.jpg (15.84 KiB) Viewed 1842 times

2023-10-05 21_41_42-Window.jpg (10.49 KiB) Viewed 1842 times

Terraria version

2023-10-05 21_44_01-Window.jpg (31.41 KiB) Viewed 1842 times

Notice how despite way more options available for Terraria, The Factorio version is way less compact, and the information less evident (it's quicker to see Reddit's icon than to read everything until finding the "Reddit" world" for example).

[Pi-C]

Amongst the things that help readability (imho) : whenever icons make sense, they help make things way more compact and more ergonomic.

Icons work for communication if sender and recipient have "agreed" upon what they mean.

Terraria version

2023-10-05 21_44_01-Window.jpg

Notice how despite way more options available for Terraria, The Factorio version is way less compact, and the information less evident (it's quicker to see Reddit's icon than to read everything until finding the "Reddit" world" for example).

Official links: I think I recognize the icons of Facebook (skip 1), Twitter-now-X (skip 2), and YouTube. The icon to the right of the Twitter bird reminds me of the DuckDuckGo icon, but I can't really make it out, perhaps it's just the color. Anyway, I associate nothing at all with most the icons -- partly because I'm out of touch with reality and don't use so-called "social" media, partly because I'm an old fart with diminishing eye sight and see the icons mainly as colored blobs that I can't recognize. Thus, for practical reasons we're not in agreement about what the icons signify: the code doesn't work, communication doesn't happen if the recipient can't make any sense of what the sender is trying to convey.

I do admit that the Terraria wiki is more compact than that of Factorio, but is it really better? The first line ("Official links", "Buy Terraria") is just a number of colored blobs (vulgo: 'icons') that are bigger than the script in the lines below but are not universally understood. The lines below that have at least some text, but the only thing I can comfortably read is what appears to be version numbers -- reading the text above and below that is possible (zooming in helps to a degree, at the cost of having to scroll sideways if you zoom in too much) but painful.

Now compare that to the pictures from the Factorio wiki that you've posted. Are there many icons? No. Do the icons make sense? Not sure, but the icons used are familiar from the game, so anybody who has played vanilla Factorio will recognize them and have some associations that link the icon to the text next to it (Assembling machine? OK, it's crafting … until output is blocked. Just make sure to always remove the latest p… -- Sure, latest version, makes sense now! Pick axe? Used in the game to mine ore; once I've mined it it's mine -- got it! I'm to take my pick axe and get the game!)

The best about your screenshots from the Factorio site: You don't need to understand the meaning of the icons! People who have never played the game probably won't think the way I've outlined in the last paragraph. To those people, the icons are still meaningless (What's that box with the three gears in it? Is that thing with the tiny hairs a kind of brush looked at from the side, or could it be some kind of centipede?). If you don't get what the icon is supposed to mean, that's no problem because it's spelled out for your right next to it. In this case, the icons still are decorative and show what items players may encounter in the game.

The Factorio version is way less compact, and the information less evident (it's quicker to see Reddit's icon than to read everything until finding the "Reddit" world" for example).

While the Factorio wiki is less compact, and while it may be old-school to rely on text, looking at your screenshots I could immediately tell what each pane was about -- simply because it is printed in a legible font (good contrast, not too small, clean script without serifes). Also, if the script was too small, zooming in on the text would be easy with most browsers, while not every browser will scale images along with the text on zooming.

Now suppose I wanted to find Reddit. Your way, I'd have to know what the icon looks like (I've followed some links to Reddit posts from this forum but, to be honest, I couldn't tell you what its icon looks like -- perhaps it would work in a multiple-choice setting where all icons are shown in good size and with clearly recognizable details and where its known that one of the icons will be the Reddit icon, but I couldn't even describe it without any help), then I'd have to go find it on the page. My way, I'd start typing "R…E…D…D…" and if the word "Reddit" was on the page, the browser would highlight it and make it easy to get to all instances of the word on the current page. Your way -- how exactly do I enter an icon in the search field?

So, never mind what other games do! Don't strive to make the wiki compact just for the sake of it being compact. I don't want a compact wiki where I don't find anything because everything is hidden behind meaningless, unusable icons -- I want a wiki that's userfriendly and provides the info I need without putting obstacles in my way while I try to access it.

[Tertius]

@PI-C I intend no offense, but the way you describe you experience the internet is not the common case. The part of the internet that deals with interaction, socialization, meeting people and discussing developed its own way of communicating and information handling. It's some kind of a new language that evolved here, a symbol-, icon- and abbreviation-based language. It's not spoken but understood visually. It developed over the last 20 years, with its roots even before that, and it culminated with today's use of icons and emojis. Icons have meaning! They are words, they are understood directly, no interpretation needed.

The vast majority of people immediately understand the social media link part of a web page. I see the Facebook icon or the Twitter icon (which is currently being destroyed, but it's still present) and know this whole part are all the social media links. I hover over unknown icons, see the link destination, and after I did this 2-3 times, I also recognize unknown icons without ever following the links.

With all the gaming platforms it's the same. My primary game shop is Steam, and whenever I recognize the steam icon, or the Xbox icon, along with other icons, I know this is the part that links to where the game is available from. It's all clear immediately. Icons are faster to understand than words. Words need to be read and understood, but icons are immediately clear. You don't need to read a text "The game is available from Steam", you just need to see the Steam icon and know: clicking this icon will bring me to the Steam Factorio shop page. No text needed.

With game content on the main page, it could be the same for important game features. Icons also colorize the page and make it more interesting.

[Amarula]

I am all in favour of accessibility. Sure icons work for younger players, and I am fine with adding icons to the page. I use the wiki all the time (and oh I wish there was a way to have a wiki for nullius!) and I don't think we should make our wiki less accessible for anyone, whether they need a larger font size, or have red-green colour-blindness, or communicate without icons.

[Pi-C]

@PI-C I intend no offense, but the way you describe you experience the internet is not the common case.

No offense taken, I never claimed my way of doing things was the common way.

The part of the internet that deals with interaction, socialization, meeting people and discussing developed its own way of communicating and information handling. It's some kind of a new language that evolved here, a symbol-, icon- and abbreviation-based language. It's not spoken but understood visually. It developed over the last 20 years, with its roots even before that, and it culminated with today's use of icons and emojis.

I'm familiar with a symbol-, icon-, and abbreviation-based language; actually, I'd consider myself an early adopter as I got started using that close to [too many] years ago, when IRC was still a novelty. But I admit that I never got the hang of emojis. If I see a post somewhere that consists of emojis only, I skip it …

Icons have meaning! They are words, they are understood directly, no interpretation needed.

They have meaning if you (a) know what it is meant to signify, and (b) can actually recognize/read the icon. My complaint was that the icons were so small that I could hardly recognize the image. Sure, that makes the page more compact -- but I find it far easier to read a textual description.

The vast majority of people immediately understand the social media link part of a web page. I see the Facebook icon or the Twitter icon (which is currently being destroyed, but it's still present) and know this whole part are all the social media links. I hover over unknown icons, see the link destination, and after I did this 2-3 times, I also recognize unknown icons without ever following the links.

It's easy to deduce that if there are "official links" represented by a number of icons, two of which are known to represent social media (SM) platforms, they probably link to other SM platforms as well. Interestingly enough, when I looked directly at the Terraria Wiki, the SM links were shown as text:

terraria.png (75.02 KiB) Viewed 1761 times

The image may be scaled down, but in the original the text was legible.

With all the gaming platforms it's the same. My primary game shop is Steam, and whenever I recognize the steam icon, or the Xbox icon, along with other icons, I know this is the part that links to where the game is available from. It's all clear immediately. Icons are faster to understand than words. Words need to be read and understood, but icons are immediately clear. You don't need to read a text "The game is available from Steam", you just need to see the Steam icon and know: clicking this icon will bring me to the Steam Factorio shop page. No text needed.

I don't usually buy games, so I'm not familiar with the different shops (I let a friend with GOG account purchase Factorio for me). Also, i never felt the need to get any gaming console. I recognized Tux, so I'd probably clicked there. Still, the descriptions of the download links are still too small -- and the light-gray-on-white text below the version number is almost useless, a disgrace!

With game content on the main page, it could be the same for important game features. Icons also colorize the page and make it more interesting.

I think I wrote something to that effect in my rant:

The best about your screenshots from the Factorio site: You don't need to understand the meaning of the icons! People who have never played the game probably won't think the way I've outlined in the last paragraph. To those people, the icons are still meaningless (What's that box with the three gears in it? Is that thing with the tiny hairs a kind of brush looked at from the side, or could it be some kind of centipede?). If you don't get what the icon is supposed to mean, that's no problem because it's spelled out for your right next to it. In this case, the icons still are decorative and show what items players may encounter in the game.

Yes, icons (or illustrations in general) can improve the visual impression. But they should be used sparingly, so that they really enhance the reading experience -- and of course, they should fit in somehow! Icons should be simple as they are rather small by design. If you try to show too much detail, icons easily become a nuisance. Good readability is what counts most of all!

[Koub]

Hi, I'd like to stress out (if that wasn't already obvious), that I'm no UI designer. I, personally, have felt less ease navigating through Factorio's wiki, than I have in Terraria's wiki. But feeling something "seems to fit better" and being able to pinpoint what exactly makes one version better are very different things. This is true vor literally anything, from food to tools, to cars, to keyboards, ... It's easy to tell "I like this one better", or "this one feels right, moreso than the other one", but telling "yeah that comes from that little tweak in the handle's shape" or "you changed the black pepper to green pepper" needs some expertise in the field I totally lack.

I just tried to put words on some obscure feeling. There are other things that do bother me on Factorio wiki (well bother is excessive, let's say that could be improved). But I struggle even more to put words on them.

On the other hand, some aspects are really excellent on Factorio's wiki (the cartouche on the right part of the pages describing entities or technologies for example). That, I can tell.

[Bilka]

Icons are an interesting topic. The current icons got a comment by a Wube UI designer that they shouldn't be there. (I don't remember the reasoning, it has been a few years.) The current icons aren't very related to the topics the boxes are about, which isn't great. But they don't harm anything either I think, since they're additional to the text.

Icons on links to store pages and social media sites would definitely be more related. But I'm wondering if that is really something people come to the wiki for, since we don't have various different versions for different stores etc. I'd rather try to highlight the links to the content pages themselves, but then it comes to the problem again that picking icons is hard, so how related will they be?

Interestingly enough, when I looked directly at the Terraria Wiki, the SM links were shown as text:

That's a different terraria wiki. The wiki moved from fandom (what you linked, formerly also known as gamepedia) to wiki.gg (what Koub linked). From what I know there are problems on the fandom platform, so a lot of wikis have moved away to other wiki farms or self-host now. I'm quite glad that we were already self-hosting so we don't have to deal with a migration like that.

Back to the other feedback Koub gave - getting rid of the beginner/advanced/expert boxes in favor of more topic specific boxes. The problems that I see with this is that we don't really have overarching topics that make for easy groupings. Yes, we have items, but we have no overview pages for item types that give much mechanical information, they just link to all items of that type (e.g. Armor). I think grouping in-game mechanics and something like modding and console will just end up replicating the advanced/beginner and export split.

Speaking of pages on mechanics, something like Mining has a deceptively simple name but discusses numbers and math that are very much not interesting for beginners. By placing this in the expert category, beginners hopefully get directed away from this page.

Regarding a tech tree: The Factorio tech tree is huge and I highly doubt it could be made to nicely fit on one or two pages on a computer monitor, and I don't even dare to think of mobile screens. It may be possible to make a list organised by science pack tiers (similar to the existing technologies navbox, just different grouping). But here I'd raise the question how often people look for specific technologies, I have a hard time gauging that. Basically, whether we should take a lot of space on the main page to show them.

[Tertius]

But here I'd raise the question how often people look for specific technologies, I have a hard time gauging that. Basically, whether we should take a lot of space on the main page to show them.

I remember that as beginner player, I didn't use the main page much. I used some of the links in the Beginner/Advanced/Expert section. I never used the "Materials and Recipes" links below, because items didn't answer my question, I was looking for tutorials and information about mechanics to understand the game. Because the German articles about game mechanics were so outdated or nonexistent, I started translating. (fun fact: I don't use my own translations any more, I almost exclusively use the English texts, because this enables me to write about the game in the English forums without translating terminology from/to German).

I skipped the fff stuff in the top main page section, because fff news weren't relevant for a general understanding of the game, and at the time when I was starting, there were no current news about the game anyway. Version and history was not relevant as well, because I run what the platform installs (in my case: Steam), whatever that may be, and as new player you really don't care about update histories.

My main navigation was (and still is) through the footers with the navboxes. Because of that, I set a bookmark to all German footers in my wiki userpage: https://wiki.factorio.com/Factorio:Navigation/de

This is the most useful collection and dictionary for me. It was when I was a beginner, and it's still the case for me as an experienced player. It's organized, structured, concise, precise, and comprehensive. It has it all, items as well as discussions of all the game mechanics.

[Koub]

Back to the other feedback Koub gave - getting rid of the beginner/advanced/expert boxes in favor of more topic specific boxes. The problems that I see with this is that we don't really have overarching topics that make for easy groupings. Yes, we have items, but we have no overview pages for item types that give much mechanical information, they just link to all items of that type (e.g. Armor). I think grouping in-game mechanics and something like modding and console will just end up replicating the advanced/beginner and export split.

What I don't like in the "Beginner vs Advanced vs Expert" is that it's arbitrary and artificial.For example the transport is in advanced, with its 4 subgenres : belts, inserters, trains, logistics". For me, inserters and belts should be considered as beginner friendly, trains should come next , and logistics at the end. But wether they're beginner level, advanced, or expert probably depends en the individual : Trains have terrified me for like 8 years. I would have classified them as über advanced stuff, along with combinators, but others do trains or combinators like they were born with them.

If I had to split all the entities into categories, I would choose (random order) :
- Getting started (linking to a page describing basically the classical game order from clicking on "new game" to at least describing the new gameplay aspects until oil automation)
- Harvesting stuff (mines, pumpjacks, woodcutting, ...)
- Moving stuff (the current "transport" part in Advanced)
- Building stuff
- Beacons and modules
- Researching stuff
- Electricity (production, storage, transport)
- Enemies
- Combat
- Weapons
- Ammo
- Hand thrown weapons
- Armor
- Armor modules
- Raw materials
- Intermediates
- Storing stuff
- Vehicles and mobility (including roads, ...)

This list lacks most game concepts (Pollution, ...), the various ways to play the game (game types, multiplayer, map options, ...), the game mechanics (various networks, ...).

The idea is that a search engine is practical when one knows what to look for, the actual name of the object or concept. I use search engines a LOT. But when looking for an item or a concept I don't know the name of, browsing by concept or object type will help me find what I'm looking for. And as we can't know the exact mind path the player is following when coming on the wiki, the different ways to get to a given answer should be available.

For linux users, the man pages are terrific to know how to use a given tool. But to know that I should "man grep", I must first know there is such a thing as a "grep". If I only know I want to find stuff in files, knowing I have to use grep is not straightforward - unless pointed to that tool. hope my reasoning makes sense.