Need feedback on a project

[Steely Ann]

I know it's kind of a shot in the dark, but I'd like some useful feedback on a technical(ish) wiki about a Half-Life 2 mod.  The more relevant forum that I'd normally ask has too many (inactive) yay-sayers right now IMO.

I figured I'd ask where the forum-goers are a bit more willing to tear it up and steer me in the right direction.  Tell us what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong, and what we can change, please.

SMOD Wiki

in before "DIAF nobody cares"

[Demolution]

Could benefit from some references to the more notable terms ("Half-Life2" in the main page, for example), but looks very comprehensive otherwise.

http://smod.wikidot.com/weapon:soy

[Steely Ann]

That's not a bad idea.  I sort of just assumed that anybody looking at it would be somewhat familiar with HL2.

I'll put it on my to-do for now.  :3

e:  Arrrgh.  The wiki doesn't like underscores a lot of the time.  Thanks.
e II: I'm diggin' you.  Fixed.

[Demolution]

It appears that the link to the image in this page is either borked or missing:
http://smod.wikidot.com/weapon:hopwire-old

Edit:

Also, wording error:

Primary Fire: Fires a stream of fire that most anything in its path.

http://smod.wikidot.com/weapon:flamethrower

[Kaine]

I find your lack of wiki support for the Swahili-speaking playerbase to be most disheartening... especially since you make concessions for players who speak this fucked up language "作者です."


In this picture, the individual on the right appears to be sporting a massive red nipple.  It's unseemly.

You have no entry in the glossary for "crowbar."  Shameful.

Your main page lacks screenshots, links to SMOD itself, or anything to really hold a visitor's interest (excluding, of course, the nipple pic.)

Yeah, I actually had to hunt down a screenshot so I'd know what the hell kind of mod you were talking about... put some of this on the main page:
http://smod.wikidot.com/smod:features
http://smod.wikidot.com/nav:sitemap

And for fuck's sake, clean up that site map!  Condense it, bold headings, underline shit, I don't care what you do... just make it tolerable to read without stabbing one's eyes out.

[Steely Ann]

Thanks, Kaine.  <3

I'll keep part of that (I assume the rest is pulling my leg) close at hand.

e: Removed the blood, gonna start messing with the front page and include some media, and some of the stuff in smod:features.  I think you're dead-on.

[mooseberry]

These are all my personal opinions, so they may or may not seem reasonable to you.

Well to be honest I don't like the home page design or layout very much.

First of all it's a bit on the wide side for those of us with smaller monitors (Or maybe everyone, I don't know.) You have a sort of (imho) amateurish approach of just leaving the right side open. Instead, I would strongly advice closing the boxes on the right at least places with text in them. It makes it look a lot less cut off and distracting.

Also, in my opinion, your fully rounded logo looks off when placed next to the very boxy and right angle-y design of the rest of the page.

I would (this is really kind of nitpicking) darken the areas where there is text just a bit, it makes it a lot easier on the eyes to read.

Also-- to users logged off at least-- there is no edit [(which may be your choice)(and in that case I recommend at least allowing "view source")] or discussion tabs, which seems important to me.

This may seem pointless, but I always thought random page is a really nice addition to a wiki site and missed it on yours.

I think some sort of featured article or the like would be a nice addition. (Besides incentive to put in good work, showing off good work, etc, it also gives the newb brand new to your site ((like me)) a chance to 'physically' look around your site. The box down below is a nice start, but besides that it leaves people who don't know SMOD with no idea of where to start.)

Also the captions boxes are fugly, and the (don't know what it is called, since I can't edit or view source) setup for where you cvars for things on an individual page is imo _really_ annoying. It's not like you have to worry about running out of room going down, so why the hell are you hiding words from me?

I also don't really like the way pages are titled in the url. Maybe it will be good, but I don't see how having (for example Soy Beans) "weapon:" in the url will help identify it any better, unless you're worried about different soybeans? I would just change it to /soy_beans, and than maybe put weapons in the title, or even better, just template it. (Maybe I missed it but I'm not seeing a whole bunch of templates, and those, ((connected to a readable, acccessible table page)), make it much better organized.)

That's all I can think of, and despite all the critisim, I think it's not bad overall, but I figure the critisisms will be more helpful to you than just gj!

Edit: Wooah that's a lot of words. Well I hope you find some of that useful.

[Steely Ann]

Sorry about the delay, moose.  Didn't have any time to touch the comp yesterday or get to Kaine's stuff yet either.  And you happen to be right saying we're amateurs since this is our first web project. :3

About the edit button/view source/etc., that's to do with the theme we borrowed and tweaked.  If you aren't a registered member on Wikidot (i.e. you can't edit things anyway), it excludes 'em from the page.  And discussion tabs are absent altogether as-is.  Yeah, I know.

D'ya have other suggestions for the caption boxes or general theme?  I've been aesthetically crippled since birth, so this kind of thing is very new to me and my partner simply doesn't have much time (or motivation).  We started out by loosely basing the layout on Valve's wiki, so that's mostly why things look the way they do; compare Combine Ace to Combine Soldier.  I wouldn't say no to getting rid of the scrollboxes since they were a pain in the ass to implement in the first place (had to put HTML code in a <code> block, then embed it in an <iframe>).  e: Now I remember why I put 'em in.  To avoid insanely loong pages like this.

For the URL titles, that's how pages are usually categorized within Wikidot.  See category:template or category:weapon.  It could be redone by just parenting pages appropriately though.  For instance, the sitemap is done by automatically listing all the children of the start page.

Sorry if it seems like a cluster; it sort of is.  I'd like to think the actual information inside is solid and useful, though.  Thanks for that small wall of text.  I just need to figure how to make something happen with it, argh.

[Bissig]

Ass long page >>>> stupid iframes

Just put in ankers at each new paragraph which link to the top.