A desperate plea...

[Cyrus Tegyr]

*A song plays in the background with flashing images of empty Wiki Pages on your screen*

This is the Wiki asking for your help, for just 5 minutes of your time each day you could help a poor, under nourished, unexplained or ill explained topic about Pangaea which will help save the lives of thousands of people who might be lost in the wilderness of ignorance. With these 5 minutes you could help those who are in desperate need of information about a subject they knew little or nothing about and might help educate them into making the right decision. Please do not let those who are ignorant suffer in their wilderness of bewilderment, let them slake their thirst at the Well of Knowledge. Become a sponsor today of a poor, helpless Wiki page and you can help countless others who have not the knowledge and expertise you do.

This announcement has been brought to you by the Foundation For a Better Wiki.
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Seriously folks, doesn't take long, take a gander at the Wiki page and see what there is or more importantly is not there and let's get some more information on there, it will help not only the Noobasaurs but also those among us who have played Pangaea for quite sometime but may not know everything. There is less than a handful of people trying to fill out information and I feel and fear that for those of use who are adding stuff to it are becoming overwhelmed with all the stuff that should be up there that isn't or all the stuff that is up there and is wrong or so basic that it does good to no one. Having a class description such as "A bard plays musical instruments and is also mediocre at magic" is well lack luster.

The wiki does not need essay quality information, what it does need is information pertaining to the experiences others have had regarding that topic. Obviously the more information you put up there the better for all of us in the long run but, for instance, when filling out a wiki page for a specific class, explain it's strong points, weaknesses, perhaps the role of the class, the skills/stats get and if you want to be extremely helpful, add personal information such as how difficult it was when you started out as that class, the skills/stats you would start with and if you could go back and change anything from when you first started out.

IF you can't be bothered to edit the wiki, just look and see who is editing it and pm them with info that might help an underdeveloped page or topic and chances are they will gladly put it up there, usually there is a reason why some of the more perhaps obvious pages that should be filled out aren't and that is because, again in terms of something like the class system, we are only limited to 5 character slots so Ivan, myself and the one or two others who are editing the wiki can't obviously play every class and even if we could, there is a chance that even we do not know everything. It had a good run when the powers that be forced the counselors to edit or add 10 pages or their counsellorship would be revoked but its lost its steam and could use some fresh eyes.

I know this probably seems like a strange post from a player but there are times when I have gone to the wiki looking for information on something that should be there and hasn't and I have to scour through my icq contacts to see if I can find someone who knows what's what on that specific topic or subject. I realize you won't get paid for this but when you are out mining sand, turning glass into obsidian, casting rites over and over for med gains, sparring with your religion horse for that mace fighting gain, building anatomy, working on completing that potion order, creating countless banner deeds, waiting for your friend to log in but he is taking forever or just bored witless running around Moonglow or any other town, take a portion of that time and pull up the wiki and put some info on there. Fear not if it isn't perfect or if your Engrish is bad, there are those among us who will usually look over people's work and if we see a typo or badly grammar than we will fix it.

One thing that might be helpful, this is directed toward the gm folks, is a sticky perhaps in the General Forum where people can post things that need to be added/changed to the wiki. I suspect one of the reasons why the wiki isn't being regularly added to is not because folks are completely lazy about taking 5 minutes out of their time but because sometimes it takes 5 minutes to scour the wiki just to find something that might need added/fixed. Who knows though, I am usually a pessimist when it comes to these things but in this instance I think we have a larger helpful player base here on Pangaea than some other shards do and believe that more people are helpful than not when it comes to spreading information around.

I suppose here is another good rule of thumb, if someone asks you over icq or map chat about something obviously help them or not, but if you chose to be helpful when you find the time, check the wiki and see if it is on there.

I apologize, I know this is a wall of text, I had something typed out ages ago but it got lost in translation, well not really but it got lost somewhere so I had to freestyle this a little and I think it turned out better anyways, a little more light hearted a lot less fire and brimstone and do do do do.

But at any rate, adopt a wiki page/topic or three today! It needs support from players like you and me.