GSWiki Raging Thrak

This article is a work in progress!

Welcome to the GemStone Wiki! Formerly hosted independently at krakiipedia, the repository of the wiki contents was cloned near New Year's Day 2015 and is now officially hosted by Simutronics. Anyone who can log in to a GemStone account at play.net can also log in to gswiki. This article aims to introduce new-comers to GemStone and wiki-editing in general to gswiki.

How do I login?

Firstly, you need a subscription to play GemStone; if you don't have one, go sign up! After that, all you need to do is click the shiny 'Log in' in the upper right corner of your web browser pointed at the wiki. Simply enter your username and password, which hopefully you haven't left written on a slip of paper in your pants pocket for someone in your laundromat to find. It's common for wiki-engines (that'd be the program on the server doing all the heavy-lifting) to be CaSe-SeNsItIve to the user handle, so be sure you enter your user name correctly! Finally, keep in mind if you recently changed your password on play.net, you might need to wait just a little while for the new password to register with the wiki system.

How can I make a user page?

Whether you want to lurk in the shadows or tell everyone who'll listen your whole if story, it's not a bad idea to create a user page for yourself. The main reason to make one is that redlinks (internal links that don't point to anywhere valid) are ugly, and the lack of a profile will keep people from easily chatting with you. Also, most folks will feel reluctant to create your user page for you, but without that base page, they can't access your Discussion page. An easy way to create your user page is merely click your user name at the top of the page, then just click the monsterbold saying you want to create that new page.

If you don't see such a user name at the top of the page, and you're sure you're logged in, try clicking this link and changing YOURLOGIN to your login, though it must be exact: User:YOURLOGIN. You can even Save Page with it blank, or with something simple like, "Hello!". If you want to play around, your own user space is the best place to do it. No one else should be editing that, unless it's your discussion page to talk with you. If someone does start a discussion with you, you'll get a message any time you login telling you there's a new message!

Sandboxes

Everyone who does wikis, whether they are new or veteran, might like to play around a little. The problem with playing on a wiki is you'll risk changing all the content on a page and others might not take too kindly to your shouting, "I WANT TO WIKI!!!!!!!!!" in the middle of their beautiful article on tomb trolls. Well, in your own user space, you can make any pages you want, and not only won't you bother anyone else, probably they'll also ignore that stuff.

Unless you really require sub-pages for all your computers, your curriculum vitae, and your Batman poster collection, the only sub-page you need is a Sandbox. You could just click a link like this and then create the page. You'll want to make the link with your actual user name instead of YOURLOGIN, of course.

Your sandbox is a great place to test how fancy you can alter things or maybe start writing that guide on your ultimate toothpick of doom that you always wanted; here you can do that without interruption over a long period until it's polished to your standards and ready to be published as a normal article. If anyone comes and bothers you, don't be shy to tell them to go play in their own sandbox!

How do I edit?

Although you can immediately begin editing, it might be best to brush up on the local customs first. Otherwise you might find yourself face-to-face with a grumpy old editor who'll blast all the mud off your edits and probably remind you to always keep your comments to a single paragraph and sign them with ~~~~ on a Discussion page; those four wiggles will fill in your username and a timestamp to let people know who's been writing on the wall, and when.

Always be sure to check a Discussion page before jumping right in to slaying a new article to see if they need help before attempting to unload all that wisdom you learned back on that turnip farm of yours. There might be long-standing disputes you'd rather avoid, or maybe there'll be some calls for help on specific areas. If you're hunting for articles to slay, go ahead and check out the Stubs; these are usually young articles you shouldn't find too difficult to expand and improve.

When are others editing?

It's also a generally a good idea to check the History page of an article first to see the latest edit; someone might be busy doing a lot of cleanup work or adding content. Usually, if folks are doing that, they'll ask others to please wait for your edits in their edit summary. Two people trying to edit the same thing at the same time will result in a collision; usually the wiki engine is smart enough to detect this and offer you a warning, but it can be a headache if your laptop battery is about to die and you didn't save the information somewhere outside your browser.

This is one reason that it's always a smart idea to only edit the section you want to edit, and not the whole article at once! Another problem could arise if—while you are editing the entire article—your cat pounces on the keyboard, deleting half the article. Then you'll be left scratching your head wondering what the article originally said and what you were trying to add. You can edit a single section by clicking the Edit button near a section heading instead of the edit button at the top of the article. Editing a single section at a time also helps us track where the edit was made, so you don't need to say as much in your Summary.

This brings me to my next point: always offer your fellow editors a brief summary of your edits. The summary does not need to be an in-depth analysis of all the characters in War and Peace, just a quick blurb telling others what you did and why you did it. If you just found a few typos or minor grammatical slips, just summarize it as "typo fixing" or "grammar" and go ahead and click the This is a minor edit box. On the other hand, if your edit changes the mechanics described in an article, it is a good idea to say which mechanics they were, why you think the correction was necessary, and provide a heads-up indicating where to find further discussion. If you got as far with the edit as you could, but still found your shoe-laces in knots, go ahead and express some uncertainty at the end of your summary or say something simple like, "More edits may be needed". The other editors will appreciate knowing you won't get mad if they go ahead and polish that up for you.

Don't poach!

Poaching articles is also generally frowned upon. Sitting in one spot attacking the same article won't give your fellow editors any chance to get in and collaborate! Usually they just want to help you, and if you walk away from that particular article for a bit, you might see a much prettier article when you return. Sometimes people will glorify the format, or add links to pages you never heard of on that turnip farm of yours. Other times, you see they changed that one sentence you took an hour to hammer out keystroke-by-keystroke between sips of coffee. If this happens, as long as you're pretty sure the other editor had a good intention, it's best to leave it for a few days and come back. Other editors can check the history, too, and they might also like the way you wrote it the first time and revert the edit for you, showing you're not the only one who thinks that way. If they don't, you can try pushing your ideal wording through again, but don't be surprised if someone else jumps right in there and changes it again! When this happens, you have to remind yourself that you weren't writing the article for yourself, you were writing it to help other people, some of whom seem to think it's better another way. Go ahead and check the Discussion page to see if anyone left you remarks or advice on this particular point; if they didn't, go ahead and explain why you think the article is nicer one way rather than another. Even if you don't flinch at the harshest insults, try and show the other editors the kindness and respect you'd want them to show your mother, who doesn't know anything about GemStone or gswiki. Also, if you see someone saying they want to add something themselves, go ahead and offer them advice or constructive ideas, but have some patience and don't just slay the article with your huge claidhmore right before their eyes. After all, we all came here to have some fun slaying articles, not fellow editors! If you feel you'll need some extended time to work on a topic without others jumping in, this is a perfect time to use your Sandbox!

How can I format?

I'm sure back on that turnip farm of yours, you heard about HTML, which is hypertext markup language. Well those markups get cumbersome, so wikis tend to use a style called markdown instead. If you never heard of any of that, I'm here to tell you formatting on wikis is pretty painless. After all, would you rather write <href="https://gswiki.play.net">gswiki</href> or just [https://gswiki.play.net gswiki]? They both link a website to appear as gswiki, but the latter looks a lot prettier and is easier to type for us old timers who've been touch-typing before you were born and only have a few marbles left rattling around upstairs. Wikilinking is also crucial, which is where you make a link to another article on gswiki; enter it like this for the raw link: [[Implosion (720)]]; or if you want to streamline the link in a sentence, like this for a titled wikilink: [[Implosion (720)|my favorite spell]]. Just remember: one bracket for external, two brackets for internal; and the external links use a space between the link and the name, whereas wikilinks use a pipe…don't ask.

Perhaps you want to make something bold? Don't use deprecated flags like <b>bold</b> when you can just do ' ' 'bold' ' '; that's three single quotes on both sides. Emphasizing text like this is also especially common for the article name within the article itself. Rather than using <i>italic</i> for italic, try encasing it in two single quotes: ' 'italic' '.

One of the best way to get formatting clues or ideas is to simply find an article with the formatting you like and hit Edit. Don't change anything, just inspect or copy the style the article uses, close that window without editing, and go on modifying the article you were working on. Also, don't check the first paragraph of this section, it's full of really terrible things so that you can see the raw versions directly in this article without having the special characters processed by the wiki engine!

• Making lists is also easy, but takes more time to explain when you are very tired.