The TDN wish list

TDN is a useful resource. Or it would be, if it got some love. The current state of things is really sad; the layout is partially handled by client-side HTML and magic macros, instead of one uniform set of rules for the wiki. The wiki (and possibly PHP) versions are probably far behind, out of fear of breaking everything. The sections and articles don't really follow the same rules of layout/style, which is something a few brave/stupid users have tried to fix. We need something better. Here follows a few suggestions. Add your own, those who still care!

First the big and possibly tricky things:

• Pick a recent wiki version of some decent wikisystem. It currently uses Wikimedia, but look into others. Two main features are speed of data retrieval (but this doesn't necessarily require a database - a fast RAID-1 volume can keep up with the traffic at the current scale) and options to replace the authentication backend.
• Move the wiki and its authentication under the main garagegames.com site, instead of a subdomain. Logging in twice is not fun, so it should share cookies with the main site (hence the move into the same site; browser security doesn't always agree with the other way).
• Make a CSS template to match the main site, and ensure that there are no style options available to the end-user. All we need is layout (image placement, flowing text - all typical wiki stuff), code tags and occasionally embedded media (YouTube videos, example audio).
• Move the content. Strip out layout tags and start fresh with just images and image links. It might be a major undertaking. I suggest marking articles for move or rewrite, and make a page in the new wiki requesting volunteers. There are many good tutorials, the references can be used, but might need updates, and some resources/add-ons need to be verified with current engines.

The other things:

• We need quickstart article templates to copy and paste, possibly even using macros like now. But macros should never, ever depend on any HTML tags. Keep it pure. Suggested templates: Engine index, tutorial, technical reference, artist reference, resource.
• Tags! Tag things with engine and type. If it can be used in both iT2D and T2D, mark it as such. All lowercase. Type would be general category, like GUI, input, animation etc. The tag system should ideally be dynamic - prime it with a bunch of tags, and let it learn as users make new tags. Perhaps it should have a way to suggest corrections when you enter something similar to an existing tag.
• User levels could be useful. Apart from admins and regular users, there could be editors who decide if an article is worth publishing. So the idea is that anyone can write articles, and editors+admins get an e-mail if they're subscribed to updates. It might need a slightly advanced system to let each engine have different groups of potentially overlapping editors.