The Earlong Royal Encyclopedia

[Stijn]

It's official.

Taken from the ERE (http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/wiki/index.php):

"Earlong Royal Encyclopedia (ERE in short) is an encyclopedia that aims at collecting as much information about the Jazz Jackrabbit series and the community that surrounds Jazz Jackrabbit 2 as possible. It’s a collaborative effort: everyone is able and even encouraged to edit and add encyclopedia entries on here. ERE is a so-called wiki. You can see the difference between existant and nonexistant links from their colour. Any entry is editable by clicking on the edit link in the function bar above and below the entry. Edit the text, summarize what you did in the Summary field and your changes are live."

So, what are you wating for? Contribute! Contribute!

[EvilMike]

I would update my 3 year old article on ctf codes and put it there.

But I haven't played CTF in ages. Anyone capable has my permission to steal as much as they want from that article, provided it is made better.

[Hybrid]

I did a piece on spaz's moves :P

[FQuist]

Do realise (this goes to Hybrid (thanks for contributing!) but to others too) that the entries, being encyclopedia entries (encyclopedias try to be neutral), should not give personal opinions or value judgements, but should describe whatever the entry is about. This means: "<a href="http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/wiki/?Spaz_Jackrabbit">Spaz Jackrabbit</a> is a red rabbit, he can doublejump", instead of "Spaz Jackrabbit is cool and his double jump is really useful". It's fine, it is your first edit. Do read the tips I've given below.

On to other stuff:

I'm really happy with ERE finally having been finished. It hope it will become a great resource. Some of the articles that were created during and after the launch, specifically <a href="http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/wiki/?List_Servers">List Servers</a> and <a href="http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/wiki/?CTF_Codes">CTF Codes</a>, show how much potential the site has, in my opinion.

I'd like to give some quick tips to users just discovering how ERE works, to start out:
<ul><li><b>Everyone</b> can edit <b>every</b> page (well, non-closed ones). This means the things you added will probably still be changed, since there's barely ever no way in which something can be improved<li>By enclosing words within [[ and ]] you can create links to other entries. For example: "CTF codes are codes used [[Capture the Flag]] games." This will create a link to the Capture the Flag article.
<li>All entries should be non-personal and refrain from speaking to the reader using "you" or use the first person perspective. They should also not give opinions, because encyclopedias don't give these. Try to make it sound like the entry is not someone talking, and like the entry is not talking to the user directly.
<li>You can easily track changes by using the <a href="http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/wiki/versions.php">Recent Changes</a> page, or view a list of all articles by using the <a href="http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/wiki/allArticles.php">All Articles</a> page.
</ul>You're invited to read the <a href="http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/wiki/?ERE:%20help">help page</a> for more information. Above all you're invited to contribute to the encyclopedia by adding/changing articles. You will probably mess up on your first time unless you've done a lot of exploring first. This is fine, others will fix your errors, and you will learn from them. The only requirement for you is that you can cope with your things being edited or thrown around a lot while you're in the learning process. Don't give up after your first tries.

[Hybrid]

That's cool. Thanks for the info Fquist. I wasn't really sure on how to do it :o

[Iam Canadian]

I wrote an article: for my first, I decided to go with something simple and chose the Lizard enemy. If anyone could read it and give me a bit of feedback, I'd really appreciate it, thanks.

[Sciz CT]

I went through and filled in some stuff for the special moves. Anyone who cares more than I do can feel free to add pictures and figure out how to link them all back to the main special moves page.

A few grammatical oddities Canadian, but it looks good otherwise.

[LittleFreak]

I'd give some feedback on your article, Canadian, but I can't even find it. http://aoe.heavengames.com/aoeforums/unhappy.gif

The layout is definately something to be worked on.

EDIT:

Oh, there's a search button. ^^;;

Your search - lizard - did not match any documents.

[FQuist]

Google hasn't discovered ERE yet so search doesn't work unfortunately. I'm going to put up a notice for that

There's an "All articles" list at the left of the page which shows all entries in alphabetical order. Through that you can find Lizard. Alternatively, you can find him by browsing through the JCS Events categories (which are under the JCS category).

Anyone have some ideas on how to make entries about JJ2 enemies easier to find?

I suddenly thought it might be appropiate for JCS Events to be a category displayed on the front page seperately, with all its four subcategories.

Iam Canadian: what can I say.. when I saw the article around 6am this morning I was surprised by its quality. I had been trying to guess who made it, I thought it'd be one of the people who had already lots of experience with the wiki, but the edit was made anonymously. Then I saw your post here. Basically everything in the entry was correctly done. Entry style, wiki markup, and the category. And it's quite informative and to the point, there's no air-filled sentences. The only thing I could notice was that the enemy statistics were not in a bulleted list. But that's nitpicking, since it's not compulsory.

[White Rabbit]

You could try finishing the singleplayer entry and since enemies are normally unique to just singleplayer, ppl may go there to look.

Or you could make a multiplayer entry and since enemies are very rare there and only achievable by MCEs, which some ppl have never heard of, and link the enemies page from there.

EDIT: But, if you start from the J2o main page, it only takes 3 clicks (from the quick links) to get to the Enemies page. It's not that bad. If ppl can't find the enemies entry, then maybe ppl can't find other entries like battle or JCS events. Maybe there should be a sort of guide to 'users' as well as 'writers' of the ERE?

[LittleFreak]

Nice article, Canadian. :)

I changed Dam Nation to Darn Nation though, I think that's the correct name.

(I'm such a perfectionist)

[cooba]

I changed Dam Nation to Darn Nation though, I think that's the correct name.WRONG!!!!!!!! (-)ation makes much more sense than Darnnation if you ask me.

[White Rabbit]

Pedant.

[Torkell]

As a thought, how about adding the J2O characters/levels/enemies sections to the wiki, and then replacing the links on the home page?

[Newspaz]

Well, I think we're still waiting on ERE to grow a little bit. But in the end we are planning to do so.

[FQuist]

If ERE can replace certain parts of the content section that'd be great. One thing that is different between the content characters section and the wiki is that the content section has a characters list with images.. not sure how that would work, if that should be replaced. We could start in a while with linking the list to existing ERE entries.

[Iam Canadian]

About the use of "Dam Nation" in my article, I used it as it was the closest I could get to the name JCS gives the tileset without angering the filter.

[Torkell]

Given the fact that dam-nation is the original name, and the way in which it's being used, I would guess that you'd get away with a filter bypass (use an HTML comment tag inbetween a couple of the letters). But it's not my decision. Admins, any comments?

[Bobby aka Dizzy]

(This does not reflect the stance of the entire administration, just my personal thoughts right now)

Perhaps it would be best to remove that word from the filter since it seems to cause more problems in appropriate uses than anything else.

[FQuist]

(This does not reflect the stance of the entire administration)

I'm not sure. I think at the least bypasses should be allowed if the context is the tileset or levels. But if we do remove it from the filter the same might happen as if when we removed hell from the filter because it was a regular english word, some people started using it insanely often in the "what the hell" etc context, out-using the normal use of the word.

[ThunderPX]

Although, really, I don't see what's so bad about [that fiery place where bad guys go]. (-) I could understand.

(I'd appreciate if these weren't counted as filter dodges as to keep the understandability of this post)

Derby: Filter bypass removal. Though the post would have been more understandable if the filter bypass were left in, there has been no administrative consensus on allowing them for discussion purposes.

[FQuist]

It's interesting how fast the wiki is expanding, isn't it? It seems to be going quite well.

It's also interesting to see people's topic choices. MCEs and Generators and Fake Health and Demons have gotten entries now, but Jazz Jackrabbit is still undefined. That's interesting how those things develop. There seems to be a lot of focus on the game details.

[Sciz CT]

Jazz Jackrabbit himself is a rather large topic to tackle, whereas small things like fake health or an individual enemy are rather easy to write up. People are generally more familiar with gameplay elements than character backgrounds.

[Monolith]

It's interesting how fast the wiki is expanding, isn't it? It seems to be going quite well.

It's also interesting to see people's topic choices. MCEs and Generators and Fake Health and Demons have gotten entries now, but Jazz Jackrabbit is still undefined. That's interesting how those things develop. There seems to be a lot of focus on the game details.
Probably because the people in this community take those obvious things for granted, and they're not as interesting as these other details.

[cooba]

...The MCE entry sucks.

[Stijn]

...The MCE entry sucks.
Well, improve it then. Or shut up.

[cooba]

I mean, it would be pretty good if it was written, say, two years ago. But now, it's this inaccurate that the whole entry should be rewritten over. And if you want me to do it, ok.

[Stijn]

That's the whole idea of a wiki. If you think an entry sucks and you know better, you are free to improve or rewrite it. Ain't it perfect?

[Chiyu]

Yeah it's a nice encylopedia I'm happy that J2o put it in.

[FQuist]

You can criticize an entry I think without having to rewrite it yourself... Some people might not have the knowledge/time/will to do that (especially a full rewrite), but can still give valuable comments that others can use to improve the entry. I'd prefer either edit it or give comments above either edit it or shut up. Of course, going beyond "sucks" would be good. Maybe you can post your objections on the MCE entry's discussion page, Cooba?

[cooba]

...Just when I was going to go beyond "sucks" blur saves the day.
If you think an entry sucks and you know better, you are free to improve or rewrite it.Thank you Captain Obvious! You saved the day!

[Stijn]

So what are you doing here making sarcastic remarks and criticizing others if you know better?