User:Silver Scroll (Calmevir)
I had been a loyal participant of the LoE OSWs for quite a while, and besides completing all (working) quests every time, I made it my occupation to show other players around and help them with their problems. Then, during the April 2015 OSW, there were so many quests that broke other quests, that almost every quest-related answer to a question I gave in global chat had to be prefaced with "Don't do this unless you've already done X! Ok, here's how to do what you asked...", and while I avoided those pitfalls I knew about, I discovered double that while playing.
Thus I decided that these warnings had to be available in a central place for all to see - what better place than the wiki? Sadly, I knew from my visits during previous OSWs, the wiki was grossly incomplete, many quests and NPCs missing entirely, and most other information painfully out of date. Still, if I wanted these warnings to be seen, I had to simply create what wasn't there, no matter how daunting the task may seem.
I summarized what I already knew, both from playing with my primary character, Silver Scroll the pegasus, and from talking to other players, and then created two new characters, Littlepip the unicorn and Carapace Chitinsky the "earth pony"; to record information about quests that had become inaccessible to me, and to test hypotheses about whether certain quests broke certain other quests. Along with some research collaboration from the global chat on Griffonia (thanks CrazymattCaptain!), a dataset was compiled, and I started adding to the wiki: writing articles, cropping and adding screenshots, categorizing the lot.
I probably spent almost as much time on the wiki as in the game during that OSW, but the result was worth it. For the first time in forever, the wiki had a complete list of quests, with articles for each of them, with articles (with pictures!) for every NPC involved, and it contained warnings about content becoming inaccessible when certain actions were taken. Even if quite a bit of it will again be out of date next OSW, it should prove significantly easier to maintain, and that alone makes it worth it.
My favorite pages
- Loadsa Monet, the first wiki page I ever wrote
- Aperit Amphora, my largest single contribution to date
- Quest; not only are the warnings on that page (repeated at strategic points throughout the wiki) probably the most important thing I added (there used to be a lot more of them) - they were my motivation for doing this, after all - but I wrote over 30% (now almost 50%) of the articles linked on that page, and seeing the quest names I invented used on other pages is a very affirming feeling indeed.
- Now that the official names of the quests are known, my names for them have all but disappeared (except for a few AKAs), and I was very active in making that change consistent across the entire wiki. Doesn't change the fact that I wrote those articles, and if anything makes me even prouder of my involvement in documenting quests on this wiki.
- And now I was allowed to invent names once again. I love making subtle allusions in my quest names. A Pinch of Salt, for example, is so named not only because the quest revolves around stolen salt, but also because the player may convince a government official to take the rules "with a pinch of salt" for the greater good. Though sometimes I just go for obscure anime references (100% Strawberry).
- Crystal Kingdom, because I was finally able to develop a street naming system for that place that makes sense. Now locations can be given more precisely than "somewhere to the east", a statement that is almost completely useless due to all the buildings looking almost the same, even for pegasi. I can only hope it catches on.
- List of socks; not only did I create 92% of those pages, due to the complete rewrite of the original Socks, I effectively wrote all of them. (The images are also mine.) That was a load of work, I tell you. And will only become more work, if socks are indeed the new hats. What have I gotten myself into...