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The Project Zomboid Wiki Feedback Thread


Connall

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Hey folks,
 
So recently I have noticed an increase in the amount of replies, threads and messages here and across other sites regarding the current state of Project Zomboid Wiki generally following with a statement such as "The wiki is outdated." Now generally the usual response has been "Perhaps edit it" however the conversion between saying and editing has been minimal to non existent, even the valiant efforts of the Mondoid has not done much to bolster pages and update information. For the past few months I have been sitting back in regards to the wiki, as I worked away with other projects, work and University. However now I have reached the point where I'm tired of seeing these messages, so I'm personally going to do another update push in the same vain of my wiki overhauls of 2014 and 2013.
 
Now I'm not here to moan about the lack of editors on the wiki, or make another call to arms. We have done that already, instead we need something that is more important right now. Information. Now admittedly, yes I could just dive into the wiki and wander around the pages and just stumble across what needs updating (and in all honesty I could probably throw a dart and find a page that needs to be updated) however I think it's more important I find the pages that matter to the community most. What people feel need to be updated NOW. These pages will take precedent in the edit I will do towards the wiki
 
So now is your chance, if there's something you think should absolutely be updated on the wiki mention it below, if you feel there's something non content wise that should be altered about the wiki, speak now!
 
Just a couple of notes.

  • Please no responses along the lines of "Just go around the wiki" or "Wiki outdated" give actual examples and why they should be updated.
  • Keep it civil, wiki might be outdated but a lot of people took time out of their day to put content on there.

Thanks, I'll be keeping an eye on replies (if there are any.)

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Hey and thanks for reaching out for the communities help ! :)

 

Me, IMO, when I discovered PZ I needed information about basic survivalist, how to make fires, crafting, farming, how to hit with my weapon ( i swear I had no clue and got killed because all i knew was pushing )

ex: how to heal yourself, broken legs, bites, scratches, burns,.... 

Can a player go and edit it themselves? thanks ! :)

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Here is the major problem with the wiki. It's pretty damn difficult to get exact information, and when I have asked for it in the past, the response has been "delve into the code and figure it out yourself".

 

There are several pages with "opinions" on it that probably don't need to be there, as well as some things that are flat out wrong. I'll see about listing some examples.

 

http://pzwiki.net/wiki/Traits

 

Down at the bottom, way too much opinion. Phobias are great for Adrenaline Junkie builds and clumsy to me personally, has NEVER caused issues. Too much opinion.

 

The Recommendations is out of date, as light drinker, brooding, and short-tempered doesn't even exist now, and with so many food sources it's really hard to recommend light eater.

 

Traits are missing most of their effects because again, we don't know exactly how they work. Weak is missing a pretty big drawback not being listed of not being able to climb sheet ropes. I understand there are a lot of people who want this information "hidden", but if your going to a wiki, your not going there because your afraid of spoilers, your going there because you want detailed information.

 

http://pzwiki.net/wiki/Foraging

 

My pet project for awhile (although I never actually edited the wiki beyond uploading some of the foraging graphics). Some pretty vague info here, like on frog. "Can be butchered for meat". What is that suppose to mean?

 

Anyways, I'm not even sure how buried my foraging guide is on the forums now, but to even eat a frog you need a kitchen or hunting knife if I recall, and the moment you cut into it, it becomes a "perishable" meat. The frog has some weird mechanics because for some reason they didn't code it to rot in its "frog" state. Mushrooms also haven't been updated to state that they can rot now, and berries are missing the fact that they can be used in cakes.

 

http://pzwiki.net/wiki/Occupation

 

Security Guard description is just wrong, as the perk Night Owl doesn't even work, but yet has stayed in the occupation forever.

 

http://pzwiki.net/wiki/Skills

 

 

Level 0) 0.25x speed

Level 1) 1x speed

Level 2) 1.25x speed

Level 3) 1.5x speed

Level 4) 1.5x speed

 

Whole thing is wrong. Level 0 is .25x, level 1 is .75x, level 2 is 1x, and level 3+ is 1.25x

 

http://pzwiki.net/wiki/Cooking

 

Badly outdated, but again, with this being an alpha and cooking left with a lot of bugs and wonky mechanics, I wouldn't even dare touch trying to update this.

 

Please don't take this the wrong way, but again, the wiki is a difficult beast to tackle with the game being in a constant state of change, players not knowing enough detailed information, and some professions (*cough cooking cough*) still having longstanding bugs that hasn't been addressed in.......well.......a very very long time.

 

Edit: This may cause another big discussion of rather or not players should have access to it, but would it be possible to finally get some answers on what traits "actually" do, what their "intended to do, but not working yet"?

 

Night Owl simply needs to be removed as it seems they have no intentions of using it, especially since wakeful is a trait now.

Lucky......oh the many discussions and arguments on what it does and does not do.

Resilient/Prone to Illness....These came out before the medical overhaul, so it probably hasn't been updated to affect regular "infections", but we players really don't know. I'm pretty sure it affects zombie infection from scratches and bites......It would be really nice if the devs could be poked about traits to know what is working and what is planned with some traits, as well as finding out hidden bonuses like on Baseball Player.

 

Edit Edit: Speaking of my foraging guide, I had to go to google to actually find it since the forums wouldn't pull it up lol.

 

http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/10851-foraging-findings/

 

Pretty much all the detailed and updated information I could gather for foraging.

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Here is the major problem with the wiki. It's pretty damn difficult to get exact information, and when I have asked for it in the past, the response has been "delve into the code and figure it out yourself".

 

There are several pages with "opinions" on it that probably don't need to be there, as well as some things that are flat out wrong. I'll see about listing some examples.

 

http://pzwiki.net/wiki/Traits

 

Down at the bottom, way too much opinion. Phobias are great for Adrenaline Junkie builds and clumsy to me personally, has NEVER caused issues. Too much opinion.

 

-snip-

 

Removed the outdated bit.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The poison section is missing in both the cooking section and it lacking it's own article.

 

Not to mention that poison has never been clearly explained, as well as how its affected by skills going from 5 levels to 10. But that has a lot to do with cooking being a mess in general :/

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  • 5 months later...

Hi, everybody, well i think that the people that will need the wiki the most are new players, so maybe it is the right idea to start by the character creation. In my opinion it would make it easier to melt the Traits ans the Occupation section together into a "Character creation" page. 

As well as I think it might be a good thing too, to make a kind of "Game mechanics" page, where players could find information about all the basic interaction they can have with the world (quick explanation about fridges, TV's even cooking and carpentry stuff with links towards the more accurate pages).

If we keep a step by step progression, it should be easier not to get confused.

i'll try to see if i can add some information myself, but I've never done that before.

 

Edit : I added the electrician and Engineer Professions and change the skill speed. 

i also made some change in the controls section.

 

I am also wondering if someone could give me any confirmation about that experience bonus on strength and fitness for the unemployed profession

 

http://pzwiki.net/wiki/Occupation

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  • 2 months later...

I would love it if the wiki were a reliable source of information but, as has been mentioned before, virtually everything concrete that could be lovingly contributed to its repository of knowledge is nipple deep into obscure or inaccessible code which itself is subject to change at a heady pace.

 

The result is some kind of coven of warlocks presiding over ancient tomes that infer what an egg is and how it might be cooked in a language that no living man can reliably read. All these wisened veterans can do is shrug their shoulders and shake rattles at pools of chicken blood in the hope of divining a story about something that happened to them five playthroughs ago that might be connected to the original inquiry.

 

Without the ability to flip the tapestry and easily extract information that could be expected to maintain stability for any length of time there's not much hope for the wiki to perform a role beyond framing the game.

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I wanted to come back to lend something usefulish to the conversation.

 

tl;dr Make a decision internally regarding what data you want the PZ team to populate and what data you want the masses to populate and then make that information as readily available.

 

Playing with friends in times past the questions that most often came up almost always concerned traits and skills. The hard and fast of what they do, what they unlock and how they work. Once that was sorted the rest of the game did a fairly good job of teaching itself, with the exception of the occasional moment of annoyance over "I want to move dirt, but the wiki says I need a sandbag, so I guess I can't move dirt in a bucket?". Or "**** trapping. ******* trapping doesn't work for ****." in various flavors.

 

Which is true. Boo on you trapping. You are the worst. That's the true reason for this post. To hate on trapping.

 

We the players can handle the gruntwork (I say we liberally, having made 0 edits to the wiki) of informing the world at large that silverware can be found in kitchens and jackets spawn on coatracks. That's the kind of massive outsourcing that lets developers get back to browsing the internet while killing time before lunch and the various other struggles of office life. Though access to a wall of data that makes that information readily available to us would be ideal. IEven if it's a 28 page xml file with a list of item codes and spawn containers. 

 

That kind of data is actually super super good. It's the difference between people stating that they think that jars might spawn in the trashcan next to a toilet in the green grocer's because they remember seeing one once maybe and knowing that it has a 2% chance to spawn in X,Y,Z. Which is also good for pointing out to devs exactly when the playerbase as a whole notes that the forum is asking where peanut butter is would be due to peanut butter only spawning in a type of container which is no longer used because of X change following the switch to creative mode building. Or, you know, finding a jar and a lid in the same playthrough. Good luck.

 

Yay.

 

I understand that there's a moodle revision coming down the pipe and the new animation systems are going to play merry hob with all of the skills and traits so the incentive to commit a great deal of time to addressing the failings of the wiki isn't really there. However, during this moment before the massive upcoming adjustments it might be worthwhile to consider how the PZ team wishes the community to access information to adjust the wiki themselves, or if the PZ team is going to take the raw data and post it themselves in a way that's agile enough for them to make iterative (and remember to make) adjustments come patchdays.

 

When people access the wiki it's because they're not interested in roleplay esq answers such as "makes you run faster". They want to crunch the and see that there's a 5% scaling per point invested. That's good information for modders and it's good information for people who come to the forum again and again wanting to know exactly what toughness is doing. 

 

Goodness what a tirade.

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19 hours ago, Dusty Lens said:

We the players can handle the gruntwork (I say we liberally, having made 0 edits to the wiki) of informing the world at large that silverware can be found in kitchens and jackets spawn on coatracks. That's the kind of massive outsourcing that lets developers get back to browsing the internet while killing time before lunch and the various other struggles of office life. Though access to a wall of data that makes that information readily available to us would be ideal. IEven if it's a 28 page xml file with a list of item codes and spawn containers. 

 

That kind of data is actually super super good. It's the difference between people stating that they think that jars might spawn in the trashcan next to a toilet in the green grocer's because they remember seeing one once maybe and knowing that it has a 2% chance to spawn in X,Y,Z. Which is also good for pointing out to devs exactly when the playerbase as a whole notes that the forum is asking where peanut butter is would be due to peanut butter only spawning in a type of container which is no longer used because of X change following the switch to creative mode building. Or, you know, finding a jar and a lid in the same playthrough. Good luck.

 

Sorry if I got something wrong here, but if I understood you right you are looking for the SuburbsDistributions.lua (ProjectZomboid installation folder>media>lua>server>items).

This is a wall of data that actually defines in which containers items likely spawn.

 

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  • MashPotato changed the title to The Project Zomboid Wiki Feedback Thttp://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/16416-the-project-zomboid-wiki-feedback-thread/hread
  • 5 weeks later...

What the wiki really needs, is a combination of:
A) source reading scripts to handle the repetitive and large volume things, working together and in combination with :
B) user addable and editable entries.

This Is an example of 100% A)
This Is an example of 100% B)

 

Both are still used because both still have strengths, and each ones weakness is the other ones strengths and vice versa

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  • 2 months later...

I tend to focus on the items section of the wiki, as a lot of them don't have pages or are outdated. I refrain from doing major changes to the list though, which brings me to the point of this reply, we should either drastically update or remove the "Fuel" section of the Items list. There is a lot more items that can be used to fuel a fire, almost all of them honestly, and while usually I would just add to the "Fuel" list but I currently find it unnecessary to even have that section. Especially since the Campfire page has a more up-to-date list, but that list can also use some updating (i'll get on that soon).

 

Edit: The Kindling list can also be removed too, and properly redistributed into the Campfire page.

 

Edit 2: Not sure where to put this, but the spam filter is actually blocking any edits to the items page, which is hindering me from working on it. I tried figuring out the culprit but in all honesty it must be the filter itself (as it gets triggered by words that only exist on there once).

Edited by Romzie
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  • 2 months later...

Perhaps not the appropriate place, but I just wanted to say that I'm a big fan of your guy(s)' work.  I've been enjoying Project Zomboid for at least two years now, and I've played it more than any other of my Steam games.  You really did a hell of a job.

 

That being said however; I wasn't sure if you were aware with the new build that Metalworking (books, torches, new items, etc) actually didn't generate in some of the already existing games that were saved.  I don't know if that's working as intended or not, but I figured I'd bring it up.  

My current game, for reference takes place in Westpoint, playing on Initial Infection (I thought the stages went through, so that was the logical stop point.  Shame on me for playing on "easy").  But I was really excited for the metalworking implementation and alas, no metalworking items spawned anywhere in the town.

 

Anyway, keep up the good work guys!

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  • 1 year later...

I think it might be time for the wiki to have another overhaul. As a relatively new player, I don't really have any information that I can add (or else I most certainly would), and to be honest I'm a little disappointed in the PZ community. Don't get me wrong: they are--for the most part--very lovely people, but many of the veteran players don't seem interested in helping any new players understand the game. 

 

That little venting aside, I'm especially frustrated by pages relating to cooking and nutrition. By that I mean that any kind of "nutrition" page doesn't actually exist and the main "cooking" page hasn't been updated since 2015, and the only thing I managed to learn from its limited content was that the "stew (recipe)" page was outdated (rotten food can now only be used at cooking level 7, not cooking level 4 like the stew page says).  Considering that a Nutritionist trait exists, it's a little odd that there is no page explaining nutrition on the wiki. As far as I can tell, calories are the only thing that actually affect your character, but if lipids, proteins, and carbs are all included in the information they must do SOMETHING, or are planned to do something in the future.

 

I've also run into problems trying to figure out what certain items are/do. For example, what in the world is a ball peen hammer used to do? It's referenced in several wiki pages, but has no page of its own. As far as I can tell, it does exactly the same thing as a regular hammer. But it exists, so it must do something different, or else it would be useless. 

 

There's also no page regarding seasons, which seems to be an integral part of the game. How does winter affect my food sources? Do I need some way to keep warm beyond warmer clothes, or are they enough? I've tried watching Let's Plays for information, but the focus seems to be entirely on defending against the zombies over time, and just sort of dealing with everything else when it happens (and the series will inevitably end before winter).

 

I think keeping brand new players in mind when editing and updating the wiki will really encourage people to add more information and will help to flesh out pages that are otherwise lacking. I also feel that adding this kind of information will encourage more people to pick up the game. I know I kind of waffled about buying it for a long time because there seemed to be such a steep learning curve.

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1 hour ago, JellyCat said:

to be honest I'm a little disappointed in the PZ community. Don't get me wrong: they are--for the most part--very lovely people, but many of the veteran players don't seem interested in helping any new players understand the game. 

Sorry but i have to disagree. The veterans are more then willing to help new players out. Yes the wiki is lacking and doesn't get updated as much as it should.... BUT we're always available to provide tips, hints and other advice. On these forums, the reddit threads, and (probably) the steam community.  If I recall right, the wiki had issues earlier in the year with spammers, and the filters that had to put in place made it difficult to register and edit stuff (not sure if its been resolved yet).

Theres also a unofficial wiki of items and recipies, though I think its lagging behind a few versions as well

http://undeniable.info/pz/wiki/recipelist.php?pn=1&wherein=0&type=0&SEARCH=0&kind=Classic

 

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I'm afraid its partially a problem of simply time and understanding how to add pages to the Wiki. When I first started editing pages...oh dear god about 3 years ago, it was mainly a case of the first few months just learning how to even edit the pages correctly, nevermind actually implementing what I tried to do simply on the food pages (I'm certain they are out of date now or semi-out of date).

Theres also the problem of multiple duplication which I'm hoping has now been solved from new ones starting via the Letter directory entered in the main page but theres a fair bit of cleanup and relinking required and it does take a fair amount of time. Language issues as well, as older pages don't get translated into the newer languages which basically leaves some pages drastically out of date. That recipe page mentioned earlier "Cooking" I believe was superceded by Recipe Ingredients in the wiki, but the fact so many pages linked together along with translated versions its near impossible to remove old content without breaking down functionality running around the wiki.

Fenris is right about the problem with spambots, its happened that many times it takes away the functionality of the wiki to update, at the moment from what I can see the main wiki front page is locked because someone kept deleting all the pages causing Connall at the time to lock everything down. that front page is unfortunately still locked so it still states the version history is 37.14 yet the Japanese version which appears more up to date is 38.30. The wiki has a seriously hard time functioning due to this and spam filters, especially the word "number".

Future editors have quite a time atm. I'm just unfortunately busy IRL to contribute too much at the moment.

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  • 2 months later...
On 5/13/2018 at 12:07 AM, Arya said:

Recipe 5017 (Insecticide Spray) misses 5xCigarettes. I don't know how to edit a recipe, otherwise I would do it myself.

I've just fixed that for you. For the future you can edit recipes here - https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Template:RecipeLookup

 

I'm not sure how active the admins are on the wiki at the moment, but if you need anything feel free to message me - https://pzwiki.net/wiki/User_talk:Vaileasys

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39 minutes ago, Vaileasys said:

I've just fixed that for you. For the future you can edit recipes here - https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Template:RecipeLookup

 

Thank you very much!

 

Well, I found that page before my previous post, but always clicked the wrong Edit button.

It now took me two more rereads of that page and three more tries until I finally found the right button, where you can actually edit the recipes, and not the ...

 

{{RecipeLookup|1026}}|1026
{{RecipeLookup|1027}}|1027
{{RecipeLookup|1028}}|1028
{{RecipeLookup|1029}}|1029

 

... part. I feel kinda dumb now, but okay, English is not my first language... :)

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46 minutes ago, Arya said:

 

Thank you very much!

 

Well, I found that page before my previous post, but always clicked the wrong Edit button.

It now took me two more rereads of that page and three more tries until I finally found the right button, where you can actually edit the recipes, and not the ...

 

{{RecipeLookup|1026}}|1026
{{RecipeLookup|1027}}|1027
{{RecipeLookup|1028}}|1028
{{RecipeLookup|1029}}|1029

 

... part. I feel kinda dumb now, but okay, English is not my first language... :)

I had the exact same trouble with it when I started editing the wiki.  It can get really confusing, especially when it comes to using templates.

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