Board Thread:Wiki Discussion/@comment-667748-20150818091418

Back when I was still active and playing DSI, I had proposed that we create a form of database, so that we'd be able to create data on pages on the fly, without copy pasting everything all over the place (Thread:20551). It would have also allowed easily creating custom builds, updating things, keeping the pages tidy etc. Unfortunately, rolling it out was incredibly complicated, and very computationally heavy. In the end, Wikia's transclusion limitation (Thread:38323) killed off the project for good.

Ever since then, I noticed that Wikia (finally) implemented modules, which allows running native lua code to generate wikicode. This is basically the same thing as a template, but backed by an *actual* programming language. Think control structures, variables, containers etc. (!)

I created a wiki for a completly unrelated game, w:c:minutedungeon, which is backed by a module system. I was able to put *ALL* of the game's internal data in about 3-4 internal "database modules" (see w:c:minutedungeon:Module:PassiveSkillCombinations or w:c:minutedungeon:Module:WeaponInfo). From there, I can create modules that *generate* content based on these databases (w:c:minutedungeon:Module:Combinations). This generates page content with absolutely no intervention on my part. It generates infoboxes/tables/etc. For example: w:c:minutedungeon:Weapons, w:c:minutedungeon:CLUB or w:c:minutedungeon:FULL_GUARD.

The best (IMO) part about this approach is the fact that the data is centralized means you can update the *contents* of every page on the wiki (and not just *style*), if ever there is an update, a new DLC, or when we are able to farm a brand new datatype.

I'm not trying to sell the wiki here of course, but rather, show how the module system could be a "game changer" for an otherwise dead project.

I'm wondering if anybody still remembers this, or is interested. If it is something we should try to roll out. 