Talk: Blippo/Original wiki design thoughts

Original wiki design thoughts

Love it how the wiki is taking off :-) Here are the initial thoughts I went through before starting it up. You're welcome to adapt and change, but it's valuable to know the initial why :-)

Basic idea
- be nice - to the readers, to the users of the wiki that might be interested in something else
  - be easy to use

Lemmas (page titles)
- So the thing that you see at the top (currently "Talk: Blippo/Original wiki design thoughts"), that is the *Lemma*. Under what the page is stored.
- All the lemmas have "Blippo/" at the start. We are at the playdate wiki, there are many other things than Blippo+ on the playdate wiki. This is so that we are not messing up the title namespace for other cool playdate games and apps on the wiki.
- The thing is called "Blippo+", but the Lemmas all are just "Blippo" because the "+" would get encoded and look strange in the URLs. And there are also some small other annoyances (like when you visit a page with a "+" in the lemma and decide to log in, you're redirected to the Playdate homepage due to a bug. If the page does not have a "+" in the lemma you get redirected back to the page you were viewing and want to edit).
- Let's keep the lemmas short. Let's not have "Blippo/Analysis/Blip/People". Let's just make it "Blippo/People".
  - Of course when we have pages for every week, "Blippo/Boredome/Week 1" is the ideal lemma.

The first paragraph
- People might use the wiki search (or an internet search engine) and could land at any page inside the Blippo+ pages. We should always have a link back to the main Blippo+ page, and it should be the first link, to accomodate these people. Each page should also start with something like "In Blippo+" or so for the same reason.
- We have a hierarchical navigation (Blippo+ > MSTV > Boredome > Week 2), so we can have sub-sub-sub-pages. There should be a way to navigate up. We solve this by having a text mentioning the next higher element in the hierachy and linking it.
  - So each first paragraph has two links upwards. I experimented with having 3 or 4 up-links, but then things become much more difficult to understand. Stay with two links: 1. the next level up and 2. to the Blippo main page.
  - Since the wiki shows the ugly lemmas at the top, the first paragraph should have the correct title in there too.

Wording
- Try to use the correct in-world terminology for everything:
  - is it a channel or a network?
  - what kind of a show is it - a show, a series, a sitcom, a program, a time slot?
  - try to find the correct in-world media lingo (like "mailbag show")

Formatting
- try to stay consistent how we use titles and stuff.

Help collaboration and consistency
- When creating a page, add all the sections and leave them empty. That way adding something is very easy and the section titles stay consistent across all pages
- Sections are:
  - Timeline
  - Transcript
  - Audio and visual details
  - People, places, things
  - Comments
  - Trivia
  - Credits
- Template for a show page <- to copy the page source from :)
- Template for a single week page <- to copy the page source from

Transcripts
- Beginning with week 5, we are using the screenplay wiki extension
  - The syntax is inspired by the fountain screenplay syntax
  - If we have time, we also convert previous weeks into screeplay style
- We use it to either write just the dialogue well formatted, or go for a full-blown screenplay transcription, if you feel inspired :-)
- Write the full character name the first time on the page. Afterwards, just the first name
- If it's a character speaking, use the character name not the actor's name
- Only write action lines if needed (like when reading it, something would be unclear otherwise)
- If there is no dialogue (like with Video Cola or Fetch), we should have Action lines to explain things.

Spoilers / what to write or not
- Let's follow the experience how it is meant, and write only about that
- Let's not write about what one could find out by decompiling the app or do other things
- I think even the credits might contain spoilers for future episodes. Let's not use it, and if linking to it, mention that it might contain spoilers

Abbreviations
- Ensure that everybody who looks at a page the first time can understand it.
- So if we have a lot of links to "Week 1", "Week 2", "Week 3", write out "Week 2" the first time it is used. Abbreviate it later down the page if w3 can be understood by context by then.

So from a information architecture view point, we have multidimensional (at least 5-dimensional) thing we want to model:
- Channels
- Shows
- Several media types (streaming video, interactive boards, additional in-world media outside the app)
- Timeline
- Combining and grouping infos into pages for people, locations, things, lingo etc.
- I tried to solve this with having a good order on the main page.

Order of things on the first Blippo page
- Explain what it is first, because everybody who finds any Blippo+ subpage and click on the first link lands here.
- Next, all the channels, because that's the main organisational structure of the App, and that helps first time users to understand it easily.
  - List shows in subsections inside the channels, because that's their relationship
  - Don't make it too complicated - first time users should feel welcome
- next, "Additional in-world media", because let's keep all in-world things together
- next, Timeline, because it's still close to documenting things
- next, Analysis
  - Themes is a subsection where we could talk about "how all Blippians seem to be TV-obsessed" etc.
- Visual details, Technical details and trivia, Comments, Credits and External links could easy be moved into a subpage

So, have fun! :-) Pat (talk) 23:48, 17 June 2025 (CEST)