StrategyWiki:Wikipedia Article

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Template:Infobox Website StrategyWiki is a wiki-based website aiming to provide gamers and game walkthrough authors with a definitive repository of videogame walkthroughs, FAQs and strategy guides all licensed under the terms of the GFDL. Unlike similar sites, StrategyWiki touts a "one game, one guide" rule where, rather than having each author work on a guide of their own, all users contribute to one single guide for each game. This is both to take full advantage of the wiki design and to eliminate the originally-inevitable redundancy of maintenance and expansion between different guides for the same game.

Traditionally, video game walkthroughs are created as plain text files with no formatting or embellishments other than visual tricks such as ASCII art. In recent years this format has been increasingly criticized for having not evolved along with advances in web design and web content accessibility. By using MediaWiki, StrategyWiki guides utilize features such as rich text, tables and inline images, all things that are either impossible or extremely difficult to replicate in a plain text file.

To differentiate itself from other standard MediaWiki wikis, StrategyWiki's unique default skin BlueCloud was developed in 2005 by web designer Ian Szewczyk.

Involvement with Wikimedia

When Jimmy Wales designated he no longer wanted videogame walkthroughs on Wikibooks, saying that video game walkthroughs had no educational value therefore was in violation of Wikibooks' charter, StrategyWiki used the transwiki process to copy the left over video game guides for continuation to their site. They now host the majority of Wikibooks' video game guides. This has inevitably resulted in a large boost to both StrategyWiki's guide count and contributor base, as many Wikibooks users who wished to continue creating game walkthroughs have now become regular StrategyWiki contributors.

Additionally, game guide content that was found on Wikipedia was formerly moved over to Wikibooks as the content is considered unencyclopedic. StrategyWiki is now considered a primary location to move game guide content

Partnership with DoubleJump Books

On March 18, 2008, StrategyWiki entered into a partnership with distinguished strategy guide publisher DoubleJump Books for mutual cross-promotion in an attempt to bridge the disconnect between online and print guides. The first promotion has appeared in DoubleJump's print guide for the PlayStation 2 RPG Mana Khemia.

Milestones

• StrategyWiki has grown to incorporate over 13,000 different articles containing over 25,000 maps, screenshots and other illustrations.
• StrategyWiki hosts over 2,000 different walkthroughs, over 300 of which are in a "completed state" (covering most or all elements of the game in question.)
• StrategyWiki receives per month approximately 300,000 unique visits and over 5,000,000 hits on average.
• StrategyWiki is ranked within the top 20,000 websites in the world traffic-wise.

Similar sites

Since its founding IGN has started the IGN Vault Wiki, but only for computer role-playing games and MMORPGs. 1up also operates a wiki, called MyCheats. Neither of these wikis have their content available under an open source license.

Wikia has a collection of game related wikis, many of which are released under the GFDL. However, each wiki is disjoint from the others with disjoint development and standardization.

External Links

• [[strategywiki:|StrategyWiki website]]
• Kotaku - A Wiki for Game Strategy, Tips
• MIT Convergence Culture Consortium - StrategyWiki: The New GameFAQs?
• Lifehacker - Game strategy with StrategyWiki