User:Xbony2/FAQ

The above is more appropriate for general wiki questions, this FAQ mainly contains questions specific to me and my views

Q: Who are you, and what do you do?
 * A: My name's Xbony2, and I'm many things. On the internet, I spend a lot of my productive time wikiing on this here wiki; I'm more or less the most active editor. I also sometimes edit other Gamepedia wikis and maybe Wiktionary and other random wikis on a whim. My userpage probably talks a lot about my wiki editing. I'm also pretty well-known as a mod author, albeit currently not a very active one. I helped port IC2 Nuclear Control to 1.7 (now World Control, which I haven't spent much time on) and have contributed a decent amount to Flaxbeard's Steam Power (now Esteemed Innovation, which I haven't spent much time on), and I also have ported and made a few other random mods at certain points. My mod author page probably talks a lot about my modding. Surprising some people remember me from when I used to do YouTube videos long ago (they're unlisted currently, good luck finding them). I also do a lot of goofing off, which includes watching YouTube and other platforms and playing random video games.

Q: How can I contact you?
 * A: Please see here.

Q: Are you male or female? [or non-binary or whatnot?]
 * A: I'm a cisdude (he/him/his).

Q: How did you get your username? And related: why the heart avatar?
 * A: It simply started as "Bony." I think a friend called me that when I was in elementary school or something. And well, I am pretty bony, although recently I've gotten more muscular. I'm in the 7% percentile for BMI of my age or something like that. Anyway, I just threw an X on one day, looked cooler I guess. And then one day, a younger and naïver "X-bony" forgot his password and thus "X-bony2" was born. This was simplified into "xbony2," and sometimes I capitalize it because MediaWiki likes page names to be capitalized.
 * The avatar? Well, I used to use a Minecraft-based avatar that was a Wither Skeleton-looking head. But Minecraft isn't the only thing I do, and it's a bit unprofessional, so I replaced it with a heart avatar. I basically downloaded a black heart from Wikimedia Commons and threw a gradient over it in Photoshop. It represents love and peace (or something like that), and the colors were cognate to the bisexual pride flag (I am closeted bisexual/pansexual). Now it's a rose, but the meaning is the same.

Q: Are you single?
 * A: It's complicated. If you want to go on a virtual date with me though we can play Minecraft together maybe :P (I am also over 18 if that's important)

Q: What is your favorite XYZ?
 * A: I made a list of all of my favorite things on this page.

Q: Can you document mod XYZ? / How do you decide to document what mods?
 * A: Well... different wiki editors might mind but I don't think there's any harm in asking the earlier question. However, I have my own agenda and I probably won't document what you ask. The mods I document usually revolve around a number of factors:
 * Newer versions: (1.12 in particular at the moment) I believe focusing on the newer mods on the newer versions of Minecraft will be more helpful in the long run over documenting something in 1.7.10, where maybe there is still a large userbase, but that userbase is slowly disappearing. Also more mods on 1.7.10 are documented already, not necessarily here but in other places, whereas information on newer content is more scattered.
 * How established a mod is: although I think I might enjoy documenting AppleMilkTea just as much as Actually Additions, I'd rather focus on mods that more users would want documentation for. Popularity is not my only focus when choosing to document a mod, but I think it would be hard to argue that being able to please more people isn't an altruistic goal.
 * How much I like a mod: I'm pretty sure this is obvious. I don't get paid (see next question); this is a hobby for me and I do whatever I want and don't you forget it. Seriously though, I dislike a lot of mainstream mods, and although I'd like to see documentation on all mods, I don't exactly plan to do everything myself. This includes some mods like Tinkers' Construct and Blood Magic and Applied Energistics 2; I'm not exactly your average player (well, I'm not much of a player at all, I mostly just focus on documentation, but my taste is different regardless). This is probably one of the biggest factors.
 * My relationship with the mod author: I don't really talk to many mod authors to be honest, but one example of this would be me and Ellpeck; while we were dating Actually Additions documentation was certainly prioritized. This isn't necessarily just about personal relationships, having a mod author's endorsement means a lot. If you are a mod author and want me to document your mod, hit me up. (I'll more likely try to shove it to someone else but hey). And of course, this could be a negative factor if I hate some mod author's guts, although fortunately I can't think of any examples for that.
 * Existing wiki documentation: this won't necessarily stop me, but if a mod is already decently documented on say for example, three other wikis, I feel like my newly created documentation wouldn't be as used and valued. I view one of the main goals of this wiki is to be a central repository of all modded Minecraft information (see a few questions down) but realistically I'd prefer to focus on the mods that need new documentation more.

Q: Do you get paid? Do you get any form of compensation or recognition for your work?
 * A: I do not get paid. There is no Gamepedia or FTB staff that contributes to this wiki (as in writing for us) and gets paid. Note:, one of our admins and probably the second most active editor, was recently hired by Gamepedia. However, his paid work focuses on building new wikis and other behind-the-scenes stuff, not contributing to this wiki. This is one aspect about wiki editing that is perhaps disappointing compared to modding; a mod author can get money from CurseForge but wikis don't have any similar system. The ads on this wiki mainly go towards hosting fees and to pay Gamepedia staff so they can continue to maintain and create wikis. This aspect does have its benefits however: with money out of the way editors can contribute for the good of the community or for fun without the green taint having the potential to lower quality in favor of increasing bulk. I'm not sure how a system of paying editors would work anyway. Anyway, I'm getting a bit off topic...
 * I have received recognition for my work in other ways. In a giveaway in November 2015 to the top 100 editors (ranked by wikipoints), the Gamepedia Team sent me a package with a tee-shirt and a Hydra plushie and a mug and some other things like that (nothing über fancy but nice of them nevertheless. Also included a back scratcher that thought was a fork or something). The Gamepedia Team made me editor of the month for August of 2016 (awarded a bit late, but still) and I received a striking similar package for that, although this package had a cool trophy I have two Hydra plushies which is cool. If you want one, I'm willing to sell one for the starting price of $9001 :P I've helped various Gamepedia editors and I think I have some respect as a wiki veteran within the Gamepedia community.
 * In the modded community I don't think I'm well recognized. I may sometimes call myself "the Vazkii of wiki documentation," but I'm not as recognized as Vazkii. Not that I'd expect to be, but not getting much thanks for your work sucks a bit. Although perhaps that is nice in a way; I know some modders would rather not be so famous. If you want to work with modded Minecraft while avoiding most of the toxicity of the community, maybe consider contributing to this wiki? Anyway, I do have *some* recognition, which is nice, even if some or maybe most of it stems from older projects (Nuclear Control 2 and others). I was featured on an episode of Behind the Mod by Amaxter (it's a bit old and it was a bit awkward since I was pretty nervous and I'm slightly socially awkward x) but good nevertheless). I am a member of All The Creators but not active.
 * I was offered a wiki-related job once, which was pretty exciting. Turned it down. I can't take up a job currently because of school, and I've never had a job before so I'm not really ready for that mindset. I have wiki stuff on my resume and I put it on my college application. I think I was already smart enough to get in but it may have helped.

Q: Can I donate to you? Is there any way I can give to you?
 * A: At the present moment I don't accept donations. I'm in school and lucky enough to not need to pay for a roof over my head. I don't spend my own money very much. I get some money from my projects on CurseForge; it's enough to buy an occasional game on Steam (or sponsor an editathon or two), and right now that's all I need. Giving me money won't really make my life easier or give me more time to focus on documentation.
 * If you want to help me out another way, helping the wiki out would make me feel great. There are a few ways you can help the wiki (and me by extension):
 * Contributing! Duh. Of course, I can't expect everyone to do that, but it's the most obvious way. If everyone who visited this wiki made an article once a month, we'd really be booming. It would be amazing. Not everyone realizes that the people who contribute to this wiki are all volunteers and documentation does not come out of our butts; we need people like you to make the wiki great.
 * Linking to the wiki in places helps. If you're a mod author, even if it's not your official source of information, if we have a pretty good section on your mod, a link on CurseForge has the potential to be helpful for us. As a regular user, which you might be, you can still link to the wiki on places like Reddit or the forums, and it really does help us (particularly in search results).
 * Fixing things that are wrong or outdated, or minimally (and more realistically) reporting them, is great. I often see people complain about certain articles or sections being outdated on Reddit or other places. These are most often from people who A) will not fix it themselves (btw, there is an edit button) and B) more frustratingly, will not bother to report it to anyone. As a wiki editor, this can get on my nerves. You can report an error by complaining on the talk page, complaining on our Discord, contacting me and complaining, or also by putting an Outdated at the top of the page (if it's an issue with it being outdated). The worst thing that can happen is that your complaint is ignored, but most likely we'll either fix it or add an ambox (like Outdated) at the top of the page so users can be warned and anyone who sees it can come around and fix it, if they happen to be interested.
 * Lastly, you should totally join our Discord server (or alternately IRC: ; they're bridged). Say hi. Maybe say thanks; we wiki editors really don't get much thanks (if any at all). Discussions focus on wiki collaboration of course, but there's been plenty of going off-topic (talking about the mod community, gaming, life, communism, etc).

Q: Why document a mod if it already has documentation?
 * A: Well, one might not really think about it, but all mods at least have some documentation. This documentation can range anywhere from a brief CurseForge description to an outdated mod spotlight made in Portuguese to a well-written in-game manual. If you think about it, the name of a mod is a form of documentation. But obviously I'm straying from the question...
 * Part of the reason for this is that a mod's documentation might not be that great. I don't want to insult any mod authors, but some overvalue their documentation. Some documentation might not contain any information on the numbers in the mod, some may described their content ambiguously. Sometimes they do this purposely; in-game documentation is often used not to explain everything in precise detail, but rather to get users started and for them to learn the mod as they go. This is a fun approach, but this is not how we approach things on this wiki; we give as much information as possible. If you want to be spoiled then come be spoiled. Some in-game sources might be a pain in the butt to navigate. Ever use the Tinkers' Construct manuals in 1.5.2? There was no search. You had to flip through every page until you found what you were looked for. That is, if you found it at all, maybe it's in the other two books! Oh, and also, the moment you close that book you lose your place. If you want to go back to where you were, better start flipping! Oh, the good ol' days. Plenty of users prefer the wiki format to other forms of documentation; some people despise wikis and that's okay too (jk it sucks, FU)
 * One of the main goals of the FTB Wiki, in my opinion, is to have information on all of modded Minecraft, in one place, in one consistent format. Ideally one should be able to look up whatever they want without going through a hundred different in-game manuals, a hundred different independent wikis, a hundred different YouTube videos, or a hundred different times just figuring it out yourself. This is the ultimate goal of the FTB Wiki; to be the wiki to end all wikis. Obviously there's a lot of work to do, but it is a goal we have.
 * And also... because it's fun! It's not very altruistic but I might document mod XYZ because I like it. If I really like some mod, I don't think it's so evil if I want to go through it and document it, even if it is already documented on some other wiki and/or in-game. This is a hobby after all.

Q: Why do you edit this wiki instead of ftbwiki.org?
 * A: The real reason is because I joined this wiki and started contributing to it first. But if you mean the question in more of the nature of "why would someone (maybe me) want to contribute to this wiki instead of that wiki?" I can answer that too. Personally, I find that this wiki is faster, a bit cleaner under the hood, looks nicer, has more active users, allows for translations (even if it's a messy system at the moment) and has more documentation on the newer versions. Btw, on the topic of looks, if you prefer dark themes, you can actually set this wiki to use a dark theme! more info here However, although one might define our two wikis as rivals, I'd rather focus on improving this wiki rather than "beating" the other wiki or always comparing ourselves to the wiki or whatnot. I can't say I'm not competitive at all, but being focusing on "oh what are they doing" feels like a misuse of energy to me. And anyway, I don't think it's really that easy to say one wiki is better than the other. Comparing two wikis really isn't as easy as one might think it is; statistics regarding size are skewed for various reasons (see User:Xbony2/badnumbers) and other comparable factors can often boil down to personal preference.

Q: Why not merge this wiki with ftbwiki.org?
 * A: Long ago, when both wikis were much smaller, we talked about this. I wasn't there (I wasn't part of the wiki at the time), but we couldn't agree on the exact terms. I wish we could; I don't like the community being split. Now that each wiki is very large and established, merging them would be nearly impossible. We use entirely different templates, extensions, formats, etc., there's ton of overlap and things that could not be easily merged. We have over 20,000 articles each, with plenty of overlap. Changing it all to match one format would be very difficult. One might say "but bots!" but it really isn't that simple. To put it into perspective, try to imagine merging Refined Storage and Applied Energistics 2, except that the amount of content each mod has is equal to all the content in FTB Infinity, and this merging is all worked by two to six unpaid users (because that's the amount of users that would volunteer for this task and have the technical abilities to be able to work on it and actually work on it enough to be counted). It would easily take over a year. Probably like three years, or more. This is not a realistic task at the moment, and neither wiki has plans to try and tackle it, and not everyone would want to even if we could just do it with a snap to the fingers, each for their own various reasons.
 * I do however have a bit of an unofficial compromise: the unofficial wiki contains a bit more documentation on mods for 1.7 and earlier (I hate saying it but it might be true :P), whereas we have more documentation for 1.8-1.12. With the exception of a few mods and maybe a few editors, I and other editors will try and focus on documentation of the content in newer versions. I won't ask the users on the unofficial wiki to agree to this compromise, as they already (for the most part) appear to be focusing on documentation in 1.7 instead of the newer versions. So, maybe (just maybe), we'll just keep doing that. I doubt 1.7 will die any time soon, and I doubt the need for the documentation in 1.12 and future versions will either. Anyone is free to document anything from any versions on any wiki (or at least here, I assume they have the same policy on the unofficial wiki) but I personally intend to focus on the newer stuff and intend to encourage (but not force) other editors around here to do the same.

Q: Why is this wiki hosted on Gamepedia? Isn't Curse evil or something?
 * A: Say whatever you want about the rest of Curse, but I've had a generally good experience with Gamepedia. To be perfectly honest, the FTB-Curse partnership is, in my opinion, the best thing that happened to this wiki and why it's even relevant today. For the rest of FTB? Questionable. But, I don't care very much about FTB, live or die, it's whateves'; I just care about this wiki.
 * If you disagree, just ask anyone who was around when the wiki was self-hosted, when simply visiting a RedPower 2 page could crash the entire wiki. Nobody sane has ever said "man, I wish I could go back to that!" The Gamepedia Team has never forced anything on us and has pretty much left us to manage our wiki, only stepping in when asked for assistance. Everyone in the Gamepedia Slack community has been pretty friendly, it's an awesome community to be part of and a family almost. The employees seemingly are normal people and not like robots, and there's been very little business awkwardness. You can ask any wiki admin if they regret moving to Gamepedia and I'd argue they'd 99% of the time say no. I don't want to say everything is perfect, but it's been pretty good. You can point me to past controversies all you want, but I've had a really good experience dealing with them (and I've had a lot of experience too, I know what I'm talking about, I've made like >50k edits to Gamepedia wikis for I dunno like five years). I don't know about the rest of Curse, but Gamepedia's been pretty good as far as I am concerned. If FTB ever plans to abandon Gamepedia, it will very unlikely be with the approval of the majority of the wiki editors here, and it will certainly not be with my approval.

Q: Would you be interested in working at my company, Company XYZ, for a paid job?
 * A: LIKE THIS WOULD EVER HAPPEN Well um, I'd love to, assuming it's a real job and not some sketchy commission (hey join my modding team I'll give you 10% of the profit) and I don't really dislike your company for some reason. However, I am still in school and not able to commit to a professional schedule. I'd prefer to spend what little time I have on being healthy and things I find enjoyable and ideally stressless. Thanks for your hypothetical offer, though. I guess you could still give it for help my ego.