Linking to outside walkthroughs?

[ASchultz]

I'm looking through game data for games I can add information for, and I'm wondering

1. how helpful it would be to provide links to outside walkthroughs such as David Welbourn's which are hard to do better than
2. how we should best add the HTML links as information e.g. "Show update" and add something to the "AKA" box or the "comments" box?

3. side point: is it worth adding where a game placed in IFComp, or what XYZZY awards it got?

[Strident]

I tend to personally put any extra information in the notes section. The template you've got off Garry works, in terms of making it easy for an admin/editor to copy and paste the information into the appropriate fields when updating the page.

I agree that David Welbourne's walkthroughs are great. Other editors might be willing to take on the task of making those sorts of edits to game pages to add the relevant links, if they're submitted to the queue... so I'll let them answer if they think that's something that would be useful to do. I'd probably personally prefer focussing my time processing material that's being specifically contributed to be added to CASA itself. There's enough there each day to give me something to do in the morning before I go to work.

[Garry]

I think it's a great idea. David Welbourn does fantastic walkthroughs. We can't copy his walkthroughs for copyright reasons, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind us linking to them. It might draw extra people to his site and may even get him some more Patreon supporters. David does a monthly report of new walkthroughs on IFDB, so you could use that to keep track of updates.

There are also lots of walkthroughs on other sites such as TipShop (to name just one) and the transcripts on ClubFloyd can be very useful if you get desperate.

If I come across a walkthrough on another site (such as IFDB) or an "official" walkthrough included with a game, is it okay (as in legal/ethical) to include those on CASA? If not, we could provide links to those. There are also invisiclues on intfiction from time to time.

On a related topic, is it okay to go the other way? Specifically, is it okay to include links to CASA from IFDB? (I noticed that David Welbourn has been doing this for his walkthroughs.) This might make people more aware of CASA and attract more contributions. I think we should probably provide a link to the game page, not a direct download to the walkthrough file.

[Alex]

My personal problem of putting links to external websites is who is going to check if all the links are still working? Before you know it the site will be full of dead links.

The policy of adding contents to CASA as far as I understood was meant to be your own material and not copy and paste walkthroughs from others (not in te least due to legal matters).

Concerning the other way around. I don't see a problem if other sites want to add links to CASA. They will encounter the above mentioned problem when we change links. I myself have given permision to a few websites to use all of my walkthroughs/maps as long as they don't remove my name from them. However I've encountered my maps and solutions on a whole bunch of sites I've never heard of before

[ASchultz]

Thanks everyone! These seem like really common sense responses.

I guess I can do small stuff like tweet my latest contributions or maybe even have a monthly roll-up at IFDB or intfiction.org.

And yeah I've seen my stuff on other sites too. You can't really stop it i guess.

[dswxyz]

Hi all. As noted above, I'm paying more attention to CASA these days, and I've finally made an account. Thanks for the praise, by the way. I'm glad people like my walkthroughs.

So many things to say, um...
* I have no objection to CASA, CAAD, IFDB, IFWiki, ifwizz.de, or any other site linking to my walkthroughs if it's okay with them.
* All my walkthroughs are currently on plover.net, but I dream that someday they'll get a permanent home at the IF Archive. I have yet to talk to anyone there about how best that might be accomplished. There are literally hundreds of walkthroughs at this point, and I suspect that the pages would need to be recompiled to be standalone pages without any links to external files before I can even try uploading them there.
* I am adding links to CASA's game pages both to my new walkthroughs-in-progress and to my old ones. However, old walkthroughs need to be recompiled and reuploaded before changes are seen there. I'm slowly writing testing software and working out practices that'll make updating my old walkthroughs more viable.
* I'm noticing several games that I know about that aren't on CASA yet, and I'll probably want to ask more questions later on how to add them, are there guidelines and best practices to follow, and which games are not wanted on CASA.
* I'm 62, and while I intend to stick around for at least 30 more years, the future might have other plans. Regardless, I do hope my walkthroughs are preserved in one way or another, and when I'm dead, I'm going to be surprisingly unfussy on whatever method is used.
* I assume that CASA would not object if I uploaded simplified versions of my own walkthroughs to CASA. Like, it's not my style, and I don't really have the time for it, but, y'know, I might be able to do that for a new games. And, uh, maybe I could give permission to let other people upload simplified versions, crediting me and or including a link to the original in the text? Would want to coordinate that sort of thing carefully so there isn't duplicated effort.

[Strident]

Nice to have you posting on here, David. Your ongoing walkthrough project is excellent and always seems to have an interesting mix of games covered. I always check out the list of which games you've covered when you post the updates on IFDB and it's always nice when I notice an old school game from the UK scene covered now and again.

Any comments below are just as a contributor/editor... Jacob would be able to advise on official site policy.

* All my walkthroughs are currently on plover.net, but I dream that someday they'll get a permanent home at the IF Archive. I have yet to talk to anyone there about how best that might be accomplished. There are literally hundreds of walkthroughs at this point, and I suspect that the pages would need to be recompiled to be standalone pages without any links to external files before I can even try uploading them there.
* I'm 62, and while I intend to stick around for at least 30 more years, the future might have other plans. Regardless, I do hope my walkthroughs are preserved in one way or another, and when I'm dead, I'm going to be surprisingly unfussy on whatever method is used.

I'm sure the IF Archive would welcome them. There are plenty of examples of just zipped archives of material being submitted, in the case of games, but obviously if everything was separated out it would form an easier-to-access resource. I think I suggested at one point the ideas of a scheme where owners of adventure/IF sites could give approval in advance that if anything was ever to happen to their websites they could be archived by an organisation such as the IF Foundation without any further permission being needed. We've lost a few important sites in recent history when they've just disappeared off the web.

* I'm noticing several games that I know about that aren't on CASA yet, and I'll probably want to ask more questions later on how to add them, are there guidelines and best practices to follow, and which games are not wanted on CASA.

Different users & editors focus on different things. There are a lot of known gaps in specific places, such as Inform games, that some editors actively look to fill. Others focus on older, 8-bit style text adventures. That's probably more of the original focus of CASA but it's my understanding, as a user, that anything with the key focus of parser and content through text with inventory and puzzles is the type of game CASA covers.

* I assume that CASA would not object if I uploaded simplified versions of my own walkthroughs to CASA. Like, it's not my style, and I don't really have the time for it, but, y'know, I might be able to do that for a new games. And, uh, maybe I could give permission to let other people upload simplified versions, crediting me and or including a link to the original in the text? Would want to coordinate that sort of thing carefully so there isn't duplicated effort.

All contributions would be most welcome whatever way they are submitted to the site. It may be that some of the other users of the site notice notable gaps of games for which you have a solution and seek your permission to adapt the content to upload. You've got a username now so it's easy to tag any content as yours even if someone else does the work of reformatting and uploading it.