I’ve noticed other authors offering character/world wikis for Patreon supporters, and that got me wondering if that’s something I should consider down the road for my own WIP. I’ve already got a bit of a personal wiki going on Obsidian, perhaps it wouldn’t be too hard to transfer that to something online and shareable?
I have a few questions for you all…
If you’re a reader, are wikis a selling point for you?
If you’re an author, do you provide wikis for fans? Free or paid? How much added work is this, what programs/services do you use, and what has your overall experience been like?
No, a public-facing wiki is a distraction from writing. Keep it personal. And honestly your personal wiki should be bare-bones: it’s a reference document.
Personally I don’t use a wiki. I just remember stuff.
Mainly because we had development threads on the forum with multiple thousands of posts, and I wanted to drop key lore points in a single location so newcomers didn’t have to catch up on a decade plus of forum discussion.
Making it was fun! Maintenance time is near zero, as I’m not dropping as many spoilers these days and I’m happy for fans to update it with anything they think is relevant. It’s a good place for people to post their strategy guides if they’re not on Steam.
But it’s definitely not a necessity, and in general I don’t think it’s a great use of time for a new author.
There’s a great one for Tally Ho/Jolly Good here, made by readers. It’s incredibly useful to have a place to point people who have plot or character questions (and it’s a quick way for me to check a reference when I need to remember something like Vyv’s brother’s name).
I would prefer if my readers made the wikis! Making a wiki helps build community first and foremost while communicating information.
Ultimately, I already am making and maintaining a wiki for an IF game, so I don’t think I have enough time to do another project wiki and then make a reader-friendly wiki.
If you’re capable of making and maintaining a wiki, by all means, I say go for it!
My opinion is that if you’re doing it yourself as an author, why aren’t you putting the info in the game as some kind of codex or achievement guide or whatever would fit the info best? As a reader, while I may use wikis heavily at points, leaving the game to go to a different site is a chore (and if it isn’t, I was losing my interest anyway).
If the info is something so random it’s completely irrelevant and as such has no place to be in the game (like, say, what would a high fantasy game’s character call their favourite modern ice cream flavour), it’s not something I’d be looking for in a wiki, either.
