How You Can Help the Rift DB Grow - GuideFollow

Helpful Links
ZAM Rift Database Comments and Feedback - If you know any bugs or have some feedback, you can post it here.
npc2item database mechanic - Information on how to use the npc2item system.
Rift Mob Template - A Simple header template for NPC wiki pages for NPC's that have clones in more than one location

Many of you are wondering (especially those wowhead users) on how can you help improve the content on the Database. Below is a quick guide for anyone interested to find out how they can help improve the content on any page they want.

What makes our Rift Database Different?
the Rift@ZAM database uses ZAM's Wikibase™ technology. This has one major difference compared to the first-generation databases. Every database page has some wiki space. As in you can help edit the page as if its another wiki article. This information is seen in-between the tooltip and the comments/screenshots section and is a great way to show information or statistics about the database entry.


How can I edit this "Wiki Space"?
If you are logged in you can see and use the nice rift button at the top right of every database page saying "Edit this page" if you are logged in you can click this button and it'll take you to a edit page. The text you type in here is saved into this "Wiki space" wikicode and several html codes can be used in here 99% of wikicode rules apply, so if you've used sites like wikipedia, wowpedia/wowwiki or any other zam wiki then you have nothing to worry about. The edit page also has some simple commands like bold, italics, sub-headings e.t.c


Want help editing this space?
Rift@ZAM has some awesome resources to help to learn the basics or the advanced wiki code. You can go through the drop-down menu " Wiki > Guides > Editing Rift@ZAM " or click here for a index to all the resources we have.


Tradtional Ways of Contributing
If you have questions or facts but unsure how to ask out, you can use the comment system thats attached to every page. You must be logged in for you to be able to post comments on pages. You can also upload screenshots. Click the "Screenshots" tab then click "Add image" then upload, click "commit upload" then presto, its done.


I have info on something that isn't found in your Database, what should I do?
Our information is from the public data feed all other fansites use. This means there are items in-game that arent in your database. Every time Trion updates their data feed, we will update our database so our database will continously get larger. But this means sometimes you may find information about an item that isnt in the database yet. Because Our database is Wikibase™ you can add content about items e.t.c that dont exist in the database yet. Check out the guide at Adding Content to Database Entries that Dont Exist (Rift) for in-depth instructions


What if an Item or Mob is NOT in the npc2item database but I still want to add that information into the npc2item tool?
Right now you have two options. You can either hold onto the information and wait until we get a data feed update or you can go to this forum post, follow the simple instructions and an admin will add in the information once we get a feed update.


What do I do with wiki content if a NPC has a clone in a different zone?
We have a simple Template housed at Template:Rift Mob, copy the code that it says to cope and paste it into the wiki edit page. This template will create a section header and a little info box explaining where the clone is located so it is easy to tell apart which NPC your talking about. See an Example of it in action HERE

We still have many sections of the database being developed... you havent seen all that were going to release.If you know our warcraft database at wowhead then you know what our standard is we are striving to match and beat.


Edited, Mar 18th 2011 2:51am by Bohtauri

Edited, Mar 19th 2011 11:06am by Bohtauri

I was just browsing the artifacts and I noticed that there are several that I am collecting on my Defiant character that are listed as being for Guardian zones. Such as Stone Vanguard Artifacts, which is listed as Silverwood, but is collected by Defiants in Stonefield, and Tide Herald Artifacts and Shade Herald Artifacts, both listed as Silverwood, but both collected in Freemarch by Defiant.

Sabethaya - thanks for the heads up! We're making tickets for all of our database improvements, and these will go on the list.

Your concept of a mix between a wowhead-like database and Wiki is great, and because of that I initially chose to help out by contributing to this site over other sites shall remain unnamed.

However I have come a cross a few things that makes the whole process of helping out seem like running through a solid rock wall:

Since it's me and a friend working together to add information I'll simplify everything and just use "I" in the explanation.

* I want to add NPC-s that sell an item to that item's page, so I go to the item and I fill out the form to add "sol by" information. When I click on it nothing happens, and on further investigation there seems to be an NPC search behind the scenes that come up empty.
* So in my "brilliance" I think this maybe has to do with the NPC not being in the system, so I search for Lisra Zaro and it comes up with 0 result.
* Reading some help documents I find out that the NPC article should be named "Rift Mob:Lisra Zaro". The article is quickly assembled and it looks like this: http://rift.zam.com/wiki/Rift_Mob:Lisra_Zaro
* Going back to the item page at http://rift.zam.com/en/item/9FB2E6D60301010101/Nico-Lights#Sold_By
* Typing in Lisra Zaro does nothing, and uppon hitting submit nothing happens again.
* Finally I search for Lisra Zaro again, and my newly made article does not show up in the results.

So I'm stumped and lost, because what I thought was a simple add and go thing has now taken up almost 1 hour of my time without anything to show for it.

I also notice that there is no category in the database-menu or wiki-menu that goes to mobs, yet there is a special category for mobs that you can only (afaik) access from the wiki main page.

I can live with a system where adding information to the wiki is complicated, not straight forward and difficult to do. I'm smart I can figure it out. I cannot however live with the fact that a simple search for something that is in the wiki does not find what people are looking for. I hope that you guys keep up the great work and fix the obvious search problems, and also find the time to make it possible to add vital information such as sold by etc to your items database.

I'm very glad to see you are working hard on this stuff. Even if it means you sometimes push features before they are ready. I'm also very glad that for the quick response, it makes me want to stick around and see what happens!

Looking forward to the (near) future development of this site! :D

A new popular question has arisen.

What if an Item or NPC is NOT in the npc2item database but I still want to add that information into the npc2item tool?

I have added an answer to the original post guide.

theres two kinds of recipe's in the wiki. "Recipe-knowledge" and "Recipe-Item" item is the actual scroll you purchase, and the knowledge is the actual skill of that recipe (in your profession tab) i have seen this problem and it looks like an error in the trion feed. We'll need to wait for Trion to update their data feed. If you want, you can post that required data into the Undiscovered items thread and i'll do it for you when I can check after the update if they have been updated.

Quite a conundrum though, its the chicken before the egg scenario. As you cant know the skill without buying the recipe.

thats what the link to the other thread in the guide above. Spam it away with all the necessary details needed

I'll make sure the programmers are aware of this. Thanks pquegg.

lol after a good little effort tonight, is there any way to make Recipe: The Wall into The Wall? Or at least show it all on the same page, its very jarring to have to go to the quick info box click the teaches link to see what the mats are on a recipe.

yeah I think the real failure here is on trion, as in game the recipe works just fine, show the needed items and what it makes, but for some reason on the item dumps they list them empty like this, very strange imo.

no I mean in game, the recipe shows like The Wall its only on the DB dumps that it shows as a blank item :/

They're added automagically as Trion releases the data. Even if we had a wiki template for them, you won't get a tooltip until the data imports, sorry.

If you want to add info to their pages in advance of the data, just make a page. Prepend "Rift item:" to the item name in the url, like this:
http://rift.zam.com/wiki/rift item:Amazing Sword of Unequipable Uberness

Then click edit and just type. When the data imports your information will automatically hook to it.

Edited, May 17th 2011 8:27pm by Calthine

Examples of missing items would help our devs run it down :)

PS: I already have a ticket on this, but item examples would still help!

Edited, May 19th 2011 7:58pm by Calthine

Last I heard Xanadu hand-enters all there stuff (instead of parsing it), but I will ask our devs to check :)

Maybe I heard wrong, but I thought yg uses a packet sniffer to grab information? People can be pretty uncomfortable touching those.

Thanks very much for the follow up, sorry it took so long!

I don't know and Micajah's at E3. I don't know if it can be accomplished with Rift like it can on other games (there's technical stuff I do not understand involved). Please hold, lol.

I second this.

The database is so sparse right now it saddens me. The Zam/Rift folks need to make a Wowhead-Client-esque program so that NPCs, quests, item drop rates, and auction house data can be aggregated.

I guess I am spoiled from relying on the Wowhead database--it's just so damn helpful.

The lack of information is really hurting the game for me, like when I see an item on the AH and I wonder: "is that a good price or am I getting completely ripped off?" or when I get a cool item drop, I have absolutely no way of knowing whether it is rare or not.

Is there any way to edit item descriptions?
For example a lot of shields are listed with Calling: Cleric Warrior

But can only be used by warriors

I am trying to add some screenshots for some of the companion pets. On the top of the main companion pet page http://rift.zam.com/wiki/Companions_(Rift) it says:

however, if you add the screenshot on the individual pet's page under the screenshot section, it doesn't seem to carry over.

I was trying it with the Spirit of Tears pet. Maybe you guys could take a look at it?

That's actually something that needs to be manually added to the companions guide... I'll get on that and thank you very much for your picture contributions!

edit: I take that back.. after looking at the Companions page, we have it set up to be automated, but not in the way you'd think. It pulls an image from the media (not screenshots) section of the NPC page associated with that companion. I'm making copies of images for ones we're missing over on those pages now. :)


... it's updated now as much as it can be! Thanks again!

Edited, Jul 12th 2011 7:56am by Cyliena

Edited, Jul 12th 2011 8:13am by Cyliena

There's no way to completely automate it the way things stand now, but we've had a log parser for about a month now: http://rift.zam.com/en/logparser.html

The answer remains the same - as soon as Trion sends us the data, we'll update it. Looks like some of Xanadu's stuff is from Test.

I have been getting 505 bad gateway for like past week when I try and upload my discovery log. Ever since that file size passed like 5mb it has been buggy and I am doubtful it has been uploading much of anything.

Do I need to clear the discovery log every login in to get it to work with how Zam has it set-up?

12mb...why does it error out? Riftnut does not have that issue. So what do I do clear out the log manually I guess to make it smaller?