Saving Ship Fittings from the Wiki

For discussion of ship fittings
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Arin Mara
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Saving Ship Fittings from the Wiki

Post by Arin Mara »

Spoiler
EVE University is refocusing their efforts on teaching players how to create a ship fitting to meet their needs, rather than providing fittings that are often used as-is, without communicating an understanding for why the fitting was created in that manner.

As a result, The UniWiki will soon be removing its repository of ship fittings. They will be replaced with a renewed focus on ship-specific roles and bonuses, as well as links to broader articles on how to fit ships for those roles and bonuses. UniWiki will also provide links to other websites (e.g. zKillboard, EveWorkbench) and articles on how to find suitable fits on those websites.

This notice is to provide you the opportunity to save your favorite fits. There is no set date for the Fittings removal, but it will likely occur within the first week of August, 2020. The process to remove fittings will be accomplished automatically, and does not require assistance or editing by wiki contributors. Thank you -- EVE University / UniWiki Management
That's the message that greeted me. I wasn't aware that the Fittings would be deleted from the Wiki. The message implies that not all Wiki Fittings have been saved elsewhere, say on EVE Workbench. I am also not aware of any effort to systematically preserve the Wiki Fittings. I have my favorite Wiki Fittings, but that may change in the future.

That's why I'm considering saving all Fittings on the Wiki.

Before of the effort involved, before I start I'd like to know:
  • * Is there any interest in saving the Wiki Fittings?
    * Where do you want the Wiki Fittings preserved?
I'm also involved in the Tiericide Name Changes effort, so I'll be able to keep them updated.
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Biwako Acami
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Re: Saving Ship Fittings from the Wiki

Post by Biwako Acami »

I think the problem is that a lot of them are already outdated from what may be the meta or ideal and it would take a a lot of effort to figure out what are worth keeping and what aren't. We could do a straight transfer over to workbench but that's just transferring the effort to another space for someone else to figure out when we need to clean up eveworkbench fits. These days its just normal to either ask others for fits or use zkillboard to figure out the best fits for some of the things you need to do.

You're probably better served by just taking what you want and letting the rest go.

PS: I'm guessing here but I would think that the automated removal would have some sort of archiving already to be put in cold storage in case something breaks. Or at least some method to revert.
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Gergoran Moussou
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Re: Saving Ship Fittings from the Wiki

Post by Gergoran Moussou »

Some are worth saving.

Some are obsolete.

Some were never worth having (dreadnoughts with prop mods, for example).
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Drebin 679
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Re: Saving Ship Fittings from the Wiki

Post by Drebin 679 »

I concur with Biwako and Gergoran that the current wikifits have a lot of, uh, junk in them. I'm personally of the opinion that there is value in having curated fits on the wiki, and do lament that they are going away entirely. But to respond to OP directly:
Arin Mara wrote:
Spoiler
EVE University is refocusing their efforts on teaching players how to create a ship fitting to meet their needs, rather than providing fittings that are often used as-is, without communicating an understanding for why the fitting was created in that manner.

As a result, The UniWiki will soon be removing its repository of ship fittings. They will be replaced with a renewed focus on ship-specific roles and bonuses, as well as links to broader articles on how to fit ships for those roles and bonuses. UniWiki will also provide links to other websites (e.g. zKillboard, EveWorkbench) and articles on how to find suitable fits on those websites.

This notice is to provide you the opportunity to save your favorite fits. There is no set date for the Fittings removal, but it will likely occur within the first week of August, 2020. The process to remove fittings will be accomplished automatically, and does not require assistance or editing by wiki contributors. Thank you -- EVE University / UniWiki Management
That's the message that greeted me. I wasn't aware that the Fittings would be deleted from the Wiki.
While this was admittedly kinda buried under other topics, it was announced in the beginning of this month by Laura in the EVE University Management Restructure thread, accessible to uni members and alumni.
Laura Karpinski wrote:Repurposing Fittings department

We will be closing the Fittings department and removing public fits from the wiki. For a long time we have tried to offer public fittings on the wiki for every ship in EVE. This is a massive undertaking, since module name changes and rebalances, as well as the in game meta, mean that fits need to be updated on a very regular basis, more regular than we can manage.

The most common complaint about the wiki by far is that the ship fittings are out of date. It often gives the misleading impression that the rest of the wiki is out of date as well. So we have decided that instead of trying to provide fits ourselves we will direct people to other, more reliable, sources of fits, like zkillboard.
I don't necessarily agree with the decision, but the facts ring true. We still have 2013-era battleship fits that stain the wiki, and other odd fits here and there.
Arin Mara wrote:Is there any interest in saving the Wiki Fittings?
Privately, I've been, uh, rather passionate with regards to the wiki fits. It's something I'd like to keep, personally, but it's not my decision to make, either. The point on teaching people how to fish rather than giving them fish rings true, though I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, and that both are within our means to maintain.

If you want to personally save them, the ShipFitting template makes use of the EFT format, which the game and most third party websites and applications support. Pyfa and eveworkbench both have sections where you can copypaste the notes we have from the wiki fits.

As for a more organized "saving", depending on how the change is done, they may still be on the wiki, in the sense that they will be recorded in past revisions of pages. The wiki is only young enough to go back to 2010, but you can go through and see revisions of what a ship page looked like, or who management was on a certain year. I have no hand in the removal, so I'm not sure how exactly it will be done.
Arin Mara wrote:Where do you want the Wiki Fittings preserved?
Depending on how much web prowess you have, there are some options.

You could spin up a MediaWiki instance that just holds copies of the fitting pages. Would just need to nab the ShipFitting template and any related subtemplates or CSS styles.

You could also go barebones and have a bunch of EFT copies in plaintext in a more basic website. It's your choice, at the end of the day, and I don't know what archive form would be best.
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Arin Mara
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Re: Saving Ship Fittings from the Wiki

Post by Arin Mara »

In the last week alone thirty five topics were written in the Hi and Bye forum section. What about all of you novice and returning capsuleers?

Saving Battleship Class Fittings isn't what I'm aiming at. Medalist winners, Campus Officers, Managers and Gradutes already know many other ways of sourcing good Ship Fittings.

What I want to save are the Fittings aimed at Alpha State Clones and those who cannot use Tech II modules because they don't have any skill trained to V. For me personally, I know I couldn't defeat Dagan in the Sisters of EVE Epic Arc or my first Limited Sleeper Cache without the Destroyer or Frigate Fittings on the Wiki.

I'll take responses for a few more days and then I'll make my decision.
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Bunny Crusher
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Re: Saving Ship Fittings from the Wiki

Post by Bunny Crusher »

I believe the intention is that risking a possible old and invalid, or no longer functioning, fitting from the wiki isn't as good a plan as teaching folks how to put a fit together.

There are also the saved corp fittings in the simulator, T1 and T2 doctrine fit suggestions on the forums, and I think just about every channel has folks willing to talk about or share fittings they use.

The wiki is a easy place to just "google" a fit, but there are quite a few other, more reliable, resources with fit's available.
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Arin Mara
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Re: Saving Ship Fittings from the Wiki

Post by Arin Mara »

I've saved all 1117 Wiki Fittings from all 233 Wiki Pages. If anyone would like to receive a copy, I'd be more then happy to send it over.
Due to the ongoing Tiercicide the Module names may not be up to date.

The raw text file has 700KB.
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Varvax
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Re: Saving Ship Fittings from the Wiki

Post by Varvax »

Hey, since I'm a proud member of the "I'm always late for interesting discussions" club, I would actually like to recieve a copy of it. I'm trying to find fits for Caldari, but it seems like nobody likes right-wing neo capitalist ships :P
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Arin Mara
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Re: Saving Ship Fittings from the Wiki

Post by Arin Mara »

I'm afraid I've lost the Fittings file. :(

It has been so long that I erased it as not even voidtools could find any trace of the Fittings.

If you're trying to find Caldari Ship Fittings, perhaps you could ask on Discord in the #fitting-chat Channel, in the Questions or Campus Chat Channels or even take a look at the Fittings section of the Forum.
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