Save the Cantr article on Wikipedia

[Solfius]

I remember people on the forums saying that their anthropology, sociology, language, whatever class recomends Cantr as a learning tool. I think we can make a case for it being unique among games as an educational resource.

I never saw that; it's pretty good

[Pie]

It helps with reading writing people skills maby, if you really need people skill help. It helped me... although I need more help...*goes to play cantr*

[Junesun]

Please contribute as much as possible to the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantr_II

I devised a new format, which will hopefully sound less like a sales pitch and more like an academic article.

I believe that it could especially benefit from Jos' input on the history and the Sociologist's input on criticism, but just write what you know right now and we'll refine it together.

[Pie]

or posibaly my intput on rollplaying stratigy?

Or crankyness. Right now, I can input on crankyness.

[pur]

i thought they had an voting system on wikipedia for such a things

[Sho]

Yes. It hasn't quite gotten up to speed yet, but in the end the decision mostly depends on a vote. People without accounts or edit histories risk being discounted as sock puppets, though, and any sign that the "keep" votes are coming from a Cantr community effort could doom the thing.

[pur]

Ye, i heard about the sock puppet and read also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sock_puppet

So if you can write a paragraph (or more) explaining how Cantr is "innovative, significant, or influential in some specific way,"

This is probably diffecult to write, i recall that an wikipedia article also need to be written out of a neutral standpoint.
I'm not a wikipedia expert , so maby i'm missing something.

[kinvoya]

Your help is urgently needed. See announcements here: http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 624#195624

[nitefyre]

Well, this evening I took a stab at what I could at filling things in. I will review what I have done here.

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Interface 2.1
The interface of the game is in the traditional text-based style, which puts an emphasis on the depth of role-play and character development. These emphases become accessible with an understanding of the game mechanics.


This was brief and succint, with an external link to the relevant Cantr wiki on game mechanics.

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Trends 3
Stolen Notes, Cantr's Official Webzine, regularly publishes an article on statistics and trends. Appropiate data values are gathered from within Cantr's world to better understand the social, political, economic, cultural and technological aspects of society in this simulation. This is then further discussed in Webzine articles to make analytical generalizations and critical evaluations on matters in various social science fields, from economics to anthropology. It is not surprising then that a considerable amount of players are currently or were recently higher education students. Cantr provides for an innovative opportunity to take advantage of a sandbox in which the facets of civilization are recreated, expanded upon and perused.


I tried to dabble into the 'innovation' and 'significance' part of the requirements here.

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Administration 4.1
Cantr II Constitution

The main governing body of Cantr II will be the Game Administration Board, which will be accountable to the Game Administration Council.
At least one member of the Game Administration Board should have access to the game database and have knowledge of how to manage an SQL database.
Both the Game Administration Council and the Game Administration Board will take their decisions by simple majority vote, unless otherwise stated. If there is a deadlock in votes, the respective Chair decides.
Members of the Game Administration Board are temporary members of the Game Administration Council, unless a particular Game Administration Board member is already a Game Administration Council member, in which case this will continue to be a permanent membership.
The Game Administration Council can overrule any decision made by the Game Administration Board.
Additions to and removals from staff positions are done by the Game Administration Board. Positions in the Game Administration Council, the Game Administration Board, as Chair of any of the departments, or the position of Finance Officer, have to be approved by the Game Administration Council. Positions in the Game Administration Board need approval of an unanimous vote in the Game Administration Council.
Membership of the Game Administration Board, Chair of a department, and Personnel Officer should in general be mutually exclusive, unless the availability of suitable staff warrants otherwise.
All staff members will have to work to preserve or stimulate: (1) the unique character and original concept of Cantr II; (2) the professionalism in the approach of players; (3) the quality of the program code and the integrity of the game database; (4) the international fame and accessibility of the game.
These bylaws can only be changed by the Game Administration Council.
Jos Elkink, Dublin, July 23, 2003 (amended March 1, 2006)


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This constitution is applied to the various departments that report to the Game Administration Board. These departments include Communications, Languages, Marketing, Resources, Players, Programming and Administrative Support.

The Communications Department is responsible for assisting in the communications between staff and players, and among players themselves, outside the game. Members of this department will function as moderators on our public forums and chat channel. The department will also handle our suggestions and bugs gatekeeping functions, so make sure that ideas and bugs discussed among players reach staff in a clear, summarized manner. Additional tasks related to community relations and communications are being developed.

The Languages Department is responsible for all translations between English and other languages, which includes translating the website, correspondence, help pages, etc. The department also cooperates with the Marketing Department to help with advertisement on non-English sites by finding the sites and translating the texts from the Marketing Department.

The Marketing Department is department is responsible for marketing Cantr II to get more players and - to a lesser extent - for finding the funds to maintain the website.

The Players Department is responsible for managing the database of players on Cantr. Members are allowed to remove players upon request or unacceptable behaviour. Further duties will be assisting players that have questions about the game that cannot be put on the OOC mailinglist or when players have lost their password.

The Programming Department is responsible for adding to and maintaining the source code of Cantr II.


This involved mostly borrowing the Cantr constitution and the information available on staff departments, with some trivial edits.

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Users 4.2
As of August 8, 2006, there are a total of 1942 registered players using 8,233 characters in 15 languages. English and Polish are the main languages theatres; however, since the game world is interconnected, different languages come into contact, and thereby, understand the causes, happenings and effects of globalization in a microscopic study of the real world reality. Not all users realize Cantr for this tool, but rather recognize it as a place to apply and develop language and written communications skills.

Again, I tried to capture the international flair of Cantr and its importance as both an academic tool and a social community, as follows:

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Interaction outside the game 4.3
The game's community encompasses the far reaches of the globe, playing in fifteen different languages. This provides for a very diverse group of people to come together, usually with similar interests. Although the discussion on Cantr's various communication channels (forums, IRC) is usually friendly and informative, there is a Communications Department that oversees and maintains the media. A branch of this Department is also responsible for sparking further insightful thought and conversation by the publication of a regularly releasing Cantr Webzine.


I left Section 5 untouched. If Jos or anybody has touched on Cantr in their scholarly work, that would definitely be crucial in the 'influential' requirement. I was wondering if the Esperantists (i.e. Judith) have referenced Cantr in their community--this could prove useful. I think Section 1 could be done a bit better, especially considering its the first thing people read.

I hope the hours of time and effort devoted today prove fruitful--I decided since it wasn't getting far I'd take the initiative and try to make some headway. Please feel free to make the appropiate edits.

[kinvoya]

Thank you, Jon. I've had a migraine and haven't been able to do any work on it after all.

Also, I haven't received any concrete examples of Cantrs use in education so it would all be speculation and spin if I wrote something. I'm not sure if that would be worse or better than nothing in that area. Sho?

[N-Aldwitch]

I'm Lassaris on the Discussion for the wiki, by the way.

[formerly known as hf]

I think the langugae availability in cantr is it's greatest strength and what makes it particularly unique - so I added this:

Language availability
Cantr has a large team of translators, who have currently translated much of the game into 15 different languges, a feature lacking in most other games of this type. Current translations are: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch (Nederlands), English, Esperanto, French (Francais), German (Deutsch), Latin, Lithuanian (Lietuviskai), Polish (Polski), Portugese (Português), Russian, Spanish (Espanol), Swedish (Svenska) and Turkish

A player, regardless of where they live, can choose to create a character of any language. The character is expected to speak in the language chosen by the player, and the interface for that character will be in the chosen language, so it is required that a player has some grasp of the chosen language. This provides an excellent opportunity for players to practice and improve their language skills. Some players have even used the game and multi-lingual community to learn new languages.

Characters of different langugaes play in the same world. There are many instances where characters have met others using a different language, and under the rules of the game, these interactions take place without the aid of online translations, providing interesting scenarios.

I'd appreciate someone from the lang. dept. checking that for accuracy...

[nitefyre]

Consider the first part of my post a memo to the Marketing Dep't.

Being that the Marketing Department has existed for years now, there are certain fundamental things I didn't see on Wikipedia that distressed me. Certain simple references to Cantr in related Wikipedia articles (e.g. Roleplaying game lists, etc) to help ingrain it into the Wikipedia culture and all the while provide it with the "international fame" that is an objective of Staff, and especially the MD.

There were only two old mentions of Cantr I found in other articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MMORPGs under Sprite-graphic games, which may not be accurate. Although I didn't delete it, I added it under the list of "free MMORPGS" and "text based". The external links of this page could be a treasure for MD advertising.

and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based . I found these links when making inside-Wikipedia links to what has been added to Cantr II's Wikipedia page lately (see HF's post and the second part of this post).

I've also gone forward and added Cantr II to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ro ... es_by_name and if somebody could add it to the right genre here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ro ... s_by_genre that would be great.

Additionally, I've used Cantr's other medium (i.e. the Webzine) to reach a larger audience here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webzine by adding 'stolen notes' to that page.

Marketing Department: Please read this:

When I was reviewing other Ezines/Webzines, I discovered these would be great places to submit articles on "Cantr" as a successful, free society simulator. Approaches to such an article could be anything from a "review" as in a gaming magazine to a "spotlight" of something interesting you've come across, although try to maintain an impartial yet explanatory mindset.

I think Judith was planning to do something of the sort for Cantr in the stalled Esperanto Ezine effort. Perhaps she has some ideas or even an article on hand that could be used under a shared-Cantr license?


And here's the second part of the post:

Also, to remain transparent with what I'm doing; the following has been added for a foundation to the roleplay tab [with relevant links] :

Roleplay 2.5

In order to establish the ability to simulate society, roleplay by the characters is fundamental. In fact, Cantr is a hybrid between society simulator and roleplaying game.

And the third part of my post:

I've suggested as a follow up to the poster above me (HF) to cover the theme of globalization in his upcoming Zine stats article. This should hopefully provide some of the 'substance' to portray Cantr as an important and innovative society simulator.

[formerly known as hf]

I added an infobox - this still requires an image. I think a screen-shot of an events page would be good. I do not have a wikipedia login, so someone else will have to do that.

I also added some blurb about accessibility.

The whole article needs tidying up, I think, and probably heavy abridging - it's far too long, and occasioanlly somewhat repetitive.

[N-Aldwitch]

Which is the problem we have when seperate people type up the wiki page. Mind you it's a good thing but there needs to be a person to watch over it and edit / condense it.