User:TheSatanicSanta/Sandbox/Survey 2

Here is a link to the entire results dumped. Some info:

• This survey started out on December 1st, and ended on January 6th. It did not go months overboard like last time, which is good. At some point you have to say no and I had no trouble with that.
• We got 816 responses! (not including 1 deleted response). Many of these responses, probably more than half of them, are from me sharing the survey on Reddit. I think about 400-500 were from Reddit and 300-400 were from the site notice. The wiki gets more views than that one Reddit thread, but I suspect people are used to clicking x when they see a site notice or ignoring it, whereas Redditors are big about getting their opinion out given the chance.
• Let's say 300-400 were from just the site notice over the period of a month. ~500 were from the 3 months that the last survey was up in 2016 (July 9th to October 1st), so maybe you can take something from that popularity-wise.
• Here is a link to the last survey results. We will be comparing them.

What Minecraft version(s) do you usually play on?

Notes

• 1.12 was the most answered with 61%. This is worth sharing with everyone who thinks 1.7 (48%) is still the dominant version (which it was last survey, with 33% playing 1.10 and 80% playing 1.7). 1.10 had 40%, and the other versions weren't particularly notable.

What Minecraft version(s) should the editors of the FTB Wiki focus on?

Notes

• 1.12 clearly won with 86%. Second was 1.10 with 36% and third 1.7 with 29%. Clear contrast between last survey and this with last one which had 55% for 1.10 and 67% for 1.7.
• Combining this question and last question, I conclude focusing on 1.12/the newest version has been the most useful thing done for the community and we should continue to do that, although we shouldn't be against documenting 1.7 completely as it's still a thing.

What particular mod(s) should the editors of the FTB Wiki take attention to/document?

No screenshot. I compiled a spreadsheet counting each one here. There were 279 responses total.

Notes

• Most notable (>= 5): 24 Astral Sorcery, 17 CoFH Team mods (6 "Thermal mods/CoFH mods," 11 Thermal Expansion, 1 CoFH World), 12 Extra Utilities (3 "Extra Utilities," 1 Extra Utilities 1, 9 Extra Utilities 2), 11 Tinkers' Construct, 11 GregTech (8 "GregTech," 2 GregTech 5 Unofficial, 1 GregTech 6), 10 Botania, 8 Immersive Engineering, 8 Ender IO, 8 Reika's mods (5 "Reika's mods," 3 ChromatiCraft, 1 ReactorCraft), 8 IndustrialCraft 2, 8 Thaumcraft (7 "Thaumcraft," 1 Thaumcraft 6), 8 Industrial Foregoing, 7 Applied Energistics, 6 Forestry, 6 Draconic Evolution, 6 Blood Magic (2 "Blood Magic," 1 Blood Magic 1, 4 Blood Magic 2), 6 Mekanism, 5 Advanced Rocketry, and 5 Embers.
• If some of those don't look like they add up that's because they don't. One person requesting "GregTech 5/6" for instance would mean +1 for the total GregTech group and +1 for both GregTech 5 and GregTech 6.
• So! The most requested mod was Astral Sorcery by a strong margin. Hubry, Lykrast and SirMoogle have all contributed to it a little bit and I encourage them to continue off their work. Anyone interested is welcome to contribute, of course, to anything (and I encourage them to). Second biggest was the CoFH Team mods. It helps that I grouped those together, but Thermal Expansion would of been pretty high on the list even if I didn't.
• There were plenty of responses like "all mods," "undocumented mods," "popular mods," "unpopular mods," "big mods," "small mods," "tech mods," "magic mods," etc. etc etc. I didn't tally them since I don't think they're super useful.
• Comparing to last survey: Last time GregTech won with Thaumcraft right behind it. Despite 300 more total responses, GregTech dropped from 17 to 11, Thaumcraft from 16 to 8, Mekanism from 13 to 6, IndustrialCraft 2 from 11 to 8. I think this definitely has something to do with users leaving 1.7 for the new versions (although Mekanism is for 1.12 now, it was more established on 1.7 than it is on 1.12, and with IndustrialCraft 2 many of those votes were together with GregTech).
• Comparing to viewing statistics. I should note that the viewing stats are not public and will not become public since Gamepedia doesn't want them to be (and for pretty good reason, since we wouldn't want to give malicious bots targets). However, I don't mind informally sharing what the most popular pages are, just not the numbers. Extra Utilities 2 is the most viewed mod page, which fits with its many requests as it is about halfway documented. The second most viewed mod page is Immersive Engineering. Because it is mostly documented, it wasn't at the top of the list but still got some requests. Now Astral Sorcery... in the month of November, it was the 23rd most viewed page on the wiki, even though at that point there was no tilesheet and little documentation. In December, it was the 11th most viewed page on the wiki, despite being partially (like 20% I'd say) documented. The requests connect considering that. The CoFH Team mods aren't very viewed on the wiki (not in the top 100) because we don't have much documented (for Thermal Expansion 5, we don't even have a navbox. I intend to make one soon).
• I should note we editors will document what we want to anyway, but we'll have all of these in mind.

What modpack launchers/mod managers do you use regularly?

Notes

• The most used launcher was the Twitch Desktop App with 66%. Second was MultiMC with 30%. 25% used the FTB Launcher.
• In comparison with last year, it seems a lot of people switched from the FTB Launcher (56% -> 25%) to the Twitch Desktop App (25% ->66%). More people used MultiMC (21% -> 30%), which I think had something to with sharing it on Reddit. Lastly, ATLauncher (27% -> 15%), Technic (24% -> 12%) and the vanilla launcher (35% -> 19%) all went down both in percentage and in the actual amount. That latter point suggests they didn't just go down because of us sharing it on Reddit.
• Just wanted to say although ATLauncher and Technic appear to be part of a smaller userbase (respectively at 15% and 12%), they still are a userbase on the wiki, even if they are a niche userbase. In other words, having some information on them and their top modpacks is not a total waste of time.

What language(s) are you proficient in?

So, the actual image is messed up here thanks to an excess of custom responses. But here are the results anyway (everything above 0.5%):

• 97% English
• 12% German
• 7.2% French
• 4.4% Spanish
• 3.5% Dutch
• 3.5% Russian
• 2.5% Portuguese
• 2% Polish
• 1.9% Chinese
• 1.2% Swedish
• 1.1% Japanese
• 0.7% Italian
• 0.6% Norwegian
• 0.6% Bulgarian
• 0.6% Czech
• 0.5% Arabic
• 0.5% Greek
• Plus programming language jokes.

Notes

• I must note that I believe the Chinese demographic would be larger if, well, Google Docs was not blocked in China. As according to 3tusk from last year "if you can access google docs in China... you really wont mind whether the documentation is Chinese or not."
• I think this mostly the same as last survey, but last survey I split this into four different questions based on skill and it was a mess. This survey was better.

If you speak a language other than English (if you don't, skip this question), how interested are you in documentation translated to your language?

Notes

• Most people responded not interested, but plenty of people said they would be. A lot of people that responded to this question only spoke English which was annoying Q.Q
• Not really comparable to last year since I did that differently. I kind of preferred the way it was last year to be honest.
• Of course, I must note this question (and the last question, and the entire survey to a small extent) is biased as it alienates those who don't speak English or those who only speak a basic amount of it (the kind of people that would probably want translated documentation). So yeah.

How often do you contribute to the FTB Wiki?

Notes

• 74% didn't, about the same as last year. Two of the choices kind of felt the same, which isn't what I intended. A few people definitely had an interesting idea of what contributing very frequently meant :P (one or two people answered "very frequently" but then "I didn't even know you could" for the next question)

If you don't contribute very much, why not?

Image messed up here too. Results are:

• 1% "I contribute all the time"
• 18% "Lack of interest"
  • There were many other ways to say "lack of interest" that people put in :P although there were a few other decent responses that I'll keep in mind for next time.
• 30% "Lack of time"
• 8% "It's too technical"
• 12% "I didn't even you could"
• 48% "never really thought about it"

Notes

• I removed "I edit another wiki" from the last survey, which I think maybe like one or two responders put in this one. Same with "Wiki Staff turned me off." No one complained about the staff although a few felt the rules could be too restrictive.

What platform do you usually use when viewing the FTB Wiki?

Notes

95% used the computer, 18% mobile. 1 guy uses a 3DS (nice). This was not on last survey.

What platforms should the FTB Wiki improve accessibility to?

Notes

In-game Minecraft was especially popular, and more popular than last year. I would suspect people who regularly visit the wiki (all responders from last survey) don't mind online documentation as much as Redditors would. If you are a mod author interested in collaborating feel free to poke us. It would be a big but cool project to work on.

What web browser(s) do you usually use to browse the FTB Wiki?

Notes

Google Chrome won by a lot (73%) with FireFox next (37%). Plenty of nerd browsers that nobody uses. Last survey it was mostly the same.

When using the wiki, which skin do you regularly use? (you can change the skin in your preferences, under appearance)

Notes

• This question is awesome because it doubles as advertising/informing people about the dark skin. Slightly more people used the dark skin than last survey. ~300 use it so that's cool (clearly worth having).

Do you have any final suggestions or words for the Official FTB Wiki?

Obviously there were many responses. Many thanks; I didn't really mention them in Discord since there were a lot of them and they were repetitive (which is cool). Plenty about versioning, which is something we need to discuss at some point. I'm not going to reply to them all here. I've shared the more interesting ones in Discord over the course of the survey, but I will (or other editors can) put out specific responses and respond to those suggestions.

A "current bugs" or "known incompatibility" sections to mod items/blocks would be nice.

As an unwritten policy we don't really document bugs, except on final versions. It's better to just report them to the mod author and have them fix it. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Accessibility to the FTB Wiki from In-game Minecraft sounds very interesting and I can imagine it would be incredibly convenient.

Yes, it definitely would. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

add spawn conditions for mobs

Mob pages should have the spawn conditions, it would be considered an incomplete page if there was no information on that. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Add support for third party modpacks!

I half-way feel that this was aimed at FTB and not us. If so, can't help with that. But if you mean we should document non-FTB modpacks, well, we do and people are welcome to document their modpacks here. Examples include All the Mods 3 and Hexxit. In theory we focus on FTB but in reality we mostly focus on mods over modpacks, though. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Ahoj jsem velkým obdivovatelem módu Gregtech 6, velice rád hraji, líbí se mi myšlení GregoriusT a zpracování celého módu GT6. Moc rád bych byl přínosem a podporou pro tento mód. Chybí překlady. Chybí návody a to se musí změnit. ;) Player -> Ray_CZ -> 82.208.17.39:27060

Translation: Ray wants more GregTech 6 guides. Retep998, you heard the man, get on it! -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

bony is a butt/Bony is cool

yes -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Break the wiki into 1.7, 1,10 and 1.12 categories/sub sites.

Finding version-specific information is probably the biggest issue with the wiki. I don't think having a page (or different website) for each version would be generally practical for us. I have an idea that I've played with a lot in my head that I want to try out and discuss, and in theory it would be fairly easy for editors to use and extremely user-friendly. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Can you add a list of machines/items to a mods info page? I love browsing on the go or at work looking at the machine chain I need.

Kind of like the Russian Minecraft Wiki? Well, I'm against this kind of set up for two reasons. One is that it takes a lot of time for an editor to do. Another is that it's slow; until it was collapsed, RU.MCW had a GregTech article that had a load time of like 30 seconds (literally). This kind of information is best covered in a getting started guide (which we're lacking for many mods, but still). -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

combine articles that describe in-between items into single pages

We do that sometimes depending on the page. It's a case-by-case thing. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Despite having to work with a game as complex and messy as modded minecraft, you folks have managed to keep its wiki looking really clean and professional. Keep up the good work. :p

thanks ^^ -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

eat grass

okay -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

eat my ass homos

only for money -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

For every article on an item/block/feature, it would be nice to have a very clear indication for which version of the mod it is relevant to. Since so much of the wiki is outdated, it would be nice to at least easily know when that's the case.

Talked about this a bit earlier. It's something we really need to discuss. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Have a wiki page for each modpack that lists all the mods in that modpack, along with summary of the modpack and it's history. On the main page, have a section that lists all the modpacks. The old unofficial FTB wiki has this, and it makes learning about all the different modpacks FTB offers really easy.

In future surveys, when asking people what minecraft version they play, also give the options ""whatever the newest version of minecraft is"" and ""whatever the modpacks I play support"". I only marked 1.10.12 because that's what Skyfactory and Beyond support, but wouldn't play an older version otherwise."

Okay so, in theory we should have an article for each modpack with a mod list. Some are missing and some are incomplete but yes.

I agree that the current main page sucks. Going kind of beyond the question but it needs improvement. Because of DPL being broken, it's capped out at 500 mods. That probably should be fixed, but I'm actually more in favor of removing the mod list altogether. We've documented so many mods and that's only going to grow more and more. It already takes up an absurd amount of the main page at 500; if had 1000 it would be completely useless. We should instead link to a page dedicated to listing the mods (List of mods) and have that page be well organized via ABC order.

But uh, back to modpacks. I don't really like the way the unofficial wiki does it. It's too exclusive for an open wiki. I'd argue most of the people coming here are looking for information for the mods rather than information for the modpacks so I wouldn't want to prioritize those.

The earlier option I will be noting. Playing an older version for a particular modpack counts as playing on that version. I don't see why it wouldn't. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

have an option to filter by mod pack so only relevant data comes up (example: knowing the best y level to mine copper is not going to help me in skyfactory)

We don't really have that much modpack information in general (besides from articles for them). But I don't feel the need to filter out ore spawning mechanics because it's not relevant for a modpacks; obviously if the information isn't applicable for you, you can just skim over it. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Have users dedicate theirselves to making pages on mods if such mod has much content.

Document mods with a lot of content? Um, sure. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

hi bony/Hi. :)

Hi! -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I expect this might be challenging, but finding articles that are out of date is very challenging. I rarely search Wiki as I assume what I will find is out of date. Mods change recipes or mechanics and I don't see how this is captured. 1.7.10 mods and 1.12 mods may be very different. Reading an entry based on the wrong mod or minecraft version creates more confusion than it should.

I'd suggest tagging each article with version the article is relevant to rather than last version. I would also suggest trying to capture articles for a version, and making them obvious (colour coding at least major versions over some critical threshold)

I agree. Documenting stuff across versions has been the biggest accessibility problem the wiki has currently. Don't know about color-coding (seems weird and would be bad for color blind folk) but I appreciate the suggestion. It's something we need to discuss. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I get that the bit about having information on multiple versions of mc mods would be tough, but, having that legacy information available would be awesome. There are tons of people still on 1.7.10, and I myself am bouncing between 1.7.10, 1.10.2, and 1.12.2. Knowing what mechanics are exclusive to which version would be great.

Absolutely. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I hate gregtech, its too vast and I don't wanna go edit this.' -Freebles

lol -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I like how receptive it is to the community (it has its own Discord). The main wiki that I edit, Minecraft Gamepedia, has a "community" but they're not really a close one, everyone mostly just does their own thing.

Yeah, we try to be good about that. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I like it when I find wiki pages with no unfinished pages, I'd prefer mods pages to be completely filled before moving on to another.

Easier said than done. People lose interest in mods, and people lose interest in wiki editing, and often before they are done with documenting a mod. And of course, we editors often aren't interested in finishing off other people's tasks; we have our own mods to finish off! So yeah, sorry. Having more editors would be great in this though if you're interested~ -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I think it's just Gamepedia that causes it, but regardless, it often seizes while banners are loading and then crashes Chrome/Safari for iOS 8 (yes, I could update, but... muh jailbreak... and yes, I've tested this on non-jailbroken devices.)

TheSatanicSanta is in charge of improving the mobile skin ^^ -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I think the main problem is just a lack of content, especially for recent mods and modpacks.

Send more editors, thanks. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I think you have a bit of a paradox on your hands. The wiki is incomplete because you don't have enough people who understand the mods, and you don't have enough people who understand the mods because the information isn't on the wiki. I'm far from an expert with the mechanics in any of the modpacks I've used, but when I need help with something I usually find my answer in an ancient reddit thread rather than here.

Interesting thought. But, a lot of documentation for me is self-discovery (figuring out things and then documenting them) so I would have to disagree. Plenty of people can learn from just messing around the mod, or looking at the source code, or looking at other sources of information (in-game manuals, videos, etc). I'd rather have information here than ancient Reddit threads though, since those aren't quite as user friendly. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I would prefer that the dark skin be made default.

Eh, no, since less people seem to use it despite being informed of its existence, and because I'd be really annoyed if someone accused of copying the unofficial wiki (because everyone knows they invented the dark theme). The current skin is suppose to look like the FTB websites. But mainly I don't dark themes (although other editors disagree) -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd suggest breaking up the mod list on the front page by Minecraft version, or alternately, the list of modpacks. As it is, those lists are essentially unreadable, being one huge clump of links.

(Kind of goes back to an earlier statement) -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm really impressed with all the work that has gone into this wiki, and hope to see it further expanded in the future. Thank you

Thanks ^_^ I'm going to stop here, I need to head to bed. Will respond to other stuff later. -Xbony2 (talk) 03:12, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

A few changes for next survey

It will probably be in mid-2019.

• For "What Minecraft version(s) do you usually play on?" and "What Minecraft version(s) should the editors of the FTB Wiki focus on?" put a "(latest version)" on the latest, since people kept replying with "latest." Include "latest snapshot" in what is being played.
• For "What particular mod(s) should the editors of the FTB Wiki take attention to/document?" maybe use the word "specific" instead of "particular." Also end with "(besides from "all" or "tech mods")."
• For "What modpack launchers/mod managers do you use regularly?" include Hearth Launcher (assuming it is around then).
• For "What language(s) are you proficient in?" just use the stuff above 0.5% as provided above for the "default" responses.
• Change "...how interested are you in documentation translated to your language?" to "What languages do you prefer to use while reading documentation?".
• For "How often do you contribute to the FTB Wiki?" remove "I've done some editing in the past but don't really do it anymore" since it's kind of the same thing as "I've made a few edits here and there."
• For "If you don't contribute very much, why not?" specify all the ways you can not be interested. Other reasons though: "I'm not that familiar with modded Minecraft," "I think the wiki is complete enough," "I'm not that good at English/explaining things" and "I don't even play modded Minecraft."
• For "Do you have any final suggestions or words for the Official FTB Wiki?" note this section is not a way to get into contact with FTB or Curse. Really don't need the modpack suggestions.

Final notes

Thanks for responding if you did respond. Shout out to me for writing all of this and going through every response (which was a lot of work but I think it is still worth it. If you came from Reddit or Discord and don't know how to add a comment to this page, this page gives information on that (just put it under the horizontal line/the four -s). Like I said I'll be going through some of final suggestions later and responding to them. -Xbony2 (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Final discussion

I think it's worth mentioning that because the survey, and all things pointing to the survey, were written in English on English-default websites, the questions about language usage are obviously going to be skewed to a populace which speaks English. We basically have no way of knowing how many users want to use the wiki but can't because they speak no English. -- SatanicSanta🎅^{FTB Wiki Admin} 21:22, 8 January 2018 (UTC)