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What is the Dakka White Dwarf Index?

The Dakka White Dwarf Index's goal is to be a continuing and comprehensive index of the articles found in White Dwarf (Games Workshop's monthly catalog/magazine). It is being done in Dakka's article section (which is a wiki), that means absolutely anyone can jump in and participate if they are so inclined.

I have started with the most recent issues and plan to work my way backwards (I personally have from issue 100 all the way up to the current issue for the US publication).

You can see the initial efforts for issues 351-375 here.


What is the point of all this?

Although the amount of quality content in White Dwarf has undoubtably dipped in recent years, there still continues to be a number of quality nuggets of gaming material that players may want to find...including campaign ideas/rules, Apocalypse rules for 40K, scenarios, etc. Games Workshop has started putting up some WD articles in PDF form on their website, but its pretty sporadic, you never know which articles are going to be put up.

So, by cataloging all articles in WD, we allow people to find the quality articles they're looking for and know which issues of WD they need to look in and/or buy to find that stuff.

There are quite a few White Dwarf indexes already out there, but most of them cover the early years of WD. Very few have kept current and those that have seem to be dedicated to only following the articles from a single game system (like 40K). This index will list all the contents of every WD issue.


Why is the Dakka index organized the way it is? Why only 25 issues per page?

A wiki page can only display so many characters (letters/numbers/symbols)...65,000 to be exact. That means we can't fit the index for every single WD article on one page. Therefore, to ensure any page won't run out of room, we will be breaking them down into chunks of 25 issues per page.

So far I've only bothered to create the current 25: 351-375 and the 25 before that: 326-350, but the rest will be created as we work our way back.

There are only 3 columns listed in Dakka's WD index: Description, Pages, & Notes. Pages are obviously the page numbers that the article is on and description is the name and general description of the article itself. So what are 'notes' then? They are basically a breakdown of all the quality content that I really think people would want to go back to find. I know that's a subjective decision (some people may love Tactica articles for example), but remember that all the articles are still being logged, its just that the 'notes' are EXTRA detail.

The 'quality' content that I'm putting into the 'notes' area are: Battle Reports, Rules & Scenarios.

Battle reports are considered 'quality' material because they're probably still the most popular aspect of the magazine and it can be fun to go back and see how certain armies fared against other armies, or if a 'new' army ever lost their inaugural battle report, etc.

Rules & Scenarios are considered 'quality' material as these are things that people can actually directly use in their games...stuff like Apocalypse Formations, Campaign rules and mission scenarios.

Of course, if someone wants to become the 'champion' of another type of content (like painting or tactica articles) and thinks there needs to be additional information listed for those articles in the 'notes' section, then as this is a community article, they can certainly feel free to start adding that stuff into the 'notes' sections if they want.


How can I help?

If you own an issue of White Dwarf that hasn't been indexed yet, you can help by entering that information yourself into the index!

If you have ANY QUESTIONS AT ALL you can post them right here in this thread and I'll get back to you.

If you want to start working on an issue that doesn't have an Index page created for it yet you can post about it in this thread and I'll get around to creating the page. Of course, anyone can actually create the new index pages, but considering they do take a little bit of work to make the formatting the same between pages, its probably best if I get them 'started' and then you can fill the info for individual issues in.

The Index is mainly being done inside of a wiki 'table', so when you go to the page and click 'edit' you're going to see all the wiki code that makes up the table. If you are unsure of where to enter information DON'T PANIC. A wiki makes it absolutely impossible to permanently screw something up. Any changes you make can be really easily removed by me, so go for it!

Also, it can really help to 'edit' a section that has already been entered to see where the information is actually entered when looking at the source code of the wiki table.

And again, if you have ANY questions about wiki tables or where to enter some data, you can ask it here in this thread and as always you can look at our wiki tutorial guide (especially the part about 'tables').


What are you doing about International versions of White Dwarf?

All the issues I'm personally entering are going to be labeled as the 'US' version (at least back to issue 200 where they started doing different versions of the magazine). If you have a substantial collection of either the UK or AUS version of the magazine and you want to start indexing those issues, please let me know and we can get a UK and AUS set of pages started for you to work on.

And I think in recent years especially all the main content of the magazine is now the same regardless of country, so those issues you will probably be able to copy the info straight over from the US index that I've already entered.


So I hope some of you out there are interested in helping me on this project and I hope there are some of you out there who will enjoy utilizing it!

Great idea Yak
Now I won't have to by a £5 advert just to get 1 apoc formation

Gorechild wrote:Great idea Yak
Now I won't have to by a £5 advert just to get 1 apoc formation

No you still will. We are not posting copyrighted information (besides a pic of the cover of the issue)...we are simply telling you what page what information in which issue it is in.

So if you wanted a particular Apoc formation you'd know which WD to go out and buy to get it.

Aah fair enough, The mention of the PDF's on GW's site threw me off! At least it means I'll know which ones I should bother getting hold of.

Next Spanish issue will be number #192. I own every Spanish version issue since #1 to #191 with the exception of numbers #14, #29 and #78.

Would a Spanish WD section of the index be interesting for you?

Erasoketa wrote:Next Spanish issue will be number #192. I own every Spanish version issue since #1 to #191 with the exception of numbers #14, #29 and #78.

Would a Spanish WD section of the index be interesting for you?

Is it interesting to you, is the question!

I don't know how many other spanish regular members we have that collect WD there are that would help you out, so it may be that you'd be the only one doing any of the data entry. I would certainly do all the setting up of the pages for you and help you through figuring out where to enter the data, etc. but at the end of the day the question is whether or not it is something you want to do (and keep up with).

I'd certainly love to have as much information as possible on Dakka, so if that's something you want to do, then I'll help you do it!

Well, I would love an index of the issues. If I had one I could store my issues in boxes, free a lot of space in my shelves and use the index to unbox the issue(s) I need in a particular moment.

I think there aren't much Spanish dakkaites, so I can foresee little to none help. It doesn't bother me, actually. I guess I could do the job slowly. This might be a tool to tease a handful of Spanish lurkers (like I was) to register

Are you scanning the covers yourself? I don't have scanner so, by now, I could only do the research and indexing.

Erasoketa wrote:Well, I would love an index of the issues. If I had one I could store my issues in boxes, free a lot of space in my shelves and use the index to unbox the issue(s) I need in a particular moment.

I think there aren't much Spanish dakkaites, so I can foresee little to none help. It doesn't bother me, actually. I guess I could do the job slowly. This might be a tool to tease a handful of Spanish lurkers (like I was) to register

Are you scanning the covers yourself? I don't have scanner so, by now, I could only do the research and indexing.

Yeah, I'm scanning the covers myself.

If you don't have a scanner you could simply worry about writing the index part and add the cover images at a later date if and when you get the capability to do so (or find someone who will do it for you...if you get far enough along on the project we could always try to put a 'call out' to people who have the spanish language WDs in their collection, although like you said I don't know how many frequent Dakka).

Also, if the covers are essentially the same for an issue you could always 'use' the english language version and just put a note under it that the cover is the english language version for reference only.


But anyway, if you want to get started on this, just let me know and I'll get the page created for you...and what issue you plan to start on as well (starting with the current issue and working your way back or starting at the beginning and working your way forward).




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Okay first 'milestone' reached...the most recent 25 issues are now indexed (minus the two most recent as I don't have those yet).

Moving on to issues 326-350 now...

Could you put up a template for the page that would contain WD 238?, it's the only one i've got that you haven't already done.

great idea

FM Ninja 048 wrote:Could you put up a template for the page that would contain WD 238?, it's the only one i've got that you haven't already done.

great idea

You only have one issue that I haven't put up yet and its 238? That seems a bit odd!

I kind of don't want to create a huge gap between the stuff that is finished and then a whole page of nothing but one issue for a long time until I get down there...so I'll send you a PM when I do finally get close to that section and put up the page.

But again, if anyone who has more issues wants to hop in around the area I'm working on, please by all means do so! The wiki allows us to correct and add to each others' work, so the more the merrier!

I'll check if the few I own are up yet, and will do them later if they are not! Great idea, old chap!

Great Stuff

I have loads from 175 or so onwards, even some earlier ones, and will add what I can as and when I can ( ). I was let down when GW stopped this on their site - for all the terrabytes it must have taken up

I assume the UK and US issues are the same despite us being two nations divided by a common language?

yakface wrote:

FM Ninja 048 wrote:Could you put up a template for the page that would contain WD 238?, it's the only one i've got that you haven't already done.

great idea

You only have one issue that I haven't put up yet and its 238? That seems a bit odd!

Found it in a charity shop, has the rules for making and using space hulks in BFG so I snapped it up

warspawned wrote:
I assume the UK and US issues are the same despite us being two nations divided by a common language?

No the UK and US are different from issue 200 on. For a while the US and UK had quite a few different articles, some were written by the US team and the articles that did come from the UK were usually located in a different numbered issue than the number that they appeared in the UK.

Recently (the last 30+ issues) they've gone with only including articles from the UK, so I believe the overall content between the UK and the US is back to being roughly similar with the only differences being the currencies listed and the US vs. UK store ads.

That's why if someone with the UK version wants to help out I will make a separate index page for them...because there has been a difference between the two, especially in the past.

FM Ninja 048 wrote:
Found it in a charity shop, has the rules for making and using space hulks in BFG so I snapped it up

Ah, that makes sense. Anyway, I'll send you a PM in the future when we get near that realm of issues.

That's why if someone with the UK version wants to help out I will make a separate index page for them...because there has been a difference between the two, especially in the past.

I'd be more than happy to help out. I can do 5 or so issues at a time, with what I have, starting from 180 or so, I have a scanner so that's no problem. If you could make the separate Index page for me that would be awesome. This whole thing gives me an excuse to wander through memory lane which I haven't done since the last time I moved my collection

warspawned wrote:

That's why if someone with the UK version wants to help out I will make a separate index page for them...because there has been a difference between the two, especially in the past.

I'd be more than happy to help out. I can do 5 or so issues at a time, with what I have, starting from 180 or so, I have a scanner so that's no problem. If you could make the separate Index page for me that would be awesome. This whole thing gives me an excuse to wander through memory lane which I haven't done since the last time I moved my collection

Excellent. So I'll go ahead and make the UK page for issues 351-375 since that matches what I've done already. Can you look through those issues and see if the index is the same for those issues (which I think it may be since they went back to nearly a unified format besides the ads). If all those match, then we can just copy and paste the changes into the UK version and then we can both essentially be working on moving backwards until we find where the issues revert tp being really different between the two versions.

Does that sound good to you?

That sounds fine to me

Once you've done it could you either post a link in this thread or PM me? Looking at the covers I'm sure of got most, if not all, the recent ones. I know I'm missing a lot from around 4th ED 40k, but we'll cross that bridge (watching out for trolls) when we come to it. Thanks Yak!

This is a great idea! I'd love to help, but all the information I have is already on there, I think

I'm sure GW would thank you,honestly. It's amazing they didn't think of this first :3

warspawned wrote:That sounds fine to me

Once you've done it could you either post a link in this thread or PM me? Looking at the covers I'm sure of got most, if not all, the recent ones. I know I'm missing a lot from around 4th ED 40k, but we'll cross that bridge (watching out for trolls) when we come to it. Thanks Yak!

Okay, I've created a page for the UK version #'s 351-375 here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/White_Dwarf_Index_351-375_%28UK%29


I'm actually curious to know if the articles in these issues are any different from the US vesion (maybe just the page numbers are off as the ad content might be slightly different?).

You can totally go on a issue-by-issue basis and 'steal' the code from my version of the index if they are mostly the same (and just change the page numbers if they are different).

I also left the 'year' and 'game release' general headings in the index, as I'm hoping they fall at the same place for the UK version, but if not that's easy enough to shift around (just let me know).


And of course, if you have ANY questions regarding wiki code, just post it here. I figure the more public we have a conversation, the more likely other people will be to join in and help.

I have various early (UK) issues from 100 onwards, and would be happy to spend a little time adding these to the index.

Well Yak, I've done 351 - sadly all U.K issues are looking like they're an issue out. If you'd like to look over what I've done that would be cool. I'm missing about 7 issues (though I'm sure another one or two will turn up at some point) from this run as I only really buy WD now if it has a decent painting article in it.

I can see this will be a monumental task - but I managed it once I got my head round it and using your fine work for reference.

I couldn't get the Image code to work for the cover - not sure what I was doing wrong there

Anyway I'll do them as & when I can - now I've done the first the rest should be quicker, but now I really need to go and paint something so I can sell it like the ho' I am

If you could part your with wisdom on getting the cover up that would be sweet. Thanks

Ok...

I spent the last two days (my two days off this week) at my computer desk watching Big Bang Theory and indexing old White Dwarfs. Here's what I've got:

White Dwarf # 1 (yes, number ONE), 86, 89, 106, 112, 113, 118, 124, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139, 143, 145, 146, 147, 149, 155, 157, 158, 160, 161

I scanned front and back covers and a .txt file with the articles, authors, pages, and content. I zipped the whole shebang up into one neat file.
Who do I send it to? Or, to whom do I send the url to download it from?

I've been typing all those damned things for two days. I'm not doing it again...



King Ghidorah

warspawned wrote:Well Yak, I've done 351 - sadly all U.K issues are looking like they're an issue out. If you'd like to look over what I've done that would be cool. I'm missing about 7 issues (though I'm sure another one or two will turn up at some point) from this run as I only really buy WD now if it has a decent painting article in it.

I can see this will be a monumental task - but I managed it once I got my head round it and using your fine work for reference.

I couldn't get the Image code to work for the cover - not sure what I was doing wrong there

Anyway I'll do them as & when I can - now I've done the first the rest should be quicker, but now I really need to go and paint something so I can sell it like the ho' I am

If you could part your with wisdom on getting the cover up that would be sweet. Thanks

1) While it will be a monumental task, I don't think it is going to be as bad as you think, and here's why:

At least for the current set of issues, besides the UK and US numbers being off by one issue, all the content seems EXACTLY the same, even down to the page numbers...so there's no reason you just can't take what I already did for US issue 350 and transpose it over for the UK 351 (for example). So although you took the time to type out the UK351 index info, you really just should have copied/pasted my US 350, as they are exactly the same!

So with that in mind, you can simply start out by copy/pasting all the stuff I've done so far over into the UK page. Once you've finished that, you can then see where I'm at in terms of working my way backward and you and I (at the very least) can take turns adding issues to the index and we can both simply copy/paste the content off of each other until we get back to the point where the issues really were rather different between the two editions.

Does that make sense and work for you?


2) As for the cover image, the easiest way to do this is to upload the images directly into the article section. When you're in the articles section (where the index is located) on the left column you'll see a link to 'upload a file'. Click on this and then upload your image file...this will then create a 'page' containing your image which you can then use to insert into your index page (you can look at how I did that in the US indexes).

Take special care to always name your cover images the same way and you can make it very easy to know the 'code' you'll need to have to make the image appear. For example when uploading my covers, I've been naming all the images (You enter the name when you upload the file, I'm not talking about what the file name on your computer is actually called) as such:

yak-WD350-cover

So when you upload your your cover images you could name them (for example):

Slinky-WD350UK-cover

And that way you'll always know what the wiki 'code' for one of your issue covers will be. Again, if any of this isn't making sense, just break it down for me and I'll try to explain it better!


3) Regarding the one issue you did index, I wanted to make a few points to you:

• Although the wiki will force line breaks when needed and simply wrap the text, for clarity sake if you ever want to force a 'line break' (a carriage return) within a single cell, you just add the 'break' code: < br/ > , just without the spaces between the brackets and the text. If you look at any of the issues I indexed you can see where I use that line break code in order to add clarity when there are multiple points of interest that need to be listed in a single cell of the table.


• I intended the 'notes' column of the index rather than to be used to specify what the article is about (that should be in the description column along with the name of the article), it should be used to only highlight content that we think people can actually USE at a later date. What I mean by that is stuff like new rules for units, scenarios, campaign rules, Apocalypse datasheets, etc. I've also started including the model frame breakdowns (where they list all the parts on a plastic frame) because that info is actually not found on GW's website, so it could actually be useful for someone looking to find a specific part. The only other thing I'm including in 'other' is battle reports, because I think people really like them and often want to go back and check them out.

If you really think there's another type of content that we should be including in the 'other' column, let me know and we can agree to start including it, but otherwise in general the 'other' column should be left blank except for noting this exceptional type of content. Any additional descriptions you want to add for an article should be put into the 'description' cell along with the article name, just take a look at how I did it in the US index to see what I'm talking about.


• If you want to use bullet points (like I've done here and used in the US index) you can add them simply by typing 'ALT 0149' on a PC or 'alt asterisk' (the '8' key) on a mac.

Ghidorah wrote:Ok...

I spent the last two days (my two days off this week) at my computer desk watching Big Bang Theory and indexing old White Dwarfs. Here's what I've got:

White Dwarf # 1 (yes, number ONE), 86, 89, 106, 112, 113, 118, 124, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139, 143, 145, 146, 147, 149, 155, 157, 158, 160, 161

I scanned front and back covers and a .txt file with the articles, authors, pages, and content. I zipped the whole shebang up into one neat file.
Who do I send it to? Or, to whom do I send the url to download it from?

I've been typing all those damned things for two days. I'm not doing it again...



King Ghidorah

Well, the hope for this project was that since its a wiki you can simply add the information yourself to the actual page here on Dakka (although I haven't made the page yet for those older issues). If you're not interested in attempting to add the info yourself into Dakka's wiki you can certainly email me the zip file to: yakface@dakkadakka.com although I probably won't get around to adding that info myself to the index until I work my way back to that point (which may take quite a while).

So...

Pre issue 200 or so, the UK and US editions were the same?

Where do these go in the wiki, since there are 2 categories at the moment, UK and US - do they go under UK?

I just wanted to announce that I've finished indexing back to issue 333, which was where Apocalypse debuted, so it made sense to finally create the first offshoot of the WD index, that being the Apocalypse rules index:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/White_Dwarf_Apocalypse_Rules_Index_%28US%29


If you've ever had trouble remembering which issue of WD had which Apocalypse datasheets in it (as GW hasn't published them all as PDFs), then this will finally help you out.


Note, that this list doesn't currently include issues 334 or 374 as I haven't picked up 374 yet, and I can't find my 334.


Again, if anyone wants to help on the overall indexing project, please, please feel free to jump in and help. If you have any questions, just post them in this thread!

Slinky wrote:So...

Pre issue 200 or so, the UK and US editions were the same?

Where do these go in the wiki, since there are 2 categories at the moment, UK and US - do they go under UK?

Sorry I somehow missed this question. I think I was gearing up for Adepticon and it slipped through.

Yes, once I get back to pre-issue 200 we will only have one page for those issues as there were no international versions, they just shipped the UK version abroad. I can definitely create a page for you to start on if you really want to work on indexing that area (just let me know), but again the current plan is to work my way backwards as there are a bunch of other index sites on the internet that already cover early WD issues...so it's much more helpful for people who want to work on the 200-330 range for the time being. But of course, if that's your passion (and the only issues you have) then let me know and I'll get it set up for you.

Very cool to see this is ongoing.

I happened to stumble upon this site while searching for various warhammer fun and thought someone might find it useful for putting together the White Dwarf index.

A number of missing issues, but there are quite a lot there and as far as I can see all the issues that are there have a full page/contents breakdown.

For anyone looking for an index of earlier issues, this one covers #1 - 329.

http://www.gamehobby.net/white_dwarf_magazine/white_dwarf_magazine.html