elanthipedia talk:Manual of Style

This page is for discussing the Manual of Style in general, or changes to non-specific article standards.

Script Page

Here is my proposal for script articles. --Isharon 19:50, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Page Change

Due to the previous MOS being so bare-bones, I decided to integrate the MOS/new with the old one, and to parcel out each specific type of article to have it's own subpage. This is a work in progress, so bare with me. -Caraamon Strugr-Makdasi 16:55, 30 May 2008 (CDT)

Suggestion - have a MOS "contents" header with links to other MOS sections, or perhaps something similar to what I have on the Help pages. --Naeya ^(talk) 21:50, 30 May 2008 (CDT)

Damn, there you go making me look bad. Haven't you been told? I think of everything and if I don't think of it, it's not needed. Bah! Oh, I just had a great idea, I'll add a header for MOS with links to other sections! :P -Caraamon Strugr-Makdasi 18:18, 31 May 2008 (CDT)

Style Page Format Discussions

Eh, I wrote not to edit until things had had time to be discussed, then promptled began editing. Well, at least I'm a dedicated hypocrite. -Caraamon Strugr-Makdasi 03:38, 20 April 2008 (CDT)

Article Content vs Length

I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts on when articles should be broken up. Obviously, when the file size of the original page starts pushing the upper limits (as in the case of the original Necromancer article) it's kinda a no-brainer. Beyond that, what criteria are used? Specifically, take a look at Prydaen Terminology and its associated talk page. Here we've got two conflicting viewpoints, both with very valid pros and cons. I see other areas of the wiki I'd like to fiddle with, but I'm hesitant to make organizational/structural changes without a general consensus. --Ogoh 01:53, 17 May 2008 (CDT)

I break down the page only when a section is large enough to stand on its own without destroying the flow of the original. I would never break down a long library book, for example. I would not break down the Command Compendium with thousands of one-sentence pages about each command, but I probably would break off entire sections of commands based on command type.--Symphaena 11:50, 17 May 2008 (CDT)

Conversation Transfer

It occurred to me that standardization seems to be a big issue all accoss subjects. Take a look at this and see what you think. --Caraamon Strugr-Makdasi 13:55, 19 April 2008 (CDT)

Yeah, excellent project, and a huge one to tackle... you've certainly bitten off a lot ;) Standardization is something that I feel strongly about, as uniformity of presentation makes the info a lot easier to use. We already have a vestigial Manual of Style page though. I'm going to move the new one to Elanthipedia:Manual of Style/new so it can be worked on it there.

I also did a little editing to remove the reference to "admin approved". Admins don't have any special rights above other users to determine what the style should be, I see our role more as facilitators and mediators should any disagreements or other conflicts arise among the community. Naturally, admins are usually users who have demonstrated a high degree of participation in the wiki, but that doesn't exclude other users from participating as fully in any area of content should they choose. I think it's important to maintain a community-focussed approach in a wiki so everyone feels welcome to contribute. To that end I'll also un-protect the page. Also this would be a natural to announce in the Projects page or on one of the Town Green sections. --Farman 14:12, 19 April 2008 (CDT)

Well that's odd, I specifically did a search for style and came up with nothing. Oh well. As for protected and such, you're right, I suppose. It just seems like if we don't set down a standard quickly, by the time the argueing has ended, it'll be even more disorganized... -Caraamon Strugr-Makdasi 15:02, 19 April 2008 (CDT)

I agree about standardizing articles. The way it's usually worked is that someone 'adopts' a certain area of the wiki and works out and lays down a standard. But given the nature of wiki's it's pretty much a given that it will get messed up along the way ;) A certain amount of sloppiness is inevitable since it's so massively collaborative.

About searching, I've also long noticed that the search tool doesn't seem to give very good results... Naeya, is this something that can be improved? --Farman 23:22, 19 April 2008 (CDT)

This whole project sounds very useful; it may be worth mentioning "titles" in this, but O well (speaking of which, I think the title template may need some cleanup, for better understanding too). Anyway, this all seems great.

As for Searching, I think we may be best to modify the actual wiki template a bit and utilize google searches instead of wiki searching, ignoring the categories won't hurt us that much, since the wiki search does not yet support "proper" category-based/limiting searches it seems. --Callek 12:41, 20 April 2008 (CDT)

Attributions

Okay, here's the issue: I've had at least one issue of people taking info from other sites without attribution. So this brings up the question, of whether we should allow attributions.

Why is this a problem? Because then we have to decide what deserves it. Plus there's the whole fact that no site has any real right to use this info since we're taking copyrighted info from a commerical game. Let's hear some thoughts on the subject. -Moderator Caraamon Strugr-Makdasi^(talk) 03:11, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Information is always free to disseminate, but you can't always spread it in the form you found it. Copyright protects a specific presentation that someone has worked hard to put together. Attribution is appropriate when you are copying parts of someone else's presentation on a subject (quoting word for word from something). However anyone is free to view another's work, glean ideas from it, and use it as building material for your own project. Additionally, no one is allowed to claim another's work as their own, nor by not attributing it to the true author create the impression that it is your own work. If you figure out the Colonel's Secret Recipe for fried chicken, there's nothing to stop you from telling everyone what it is; but it's a crime to take his barrel of spice-mixture from his warehouse and sell it as your own.

Put in terms of practical use for a DR wiki: if (for example) Simu announces a game mechanic change you can tell whoever you want about it, but if you choose to do so by copy/pasting a GM's post on the subject you MUST at the very least attribute the source and the date they made the statement (preferably also a link to the site and the date you copy/pasted it, so that readers can check it for themselves). If another player discovers a game mechanic and posts about it on their own site, you again are free to transfer the information but not to use their words to do so without giving them credit.

This does not mean that quoting someone is polite; just because you aren't breaking a law doesn't mean people have to like what you've done. This is why reporters like to ask "Can I quote you on that?" before just printing a quote - it keeps their source happy and likely to provide more quotes later on. The advice I would give is that whether you are going to quote someone's exact words or just paraphrase the information, keep in mind that while they can't actually stop you from doing it they might still be offended. After all, this person is a useful source, and if you want them to ever be a useful source again you should try to keep them happy. --Aracin 18:52, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

compendiums & anatomy charts

So I was in Gersvinda's Natural Studies confirming the shop inventory for HE425, and I noticed some of the double red !! marks on a few items, so I went to each to see about resolving whatever issue they had. What I found was that both the covers, and the charts, were all over the place as far as how the item type was listed. If I can get some clarification on how each item should be flagged, I'll take on the project of updating these across the wiki to be uniform.

compendiums: are these containers, or stackers, or both (or neither!). A sample item can be found here: Item:Slim compendium bound with plush starlight velvet
anatomy charts: Should these only be "anatomy charts", or "trainers" as well? Then on a number of charts, I saw something similar to this in the free text:

Requires approximately [[requires scholarship skill::710]] scholarship to use. Trains both [[trains::Scholarship skill]] and [[trains::First Aid skill]].

And that would obviously stay, however these also train empathy for Empaths, so should that be added in too? Or do we only need to keep the 1st sentence (with the skill required section) with the tagging as an "anatomy chart". A sample item can be found here: Item:Dryad anatomy chart

Anyhow, let me know what the MOS overview for these should be and I'll try and clean things up a bit. --Kythryn 02:05, 6 November 2017 (CST)

Discord "Post" Template

So back in February, GM Zadraes indicated that the DR/Simu forums will eventually be closed out. (post here). And, I've seen a number of Discussions started on various pages over the past few years with a link to a Red Name Discord post with information relevant to that page topic. Is it time to create a new template for Discord post documentation? And if so, would it be possible to create a corresponding FORM for it to help ease naming and formatting guidelines? Kythryn 10:18, 16 April 2022 (CDT)

This has come up a couple of times on the #elanthipedia channel in the official discord. I don't have any objections to doing something like this -- I've thought about it myself -- but I'm struggling with how to implement it correctly.

We do not have the ability to add new custom namespaces. Forum captures all live in the "Post" namespace. Using that existing namespace for both types of captures is theoretically possible, but it muddies things up. Most likely this would mean that the existing form would be used for BOTH types with some sort of toggle.
1. For a devil's advocate suggestion, we could instead delegate all POST pages as forum pages and just create a new PAGEPREFIX for the Discord posts, so the page link might read DISCORD:ILITHI SHOPS GET OVERHAUL 4/16/2022. I imagine adding this would need to be done at Lyneya's level or by on-site staff, but as we have other PAGEPREFIX's outside box-wiki installation (ie. ARMOR, WEAPON, etc.), while not as easy as the Moderators rolling it in, should be possible. And then just make up a new set of PROPERTIES & FORMS to match the new PAGEPREFIX.
2. However I agree that they would both make sense under the POST group and I think if we can make it work without breaking all the current POST's, this is the better approach so that when someone is searching old POST's for things, they look through both the Forums and the Discord records at the same time. I think a toggle makes sense if we can integrate it into the current FORM, which doesn't look like it would be too awful once we address the below issues.
3. Of course, the ideal resolution would be if there was a (secure) BOT that could just auto-populate a Discord post directly to the wiki here if a Red Name flags it as "Important". Obviously we don't need to have every casual Red Name post documented here, but if a GM knows that the post they are making has important information for the player base, if they had a flag they could add at the time or retroactively to indicate that, the BOT could grab it and post it here for documentation.
Beyond the text itself, what would we be capturing? Structurally, these are different mediums.
- There is no title. How would we name and organize discord captures?

While we'd loose the "at a glance" information the current Forums titles offer, maybe it's just the quick capture of Channel/Red Name/Date and then we (try) and lean hard on associated subjects during documentation? So:

POST:DISCORD - EVENTS AND HAPPENINGS - LYNEYA - 4/16/2022

Alternately, we might try and create a FORM that helps with auto-population of the POST title from common subjects, similar to how the ARMOR form makes suggestions on the TAG fields. So that might look something like:

POST:EVENTS AND HAPPENINGS (ILITHI, FERDAHL, AWARDS CEREMONY) - LYNEYA - 4/16/2022

It would be nice to automate the choice on the titling somehow but I agree there isn't a clear path on how to do it.

- Discord itself is much more ephemeral than the forums are. Not a problem, per se, but information can get changed and deleted much more easily.

Yea, although we've seen GM's keep adding more useful information to Forums' threads for years, not all of which gets documented here depending on which Wiki user is following the thread and how motivated they are to document each one. I don't think we can ever expect 100% documentation of important Red Name posts, no matter the platform they using, unless we somehow get the GM's to post here to the Wiki themselves.
One feature that would be nice to have, and I don't know that this is possible with how Discord works, but right now, you do have to be logged into Discord via your browser in order to follow the links that are on our wiki pages. On the linked Forum's posts, you can always read that post regardless of your login status to the play.net web site; you just need to log in to follow the thread. Be nice if we could get that from the Discord links too.

In the interim, what I've been doing when incorporating Discord sourcing is either adding the information to the appropriate Talk pages, and/or using inline page references with direct links back to the discord server. I don't know if either of these are good or sustainable approaches.

I guess we could create a TEMPLATE that adds the link in a more structured way until we figure out how to deal with the Discord documentation. But right now, I think it's fine and it's nice to have them; personally I'm glad to see the links as I don't log into Discord unless I'm specifically looking for something, so I know I miss quite a few Red Name posts and running across a link here has let me know more than once that I missed something of interest.

It's a good idea. My question is more about how it should work. -- TK-421 (talk) 13:01, 16 April 2022 (CDT)

Maybe for now, we do flesh out a general plan but just implement a "link template"; in re-reading that original Zadraes post, it does imply there are some web site upgrades that may be happening, which could include here on the wiki. Maybe they are already working on this or a tangential issue on-site which will give us more options to work with once the Forum phase out happens? Hope springs eternal, right? :) Kythryn 19:14, 16 April 2022 (CDT)

I did go ahead and make up a quick template for the Discord Link standardization. I'm not tied to the wording or formatting, just copied that from the EditConsolidation template so it would be familiar. The template is Template:DiscordLink, and an example in use can be found here: Droughtman's Challenge 441#Leaderboard Champion Run Kythryn 13:19, 17 April 2022 (CDT)