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[voliol]

{{old}} is a very practical template to use whenever a new update comes up, to remind that a certain article needs updating when you don’t have time/done the research yet. I feels like it’s lacking a way to refer to which version changed things up though, as if you had that other users could look at the right release information to make the change/know which science to do.

I.e. in addition to

This article or section may need to be updated due to recent changes.

there should be e.g.

This article or section may need to be updated due to changes in 0.47.05.

[lethosor]

{{old}} is a very practical template to use whenever a new update comes up, to remind that a certain article needs updating when you don’t have time/done the research yet. I feels like it’s lacking a way to refer to which version changed things up though, as if you had that other users could look at the right release information to make the change/know which science to do.

I.e. in addition to

This article or section may need to be updated due to recent changes.

there should be e.g.

This article or section may need to be updated due to changes in 0.47.05.

Added: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Template:Old (there was already support for adding details, but this flows a bit better for "changes in v0.xx.xx", although it only supports a single version).  Thanks for the suggestion!

These are two things I've been wanting to do for a long time but it seems like a large chore. I'd like to do this for all tokens, not just creatures, is there any simple way to create a category page from all known Tokens and then populate it from the raws that token appears in? I can imagine a script that could do it with the raws themselves but I don't know how it would work in on a wiki.

Maybe we could also make a template sidebar for items/objects (like creatures have) that holds the common item info like the translations, description, the stockpile it belongs to, possible materials, tile, image from the premium release, possible workshops it can be made in, etc?

Searching the raws is currently done with a custom extension: https://github.com/quietust/DFRawFunctions
The raws are stored on disk on the wiki, and are also used for pages like https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Cat/raw. There are several layers of templates that pull from the raws in order to generate sidebars on pages like https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Cat, but most raw-dependent categories are also added from these templates. https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Template:CreatureInfo_v0.40 is one that categorizes pages, and it is typically invoked from https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Template:Creaturelookup/0, which actually looks up the relevant data from the raws.

While it would theoretically be possible to categorize pages based on everything in the raws, that would clutter the category lists and add a lot of maintenance overhead for maintaining the category pages (like https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Category:DF2014:Grazer), so I would recommend not doing that except for traits of creatures that are definitely useful to search by.

[BlueManedHawk]

Hi.  I use the wiki a lot, and I feel like I should make my voice heard.

Firstly, I think that the main page of the wiki isn't great.  The term "Dwarf Fortress Wiki" should be larger, and the organization of the various things on the page isn't the best.  I think that the pages new players will need immediately (which is currently just an orange-outlined box) should be right at the top, and among the four articles there should be a fifth article containing important notes, such as "There is no way to win and hundreds of ways to lose." and "You should always set up things (such as a farm, a milatia, a hopstital, etc.) before you need it.".  Under that would be the quote and image of the day, followed by extremely useful articles below.

Second, I'm not a fan of the current rating system for articles.  I think that the guidelines for article rating are overall too vague, and there aren't enough ratings.  I personally think that a rating system that goes "tatterred, normal, well-crafted, finely-crafted, superior, exceptional, masterwork, artifact" would be best, with "tattered" being used for unfinished articles, and "artifact" being reserved for articles that are important enough to be on the main page. 

Third thing:  I'm not sure what I think about spoiler tags.  There are certainly plenty of things that seem like they should be experienced first-hand, but what those things are seems somewhat difficult to pinpoint in a way that everyone agrees on.  Furthermore, I fear that having spoiler tags can make it seem like the game is more linear than people expect, which could turn people off from the game.  Additionally, I think that a consistent list of spoiler-prevention words such as "clowns", "candy", and "circus" needs to be kept.  I also think that it may be a good idea to state when people should look at spoilery articles; for example, the page for adamantine could say at the top "This article contains minor spoilers.  You should wait until you see an announcement that looks like this before continuing:  [Raw adamantine!  Praise the miners!]".

Fourth thing:  I feel that the Wiki needs to be promoted in more places, such as in #df-questions in the Kitfox discord and in the biweekly DF questions thread on the subreddit.

Fifth thing:  I think that it would be nice to have various things, such as creatures, metals, stones, gems, etc. under "subnamespaces", if that's a thing or possible.

Sixth thing:  I would like to see a dark mode available on the wiki, since most dark mode extensions distort the colored text.

I hope that this didn't come off as rude.

EDIT:  I forgot to mention that I would like to see the current captcha system replaced with something less intrusive, since ReCAPTCHA is run by Google, and Google is a terrible company.

[lethosor]

Firstly, I think that the main page of the wiki isn't great.  The term "Dwarf Fortress Wiki" should be larger, and the organization of the various things on the page isn't the best.  I think that the pages new players will need immediately (which is currently just an orange-outlined box) should be right at the top, and among the four articles there should be a fifth article containing important notes, such as "There is no way to win and hundreds of ways to lose." and "You should always set up things (such as a farm, a milatia, a hopstital, etc.) before you need it.".  Under that would be the quote and image of the day, followed by extremely useful articles below.

The design has gone through several iterations. Not saying it's "perfect" by any means, but there have been a number of compromises made to balance overall appearance and positioning of important information. I personally think the orange box is close enough to the top and stands out enough that it's fairly easy to find.

A page like the one you described could be useful. I'm not sure if there is one already.

Second, I'm not a fan of the current rating system for articles.  I think that the guidelines for article rating are overall too vague, and there aren't enough ratings.  I personally think that a rating system that goes "tatterred, normal, well-crafted, finely-crafted, superior, exceptional, masterwork, artifact" would be best, with "tattered" being used for unfinished articles, and "artifact" being reserved for articles that are important enough to be on the main page. 

We did go from 4 to 5 at one point, but decided we didn't need more at the time. It is subjective, yes, but 8 would take up a lot of space, and I'm not seeing a strong reason to exactly match DF's item quality scale.

Fourth thing:  I feel that the Wiki needs to be promoted in more places, such as in #df-questions in the Kitfox discord and in the biweekly DF questions thread on the subreddit.

The questions threads already link to the wiki (example from yesterday). I haven't really monitored the Discord channel you mentioned much, but it could be worth adding references to the wiki there if there aren't any already. It's not something that can be done on the wiki side, though.

[/quote]
Fifth thing:  I think that it would be nice to have various things, such as creatures, metals, stones, gems, etc. under "subnamespaces", if that's a thing or possible.
[/quote]
That's not a feature that exists, unfortunately.

Sixth thing:  I would like to see a dark mode available on the wiki, since most dark mode extensions distort the colored text.

It has been suggested a few times. There might be a wiki extension we could install for it, but if the colored text you're referring to is in the articles themselves, it would almost certainly have the same issue. (Are you referring to the "article version" box, snippets of DF-style inline text, or something else?)

EDIT:  I forgot to mention that I would like to see the current captcha system replaced with something less intrusive, since ReCAPTCHA is run by Google, and Google is a terrible company.

The wiki relies heavily on Google ads to keep the servers running. It might be possible to replace ReCAPTCHA; the only usable alternative I'm seeing that our extension supports is https://www.hcaptcha.com/, and I'm not sure if our version of the extension supports it, but it might work as a replacement.

[BlueManedHawk]

The [main page's] design has gone through several iterations. Not saying it's "perfect" by any means, but there have been a number of compromises made to balance overall appearance and positioning of important information. I personally think the orange box is close enough to the top and stands out enough that it's fairly easy to find.

A page like the one you described could be useful. I'm not sure if there is one already.

Alright, then.  I guess the main page works fine for now, and while I would like to see it revised a bit more, I don't want to disturb anybody.

We did go from 4 to 5 [quality levels] at one point, but decided we didn't need more at the time. It is subjective, yes, but 8 would take up a lot of space, and I'm not seeing a strong reason to exactly match DF's item quality scale.

Alright, after taking this into consideration, I have a new proposal:
- "Tattered" would be used specifically for stubs and unfinished things.
- "Well-crafted" would be the default, used for things like articles on specific stones, gems, creatures...pretty much anything there's a lot of.
- "Finely-crafted"  would be used for the above things, but really notable examples, such as obsidian, star sapphires, fire men, etc.
- "Superior" would be used for things that aren't the most important, such as dice, taverns, hotkeys, etc.
- "Exceptional" would be used for things that are important, but not important enough to be directly linked on the main page, such as megabeasts, trading and caravans, þe hidden fun stuff, etc.
- "Masterwork" would be reserved for things that are important enough to be linked to on the main page, such as the military, dwarves, fun, etc.

I think that this is a fine amount of granularity, since six is a nice number and it follows the scheme in DF pretty well.

I've also realized that this is more of an importance indicator than a quality indicator.  Maybe it could be implemented alongside the current system, although the current system works fine as-is.

[Subnamespaces is] not a feature that exists, unfortunately.

Dang.  Would there be some other way to sort them?

[Dark mode] has been suggested a few times. There might be a wiki extension we could install for it, but if the colored text you're referring to is in the articles themselves, it would almost certainly have the same issue. (Are you referring to the "article version" box, snippets of DF-style inline text, or something else?)

I'm specifically referring to DF-style inline text.

[lethosor]

Alright, then.  I guess the main page works fine for now, and while I would like to see it revised a bit more, I don't want to disturb anybody.

I'm not opposed to revisions - if we can make it easier to navigate, that's fine by me! I just don't think there's a need for a major redesign, or the controversy that could come with a major redesign. But it's a wiki, and it can be changed.

Alright, after taking this into consideration, I have a new proposal:
- "Tattered" would be used specifically for stubs and unfinished things.
- "Well-crafted" would be the default, used for things like articles on specific stones, gems, creatures...pretty much anything there's a lot of.
- "Finely-crafted"  would be used for the above things, but really notable examples, such as obsidian, star sapphires, fire men, etc.
- "Superior" would be used for things that aren't the most important, such as dice, taverns, hotkeys, etc.
- "Exceptional" would be used for things that are important, but not important enough to be directly linked on the main page, such as megabeasts, trading and caravans, þe hidden fun stuff, etc.
- "Masterwork" would be reserved for things that are important enough to be linked to on the main page, such as the military, dwarves, fun, etc.

I've also realized that this is more of an importance indicator than a quality indicator.  Maybe it could be implemented alongside the current system, although the current system works fine as-is.

I was also about to point out that the current system is more of a quality (or sometimes completeness) indicator than an importance indicator (the criteria for "masterwork" do mention importance a bit, but there are several other criteria as well).

It's an interesting idea, anyway, although I'm not sure that we need a sixth ranking enough to warrant the effort to roll out such a change. (And a minor point: we've abbreviated some due to space constraints, e.g. "finely crafted" is "fine", and I'm not sure if "well" would work, er, well in this context.)

[Subnamespaces is] not a feature that exists, unfortunately.

Dang.  Would there be some other way to sort them?

We already have categories and infobox templates for all of the things you mentioned. For instance, https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Lapis_lazuli has a "Gems" box at the bottom and is in the https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Category:DF2014:Gems category. (Yes, I know that last link looks like a sub-namespace, but the second colon is just part of the page title; we have custom templates to handle categories, but supporting that type of title for regular pages is harder.)

In this case, adding {{gems}} to the bottom of the page is all that's necessary - likely similar for other pages, but you can click the "edit" tab and scroll down to the bottom of the text editor if you're curious. Also, feel free to add this if you notice it missing from any pages that it should be on (it's a wiki )

I'm specifically referring to DF-style inline text.

Ok, thanks, that helps. Do you have a screenshot of the issue handy?

[clinodev]

Fourth thing:  I feel that the Wiki needs to be promoted in more places, such as in #df-questions in the Kitfox discord and in the biweekly DF questions thread on the subreddit.

The questions threads already link to the wiki (example from yesterday). I haven't really monitored the Discord channel you mentioned much, but it could be worth adding references to the wiki there if there aren't any already. It's not something that can be done on the wiki side, though.

On the reddit side, it's mentioned in the Questions Thread, and then in the sidebar multiple times as well. We consider the wiki a critical resource, and try to encourage everyone to search it carefully before asking questions in the Questions Thread (because answering "how dorf dig" too many times tends to wear down volunteer helpers.) Our efforts are thwarted, alas, by the fact that hardly anyone reads the sidebar.

On the Kitfox Discord side, the wiki gets linked and referenced pretty much constantly, as you can imagine. It's pinned in #df-questions already but I've added a newer pin to move it up the list, and pinned it in #df-discussion as well. I've inquired about adding the Wiki link to the #df-questions channel topic text as well.

Insomuch as I can speak for both the subreddit and the Discord, it's very much in our interests to encourage the use of the wiki as much as possible, for simple manpower reasons beyond it being indisputably the best source for DF information. If you (or anyone else,) have any further suggestions for how we can better promote it, feel free to contact us via modmail on reddit or me directly on reddit or discord.

[clinodev]

There we go, the new pin and new channel text.

[Nopenope]

This has been said elsewhere, but a good way to obtain some info about the game is to look at the posts made by Toady One and Quietust - by definition whatever they say is true. Also trawl some 'research' or 'science' threads on the forums and reddit and so on. Just copy and paste it all to the wiki.

[lethosor]

Just copy and paste it all to the wiki.

For anyone taking this advice, I would encourage you to take a look at this discussion first - make sure the information you are including is up-to-date.

(A minor side comment: Quietust is not actually a DF dev, although much of his research is accurate.)

[Tsov]

I added a bunch of articles - it's crazy how many features from the latest version were missing. They're mostly stubs but hopefully they will push people to add to them.

[Bumber]

Grasshoppers can now be caught in animal traps as of 0.47.05. I updated the grasshopper page, but I'm not sure how to update the raws.

Also, the displayed raws on the grasshopper page (and others) contains "1 kph" at the beginning, which actually belongs to the previous creature's (giant moth) climbing gait. I suspect an automated process is being used to divide up the raws, which can hopefully be changed to divide after the newline instead.

[lethosor]

I suspect an automated process is being used to divide up the raws, which can hopefully be changed to divide after the newline instead.

Correct, it is https://github.com/quietust/DFRawFunctions. But changing it unfortunately introduces the opposite issue, because relevant text is sometimes added before raws. I believe the decision was made to assume that text corresponds to the object following it because that is the case more often.

[Bumber]

Correct, it is https://github.com/quietust/DFRawFunctions. But changing it unfortunately introduces the opposite issue, because relevant text is sometimes added before raws. I believe the decision was made to assume that text corresponds to the object following it because that is the case more often.

That wouldn't even fix it, because the split actually belongs between comments. Can it not make an exception for text on the same line as a tag?

Here's the relevant part of the raws:

Code: (creature_bug_slug_new.txt) [Select]

[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_CLIMBING_GAITS:9000:8900:8825:8775:9500:9900] 1 kph

Grasshoppers were sponsored by the generous contributions of the Bay 12 community.

Bernard Suits

[CREATURE:GRASSHOPPER]
[DESCRIPTION:A tiny insect which uses its powerful legs to leap and make noise.]
It just needs to split after the "1 kph" instead of before it.

[lethosor]

Oh, that exception might be possible. It has been a while since I've looked at the parser, though.