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[Grakelin]

Haven't you ever played Lord of the Rings? 'Fine' means the goblin got to hit you once or twice before you killed it.

[Draco18s]

Haven't you ever played Dwarf Fortress?  Fine are the beds you give to your peasants.

[Vengeful Donut]

Haven't you ever played Dwarf Fortress?  Fine are the beds you give to your peasants.

Fine means one thing in DF. It means something completely different in English (the language the wiki is written in). Game references and in-jokes are good only up until they conflict with common sense and usability. It's ridiculous to label the lowest quality articles fine. They are not fine.

[Graebeard]

Since this discussion has come up again I'll reiterate my approval of the fine/exceptional/masterwork designations.

They are not only an in-joke, but also a way to introduce new players to in-game terminology.  As an objectively understandable system of ranking, it is far superior to the elven/human/dwarven system it supplanted.

As to new players being confused, it's a great improvement and I doubt it will cause much confusion.  While the primary audience of the wiki is new and learning players, the quality designations seem to be aimed at a more sophisticated audience: those able and willing to improve the quality of the articles.

[Vengeful Donut]

Yes, we can make our words mean whatever we want to if we work at it. All you have to do is say "when i say the word X, I mean suchandsuch" and then you can expect them to understand you whenever you say X.
However, that extra step in communication is unnecessary if you use a language each of you knows at the start!

Even if the rank-by-races is no good, that doesn't make fine a good label for articles which are not fine. If you want a DF quality theme, xShoddyx or xTatteredx would fit the bill pretty well.

[ManaUser]

You could always add a xBrokenx category for really bad articles...

[Mason11987]

hmmmm.... okay.  I get it.  We'll have "stub" be a separate tag we apply to articles.  And I'll change them to fine exceptional and masterwork.

So poor-quality articles are "fine" now?

I think there's something about this that you aren't understanding.

Something I'm not understanding?  This is a much better system then elven/human/dwarven, even if the bottom level isn't "accurate" at least it can still be obviously differentiated from the other levels, which is better then elven/human/dwarven.

I saw numerous suggestions here and on the wiki when the discussion was up, and I tried to meet what people wanted but you apparantly can't appease everyone.

Summary:  This is better then it was before (Thank you Briess for doing it btw, it was a great foundation), noone suggested using "XbadX" before so I didn't do that.  If you think you can improve it, add a 4th level, or scrap Fine for something else.  Don't get mad at me because I didn't meet your requirements when you didn't say them when we asked for comments.

[G-Flex]

It's not about "our requirements"; it simply doesn't make sense even at first glance for the lowest possible quality to be something positive.

[Footkerchief]

It's not about "our requirements"; it simply doesn't make sense even at first glance for the lowest possible quality to be something positive.

Makes plenty of sense to me.  This isn't a rating system for telling people their article sucks.  It's reasonable for the ratings to reflect the fact that even an article with a lot of room for improvement can still be useful and informative.

I'm happy with the fine/exceptional/masterwork stuff.  I wasn't crazy about the elven/human/dwarven system, but it was okay too.  It's sad that people are more interested in arguing over the names than actually using the rating system or otherwise contributing to the wiki.

[G-Flex]

... And if the article isn't really any good? What then? The point is that saying an article is good when it is not good is a bad thing. If you're going to have some kind of rating system, you need to account for the ability to say that something isn't good, or at the very least, not be forced into saying that it is. Yes, even extremely poorly-written articles can have valid information in them, but they're still extremely poorly-written, and saying that literally any article is a good article is not a very good thing. If you're going to rate something, you need to be able to say more than good things about it.

[Footkerchief]

If you're going to rate something, you need to be able to say more than good things about it.

That's what the talk page is for.  The purpose of this rating, as I understand it, is to organize articles into three tiers according to how much improvement is needed, so that contributors can find the ones that need work.  Any value judgment implied by the particular word is completely secondary.  The ratings could as easily be 1/2/3 or red/green/blue.  In other words, this is more like the priority field on the bug tracker than a star rating on youtube.

Do you have any constructive ideas for a better approach?

[Blacken]

Why fuck with something that already works?

Incomplete/Stub/Problematic Artcle
(regular) Article
Good Article
Featured Article

Done. Problem solved. That wasn't hard.

Human beings read the Wiki. Human beings who don't necessarily know a lot about Dwarf Fortress. That is not the place to hurp about how DF-nerdy you are. User-friendliness was already borked the fuck out by the namespace migration, but you don't need to make it even more impenetrable for people who just want to find out how wells work.

[G-Flex]

Yes. There are plenty of words in the English language with which to say that something is of subpar quality. Pick one, or something.

The ratings should ideally be able to represent a substandard article, a decent article, and a very good article, at the least. We have three categories, so that's fine.

I say that we should either use suitable words, or use ranks that don't really imply much of anything (like your examples).

I guess you could do both and go with something like "bronze - silver - gold", which was already suggested, since none of them really have much of an absolute meaning, the metal theme works for DF, and it's clear which is better than the other. It makes sense to people whether or not they're new to DF. Simple wiki functionality should not rely on injokes.

Why fuck with something that already works?

Incomplete/Stub/Problematic Artcle
(regular) Article
Good Article
Featured Article

Done. Problem solved. That wasn't hard.

This works, although I don't know if briess (or anybody else) really would want to select "featured articles" in any sort of official manner. I think the best way to go would be to use the sort of vague quality ranks we were just talking about before, or stick to more specific templates on the pages themselves (to state what the page actually needs in particular), or some combination.


But yeah, this really should not be a big deal. It's like we're getting progressively closer and closer to something that makes sense to people who haven't been completely lobotomized by community injokes.

[Footkerchief]

Human beings read the Wiki. Human beings who don't necessarily know a lot about Dwarf Fortress. That is not the place to hurp about how DF-nerdy you are. User-friendliness was already borked the fuck out by the namespace migration, but you don't need to make it even more impenetrable for people who just want to find out how wells work.

As far as I can tell, this rating isn't for "people who just want to find out how wells work."  It's for contributors who are looking for articles that need improvement, and to them the labels are immaterial.  This fact is reflected by how unobtrusive the ratings are -- the people you're talking about aren't likely to notice them at all.

There seems to be a lack of consensus about what the purpose of the rating system is, even among the people who were involved in implementing it.  So, uh, I guess it would be nice if everyone in this discussion states what they consider the purpose is.

For my part, if I'm right that the ratings are just to help contributors find articles that need work, then any label that implies a value judgment should be avoided, because it'll give people the wrong idea about what the rating system is for (c.f. this thread).

[G-Flex]

The quality labels should not just be for people who want to improve an article. They should allow the user to take a glance at how good the article is considered to be. This latter purpose should not be thrown out the window for no reason.