Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Draco18s]

I don't really know what here is worth reporting.  People are having a discussion, and I for one think it's valuable to have improvements to the wiki discussed and visible frequently.

I'll let them decide.  Things were getting a bit heated for my reading pleasure.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I don't really know what here is worth reporting.  People are having a discussion, and I for one think it's valuable to have improvements to the wiki discussed and visible frequently.

I'll let them decide.  Things were getting a bit heated for my reading pleasure.

Things seem to have calmed down, now. Continuing to bring it up is just fanning the ashes, at this point.

[Mason11987]

Also,colored text,well,it's not as bad as colored boxes,but neither sound like attractive solutions.

In a perfect world, we'd all intuitively know what an author had in mind, and be able to instantly tell what's pertinent to the game, and what's a joke, or a real-life statement, etc. Unfortunately, we're not psychic, and therefore other means must be found.

I don't think colored text is perfect. I do think that it's easy for everyone to use, while being both more flexible, and not nearly as intrusive, as the boxes.

In which case I think having a box with "real world information" is useful.

Another option is just having a section (at the bottom) which could be fine.

I think coloring text/putting a page-wide box is bad design and would push people away, we don't want people to think they're looking at a website from the 90s.

If we're going to have a vote, let's make it Forum-wide, and in another thread, since the Wiki's there for everyone to use.

I definitely don't agree with having a vote, and if we have one it'll definitely need to be on the wiki.  Wikis don't really work well if decision is simply based off of "votes" (see wikipedia) because people come and go and we don't want something undone in the future because the people could bring in enough friends to vote a certain way (or make enough accounts), or whatever.

If someone ignores text labeled as "real world" then that's too bad.  We can't really cater to users who get confused because they choose not to read.  If people fail to read obvious text then they're going to get confused.  If we go down that route of notifying people of things 100 different ways then we'll distract people from the small actual game relevant information.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Personally, I don't see how a box would be that damnable (and I also don't see the problem of pages from the 90s - but I don't want to get into a rant about recent pages in general).

And as for not caring about people who may overread things, that does not sound very user-friendly to me either. Actually, with that attitude, we should slam a good of the question threads here on the forums, as they on occasion ask a question that was asked just two threads beforehand in very obvious wording in the subject line.

Personally, I don't think it is upon us to judge people thus and say we do not care about them.

Well, these are just my feelings and why I am strongly in favor of the box - the actual design is something I would rather leave up to someone with experience of putting such designs together for wikis.

Deathworks

[SirHoneyBadger]

It's not a "hundred different ways", Mason11987, it's one way, which we're taking pains to decide the best option for, rather than lumping a bunch of different things together.

And I agree with Deathworks: If you're going to commit yourself to creating a useful public Wiki, then shouldn't "user-friendliness" (as in, all users, including new ones that may just be skimming) be a priority?

DF, after all, has a GIGANTIC amount of information to take in. It's not real hard to miss something, even if you're looking for it. 

Deathworks: What are some of the advantages of the box? I'm against it, but I'd like to hear some other opinions.

[Mason11987]

It's not a "hundred different ways", Mason11987, it's one way, which we're taking pains to decide the best option for, rather than lumping a bunch of different things together.

And I agree with Deathworks: If you're going to commit yourself to creating a useful public Wiki, then shouldn't "user-friendliness" (as in, all users, including new ones that may just be skimming) be a priority?

DF, after all, has a GIGANTIC amount of information to take in. It's not real hard to miss something, even if you're looking for it.

I don't think I wasn't being user-friendly. I'm saying if we have a section labeled "real world information" I don't really think we need to focus our efforts on the people who read that, and then get confused why the information below is real world information.

Isn't there a point where we could try TOO hard for the users who refuse to read clear instructions?  I mean, when people post things that have shown up ten times we shouldn't yell at them, but we should tell them there is a search box.  And when they do that no one expects Today to go in and modify the topic titles so that they are bolded or multi-colored even if that might help the user find something, because you're using readability for the 99% who scan a page first.

Besides, I think this discussion brings up the reasonable issue about why we even need non-DF information in the wiki.  Isn't that more confusing to the users?

I'm all about presenting information in a clean obvious way.  In that sense we should label information correctly, and if it's not actual useful to the game it shouldn't be there.

[madman]

"elven < human < dwarven" is about as bad as it gets.

I agree. The first thing I look up since the DF2010 release is Immigration, and I see this "Human" label at the top. My first thought is that I want to know about dwarven immigration, not human immigration!

[SirHoneyBadger]

Well, it's a good point that a lot of information that's in the Wiki isn't really necessary to play DF. You're absolutely right.

The issue with that is, a lot of people get a lot of enjoyment out of that content. It's "useful" in that it educates and entertains.

It does make things somewhat more difficult, but the education/entertainment facets shouldn't be ignored. They do effectively help bring new people into the game, and new people = donations.

Maybe a solution could be to create a "subsection" of the Wiki that could be purely devoted to creating and maintaining a current bare-bones user's manual for the game, with no superfluous information allowed, that only teaches how to perform actions in the game (with only the bare minimum on strategy), and how to mod the game.

[Locriani]

RE: Colored Text and Sections:

No.  Just no.  I am inundated with emails and IRC questions that ask me if something is true or not when it's in a D for Dwarf section. If we're going to put factual information in the wiki, it NEEDS to be in it's own box that makes it patently obvious that this does not apply to the game.  An article section doesn't fulfill this requirement either, as it's not made obvious (as obvious as it might seem, it's really not) that the information is not applicable to the game.

[Xgamer4]

Honestly, part of the reason you get inundated with questions might be because "D for Dwarf" doesn't really strike me as something that automatically makes it obvious that the following information applies in-game. It just sounds like a catchy title that doesn't really say anything. So that might be something you wanna fix, too.

But ok, fair enough. A box works. Just, don't stick it in the sidebar and don't have it closed by default. That's pointless.

[Locriani]

Honestly, part of the reason you get inundated with questions might be because "D for Dwarf" doesn't really strike me as something that automatically makes it obvious that the following information applies in-game. It just sounds like a catchy title that doesn't really say anything. So that might be something you wanna fix, too.

But ok, fair enough. A box works. Just, don't stick it in the sidebar and don't have it closed by default. That's pointless.

Oh, I agree. the D for Dwarf template is rather terrible at accomplishing its goal, but (at risk of sounding like a broken record) I have not had time to mess with it yet.

A lot of these suggestions that have been posted are great, but you have to remember, if YOU YOURSELF don't attempt to put them into place, it's very unlikely someone else will.  There's just not enough hours to do so.

[Graebeard]

"elven < human < dwarven" is about as bad as it gets.

I agree. The first thing I look up since the DF2010 release is Immigration, and I see this "Human" label at the top. My first thought is that I want to know about dwarven immigration, not human immigration!

This has been fixed on the wiki.  Thanks to whoever made the change, it looks a lot better.

[Draco18s]

This has been fixed on the wiki.  Thanks to whoever made the change, it looks a lot better.

Yeah, although the tags themselves are the same {{elven}} and such.  And when you click on one of those links at the top it talks about Elven, Dwarven, and Human quality.  Sooo...

[Locriani]

This has been fixed on the wiki.  Thanks to whoever made the change, it looks a lot better.

Yeah, although the tags themselves are the same {{elven}} and such.  And when you click on one of those links at the top it talks about Elven, Dwarven, and Human quality.  Sooo...

Feel free to fix it then.  I'm trying to get to all of it, but it's a lot of work.  If you want to complain without contributing, please remember that the people instituting these changes and fixes are volunteering their time and labor.  I've spent almost 9 hours today fixing up minor things on the wiki, and I know other editors have put in comparable (if not greater) time.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

I for one am quite grateful for the elf<human<dwarf thing having been replaced. Especially since that is one edit I would not have dared by myself for fear of an edit-war.

Deathworks