Difference between revisions of "Talk:Wiki Discussion"

Revision as of 10:04, 3 November 2014

Xbox package system

I was directed to this page to bring up concerns about the WoT XBOX wiki. As it stands the current format is a mirror image of the PC wiki. The first issue I believe that needs to be addressed is the fact that the Xbox uses a package system and not a module system. Also the game does not show radios even though they are used to calculate a tanks recon range. Strange I know. If the package system can be addressed I can give a lot more feedback. --xXMansini2069Xx:xbox (talk) 18:19, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I've raised the issue with the other wiki staff and WG folks to see if the package system can be reflected on the wiki. This will require extensive rework with our current API usage though, so I don't know when it will come. --Haswell:na (talk) 21:21, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Provisional Pro/Con Limits

I disregard the new policy. The idea of a Wiki is that it is usually unmoderated and that users take charge. There are definitely many tanks, that can have 6, 7 or more pros or cons. I reviewed "my" tanks and I feel sorry, that a lot of helpful pros/cons have been deleted. Please rethink this limit, thx. --warfair4:eu (talk) 15:29, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Let's have a discussion on the merits then, shall we.

In regards to the idea that a wiki should be minimally moderated and user-driven: of course, I agree.

I would love to see a more active wiki where there are too many edits in a day for the admin staff to keep up, essentially requiring that players patrol other players. This is ideal to me. That being said however even then it is the requirement for the admin staff to make larger policy decisions that are agreed to improve, rather than detract, the experience both for players and admins. This particular one is a reflection of one such larger issues, and I will explain how it fits my vision for an improved wiki experience.

In the 6 months or so that have transpired since my beginning work as an admin on this wiki, I have spent quite a lot of time going through recent changes and making edits and reversions that I felt were required by the style guide and by my interpretation of a proper page for each tank as I looked over it. This work has been subjective, I will acknowledge, but the correctness of my previous work is not what is in discussion here.

In the vast majority of edits or reversions I have made to player edits, these changes have centered around shortening or removing bullets in the pro/con section. This is symptomatic of the disproportionate focus on the pro/con section in edits firstly, but also a tendency to attempt espousing every single characteristic of each tank within the section in question. This is, of course, a fundamental misinterpretation of the purpose of pro/con by many users of this site. Pro/con is a summary; a highlight section, if you will. Exhaustive detail (and even then, within reason should be the goal) is reserved not for pro/con but for performance, and information pertaining to module setups and grinds other than the top are the demesne of the research section. Between that and an observed tendency to insert excessive detail, or give detail in such a way that what should be one quick summary bullet point becomes two or more more detailed bullets, it is my opinion that the pro/con section has been traditionally abused by its users over the past months since the reopening of the wiki. This is not due to a lack of goodwill on the part of the editors, rather quite the contrary it stems from good intentions, but these same intentions have been ill-harnessed due to a lack of willingness to spread attention to all sections of a tank page within the page content and instead treat one in particular as an end-all for all attentions.

Policing this tendency has cost me a lot of time, and it is actually with the goal of reducing the amount of moderation this wiki requires rather than a wish to restrict the freedoms of editors that I have implemented this bullet restriction. I shall explain my reasoning.

Firstly, I should make clear that at present, no bullets have been deleted from any page as a result of this change. In point of fact, the only operational effect of this change is to simply limit the number of bullets that are displayed; the page contents themselves are not touched. These additional bullets are retained in the page source, and will remain available for players wishing to view the page source, or if it is ultimately decided that this limit is not required they will become visible on the page again.

But beyond that, restricting the number of displayed bullets reduces the patrol workload of administrators. By capping the maximum amount of displayed content, it is no longer necessary to remove bullets from pro/cons because an excessive number of bullets are displayed, thus reducing the number of cases in which admin edits are required.

Now granted, 5 bullets for each section is provisional and can be subject to change based on feedback. But, at least in my opinion, what really would be written, that requires more than 5 per?

A short summary of the pros/cons is probably going to focus on these:

• Armor
• Mobility
• Penetration
• Damage and DPM
• Notable soft stats, in one to two bullets

And really, that's about it. About 5, maybe 6 bullets in total. Now, seeing as you're unlikely to have everything be a pro or everything be a con at once, by extension that means that really, there shouldn't even be that many bullets in either pros or cons at a given time. There's a lot of bullet points on a lot of pages beyond that, but think about it for a moment: most of those are normally details on, say, weakspots or breakdowns of sub-items falling into one of the above categories, that really should have been relegated to performance in the first place rather than pros/cons.

So, with the limiter in place, it falls on the players to be aware that they do not have a blank canvas with which to paint a full description of a tank within pros/cons, and thus act accordingly. Because they must act within the restrictions, they are required to self-patrol their own additions to the pro/con section, and when too many bullets are added they war against themselves for space until the more relevant content is the only one to remain. This is actually a better atmosphere for a more player-centric wiki, in which I or any other wiki admin is no longer obligated to do the same work visibly, but rather by simply having the wiki code itself do this invisibly.

This is my reasoning for having the limit installed. I'm still undecided what the final number of bullets should be, though, and I am still open to input as to why or why not the limiter ought to be there in the first place, but I hope this helps you understand my reasoning.

ForcestormX:na (talk) 18:09, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Let me first thank you for your (quite) lengthy answer... I totally understand the reasons behind max 5 bullet points rule. I don´t want to argue against what you said. And also I´m not a friend of 10-bullet-lists. Still, there are circumstances, where more than 5 bullet points might be appropriate. Not everyone is reading and comprehending the performance section. Yes, its their fault. Still, if the pro/con list should work light a highlight section, then some aspects need to be included, which distinguish these tanks from others! Just to mention the really really bad camo values of the japanese top tier tanks... this is nothing you can see from the data given, just derived from the (of course subjective) experience of the players. Anyway, I don´t think, there will be much of a discussion here due to the lack of user participation... --warfair4:eu (talk) 10:03, 3 November 2014 (UTC)