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Elemental Manipulation Page Removal

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I’m working today as well, but I have a slight amount of time.

“a few powers that are quite self-explanatory”

This is the biggest problem with the removal. Elemental powers aren’t self explanatory. Practically zero character has full control over an element. Most just shoot or summon their respective elements, while others need to get it from sources other than themselves. Like not even avatar has the full extent of these powers. People are supposed to list what characters can do with these powers on the profile. So elemental manipulation is absolutely useful if a character can control a crap ton of elements as we need to explain how they can do so.
 
Keeweed said:
I’m working today as well, but I have a slight amount of time.

“a few powers that are quite self-explanatory”

This is the biggest problem with the removal. Elemental powers aren’t self explanatory. Practically zero character has full control over an element. Most just shoot or summon their respective elements, while others need to get it from sources other than themselves. Like not even avatar has the full extent of these powers. People are supposed to list what characters can do with these powers on the profile. So elemental manipulation is absolutely useful if a character can control a crap ton of elements as we need to explain how they can do so.
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And that's exactly the problem.

Elemental Manipulation itself has no meaning as it is pretty variable as you've said in terms of what it can actually be, and it being only usable as a sort of list for other powers defeats its purpose of being a power to index stuff with in the first place, if we want to just do a list, that "power" (if you can even call it that, at that point it's just a category turned into a power page), you can always just index the respective powers the character in question has directly, further supporting that all it does is make inconsistency in terms of ways of indexing and is redundant to have.
 
Given that we are not going to remove Elemental Manipulation, should we close this thread?
 
Well the big conclusion that is supposed to come from this is elemental manipulation being removed. Which isn’t going to happen because it would need to be a site wide revision and there’s zero way this would ever get enough attention to be site wide.

“you can always just index the respective powers the character in question has directly”

But why do that when you have a word that perfectly describes all of those powers. You don’t need to waste space and time typing Sand, Fire, Smoke, Ice, Lightning, Air, Earth, Light, and Darkness manipulation, when you can just say elemental manipulation. Plus if you list the powers individually to give them proper descriptions then you have to add manipulation after all those elements. Look at the Electroblob’s Wizardry page on Fc/oc. When I made it I didn’t know elemental manipulation was a thing. So take that page and imagine I replaced all those separate elements with elemental manipulation (I would do it now, but I don’t know how to edit tabbers). The page would be vastly cleaner and easier to read.

I don’t care if elemental manipulation has a small purpose, it has a purpose and it would be way too much effort to remove. Plus many people do like it.

The only thing we would need to do if it stays is add a category to pages. Which is a very minor side thing that can be slowly added to pages over time. If we remove elemental manipulation we would have to change all the pages that have it all at once. And your problem was you didn’t know which element they can manipulate, so you wouldn’t be able to give those pages the proper elements. There are a lot of problems that can happen if we nuke elemental manipulation and we gain nothing because it exist for organization.
 
Keeweed said:
Well the big conclusion that is supposed to come from this is elemental manipulation being removed. Which isn’t going to happen because it would need to be a site wide revision and there’s zero way this would ever get enough attention to be site wide.
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Yes, and the staff consensus is against this, so continuing to argue here is just a waste of time and energy.
 
Looking back on this thread. I remember that status effect inducement exist. It’s literally the same as elemental manipulation. A power that exist to categorize a bunch of powers to save time and space on profiles. So elemental manipulation isn’t even special in that regard we have multiple powers for categorizing large subsets of powers. Neither of these powers will ever be deleted and it would take way too much effort to delete them even if there was an objective reason to do so. Currently there really isn’t one. I won’t close the thread, that’s because it isn’t up to me. But if you, Ant, think the thread should be closed you have all the right to do so because this thread relies heavily on staff support and if the staff don’t support it, it isn’t going through.
 
Since Bobsican started a new thread in which he still tried to get the page deleted, I reopened this thread, and closed the new one instead, as I offered him to do earlier on my forum message wall.

He can copy-paste his initial message from there to here.
 
Personally.... overarching powers like this I have mixed feelings about. In a sense it is no different than "Superhuman Physical Characteristics" or "Magic" which cover a huge range of abilities each. So in that sense I don't think it should be deleted just because it can mean many abilities and specific subtypes can be listed instead.

I do believe however that we should specify that if a character only controls a single element (let's say Fire for example) that we shouldn't list "Elemental Manipulation" but just list "Fire Manipulation" instead.

Elemental manipulation should be for the power to control multiple different elements, and those elements they can control should definitely be listed afterwards.
 
Yeah, I personally think the ability should stay; I know fire, water, air, earth, electric, ice, and sometimes light and darkness ect are all sub powers of it. But Elemental manipulation could also apply to periodic table elements and categorized as that. Those are all sub powers of sub powers yeah. Even elemental manipulation is a sub power of either magic or energy manipulation with fire manipulation and water manipulation being sub powers of that. Elemental manipulation is better if they have a multitude of different types of elements they can manipulation or if the specifically only manipulate a specific type of element that is unique to specific verses.

But I'm also about to go to sleep. So can't elaborate too much.
 
I agree with the removal. It's extremely redundant, everything that falls under it is going to be listed individually anyway and it does nothing but clog the page. And I disagree with Damage3245 that it's similar to stuff like Magic. While yes, when you list "Magic" on a profile you still have to list everything the magic does, it still has a purpose there because it describes a mechanic. Magic itself is a whole system on its own that we use for equalizing and whatnot, Elemental Manipulation doesn't fit any niche like that. Because it doesn't have a shared source that we can just apply as a general round up.
 
It is a convenient quite common ability that does not cause any harm and would require massive wiki revisions to remove and replace when we already have yet to apply far more crucial projects.
 
Damage3245 said:
Personally.... overarching powers like this I have mixed feelings about. In a sense it is no different than "Superhuman Physical Characteristics" or "Magic" which cover a huge range of abilities each. So in that sense I don't think it should be deleted just because it can mean many abilities and specific subtypes can be listed instead.

I do believe however that we should specify that if a character only controls a single element (let's say Fire for example) that we shouldn't list "Elemental Manipulation" but just list "Fire Manipulation" instead.

Elemental manipulation should be for the power to control multiple different elements, and those elements they can control should definitely be listed afterwards.
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I agree with this.
 
Thank you to everybody who are responding here. Please read the preceding discussion as well if possible.
 
What's wrong with saying a character has Elemental Manipulation, then add within parentheses the various types of elements the said character can use?

I.E., "Elemental Manipulation (Can control Fire, Water Electricity, and Wind)

If they only can control one or two different elements, then just list those elements. This makes things more compact for the sake of indexing, instead of having to list every single type of Manipulation one character may have.
 
That is largely my view as well. We should clarify that specifications are necessary within the page itself.
 
However, here is Bobsican's post from the other thread, so we try to be fair about this:
Bobsican said:
Continued from here

Before anyone says that it was declined, Ant gave me another chance of sorts, given that only he and @Abstractions in terms of current staff members disagreed, that and there being some pending actions even if the page is to stay.

That being said, I'll start with the new problem I've noticed on keeping this page:


Perfectly describes? A better term would be "Unecessarily turns details on pages harder to find".

I'll bring up three cases:

1: "[[Fire Manipulation]]",
2: "[[Elemental Manipulation]] (Fire, Y can use it in Z manner)"
3: "[[Elemental Manipulation]] (Y can use [[Fire Manipulation|fire]] in the Z manner)"

A bot that tries to clean up a verse in question for the removal of Fire Manipulation will easily find the first option, but won't find the second case as it's most likely based on the What Links Here feature, given that it is compromised whenever Elemental Manipulation is used for the purpose you describe, if a verse has to have Fire Manipulation removed (or reworded) for some reason, but if it doesn't link back to the Electricity Manipulation page to filter the cases to remove in the first place, then now you clearly have a burden that requires being found manually, and filtering further by just searching for "What Links to Elemental Manipulation" as well or so can bring false positives for this kind of purpose, all for saving a few words at most.

And while the third option is a middleground that keeps a link to Fire Manipulation and Elemental Manipulation, the ones that want to keep Elemental Manipulation like you appear to dislike it as it just turns listing stuff even harder than if this "power" was around in the first place, showing how it's redundant, unecessary and overall counterproductive.

This could also be fixed by a way I'll explain later.

Easy, such pages that just listed "Elemental Manipulation" without further details would just have it removed (We do that to nearly anything), and some listing would be done on cases where this happens (namely to keep it clear to users that the respective page may need a revision).

Cases where it's said which "elements" the character in question does manipulate would just be listed as they were, but with the "Elemental Manipulation" part and the parenthesis over it (if any) removed. And as mentioned before, while it technically has a purpose, it does more negatives than positives in the long run from what I've seen, makes links regarding something within a verse harder to find for organization purposes (ironically), promotes inconsistent formatting, etc. Status Effect Inducement is also a relic from over 5 years back in the wiki, two wrongs don't make a right and it may as well be in needs of revisions in the same way.

Okay, now I'll go reminding the other stuff to do if the page is to remain:

1: Elemental Manipulation's usage for indexing being optional.
After all, by itself it covers nothing, and just listing directly each "subset" of it is about as effective.


2: The category "Element Users" being added to all characters that have at least two or more of its "subsets" regardless of if Elemental Manipulation is actually listed or not.
Now I'm mentioning the other alternative I said I was going to say before, if this page is to remain, all characters that have two or more powers that are considered "subsets" (As in, listed) within Elemental Manipulation get the Element Users category, this helps to remain consistent on regards of this "power" and eases finding pages that meet this criteria.
If the above is done, the Elemental Manipulation page should also be edited accordingly to keep it clear.
Click to expand...
 
Personally, I consider it redundant. If we would debate whether to create this ability today, I would say no.
However, removing it from the close to 1500 pages that list it has probably less priority than even the category addition idea.
I agree that the powers included in elemental manip should also be linked and categorized on the pages, though.
 
If the issue for its removal is it just being a low priority, it can just be kept as a wiki revision to apply after some more relevant wiki-wide plans are done.
 
Once again a large argument for the removal keeps misunderstandings how we list the powers on the page. You don’t do this:

[[Elemental Manipulation]] (Can [[Fire Manipulation| shoot pillars of fire]])

You do this:

[[Elemental Manipulation]] (Can shoot pillars of fire).

Edit: Obviously there would be more elements. This is the just an example of formatting.

Elemental Manipulation, as a page, already links all the different elements. You don’t need to link every individual elements.

Also the power is supposed to be redundant, because it’s the equivalent of the two words horrified and terrified. They both cover the same thing.
The reason elemental manipulation has a purpose is for organization, it’s supposed to be broad. It’s exactly like status effect inducement.

If a character has four or above of the subset powers you’re going to start to notice those powers can begin to take up space. Since there is a single word that already covers these powers, and we already have a page for it, just use elemental manipulation. Maybe if this power was just being made it could be argued to not be worth it. But since 1500 to 3000 profiles currently already have it, there is zero reason to get rid of it.
 
Because elemental manipulation already links the power. You don’t do [[Soul Manipulation]] ([[Soul Manipulation| Can steal souls]])

So why do that with elemental manipulation. Elemental manipulation is the power, it already has the links. If elemental manipulation description requires you to link all the individual subsets in the description then, yes it would be completely worthless, but you don’t do that. You link elemental manipulation and it has the links.
 
Elemental Manipulation only needs to be added if they manipulate multiple elements and are treated as segments of the same power, or if the element(s) they manipulate are stuff not categorized under the main forms. If they just manipulate fire, then simply having fire manipulation is fine. And while I do see DontTalkDT's and Bobsican's points, I agree with what Damage and Soldier Blue that some profiles definitely look more organized with elemental manipulation as a specific bubble with _(All the different elements they manipulate inside these).
 
Because elemental manipulation already links the power. You don’t do [[Soul Manipulation]] ([[Soul Manipulation| Can steal souls]])
Click to expand...

That's because there's only 1 page for Soul Manipulation. Not so for Elemental Manipulation and Fire Manipulation.
 
I don't really have an issue with removing Elemental Manipulation.
 
Keeweed said:
Because elemental manipulation already links the power. You don’t do [[Soul Manipulation]] ([[Soul Manipulation| Can steal souls]])

So why do that with elemental manipulation. Elemental manipulation is the power, it already has the links. If elemental manipulation description requires you to link all the individual subsets in the description then, yes it would be completely worthless, but you don’t do that. You link elemental manipulation and it has the links.
Click to expand...
Here's the thing, for example, if "Fire Manipulation" isn't linked, you get the issue of whenever it's required to find pages within a certain verse with this power, you won't find it as they don't link to it, and filtering by searching for what links to Elemental Manipulation easily brings a ton of false positives as well, which makes editing unecessarily harder, and as you've said before, listing the power in this manner ("[[Elemental Manipulation]] (X can use [[Fire Manipulation|blasts of fire]])"), defeats the purpose of having the power to make editing and indexing "easier".
And while this could be fixed by having the respective page to also have the "Fire Users" category, it's quite unreliable for cases like this where the respective page for it isn't linked directly.
 
Damage3245 said:
That's because there's only 1 page for Soul Manipulation. Not so for Elemental Manipulation and Fire Manipulation.
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Fair, but we don’t do that with status effect inducement usually either. If there is something that doesn’t have a point here, it’s linking every element whenever they are mentioned in the description. Elemental manipulation already has the power links and I think people can understand that shooting out fire is fire manipulation, so just go to elemental manipulation’s page and find fire manipulation.
 
Keeweed said:
Fair, but we don’t do that with status effect inducement usually either. If there is something that doesn’t have a point here, it’s linking every element whenever they are mentioned in the description. Elemental manipulation already has the power links and I think people can understand that shooting out fire is fire manipulation, so just go to elemental manipulation’s page and find fire manipulation.
Click to expand...
As said before, two wrongs don't make a right, if anything what you're saying supports that Status Effect Inducement should be removed as well, especially considering that "power" also treats several unrelated powers as one broad category when for many verses they're not different from regular hax.
 
Bobsican said:
Here's the thing, for example, if "Fire Manipulation" isn't linked, you get the issue of whenever it's required to find pages within a certain verse with this power, you won't find it as they don't link to it, and filtering by searching for what links to Elemental Manipulation easily brings a ton of false positives as well, which makes editing unecessarily harder, and as you've said before, listing the power in this manner ("[[Elemental Manipulation]] (X can use [[Fire Manipulation|blasts of fire]])"), defeats the purpose of having the power to make editing and indexing "easier".
And while this could be fixed by having the respective page to also have the "Fire Users" category, it's quite unreliable for cases like this where the respective page for it isn't linked directly.
Click to expand...
What person looks up a page by fire users rather than the character’s name. Do people seriously search through specific categories and powers to find characters? Getting a false positive on something as specific as that is not a reason to remove a power.

Here’s the thing. What do we truly gain from removing this power. A shit ton of work for literally zero benefit.
 
Keeweed said:
What person looks up a page by fire users rather than the character’s name. Do people seriously search through specific categories and powers? Getting a false positive on something as specific as that is not a reason to remove a power.

Here’s the thing. What do we truly gain from removing this power. A shit ton of work for literally zero benefit.
Click to expand...
I mean, why do you think we have categories in the first place? Many users do actually navigate across categories at times to remain informed on related subjects to a certain page. And false positives are indeed a reason, it supports this "power" being more of a burden than actually useful, simply put, it brings more negatives than positives.

We gain more consistency in regards of formatting, less issues in regards of navigation and organization (Especially when it comes to finding pages for the purpose of CRTs or bot-based clean-ups), and promoting that descriptions in pages over the respective powers that were "previously covered" by it to be more explicit, given that this power being around also promotes it being indexed without further details, which as said before, means nothing by itself.
 
More consistency is pretty meaningless in this case. Majority of our profile are worded vastly differently majority of the time because different people make the profile. You can pretty clearly tell when a profile is made by an amateur vs someone who has done it for a long time.

There wouldn’t be an issue with navigation. A person manipulates fire and the elemental manipulation page says there is fire manipulation. The person would just click on that. People don’t click on power whenever they come across them, they click them once to see what they are about and probably never touch them again. The only powers I ever relook over are things that have specific types so when I make profiles I get the types right.

Powers should have descriptions anyways. All powers should have descriptions. Getting rid of elemental manipulation has literally nothing to do with that. If you have soul manipulation, explain why and how. No power is self explanatory, not even superhuman physically characteristics because you can have super speed or strength independently.
 
Keeweed said:
More consistency is pretty meaningless in this case. Majority of our profile are worded vastly differently majority of the time because different people make the profile. You can pretty clearly tell when a profile is made by an amateur vs someone who has done it for a long time.

There wouldn’t be an issue with navigation. A person manipulates fire and the elemental manipulation page says there is fire manipulation. The person would just click on that. People don’t click on power whenever they come across them, they click them once to see what they are about and probably never touch them again. The only powers I ever relook over are things that have specific types so when I make profiles I get the types right.

Powers should have descriptions anyways. All powers should have descriptions. Getting rid of elemental manipulation has literally nothing to do with that. If you have soul manipulation, explain why and how. No power is self explanatory, not even superhuman physically characteristics because you can have super speed or strength independently.
Click to expand...
Not really, removing Elemental Manipulation would make it so that users now would list like "[[Fire Manipulation]], [[Electricity Manipulation]]" and so on at worst (rather than also having to deal with "[[Elemental Manipulation]] (Fire)" or [[Elemental Manipulation]] (Can use [[Fire Manipulation|fire]] and [[Electricity Manipulation|electricity]]), and the first option is far more self-explanatory (And easier to get for newer members) than Elemental Manipulation, as that one is just a broad term for "Just say the elements without links afterwards", and by itself it has as much meaning as "Can use elements", while also bringing the other issues I've said in past replies.

Not that kind of navigation, the one regarding categories and links (for the purpose of finding certain pages for CRTs, not just casual reading) as I've said before, in fact, you straight up skipped that point, meaning that the point still stands regardless.

Indeed, but Elemental Manipulation brings more issues if left unexplained than Fire Manipulation, for instance, the former can mean a ton of things, and goes back to the first point I did of it being as meaningless as "Can use elements", while the latter goes more to the point with "Can use fire". Also Superhuman Physical Characteristics and related powers are already covered in the Attack Potency, Speed and Durability pages, but it's really only listed nowadays out of tradition (over 90% of the site would have to be revised for its removal), and it helps users understand some of the basics of our standards.
 
That type of navigation has the category system. Why does the profile need to link the power when the category exist. Just look up fire users. If a page with elemental manipulation is missing a category just add the category. Category’s can be added slowly overtime whenever someone notices they are missing. If we remove elemental manipulation we would have to quickly change all the pages that have it.

While superhuman physical characteristics is covered by how our profile works: the point was that it isn’t self explanatory. It is explained by our profiles, but it doesn’t explain itself.
 
“rather than also having to deal with "[[Elemental Manipulation]] (Fire)" or [[Elemental Manipulation]] (Can use [[Fire Manipulation|fire]] and [[Electricity Manipulation|electricity]])”

Once again elemental manipulation’s description doesn’t need to do that. That’s what I was trying to explain with my navigation point. Elemental manipulation is already a collection of the sub sets. We don’t need to add every individual sub set to the profiles, that’s the entire point of have a power be a category of powers to begin with. You click elemental manipulation, you find fire manipulation, and you click it.
 
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