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Important suggestions for turning the wiki more professional (Staff only)

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Well, we do have manuals of style, but they would need to be adjusted:


 
Bullet points will not work with profiles that have fifty-something Abilities in the one key that can't be divided into tabs. It would just be too long. (Also, personally, bullet points doesn't look as nice as a properly explained wall of text when actual brief explanations are given in brackets)

However, rarely anyone uses the NA&T section, people just find it a lot easier to classify an ability as one of our standardised Powers, however, they also have a habit of not using brackets to describe what they gain this Power from. This leads to people having to ask others what it's about and kinda defeats the Wiki's point.

As for References ([1]). yeah, I'm not sure why we didn't have those when they are Standard on every other Wiki on FANDOM.
 
Bullet points will not work with profiles that have fifty-something Abilities in the one key that can't be divided into tabs. It would just be too long. (Also, personally, bullet points doesn't look as nice as a properly explained wall of text when actual brief explanations are given in brackets)

We just won't do it for those profiles then.
 
That would also look horrible and unprofessional IMO. Sure only looking at one profile won't make a difference, but going from a profile that uses bullet points to one that uses a wall of text just sticks out and makes the Wiki look unprofessional from the lack of a standardised look.
 
Some profiles have galleries and some don't. Some profiles have references and some don't.

I get wanting to make everything consistent, but I also think a lot of pages would benefit from not being massive walls of text.
 
I agree with this. I think we should make references as close as mandatory as possible for things that are easy to reference such as books (chapters), comics (issues) series (season/episode number), etc. But make it non-mandatory/exclusion for things that are more difficult to use as reference, like games and films. However, if a game has levels or quests, or similar, those should be referenced. And if it's a big film franchise/anthology film, those should be referenced as well. Listing specific page numbers for books and timestamps for films shouldn't be a thing because it kind of depends on which version you're watching/reading from, so you can have disparity for what's shown, so that should be avoided. An obvious exception would be something like a web novel or something which is only one official point of reference.
I largely agree. I do think games from games franchise should be included in the reference; some franchises tend to have many games and without much knowledge on which game the reference comes from, it can take hours of research to find them.

On the punctuation point, I shared similar thoughts to AKM's.
 
I agree If its optional and not mandatory. For me and those users that create profiles mostly from web/light novels with lots of abilities and epic in length it would be exhausting plus hard when multiple powers are used in the same chapter, scene or the like. Like for example, when a fight happened and you see them using several if not more abilities at once in the same paragraph or sentance.

Lets not forget the length - example Ergenverse which has over 7000 chapters from and a word count of over 17 million words...just to go again though it to put the references would be irrelevant when i already have the scans/quotes. Or any other web novel which has over 1000 chapters or light novels which have 15 plus volumes. Scans and quotes plus an explaination in the Techniques section works better.
 
So, was going to add references to Shallow Vernal a while back, couldn't get it work.

The preview page when showing also makes it seem like the references are messed up

5e9d6f6cc6cb96d6d4a704883af79da1.png


But when posted it's fine, was also getting citation errors too cause i was getting stuff mixed up due to how many abilities link to the same references and just the sheer number of abilities Vernal has.

Honestly it's a major pain when the character has so many abilities, wouldn't really mind doing this for ppl with a small number of abilities, but idk if i would wanna invest all that time for wall of text like Yakagi Suimei, Rimuru etc.
 
This is definitely a good idea, enforcing the addition of references more, though making it completely mandatory doesn't seem quite workable for very large verses.

And the bullet point P&A section seems like a good idea to me, so long as it's up to the discretion of the page maker on which fits best.
 
Even if it is in a page I don't really think it actually belongs there as it isn't really an attack or a technique but a property of the character. Besides I could keep coming up with stuff, either way the real point I made is that most pages elaborate in P&A, not NA/T, whether it should be that way or not doesn't really matter.
 
100% agree with the first one. I actually already started doing it for some profiles/verses and will make a thread for 'em all when done.
I think another good thing would be to encourage not only reference but things such as linking an entire scene/interaction rather than a one-time scan.
Mainly thinking of VNs and Video Games, where taking things out of context is nearly too simple.

For the second one, I find Damage3245's profile example to be pretty good, although I fear that it'll look like the pages will be long af for characters with a lot of abilities.
 
I tend to link YT videos instead of just taking a GIF clip so people can skim around and check the context if they want also it's faster
 
I tend to link YT videos instead of just taking a GIF clip so people can skim around and check the context if they want also it's faster

I’d like that too. But some videos get taken down and we can’t control that. Which is why it’s helpful to have references, to easily find a way to back up links if they fail.
 
I’d like that too. But some videos get taken down and we can’t control that. Which is why it’s helpful to have references, to easily find a way to back up links if they fail.
Doing both seems like the best yeah. One is sure to not be taken down, and the other is extra-precision.
 
It's kinda difficult to do that for videogames though. For some of them you can do something like "Super Mario World, Castle 5 cutscene" but for something like a niche game mechanic you can't really source it unless you wanna go "Just hold guard while looking away from an enemy and hit the dodge button as soon as they hit you"
 
It's kinda difficult to do that for videogames though. For some of them you can do something like "Super Mario World, Castle 5 cutscene" but for something like a niche game mechanic you can't really source it unless you wanna go "Just hold guard while looking away from an enemy and hit the dodge button as soon as they hit you"
You can at least reference the game or the given name of the move if there is one.
Not much, but still nice.
 
References are desperately needed for a lot of pages I believe, and would be solved gradually I expect by encouraging more references be added.

On the topic of making pages more professional, I think that allowing pages to change the presentation of the Powers & Abilities section would be greatly beneficial in improving the clarity of those areas. A lot like how we do with the "Notable Attacks" section.

Imagine if the Notable Attacks section was structured like our current powers section and Goku's page looked like:

Kamehameha, Instant Transmission, Kaio-ken, Spirit Bomb, Kiai, Kienzan, Solar Flare, Telepathy, Mafuba, etc.

I'm not demanding we do a verse-wide overhaul, but stopping all pages from being forced to share the same wall of text format would be a boon.
Sorry for a late response, sorry if we veered off to different points of discussion.

I agree with OP, references are needed. I vehemently disagree with this idea. Requiring each and every ability to be laid out in as intensive a manner as possible leads solely to exponential requirements for pages. For example, if you required, say, the Ashen One from Dark Souls 3 to have literally everything laid out on the profile, you'd be looking at, most likely, a 100k+ byte addition.

The notion is absurd.

Still, absolutely make references a requirement, though some standard format for references for things like video games will be needed.
 
References should be standardized, use a combination of P&A and Notable Attacks/Techniques for specification. P&A should give you the basics and why, Notable Attacks/Techniques should further explain and dissect things. P&A is fine as is. Just use tabbers if you have to.
 
I agree with the idea. Others have made the same point, it's simply more helpful to have them.

So long as the page isn't cluttered with references, of course.
 
I agree but how would the references integrate with the already present scans link on the profiles themselves?
 
I'm not sure if a reference section should be 100% mandatory, but I personally think it's highly recommended for book verses, and for manga to mention chapter and page for each scan. The hard part is for video game verses, since most people would usually link to Let's Play videos and not sure if there's a place to reference source that. But there are ways to set up URLs to automatically go for the timestamp. Though, if it comes from an instruction manual, the page number can be listed. As for movies, timestamps are kind of hard to calculate sometimes depending on movie version and the like. But scenes could be sourced given that DVDs and Blue Ray typically have scene selection and the like.
 
I'm not sure if a reference section should be 100% mandatory, but I personally think it's highly recommended for book verses, and for manga to mention chapter and page for each scan. The hard part is for video game verses, since most people would usually link to Let's Play videos and not sure if there's a place to reference source that. But there are ways to set up URLs to automatically go for the timestamp. Though, if it comes from an instruction manual, the page number can be listed. As for movies, timestamps are kind of hard to calculate sometimes depending on movie version and the like. But scenes could be sourced given that DVDs and Blue Ray typically have scene selection and the like.
Yeah, it should be mandatory for manga chapters, comic books and novels but in the case of video games it should be optional and not enforced.
 
How strict exactly is this going to be? Because would be asking a lot to expect me to through the hundreds to thousands of profiles i have made to add reference sections.

Also if i make a profile that has a ton of abilities, its not gonna have a reference section immediately, that would happen overtime, since that's a lot of work, granted i guess i could just keep it in sandbox until that's all ready.

Creating verses are time consuming, this is one more thing on top of it, feeling pretty unmotivated now towards creating entire verses that are gonna take a lot of time and nobody else cares for.
 
That shouldn’t be an issue with Scroll Box.
{{Scroll box|
{{reflist}}
}}
or
{{Scroll box|
{{reflist|2}}
}}
{{reflist|2}} is usually far better for many referenses.
 
How strict exactly is this going to be? Because would be asking a lot to expect me to through the hundreds to thousands of profiles i have made to add reference sections.

Also if i make a profile that has a ton of abilities, its not gonna have a reference section immediately, that would happen overtime, since that's a lot of work, granted i guess i could just keep it in sandbox until that's all ready.

Creating verses are time consuming, this is one more thing on top of it, feeling pretty unmotivated now towards creating entire verses that are gonna take a lot of time and nobody else cares for.
It is not going to be enforced exactly, as that is not realistic, but it should be very heavily encouraged to use references for the more important content of pages.

Also, as I think that Promestein said, there is no hurry. We are just initiating a gradual process that will likely take years to apply reasonably well.
 
Anyway, it seems like Damage's suggestion about bullet point style powers and abilities sections has been rejected.
 
I don't really have a problem if its not gonna be enforced, just encouraged.

My concern really was how time consuming this would be, but if it's just a matter of referencing where like a massive ability like concept manipulation, plot manipulation, causality manipulation etc are from, and it's not a matter of reference where every single ability is from, and its a gradual process, this is fairly reasoning i think.

As long as we aren't being pedantic, demanding to know where minor stuff like fire manipulation or air manipulation are from.
 
Anyway, it seems like Damage's suggestion about bullet point style powers and abilities sections has been rejected.
I definitely wasn't suggesting that it be a mandatory enforcement on profiles, but being a bit more flexible on that section wouldn't hurt.

Some profiles would benefit from it and some would not.
 
I don't really have a problem if its not gonna be enforced, just encouraged.

My concern really was how time consuming this would be, but if it's just a matter of referencing where like a massive ability like concept manipulation, plot manipulation, causality manipulation etc are from, and it's not a matter of reference where every single ability is from, and its a gradual process, this is fairly reasoning i think.

As long as we aren't being pedantic, demanding to know where minor stuff like fire manipulation or air manipulation are from.
Well, as I mentioned earlier, it is not remotely realistic for us to go around deleting any pages that do not use references, but it should be extremely heavily encouraged.

Also, as you said, the more major abilities are far more important to reference than the minor self-evident ones.
I definitely wasn't suggesting that it be a mandatory enforcement on profiles, but being a bit more flexible on that section wouldn't hurt.

Some profiles would benefit from it and some would not.
Yes. Agreed, but it seems like other prominent staff members here do not think that it would be appropriate.
 
Anyway, I need suggestions for how to rewrite the standard format page, the editing rules page, and the welcome message page in appropriate manners.

We should preferably also write a specific page about our new standards for when and how to use references properly in our wiki, in order to simplify things for our members, and make them less confused. It should mention examples for comic books and manga, games, books, movies and TV shows.

We could simply call the new page "References" or somesuch.

After all of our preparations have been finished, I can start a highlighted news & announcements thread.
 
Just so I'm sure I understand correctly, even for profiles made in the future, we're not gonna be deleting them if they don't have references, right? Because that's a lot to ask of normal users making their first page, for example
 
Just so I'm sure I understand correctly, even for profiles made in the future, we're not gonna be deleting them if they don't have references, right? Because that's a lot to ask of normal users making their first page, for example
First pages usually have worse problem than that.
We should still try to make it a thing, otherwise nobody will put references because it would mean actually searching for feats or would "take too much time"
 
We realistically cannot start to go around deleting profile pages that are otherwise fine, but we need to make very clear that references are by far preferable to no references.

Suggestions regarding how to properly and efficiently get that message across would be very appreciated.
 
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