I was given permission by
@Deagonx to comment here, as I have a very passionate disagreement with a specific aspect of this draft.
As you may already know from our debate
@Bobsican last night, I do not at all agree with discouraging a profile to be descriptive in the functions of a Power System, how it is obtained, etc. Not only do
several pages already do this without opposition, but we should not be discouraging a page creator to be detailed and thorough in anything.
Eh, multiple wrongs don't make a right, there were barely any standards before and so users could do almost anything, someone even thought verse-specific P&As
were no different from explanation pages, for instance.
Also, thing is that in such cases very often we get bloated with information that is too irrelevant for our purposes, we're not going to
pull a Codex and list a in-depth description of a good portion of a series in a page that doesn't describe stuff that'd pertain the statistics of the characters (in fact, this is an issue I find in some verse pages too, which are often complained on off-site out of being unecessarily large), and the pages you've linked are in fact good examples of this issue, being a bit all over the place and confusing for visitors, more isn't always better.
Basically nothing gets even compromised for our purposes if this stuff gets skipped, anything that'd properly pertain the capabilities of a character would be actually indexed somewhere, rather than just broadly said expecting visitors to inherently be aware of what it'd fall as, by that logic we wouldn't have Powers and Abilities to begin with and instead just link scans of all a character has shown like off-site respect threads.
I believe it is most effective to make this an optional standard; A profile creator should have the ability to freely detail their page with the functions of an ability, just as a Summary in a character profile will detail a character's backstory, which doesn't NEED to be indexed, but is still there. At the same time, leaving the pages that do not do this in tandem with those that do is also okay in terms of indexing.
That'd defeat the point of making a standard in the first place, pages that don't obey this standard wouldn't be deleted, but would just be fixed over time, which is quite plausible to do considering verse supporters basically have to only adjust a few pages at most (not many verses have more than a single verse-specific P&A page). I could manage to get the verse-specific P&As to an higher standard in the last months, I'd be fully willing to help continuing on that.
But I have a question, Bob. Are you suggesting that in the Summary section, we should not include detailed information about how the ability is obtained, prerequisites, or terminology, but it would be allowed in other sections of the page? Or are you implying that such information is not allowed anywhere on the page?
Not anywhere on the page IMO for the before-mentioned reasons, complex descriptions that'd actually pertain our purposes would be mentioned as reasonings in the P&A section.
If it's the latter, I have mixed feelings about excluding this information entirely. While I agree that the summary should be concise and not overwhelmed with excessive details (hence "summary"), completely omitting such information seems a bit unusual. Maybe we could explore the possibility of creating a separate section specifically dedicated to things such as prerequisites, and how they are obtained instead?
I'd rather if anything compromise to optionally linking to a blog post, explanation page, or even a page in another wiki in some cases for this kind of stuff, it'd make stuff look neater and way easier to sort out without directly derailing from the purpose of the site.
The majority of verse pages currently adopt a different approach by listing the types as the main headings, unlike Bob's proposed format where the types would be listed under a dedicated "Types" section. Additionally, I've reviewed approximately 12 or 13 physiology pages that somehow have the verse-specific P&A categories, and I can say that their structures definitely vary significantly.
Well, I think that we need to revise Bobsican's suggested format then, make it considerably less restrictive, and probably allow for several layout options as well.
I could update the proposed standard accordingly, although other standard formats usually don't allow "custom" headings, and in any case it'd be impossible to make one that fits all the current pages without being so broad to the point it's not a standard anymore.
Do the pages fit well with Bobsican's suggested format in practice? While I personally believe it is possible to modify the pages to adhere to Bob's proposed format, the level of effort required may vary. Some pages currently lack a section listing the users of the specific ability (or some other sections for that matter), so revising them to conform to Bob's format would depend on the willingness and availability of verse supporters (As I think there are certain sections that can only be completed by them). Also, what about the Physiology pages that have the same verse-specific category?
Physiology pages adhere to basically the same standards as a "proper" verse-specific P&A TBH, especially as apparently there's a few pages that overlap as both, as we've both discussed off-site.
Also,
@Bobsican, would the Weakness part of the ability be also accommodated by the "Powers and Abilities" heading section, or not?
Good catch, that'd be fine there.
