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One common flaw in profiles is that they lack detailed explanations. There are two main cases, the first being that the parenthesis with explanations behind the stats are lacking.
The second one is that often abilities from our Powers and Abilities pages get simply listed in the powers and abilities section without there being a more detailed explanation about which applications of the ability the character shows, how powerful the version of the ability is that the character posses and how exactly the effect of the ability is reached.
The second one is especially bad, since there is nothing to encourage someone knowing the character well to add this explanation. On the opposite, often a character appears more powerful if such explanations are left out. For example listing just "Soul Manipulation" makes it sound like the user could damage souls, even if that is not necessarily the case (the user could for example only be able to manipulate the souls of the dead, or he could require physical contact to do so etc.).
Now of course one can make threads about such issues with profiles and ask what a certain ability is or what the reasoning for a stat is, but that is usually tiresome and often it isn't much discussion necessary, but only the pointer to say that something should be clarified would be necessary.
So how are similar problems handled elsewhere? Well, Wikipedia has tags like the "Citation needed" and "Clarify" templates that users may just insert on pages in order to point such problems out.
So I thought maybe it would be a good idea to create something similar for our wiki, that users could then liberally insert in pages whenever they feel something isn't properly explained.
So in practice I would want to create a template, so that inserting {{Explanation needed|What needs to be explained}} gives a small non-intrusive note. For example:
Powers and Abilities: [[Superhuman Physical Characteristics]], [[Fire Manipulation]], [[Reality Warping]]{{Explanation needed|Which kind of effects were shown/explained to be possible through this?}}, [[Flight]]
Would result in:
Powers and Abilities: Superhuman Physical Characteristics, Fire Manipulation, Reality Warping[Explanation needed], Flight
Just that the link would go to some page like this instead of going to the main page and a category for pages with the tag would be added.
What do you guys think about this idea?
The second one is that often abilities from our Powers and Abilities pages get simply listed in the powers and abilities section without there being a more detailed explanation about which applications of the ability the character shows, how powerful the version of the ability is that the character posses and how exactly the effect of the ability is reached.
The second one is especially bad, since there is nothing to encourage someone knowing the character well to add this explanation. On the opposite, often a character appears more powerful if such explanations are left out. For example listing just "Soul Manipulation" makes it sound like the user could damage souls, even if that is not necessarily the case (the user could for example only be able to manipulate the souls of the dead, or he could require physical contact to do so etc.).
Now of course one can make threads about such issues with profiles and ask what a certain ability is or what the reasoning for a stat is, but that is usually tiresome and often it isn't much discussion necessary, but only the pointer to say that something should be clarified would be necessary.
So how are similar problems handled elsewhere? Well, Wikipedia has tags like the "Citation needed" and "Clarify" templates that users may just insert on pages in order to point such problems out.
So I thought maybe it would be a good idea to create something similar for our wiki, that users could then liberally insert in pages whenever they feel something isn't properly explained.
So in practice I would want to create a template, so that inserting {{Explanation needed|What needs to be explained}} gives a small non-intrusive note. For example:
Powers and Abilities: [[Superhuman Physical Characteristics]], [[Fire Manipulation]], [[Reality Warping]]{{Explanation needed|Which kind of effects were shown/explained to be possible through this?}}, [[Flight]]
Would result in:
Powers and Abilities: Superhuman Physical Characteristics, Fire Manipulation, Reality Warping[Explanation needed], Flight
Just that the link would go to some page like this instead of going to the main page and a category for pages with the tag would be added.
What do you guys think about this idea?