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Tl;dr: The current description has too much distracting and confusing information, and needs to be presented in a way that's clearer and easier to digest. Draft proposal's at the bottom of the post.
It seems like most people agree with there being some sort of problem with the current description which can be improved, but how exactly we do that is still being discussed.The current description is a problem.
First off, before anybody gets any sort of emotions about this, I'm not suggesting any change to the way we define the tiers or how we qualify them. You may remember me as the person who underwent the project to clean up and organize the rules pages, which were a horrific wall of completely user unfriendly bullets points before I got to them, and my goal here is actually really similar. I simply want to make the description text itself more clear and digestible without removing any of its meaning, as well as fixing some minor errors and/or questionable word choices.Full disclaimer: I'm both a business major and a author, and this is basically going to be a nerdy deep-dive into everything wrong with the current description's ability to be understood, down to a very technical level. If you just want to hear the actual proposal which comes from it then skip down the heading titled "Solutions."
This is what the current description for High 1-A states:
Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with most of this on an objective informational level, but there is a huge problem on the level of it being readable and understandable by a general audience. (There is, however, a double period after 'ordinal' for no reason, and even if the rest of this proposal is completely rejected, this should obviously be corrected.)High 1-A: High Outerverse level
Characters or objects that can affect structures that are larger than what the logical framework defining 1-A and below can allow, and as such exceed any possible number of levels contained in the previous tiers, including an infinite or uncountably infinite number. Practically speaking, this would be something completely unreachable to any 1-A hierarchies.
A concrete example of such a structure would be an inaccessible cardinal, which in simple terms is a number so large that it cannot be reached ("accessed") by smaller numbers, and as such has to be "assumed" to exist in order to be made sense of or defined in a formal context (Unlike the standard aleph numbers, which can be straightforwardly put together using the building blocks of set theory). Even just the amount of infinite cardinals between the first inaccessible cardinal and aleph-2 (Which defines 1-A) is greater than cardinals such as aleph-0, aleph-1, aleph-2, aleph-3, etc., and even many aleph numbers whose index is an infinite ordinal.. More information on the concept is available on this page.
Everywhere I go and Tier 1 is mentioned, tons of users, even seasoned staff, will actively avoid the discussion on the explicitly stated basis that High 1-A and/or debates surrounding it are complicated, confusing, or otherwise difficult to follow. Instead, many people's first instinct is to only call on specific people they deem "experts" on the topic, and the sheer number of people who seem to misinterpret or not understand the tier is a testament to how poorly it's explained.
So what makes it poorly explained? To answer that, I sort of need to step into the marketing knowledge I've accrued during my college profession. (Only 1 more semester to go, by the way!) People often mistake marketing for advertising, but it refers to literally everything done to make a product appealing to and readily accessible to consumers. I know we don't sell anything, technically, but our product is information about the abilities of fictional characters, even if it's free. From that perspective, this description completely falls flat on some very important marketing and communications principles, which explains why the information is so often poorly received or understood.
What specifically is wrong with it?
- Semantic Noise - In communications, there's something called "noise" - which refers to anything which makes it difficult for a listener of a message to either hear or understand it. One of these types of noise is semantic noise, things with the word choice and structure of the message itself which make it more difficult to understand. Some of this is present, and I'll get to the specifics later.
- Information Overload - Our brains have a lot of limitations, especially when it comes to learning new information. One of these factors is your short term memory. The human brain can literally only hold a certain amount of information at the same time before information starts to be lost and not committed to long-term memory. There's a lot of complicated and ultimately unneeded information shoved into a very small space in the description, which results in readers being unable to properly parse it all at once. Again, I'll get to the specifics later.
- Lack of Accessibility - Different people have different levels of knowledge, and different learning styles, and different ways they conceptualize information. For basic and/or grounded concepts, like those in the lower tiers, this isn't much of a problem. In fact, the lower tiers already have a built-in method of conceptualizing the information in multiple ways in the sense that they include very easy to visualize examples in their names, like a wall, or a mountain, or a solar system, which makes it even easier. For very complicated topics, it's important to have multiple ways to present the information. Firstly, there's zero visual aids, but even without that, there's multiple ways to explain something even just in text, but the tiering system, at least at High 1-A, only makes one attempt to do that, and the method it uses is terrible (more on that later).
The Inaccessible Cardinals Situation
To me, one of the worst offenses of the current description is the terrible information overload, and the main offender of this is as you might've guessed from the title of the thread: the paragraph about cardinal numbers.This example makes up more than half of the description, and contains an absolute load of irrelevant information and very technical and complicated phrases and concepts which completely distract from the premise of the tier, which in all reality, is actually very simple. It throws an extremely complicated and hypothetical field of mathematics suddenly into the mix, linking to an entire Wikipedia page full of even more complex topics, puts multiple normal words in quotes without explaining why, brings up discussion of previous concepts, throws a bunch of numbers and more undefined terms like 'index' into the mix, then finally ends by linking a page which claims to be an explanation of the tiering system as a whole, but instead spends its entire length taking a deep-dive entirely into Set Theory, and then links even more things, including up to half an hour of videos.A concrete example of such a structure would be an inaccessible cardinal, which in simple terms is a number so large that it cannot be reached ("accessed") by smaller numbers, and as such has to be "assumed" to exist in order to be made sense of or defined in a formal context (Unlike the standard aleph numbers, which can be straightforwardly put together using the building blocks of set theory). Even just the amount of infinite cardinals between the first inaccessible cardinal and aleph-2 (Which defines 1-A) is greater than cardinals such as aleph-0, aleph-1, aleph-2, aleph-3, etc., and even many aleph numbers whose index is an infinite ordinal.. More information on the concept is available on this page.
To put it simply: by the time any reader makes it to the end of this paragraph, let alone all the supplementary material, their brain has probably already completely thrown out the actual relevant information about the tier and what actually defines it, in addition to now being confused about this esoteric mathematical concept as well.
While we're on the topic of this paragraph, let's address how it actually supplies a misconception about the tiering system that I keep seeing staff correct people on, although evidently not realizing that the misconception is literally perpetuated by the language of this paragraph. In short, it's this:
First of all, this entire sentence in its current language is technically just not true.A concrete example of such a structure would be an inaccessible cardinal
We're talking about a High 1-A structure here, as defined by our tiering system, which is a character or structure which can affect something qualitatively superior to the entire logical framework and/or the boundaries of what 1-A includes.
If you can't see the obvious, let me lay it out: the concept itself of inaccessible cardinals is not even a structure or character, let alone one which fits the criteria of High 1-A.
What this sentence is trying to say is that a structure would be High 1-A if it contained a number of dimension which could only be mathematically described with inaccessible cardinals. A number itself, even a really big hypothetical one, means absolutely nothing in a vacuum, and absolutely does not grant anything a tier, and so alone is absolutely not an example of a High 1-A structure.
Second of all, if it were an example, it most certainly wouldn't be a "concrete" one. The following is the definition of concrete as it's used in this context:
Inaccessible cardinals cannot be proven using foundational principles of mathematics, and in fact exist using a logic separate from Set Theory itself which they're derived from, and rely on an added assumption not normally present. Even "imaginary numbers" are more "concrete" than inaccessible cardinals since they're actually linked to real observable trends and the math related to them. Inaccessible cardinals are a theoretical and abstract mathematical concept, and doesn't even indirectly have any real physical systems or patterns related to it. It is, in its literal and most basic form, just a thought experiment: "Yo, know how we made all those layers of infinities in Set Theory? What if there was another one but it was like so big it couldn't even be reached by any of that, wouldn't that be sick?" You can argue it's interesting, applicable in some specific hypothetical concept like ours, or whatever, but you most definitely can't argue that it's a "concrete example" of anything as per this definition.existing in a material or physical form; not abstract.
That's probably what they meant, and I knew that, but I baited you and went on the previous rant to make a point: we want to avoid semantic confusion. When we're presenting information, especially complicated information, we need to be very careful with the words we use so that we don't give anyone the wrong idea. Besides, it's not specific either. It's literally an entire branch of abstract mathematics, and isn't even applied to anything in this paragraph, so it's as vague as can be as well.Okay, but what about the version of "concrete" that's literally just a synonym for "specific".
The Primary Description
Earlier I implied that other than the massive distraction of the inaccessible cardinals paragraph, there were some issues with the base description as well, so let's get into that. None of it is nearly as bad as the previous thing, but I think it serves us well to be extra picky on a topic that's caused so much confusion in the community.The first problem is that most of this explanation is one long sentence with a lot of complicated words. Earlier I mentioned how our limited short-term memory can make it difficult to hold on to earlier information when reading something complex. I know I'm guilty of it in most of my writing, and love long sentences with many commas, but this isn't a prose page, this is an ordered list with information which should be relatively concise. There's a lot of ways to address this issue and make the information more digestible, and the first one is to simply use less complex sentence structure, and break the information into more separate ideas and/or sentences.
Let's break down the first sentence and second into the separate statements they actually hold. Each primary bullet point is an independent clause. Each secondary bullet point is a dependent clause. Each tertiary bullet point is a question raised either by assuming knowledge of the reader or being vague.
Characters or objects that can affect structures that are larger than what the logical framework defining 1-A and below can allow, and as such exceed any possible number of levels contained in the previous tiers, including an infinite or uncountably infinite number.
- Characters or objects that can affect structures
- that are larger than the logical framework defining 1-A and below can allow
- What does it mean to be larger than a logical framework?
- What are the logical framework of all previous tiers?
- that are larger than the logical framework defining 1-A and below can allow
- and as such exceed any possible number of levels
- contained in the previous tiers
- What does a "level" mean in this context?
- What are the possible number of levels in the previous tiers?
- including an infinite or uncountably infinite number
- What's the difference between a countable or uncountable infinity?
- contained in the previous tiers
Practically speaking, this would be something completely unreachable to any 1-A hierarchies.
- This would be something completely unreachable
- practically speaking
- Practical for what?
- to any 1-A hierarchies
- What does a hierarchy mean in this context?
- What are all the 1-A hierarchies?
- practically speaking
There's generally four types of sentence complexity. Simple (1 independent clause), compound (2 independent clauses), complex (At least 1 of each type of clause), and compound-complex (at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause).
The first sentence of the description has two independent clauses and three dependent clauses. This not only makes it a compound-complex sentence, but one that's well above the baseline criteria. In addition to the use of vague or technical terms, this makes it very hard to digest for the average reader. The second sentence has 1 independent clause and 2 dependent clauses, making it only a complex sentence, and is generally far easier to understand.
Now, obviously we don't need to talk like cavemen, and compound, complex, or even compound-complex sentences have a clear and beneficial purpose in language, especially in information. However, given the complexity of the topics being discussed, its role as an informational tool for a general audience, and how much the content itself already stresses our short term memory, the structure would benefit greatly from being broken down into more but simpler sentences with more clarification. Ironically, this will make it much longer, but easier to digest by allowing the reader to process less information at once.
Accessibility
When we think of accessibility, we tend to think of accommodating for disabilities or unique circumstances, but the realm of accessibility extends to normal differences between all people, and thus benefits everyone. Culture, status, profession, interests, existing knowledge, vocabulary, region, language, preference, learning style, and many other things can change how accessible content is to a general audience. Many of these things are mitigated by the focused nature of our site. We're a mostly English platform appealing specifically to people interested in categorizing the powers and abilities of fictional characters and who have access to the internet. In addition, we assume that they have indeed read the rest of the tiers in this instance. However, even someone who has read the entire tiering system will often find themselves having to repeatedly scroll back up for reminders simply due to the extent to which the High 1-A description assumes a memorization of previous tiers. Some assumption is expected, but it shouldn't be so much that the reader won't possess the knowledge just from knowing the gist- we don't want them having to literally scroll back up and find specific quotes and definitions just to read the paragraph they're on.As previously pointed out, the current description makes some pretty large assumptions of knowledge in the first section, and so many in the cardinal section that I'm not even going to bother analyzing it. Most notably, it makes very specific reference to certain technical terms and previous tiers, and to make it worse, it's inconsistent. "Logical framework", "levels", "hierarchies" are all words which mean the same thing in this context- we're talking about the bounds of the previous tiers: the minimum, maximum, and in-betweens, but the use of three different words, (some of them sounding technical) creates a needless implication that the subject is more complicated than it really is, and puts more stress on the reader in terms of processing each term and second-guessing if they missed something earlier which makes "hierarchies" different than "levels". Some of the vocabulary is just needlessly thesaurus sounding for no reason. Why would we say "logical framework" instead of simply saying "boundaries"? It makes it far less intuitive and again implies it's part of some larger concept we need to know.
In general, in the tiering system, I see a bias towards using mathematical terms where it's not needed. Math is one way for higher tiers to be reached, but it's not the only way, in fact I would argue it's not even the most common. The actual definitions of the tier reflect this, but the word choice and framing sort of implies differently, which I've personally seen lead to misconceptions in the past that math is the only way to reach these tiers, and outright rejecting the possibility of reaching them by any other means. If we have a concept which is general, then our wording should be general too.
As for different mediums, as mentioned previously, even while only using text there's many ways to reword information in a way that can stick for certain people who don't understand the first way. The most obvious way, and what seems very popular and effective in the previous tiers are examples. If you want to put it in terms of math, this is where you'd do it. The current description tries to do so, but it does it in a way that actually makes it more confusing rather than less so.
Solutions
So, with all the context and reasoning laid out for the fact that there is an issue, how do we fix it? The following is a general solution for each problem explained earlier.Description:
- Break up the description into more but simpler sentences - This will make the concepts easier to mentally follow and digest, allowing it to more effectively be transferred from short term to long term memory.
- Add reminders of previous information as needed - This will reduce the amount of assumed knowledge baked into the explanation, which will make it more convenient to read and reduce the need to reread all of the previous tiers.
- Be consistent with the terminology used - This will reduce the appearance of complexity and make readers more confident that they understand the information, as opposed to questioning if they're missing an important distinction between two words which doesn't actually exist.
- Use vocabulary which is general and common if possible - This will remove the current bias towards technical subjects and mathematics which the current description has, better reflecting the actual definition of High 1-A not necessarily requiring any application of mathematical theories to reach.
Examples/Cardinals Section:
- Fix the inaccessible cardinals example to be accurate and actually apply the concept into practice - The current description's current wording implies and reinforces a common misconception that an "inaccessible cardinal" itself is High 1-A even without context, which doesn't actually make any sense.
- Vastly simplify the example using inaccessible cardinals and save any technical details for the separate page already made for them - The sheer length and complexity of the paragraph is hard to understand on its own, but also dramatically subtracts and confuses from the concept it's attempting to be an example for.
- Add a second example using non-mathematical concepts - The tier is not only reachable by mathematics, and it would be helpful and make it seem less intimidating by including an example which doesn't require an understanding of an obscure mathematical theory.
First Draft Proposal
Now that we've established that there's problems with the current description, what they are, and a general strategy for fixing them, it's finally time for a first draft of a possible replacement. I'm more than willing to adjust and negotiate this, so please don't assume that I'm hard-set on proposing we replace it with exactly what I've written below, it's just a first draft to give us a springboard towards the discussion on what the replacement would actually be if this is accepted. It also includes some minor grammar changes. Without further ado, my first draft:[Under construction]
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