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Stricter Verse-Specific P&A pages standards

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Bobsican

Bobsican

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Okay, now that the amount of verse-specific P&As is starting to rivalize vanilla P&As, I think it's about time some more rigorous standards are put in place to keep quality on the site before it gets out of hand.

Now, we all know that currently verse-specific P&A pages aren't allowed under the following criteria:

  • Regarding Verse-specific Powers and Abilities, keep in mind that these pages should only be made when a significant number of characters possess the relevant ability, and that said ability should cover several other powers and abilities, in order to avoid redundant repetitions in character profiles. Some examples: Puella Magi Physiology, Nen, Haki, Servant Physiology
    • Before creating this type of page, please make sure to have its addition accepted in a thread in the Content Revisions forum. This is because verse-specific powers and abilities often tend to be controversial and they should be scrutinized by the staff and the community before being published.
Click to expand...
First things first, currently how many pages would be enought to be "significant" is currently entirely undefined, which has made this pretty arbitrary, I recall we've deleted before pages out of having 4 members or less, so I'd propose a minimal of 5 pages (excluding verse pages) to have the respective power to meet that criteria, to retain some consistency long term.

I'd also propose a minimal of 10 P&As per verse-specific power, that number is reasonably high and most cases already meet that, while also avoiding rather too simple verse-specific P&As that just give minor and easy to explain effects to an element/physiology or the like, and of course double standards, of course we should also filter out bloating with redundant P&As just to fit.

Finally, I also think that we should only count characters that are actually indexed on the site, I've seen way too often some staying for months while lacking the number of characters (and thus not meeting the criteria) out of there being more users in-verse than on the site and that someone could theoretically add them, but that's like keeping a blank verse page out of someone theoretically indexing the characters, which just gives a bad image to the site to say the least.

So my proposal is to add the above stuff (or some variant depending on discussion) to the Editing Rules.
 
Hmmm... is a minimum number of P&As the way to go? Personally, I think it can at times make more sense to have a page with 5 P&A that have long necessary explanations than having 10 P&As with barely anything.
I believe the main reason we have verse-specific pages was to prevent long repeated explanations on each profile, so technically going by ability count alone seems to not align with the intention.

If we want to talk about standards I also want to bring up ability pages that list lots of branches from everything. How would we evaluate those? Like, someone makes a page for "magic" of the verse and lists each of 10 branches that give a few abilities each. So the page has 32 abilities listed, but on average each character only has just 5 of those.
I guess that also kinda goes into the territory of bloating the amount of P&As.
 
When you put it like that, probably not necessarily, perhaps we could prioritize a minimal page size (which can be seen in the history section of the page) then, we still have to draw a line between stuff undeserving from a page and stuff that does appreciate one, in any case.

Edit: Just remembered that pages we once had on the site like Super Saiyan Transformations were deleted out of a rather low amount of P&As in themselves even if they had large descriptions, which reminds me that we should filter out bloating with information that's irrelevant for our purposes in this regard, if we're going to go over page size over P&A number.
Personally I'd rather just stick to a certain P&A number (which is what we currently do beyond the lack of a proper minimal) if no better option is brought up.

I've started to see that happen as well, even for stuff that's practically unrelated beyond some semantics that are mostly irrelevant for our purposes, but I'm unsure on how to handle them, on one hand they help indexing by neatly organizing a good amount of stuff in a single page for the purposes of a verse, but on the other they become too variable to even be inherent standard stuff per-say, it doesn't help that this is also considerably context dependant based on the verse out of the potential semantics involved.
I suppose that could just be evaluated case-by-case based on relevancy on doing it like that, but if there's not enought stuff to do it like that such cases should just be divided into the "subgroups" (pages) accordingly. Cases that are particularly large could also be divisible without much issue if desired for organization purposes.
 
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Some basic standards in this regard seem like a good idea to me at least, but I am uncertain regarding the specifics.
 
I don't mind some stricter standards, but if y'all about to just start deleting some of those pages that don't meet the requirements, you'll need to give the users who created the page to copy it's contents so they can apply it to the characters pages.
 
Honestly I'd go stricter. I agree with the OP, therefore.
 
I had always thought that the verse specific p&a were more for ability mechanics rather than just a list of abilities a group of people have.

Axing pages that only have 5 abilities seems a bit much if those 5 abilities are part of a greater mechanical function.

As for significance and number of users, having a set number for that is fine, but only if we count characters that resist the verse specific p&a as well. I feel like that is an important distinction to make since powers are a 2 way street. It doesn't make sense to delete the power if like 2 guys have it and 10 people resist it specifically.
 
In a way that's a part of their purpose, but at the same time it being a list of P&As a certain group of characters have is their main purpose, they aren't like weapons in the sense of that they're notable to index on their own, for example, especially since if we went like that the site would quickly get bloated with rather unecessary ones.

Can you explain what you mean by "part of a greater mechanical function"? I think that could be taken in multiple ways, so if we're going to put some leniency on this based on that it'd be best to be more specific.

I'd be fine with also counting users that resist the verse-specific P&A for the purposes of fitting that one criteria, yes.
 
Like what if a physiology page only has 5 abilities, but one of them is Accelerated Development. However, different class of users develop differently with unique variations. The p&a page would explain how each variant is different but still share the same physiology.
 
I suppose we could also make it so that it goes like "to qualify for a page, a verse-specific power must have at least 10 powers and/or abilities, or at least three branches/subsections for P&As based on significantly related variants of it, with at least 5 P&As in total in such case"
 
I would be opposed to something like that. As I said, I feel verse-specific pages ought to be restrictive in terms of what gets on and what doesn't- every verse specific power shouldn't get one, as it's only necessary if it will considerably streamline the process of making pages/make pages considerably simpler. So, I don't think decreasing P&A requirements is the way to go.

The exception to this would be akin to what DT said- excessively gaudy descriptions should be a criteria for a verse-specific power, as well, and may supercede the minimum (or we could set a complicated description as the sole requirement, both work I suppose).

Basically, in my eyes, the purpose of these pages is to make it very simple to explain a unique power of the verse. If the power is just accelerated development, and then that gives each person in the verse a different power, that's not really necessary to set up as a verse specific ability. We have a page for Accelerated Development already, after all.
 
I agree with Bambu's last post above.
 
I also agree with Bambu TBH.

Anyways, based on current consensus we could change from what we currently have to:

  • Regarding Verse-specific Powers and Abilities, keep in mind that these pages should only be made when at least 5 characters possess the relevant ability or a resistance to it in total, while also being indexed with them on the site, and said ability includes at least 10 other powers and abilities, in order to avoid redundant repetitions in character profiles. The required number of powers and abilities to be acceptable can be lowered to 5 for cases that require particularly large explanations for their powers and abilities, without bloating with information unrelated to our purposes. Some examples: Puella Magi Physiology, Nen, Haki, Servant Physiology
    • Verse-specific powers and abilities that have several subtypes for certain kinds of characters should only have them if the power as a whole is related enought to them, as such it's inappropiate to merge several verse-specific powers and abilities into a single page if they'd be better having their own page, especially if this is being done to bloat the page in content to qualify.
    • Before creating this type of page, please make sure to have its addition accepted in a thread in the Content Revisions forum. This is because verse-specific powers and abilities often tend to be controversial and they should be scrutinized by the staff and the community before being published.
Click to expand...
The wording could probably be improved, but this is a good start.
 
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Thank you for helping out.

What do the rest of you think about the above suggested wording?
 
If I may, I think there are better examples than some of those listed. While Nen is clearly a very good example, I think Servant Physiology is a poor one- it is, indeed, simply a list of powers and abilities. Ideally, our example pages would be those that are explanations of in-depth mechanics. While it isn't a verse I work on (at least, anymore), I think Sword Logic would make a far better example, while we're on the subject.
 
I am personally fine with the change suggested by Bambu.

Thank you for the replies.
 
I don't really mind changing the examples.

Then...
  • Regarding Verse-specific Powers and Abilities, keep in mind that these pages should only be made when at least 5 characters possess the relevant ability or a resistance to it in total, while also being indexed with them on the site, and said ability includes at least 10 other powers and abilities, in order to avoid redundant repetitions in character profiles. The required number of powers and abilities to be acceptable can be lowered to 5 for cases that require particularly large explanations for their powers and abilities, without bloating with information unrelated to our purposes. Some examples: Puella Magi Physiology, Nen, Haki, Sword Logic
    • Verse-specific powers and abilities that have several subtypes for certain kinds of characters should only have them if the power as a whole is related enought to them, as such it's inappropiate to merge several verse-specific powers and abilities into a single page if they'd be better having their own page, especially if this is being done to bloat the page in content to qualify.
    • Before creating this type of page, please make sure to have its addition accepted in a thread in the Content Revisions forum. This is because verse-specific powers and abilities often tend to be controversial and they should be scrutinized by the staff and the community before being published.
Click to expand...
Given the lack of objections at this point, I think it can be applied.
Once it has been applied I'll probably do a thread in the News and Announcements board to notify everyone over this, I already have several cases in mind to at least evaluate.
 
Thank you for the replies. The latest draft text above can probably be applied to our editing rules page then, but it seems safest to wait for feedback from a bit more members first.

Or would it be better to create a new standard format page, and place the new rules there instead?

vsbattles.fandom.com

Standard Format for Powers and Abilities

Insert a portrait of the power/ability in utilization here. The standard size is 400px, if the image is aligned to the right. Insert a basic description of the particular power or ability in question, including how it works or functions. Explanations about how the power or ability can be...
vsbattles.fandom.com vsbattles.fandom.com
 
I recall the idea for a Standard Format for Verse-Specific P&As page was brought up long ago, but the topic silently died and I can't find the thread.
In any case, while I would be fine with it, that'd probably deserve its own thread, and for the purposes of the current topic at hand, it'd be best to just update the current rulings regarding the OP's premise if no one objects soon and all.
 
I do have a slight concern, given that we're planning to move explanation pages onto mainspace. I know of some explanation pages for abilities which have fewer than five users; would pages that don't meet the requirements for a verse-specific power still be able to be created as an explanation page?
 
TBH that'd defeat the point of the stricter standards to begin with, so I'd lean on the negative. Therefore there probably should be some standards on what's allowed for an explanation page in mainspace, but that's for another thread.
 
If it shouldn't be, then we'd need to reverse the decision about moving certain explanation pages to mainspace....
 
Explanation pages are good to simplify indexing to about any topic and all of that, but when they're used to circumvent this kind of stuff... yeah no.
 
I personally do not mind if we lessen the minimum number of users for a verse-specific power from five to two or three instead.
 
Only two users sounds like really little to me though I would be more comfortable with it if these two users are really important for their verse and if understanding that specific power is relevant for understanding how their verse works.
 
Only two users seems too low for me as well, I recall the Retcon Powers page was removed out of having too few users even if the page had mutliple walls of text.
TBH at that point it's not too much to ask to just reiterate the same reasonings on the pages, which is why there's a minimal users criteria to begin with.
 
Okay. Thank you for the replies,
 
Uh... should we lower the minimal amount of users required then, or not? Staff input on this area overall seems inconclusive so far, so we may need a bit more staff input on that regard.
 
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