This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of free time. ;) Still, it's very exciting, and stimulating for the project!
BOZ (
talk)
23:50, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Just a reminder about the
Gen Con review. There's only a few days left, and it seems like sources are the primary issue at this point. I don't really know enough about Gen Con to provide or find refs, so any help would be great! -
Drilnoth (
talk)
00:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
On the bright side, although there were no support votes, the only oppose vote was based on a misunderstanding and later retracted. So, coming out even, I think with some work and time it would be worthwhile to try that one again. Let's concentrate on some more likely candidates first, like EGG. :)
BOZ (
talk)
15:19, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Sorry I wasn't able to provide you support on that. I just felt that the lack of information about the plot and player's goals in the first release meant that the article didn't satisfy 1b of the
FA criteria. I know from personal experience how challenging it can be to get an article up to FA, so I hope the article can be improved and taken through again some time in the future.—
RJH (
talk)
16:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
For what it's worth, here's the Schick (1991:102) summary:
"I6, Ravenloft Tracy and Laura Hickman, art by Clyde Caldwell Popular scenario for character levels 5–7 involving a vampire nobelman in a gothic Transylvania-type setting. Don't trust him! Includes alternative plot-lines, so the scenario can be reused, and perspective-drawn castle maps. See also ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ADVENTURE GAMEBOOKS entry 6, Master of Ravenloft. Strategist's Club award-winner 004-479.1/900-83. 32 pp., two outer folders. TSR, 1983."
Nice, thanks. I'll look into doing some more work with that, once this assessment, categorization, and template business is all sorted out. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
19:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I've been thinking about our assessment schemes quite a bit recently, and have a couple of proposals which could help refine it:
Add a B-class checklist to our project banner.
Create subcategories such as "Stub-class D&D articles of High importance" so that things can be more easily accessed.
Additionally, I think that creating some work groups could be nice... in addition to a Forgotten Realms work group, Dragonlance work group, and Greyhawk work group, there could be work groups based on article type: People, Novels, Supplements, and Worlds (this latter covering all of the more in-universe stuff like characters and locations, with a goal on cleaning them up to be more out-of-universe). There would certainly be some overlap, but I think that some more project organization would be nice. However, do you think that having any work groups (other than maybe the setting groups) would be silly with the current number of members? -
Drilnoth (
talk)
22:05, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Not sure if this is related to what you are suggesting, but in WP:ASTRO we put together a
Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy/Importance ratings page to reflect the astronomy-specific criteria for page importance ratings. (The page was based upon a similar criteria for the WP Physics group.) It might be worthwhile to have something like that for this project.—
RJH (
talk)
23:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
See {{comicsproj}}; that has a B-Class checklist on it that can stay hidden when no one has worked on it. If you alter the {{D&D}} template to place the checklist on it, I would add the checklist parameters, at minimum, to anything that is currently a B or C, and as we have time we can put it on Starts and eventually Stubs. As for workgroups, I'm not sure if they are really worthwhile given how many active members we have, but I might be wrong. :) Feel free to pursue though, as you might get some bites.
BOZ (
talk)
23:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Re:RJH. I'll look into that. I think that the project needs better guidelines on both quality and importance, so pages like that would work.
Re:BOZ. Sounds good with the B-class checklist. While I'm at it, I'll add in the combined importance/class categories so that we can more easily locate articles by quality and priority. Regarding workgroups, I agree that having ones focused on, for example, "People" and "Novels" would be a bit much; I just threw it out as an idea. I do think that we should make the setting projects into workgroups... all the documentation pretty much exists already, so it shouldn't take too much work, and it would make talk pages look nicer without as many separate but related projects.
While I'm working on this template, I'm just going to go ahead and add in functioning for setting work groups in case that ever happens. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
02:24, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
If you want to see what a filled-in checklist looks like, see
Talk:Spider-Man for one of many examples. If you need, I can find one that has been only partially filled in (like some are yes, some are no, so usually a C or Start class).
BOZ (
talk)
06:20, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks; I've pretty much found everything that I need for now to work on the new template in my sandbox. It could take a few days, maybe even a week or two, to get the template ready, and then I have to create an assessment subpage and a bunch of new categories. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
13:07, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Just so that everyone knows, things might get kind of chaotic over the next few days as all the new stuff gets functioning properly and new subpages are created. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
16:18, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
-removed indent-There is a current discussion at
this page regarding whether "D&D" or "Dungeons & Dragons" should be used for category names. This will need to be resolved one way or the other before I can get the template moving, so all input is much appreciated. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
19:59, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I think that I'm actually getting close to being able to use the new template; a little more coding and work with subpages and it should be ready. It was a bit easier than I had originally expected. Anyway, I think that pretty much as soon as the category-renaming discussion is over I'll be ready (I hesitate to start before the discussion ends because I'm going to create a lot of categories which need to use either "D&D" or "Dungeons & Dragons") -
Drilnoth (
talk)
00:43, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
Any more opinions on the work groups for the different settings? It would be easier to figure that out now and have everything properly set up in the new template from the get-go rather than to need to update it later. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
15:22, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Status report:
Once the new template goes live (hopefully in the next few days), something's probably going to be broken. I'm not a master at template design, and I think I've gotten most of the glitches out, but there's sure to be an error somewhere.
One problem that I can anticipate but don't know how to fix is that both "Class" and "Importance" will have to be set on every page; setting "Class" to something like "Redirect" or "Category" won't automatically set the "Importance" to "NA." I'll keep working on this and I'll try to figure out the proper code to get around it.
If there are other problems, please don't hesitate to fix them or let me know. If anyone would like to check my coding beforehand and fix any obvious mistakes, they can
here. Some things, like transcluding other pages from my userspace onto the template, will need to be fixed as the template is officially being set up. I have quite a few subpages which are being used to make sure that the template is functioning properly; you might want to take a look at them, too.
Finally, since there have been no objections, I'm going to taskforceify the three setting projects. I'm not going to put a whole lot of work into this at first, though; I'm going to just move the project pages to be subpages here, add a few things to the project's main page, and get the templates updated and ready. The work group subpages themselves can be updated at a later time, once the project as a whole has more active participants. If anyone thinks that I should hold off on this, please let me know and we can discuss it further. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
14:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
I've finished taskforcifying the other projects. Their pages need major reorganization to reflect recent events; I'll probably get around to that at some point if no one else does. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
02:23, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
A brief guide
Okay, I think I've got most everything up and functioning properly now. Here's a quick rundown of the changes:
The Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms projects have been made into work forces; their pages are accessible from the tabs on the top of
WP:DND.
The {{D&D}} template got a major overhaul; see its documentation for details on the use of new parameters. One important note is that the template no longer uses {{WPBannerMeta}}.
There is a new "assessment" department, viewable at
WP:DND/A or
WP:D&D/A, and also accessible from the tabs. This is basically a full guide to assessing D&D articles.
Categories got reorganized. Once the discussion at
WP:CFD is done, which looks like it will rename some categories, all of the categories should be working right. However, for a few days yet, you may see quite a few redlinks in the categories locations. To see most of the new categories, check out the subcats of
Category:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons. There will also be cats that organize by both quality and importance, such as
Category:Stub-Class Dungeons & Dragons articles of Low-importance. These will be more easily accessible once the renaming is done.
There is a new "Bottom" importance; see
WP:DND/A for guidelines on use.
The quality statistics on the main page are now being generated differently. Instead of using the WP1.0 bots statistics generated every few days, they are updated on a daily basis by
Erwin85Bot. Additionally, all of the in-table numbers are linked to provide easy access to categories like
Category:GA-Class Dungeons & Dragons articles of Top-importance.
There is a new "backlog" section on the main page which lists the various backlog categories and the number of articles in them, updated daily by
Erwin85Bot. For a while these will probably just go up in number as the revisions to {{D&D}} take effect and as articles are tagged (using the refs, fiction, and cleanup parameters as described at {{D&D}}). Afterwords, we can hopefully use the table and categories to help cleanup all of our articles that are in dire need of it.
If you have any questions or think that one or more of the changes should be removed, feel free to ask or edit! Once again, note that some of these things (mostly related to categories) still aren't quite up-and-running all the way yet. Additionally, the assessment and backlog statistics have not yet been counted, so all of the numbers are currently "0." -
Drilnoth (
talk)
03:29, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
What's the point of having the cross categories? The assessment chart is miscounting things—it shows two featured lists, but it's really counting the two subcategories—there are no featured lists in this project. Pagrashtak17:22, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I'll look into the assessment chart. The reason for them is because it will hopefully make things easier to keep track of... articles which are both Stub-Class and Low-importance are much more likely to be non-notable and need cleanup even than Stub-Class and Mid-importance articles. Anyway, I'll take a look at the chart. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
22:56, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Same here. :) As a matter of fact, I fixed the spelling of Faerûn on several articles earlier today using that method.
BOZ (
talk)
23:46, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Note: the little hat diacritic mark is a
circumflex. In HTML you can add it to a vowel via a "&[aeiou]circ;" tag, such as 'û' giving û. But copy and paste works as well. That's my dwebish observation for the day. ;-)—
RJH (
talk)
23:47, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Although I usually copy and paste these kinds of things, if you're in a pinch you can also select the drop-down box under the editing window, choose Latin, and insert the character from there. Another method is to hold Alt down and type 0251 on the key pad (must be the key pad on the right and not the row of numbers up top), but that requires a lot of memorization if you want access to all the characters. Pagrashtak15:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Should we have a cleanup department?
I don't know where that thing with Gavin is going, but I don't think it or he is going to really cleanup the D&D articles like we should. Maybe we should start a department/subpage and work on it. If it already exists, just point me towards it. -
Peregrine Fisher (
talk) (
contribs)
06:56, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I see that your cleanup department lists four specific tasks, but determining notability/merging is not one of them. I would suggest that the primary cleanup effort needed first is to go through the project's articles and merge anything that is not notable. For example, as I write this there are 335 D&D Stub-Class articles. Surely there are quite a few articles in there that simply won't have the secondary sources needed to write an article. I picked one at random—
Dhakaan. Created the first day of June 2006, this article has only one reference, and it is a website from Wizards of the Coast, meaning it can't establish notability. The article was redirected at one point, but an anon reverted that and the reversion has stuck. If there aren't sufficient independent secondary sources, this needs to be merged or deleted. Getting rid of the non-notable articles will make the cleanup effort on the remaining articles much easier. Pagrashtak15:45, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Good point; I'll mention something about that. I think that merging is the correct course of action for articles like that; I don't think that there's any point in deleting valid content just it doesn't warrant its own article. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
16:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I think that I've got the cleanup department pretty much done, including guidelines on what to do with non-notable articles. I'll shortly get to work on a references department. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
16:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Cool - it's more than two months out of date though, as the bot says that's data from mid-October. Hopefully the next data dump won't take as long as the last one did! (I think the previous one was around July... before that they were almost monthly!)
BOZ (
talk)
22:18, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
It is kind of out of date, but I think that a lot of it is probably still accurate. Now we just need to work through it! -
Drilnoth (
talk)
02:16, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
That is an excellent idea. I think we should get a list of reliable (that is, we know we can use them), questionable (we think we can use them, but we're not sure), and unreliable (we shouldn't use them if we can find something better) secondary sources. It's badly needed. :) I've seen Heroic Worlds used in dozens of articles, plus there is the Game Inventor's Guidebook which I've seen several times, and I'm sure there are others. It would be a big help to have a list to go to for references. I imagine most of them would be print, although I don't doubt that there are some good web resources as well.
BOZ (
talk)
14:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd sure like to know what game-related web resources meet the wikipedia requirements for reliability and independence. It doesn't seem like there are that many. Usually I end having to look for things like online newspaper or magazine articles.—
RJH (
talk)
17:03, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I was just going to come and let everyone know I'd started it! All help in compiling sources, be they primary, secondary, or tertiary, printed or online, self-published or reliable, would be great! -
Drilnoth (
talk)
17:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
heh :) Any list of primary sources should be very short, and consist of things printed by TSR/WotC or written by any of its designers which talk about the game and its aspects from a design point of view, rather than an in-game point of view. For example, the "30 Years" book would be a good one to list. Won't do jack for notability, but definitely helps for
WP:V.
BOZ (
talk)
17:32, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Dicing with Dragons By Ian Livingstone has a limited preview, which means you can read whole pages.
Shared Fantasy By Gary Alan Fine does too.
Dummies book. I'm not sure that the Dummies book is a primary source.
John Wiley & Sons puts it out, and they don't have any financial stake in WOTC (I don't think). If they choose experts who are related to WOTC and D&D, I don't think that makes it primary. I haven't read it, but if it has good stuff that could establish notability, I'd look into this a bit further. My guess is that it's OK, or people might say "you can't use dummies" books, which won't be backed up by any policy or guideline. -
Peregrine Fisher (
talk) (
contribs)
21:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Good point; the Dummies ratings should be changed. I'm going to be looking for a lot of previews, both via Google and Amazon, as I continue work on the chart. All help is appreciated, though! -
Drilnoth (
talk)
22:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
IMO any official TSR or WotC D&D sourcebook or ruleboook should be considered a reliable primary source for game mechanics and aspects of the settings (in other words, in-universe facts and beliefs). --
Gordon Ecker (
talk)
02:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Good point. Maybe we'll focus on getting reliable secondary sources, and then add in the supplements and rulebooks later. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
02:15, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
-removed indent-On rulebooks: Maybe we should have a separate table or page for primary sources. I don't think that one entry would make much sense because it would need so much changing to the code whenever its used.
On page #s: GAs and FAs do need page numbers. The reason that I didn't include them in the table, however, is because the exact page number used from a source will vary based on what it is being used as reference for; if you can figure out some way to add them in, by all means do so. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
13:25, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
I've found Realms of Fantasy magazine to have quite a few reviews of D&D books and adventures in it, and it is commonly subscribed to by public libraries. No one could really argue against it as a secondary source.--
Smcmillan (
talk)
05:28, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
I was just looking at your References section, and noticed you don't have any websites listed there yet. There are two sections of the
Dragonlance Nexus website which I think would make very good secondary sources for Dragonlance information:
Dragonlance Lexicon is a fan created encyclopedia of information about Dragonlance canon. As a canon encyclopedia, it explains things from an in-universe persepctive, but uses all sources of Dragonlance information as sources. With the exception of a few subjects that are included in every (or almost every) Dragonlance novel and game book, the Lexicon pages have excellent bibliographies that can help you identify primary sources.
Product Catalog is an up to date encyclopedia of every Dragonlance novel, every Dragonlance role playing product (including miniatures), every Dragonlance comic, the Dragonlance animated film and every thing else made for Dragonlance. These pages can help you identify original publication dates, as well as confirming that an article has the correct cover artwork uploaded to it.
I would have added the websites myself, but there was a column for "Reliability", and I don't have much to do with this WikiProject, I thought I would let someone else make that call.
The
News section of Dragonlance Nexus, may also be useful for providing information that Dragonlance books have been nominated for awards, providing information about Dragonlance authors (and that sort of thing), but will have some announcements that concern things that are not worthy of Wikipedia articles.
Big Mac (
talk)
00:46, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that fan created info is not allowed. Any site must have editorial control, which it doesn't look like Dragonlance Nexus has. To my knowledge, there isn't any good website that can be used as a secondary source. Is that true? We got nothin? -
Peregrine Fisher (
talk) (
contribs)
01:01, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
There are good websites (including, I think, some parts of DLNexus) for referencing... I just haven't added them to the list yet. I've been working on a lot of stuff recently, but I plan to get to that. Of course, a little help wouldn't hurt, either. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
02:06, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
I've tried to find some, but I haven't found much. The closest I've found to unarguable reliable sources are video game sites that discuss the video game aspects of DnD. There are sites for TV eps, VGames, comics, and almost everything, but I haven't had any luck with pen and paper RPG stuff. If we could find a good one, we should clean it out of all info. -
Peregrine Fisher (
talk) (
contribs)
02:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
God damn right! ;) That's been our biggest problem so far, is finding suitable reliable independent sources. Many of them are trustworthy enough, and likely to be accurate and complete, but the lack of editorial review and all that has been killing sites that we would like to use. Most of the reliable sources I have seen are paper-only, and we know how much less easy those are to access. We can't just rely on Casliber and WebWarlock having to dig through their garages to find old magazines all the time. :)
BOZ (
talk)
02:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
We're not exactly supposed to talk about this, but you can get Dragon magazine using bittorrent. The problem is they're published by TSR and WotC, so they're not independant. Polyhedron is independant (I think) and maybe some others at
Category:Dungeons & Dragons magazines but I haven't found a good way to get them. -
Peregrine Fisher (
talk) (
contribs)
03:00, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of free time. ;) Still, it's very exciting, and stimulating for the project!
BOZ (
talk)
23:50, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Just a reminder about the
Gen Con review. There's only a few days left, and it seems like sources are the primary issue at this point. I don't really know enough about Gen Con to provide or find refs, so any help would be great! -
Drilnoth (
talk)
00:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
On the bright side, although there were no support votes, the only oppose vote was based on a misunderstanding and later retracted. So, coming out even, I think with some work and time it would be worthwhile to try that one again. Let's concentrate on some more likely candidates first, like EGG. :)
BOZ (
talk)
15:19, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Sorry I wasn't able to provide you support on that. I just felt that the lack of information about the plot and player's goals in the first release meant that the article didn't satisfy 1b of the
FA criteria. I know from personal experience how challenging it can be to get an article up to FA, so I hope the article can be improved and taken through again some time in the future.—
RJH (
talk)
16:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
For what it's worth, here's the Schick (1991:102) summary:
"I6, Ravenloft Tracy and Laura Hickman, art by Clyde Caldwell Popular scenario for character levels 5–7 involving a vampire nobelman in a gothic Transylvania-type setting. Don't trust him! Includes alternative plot-lines, so the scenario can be reused, and perspective-drawn castle maps. See also ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ADVENTURE GAMEBOOKS entry 6, Master of Ravenloft. Strategist's Club award-winner 004-479.1/900-83. 32 pp., two outer folders. TSR, 1983."
Nice, thanks. I'll look into doing some more work with that, once this assessment, categorization, and template business is all sorted out. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
19:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I've been thinking about our assessment schemes quite a bit recently, and have a couple of proposals which could help refine it:
Add a B-class checklist to our project banner.
Create subcategories such as "Stub-class D&D articles of High importance" so that things can be more easily accessed.
Additionally, I think that creating some work groups could be nice... in addition to a Forgotten Realms work group, Dragonlance work group, and Greyhawk work group, there could be work groups based on article type: People, Novels, Supplements, and Worlds (this latter covering all of the more in-universe stuff like characters and locations, with a goal on cleaning them up to be more out-of-universe). There would certainly be some overlap, but I think that some more project organization would be nice. However, do you think that having any work groups (other than maybe the setting groups) would be silly with the current number of members? -
Drilnoth (
talk)
22:05, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Not sure if this is related to what you are suggesting, but in WP:ASTRO we put together a
Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy/Importance ratings page to reflect the astronomy-specific criteria for page importance ratings. (The page was based upon a similar criteria for the WP Physics group.) It might be worthwhile to have something like that for this project.—
RJH (
talk)
23:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
See {{comicsproj}}; that has a B-Class checklist on it that can stay hidden when no one has worked on it. If you alter the {{D&D}} template to place the checklist on it, I would add the checklist parameters, at minimum, to anything that is currently a B or C, and as we have time we can put it on Starts and eventually Stubs. As for workgroups, I'm not sure if they are really worthwhile given how many active members we have, but I might be wrong. :) Feel free to pursue though, as you might get some bites.
BOZ (
talk)
23:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Re:RJH. I'll look into that. I think that the project needs better guidelines on both quality and importance, so pages like that would work.
Re:BOZ. Sounds good with the B-class checklist. While I'm at it, I'll add in the combined importance/class categories so that we can more easily locate articles by quality and priority. Regarding workgroups, I agree that having ones focused on, for example, "People" and "Novels" would be a bit much; I just threw it out as an idea. I do think that we should make the setting projects into workgroups... all the documentation pretty much exists already, so it shouldn't take too much work, and it would make talk pages look nicer without as many separate but related projects.
While I'm working on this template, I'm just going to go ahead and add in functioning for setting work groups in case that ever happens. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
02:24, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
If you want to see what a filled-in checklist looks like, see
Talk:Spider-Man for one of many examples. If you need, I can find one that has been only partially filled in (like some are yes, some are no, so usually a C or Start class).
BOZ (
talk)
06:20, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks; I've pretty much found everything that I need for now to work on the new template in my sandbox. It could take a few days, maybe even a week or two, to get the template ready, and then I have to create an assessment subpage and a bunch of new categories. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
13:07, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Just so that everyone knows, things might get kind of chaotic over the next few days as all the new stuff gets functioning properly and new subpages are created. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
16:18, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
-removed indent-There is a current discussion at
this page regarding whether "D&D" or "Dungeons & Dragons" should be used for category names. This will need to be resolved one way or the other before I can get the template moving, so all input is much appreciated. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
19:59, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I think that I'm actually getting close to being able to use the new template; a little more coding and work with subpages and it should be ready. It was a bit easier than I had originally expected. Anyway, I think that pretty much as soon as the category-renaming discussion is over I'll be ready (I hesitate to start before the discussion ends because I'm going to create a lot of categories which need to use either "D&D" or "Dungeons & Dragons") -
Drilnoth (
talk)
00:43, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
Any more opinions on the work groups for the different settings? It would be easier to figure that out now and have everything properly set up in the new template from the get-go rather than to need to update it later. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
15:22, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
Status report:
Once the new template goes live (hopefully in the next few days), something's probably going to be broken. I'm not a master at template design, and I think I've gotten most of the glitches out, but there's sure to be an error somewhere.
One problem that I can anticipate but don't know how to fix is that both "Class" and "Importance" will have to be set on every page; setting "Class" to something like "Redirect" or "Category" won't automatically set the "Importance" to "NA." I'll keep working on this and I'll try to figure out the proper code to get around it.
If there are other problems, please don't hesitate to fix them or let me know. If anyone would like to check my coding beforehand and fix any obvious mistakes, they can
here. Some things, like transcluding other pages from my userspace onto the template, will need to be fixed as the template is officially being set up. I have quite a few subpages which are being used to make sure that the template is functioning properly; you might want to take a look at them, too.
Finally, since there have been no objections, I'm going to taskforceify the three setting projects. I'm not going to put a whole lot of work into this at first, though; I'm going to just move the project pages to be subpages here, add a few things to the project's main page, and get the templates updated and ready. The work group subpages themselves can be updated at a later time, once the project as a whole has more active participants. If anyone thinks that I should hold off on this, please let me know and we can discuss it further. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
14:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
I've finished taskforcifying the other projects. Their pages need major reorganization to reflect recent events; I'll probably get around to that at some point if no one else does. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
02:23, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
A brief guide
Okay, I think I've got most everything up and functioning properly now. Here's a quick rundown of the changes:
The Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms projects have been made into work forces; their pages are accessible from the tabs on the top of
WP:DND.
The {{D&D}} template got a major overhaul; see its documentation for details on the use of new parameters. One important note is that the template no longer uses {{WPBannerMeta}}.
There is a new "assessment" department, viewable at
WP:DND/A or
WP:D&D/A, and also accessible from the tabs. This is basically a full guide to assessing D&D articles.
Categories got reorganized. Once the discussion at
WP:CFD is done, which looks like it will rename some categories, all of the categories should be working right. However, for a few days yet, you may see quite a few redlinks in the categories locations. To see most of the new categories, check out the subcats of
Category:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons. There will also be cats that organize by both quality and importance, such as
Category:Stub-Class Dungeons & Dragons articles of Low-importance. These will be more easily accessible once the renaming is done.
There is a new "Bottom" importance; see
WP:DND/A for guidelines on use.
The quality statistics on the main page are now being generated differently. Instead of using the WP1.0 bots statistics generated every few days, they are updated on a daily basis by
Erwin85Bot. Additionally, all of the in-table numbers are linked to provide easy access to categories like
Category:GA-Class Dungeons & Dragons articles of Top-importance.
There is a new "backlog" section on the main page which lists the various backlog categories and the number of articles in them, updated daily by
Erwin85Bot. For a while these will probably just go up in number as the revisions to {{D&D}} take effect and as articles are tagged (using the refs, fiction, and cleanup parameters as described at {{D&D}}). Afterwords, we can hopefully use the table and categories to help cleanup all of our articles that are in dire need of it.
If you have any questions or think that one or more of the changes should be removed, feel free to ask or edit! Once again, note that some of these things (mostly related to categories) still aren't quite up-and-running all the way yet. Additionally, the assessment and backlog statistics have not yet been counted, so all of the numbers are currently "0." -
Drilnoth (
talk)
03:29, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
What's the point of having the cross categories? The assessment chart is miscounting things—it shows two featured lists, but it's really counting the two subcategories—there are no featured lists in this project. Pagrashtak17:22, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I'll look into the assessment chart. The reason for them is because it will hopefully make things easier to keep track of... articles which are both Stub-Class and Low-importance are much more likely to be non-notable and need cleanup even than Stub-Class and Mid-importance articles. Anyway, I'll take a look at the chart. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
22:56, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Same here. :) As a matter of fact, I fixed the spelling of Faerûn on several articles earlier today using that method.
BOZ (
talk)
23:46, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Note: the little hat diacritic mark is a
circumflex. In HTML you can add it to a vowel via a "&[aeiou]circ;" tag, such as 'û' giving û. But copy and paste works as well. That's my dwebish observation for the day. ;-)—
RJH (
talk)
23:47, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Although I usually copy and paste these kinds of things, if you're in a pinch you can also select the drop-down box under the editing window, choose Latin, and insert the character from there. Another method is to hold Alt down and type 0251 on the key pad (must be the key pad on the right and not the row of numbers up top), but that requires a lot of memorization if you want access to all the characters. Pagrashtak15:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Should we have a cleanup department?
I don't know where that thing with Gavin is going, but I don't think it or he is going to really cleanup the D&D articles like we should. Maybe we should start a department/subpage and work on it. If it already exists, just point me towards it. -
Peregrine Fisher (
talk) (
contribs)
06:56, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I see that your cleanup department lists four specific tasks, but determining notability/merging is not one of them. I would suggest that the primary cleanup effort needed first is to go through the project's articles and merge anything that is not notable. For example, as I write this there are 335 D&D Stub-Class articles. Surely there are quite a few articles in there that simply won't have the secondary sources needed to write an article. I picked one at random—
Dhakaan. Created the first day of June 2006, this article has only one reference, and it is a website from Wizards of the Coast, meaning it can't establish notability. The article was redirected at one point, but an anon reverted that and the reversion has stuck. If there aren't sufficient independent secondary sources, this needs to be merged or deleted. Getting rid of the non-notable articles will make the cleanup effort on the remaining articles much easier. Pagrashtak15:45, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Good point; I'll mention something about that. I think that merging is the correct course of action for articles like that; I don't think that there's any point in deleting valid content just it doesn't warrant its own article. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
16:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I think that I've got the cleanup department pretty much done, including guidelines on what to do with non-notable articles. I'll shortly get to work on a references department. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
16:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Cool - it's more than two months out of date though, as the bot says that's data from mid-October. Hopefully the next data dump won't take as long as the last one did! (I think the previous one was around July... before that they were almost monthly!)
BOZ (
talk)
22:18, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
It is kind of out of date, but I think that a lot of it is probably still accurate. Now we just need to work through it! -
Drilnoth (
talk)
02:16, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
That is an excellent idea. I think we should get a list of reliable (that is, we know we can use them), questionable (we think we can use them, but we're not sure), and unreliable (we shouldn't use them if we can find something better) secondary sources. It's badly needed. :) I've seen Heroic Worlds used in dozens of articles, plus there is the Game Inventor's Guidebook which I've seen several times, and I'm sure there are others. It would be a big help to have a list to go to for references. I imagine most of them would be print, although I don't doubt that there are some good web resources as well.
BOZ (
talk)
14:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd sure like to know what game-related web resources meet the wikipedia requirements for reliability and independence. It doesn't seem like there are that many. Usually I end having to look for things like online newspaper or magazine articles.—
RJH (
talk)
17:03, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I was just going to come and let everyone know I'd started it! All help in compiling sources, be they primary, secondary, or tertiary, printed or online, self-published or reliable, would be great! -
Drilnoth (
talk)
17:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
heh :) Any list of primary sources should be very short, and consist of things printed by TSR/WotC or written by any of its designers which talk about the game and its aspects from a design point of view, rather than an in-game point of view. For example, the "30 Years" book would be a good one to list. Won't do jack for notability, but definitely helps for
WP:V.
BOZ (
talk)
17:32, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Dicing with Dragons By Ian Livingstone has a limited preview, which means you can read whole pages.
Shared Fantasy By Gary Alan Fine does too.
Dummies book. I'm not sure that the Dummies book is a primary source.
John Wiley & Sons puts it out, and they don't have any financial stake in WOTC (I don't think). If they choose experts who are related to WOTC and D&D, I don't think that makes it primary. I haven't read it, but if it has good stuff that could establish notability, I'd look into this a bit further. My guess is that it's OK, or people might say "you can't use dummies" books, which won't be backed up by any policy or guideline. -
Peregrine Fisher (
talk) (
contribs)
21:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Good point; the Dummies ratings should be changed. I'm going to be looking for a lot of previews, both via Google and Amazon, as I continue work on the chart. All help is appreciated, though! -
Drilnoth (
talk)
22:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
IMO any official TSR or WotC D&D sourcebook or ruleboook should be considered a reliable primary source for game mechanics and aspects of the settings (in other words, in-universe facts and beliefs). --
Gordon Ecker (
talk)
02:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Good point. Maybe we'll focus on getting reliable secondary sources, and then add in the supplements and rulebooks later. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
02:15, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
-removed indent-On rulebooks: Maybe we should have a separate table or page for primary sources. I don't think that one entry would make much sense because it would need so much changing to the code whenever its used.
On page #s: GAs and FAs do need page numbers. The reason that I didn't include them in the table, however, is because the exact page number used from a source will vary based on what it is being used as reference for; if you can figure out some way to add them in, by all means do so. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
13:25, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
I've found Realms of Fantasy magazine to have quite a few reviews of D&D books and adventures in it, and it is commonly subscribed to by public libraries. No one could really argue against it as a secondary source.--
Smcmillan (
talk)
05:28, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
I was just looking at your References section, and noticed you don't have any websites listed there yet. There are two sections of the
Dragonlance Nexus website which I think would make very good secondary sources for Dragonlance information:
Dragonlance Lexicon is a fan created encyclopedia of information about Dragonlance canon. As a canon encyclopedia, it explains things from an in-universe persepctive, but uses all sources of Dragonlance information as sources. With the exception of a few subjects that are included in every (or almost every) Dragonlance novel and game book, the Lexicon pages have excellent bibliographies that can help you identify primary sources.
Product Catalog is an up to date encyclopedia of every Dragonlance novel, every Dragonlance role playing product (including miniatures), every Dragonlance comic, the Dragonlance animated film and every thing else made for Dragonlance. These pages can help you identify original publication dates, as well as confirming that an article has the correct cover artwork uploaded to it.
I would have added the websites myself, but there was a column for "Reliability", and I don't have much to do with this WikiProject, I thought I would let someone else make that call.
The
News section of Dragonlance Nexus, may also be useful for providing information that Dragonlance books have been nominated for awards, providing information about Dragonlance authors (and that sort of thing), but will have some announcements that concern things that are not worthy of Wikipedia articles.
Big Mac (
talk)
00:46, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that fan created info is not allowed. Any site must have editorial control, which it doesn't look like Dragonlance Nexus has. To my knowledge, there isn't any good website that can be used as a secondary source. Is that true? We got nothin? -
Peregrine Fisher (
talk) (
contribs)
01:01, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
There are good websites (including, I think, some parts of DLNexus) for referencing... I just haven't added them to the list yet. I've been working on a lot of stuff recently, but I plan to get to that. Of course, a little help wouldn't hurt, either. -
Drilnoth (
talk)
02:06, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
I've tried to find some, but I haven't found much. The closest I've found to unarguable reliable sources are video game sites that discuss the video game aspects of DnD. There are sites for TV eps, VGames, comics, and almost everything, but I haven't had any luck with pen and paper RPG stuff. If we could find a good one, we should clean it out of all info. -
Peregrine Fisher (
talk) (
contribs)
02:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
God damn right! ;) That's been our biggest problem so far, is finding suitable reliable independent sources. Many of them are trustworthy enough, and likely to be accurate and complete, but the lack of editorial review and all that has been killing sites that we would like to use. Most of the reliable sources I have seen are paper-only, and we know how much less easy those are to access. We can't just rely on Casliber and WebWarlock having to dig through their garages to find old magazines all the time. :)
BOZ (
talk)
02:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
We're not exactly supposed to talk about this, but you can get Dragon magazine using bittorrent. The problem is they're published by TSR and WotC, so they're not independant. Polyhedron is independant (I think) and maybe some others at
Category:Dungeons & Dragons magazines but I haven't found a good way to get them. -
Peregrine Fisher (
talk) (
contribs)
03:00, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
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