Homecoming Wiki talk:Article Guidelines

Wow, this is fantastic, much better than what I would have come up with! --TonyV 10:10, 26 August 2007 (EDT)

I have to credit StarGeek for doing most of the legwork, much of what I did was reshaping what he had done over on Help:References. :) -- Sekoia 11:28, 26 August 2007 (EDT)

User Pages

I'm assuming that it's verboten to fix up grammar and spelling on User pages. If this is the case, you might want to mention it. If not, you might want to mention that too. →Torin23 14:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Generally we don't make a practice of modifying anyone's User Page. On rare occasion we might help fix something like a broken link or an error that was introduced by a change made elsewhere (i.e. in a template that was being used on that User Page). In any case where content that isn't appropriate anywhere on Paragon Wiki is placed on a User Page, it's best to contact an admin and let us handle the situation. But for something like grammar or spelling errors, we leave User Pages alone. --Eabrace 18:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Changing the target of a redirected link.

Would it not be preferred, in the examples given, to choose example 3 in preference to examples 1 or 2 (presuming you're already going through the trouble of editing the link). Mrudat 06:41, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

reference links broken

The links all fail in the references section, probably due to last year's wiki move? Searching... no luck yet. Taosin 07:21, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Internet Wayback machine gets me some of some of these (lost?) references, not all, as it won't go to the second and later pages of long threads. The first ref dates back to Sep 2007. is there an archive anywhere of 5.25" disks? <grin> Taosin 07:38, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah yes. The old forums. The domain name for those forums expired around October 2010, at which time Tony archived their content to oldforums.paragonwiki.com (discussed here). You'll note, however, that clicking on that site currently brings up the message that the site is under maintenance. I want to say I remember a later conversation on the forums about retiring those old boards for good, but haven't been able to dig anything up in that regard. For the most accurate account, it would probably be best to poke Tony with a PM and see what he says. --Eabrace

20:31, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I want to say I remember something about that conversation, too, but I can't recall specifically when it was. I also remember checking my link to the old forums around the same time as the recent security problems, and thought that they had been taken down to scrub them like the COH Faces site was. *shrug* -- Blondeshell 21:00, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I can confirm that as of November 2011, Tony was planning to leave the old Paragon Wiki forums site down. -- Sekoia 17:39, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Undisclosed/NDA material

We need to add a section to these guidelines explaining our policy regarding content that has not yet been publicly acknowledged by the devs. I don't feel well enough versed in this arena to draft it up though. -- Sekoia 18:18, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

As you said on Rigel's talk page, this area is decidedly murky. For instance, when the CoH Website got accidental updates, we immediately had that info on the PWiki... even though it was clear that the info was not meant to be public yet. Somehow, people have been getting power names and Powerset names, and that has made others feel more comfortable giving additional information. Yet, in this case, there seems to be no information that can be tracked to a legitimate public source. To me, that is the dividing line between postable on the Wiki and not:

Is the source of this information available to the CoH community at large?
If yes, is it likely to be fixed and/or removed?
- If no, then it is totally fine
- If yes, then it depends on how 'public' it was... the official website being about as public as you can get.

Just my thoughts. —Thirty7

23:32, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

First answer's yes: any VIP with beta client will be bombarded with this information. Grinding Magi and probing for unannounced new powers is pretty much all anyone's doing on beta. Second question's a call for speculation.

Once information is in the open, suppressing it just begs for the Streisand effect. Heavy moderation on the official forums is already generating buzz in live server global chat; everyone's asking what the big secret is!

Better to present the information in a fair and forthcoming manner, no secrets, no hype. Nothing like a good boring encyclopedia article to cool things down. Sans Streisand effect, this time next week, there'll be something new for people to buzz about.

Of course, NDA situations could be different, but that's not an issue this time. Rigel Kent 00:34, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

First off, Rigel, the answer to that first question is NO! The source of the information is NOT available freely to the CoH public at large, but at this point, the resultatnt information and questions thereof is. That is a huge difference. Until the source can be tracked to a public release (accidental website updates included), it shouldn't be on the Wiki! The Wiki is not, nor should it be, a place to "air things out." —Thirty7

04:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

The answer is yes. To clarify, the source of the information is text links within the beta client. These links are available to all VIP subscribers who log in to the beta test. Click the link, the information appears. Icons, power descriptions, real numbers too. I have no special access to information that any other VIP can't get to. Rigel Kent 02:31, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

No. You are missing something. Can we incontrovertibly prove how those names were arrived at? Can we be positive it was guessing and not from looking in the game files? No, we can't. So the source of the information is NOT publicly available. Until we can say, oh, THIS is how everyone found out these names, we simply can't put the information here. Period. —Thirty7

04:24, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Mod post removals.

Over the past few issues, I've been watching posts that pop up and get removed on the CoH beta forums by the mods. there are two that stick out in my mind.

First, my own discovery of a bug in the tailor that allowed a player to use female model costume parts on male/huge, male/huge parts on each other and female models. When I posted it, I included an image of the female model using the male bare chest leather strap and nipple piercings and another which was a man in lacy white drag with a woman's head (irresponsibly file named as SoGae.png). These were removed within 24 hours as inappropriate for viewing, both on grounds of content (The female model was anatomically correct appearing and the nipple piercings looked ow... ), and file name being inappropriate.
Second would be some recently shown images of power descriptions from power links provided by another player. They showed powers from upcoming unreleased and unannounced sets as well as unannounced unreleased AT that was being worked on. This post was visible for approximately an hour and a half before being removed entirely from the forum by the mods.

-Sayaki 17:45 8 April (PST)

If it has not been announced in open beta, on the website, on the forums, or at a physical meetup (Pummit, Con, etc), then it does not belong on the wiki. That has been our stance in the past, and I should hope that will continue to be our stance. When it comes to forthcoming content or powers or whatever, the wiki is for official information, and if it's not available from an official announcement, it isn't official information. I don't want to get in trouble by the devs/mods/whatever for hosting "misbegotten" information. ~ User:Aggelakis/Sig1 00:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I guess this is what I was trying to say, Agge, but it got misconstrued. The fact that Water Blast was fully documented on the Wiki here meant that when I found it, I assumed that there HAD been an official announcement of some kind, and that I had missed it, merely because we seem to be good at removing things that aren't supposed to be here. —Thirty7

04:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

If I could see the new power set during character creation on beta, this would be an easy case of saying the info is readily available and ready for documentation. I'm updating my beta client right now so that I can check, but I'm pretty sure it's not there. If there had been an official update on the CoH website announcing the new power set and describing all of the powers, it would be an easy matter of saying that the information on that web page was ready for inclusion in the wiki (but only the information that could be obtained from the official page). I haven't seen any official announcements. If a developer or community rep had posted to announce the new power set on the CoH forums or discussed the set in an interview, the information they had included in the post or interview would be ready for documenting on the wiki. As far as I'm aware, they haven't mentioned the set in a post or an interview.

I am forced to conclude that the information for the new power set is not ready for documentation. The information will eventually be publicly available via one or more of those official sources we've mentioned here. At that time, we can start adding the information to the wiki. Until then, it's best not to add it here.

It might be another matter if the power information had been visible at character creation and had been documented before the devs realized they'd made a mistake and removed it from the power selection, but that's not the case here. As Guy mentioned, the only way to obtain those power names right now is by pulling the client files apart and digging through them. That's definitely something that's frowned upon by NCsoft and discussing any little treasures found in such a manner that could not be found through normal gameplay is only inviting trouble. Placing that information on the wiki and making it readily accessible with a simple search leaves us open to souring the relationship the wiki has with the development staff. We've worked very hard over the years to foster the working relationship we have today, but that could disappear in a heartbeat if we started trolling the developers by documenting information they very specifically aren't ready to make public.

Granted, we're not perfect. I think we've most of us have inadvertently let something slip through the cracks at some point. (I know I certainly have.) But we should make every effort possible to prevent information that's not ready for public view from getting out into the wild.--Eabrace

05:19, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorcery power pool appears as a greyed-out power pool option for every character, when training up to a new level. The new ATEs can be created with enhancement converters. Water Blast, Psionic Melee, Symbiotic Armor, and Nature Affinity were discovered by guessing. All Healing enhancements are now Healing/Absorb enhancements. The Magisterium Trial requires Lore and Destiny unlocked to participate. Beta testers know all these features, but none of these features had patch notes. Where should the line be drawn, beyond which we no longer need to ask the devs' permission to post publicly known, easily verifiable game features lacking patch notes? Rigel Kent 02:31, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Since as you say, Sorcery appears as a greyed out option which is easily viewable on beta server when leveling up, you could write a bit about that. But the others probably shouldn't be viewable since they're not easily found (i.e. you pretty much have to guess what to type to find the power). Sera404 02:40, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

These powers were not found by guessing. They were found by looking at icon filenames. --GuyPerfect 02:50, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

That's quite an accusation to be making without proof. Rigel Kent 03:25, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

The point is, unless you can prove that that isn't how they were gotten, it doesn't matter. We need to be able to point at a legitimate source for our information. And there just isn't one for the power names of any of the sets... or even that the powersets exist. Because we already know they do doesn't make them legitimate. The only thing we can do is put up Magisterium info, and the fact that there was a Sorcery set in the Power Pool list (sans powers). None of that other information has a verifiable source that is in the public eye that we can point at when the Devs get pissed at us for having it up. —Thirty7

04:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

You apparently have access to the same stuff, Rigel. Take a look:

That icon has a filename WaterBlast_SteamSpray.png, so it doesn't take a real hacker to think of typing [Steam Spray] into the chat window to see what happens.
It should be worth noting that there are Genesis Incarnate Abilities in the beta client right now, but THOSE powers didn't get leaked. If someone hacked the data files, they'd surely be all over it, but if they only looked at the icon filenames, we'd only have information on powers with names in the icons...

How's that for proof? Or will you suggest that whoever was really good at guessing all the powers with corresponding icons just couldn't figure out what the Genesis powers were called? --GuyPerfect 18:52, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

There are counterexamples of powers whose names do not match the icons. Please stop speculating. Rigel Kent 07:34, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

The first round was almost certainly icon filenames. I don't think it's a coincidence that the initial screenshots I saw omitted the two Sybiotic Armor powers where the icon file doesn't match the power name. Those powers did show up later elsewhere (whereever you got the info for the wiki page from), so for round 2 someone probably went searching for the known names in powers.bin to find the rest. --Codewalker

17:10, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any power names there, either. Has anyone here actually seen a power name string in the piggs before? What's the basis for the assumption that they're in the piggs to begin with? Rigel Kent 02:06, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorcery power pool appears as a greyed-out power pool option for every character, when training up to a new level.

Then you can write that the Sorcery power pool will be available in a future update, but since it's not possible to view the powers list from the level up/respec/creation/whatever window and since the powers have not been publicly announced somewhere (and publicly includes VIP beta and website oopses, like the i23 overview page that went up a couple days early), nothing else should be said.

Water Blast, Psionic Melee, Symbiotic Armor, and Nature Affinity were discovered by guessing.

They were never publicly announced, and they are not found in the powerset lists, and they are not visible on the paragon market. They do not belong.

The new ATEs can be created with enhancement converters. All Healing enhancements are now Healing/Absorb enhancements. The Magisterium Trial requires Lore and Destiny unlocked to participate.

Then you can write about those since they're readily available to actually "physically see" (virtually) and use. These are active, visual pieces of the game that people can look at their Healing SO and see Healing/Absorb. They can queue for the Magi without Destiny unlocked and be told Destiny requires unlocking. They can convert their current ATE and get one of the new set. If you can point at an actual documentation of the thing, and not just say "well, they were guessed" (and this is you asserting your belief of the thing, not actual proof of the thing), then they are OK.

~ User:Aggelakis/Sig1 07:30, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Once again, Agge has summed it up perfectly. —Thirty7

10:57, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I've added a section for Future Content to the article guidelines, drawing on the discussion above. Improvements and feedback would be very welcome. -- Sekoia 11:13, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

So far so good. My only dispute is with the "special knowledge" clause, which is too broad and too subjective. I wouldn't have known the new ATE sets exist except for beta testers sharing specific and non-obvious knowledge on how to convert them. Probing for weaknesses in the code is, after all, encouraged during a beta test, and useful on the live servers as well.

An objective standard like "viewable from within the client" instead would be better. Viewability can be proven. Unprovable premises have a nasty habit of leading to shoving matches. Neither side can prove the claim, so she with the biggest muscles wins.

I'd like to see rationales added to the "not permissible" lines, just so people don't assume they're "because we said so". Things that exist only in the PIGG files, but aren't verifiable within the client, frequently never show up in the game (edit: not even in future content), for example.

Finally, where do "tips and strategies" fit in? Where should the line be drawn between, for example, common Hamidon raid strategies (which probably should be here), and Rigel Kent's awesome foolproof technique of putting Vengeance on auto (which, no matter how certain I am is great advice -- and I am! -- probably shouldn't be here)? Rigel Kent 15:11, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I see your point regarding the "special knowledge" clause. I don't think "viewable from within the client" would work though. As with this particular issue, you can view unannounced information if you happen to know the right power names, which means it'd be permissible under "viewable from within the client". However, that sort of information is not acceptable, since it's pretty clear that NCsoft did not intend for the information to be publicly accessible/known as of yet (ie. they did not announce it, you can't access it through standard interfaces, etc.). I'm not sure at the moment how to articulate this clearly.

I would say that the primary rationales behind these policies is that we're trying to respect the developer's intentions and only share official information. I alluded to this when I put in "we wish to continue to have a positive relationship with the City of Heroes development team", but it could probably be more clear. The fact that data in the PIGG files that isn't verifiable in the client often doesn't show up in the game later is probably more of a secondary rationale, worth mentioning.

Regarding your final question, tips and strategies sometimes get included in "normal" articles but often they are put into player guides. Take a look through Category:Player Guides for examples. If you wanted to write a guide in which you extol the virtues of putting Vengenace on auto, that would be acceptable for the wiki--provided it was clearly marked as a player's guide. Looking at the guidelines, this could probably be better clarified.

I'm going to hold off on making any changes at the moment because I'm pretty tired--I'll try to come back later to incorporate some of these improvements if nobody else beats me to it. -- Sekoia 15:47, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Also, referencing a comment up above, if someone posts information to the official forums and the mods delete it, that's a pretty good sign that we shouldn't have it on the wiki either. Sounds like this has happened with the powersets in question here? That point should get incorporated into the guidelines as well. -- Sekoia 15:50, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like you want a permission-based policy, then. Should the standard read, explicit or repeated implicit requests for takedowns from NC* or Paragon? Rigel Kent 07:34, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I replaced the "special knowledge" clause with what hopefully is more objective language. I also added some information on rationale behind the policy. I also tried to incorporate explicit and implicit takedown requests as suggested. I think that covers all the points you raised? -- Sekoia 19:03, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Permissible criterion 1: I don't get why website leak = good, beta leak = bad. Deleting an inadvertently published webpage, and deleting forum posts, are both implied requests to take down information. Suggest deleting the part inside parentheses, holding web leaks to the same standard as beta leaks.

Permissible criterion 3: "normal gameplay" is wide open to interpretation. Is accidentally converting a known ATE into an unannounced ATE normal? Is typing out and clicking a text power link to [Waylay] normal? Let's not turn every single undocumented feature into the same drawn-out debate we just had here. Suggest rewording as "viewable within the client interface" except, of course, for all the exceptions listed under "not permissible". ("Viewable within client" duplicates not permissible criterion #1.)

Not permissible criteria 1 through 3: Just delete these. Due to #4-7, they only apply to open and non-NDA content that NCSoft and Paragon Studios have not objected to, even implicitly. Their provability is doubtful; again, I'm seeing lots of unnecessary debates in the future if these criteria stay. Further, they are so broad, they could be construed by future admins to exclude any information known to open beta testers but not documented in official announcements.

I support not permissible criteria #4 and #5 to the extent that such information cannot be verified by the general public. Someone could post any garbage and claim it's part of a super-secret ultra-closed beta.

I'm skeptical of not permissible criteria #6 and #7 due to censorship concerns, as well as the Streisand effect. But I'm willing to wait and see whether NC and PS censorship is actually as ineffective at stopping the flow of information on the Internet, or actually as detrimental to this wiki's value as a player resource as I believe it to be. Rigel Kent 02:06, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Guys, after thinking about this for a few minutes (hey, three is "a few!"), I have a tentative suggestion. I don't want the devs/reps to become hostile to the wiki as a source of leaks any more than anyone else does. I also don't want to try to mind-read their intentions, either. There's clearly information that gets leaked that they don't want publicized, and information that gets leaked that they either don't care so much about being leaked or, at worst, go ahead and accept the leak for what it is. My tentative suggestion is that we should get in touch with Andy "Zwillinger" Belford and try to develop some kind of two-way communication on what they do and what they don't want published.

For this particular issue, I PMed him the other day. I got back a response saying, "Tony, you're an awesome guy, and I hope that someday I can hope to be a fraction as smart, funny, and..." Oh wait, sorry, that was a dream I had. His real response was that this information is work-in-progress, posting it (even labeled as speculative) could mislead people into thinking it's official, and their stance is that having it on the Paragon Wiki right now would be a disservice. The point is now we don't have to guess what they think or try to read things into moderator actions--we know what they think. So for this particular issue, I'm 100% in favor of deleting it until it's officially announced. (Which I suppose is a good thing, since it has already been...)

As for going forward, if we're met with a similar situation where there's a question about whether or not the devs/reps mind of information is published, I propose that there's a really easy way to find out: PM Andy or someone else on the community relations team and ask. As for a policy, I hate absolutes. As soon as we say, "No information that hasn't been announced," something will come up that is painfully obvious we should have on there but, thanks to our rule, we can't put on there. If nothing else, we should have a clause that basically says, "...And all of that stuff above can be overridden subject to the discretion of the Paragon Wiki Editor/Administrator staff."

People need to know that if they post information that is gained through secretive means, whether it be by hacking PIGGs or by lucky guessing, if it sets off our "Spidey sense," it might get removed. Likewise, they also need to understand that sometimes there will be exceptions, and we're not going to be rules-lawyered to death in either direction (leaving information posted or taking it down). While we don't make decisions capriciously, we also retain ultimate benevolent dictatorial control over the editing process. --TonyV 19:50, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I only really have one issue with your proposal, Tony. And my issue is not with the concept, but with the execution.

Probably ninety percent of the monitoring I do on a day-to-day basis is done as a background task while I'm sitting at my desk at work. (In fact, I'm writing this as I'm sitting at work running a diff report at this very moment.) What I can't do while I'm sitting here is access the CoH boards to send Zwillinger a PM because the boards are blocked by our firewall. If I had been the first to spot the new power sets being documented, the closest I could have come to following your suggested protocol would be to leave a post in the admin section of the Titan boards for someone else to send Zwillinger a PM and wait to see what happens. Given the volume of PMs that Zwillinger probably gets on a daily basis, I'd be shocked to see anyone get anything resembling an immediate response to their PM. (How long did it take Z to respond to your PM?) Given the delay all of that adds, the information would be out in the open for consumption for far longer than it took to blank the pages this time around. And the longer information remains in the open, the worse any resulting complications will be.

(Nevermind the fact that I probably wouldn't have questioned the legitimacy of the information for at least one of the sets currently in question based on the editors who were listed in the page history. But, as I stated before, we all make mistakes from time to time, so I'm not going to point any fingers.)

Given the limitations of accessibility and propagation delay in your proposal, I would much rather blank a page first, leave a note stating that we are contacting official sources and awaiting confirmation that the information is ready for release, and temporarily lock it while we wait for either a response from Z or some sort of link to an official source of released information. As a courtesy to any contributing editors up to that point, I would probably leave a message on their talk pages asking for a link to the source of their information at the same time. If a satisfactory link to an official source was provided prior to receiving a response from Z, then I would see no issue with restoring the page and unlocking it without waiting.

Additionally, I would think that this policy will have to be re-visited at any point in the future that the Community Manager title changes hands. Different Community Managers will have different opinions on this matter and may potentially be less responsive to PMs.

--Eabrace

20:36, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I think a key part of what he said is: "posting it (even labeled as speculative) could mislead people into thinking it's official". So that actually supports my point of view. PW should only be sharing official information. I don't think we should be asking community reps if they're okay with us posting leaked material on the PW at all. If it's leaked material, it's not official. Any time we do that, we're risking misleading people into thinking it's official, and I just don't think unofficial material belongs on the wiki.

I also can't see a community rep ever saying "yes, it's okay to keep that unofficial information on the wiki". That's tantamount to them saying it's official, which they would never say to us unless they were already saying it publicly. And if they were making it publicly official, there'd be no need to PM them in the first place. -- Sekoia 23:57, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

The following is an archived vote. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. No further edits should be made to this section.

Draft Policy Feedback, 2012-04-12

We now have a draft policy for future content. The policy as exists at the time that I'm posting this can be reviewed here. Please comment below whether you support or oppose the policy as drafted. If you oppose, please state what needs to change in order for you to support it. -- Sekoia 19:08, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Support. -- Sekoia 19:09, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Support. —Thirty7 19:45, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Support --Eabrace 19:48, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Support --GuyPerfect 20:10, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Support ~ User:Aggelakis/Sig1 20:15, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Oppose criteria 1 and 3 under permissible, and criteria 1 2 and 3 under not permissible, per above

Comments criteria 1 and 2 under permissible can be combined to include all official outlets (facebook, ustream, meet-and-greets, any other outlets we're not thinking of); criteria 4 and 5 under not permissible can be combined as they are historically one and the same; criterion 6 perhaps insert "or until" after "unless", as these items often stop being secrets after a time; criterion 7 perhaps insert "or Paragon Studios" between "NCSoft" and "staff" Rigel Kent 02:06, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Oppose Not strongly, but on two grounds. First, I still feel like it's worth discussing one particular edge case more: a case where something is verifiable via the live or beta client, even if it is not necessarily officially announced or released. For example, regardless of where the info came from, there's no denying that if one typed in [Steam Spray] (since it's already been mentioned), the information IS there and it IS accessible. I don't want us to get into the business of trying to mindread where information came from. As a trivial counterpoint, what about exploration badges and plaques in new zomes? Does anyone here really believe that someone goes out there and methodically searches a new zone, systematically finding all of the badges? I'm sure some do, but isn't it more reasonable to assume that most of the badge information comes from hacking open the PIGG files where it is laid bare in an easy list to anyone who knows how to find it? Are we going to start deleting articles about exploration badges before they actually hit live since, more likely than not, they're found "solely via examination of the PIGG files"? If you're thinking, "Yeah, but you can find them via methodically searching the zone," then you've just kind of proven the point. There is little doubt in my mind that with each new push of the beta client, there are a bunch of people who spend hours methodically searching for things that the devs are rumored to be working on, such as new powersets and such.

The second of the two grounds on which I oppose it as it's written is that before we make this official, I'd like to post a message on the official forums warning people that this policy is coming down. I disagree with statements indicating that this has been our policy all along. My personal feeling is that I've always regarded information obtained from PIGG file hacking as fair game once it gets "out there," and some quick Google searches indicate to me that the information we're discussing is out there. That being said, I don't encourage people to hack the PIGG files because it is a ToS violation, but I'm also extremely aware that it does happen, and frankly, I don't blame people for being curious and going through extraordinary measures to get that little scoop about the game they love. HOWEVER, I also have been pretty persistent in insisting that information our team gathers not be made publicly available. For one thing, I don't want our own team to run afoul of the ToS. For another, I want the Wiki to be a documentation of known information, not turn it into a primary investigative source itself.

All of that is the long way of saying that I do regard this policy as a subtle, but tangible, shift in how we do things. As such, I'd like to give the community-at-large a preview of it and a chance to weigh in, regardless of our ultimate yea or nay decision on it.

My 2¢'s worth... --TonyV 02:04, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

* Additional note: This isn't to say that I think the idea or even the wording of what we have should be scrapped, just that I feel like we're perhaps making a well-intentioned but too-restrictive policy based on one unusual circumstance that got a lot of attention. I think that shoring up an "official stance" on the matter is worthwhile, and I don't oppose the removal of information for this specific case since the community reps have made it clear that this is something they do not approve of. But I don't want us to get down the road and have people thinking, "sh** fire, everyone knows this, I'd like to see a central repository of what we know about it, but the Paragon Wiki has absolutely nothing about it." Or worse, for overeager editors to start moderating stuff and end up blowing away something that is official because it turns out they just hadn't read about it in some publicly posted place. --TonyV 03:45, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

* Additional note 2: There are a few exceptions which I believe supersede any other policy we have in place and under which I believe information should be immediately expunged: 1) Spam (obviously), 2) When non-public personal information is posted without consent (for example, a developer's personal contact information), and 3) When information related to an active exploit or cheating is posted (though I do believe that information about fixed exploits are fair game). If information is asked to be removed by Paragon Studios, I don't think it should necessarily fall under the "immediately take it down" criteria, but I think it should have more weight than a normal request or takedown evaluation and we should try to accommodate when possible. --TonyV 20:44, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Voting is closed with a majority result of Support. The tally was 5 Support and 2 Oppose. Given that there were several points raised that would benefit from further discussion, I will mark the policy as official but under review. I will try to start new sections for the specific points of opposition to see if consensus can be found for any further changes. -- Sekoia 22:22, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the vote. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

The following is an archived vote. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. No further edits should be made to this section.

Full Page Draft Support 2012-04-12

It occurs to me that we never really made the rest of this article official policy, though we've been treating it as such. Please review the article guidelines (as they currently exist). Ignoring the section about Future Content (which is being discussed separately above) and ignoring the section about Mission Articles (which is covered by a separate policy), do you ~~approve~~ support or oppose making the rest of the page official policy? If you oppose, please state what needs to be changed in order for you to support it. -- Sekoia 20:03, 12 April 2012 (UTC) (EDIT: updated to say "support" instead of "approve". *shakes fist at Eabrace* -- Sekoia 22:23, 12 April 2012 (UTC)) (EDIT2: Updated to note exclusion of Mission Articles section. -- Sekoia 03:41, 13 April 2012 (UTC))

Support. -- Sekoia 20:03, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Support ~ User:Aggelakis/Sig1 20:15, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Support —Thirty7 20:29, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Approve (since "support" wasn't actually an option) :) --Eabrace 21:49, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Oppose In-Game Text item 2: {{sic}} is preferred style for direct quotes, unless there's so much {{sic}} that it interferes with legibility. Trying to fix quotes ourselves can cause disputes on what the text should really say. {{sic}} also serves as useful feedback for the devs, as I mentioned on the forum. In-Game Text item 3: Noted but not corrected, similar reasons. In-Game Text item 4: Clarify this is for "the story so far" clues with the same title as the arc title, which grow paragraph by paragraph and are substrings of the souvenir text. Direct Links Vs. Redirects: Links to disambiguation pages should also be avoided, and when creating a disambiguation page, anything that links there should be relinked to the specific page when possible. Pronouns: Exception needed for first- and second-person pronouns in direct quotes; never assume common sense on the Internet!

Comments Perhaps this discussion needs more publicity? I'm seeing a very small portion of the userbase responding. Is the Mission Articles policy on a separate page included here? Rigel Kent 03:05, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Regarding proportionally small response, keep in mind the active userbase is small to begin with. ~ User:Aggelakis/Sig1 03:15, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

The Mission Articles policy is a separate policy and isn't covered under this discussion, I'll try to get a similar vote going over there tomorrow. Thanks for pointing that out. -- Sekoia 03:41, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

The reason I corrected grammar and spelling errors is because the articles were written in the spirit of conveying information, not necessarily being an exact one-to-one transcription of the game. If we used {{sic}} templates, I feel like the only purpose that would be served is to point out the error. I'm pretty sure the devs don't use the wiki as a bug report, it really needs to be /bug'ged in-game anyway, and most importantly, I feel like leaving grammatical and/or spelling errors in and the use of {{sic}} templates would detract from the readability and comprehensibility of the article, which to me is paramount. If there is something that is semantically confusing, I agree it should probably be discussed how it should be worded, but the vast majority (that is, all I've ever corrected) have been very straight-forward typos. --TonyV 04:27, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Support I also don't oppose the points raised in the "Oppose" comments above, except the first item as noted in the comments under it. Good points raised there. --TonyV 04:27, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Voting is closed with a majority result of Support. The tally was 5 Support and 1 Oppose. Given that there were several points raised that would benefit from further discussion, I will mark the policy as official but will mark the relevant specific sections under review. I will try to start new sections for the specific points of opposition to see if consensus can be found for any further changes. -- Sekoia 22:23, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the vote. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Disambiguation links

Rigel Kent suggests above: "Links to disambiguation pages should also be avoided, and when creating a disambiguation page, anything that links there should be relinked to the specific page when possible." I'm inclined to agree with that sentiment. I think rather than trying to work it into the section on Redirects, I'd rather add a new section since the Redirect section is pretty big and since Disambiguation links are going to be handled differently. Before I draft that up, does anyone disagree with this change? -- Sekoia 22:39, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

No disagreement from me. --Eabrace

22:45, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Sounds fine as far as I can tell. —Thirty7

05:04, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

No disagreement here either. That's how I've been operating since I started editing. ~ User:Aggelakis/Sig1 06:40, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Sic usage

Rigel Kent suggests above that we modify the In-Game Text section to indicate that {{sic}} should be used rather than correcting misspellings and grammatical errors. This has been discussed on the PW forums in two spots that I know of: A Suggestion from Beta and Bugs 101. This seems to be a controversial topic. If we do use {{sic}}, the way we use it and what we do with it also seems up in the air. So, let's open this can of worms again. What do people think? -- Sekoia 22:45, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Ambivalent here. I will be continuing to fix errors without sic, so if someone wants to adhere to this policy they'll have to clean up after every piece of content I put in. I am not being paid to copyedit the devs. ~ User:Aggelakis/Sig1 06:42, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't see myself using {{sic}} when updating things. To me, the correcting of grammar and such here is to make us look professional and polished. If something is wrong in-game that is to be taken care of through available means (/bug, /petition, forum posts, etc.). Also, there is the messy issue of the perhaps thousands of places where the template has not been used, and, as such would be inherently and irrevocably inconsistent in implementation if we start it now. And, as Sekoia I think pointed out on the forums, we don't make it clear when we are making up text ourselves, and when we are quoting, so if we have certain sections with grammar mistakes, and other sections on the same page that are free of them, it will just look like we don't know what's going on. Again, that goes back to making us look good. —Thirty7

16:03, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

As Thirty7 mentioned, I think that before we can even think about using {{sic}}, we need to find some way of making it clear when we're quoting information from the game so that readers clearly know what's our text and what's game text. Until we do that, I think it's absurd to even consider using {{sic}}. As a second point, if we have admins actively saying that they refuse to use the template, then this feels like an utter non-starter to me. Personally, I would love to see external text clearly visible as such and I would love to see us noting these mistakes with {{sic}} rather than just correcting them. I would much prefer we adhere to what's in-game, even if it's wrong. But given that we have no means for knowing when mistakes get corrected, and given that people are likely to accidentally correct things when transcribing, and given that mistakes we see on the wiki are also likely to be accidents in transcription, and given that we have vast amounts of text that were already corrected, the whole thing just seems like an exercise in futility. To me, this falls into the realm of things that would be nice in an ideal world, but just won't work realistically. -- Sekoia 20:16, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Factual errors

In the In-Game Text section, it states "Factual errors should be corrected or noted.". Rigel Kent above suggests we change this to "Factual errors should be noted but not corrected." (or similar). This is similar to the above discussion regarding {{sic}}, but is separate since factual errors are a very substantially different kind of mistake than grammar and misspelling. So, let's open this can of worms too. How should we handle factual errors? -- Sekoia 22:48, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I think it should instead be "corrected AND noted" (this is actually how almost every editor has been handling it already, anyway). This is different from mispelling/grammar in that it interferes with the way the wiki presents its data. Leaving the incorrect information in means the wiki is incorrect. I don't like that. :( ~ User:Aggelakis/Sig1 06:46, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't either, Agge. I am in favor of making notes on corrections, not leaving things incorrect with a note. —Thirty7

16:04, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

This falls in line with my comments on "sic" above. If we were to clearly set off the game text, it would make more sense to leave it incorrect and just include a note with the correction. That would be my preference. But since we don't set the text off clearly, it's probably more prudent to correct and note. Especially since that's how it's been done so far anyway. -- Sekoia 20:19, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Future Content - Further Changes

I reviewed the discussion above to find points of contention to start new topics on, but there's so much and it's all over the map that I'm not going to try to start new sections for specific points because I suspect I'd end up starting four or five or more of them and who knows if I'd even hit them right. So Rigel and TonyV -- please review your comments above as well as the existing policy. If you still feel there should be policy changes made to Future Content, please start a new section for each specific, discrete change you'd like to see made. Please don't make a single monolithic section with a number of proposed changes; that makes it harder to make progress on things since the discussions then get tangled together. I'm not trying to suppress the conversation here, I'm just not sure how to go about wrangling it in a way that does justice to your concerns. -- Sekoia 23:04, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

So I dug this hatchet-sized hole

"Effective immediately, all development on City of Heroes will cease"

It seems unhelpful to draw any further distinction between announced and unannounced features in development. With Paragon Studios closing, all new features, announced or not, are unlikely to ever be released on NCSoft's servers. Bio Armor is as unlikely to go live as Wind Control. Should focus be shifted away from "future content" (which is now an empty set) to "content in development at closing", with inclusion criteria independent of future developer actions? Rigel Kent 20:15, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I still plan on adding the new story arcs, badges, and as much other content as it would have come with Issue 24 (at least as long as the beta server's accessible), as well as trying to fill in holes for the other stuff that's been unfinished since at least Issue 21. (I'm looking at you, Twinshot.) When it comes to power sets, my vote would be to limit inclusion in the "definite stuff that got cancelled" category to things that were on the last beta build. Anything else would fall under "possible or speculative." —

talk / contribs 05:38, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

There are efforts underway to try to save City of Heroes. I'm inclined to wait to see where those efforts go before making any decisions on whether we should change how we handle un-announced information. But if it becomes clear that City cannot be saved, I don't see any reason why we can't relax the policy. -- Sekoia 09:01, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, good point. At this early stage, I can't accept that there's no chance the game will get licensed out to some other developer/gamerunner, either.

But if and when the time comes I'll be happy to demonstrate which info I got through (no surprise)ing and which info I got through (nobody guessed it)ing. That should help clarify which features were probably unfinished (like a new AT), which features were probably finished (like new power sets), and which features were provably finished (like new power pools). Rigel Kent 06:03, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

I started a thread to discuss this further on the forums. -- Sekoia 08:55, 1 December 2012 (UTC)