Template talk:Delete

Just cleared a few things you flagged for deletion did not have any real valid delete reasons. You just said "orphan".

An orphaned page is not a good reason to delete a page. Deletion is a pretty serious tool that should be very carefully considered, and only used on pages that you consider 100% no one would ever have a reason to re-create in the future. EG:

• Things unrelated to the game. This game and pnp. Just because something is a pen and paper only feature doesn't mean it shouldn't be here.. A ton of PnP players come here and search related things from that game to see how it works here.. If the page was deleted, there search will fail.
• Invalid category names (since categories cant be moved very cleanly, invalid page names should be moved/redirected instead in most cases)
• Files that were deprecated by superior versions.. Like categories, since they can't be moved..
  • Mainly just for quality/cropping reasons. For historical purposes, we should keep images of things that don't exist in the game, and preferably use the "upload" a new version tool over them, so we can track the old versions easily.
• Typos people are unlikely to type into a search.. Common typos should actually be left and redirected, as our search function does find redirects.

Not orphans. If you find an orphaned page that has no useful data on it at all. Either redirect it to something relevant, or tag it with help improve.. Not delete.

Thanks for the effort either way though.

Shade 12:43, March 26, 2012 (EDT)

Well, I don't think deletion is a bad thing. Useless stuff is useless. And confusing. And if some page is an orphan, it is a very useful indicator that the information is probably not interesting enough.

• E.g.: Proficiency: Greatclub is a useless article, because we have an article about Proficiency and about Greatclub. Also, there is no Proficiency: Khopesh article. So, uh, consistency please? It "absolutely" should be deleted.
• Exceptional Intelligence is an orphan, nothing linked to it. If someone searches for "exceptional intelligence" in DDO wiki, both exceptional and intelligence articles show up in search. Now you have created a redirect, which is useless because no-one is going to click on Exceptional Intelligence anyway. (Because it's an orphan)
• Coup de Grace was an orphan, no-one knew the topic existed. If someone searched for Coup de Grace, he'd find the inadequate information that the article provided. I have added up-to-date info to the PnP differences article. If someone searched for Coup de Grace, he'd find the important information in that article. You have now added some confusing dev quote how things will have worked in the past future. I don't think it's the mission of DDO wiki to explain design decisions of devs; I'd rather have it explain how stuff works here.
• Epic Brawling Gloves: I am not persuaded that this is the best way to go. When I click that, I see the tier I description. From user's perspective, they are not used to scroll down because they don't expect multiple items in one article. I'd rather go with redirect to Brawling Gloves (or just delete).

Also: Thanks for the effort either way though.

--Cru121 03:37, March 27, 2012 (EDT)

Just to chime in with some remarks:

• While I agree that some content is in its current form confusing, misleading or just may be improved, I on the other hand agree with Shade that deletion is not always the best, even if easiest solution.
• I wouldn't for example name Proficiency: Greatclub useless, just maybe not perfect or ideal. Each content has its purpose but may be improved to something better. In this case I guess the specialty is that there aren't much item/weapons that provide a Proficiency. So I may be looking out for items like that to save a feat. If the Proficiency: Khopesh article is missing and you think you can fill it with some useful data it would be probably best to create it. There is a lot of content and explanation still missing :)
• I know about Coup de Grace, as I for example know that this was available for example in the D&D game The Temple of Elemental Evil. While orphan but a complete article I kept it as such as I couldn't figure out a good place to link it into the system. Searching as suggested for that topic however give as first results links to totally unrelated topics. Surely the mission of DDO wiki is not to explain design decisions, however I guess the main purpose is to answer questions of players regarding DDO. Including the question why Coup de Grace is available in other D&D games but not in DDO.
• If I search for Exceptional Intelligence I probably interested in which item provide such a bonus, or how to obtain it in general and if it stacks with other type of bonus. So it is a valid point to search for this and if I happen to search for both keywords this page is actually the first hit. There may be 100 other pages that include the words Intelligence but in that case probably not what I am interested in (e.g. an enhancement for the Wizard class). Even in Google I usually not look for hits past the first page. On the other hand I agree that the page Exceptional bonus is a bit short and could use some loving.
• I agree that scrolling on Epic Brawling Gloves is probably not the best way. But that is exactly one of my points: there is way for improvement. However till I come up with a better idea I will keep it like that then to delete content.

So I see your reasons, but I guess the main point of Shade is just: "first try to improve something, or give others the chance to do so, before dumping information".

SisAmethyst 14:50, March 27, 2012 (EDT)

About EBG. There's already a page for each tier, so the scrolling down is pointless, since they can click on the Crafted to T2 link if they want that info, or just search. Now, things that I think are ok to delete: Spam (we're getting hammered by it right now), Outdated / Duplicate templates (the Unique Armor template I deleted yesterday for instance, or any Tech13/Shoemaker decides to make a new version of and depreciates the old) and files/page names that were created with spelling errors (and the author requests). Other then that, I don't bother with those. Yawgmoth 15:08, March 27, 2012 (EDT)

Opinions on whats useless or not are cool. But again it's not a valid delete reason.

Deleting something ANYONE - even if it's just a small amount of viewers would want IS a bad thing. Aside from sysops, no one can view any deleted information, its just plain lost to them.. That's quite upsetting. It was in many cases to me before I could undelete things.

And being deleting stuff doesn't even remove it from the server harddrive - you aren't saving any hard disk space, you are just making it unavailable to users. It's kept forever - I can restore stuff deleted 6 years ago. And being xevo hasn't made any concerns regarding it either, I don't think we should even consider it. It's THE DDO wiki, we want EVERY last bit of information on here, no matter how trivial, or no matter how few people may want said info.

So yea, when you flag or delete things, understand the consequences may be high, and understand the benefits are very few.

re: specific page comments:

Coupe de grace - absolutely we want that info. You may not consider a 30+ forum topic WITH a developer reply explanation "adequate".. But that's irrelevant. It's desired information, else that topic wouldn't exist.

RE: Yawgmoth: Deleting very old out of use templates is sometimes ok.. But be aware it's again not an important task, and can sometimes reduce the functionality of the site. EG: User wants to look up some armor he has on a mule.. It may be the older version, most items are not changed retroactively. So he can go to the page, and look through the history for the stats. If you deleted the old version of the template and we otherwise don't have a separate history page .. He can't view it directly... So yea, consider checking some old version of items for template use before deletion. Ones that are several years old may not even be in use in older revisions so that might be ok, but most are in use in old revs.

re: Epic Brawling gloves.. Does have a distinct advantage displayed like that: Users with slow internet connections can load 1 page and see it all, a lot faster then they can load 3 separate pages.

Though yea we should unify our display of pages like that.

RE: Feats.. Proficiency: Greatclub is a feat in the game.. I don't get how you can't understand that a feat in the game is a rather important page to have. Yea we have a generic marital prof feat page - but that isn't how it works in the game.. You can't take that, you take prof in a specific subfeat.

re: orphaned pages that are just redirects: Our search functionality does find redirect pages, and it greatly improves search results by having alternate wording link to properly article titles.

Yea greatclubs generally suck, but despite that I bet you at least someone out there has taken the feat. The fact we are missing many other feat pages isn't a valid delete reason. I'll work on creating all the other missing weapon prof feat pages.
Shade 16:16, March 27, 2012 (EDT)

The templates I deleted weren't in use, a long time ago, before tech13 hooked up the bot, we went and manually changed them all to Named Armor/Named Weapon. Much in the same way we changed Enchantment to Enhancement on everything -.- Also we should take this off of Cru's talk page -.- starting to get off topic, and into into a war Yawgmoth 16:43, March 27, 2012 (EDT)

I marked Proficiency: Greatclub not as a whim, but because I looked at precedents. See Template:ItemGrantedFeat, look at how e.g. WF falchion, proficiency khopesh or other links are handled. Anyway, readers of DDO wiki are not complete idiots, they will realize that Proficiency: Greatclub means user is proficient with greatclubs. Do we need wiki for that? Come on! Do we want to create proficiency feats for every single weapon?

• Coup de Grace search is OK: [[1]]
• Exc. Int is first hit, but does not really help you further, unless you are searching for information about Exceptional bonus. Other Exceptional Ability articles don't exist. Why keep this one? Inconsistent. Does not help user to get information.

• Epic gloves - I guess I just think we don't need a two dozen articles about the same item.

• Also, it's not that I was picking random articles that I could mark for deletion. I was going through orphans. I have linked to a bunch of those orphans at various places to eliminate them from the orphan list; I have marked for deletion only those that I thought useless.

• Also, IMHO, rather let's have fewer good articles than more bad ones.

--Cru121 16:33, March 27, 2012 (EDT)

• sigh* children children children... I've seen references to me a "few" times above, and I'm not sure they are all positive..

As far as Template:ItemGrantedFeat goes.. I built it with what resources I had to go with.. I went through all of the items that I could find that granted a feat, and however it was linked to on those items, I consolidated into the template. The Mad Lute had it listed as Proficiency: Greatclub. There are no other items I was aware of when the template was written that gave this feat. I did not research into if Proficiency: Greatclub existed or not, I wanted to get the base template done and functional. Now, If you create Proficiency: Khopesh, Shield Proficiency: Tower Shield, Weapon Focus: Falchion,, Dragonshard Focus: Sentinel, Feat: Bow Strength, Feat: Mobility, or Feat: Precise Shot, I would be happy to make adjustments to the template to point to those things directly. Upon [Show Preview], Weapon Focus: Piercing seems to have a page already, so I will check and make sure it is directly linked tonight.. Quite frankly, those things need to be created, I just haven't the time to do it at the moment.. I've got a new baby at home and I haven't even gotten time to play the game never mind work up pages for feats I don't often use. None of these types of pages need to be deleted.

As far as Epic Brawling Gloves goes.. We actually do not have multiple articles about it.. We have the 3 tiers, and that is it. The all encompassing version Epic Brawling Gloves actually was a stub because of its lack of characters until I de-stubbed it.. It simply makes the server load the three individual pages into one page for those with less than desirable connect speeds.. This will become VERY much more important and desired at the end of this summer after the next wiki upgrade to version 1.19.. This new wiki version is deprecating some of the old css styles and offering some new ones.. I'm not sure if a mobile version is included with MW1.19, but if it is not, I will be creating one. All of the rest of the "Tiered" items will need pages similar to this by the end of the summer..

As far as the "Exceptional stat skills" bonuses go... It has been on my list of things to do for some time now to build a template and make sure all of those types of pages exist.. Again.. Lack of time and other projects have had precedence.. If someone wants to work on building the pages and drop me a note, I would be happy to put the template together.. Now, Exceptional Intelligence is a fine page to have, and it being a redirect is absolutely sound.. It just needs to be redirected to a sub-section name Exceptional Intelligence on the Intelligence page itself and not redirected to Exceptional bonus.. As should all of the exceptional stats to there respective stats..

As far as Coup de Grace goes.. It exists as a developer himself (Eladrin) describes, "Auto-criticals when struck while helpless are intended to simulate the coup de grace rule..." In my opinion, this qualifies it to be on this wiki.. I suppose that page could use some cleaning up to make it clearer, but that is neither here nor there..

I think I have touched on all of the concerns and issues raised on this page, and this is a rather specific discussion that belongs on Template_talk:Delete, so I am moving it there now.. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 19:34, March 27, 2012 (EDT)

...

• Proficiency: Greatclub: How about a page Proficiency (Item enchantment). List the items and description one place to find for all current and future items that use Proficiency: <Weapon type> (does not include Shield Proficiency)

• "Epic Brawling gloves. The page with the current template looks bad, horrible I palm faced close the tab.

That page has 3x more text most repeated, 3x templates (the same template). The wiki needs a better way for tier items/upgraded items then 2-3 separate pages or mashing the upgrades info and pics in the notes section since most of the information is the same across all 3 tiers or upgraded items. The current temp works satisfactory for non-tier items and epics put goes down hill when there are 2 more tiers/upgrades.

• Deletion: (The rule I follow) Don't need it, not in use, remove it from play (duplicate iamge, page). Unsure, tag it. If it looks important but not in use, tag it, no response in a few weeks after tag, delete it. The day may come when we have to clean house.

• Exceptional bonus could use more info.

→ Bladedge 21:03, March 27, 2012 (EDT)

Okay, so it seems the wikipedia policy for deletion is really strict ([2]). I'll try to resist the temptation to tag articles for deletion.

Anyway, as for creating articles for Proficiency: Khopesh, Shield Proficiency: Tower Shield, Weapon Focus: Falchion, etc., I'd advice against it. If there's ever a change to the weapon focus feat, we'd have dozens of articles to modify. Redundant content is hard to maintain. --Cru121 02:58, March 28, 2012 (EDT)