Difference between revisions of "User talk:Thadius856"

Revision as of 08:53, 18 September 2008

Capitalization - When (UO and RL)Worlds Collide

Tancred Redstar's Thoughts

Hi Thadius856, welcome aboard! I've noticed you've made quite a few fixes today. Many of those changes were certainly needed, but on some it gave me pause to consider that UO syntax and colloquialisms don't always match up to standard English grammar rules. Some of this is simply the nature of MMO's and some even UO-specific. I'm relatively new here (in the grand scheme of things) and there isn't a Style Guide(something I've mentioned to others before), so perhaps JC, Cogniac, et. al could clarify this a bit so we could all adopt a comprehensive policy and common understanding. --Tancred RedStar 22:54, 10 September 2008 (PDT)

Consider the following example. You're approached in Luna by a young character, who asks:

"Wow, the use best weapon skill property rocks!"

I think we can agree that it would look a bit funny in Proper Case, as such:

"Wow, the Use Best Weapon Skill property rocks!"

Surely, five capitalized words in a sentence of a mere eight words would raise your eyebrow.

Don't get me wrong. I agree that Proper Case has its place on many articles. The spell Summon Air Elemental, for example, is the name of the spell. Were the words used in reference to the spell, and not its name, it would likely be lowercase.

"I love the spell Summon Air Elemental."

versus

"How do I summon an Air Elemental?"

Regardless of what either of us think, we're not the only contributors here and seems to boil down to that fact that a MoS is needed in some form or other, with a fair amount of community input. So... how do we get the ball rolling? :)

Thadius856 23:33, 10 September 2008 (PDT)

Bomb Bloke's Thoughts

The way I see it, the goal is to use the same spelling/syntax as is used in game. For example, refer to the Boomstick article - Notice the capitilisation used in the page text matches that used in the image from the game.

If there is an error in the game, it should be mirrored in the wiki until such time as it's fixed in UO. For example, the Resillient Bracer exists as an article, and the "correct" version (Resilient Bracer) exists as a redirect.

- Bomb Bloke 23:04, 10 September 2008 (PDT)

Response: Ahh, I think we're talking on different points. I'm not making changes to proper names of items here, or mispellings [sic] in the game itself. Your example of Boomstick I wholeheartedly agree with. It is, after all, a proper name, just like Bomb Bloke. However, if you review my edit history closely, you'll see that my edits have largely been to a single subset of articles. Specifically, I've been moving articles written about item properties. These properties are only shown on the popup when mousing over an item. Unfortunately, all item properties in popups that I can recall ever seeing have been in Proper Case.

Consider the following items:

Empty Tub

Weight: 60 Stones

Contents:5/125 Items, 30/400 Stones

Chainmail Leggings

Insured

Weight: 7 Stones

Mana Increase 7

Lower Mana Cost 4%

Lower Reagent Cost 17%

Physical Resist 4%

Fire Resist 4%

Cold Resist 4%

Poison Resist 1%

Energy Resist 2%

Mage Armor

Strength Requirement 60

Durability 43/52

We can plainly see that every word is capitalized. Now, I admit that some of these words are arguable as to whether they should be capitalized. The term "Mage Armor" could honestly be argued either way. However, I'm sure we can agree that "Stones" and "Requirement" are capitalized not because they need to be, but because UO has been programmed to automatically place everything in a mouseover popup in Proper Case. This same behavior is exhibited by named pets - if you name your pet "an unruly dragon", its mouseover displays as "An Unruly Dragon".

Why? Who knows. It doesn't really matter. The point here is that if we expect to remain consistent and follow cases exactly as they are written in the game, we'd logically have to capitalize every instance of "Stones" or "Requirements" on the Wiki.

Hopefully this makes some sort of sense. *gasps for breath*

Thadius856 23:33, 10 September 2008 (PDT)

I was referring to the exact page contents as opposed to the article name. To quote the segment I was talking about directly:

*Weight: 8 Stones
*Spell Channeling
*Mana Regeneration 3 
*Faster Casting 1 
*Lower Reagent Cost 20% 
*Chaos Damage 100%
*Weapon Speed 2.25s
*One-Handed Weapon
*Skill Required: Mace Fighting
*Durability: 255/255

And to show the image in concern:

You can see that the conventions used are the same.

I fully agree that UO doesn't place capitilisations according to proper grammatical rules - The point is that UOGuide should follow the UO's rules regardless. Not the "correct" rules, not the rules the players tend to use, but the terms used by the game.

At least as far as article titles are concerned. When it comes to links within pages, I really don't care.

It's well worth mentioning that "correcting" all the uses of capitilisation in the wiki would require hundreds upon hundreds of edits at this point.

- Bomb Bloke 23:59, 10 September 2008 (PDT)

I See What You're Saying About Using "UO's Rules", But Every Word On The Popups Is Capitalized. Would You Reduce Readability In The Name Of Matching The Images? :\ Thadius856 00:09, 11 September 2008 (PDT)

Fortunately, we don't need to capitilise every single word we write in order to do that. I personally feel no readability is lost under the current system.

- Bomb Bloke 00:12, 11 September 2008 (PDT)

Edit: Perhaps I should say why I was changing the articles. I'd used UOGuide maybe 20 times before I decided to contribute, almost exclusively found from Google search results. However, once I found an article I liked, I could never located an article that wasn't directly linked from it, and so I left the site each time confused as to why it was so incomplete.

I decided to join because I eventually realized that the reason why none of the articles could ever be found was because I wasn't capitalizing every single word of almost every article, and thus was getting poor results from the search box, and not because the site was incomplete like I had originally thought. Imagine how many others users came to this site and left bewildered because they hadn't caught the issue with capitalization.

What we're discussing here is a matter of usability, accessibility and readability. Thadius856 00:15, 11 September 2008 (PDT)

That also concerned me at one point... I'm pretty sure at some stage the problem you describe was around. But right now it isn't - Try using the search box to look up, for eg, the "composite bow" - No matter HOW you capitalise it, you'll go straight to the correct page. No redirects triggered at all.

If you try and enter a URL directly, however, you won't have the same luck. http://www.uoguide.com/composite_bow, for example, does not work. Not sure how many people attempt to do that though. It's certainly important to use the search function before introducing "new" pages.

-Bomb Bloke 00:54, 11 September 2008 (PDT)

Meridus' Thoughts

Welcome! I agree that I would like to see the same syntax that is used in game, or is commonly used by players. It sure raises the recognition factor and ease of use, as I'm cruising around the site.Meridus 23:12, 10 September 2008 (PDT)

Response: I agree with you. Please see my above response for more info. Thadius856 23:33, 10 September 2008 (PDT)

Outnumbered

Well, I can see I'm obviously in the minority here. Three SysOps to a single new contributor. I'm more than happy to respect the wishes of this site's administration. However, with these changes no longer being needed wanted, I don't see many other uses for my contributions. Thadius856 00:20, 11 September 2008 (PDT)

I try not to let loose the full force of my arrogance, but occasionally I do slip. I apologise if I've done that here.

All I can recommend is to take a look around at existing articles in future, check if an established standard is in order, and if so, ask before changing it. The first time I asked the answer was also no - but after looking a bit further into things, I eventually saw why.

Granted that the "thought counts", but you can see that standards have to be in place. The trick is to get in first so that the standard is yours to begin with. ;) Only you can determine if you've anything to add, and it's entirely up to you as to whether you do so, but don't go thinking that it won't be appreciated.

- Bomb Bloke 00:54, 11 September 2008 (PDT)

Hello again Thadius, I hope you will reconsider your view, we're all here to make UOGuide bigger, better and more useful for all UO players. This thing on capitalization is merely a technicality, one of the minute, finer points of a convention that was more or less inferred from early on. It's hardly a gulf of difference and your advanced understanding and long experience working with Wiki's could be a great contribution towards improving this UO community resource. I was encouraged to see another UO player with expertise stepping in to help, esp when I saw your request regarding working with the advanced editor. With nearly 6 years of UO experience, surely there is much you could add and provide veteran insight on. --Tancred RedStar 06:19, 11 September 2008 (PDT)

Like the others have stated, in the scope of things this is not a big deal. We all agree consistency helps, There is no reason to redo hundreds of pages over a minor debatable issue. However, content is needed. It is obvious to me you have a working knowledge of Wiki that far exceeds my own. There are so many subjects and guides still missing from the site. Will somebody please write a guide on making fire bombs out of bottles of Ale, or the non faction Tinkers trapped box. :) (You know: Mage locks down turn with deco tool right, or is it left??) Anyway, please reconsider. We know you have much to offer. Meridus 10:18, 11 September 2008 (PDT)

New (edit: Infobox item) Template

Tonight, I've been working on a new infobox for items (weapons, armor, etc). I figure that a universal template would greatly benefit the cause of this website. To this end, I wanted to gather ideas about how effective this template works to disseminating information about particular items before I continue developing.

As an example, I've gone ahead and converted the page Aegis of Grace on my own userpage using the template, which is still in development. So, honesty, which of the following pages looks better?

Aegis of Grace or User:Thadius856/Aegis of Grace

I'd like to continue developing this template for mass deployment, but would like to first get the nod from the site's administration. If you could please leave your thoughts regarding the template on my talk page, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thadius856 21:35, 13 September 2008 (PDT)

Meridus' Thoughts

Your new template looks very nice. My only comment would be to include links such as used in: Quiver of Rage. That being said, this is an area that Bomb Bloke has put much effort into. I'm not in a position to say one way or the other. Meridus 22:07, 13 September 2008 (PDT)

Bomb Bloke's Thoughts

'Tis a thang 'o beauty!

I made a little table to present the base armor bits, but that was a quick five minute job. This template blows it away easily. There's currently no standardisation amongst all the artifacts/weapons/armor, and I doubt anyone could do any better then this.

I've been planning on going through all the artifact/item set pages to fix the categories anyway, so fixing all the images to smaller versions and implementing the template at the same time makes that bit of work seem a bit more attractive.

Regarding the implementation of links, is it possible to keep them white but just underline them? I reckon that'd be the best way to make them apparent without breaking the look of the template too badly.

Another thing on my mind is that nearly all artifacts (with just a two exceptions that I know of) have a "base item" associated with them. For example, the Flesh Ripper is really a named/colored/modded Assassin Spike. I dunno whether that bit of info could/should be part of the template, or part of the rest of the page text.

I don't even know if the current Aegis of Grace pictured has a "valid" base item. I own one, but it's a circlet so I can't check.

- Bomb Bloke 01:45, 14 September 2008 (PDT)

Update: Thank you for your kind words. I'm glad that everybody seems to like it. I chose to use Aegis of Grace as a sample because its picture was already cropped down a bit. I just wanted to get everybody's feedback before I started adding every weapon/item property to the template, in the right orders.

I'll keep adding to it, since there seems to be a positive response to my efforts. And yes, colored links can be added, with or without underline. If you look at one of my other templates, Template:Item properties, you'll notice that the links were forced to be black, and only show underline when moused over. I'll go ahead and implement that style for now, as we can easily change it at any time if you decide that style doesn't work for the 'guide. Thadius856 10:25, 14 September 2008 (PDT)

The reason I suggest underlining them here is because I doubt some people would otherwise realise their existence (especially if they were new to wikis). In your properties template it's obvious the only reason the text is there is to serve as links, but as the item box template mimics the original so closely I'm not sure if the same holds true there. - Bomb Bloke 23:29, 14 September 2008 (PDT)

Afterthought: I'd agree that the base item would be useful info, but with keeping the infobox very close to the game's popups, it would probably be a better idea to have that included in the first sentence of the intro paragraph. I'll add the parameter to the template, just in case its decided that it should be included there. In any case, I'll leave it off hide it towards the bottom of template's documentation to be on the safe side, so not everybody knows it exists and it won't be used willy-nilly. Thadius856 10:29, 14 September 2008 (PDT)

Tancred Redstar's Thoughts

Looks great to me! --Tancred RedStar 08:53, 18 September 2008 (PDT)

Whitespace Problems

Under my browser (Firefox 2) the Blade Dance had a gap of two lines between the "Hit Mana Leech" and "Mana Increase" properties. I trimmed out all the extra spaces and that fixed things.

But when I bring up the HTML source for the page, I still see that all the empty lines in the template (as opposed to the lines with comments) are still making their way in. Quite a lot of white space, though I doubt this causes any real problems.

- Bomb Bloke 23:29, 14 September 2008 (PDT)

Response: I was noticing that myself on that specific article. Couldn't see any extra whitespace in the template, so I chalked my lack of success fixing it up to tiredness and went to bed. I'm glad you solved the problem. As for the whitespace in the template, it should be more than fine. All browsers worth the code their file size or made in the last 10 years should auto-hide multiple soft line breaks. Almost all cell phone browsers should as well, except VERY old ones, if even then. Anyway, don't fret about the whitespace. Thadius856 22:51, 15 September 2008 (PDT)

Correct Property Order

I like the itembox idea. So much so that I thought it up myself over a year ago. See: Template:Item. I made considerable progress on it with the help of some of the other sysops, but I was stymied by something that you mention a few comments above this: "adding every weapon/item property to the template, in the right orders." It's that "in the right order" thing that stopped me, because the two options were a.) get the dev team to look at the server code to determine the order or b.) spend 81923048234 hours painstakingly tracking items in-game to determine the order of all properties in relation to each other by hand. I went with a.) and I still have an open request going with Jeremy after about 7 or 8 months.

After many fruitless months of waiting, I gave up, moved on to other things, and locked the template for safekeeping. If you want to figure out the correct ordering of all item properties yourself, I can unlock that template and you can keep working from where I left off. --Cogniac 16:59, 14 September 2008 (PDT)

Response: Aye, it is quite frustrating. However, I've noticed that certain properties will always be in a sub-group together, and that they'll always follow that same subgrouping. So, how will I find out the order of all the properties? Well, to be honest, I won't. I'll just make the template as best I can, and then adjust it when I come across any item that "breaks the mold", so to speak. Plus, some of the Luna vendor search engine sites help, as I can search for multiple, specific properties on a single item... and have LOTS of results if I search across specific/all shards. Wish me luck. Thadius856

Durability

I was wondering, how would the durability of non-artifact (255/255) items be best presented?

I was thinking a lowest-highest possible max format (eg. Durability: 10-50), but I don't know what the minimum/maximum values for "standard", non-PoF/property affected items are...

- Bomb Bloke 05:53, 16 September 2008 (PDT)

Response: Good question. I hadn't considered that they may vary. I hadn't considered that info as important, since so far I've been focusing on uniquely-named items (artis, etc). I just went ahead and added the feature.

| mindurability=10

| maxdurability=100

shows in the template as

Durability: 10 (min) - 100 (max)

Hope that helps. Good luck on finding their values, though! Thadius856 10:16, 16 September 2008 (PDT)