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Dwarf Fortress Wiki:Centralized Discussion/Personality pages review and restructuring
For clarity and organisation there is a #General notes and discussion section at the bottom, and I will be liberally tagging the initial layout of this discussion page with my signature, so any additions by other commenters relevant to a more specific section can be easily identified. From past experience I'm expecting very few, if any comments here, but it can't hurt to account for the unexpected –Alpacalypse (talk) 17:01, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
As new versions of the game have been released, in the case of the concept of personality, the wiki has been incrementally adjusting to quite comprehensive changes, and over time the various pages on this relative broad topic have become somewhat inconsistent in terminology, both in page naming and article contents. This has lead to some redundancies, inconsistent page linking, and unintentionally misleading information; and it appears to also cause some confusion for editors, mildly compounding some drifts in consistency and convention. As changes as a whole would be quite a major alteration to overall structure, nomenclature, and page linking, and as feedback and discussion around this is already getting quite fragmented, it seemed like a prime candidate for a centralised discussion. It also seems prudent to have a clear plan of action, or at least an explanation in place before any significant restructuring is undertaken, even if there is no explicit demand for concensus on this first. (Note: this isn't a demand for action, and I am quite happy to take this on myself, pending further queries, feedback, or concerns.) –Alpacalypse (talk) 17:01, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
Relevant pages[edit]
Primary topics[edit]
Anything explicitly under the category of "Personality".
- Personality facet
- Personality value
- Preference
- Personality need (was recently Need, queries about move lead to checking for feedback/consensus first.)
Suggested location for an overview and disambiguation meta-topic article:
–Alpacalypse (talk) 17:01, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
Secondary topics[edit]
Anything seen in the game that is implicitly or mechanically under the category of "Personality".
Related creature description tabs:
Related mechanics:
–Alpacalypse (talk) 18:06, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
Tertiary topics[edit]
Anything related to personality that is not explicitly presented as such directly to the player.
Mechanics/internal:
–Alpacalypse (talk) 17:01, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
Outdated or redundant pages[edit]
Pages that are fundamentally at odds with the current version of the game:
–Alpacalypse (talk) 17:01, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
Suggested changes[edit]
All of the above is functional, and the only unambiguously omission of immediate tangible benefit to the average user would probably be a Personality overview page. In terms of consistency and standardisation, it would be nice to have the primary topics moved to page names reflecting the information presented to the player, rather than based on internal identifiers. This could be mostly acheived without any page moves, and just with redirects; though given how consistency on terminology and structure got a bit muddled over time, actual move might be desirable to better indicate convention to editors, and to future-proof contextual and organisational drift again over time (as well as reducing double redirect likelyhood). –Alpacalypse (talk) 17:01, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
Naming convention[edit]
Exception to avoiding plurals: The first, and often only place the player is likely to see these topics referenced in the game will be in the creature overview/inspection window, where they are all plural; where this is the case, it seems to allow for quite a compelling argument for having the page names conform to the plural forms (Traits, Values, Thoughts). For the most part, editors are probably more often going to be referring to them as plurals too, and as the wiki already has redirects for plural to singular, it could just be reversed in this case, without causing any perceptible inconveniences to editors who either knowingly or unknowingly choose to link to the singular words. –Alpacalypse (talk) 17:01, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
Some other exceptions: Personality goal could maybe be Dreams rather than Goals as "goal" is another internal/interpreted term, and all goals are presented to the player with the word "Dreams". Downside to this one is if "Dreams" ever get added to the game. Value is already a disambiguation page, but I also think that is a good example of why in this case Values is not as confusing as it might seem, you are far more likely to refer to the "values" someone holds, and the "value" of objects and zones (and the standard syntax of [[value]]s still solves any edge cases for the latter). –Alpacalypse (talk) 18:16, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
[edit]
If it makes sense to have all of the suggested pages above to be notionally under some kind of meta-category (doesn't have to be literally "Personality", "Soul" maybe?), then it seems varied and broad enough to maybe benefit from a navigation template in that vein. –Alpacalypse (talk) 17:01, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
General notes and discussion[edit]
To keep things organised, just in case this does generate much commentary, general comments can be added here, and comments and additions to the above sections can be made where they are specifically relevant. –Alpacalypse (talk) 17:01, 12 October 2026 (UTC)
Just as an FYI, or to head off any worries: For the structuring of this, I'm planning to get it all up in draft form under my own name space and make sure all the i's are dotted and t's crossed before updating multiple pages (and leave any major article rewrites, if any are necessary, until after that is done). –Alpacalypse (talk) 18:20, 12 October 2026 (UTC)