Dwarf Fortress Wiki talk:Article Consolidation

From DFW:Centralized Discussion

Will any articles be pruned away or merged? In the jump from 40D to v31 a lot of articles that used to be served well by tables seem to have become their own articles, which really clutters the place up and scatters information all over unfindably. Stones, ores, and gems are the most obvious, they really only need three tables instead of hundreds of articles. --Corona688 19:53, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Gems are definitely going to have to be consolidated into their own article. Ores and other valuable stones have too much relevant information to stuff in a table, although the worthless stuff like microcline or slate should definitely be relegated to Table Land (presumably we'd have a Stones page, with extra pages for stuff like obsidian or hematite). I think following the example of articles from 40d is a good idea. -- 114.77.43.223

What is there to know about Hematite except what it makes and where it's found? What makes it so useful is the metal, which is better described in the Iron page. Seems perfect for a table to me, alongside the myriad other ores that get mined and smelted exactly the same way. Obsidian on the other hand has a fairly unique property that wouldn't be well-described in the valuable stones table alone. --71.17.242.69 06:28, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that ores/stones/gems should be in combined articles. I think I could work on something like this today. Mason ^(T-C) 16:26, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Minerals having their own pages is fine with me. There's a bit of information that can be included on the odd page as well as values, pictures and a wikipedia link. Time is better spent elsewhere. One area that could use some looking into is which material is best for each weapon on the weapons article. It currently doesn't have any information on this at all. Richards 16:40, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

What are minerals? *SCNR* --Birthright 19:43, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Generally I don't think "stubs" are a bad thing. Fish cleaner, fishery and fish cleaning may be put in one article+2 redirects, but there are other topics where there is not much to say, and that's just fine, too. With barely 1000 articles it is also rather silly to talk of clutter. How does Wikipedia manage then? Making additional guides and summarizations is of course useful (and linking to them).

Stubs that stay stubs are a bad thing. They bury searches in useless results. Wikipedia does not have the problem of filling in hundreds of EMPTY articles following a premade structure that may no longer be relevant or even sensible. And if they're staying stubs, really, they don't deserve a page. --71.17.241.117 01:09, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Er, that was me. --Corona688 01:11, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure why microcline should have it's own article..actually, it should. What I - and a lot of players? - like to do is dig down, find a new stone, look it up. Not just if it's valuable, but also in what layers it appears and if its worth to dig through it into the base layer that may contain interesting or specific stuff. So even when i see that microcline really is everywhere i may decide to not dig on there when I'm looking for, say, platinum. In any case I didn't like the way the table for "generic" stone was organized in the 40d space. As for gems I think we should have both. An article for every gem so i can just check it's value when I find it (before I mine it) without needing the browser search function to find it in a pages-long table, but a table too so we have a central place where one can compare gems with each other. --Birthright 19:43, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

A table would accomplish all that a lot better than an eternally empty stub or a fancy illustration of microcline would. Why couldn't it have a column for value? --Corona688 01:11, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd also add that when you did a search for, say, Diamond, it would bring you to /whatever/page#Diamond but for some reason not forward you to Diamond in the page. That could probably be fixed, so the search would work for you too. --71.17.241.117 03:30, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

By all means, create your giant tables and combined articles. Nobody will be against more useful content. However, please don't destroy the already existing stone and gem pages. If you really want them gone, we can discuss it after you've made a suitable replacement. VengefulDonut 04:42, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Well of course we'd want to replace them with a more useful resource before we remove them, and I also see the potential value in having specific pages, and also table pages. So I might start working on that DF2010:Ore / DF2010:Gems / DF2010:Stone Mason ^(T-C) 13:33, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Lumping everything into a table just means more work for a new player to find the information they are looking for. Sure, it seems obvious to anyone that's played for more than a day that microcline is pretty but worthless, but new players shouldn't be forced to scroll through potentially confusing tables to find what they want. But big tables DO have value players both new and old, so having BOTH mega-tables and individual pages is the best solution, in my opinion. The individual pages should however have very clear links to the main stone/gem/ore/etc. pages, plus any information that may be unique to that object. Don't make it hard on newcomers just to "tidy things up" or whatever. A wiki is about getting the relevant information to the user, and if the user wants to know about microcline, it should be as simple as typing it into the box.