Dwarf Fortress Wiki talk:Quality

Downgrade from Fine to Tattered

Now that xTatteredx has been implemented, all of the -Fine- articles which are definitely not fine should be downgraded. I suggest we all go through a letter of the alphabet from here and rate all the articles properly. I've already done so for letters A and B... 24 more to go. If you have extra info to add, don't hold back.

Go and rate!

What's the difference between fine and tattered? At present you have the exact same criteria listed for both categories. --Doctorzuber 18:58, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I had changed Tattered to be different from Fine, but VengefulDonut apparently disagreed and reverted them back to being identical. So Yeah. --Quietust 19:20, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Either you two didn't read them or we disagree over what the word identical means. VengefulDonut 19:43, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, nearly identical. Out of the 5 properties on each one, 3 are the same. --Quietust 20:52, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Alright. What about this? VengefulDonut 21:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

It's apparently been edited since I said something. I assure you it was identical when I posted, which was very confusing. --Doctorzuber 00:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

It wasn't identical, there was a slight difference. Too small but it was there. Speed112 01:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Stone, gem and similar articles

Any thoughts on how to rate these? Many of them seem to be tagged as stubs, but the stone template in particular seems to me to cover most of the salient information. Oddtwang of Dork 20:20, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

In my view, quality should be a reflection of the percentage of the total information about a given subject that exists. So if we're talking about non-special stones, there is very little information aside from their basic properties, colours, locations etc. Thus if an article encapsulates all of those, it should be rated fairly high quality. I can see that there could be an argument for adding like a little descriptive sentence on the page or something, but surely brevity and simplicity are features that suggest a higher quality of article. In addition, if you look at the current definition for Masterwork Quality articles, these basic stone articles are comprehensive on the subject, contain no unverified information, have an appropriate number of outbound links, do not have any redlinks and are properly categorized. The only feature I am not sure on is whether the links are in the right format, but I'd be willing to bet that it is. If that is the case, the only problem with them, and the only thing holding them back from being Masterwork (by the current definition) is the fact that they do not have multiple editors. Surely then, if we go through the pages and quickly check if the information is correct, we can then reclassify them as Masterwork. Pie 00:36, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Adding the real life information is just extraneous nonsense that doesn't help anything. Every mineral article has a link to the wikipedia page on the same subject already (in the side chart), we simply do not require a chemical formula and a crystal matrix diagram for every mineral on a wiki devoted to Dwarf Fortress gameplay.

For vermin articles, it makes sense to have a longer article for the economically important cave spider. For mineral articles, it makes sense to have a longer article for the rare and game specific adamantine. A D for Dwarf section for minerals like chert is simply unreasonable, and would take away from the specific purpose of the wiki, which is information first.

All of the mineral articles fulfill the masterwork obligations. They are as comprehensive on the subject at hand as necessary, because this is a game, not a geology lesson. If players are interested in geology, they can find the information they need more effectively elsewhere. JohnnyMadhouse 22:54, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

It seems that rating these articles removes the gamedata properties. The template is in place, but the actual information (i.e. layer, melting point, boiling point, etc.) is gone. I'm not sure how to recover it. Shadowfury333 00:55, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

who rates those articles

who rates those articles?

I have been. If I shouldn't be, someone say so now. Also, should ~100% of content articles be rated? --StrongAxe 18:42, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

As there isn't much of a vandalism thing going on here, I think it should be the original author of the article who rates it, with some admin verification following--Smd 15:25, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Anyone and everyone should be rating the articles. Don't agree with an article rating? leave a note why on the talk page and re-rate the page in question. --Briess 01:35, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Anybody can rate an article, it's a wiki and we're supposed to all work together. Just try to correct or update anything that needs changing. If you spot vandalism, go to the history tab next to the discussion/edit tabs and revert the page to a pre-vandal version. 97.90.193.201 17:57, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Changing levels

There was a discussion on the forums involving changing the quality levels to Fine, Exceptional, and Masterwork. Yes/no?--Draco18s 17:29, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. Mason ^(T-C) 17:31, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I second. The forum thread linked above garnered broad support for -Fine-, +Exceptional+, *Masterwork* after discussing several options. -Grae

Agreed, with the quality modifiers in place, they're awesome for this wiki. I mean, what's more Dwarf Fortressy than having a good *article*? --Aescula 21:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, it seems to fit the game better rather than fit with common player perceptions of the races in game.Vattic 20:51, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Although I think the Fine, Exceptional, Masterwork is a better grading scheme I have to question the need for more than two levels. Either an article doesn't have enough information (currently Elven) or it does (currently Human or Dwarven. The distinction between the top too levels is mostly in how it links to other articles which I think is a poor way to grade. For example you could make a Human article Dwarven by removing any red links or badly formed links but arguably this reduces the quality of the article itself. So I'd suggest just having a rating for poor pages and leaving good ones without any tag. --Shades 14:51, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I think there is some value to pointing out articles that are not only accurate and full of all the information, but also easy to navigate within and between. Hence the distinction between what is good and great. Mason ^(T-C) 16:28, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

But that is not what we are doing as by removing the links on a Human article you can end up with a Dwarven article. That is not a good reinforcement. --Shades 07:50, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I added another category requirement for an Exceptional article now. --Briess 00:15, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Template/method

I see that this was set up with different templates for each quality level. Is that really the best way to go? Couldn't instead of {{elven}} {{dwarven}} {{human}} could we do {{Quality|<low>}} {{Quality|<med>}} {{Quality|<high>}} (for whatever those three are)? Thoughts? Mason ^(T-C) 17:50, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

That seems far more sensible to me. The three tags are now very confusing if you don't happen to have been around while the quality thing's been introduced. Oddtwang of Dork 15:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I also agree - it would centralize the formatting rules, and even potentially allow people to set what kind of label they want to see. --Krenn 07:06, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to implement this if you feel so inclined. --Briess 00:15, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Alright, I'll try to work on this tonight. Mason ^(T-C) 19:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

This started out as a project to point what needs fixing. Fine is a terrible name for the bottom quality rank. If you are hell-bent on driving the DF reference all the way, make the lowest rank XShoddyX VengefulDonut 12:39, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, the comments on the forums seem to be more objections than suggestions. Perhaps the original elven/human/dwarven ranking would work. VengefulDonut 12:45, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd also like to nitpick that the current labels, "-Fine-" "+Exceptional+" and "*Masterwork*", are wrong - they should be "+Fine+" "≡Exceptional≡" and "☼Masterwork☼". --Quietust 13:00, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I think the purpose of pointing to what needs fixing works just as fine regardless of names. Anyone who cliks those links (which anyone who wants to fix things on the wiki probably will) understand what fine pages need more work.

I don't think elven/human/dwarven was any better at showing what needs improvement. While fine/exceptional/masterwork might not accurately measure the bottom level, at least it shows a gradient which elven/human/dwarven does not. I have no objection to bumping it to 4 levels (I think something LIKE stub could be there, shoddy isn't bad) that seems like a very good idea to me.

Vengeful, I know there are a lot of objections but when asked for some suggestions this change seemed very highly requested. I simply implmented it because I agreed that "elven" doesn't really equal "bad" or even "worse then human".

Yeah, Agreed Quiest, I'll change that. Mason ^(T-C) 14:30, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

We don't need more levels. We just need the labels for the current levels to match their purpose. The bottom level, which represents "needs improvement" articles, needs to have a tag that sounds bad. xTatteredx and xShoddyx would fit the current theme. Replacing it all with number ranks would solve it (say, level of magma). As long as the label doesn't directly conflict with the purpose of the category, the way fine does. VengefulDonut 14:54, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, it was a little work to make sure the shift happened correctly. If you want to do the change to "Shoddy" or "Tattered" then cool, otherwise I'll maybe do it sometime this week. Mason ^(T-C) 17:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Something a little negative about that, isn't there? "Stub" says 'this needs more adding to it' whereas "shoddy" says 'what's here isn't much cop'. I agree that "Fine" is probably a bit generous. Offhand, however, I don't have another suggestion for the lowest level.

There's probably an argument to make that the middle level would be better as "Fine" if the lowest is changed - I think there's a clearer distinction then between it and the top level. Oddtwang of Dork 21:02, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I just noticed the addition of "xTATTEREDx". Now we have a brand new problem: There's absolutely nothing in between "poor" (tattered) and "good" (fine). We need something neutral. Poor - Neutral - Good - Great is a fine progression, but we don't have anything that sounds "neutral".G-Flex 07:47, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. Fine really isn't a neutral word. What would be a good replacement? VengefulDonut 12:30, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Well tbh fine is fine, not good, as in it's not bad but it isn't good either = neutral. Exceptional = good and Masterwork = great. I was in fact thinking that, rating-wise, Masterwork is really close to Exceptional, and Exceptional is pretty far away from Fine, so it would be a good idea to turn Fine into Well-crafted and Exceptional into Superior, to have them all 2 levels apart: Tattered(0), Well-crafted(2), Superior(4), Masterful(6... or 12). --Speed112 12:14, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Quality categories by version namespace

Is there a relatively simple way to view a list of, say, all DF2010 articles of Fine quality? If not, could there be? It would be quite handy for targeting articles to be improved. --FunkyWaltDogg 03:29, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Doing so would require editing the {{Quality}} template itself, though it might not be a bad idea. --Quietust 04:04, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking of doing that. We'll leave this here for a little so people can comment on it, but then if noone opposes I'll make the change. Mason ^(T-C) 17:22, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

With this in place, would calculating the "Overall quality rating" for each version not be more useful? Either for each namespace or for each + the articles in the mainspace, maybe? Oddtwang of Dork 21:05, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I've just updated the progress bar template to allow it to focus on a single namespace. 40d has a reasonably high rating, while 23a is way worse than even DF2010. I've also tweaked this Quality page to list the quality stats for all 3 namespaces - it's a bit busy, but the information should be useful. --Quietust 13:57, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks great IMO, thanks! --FunkyWaltDogg 15:02, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

My god, stats. Stats everywhere! I love it. Well done. Mason ^(T-C) 15:27, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

There's no mention of the "Version:Quality" style categories on the quality page. Should those be added immediately, or are we waiting until we've reached a decision on if ratings will differ between versions? Because I would add them, but I don't want to screw things up. Señor Pwnage 02:36, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Drop in overall quality rating

Why has the quality rating seen on the main page dropped so precipitously? It was at over 20% a week or two ago, now it is at 11%. Is this due to articles being rerated downward, or due to the hundreds of nearly-stub pages such as DF2010:Aquamarine? Has the calculation method changed? Or another cause?
—0x517A5D 20:19, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Almost certainly the latter, and probably partially my fault - whenever I find a page that has no rating at all, I just give it a "Fine" rating so it at least has a rating at all - I'm of the opinion that it's better for a page to be underrated than completely unrated. --Quietust 21:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

And I agree, the lowest rating should be applied to the worst articles. Mason ^(T-C) 17:21, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Given that a bunch of the articles have been blindly categorized as "Fine", I'm going through and rerating a bunch of them as "Unrated" which will place them in a distinct category so other users can provide more accurate ratings. It would probably be beneficial to make the template recognize this rating and list it on this project page (and somehow include them on the progress bar thingy). --Quietust 19:36, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest not doing that. Fine is currently the "bottom" rating. We can that name if we want, but having to go back and change unrated to "new bottom rating" will be a lot of unnecessary work, imo. Don't you think? Mason ^(T-C) 22:50, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

"Unrated" was not intended to be a "new bottom rating", but a way of denoting that an article needs to be (re-)rated - since the intent is that every page (or at least all of those in the DF2010 namespace) should have a quality rating, it's useful to be able to explicitly categorize an article as needing a rating without having to rate the article yourself (for those who are very poor judges of quality). --Quietust 22:55, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm also rather shocked at the brutal re-rating of everything. Not one Masterwork article? Seriously? If everything's just going to end up in a morass of Fine, where Fine can be anything from a pointless stub to a half-decent, usable article, then the system really isn't helping. --Krenn 05:08, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Ah - replying to my own post in case anyone else has the same confusion I did; the problem is that the links to the categories from the Quality page go to non-version specific categories of Fine, Exceptional, and Masterwork, and nothing is in those anymore. All articles are now of a quality rating specific to their own namespace, IE: Category:DF2010:Masterwork Quality Articles. I still think rating is being too harsh, though, as there's only 3 masterwork right now and that seems low. --Krenn 05:14, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll fix this. Also, the count is just how many articles are labeled masterwork, if you can find some other than those three that are masterwork, please label them such :). Mason ^(T-C) 06:15, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

There are only 2!!! masterwork articles now for some reason. Don't know if the 3rd one deserved being downgraded or not, but this makes me kind of sad. We need to do something about all these "fine" articles which are anything but fine, and bump more-than-decent exceptional articles with some extra stuff to make them masterwork... guides maybe? I don't know. But I don't really like it. I'm trying to do stuff but I'm new (so I suck) and don't have time... the answer is for everyone to do small things and not let it to a few good members. --Speed112

Criteria

Currently, having a "substantial number of redlinks" is grounds for an article being rated as Fine. While this is okay for new pages, it's a bit unfair to articles in the 23a namespace, where most of the content is concrete but simply hasn't been imported from the Archive wiki yet. Should this distinguish between redlinks due to incorrect formatting versus redlinks due to pending creation of other pages? --Quietust 19:48, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I tend to think the rules should be substantially different in the 23a namespace, as it is essentially historical content being ported into the current wiki for reference purposes. So I would actually argue that 23a pages should not be rated at all, nor taken into account in the quality rating.
Speaking of that, it used to be wiki policy to make minimal edits — don't these repeated ratings lead to extra entries in the page histories and extra disk space consumed? Or are the ratings handled thru a database entry maybe?
—0x517A5D 19:57, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

By that argument, should not 40d articles also be exempt from being rated? --Quietust 20:20, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Disk space is not a concern. However, fine as the bottom rating of articles is not fine. --Briess 20:22, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: No ratings for 40d and 23a

Those parts of the wiki are mostly static (and hopefully generally complete) and increasingly of historic interest only. The way I understand the rating, it's mostly to show the ongoing process of completing a new version and telling a user how to evaluate an article.

We could alternatively introduce separate rating templates for 40d and 23a.. --Höhlenschreck 21:52, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps just alternate categories? Mason ^(T-C) 22:48, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Specifics of implementation aside, I think a ratings system that only counts current version and mainspace articles in the overall wiki score is a good idea. --FunkyWaltDogg 00:39, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

This is now implmented, the "score" is DF2010 only. Hohlenschreck, does this meet your ideas? Or do you not want labels on older articles at all? Mason ^(T-C) 06:30, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I think this is fine --Höhlenschreck 00:43, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Quality is not updating itself

I've been testing something, and looking at a preview via edit, it shows a different quality than normal, like it's not updating the quality at all. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or as possible as a wiki can go. Any ideas as to why this is happening? --Hugna 07:10, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

The quality won't update itself automatically while you preview. From Recent Changes it looks like (maybe) there is now something which automatically updates rating based on some script? Interesting if that's the case. But it definitely won't have any impact while you are previewing (also not immediately after you save either). Mason ^(T-C) 11:12, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by a different quality than normal? If you hit preview when on the edit page, it will show whatever quality tag is currently on the page. Also Mason, the rate script is just an easier method to add/update a quality tag -- shouldn't have anything to do with what he's talking about, I hope. Emi [T] 11:54, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Difference between exceptional and masterwork

I've noticed there has been some talk about exceptionals/materworks over on the Black diamond page. I'm continuing the topic here, to have everything in centralised discussion... My two cents: I think "exceptional" should be the standard for an article that contains all in-game information. Masterworks should then be articles that for some reason exceed the standard value and add something extra - like guides (great example it the Cave spider page) or massive amounts of information organised in a convenient way (like the generic Tree page). I'm saying this mostly as a user, who expects masterworks to be something worth reading. Having masterworks that are basically just stubs (eg. the Black diamond) is very counterintuitive, even if nothing remains to be said. Yes, I'm aware this would mean rearranging the quality criteria. --Markus cz 11:38, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. --Nahno 12:53, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

That's the way I view it too. Since we've now got xTatteredx for useless articles and +Fine+ for mediocre ones, putting ≡Exceptional≡ as "complete" and ☼Masterwork☼ as "over and beyond" seems appropriate. --DeMatt 01:42, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree, Masterwork articles need to be something particularly special. I don't think it's a problem if some articles, by their nature, may never be able to be "masterwork". Mason ^(T-C) 12:43, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I just want to point out that if Exceptional is the goal, it should score as 100%, not 60%, in the math for the quality rating. (I think Fine should also be bumped upward from 30%, and Tattered bumped up from 0% to maybe 10%.) I won't make the change myself, as my last edit to the math was reversed.
—0x517A5D 14:51, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Your last edit to the math was reversed due to said change consisting of adding a random number from -30 to +40 to the rating, as well as outright labeling it as "malicious". --Quietust 16:31, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a point?
—0x517A5D 16:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

The point is, your suggested contribution here is useful. The addition of a random element to the rating value was not judged as useful. One was reverted, the other is very unlikely to be reverted unless another better idea comes along. --Briess 18:51, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

And there in lies the problem (perhaps the only among all the positives) of a rating system like this. It doesn't let you specifically point out impressive achievements without marking everything else as missing something. I mean it takes away the benefit of highlighting the best work we've (well, not really me, but other people) came up with as a group in order to assign a score. But I can't think of another way of doing it. Mason ^(T-C) 05:21, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Let's add the following requirement (or something along these lines) for an article to be considered masterwork:

• This is enlightening.

or maybe something like this:

• All DF players should read this article.

It would be good to have something that says the page is an important one, and not just a comprehensive one. VengefulDonut 05:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Maybe not specifically these criteria, but something along those lines. Masterwork articles should shine among other great articles (Exceptional) and be, indeed, masterwork.

Another idea would be to tweak the rating so that Exceptional articles are complete (100%) and Masterwork are complete with a spark of awesomeness. What I mean is that they should still count as 100% on the rating percentile, but there should be another counter of awesomeness which says how many Masterwork quality articles there are. Speed112 10:58, 2 June 2010 (UTC)