Dwarf Fortress Wiki talk:Centralized Discussion

C++ Symbols

Hi, Im try using "windows debugging tools" to get some useful information about some crashs since windows 7 doesnt have the so called "dr watson" anymore (which creates a dump useful for toady). For the debug info to be more useful, there is an option to use symbols file (*.pdb) I found some c++ symbols in the wiki but is it possible to make a real pdb file out of that? copypasta into a new txt file and renaming the extension doesnt seem to work.

Clarification on "Verification" of content

The policy is that all content from 40d must be verified before making it to the 2010 namespace. Whould confirming with the changelog that something hasn't changed be good enough to meet this requirement? If not, does this means that each feature must be tested in game? bongotastic #11:05, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

In general the changelog is not sufficient. For example, the changelog doesn't say that the DF2010:Archery Target is now broken, but if you tried it out personally before moving it then you would know that simply copy-pasting this is a bad idea. Not a small task I know, but long-term this is far more valuable. Any article in particular you were thinking about? Mason ^(T-C) 12:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Thoughts?

Any thoughts on this page? Any potentially useful organizing ideas? Mason ^(T-C) 16:58, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. --Briess 17:03, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Missing discussions?

Are there any important discussions I've missed, or anything you'd like to discussion that you'd like a location to discuss? Mason ^(T-C) 16:58, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

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)

Might I suggest responses go to the just created Dwarf Fortress Wiki:Article Consolidation talk page. I think this is a big issue worth discussing, and so it deserves to be discussed there. Mason ^(T-C) 21:34, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I wonder, is there a place here for a Future Versions Ideas page? I have many ideas for things that could be used in future versions of Dwarf Fort, but there's no way to get the word to Toady that I'm aware of, aside from straight e-mailing him...--Aescula 20:55, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not really sure if the wiki is the right place for something like that. I mostly say that because I don't think that he will look at what we set up for the wiki either. There is a Suggestions Forum that seems to be the best place for that kind of thing. I imagine if he looks anywhere he looks there. Mason ^(T-C) 19:53, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Template madness

Okay I was looking at DF2010:Native platinum and wanted to make the changes but the arrangement of templates make editing the sidebar incredibly complicated even for the fairly good amount of knowledge I have of the wiki.

This really doesn't need to be this complicated. Could someone explain how it works and more importantly why it needs to be so complicated. Mason ^(T-C) 21:12, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, we need a short tutorial on templates. This is shutting out IPs (and probably the majority of editors) through the backdoor. --Birthright 00:32, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Here you go. VengefulDonut 14:20, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Right. You make it obvious that excessive use of templates will make the wiki unusable for all but a small aristocracy. Plus we would still need a central place frequently visited by editors that links to those pages. Maybe link to the -still missing- short tutorial next to every template in the articles? --Birthright 20:57, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

You seem confident that you will get what you want. VengefulDonut 23:52, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Magmawiki skin feedback

I just decided to try out the new skin. I am using it for ten minutes and I already can't imagine using anything different, it's great!--SanDiego 13:54, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

If not consolidation, then what?

I don't seem to have a lot of support for article consolidation, and have abruptly been relieved of the time I had to try and help. Fine. I still insist the clutter of pages remains troublesome. Whenever your search is slightly off, instead of returning few to no results, it returns hundreds of irrelevant results. When I search for BODY_SIZE I don't want creature_standard.txt, grimeling size, mud man size, olmman size, fire man size, insert-material-here-man size or anything else's tags, I'm looking for info on the tags themselves. Same when I search "raws", I don't mean those of beetles, whales, walruses, sturgeon, stingray, etc, etc, etc. Redirects won't fix this until we redirect every possible thing that needs to be redirected, at all, ever, but that seems an even more exhaustive task than tables.

Is it possible to prevent the search from indexing these stub articles, or at least giving them less priority? The 'whale' page is going to be irrelevant to anyone not searching for whales... --Corona688 17:02, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you that there isn't the support for consolidation. I do understand what you're saying. It seems like there are two possible solutions to your problem.

• Better organization: This is entirely possible, but very complicated. I've been trying to improve this but it is very difficult. If you don't have the time to work on this and improve it you'll have to rely on my inconsistent free time to make some improvements. If you have some good ideas besides "make it better" I'm all ears.
• Better search: This is much more difficult, and probably not exactly possible given the extreme constraints that is the mediawiki software. You'd be pleased to know that we (User:Briess and User:Emi) are working on developing a new wiki software specifically for DF. Details can be found here and here. I can only assume that they will make sure to provide improved searching as one of their goals, but if you want to post in the forum thread your wishes that would probably be useful.

Mason ^(T-C) 20:10, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not the wiki that sucks, the search function is limited. You are simply asking too much. --Birthright 00:29, 7 May 2010 (UTC)