Dwarf Fortress Wiki talk:Versions

What about {{version}}?

Did you have something like this in mind? category:version template:version (: VengefulDonut 21:32, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I did see that before and I think that's awesome as notes about particular items in an article, but it doesn't quite bring us to the two goals I hoped for here. It informs users about a statement but because of the difficulty (and undesirability) of labeling every statement in an article I think a single template per article can bring something different to the table. Mason11987 ^(T-C) 21:38, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Template:old is the same functionality but with a box. Is this what you need, or did you have something else in mind? VengefulDonut 21:43, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Much closer, I think a box for an article (maybe shifted to the top-right) is necessary for this, in order to provide the benefit of information for the user. A difference is I'd like this box to be on every article so that not only are articles labeled as out of date, but also as up to date. Most importantly I'm more about discussing the conceptual idea of this kind of organization, then we can devise an appropriate implementation. Mason11987 ^(T-C) 21:51, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

From what I've seen so far, it looks like what you want is a trivial step away from the things already in place. Is putting the box in the top right corner and putting one on every article the only difference? VengefulDonut 21:58, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh I'm not saying it's a fundemental change, but it's implementation will allow for the large project of updating after this big update of DF. There are some details I think should be part of this change:

• A box on every article stating if the article is up to date or not. If it's not, also stating up to what version it is up to date.
• A categorization scheme that follows like so:
  • If it's up to date, put in two categories: something like "up to date", and something like "version ______"
  • If it's not up to date, put it in two categories: something like "obsolete", and something like "version _____"

Each page should be able to just list the version it's updated as of, the template should determine whether "{{Version|40d}}" should end up in category "up to date" or category "obsolete". This should be done in such a way that when a new version comes out we can make a small change to the template and EVERY article will become "obsolete" and users can over time go through them and confirm that they are still up-to-date by changing the template to refer to the new version. I think this is the major aspect I'm proposing that isn't a trivial difference from the current method of organization and upkeep here. Do you get what I'm suggesting? If I thought it was a trival difference I would have just implemented it and asked what people thought, but this could be a very big deal if we go through with it. Mason11987 ^(T-C) 22:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Take a look at template:vcat. This is the template currently placed on all of the version category pages. It compares the version the category corresponds to with template:current/version and displays a message based on whether or not it matches. Is this the type of thing you want? VengefulDonut 22:16, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

This is certainly a useful feature already in place that would likely go on the categories that will be created, or it might just stay as is but the version template will change slightly. Mason11987 ^(T-C) 00:50, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps use "New", "Old", and "Obsolete" markers? DF2010 is "New", 40d is "Old", and pre-40d is "Obsolete"? I like the idea of a small box up in the corner, and a category to group them. --Aescula 23:43, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I would want to make sure we don't get out of hand; new uses will be likely to ignore anything marked "Old" even if it continues to be accurate (nobody had verified it). Perhaps something like "This page is X releases old; some information may be changed" or something. Most releases don't change more than a few major areas (DF2010 is an exception because of the length of release, but even it won't be changing everything). I do think that something like this is VERY important for "tutorial" sections; a single key change could stymie a new user; and we'd lose them forever. --Bombcar 00:33, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Well of course and that's a detail on the text in the template. There are multiple goals to accomplish and realistically I don't think it would take long on a minor to average version to go through and just check each article to make sure it's up to date. There are a lot but it's not too much, and there a lot of active editors on here who if given a straightforward task of article version checking would be able to accomplish it in the early days of a new version release I'm sure. I also think the New/Old(Current)/Obsolete(Old) is a great addition. That way we can do the transition of New to Current for DF2010 after we've done a lot of the work. Mason11987 ^(T-C) 00:50, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem with "updating" all the old version's pages is that is based on the premise that a page, as a whole, can both be "updated" and then accurately labeled as such. It can't, not either. Pieces will be updated, subsections, or single elements of subsections, but even then only as accurate as that last editor understood the changes. Think about the changes that the Wound/Healing system will undergo, or Materials/Values, or Weapons/Armor, and all the directly associated pages and concepts, and references and paraphrasing in other articles - could be massive and subtle at the same time. When does a label get changed? If each User only edits a bit at a time (and few of us rewrite entire pages!), how do we know we've filtered out all the legacy information? I do like the idea of beginning new version labels for each version's article on the same subject - altho' that would almost require different sites to allow for identical article names. --Albedo 12:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't disagree with your opinion on bit-by-bit changes, it makes sense. I think your below idea might be the way to go, with articles of the new version labeled with a suffix (DF2010) linking back to the "old" version, which links forward to the 2010 version. A new site is definitely not needed and would cause a huge amount of problems imo. I think a simple template on every article (like I described) pointing to a 2010 version can be done by a handful of people with a little time. Then the 2010 version can start with just that template (which will automatically point backwards). This will include the separate page like you suggested, but would still accomplish the goals I had hoped to accomplish. Mason ^(T-C) 12:13, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

<nods> Those "goals" being:

• Allow users to know an article is up to date
• If an article isn't up to date, allow a user to know exactly how out of date it currently is.
• Allow editors to easily find articles which are out of date and improve them.

It seems no article can ever be confirmed as 100% up to date - new observations and insights make this a very dynamic and wiki-appropriate process. But if we can start every 2010 article (and every version in the future!) with currently accurate info, even if that's only a fraction of what we "knew" for d40, that's as big a step as we can take in the right direction.--Albedo 12:25, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

My vision

(For what it's worth). I mentioned a desire to look into the possibility of doing this on my Admin application, in the Q&A process. When I first joined the DF community, we had just(?) undergone a version shift, and the pages here and users on the Forums here were rife with misinformation and contradictory understandings of the game. Newbies would look in the wiki and find ancient history mixed side-by-side with recent edits, some stuff that went back to the 2-D version, and that would be presented as gospel and no one knew any different. The very recent revelation that workshops do NOT make noise in d40 is a perfect example. I'd love to see this version change-over done differently.

What I had envisioned was a category template, something bold and unmistakable like mod or delete, that marked a page (or every major subsection?) as "OLD VERSION : d40" (or whatever). (This would also create a category page where all those could be scanned at a glance.) Those pages would not be edited for DF2010 - to do that would invite a piecemeal disaster that would spiral into the same jumbled quagmire (or probably worse!) that I first stepped into. As a User wants to address a topic, a new page is started - if that is identical to the prev info (dwarf, perhaps, etc), then it's mostly just copy/paste - but if not, then it gets edited and updated on the new page. If only part of it can be verified, then only part of that older page makes the transition at that time. Thus (in theory*) only material that has been confirmed as "DF2010 accurate" will make it to the "current" wiki, and the rest is clearly marked as legacy but stays intact as that.

(* I have no illusions that users will not find a way to screw this up at times. But it has to be better than opening a long legacy article that has already had a dozen editors shake it up - but it's unclear what has and what has not been addressed. Armor, or skill, for instance.)

The new pages would have a link to the old one(s), so users could see what if any old info is still applicable or unconfirmed, and/or what needs to be translated/updated and added, but the new page will grow the new article from the ground up, rather than pretend a dozen users could patch an accurate final product together from an inaccurate but similar one, one edit at a time.

It's the difference between repairing a totaled car, and using only the good pieces to rebuild a new one.

I'm not experienced enough in the wiki-code to know if or how the two "versions" would be kept distinct if we stayed on this site - many articles will certainly want the same Name, so... yeah. That's what I thought the new site/engine would be used for, not simply copy/pasting current articles and being right where we are now, right where we were with the last significant change, right where we don't want to be.--Albedo 10:05, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

IMO. Personally you would do this by copying every [[article]] (say, Miner) to a new namespace. With redirects from main namespace to the version namespace.

So [[Miner]] would redirect to [[VerABC:Miner]]. With a simple Page Copy, editors could copy the whole page, and easily update it to DF2010.Garrie

Um, what's the right word?... NO!!! That is exactly what I would NOT want to see happen! And sorry to shout, but that is so far off the mark it frightens me. That achieves nothing but two legacy sites. What I would prefer is that the new page is blank, and only information that has gone thru a user's confirmation process is added to that new article. Blind, bulk "copy/pasting" is not that. It's much easier to read over one section at a time and update that, than to try to weed out legacy information buried in an entire article that has been "mostly edited". For one, how does anyone know what has and has not been checked at least once? Yes, there will be constant updates - but the core information is then at least (in theory) info on 2010, not d40, and any clear d40 legacy material has already been filtered out. ("Healing and wounds" jumps immediately to mind as a collection of articles that would lead to a disastrous "rewrite" - but snipping bits and pieces, and adding that to the updated system - that gives us better accuracy for the end product.)--Albedo 10:38, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Something like this, Template:D40x: Template:D40x

I like where you're going and I think this could fit nicely with the goals I had in mind when I wrote this. For each article we could have a box in it. Saying that this article was updated as of version 40d, for the new version click "here". Here will link to "article name (DF2010)" or something similar. That article will have a box saying it was updated as of DF2010, and for the old version click "here", where here will link to "article name". This can easily be done via templates.

I understand your concern about updating articles bit-by-bit, and I see a lot of value in your suggestion. I think at SOME point though after the release of DF2010 we'll need to mass move articles so that the 2010 versions become the article name verions, and the article name versions become article name (40d), and the template placed can have a minor modification to continue functioning after a mass move.

Ultimately I think this will require more administrative work (move-over-redirect for example), and perhaps a larger set of work for editors, but it will more likely have a better end-product then a bit-by-bit change, which is really most important. Organization on something like this is key though, but I like your approach. Mason ^(T-C) 11:59, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

And I value your experience with what's possible - that could totally work, linking each article to a main (or "best") article in the other version ("best" being relative, depending). And, yes, the "migration" between naming conventions could be a pain and will have to happen as we phase out d40 (another reason I was thinking 2 sites, but if we don't have to go there then that's better still). I completely re-edited some of the larger clusters left by the previous version changes - the whole Armor/Weapon series, and the various Defense Design/Fortress Design/Fortress Defense/Design a Fortress/Defend your Fortress/Siege Engine/Siege/Design a Defense/Design Theory/Design Theory pages - you get the idea. That was ugly and took weeks of planning and then editing, and the info was already mostly there and it was largely "one vision", so I could keep track of my own progress - we can't expect that with this shift. Many of groups of d40 article will need to be re-conceived 100% as well as have all new info, rearranged to better fit the 2010 game system and paradigm. "Squads" and "Burrows" will wreck havoc with the current Military and Design concepts, and Wounds/Doctors will most likely call for a new series of articles. It's not going to be a 1:1 translation, and we shouldn't plan on it being so.--Albedo 12:18, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I get what you're saying about the changes being big enough that "blind copying" d40 info won't work to make accurate DF2010 articles. But I honestly think the use of a seperate name-space for (legacy) version specific information is a tidier way of "quarantining" it than Article (Version). The "quarantining" process was more what I was getting at, than the process of getting "accurate DF2010" articles into main-space. Garrie 12:27, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I kind of like the namespaced articles idea. However, don't let what I think will / wont work override every other opinion. --Briess 12:36, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the namespace is a good option. My only worry is problems it could cause to things such as search, which the parenthetical notation wouldn't have those problems. On the other hand it isn't as easy to separate a page name and the version it applies to if the version is in parentheses, those I suspect the difference may be minimal especially with parser functions. One thing we don't want is to make navigation more difficult to users. If they type "weapons" they should arrive at the appropriate article automatically. Which either means that information has to be on the article Weapons (without namespace or parentheses) or the article Weapons has to redirect to the correct version. I think having DF2010:Weapons and 40d:Weapons could certainly work, but then when there is a version change all of the articles like Weapons have to point to the new version. This isn't a big deal to me though, and is a necessary problem to overcome if we're going to have an article for each topic for each version. Mason ^(T-C) 22:42, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll update the article page with what I think is the current consensus approach. Mason ^(T-C) 22:42, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

A new namespace would be really good. If we have some large article X that effectively needs to be scrapped, we could move it to Legacy:X and put an appropriate label on it. Then lock it and put a link to it on the new X article. This has the added benefit of disabling all of the template:version (and maybe template:verify) tags, which only include pages in a category if they are in the main namespace. So they don't need to be found and removed manually. VengefulDonut 12:01, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Updated proposal

I made some changes, hopefully they are clear. Thoughts? Mason ^(T-C) 22:52, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if what we're doing here would be more suited for a release like DF2010 - a jump from 39d to 40d, say, wouldn't be that much and shouldn't make the whole wiki covered with orange boxes. Perhaps a smaller unverified note unless a manual "this change was major" button is hit somewhere. I like what is there currently, as articles would "rust" just like dwarven skills if not updated. --Bombcar 04:26, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

This was inspired by the DF2010 jump but the goal is to make sure the wiki stays up to date through all future releases. Though I agree that larger changes require a different approach then small changes. I'd suggest we worry about small changes when they come afterwords. Mason ^(T-C) 12:34, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

My suggestion would be to use the "main" namespace (ie: no special prefix) for whatever version is current.Garrie 06:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Well that seems obvious, and way simpler lol. The template could still work just as well that way, since the template will know what version is up to date, if it finds an article that is using it, it will know it's up to date if it's the main namespace article. This will mean that at some point in the near future we'll have to move all of the articles that are relevant to "40d:Article" then edit the redirect to begin the new page which will be about the article for DF2010. Thoughts on this? Mason ^(T-C) 12:34, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems simpler, but is it really, in the long run? (I'm not sure, but I'm just not convinced either way.) The difference is whether we have to update every "current" page every significant version upgrade. Won't be "every" time, but any time like this one. That, plus however much hassle and confusion having two (and more later!) parallel sets of articles creates. While that won't be often, it will be a LOT of pages to reconcile, recreating (and compounding?) the current situation with every major upgrade. I wish we could somehow create two independent "sites" (with or without a different domain name/etc), but linkable to each other, so that the new one is separate yet still easily self-referential within itself. A new page or internal-link either series is just a new page, metal or stone, no need for a new template or qualifier to the obvious and appropriate article name. And any older series of articles don't muddy the water for navigation or a Search, they just become "the old site", similarly separate but nearby. If there was a way to mass-mark every page on a site, adding a template that refers users to the new "current version", so much the better. I don't know if anything like this is possible, or practical if it is, but it would be a good thing if it were, and solve both problems.--Albedo 06:39, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I really really don't think that scrapping the wiki and calling it old is useful. We destroy any and all redirecting capability, which is critical for new users. Our goal is to retain information about the old versions while creating information on the new versions as accurately and quickly as possible, and with as little trouble for readers as possible. Creating another wiki is not helpful for this for many reasons (watchlists/usernames not copying over as a couple examples). I don't think old articles in other namespaces will mess up search, as you can explicitly exclude different name spaces in your search. I think this is a fantastic feature, instead of a problem. Imagine being able to search for some topic only in 40d articles? Or only in "up to date" articles? Or both? Mason ^(T-C) 14:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

DF2010

I just wanted to make sure nobody plans to keep calling the new version DF2010 after it gets released. It will have a real version number at that point. VengefulDonut 00:17, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Lotsa luck on that one. My guess is it'll be a redirect, as so many "fan contributions" to this culture. Meanwhile, since we have no hard count on the version changes (which equate to the ver number), this will continue to ingrain itself in our consciousness.)--Albedo 03:28, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

*using small text to fake hide my pride* - I coined the name "DF 2010" when I made the wiki article :D Mason ^(T-C)

The 2D version is very commonly referred to as such, so I wouldn't be surprised if it continues to be well known as DF2010. That being said I agree that if we go with the namespaces, we aren't going to use DF2010 unless that phrasing actually existing IN the game. Regardless though our job is to help people find what they're looking for and that should be the #1 concern. If people will search for something using DF2010 or similar we should make that easy as possible. But the name of articles is unimportant as long as the possible names redirect to the actual article, that's my only concern. Mason ^(T-C) 14:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Consensus?

I went through and read everyone's comments on this talk, and tried to summarize everyone's viewpoints. It looks like we have a general consensus for this idea:

• Move version-dependent (almost all) articles to "40d:X"
• Page "X" [this means the "main" namespace] contain DF2010 information only (no Copy/Paste), links to "40d:X"
• Current Version namespace is intended to be a staging namespace for us editors.
• Make references to "DF2010" able to be changed easily.

I figure we can just do a straw poll to decide if this is a good idea (as a whole). In your comment if you could specify when you think this kind of thing should be done (after we set up templates/categories), that'd be useful [either "ASAP", "some date", or "after DF2010" release].

• Support - ASAP Mason ^(T-C) 23:46, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
• Support - ASAP, and I've set up the required namespaces for this project. --Briess 00:33, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
• Support, except the for the name of the namespace. I think "legacy" has a much better ring to it than "40d". Also, this won't be the last time we want to move outdated info somewhere. VengefulDonut 01:35, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

  I think it would be great to keep all our outdated information for those who want to play legacy versions of the game. --Briess 01:37, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Strongly support that last sentiment, at least for the now...

...Also, I'll suggest that less than 36 hrs over a weekend (if at any time) is perhaps NOT adequate time to poll for a "consensus", at least not for something of this magnitude. I had something to say about this, something that might have made a diff, but... it's completely moot now, i'n'it? Next time, maybe either wait just a bit longer before taking executive action, or simply don't pretend input matters, pls - it's disheartening, among other things.--Albedo 07:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Seconded what Albedo said.Garrie 09:22, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

• Support altho' it's a bit late. Vengeful, while I agree about legacy: vs 40d: - what do we use next version? Mass move all legacy: to 40d: so we can move main: to legacy:?Garrie 09:22, 8 March 2010 (UTC)