User:The Nerevarine/Tasks/DiscussionLogNPCcat

Deletion

From that Prod template: "You may remove this notice if you improve this article or object to this deletion for any reason." so i did. The Silencer wrote as reason for applying the Prod template: "the pointless category, people in locations will be listed on location pages". I object because:

1. As a quick look on Online:Skywatch would have shown, that is not the case (yet). There is not even a section i could fill in missing NPCs.
2. That would help only those who don't use categories as fast way to find the information they look for.
3. A categorisation would enable to write a bot that fills any added NPCs to a city page automatically. As the NPC template also auto categorises for profession (e.g. vendor and vendor type) that would safe a lot of work on city pages and still enable a clean and structured list layout.
4. Categorizing by location is pointless, but than having NPCs categorised by gender and race is not? Sorry, that priorization totally fails me. Why would someone look for NPCs by Gender or Race? The ususal question a player has is "Where can i find a <vendor or quest giver of choice> in <city of choice>?"

--The Nerevarine (talk) 18:38, 27 April 2014 (GMT)

Once the location page has been filled in then the categories will be pointless, therefore creating them causes extra work down the road that doesn't need to be done. NPCs are not categorized solely by gender, first race and then gender. People do use those for things such as our names pages, where a list of all names are kept sorted by race, gender, game, and first/last name. Categories are actually only meant for the maintenance side of any wiki, not for people looking to find anything; otherwise our list pages would be totally irrelevant and we would just send people to the categories and not bother doing anything of substance or actual use. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 18:46, 27 April 2014 (GMT)

"Once the location page has been filled in then the categories will be pointless, therefore creating them causes extra work down the road that doesn't need to be done."

It is much easier to add a category tag when creating NPC page than to have to open yet an other page or even pages to update them. So having a cat and an update bot would be much easier. Also people tend to forget things that are more efford more often than those that are less. And last it would even be no extra effort for them at all, if location/city categorization would be included in the template.

"People do use those for things such as our names pages, where a list of all names[...]" Again: why would someone look up NPCs that way?

"Categories are actually only meant for the maintenance side of any wiki, not for people looking to find anything[...]" No, categories are a way to catalogue information in an way people can easily browse them and find things in any wiki. Even if one does not navigate that way, why obstruct that way for those who do? Lists have their meaning when also some context from the surrounding article is wanted, then not just a category is linked there but a list as it is more convenient. (And besides, most times tables make more sense to those users as an overwiew with comparable emphasised information can be provided.)

"[...]not bother doing anything of substance or actual use" As i pointed out, categories, maintained properly, are of high substance and use. Maybe not for everyone, but surely for a sufficient number of users to justify maintaining them.

--The Nerevarine (talk) 19:14, 27 April 2014 (GMT)

I think the main issue here is that this is a massive change to the way we do things, and would have ramifications across the site (as in, we would have to apply this change to all the other namespaces) and would involved hundreds of new categories. We don't make changes like this on a whim, so if you think this should be a real thing, post a detailed and well thought out suggestion on the Community Portal and let everyone have a chance to comment on it. Jeancey (talk) 19:22, 27 April 2014 (GMT)

(edit conflict) Categories are for maintenance, even if many wikis use them as a more convenient listing "page". If your proposal is that these are a temporary measure until the location pages are filled in (which they will be no matter your negativity to such a thing as every other settlement page on the wiki has a list), then afterwards do we delete these pages? That would require the editing of 10k pages to remove manual categories. Even if it is a template category that would still affect those pages when it is removed as they would all be recached by the system, though it would reduce the pages actually edited down to one template and all the categories. Quick fixes are not good, especially something that will extend to so many pages. Yes we have a temp cat (not created but does appear) for pages, but we have good reason for that, it forces a check on whether it appears because it lacks an icon. The only reason these categories would be useful is if we were not to create a list of people on the locations at all, ever, which simply will not be the case, therefore the categories are both useless and future-redundant. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 19:30, 27 April 2014 (GMT)

I dont't think we will come together on the topic category intentions and usefullness and would now start to cricle variations of the same pros and cons. So a new perspective on the matter would be helpfull. Thankfully Jeancey provided one. Please see my reply to him below. --The Nerevarine (talk) 19:50, 27 April 2014 (GMT)

"I think the main issue here is that this is a massive change to the way we do things [...] we would have to apply this change to all the other namespaces" Ah, that is an reason i can understand.

"post a detailed and well thought out suggestion on the Community Portal" I will do so when my ESO updates are doen and I feel entanled enough to develop a cross namespace solution and implement it (Basicly i think it will never get accepted if i'm not willing to do this myself). Ok then delet this cat. I will copy this discussion toone of my subpages, so i don't forget about it when the time comes. Would be a bit more work than the Redguard stuff back then :) --The Nerevarine (talk) 19:50, 27 April 2014 (GMT)