If a mission description said something about "Maliase," I'd type it into the article as "Malaise" without tagging it as a bug.
The words I used didn't
quite convey what I was thinking, so I should probably clarify. I agree with Tony here. What I had in mind in my previous post was that if the AV in a mission has "Maliase" floating over his head, we should probably note that.
Generalizing, anything that would be the name of an article should probably be noted and not secretly fixed. I believe we've had a few misspelled badges, recipes, and IOs that have fallen into that category. They resided at the misspelled article name until they were fixed, if I remember correctly.
Case in point:
There's a mission in the Operative Renault Strike Force (Cause distraction for Barracuda) that tells you to "Defeat 20 Longbow." It just so happens that only Longbow in the Agincourt area of Nerva Archipelago count for this objective, and the game never tells you that. One of two things happened:
- It's an information discrepancy where the player isn't given proper details as to what they need to do
- It's an improperly authored mission where Agincourt is specified where it shouldn't be
.
Either way, the game's programming is not at fault, because it's following its instructions: only count Longbow on Agincourt.
Whether this was what the mission author meant to do or if they failed to tell the player about it, it's not something that happens in the computer. It happens in your head. This is no different from Mission Architect errors. If the author makes a mistake, don't tag it a bug; the game has absolutely nothing to do with it.
If they changed this, it would show up in the patch notes as a correction. It isn't unreasonable for us to note it, track it, and them remove the note when it gets fixed.
This feels largely like an argument over semantics to me. Whether we call it a "data bug" or a "text error", the fact remains it's a mistake in the game that people would want to know about. It's also a mistake that should probably be tracked to increase the likelihood that it'll be updated or removed if the devs address the mistake.
If we really, absolutely must not call non-programming errors "bugs", then we should create another template to represent data errors. But honestly, that's not going to help much. The boundary between text and programming can be fuzzy, as Tony points out with his example about damage dealt. Plus, it's adding a complication for editors to keep track of. People won't use the new template consistently. You'll still see {{bug}} getting used because clearly other people think of them as bugs.
I think we should relax a bit. We don't have to be pedantic on what a bug is. Especially since the pedantry is ultimately erroneous since plenty of dictionary definitions of bug would apply
even to data errors.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bugDefinition #4: A problem that needs fixing, especially in computing.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bugDefinition #4: Informal. a defect or imperfection, as in a mechanical device, computer program, or plan; glitch:
The test flight discovered the bugs in the new plane.http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bugEntry #2, definition #2: an unexpected defect, fault, flaw, or imperfection
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/bugDefinition 4a: A defect or difficulty, as in a system or design.
Definition 4b:
Computer Science A defect in the code or routine of a program.
The last definition is particularly helpful, I think. Guy's clearly coming to this with the domain-specific definition of a bug. However, the game isn't played exclusively by computer scientists and it's inappropriate to constrain words to their computer science jargon meanings. If the ParagonWiki were documenting the
code behind the game, that would make sense. But we're documenting a game as played by end users, for end users.