Author Topic: Incomplete vs. Stub?  (Read 3413 times)

Felderburg

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Incomplete vs. Stub?
« on: July 02, 2013, 09:07:34 PM »
So there are several articles that have bits and pieces of missing info. I'm thinking mainly of contacts with things like "Too Low Level" missing, but it applies to any other article with minor things like that. The stub template appears to be what should be used for articles like that - functional, with minor things missing. However, many of these articles do have "editing notes" in that they say info is missing. Plus, the stub template doesn't allow for adding notes so that people can see right at the top of the page what needs to be worked on, and hunting through the article for red or orange text can be annoying. So what should be used in these cases?
« Last Edit: January 22, 2014, 10:50:25 PM by Felderburg »
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Blondeshell

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Re: Incomplete vs. Stub?
« Reply #1 on: July 03, 2013, 06:29:02 AM »
I've always thought that the "Stub" designation was best suited for articles that got started, but were never really fleshed out or completed in any way. I think articles that are basically done except for a couple bits here and there would be better noted as "Incomplete."

Of course, there are many contacts who don't have all of their introductory dialogue filled in, and likely never will, so another question might be "Is there a certain threshhold of incompleteness, whether by overall percentage of text or a simple quantity of missing bits, that an article must cross before it is actually marked 'Incomplete' instead of being left as is?" I don't have a good answer for that question right now.

Felderburg

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Re: Incomplete vs. Stub?
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2013, 06:59:08 PM »
I think a good example of this issue is Dr. Geist: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Doctor_Geist His article is complete, except for one dialog line: whatever he says when he defeats a player. It's possible he never defeated anyone (being a low-level megalomaniac) and that this info truly is lost. However, there is a chance that someone knows what he said, and so it seems to me that this article is technically incomplete. However, it's complete enough that it shouldn't get a big box at the top saying it's incomplete, but there needs to be more to indicate that the page is missing something - specifically, articles with minor pieces of missing dialog like this one should be easy to find without stumbling over them randomly.

Looking at some templates, it seems like there already exists templates for most missing dialogs, like contacts that are missing the "too busy" or "too low" dialogs. I will work on making those templates automatically add the "Incomplete" category to their pages - that way, the pages are added to what should be a common spot for finding articles like them, and we don't have to add any more templates. It's possible that there may be things like Dr. Geist's "Defeats player" dialog that could use a new template, but it would be in the same vein as the existing templates, rather than a new one.


Edit: Well that was easy. I feel better about my life now. If these changes aren't desirable, the changes were all to the "Missing ..." templates on this page: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Contact_Templates I also made the text bold and made it all the same color (most were dark orange, a few were orange - they are all dark orange now).

One thing to consider is perhaps making a new sub-category, for "Minor Incomplete" articles - so all the articles with the templates I edited, which are minor bits of dialog, don't clutter the "really" Incomplete articles.

Another issue is that for someone like: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Andrea_Mitchell who also has several pieces of regular text calling out missing information a person has to stumble across that page or somehow hit the right search to find articles with text like that. This fix also didn't add Dr. Geist to the incomplete category, since he is in the text-only boat.




Edit 2: So I took my own suggestion and made a "Missing Dialogue" sub-category of the "Incomplete" category. It contains everything that uses the "missing ___" dialogue templates. So the "Incomplete" tag can be used for things truly lacking, while the "Missing Dialogue" category can be used for things that are only missing the small pieces that those templates cover.

The issue of in-text (no template) noted "missing ___" or "no data" still remains, but I think what I've done is a step towards making sure we know better which articles need help, and what sort of help they need.


Edit 3: It turns out that the { { missing } } template already existed. It appears to be used in a similar fashion, for the most part, to the other "Missing ..." templates. Because of this, I had it add pages it is in to the missing dialog sub-category. It's not quite accurate (for example, Positron's description is not dialog, but it is missing and uses that template) so maybe someone with admin power should rename that sub-category to just "Missing Information"? Or perhaps something else? Or perhaps leave it as is?

I don't think things using the { {missing} } template should be placed directly in "Incomplete", since that ought to be reserved for things that are more incomplete, whereas the missing template is often used for very minor pieces of information.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2013, 03:57:12 PM by Felderburg »
I used CIT before they even joined the Titan network! But then I left for a long ol' time, and came back. Now I edit the wiki.

I'm working on sorting the Lore AMAs so that questions are easily found and linked: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted Tell me what you think!

Pinnacle: The only server that faceplants before a fight! Member of the Pinnacle RP Congress (People's Elf of the CCCP); formerly @The Holy Flame