Forum:QOL improvements

Hey there, for your consideration, I'd like to submit a couple of proposals for quality of life improvements (clarify rules mostly).

Ledes[]

At minimum, the lead section should identify the article subject and the game it appears in. Template:In should be used to standardize formatting.

Example: '''Tycho''' is a character and companion {{In|FO1}}

Example: Tycho is a character and companion in Fallout

Long articles covering topics that appear in multiple games may be formatted as summaries, according to the Wikipedia Manual of Style.

Rationale: This is meant to clarify a vague layout guideline and provide a minimum standard to unify our current practice, which is a mix of lore-centric ledes in old articles and game-centric ledes in Fallout 76 articles. The "minimum" criteria is meant to acknowledge larger leading paragraphs without forcing them to be cut down.

Strategy rule clarification[]

The strategy rule would be amended to the following:

• All content needs to be objective. Gameplay strategies and guides should rely on facts, rather than personal opinions or subjective favorites. Personal builds and other guides of this type should only be posted within User namespaces.

Rationale: The rule was originally implemented to cut down on the number of personal builds posted in wiki main spaces in the wake of Fallout 3's release. The change is meant to allow for noting facts (eg. overpowered weapons, synergies between items/perks, broken perk implementations etc.), while keeping personal opinions to a minimum.

I believe this change is necessary, as with many of the original authors of the rule now gone, context that was taken for granted is now missing - and as a place aiming to be the one stop shop for everything Fallout, we really should be able to point out that the SIG-Sauer in Fallout 1 is a good weapon, but doesn't work in Fallout 2, because of the broken ammo implementation in the first game, or that certain weapons are OP and make the game trivial (turbo plasma, anyone?).

For practical examples:

14mm pistol

The Characteristics section provides essential information on the weapon, how it performs, which followers can use it and (crucially) explains how the ammo modifiers work and why there's such a gulf in its performance between FO1 and FO2.

Reservist's rifle

The Characteristics section observes the weapon's properties and synergies, strictly adhering to game mechanics without relying on personal opinion or reference to specific builds. Compare to old revisions, whose disjointed structure prompted this rule in the first place.

Good Intentions

Similarly, the section here observes how the legendary effect (a guaranteed spawn) acts as an alternative to the Incite option, also noting the decision between inciting enemies and dealing raw damage.

Sniper rifle

The characteristics section describes how the weapon performs and notes when the weapon becomes useless (a major issue, since Small Guns dominate for much of the game, but once robots appear it becomes little more than a pop gun).

Elite riot gear

Observes several facts that aren't obvious from just looking at the stats, such as the fact it is one of the only items boosting critical chance and the most protective medium armor in regular gameplay (Gannon's armor is only available in the endgame).

The idea is to provide the reader with clear information about how the item or follower stacks up against other entities in the game, without sacrificing readability. Given that there are far fewer "my favorite build" edits, this should not be much of a problem to enforce and, in fact, will enhance Fo3/FNV articles, as a lot of useful information has been removed as "strategy", rather than reintegrated in a more professional fashion into the body of the article.

Quest article layouts[]

Rather than breaking them down into Quick walkthrough and Detailed walkthrough, adopt the following format

1. Background: Explains who and why gives the quest, which will provide useful context, especially for games a reader has not played.
2. Walkthrough: A single space for a walkthrough. Some of the older articles are incredibly verbose and don't provide a clear method of playing through a quest.

Rationale: A lot of the quest walkthroughs jump straight into the walkthrough without explaining why you get this quest. While this is not strictly necessary for people who play the games, the wiki also serves as a resource for people who don't - and especially with the OG Fallout games, we should, imho, provide a little bit of context. For example, Rescue Initiate from the Hub has a single throwaway line describing the situation. The Background page could provide a little context and also note where the player can obtain the quest - as it stands, it doesn't really mention you can receive the quest from Talus as well.

Minor improvements[]

Locations[]

For Location sections, introduce a standard format:

* [[Location]]: Description of location.

Example (Prototype UP77 "Limitless Potential"):

• University Point, University Credit Union: Inside the Credit Union bank vault, locked behind a Novice-locked terminal. The prototype is located inside a hidden compartment on the right-hand wall opened using a red button inside a Master-locked safe on the second row of the wall safes. The prototype is on the large table in the middle of the room.

Rationale: A common problem with location sections is that they are writted in loose prose, and the location is not highlighted properly. This simple guideline would organize locations so that the reader instantly knows which general area we are talking about, while the use of bulletpoints - even for uniques! - helps visually organize the data.

Additionally, can be grouped together by Loot/Merchants/Characters for multiple locations, to help find out how to get the item in question more easily. See here for an example.

Categorization[]

Finally, I'd like to clarify the categorization rules, which turned out to be self-contradicting in practice:

This leads to odd categorization decisions, as Category:Fallout characters is virtually empty and most characters were moved to various subcategories, so while Ian might logically belong in that category, he isn't there, because the next rule was interpreted to mean he must be moved to the race sub-cat and kept there.

The change would be to alter the rule:

A content page should be placed in all the categories to which it logically belongs, at minimum the work the subject appears in.

If additional categories are applicable, the content page should be placed in the most specific category (or categories) of a given branch of the category tree.

And an example:

Ian is a human companion in Fallout, and should be categorized at minimum:

• By game (Fallout characters)
• By species (Fallout human characters)
• By type (Fallout companions)

And have additional categories reflecting his presence in other works.

Thoughts and any other suggestions welcome! These are all minor quibbles, so I'd like to have one lump vote covering them, rather than go over each and every one in sequence. 【Ｔａｇａｚｉｅｌ】 ☏ 15:31, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Comments[]

I have no objections, and the lead lines can be handled by {{In|}}. FreshYoMama | Talk 17:49, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I'd like an SEO expert to chime in about the use of templates and magic words in ledes. I know we used to use pagemaneND quite a bit, but decided it better to use the actual prose in it's place. The first paragraph, as far as I know, is pretty important for SEO and I'd like to make sure we're doing this right. As for the idea of how to structure the lede, I agree with the general idea here. As for strategy I still think we'd need to very clearly define what is and not acceptable. Where exactly do we draw the line? We would need precise examples in the policy I'd think. As for walkthroughs, I have no problem keeping the charts. They do not need to be in a separate section. And the idea that the walkthrough should include any prerequisite step to initiate sound like something we should already be doing.TheGunny2.0 (talk) 23:28, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

no worries on the first part of your statement. FreshYoMama | Talk 19:10, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I know that the super short leads weren't good for SEO, but I still think that for some of our pages the leads do need to be cut down. I like the idea of a set standard, and I do agree that standard should be the bare minimum, but for some pages the lead is so large it isn't a lead anymore. There's a difference between introducing a topic and summarising a topic, and a lot of those larger leads aren't introductions like a leads meant to be, they're summaries. Aiden4017 (talk) 05:23, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Generally, something that we should revisit is the quote placement. while I like it, I've asked our SEO expert and she noted that it's actually not all that great for ranking pages. 【Ｔａｇａｚｉｅｌ】 ☏ 11:15, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

As Fresh posted, text generated by a template is indistinguishable from hand-written text to anyone and anything, search engines or users. Text generated by client-side processes, like Javascript, would be different. And I'm pretty sure we don't have anything like that. For SEO, keep in mind that lede paragraph is what will be pulled by search engines for right-column summary boxes and quick answers. It will also be used for the summary in the normal listings. We should strive to answer all the basic questions as concisely as possible: the who, what, where, when, why, and, if it's short enough, the how. Keep this to 5 sentences or less. And then below that, perhaps immediately below the ToC, then we put the quote. I would also propose that we move actual page maintenance templates to somewhere at the bottom of the page. After the 'meat' of the page. The 'for' and disambiguation templates are fine up top as they are good info to know and call attention to.

And I second Gunny on the need to nail down strategy a little more. -Gilpo1 (talk) 14:45, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Going back over this before it gets taken to a vote, I get the intent of the walkthrough portion, but I feel this isn't the right solution to the problem that exists. I found the quick walkthroughs for FO4 to be extremely helpful while playing the game and getting 'stuck' at 'what do I do now?' However, the detailed walkthroughs I use when looking back to remember what the quest was about and the lore involved. However, I do agree that the background needs to be more detailed. It needs to put the quest in the context of the events of the game that lead up to it. The detailed walkthough will then give the 'lore' of the quest leading to the next quest in the storyline. While playing the game, I preferred to look at the quick walkthrough and experience the story portion of the quest through the dialog and my choices, rather than read the details on the wiki. I feel this all could be hammered out in the guidelines as opposed to making a change in the existing format. -Gilpo1 (talk) 16:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)