HRWiki talk:Inclusion guidelines

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This seems like a very good list but that thing about 5 lines is troubling me... --Dacheatbot · Communicate 01:43, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, there is a lot of articles with fewer than 5 lines. I think 4 would be better. But good job combining all that. TheYellowDart(t/c)
For example, A while back I made a little article called Bees and it has 1 line. It also has 13 instances and is a good running gag in my opinion. Under that rule, it would have been deleted. --Dacheatbot · Communicate 01:50, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
That's just my personal rule. We can make it longer or drop it or whatever; I just decided to put it there for the heck of it and see what everyone else thought. -Brightstar Shiner 01:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll have more to say when I have time to look each specific line over carefully, but I wanted to go ahead and post to say good work. On first reading these guidelines look well thought-out, researched, and reasonable. — It's dot com 13:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention that they finally apply to what we've been dealing with for years. — Lapper (talk) 13:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
All three-and-a-half of them, of course. -Brightstar Shiner 21:00, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Contents

Lines of text

First, nice initiative for the policy, Brightstar. That conversation was too important to leave behind. Now, about the "three lines of text" point: Some pages are just lists that do not go in to great length about ordinary subjects. Most of those page are general item lists (Like Bees mentioned before) and lists like Secret Pages. Also, there need to be a better definition of 3 lines. In what resolution? With or without image? On the monospaced edit box? I generally like to see the article as a whole, but if the community want keep this then it should be standardized. Elcool (talk)(contribs) 15:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Look, we can trash that rule and put something better in if we want to. I only put it in to see what people thought of it. My thought behind that guideline was to have some sort of standard for the amount of information known about the page's subject (i.e. how minor it is). For example, take Marzipan's Purse or Stalker Spray. Those were extremely unimportant items and their once-existing articles could only tell about three lines' worth of information about either of them. They were deleted on the grounds of being (way) too minor. See my point? We can revise the rule to not mention lines or we can just get rid of it. It's whatever the community decides. -Brightstar Shiner 21:00, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
How about if we merge it with #8 to say something like: Generally, if all information known could easily be included in a few lines on any other page or page section on the wiki, it isn’t worthy of its own page. A page should not exist if it doesn’t offer a unique opportunity to expand on its topic in ways that aren't possible in other pages. The wording could still use some work, but I think the point of both items is that if the information is not something that there's a lot to expound on and not just be included another page. The Smoke Detector is a good example of this. Interesting that it's been seen in 3 emails (one in each era), but really just a part of the living room, can be easily included on that page. - ISTC 21:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
<breathes sigh of relief> Good idea, Ilko. I wanted to keep this, but it just didn't fit right. When I add this to the page in about two minutes, I might reword it a tad, but otherwise it's great! Thank you! -Brightstar Shiner 22:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, now I see what you tried to do. How about something that page must give some info beyond what the item is and where it appears. Saying that Marzipan's purse is a purse that belonged Marzipan and it appeared in toon X is a good example. Elcool (talk)(contribs) 19:30, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
This should still fit into that one rule, so how should I reword it? -Brightstar Shiner 19:41, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm sure we'll think of something. I don't have any ideas now. Elcool (talk)(contribs) 20:04, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Well...looking at the rule now, I think that any page meeting the guidelines stated in rule #7 would be complete enough to follow this rule too. Really, it would be redundant to add any more wording to this guideline, so I think I like it as it is right now. Oh yeah, I wanted to tell you; thanks for posting your personal guidelines back at the original discussion. Most of this page came from that post. -Brightstar Shiner 20:14, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
You're welcome. I was just adding to the discussion :). Elcool (talk)(contribs) 21:17, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I could see a slight reword to add "A good article will include substantial information beyond a general description of an item and where it appears." or something simular. I can't find a great way to make it flow though. It is what we're implying but it is not directly stated. We could also add something like that to #4 if we wanted it to be more directly stated somewhere. - ISTC
Maybe I could put it in #4. I don't want #7 to get too long, you know. -Brightstar Shiner 18:36, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Examples

Just for clarification, when you move this to the "public arena" are you planning on keeping the examples? If so, I don't feel Rumble Red is a good example for the last point since he is a reoccurring character. Maybe something like Carol (which is important enough to belong outside of Character's Instruments or Spin My Buzzer which belongs more on its own than being part of Homestar Runner would be more fitting. I dunno, they were just 2 that came to mind, there may be a better one out there - ISTC 22:55, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

These aren't the final examples, but I am going to keep them. Carol is a good idea; certainly better than Rumble Red. I'll go ahead and add it. -Brightstar Shiner 23:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Anything Else?

Personally, I think this page is ready to make the big jump into being the the new deletion policy. It looks good, flows nicely, and makes sense now that we've finally fixed that seventh rule. If there are any more concerns about this page as it is right at the moment, please speak now. I won't change HrWiki: Deletion Policy just yet. -Brightstar Shiner 21:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

It would be nice to hear more voices on this, but I think this page good enough for a policy page. We can still edit policy pages and can still discuss it on the talk page. Elcool (talk)(contribs) 21:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd probably remove the bad example from #7 as it's really out of place with everything else. As stated above I'm not sure we want/need examples at all, but I can see both sides of that argument. Yet, if we do keep them in, we should consistantly include 1 example of a good page, and leave it at that in my opinion. But I agree with the ELC, I think it's good to go. - ISTC 21:30, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
To me it looks good. I only added two minor things. I've been wondering if it should be made clear that whoever reads this should read all of the article and exceptions, so they get a good idea what the guidelines mean. But no one reads instructions (including myself) so I'm gonna leave that be. --Stux 17:21, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll get rid of the bad example and add a note to the beginning of the page about reading all the guidelines. -Brightstar Shiner 18:36, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I think it's good to have a bad example. Or at the very least, label it as a good example of what not to do, which would be bad (that is, doing what is not meant to be done, not having a good example of what would be bad to do -- which would be good). Confused? So am I. Anyway, having an example of a Good page that should not be deleted and follows the guidelines is good, and having an example of what was a bad page that was moved to a good place would also! ...be ...good. I could've made myself clearer but I didn't want to. --Stux 19:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I...think I followed that. What you're trying to say is that we should have an example of what not to do on each guideline. Well, I tried that, and I think it would make the page more confusing (no pun intended) if there were too many examples. Also, people might disagree about a certain page's bad-example-ittude and have a big ol' argument, which is not what we want. If it's okay with you, I'll just keep the page as is. -Brightstar Shiner 19:38, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh! no, no, no. I didn't mean a bad example for every item, I meant a bad example for that one item (#7). I wasn't clear enough about that little issue. ;) --Stux 20:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, but either we do examples for all of them or for none of them. As ISTC said about seven posts ago, we should be consistent and the one bad example is pretty out of place. Also for the reasons I said earlier. -Brightstar Shiner 01:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
There's also the issue of things that would be considered "bad examples" should be deleted and thus not available as examples at all. - ISTC 01:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, right now I'm ready to make this a real page. What I'll do is copy the info here, delete the info there, paste the info here into that page, and have a sysop delete this page. Before I do, is there anything on the HrWiki: Deletion Policy article that we want to keep? I understand that not many users are around this time of day (and the only reason I'm here before 3:45 is that school was cancelled), so once again, I won't do it until you guys give me the OK. -Brightstar Shiner 18:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

These discussions, since they are part of the page should also be moved before deleting this page (should it even be deleted?) --Stux 18:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't know; should this page be deleted? I just assumed we would nix it after I finished the page. We can keep this page and link to the original discussion at Da Basement and this discussion here at HrWiki:Deletion Policy's talk page. I guess it's not useful to delete this subpage. -Brightstar Shiner 18:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
After looking over the Deletion Policy page, I think we should keep the "On Deleting Pages" part and delete the rest. In twenty minutes I will make the big move and try to connect the talk pages in the process (even though Deletion Policy's talk page is empty). -Brightstar Shiner 22:10, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Character Variations

I think a point should be added explaining which character variations deserve their own articles. I do understand that Zubs and Coach B and Head Bad and Strong Body contribute more to their emails than the 2046 characters do to your funeral, but I do not understand how Modestly Hot Homsar contributes enough to the plot of different town to get a page of itself. Bad Bad Guy 03:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Character Relationships

There seems to be quite a bit of controversy over which Character Relationships articles to keep and which ones to delete. Arguments about how varied, conflicting, or prominent a relationship needs to be to have an article have surfaced, but haven't been dealt with. We need to settle on some rules. Here's a conversation Heimstern and I had a little bit ago on IRC, slightly edited to remove some stuff that didn't pertain to the topic:

[4:16pm] Brightstar: Eh... there's something wrong on the wiki that I think needs to be taken care of.
[4:16pm] Brightstar: It happened a few months ago and just sort of got brought back up again.
[4:18pm] Brightstar: Character Relationships. When do they merit a page? What do we want and what don't we? What needs to be done to HRWiki:Inclusion guidelines (something I started, so this concerns me) to fix this problem?
[4:20pm] Heimstern: Hey, Brightstar. I need to leave in a few, but I do have some thoughts on that.
[4:20pm] Brightstar: Okay.
[4:20pm] Heimstern: I think it's hard for us to do this because we don't have a whole lot of precedent.
[4:20pm] Heimstern: Since there are relatively few character relationship articles.
[4:21pm] Brightstar: What do you mean by precedent?
[4:21pm] Heimstern: A track record as to what we want and don't want.
[4:21pm] Brightstar: Ah.
[4:22pm] Brightstar: How many relationship articles do we have?
[4:22pm] Heimstern: I consider inclusion guidelines descriptive rather than prescriptive. That is, they describe what we do, not prescribe what we must do.
[4:22pm] Heimstern: That's why precedent is important for this kind of thing.
[4:23pm] Heimstern: Still, we do have a little bit of precedent.
[4:23pm] Brightstar: If I remember correctly, the Inclusion guidelines were purposefully written that way so as not to seem absolute in determining what pages to delete.
[4:23pm] Heimstern: For example, the deletion of the Poopsmith and KOT.
[4:23pm] Heimstern: Yeah, that's right. Like the pirate code, they're guidelines, not rules.
[4:24pm] Brightstar: What should they be?
[4:24pm] Heimstern: Good question. It's hard with so little precedent.
[4:24pm] Heimstern: I can tell you my opinion.
[4:25pm] Heimstern: These are things that make relationships notable, in my mind:
[4:25pm] Brightstar: The title was changed from Deletion Policy to Inclusion guidelines because precedent wasn't wanted in that case.
[4:26pm] Brightstar: We wanted people to consider each article on a case-by-case basis, since the guidelines were for every article.
[4:27pm] Heimstern: 1. If it's frequently featured in a way that's important to the plot. Example, HR and Marzi, HR and SB, SB and The Cheat, Bubs and Coach Z maybe. This is the best kind of relationship article.
[4:27pm] Heimstern: 2. More than one-sided is a plus. That was what people didn't like about Poopsmith and KOT. Was pretty one-sided.
[4:28pm] Heimstern: Those are the main things I've taken into account.
[4:29pm] Brightstar: But this is specific, so we can have precedent. Maybe a seperate section on Inclusion guidelines once we work it out. We'll want consensus on this one, not just a Band-Aid one or two user thing that everyone will be happy with on the first try.
[4:29pm] Heimstern: But what the community thinks, I don't know.
[4:30pm] Heimstern: You could bring it up on the talk for inclusion guidelines, if you think it's important.
[4:30pm] Heimstern: It may already be there.
[4:30pm] Heimstern: But you could revive it (you like doing that, after all! :) )
[4:31pm] Brightstar: Like I said, we should let the community decide. This is more abstract than second-person and affects more future edits than Favicon. And I think someone brought it up elsewhere, but the discussion died out.
[4:32pm] Brightstar: Oh, reviving stuff is my speciality. I guess people listen to me, so it might be a good idea for me to add a new comment somewhere.
[4:35pm] Brightstar: I'll go to Inclusion guidelines. That's the page that'll be edited once everything's decided.
[4:36pm] Heimstern: Yes, I think it's the right place.

For more information, please call our toll-free number or visit Talk:The King of Town and The Poopsmith's Relationship. -Brightstar Shiner 21:01, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

See Category talk:Character Relationships#Scope as well (a similar conversation that was started, but fizzled out). Trey56 21:06, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
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