Talk: Policy/Objects

Policy Change Proposal

Now that Wikikinetic has left the wiki, could this policy be changed to the third proposal (one object with an official name from the game files as well as fan nicknames)? I think that the current policy taken is both irrelevant (as few people edit the wiki anymore), and leads to a completely disorganized page that is very difficult to scroll through. I do not see any good reason why the Objects page has to be completely protected to prevent everyone from editing except for the administrators, who both have been inactive for months and have not contributed largely to the wiki for over a year.  Smashislife02 (talk) 01:05, March 30, 2020 (UTC)

I'm somewhat new to this wiki but I am inclined to agree, this method of listing is really uncomfortable and unintuitive. Now that Celeste is finished, with time there will be less activity (not that there was that much to begin with; it's a small indie game, after all), so at some point the wiki will end up with the one system the older users had the energy to implement. The current policy page has several problems, and not being objective is one of them; it's impossible that the current system has just 1 drawback. Likewise, the older drawbacks are outdated and thus largerly irrelevant now. Not to mention that the conclusion is skewed to support the current system more, as the drawbacks listed don't all hold the same weight, and by extension the layout options cannot be decided by just comparing the numbers.

Also, what isn't often talked about are the benefits of other systems: the ability to sort the objects by their chronological order of appearance, or group by their chapters, or comfortably refer to what are basically reskins of an object in other chapters... Even if currently unplanned, this is worth reconsidering. I support the "1 entry = 1 object with many names" proposal as well. Any problems, should they arise, can be solved through the way of discussion and protecting the page as a last resort. MrKukurykpl (talk) 17:51, April 4, 2020 (UTC)

Hi guys, thanks for your feedback! Hearing what the community thinks is always really important. Seeing as you said a lot of stuff, I'd like to address your problems with a bullet-point list, as follows:

• It may not show up much where you're looking, but the wiki is, actually, still edited on a regular basis, and by a number of different people;
• The page is actually organized alphabetically, and, although it may be annoying to scroll through, there is the table of contents for a reason (though it may be unintuitive to use it);
• You are certainly correct that fully-protecting the page is overkill, but the reason that it was done was that IP editors were managing to get through the semi-protection and making unproductive edits (though, perhaps, by now that might no longer be a problem);
• I'll update the policy page if I can concretely figure out what's wrong with it;
• I believe that the "one drawback" thing is that it was only seen to have one drawback that the others didn't, though there may, of course, be one or more other problems that weren't noticed (though what most people complain about is the one that was);
• It's pretty much impossible to tell for sure whether people would still be arguing if there were still something to argue over (and, if people were arguing, there'd be a lot of editing too), but my intuition of such things indicates that they would;
• The conclusion wasn't reached just by comparing the numbers, though I'm having some trouble finding the relevant discussion;
• I'm not really sure how one would have an easier time sorting the objects if there were only one name per object, and I really don't know what you're saying about reskins, MrKukurykpl;
• And, although discussion to reach consensus between users is usually the best way to go when disputes arise, the people who're arguing about this tend to simply insist on their own favored names, thus making compromise difficult.

As I said earlier, community feedback is very important, I'm sorry if I missed anything important either of you said, and I hope that both of you have a nice day! Malletspace (talk) 07:42, April 27, 2020 (UTC)

Hi Malletspace. Thank you for responding!

• I am aware that the wiki is edited on a regular basis (although usually only a couple of edits occur daily.)
• Alphabetical organization is not necessarily the best way to sort the page (objects by chronological order ingame might be more helpful, for example). In addition, this organization becomes further muddled when multiple duplicate names clutter up the table of contents.
• I would tentatively argue that protection could attempt being lifted, at least to add the missing objects (such as the Breaker Boxes that remove electricity from rooms in Farewell).
• The Objects/Policy page is subjective and written so that Wikikinetic could do the least amount of work. A policy that is agreed upon by more than one person (and said person has left the wiki) would be the most effective.
• The drawbacks are subjective. Personally, I would argue that drawbacks that take place with the editing of pages (such as the creation of new links and redirects) are less severe than drawbacks that remain on the page itself (multiple article comments, MrKukurykpl, and I all agree that the current page has a large number of issues).
• I doubt that people would argue as much if we used the official names from the game files (for example, Bubbles are actually referred to as Boosters in the game files) and left a disclaimer that we were using the official names. My suggestion was that we use the official name as the main title and keep nicknames as redirects (e.g. Dream Blocks, also referred to by fans as Space Jam, Star Blocks, and Star Jam, are...).
• I would like to see that discussion, but it still may not be relevant at this point in time.
• Sorting the objects would naturally become easier if fewer of them were listed. I'm not sure what MrKukurykpl means about reskins either.
• I answered this three points back.

I don't think you missed too much overall. Enjoy your day. Smashislife02 (talk) 14:04, April 27, 2020 (UTC)

Hey again, thanks for joining in – looks like I should first clarify some confusing wording of mine.

> "I'm not really sure how one would have an easier time sorting the objects if there were only one name per object [...]"

Here I'd like to note that I mentioned specifically sorting the objects chronologically, i.e. how they appear in game; this by definition would make sorting easier than the current alphabetical + repeats, as the order is dictated by an external source – the game itself – and is not up to debate and the limits of people's imagination when it comes to naming things.

> "[...]and I really don't know what you're saying about reskins."

To be fair I did introduce an off-hand concept with zero explanation there. What I basically meant is that some chapters have objects that behave identically to ones introduced earlier, though with changed appearance (most likely to make them fit easier within a chapter's theme). This is what made me call them "reskins". And it just so happens that the examples of this are partially missing from the wiki; one of them could be the Horizontal/Vertical Moving Sludge & Blades, or Traffic Blocks & ...whatever these things are called like in Farewell.

Onto the point: please, you have to agree that the problem exists, because it's blatantly visible, and without that we can't really improve anything. Here's the main problems I have with the current solution.

• The page itself seems almost stretched to absurdity, with some rather funny consequences of following its own rules. Since all names get an entry which is copy-pasted, you can end up with the same terms being shown on display at once, and even directly below each other in some cases. There's also no easy way to discern the actual amount of objects present in game.
• You mentioned the table age contents as a valid, though unintuitive way of finding informations on the page. This I believe to be an understatement at best and an oxymoron at worst. The whole point of the table of contents is to provide an easy way to navigate through pages. It's why Wikipedia and Fandom alike encourage short, yet descriptive section titles and using the correct heading formatting; to make it comfortable to use. I think that the current layout completely undermines the point of the table of contents in the first place. Having repeated sections with different names would be confusing in any book, on any wikia, and this is no exception. Instead of making things easier to search, which is usually done by redirects and disambiguation pages, this page obscures its own content.
• The article history is riddled with people making good faith edits only to be undone moments later. This shows either the lack of understanding of the policy page by users, or improper highlighting by the policy makers. Most likely both problems occur here.
• The page, at least in my opinion, awkwardly shuns away editors by the note at the top of a page. This kind of custom rule for a single page only isn't healthy for the wikia. Rather than trying to fix it, I'd suggest replacing it with something more reliable, more on that later.
• The page's comments keep expressing confusion, dislike or criticism of the currently implemented solution. Since that is just the vocal (or logged-in) part of the community, think of the masses than share this view but simply don't comment (akin to 1-9-90 internet rule).
• And perhaps most importantly, the article right now is locked entirely and has been like this for near 4 months, meaning any and all changes to it are entirely dependent on active moderators or administrators. This is a huge problem – like the user Smashislife02, me and some commenters have noticed, the page is now incomplete with no way to adding new objects or even editing formatting. Not to mention that it's still one of the biggest (and most viewed) pages on this wiki, and maintaining it updated should be in the best interest of the wikia.

Now I know it's probably hard to change the system that you worked hard on implementing and then using for maintaining relative order on the page for a long time. I've absolutely been there, and from a personnal standpoint, it hurts. BUT I believe other than putting more work on it at first, a change would be the best option for the wiki. From the problems I pointed out above you can probably tell why I thought the Policy page is skewed or unobjective.

Onto expressing the ideas; I mostly agree with Smashislife02 on the basic stuff, I'd like to add some of my ideas on top. Basically I support using the official names from code (because again – you cannot really argue with that) and adding some fan names as their aliases, though with some limitations. Like 5 different names for one thing is just too much and pushes the content further down.

The main idea I'd like to also propose is what I roughly mentioned already. What if the article was sorted by chapters, where the introduction mentions each object available in it. Then, every new object in a chapter is described (chronologically, perhaps). Should an object come back later in the same form, then only that chapter's introduction would mention it. Should a "reskin" appear instead - it have a shorter description and could reference back to the original object.

That was a long read so thanks for sticking with me, hope you'll see where we're coming from so we can hopefully reach a consensus. MrKukurykpl (talk) 22:30, April 29, 2020 (UTC)

Before I respond to your specific points, I would just like to mention again that the purpose of the Objects page is as a glossary of object names — it's supposed to be an explanation of the terms as well as of the objects themselves. That out of the way:

• The reason the page is sorted alphabetically is both to aid location of objects, and because this way is more objective than most other ways;
• I am considering scaling back to semi-protection for a little while and seeing how it goes, but I'll have to talk to the other admin before doing anything conclusive;
• Although the page would probably look nicer with only one name for each object, it would then no longer be a glossary, and it would get a lot of edit warring again;
  • Even if the names were "official", people would still be upset, especially since most people don't have access to the data and would therefore have no verification that the names were actually official;
  • I didn't think that people were specifically trying to find out how many different kinds of objects there are in the game, but there should be a way to get a number without removing everything else;
• The fact that someone is trying to help does not mean that the right thing is being done; unconstructive edits — even ones made in good faith — will be reverted;
• Although it is true that there are probably a large number of people who are not voicing their opinions, the people who are are not necessarily a representative sample: dissatisfied people are generally more likely to comment about this than are people who like things the way that they are;
• And there actually already is a way of locating objects by chapter: each chapter page has a section intended to list all of the objects that appear in that chapter, and every object has a link to the Objects page.

I hope that this was worth the wait, and helps in some way! Malletspace (talk) 23:21, May 22, 2020 (UTC)

OK, I'm moving the protection down, as I said. The policy, however, does still hold, so please refrain from implementing changes to the page structure that would go against this. Thanks! Malletspace (talk) 22:44, May 24, 2020 (UTC)