User:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Shortcuts/Articles in need of review

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“

And we all have heard the saying, which is true as well as witty, That a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee.

— Allan Sherman

The List

These are articles that, in my opinion, are due for a review and a likely rewrite. The typical reasons for including a page here are listed below.

See also: category:cleanup

See also: Guild Wars Wiki:List of proposed moves, splits and merges

Timely

These are articles that should be cleaned up. They make the top of my list because they are important and/or topical.

1. Bear Club for Men and Women: nearly all details are the same; one should transclude from the other so that it's less likely for edits to one to be lost to the other. Also: simplification required.
2. The Deep and Urgoz's Warren: both articles are out-of-date (common tactics have changed) and they still read as if to remind those who have been before of the route. There's little/no orientation for newcomers.
3. List of collectors — looks awkward atm.
4. Requirement — lots of data, not so much info
5. Skill nomenclature — don't get me started
6. Bar compression — see talk:Bar compression
7. Team roles — cart b4 horse.
8. Beastmaster — outdated, too much data/not enough info.

Low-hanging fruit

These are articles that should be cleaned up. In theory, they are low-effort.

• Drunkard, Alcohol, Drunk, Survivor, GWAMM: all cameling away from the horse design.
• Rare material including artisan info: a way to present rare mats that helps people avoid searching the nearest/most convenient artisan
• Gold farming
• Unspeakable, Unknowable — long-winded. Combines background with tips. Some of the advice is outdated.
• Caster weapon — long-winded.

Someday

These are articles that should be cleaned up. However, the effort:reward ratio is unfavorable.

• Animal companion, Pet, Zaishen Menagerie: lots of overlap (sensibly and not so much); hard to find a list that matches what you see in-game; some good info lost in the details. Also: pet evolution.
• Area of Effect, Range, and all the associated articles: see 1-8 above. Data is sometimes unclear and seemingly in contradiction within and/or across articles. Some text is repetitive and/or difficult to parse. Ideally, articles should feed each other (transclusion or DPL) so that when one article is changed, the others update appropriately. One possible solution: set up suitable smaller articles and transclude appropriately. Another idea: setup appropriate master article and DPL appropriately. See: Distance.
• Cartographer and Vanquisher: also their associated articles. Tips are mixed with facts, suggestions are repeated (sometimes contradicting each other); general principles are covered as specifics and specifics as general ideas. As with other articles, there's extremely useful info hidden by the presentation. See also /Template:Vanquish note and /Template:Cartography note
• Dungeons and their associated quest articles: lots of overlap (some sensible, some not); structure sometimes differs wildly; inconsistent presentation of LoD and reward info; walkthroughs and tips/notes duplicate/contradict; ...
  • Dungeon chest contents: Standardize presentation, see: Dungeon chest content template
• Energy management (and associated subpages). A lot of data, not very much information. Could provide helpful tips for any/each profession instead of generic advice. i.e. it's not very helpful to anyone not yet familiar with the basics and not much new for those who are.
• Fissure of Woe and associated quests and landmarks. Not very helpful to anyone who hasn't been there before. And not much new info for people who have.
• Hero behavior: don't get me started. This article is a collection of important, but disorganized ideas/tips/issues. General examples are mixed with specifics and specifics are repeated in multiple ways, despite the general behavior being noted. This is a classic article by committee. Draft.
• Kilroy Stonekin's Punch-Out Extravaganza!: level of detail is becoming overwhelming (less will be more)
• Knock down: long intro, mix of data and tactics, covers PvP but not PvE; good ideas can be more focused.
• Loot scaling and Anti-farm code: don't get me started. See: Draft
• Shrines (all explorable areas). How we present shrines. A lot of space to present something very simple. What about this instead?
• Reference of perfect mesmer weapons: needs to be drastically overhauled, standardized; also: needs corresponding articles for other profs.
• Replication: a more consistent way of presenting replication comparisons for unique weapons.
• Shrines (esp. in Echovald and Jade areas): the same shrines are listed multiple times with differing presentation standards. There's relatively simple information presented in a complex fashion. Alternative presentation
• Spirit spam, tank, and similar articles: theory, opinion, facts are jumbled up. A lot of good stuff, could be more useful and easier to read.
• Upgrade component: treats weapon and armor upgrades differentially.
• Shining Blade Bounty articles: walkthroughs can be standardized. The synergy phrasing is sometimes confusing (and sometimes misleading; often, there's very little true synergy).
• Weapon stats template — should this be used?

Completed

These are articles from the above lists that have been cleaned-up. (This doesn't include articles cleaned up haphazardly.)

• Gate of Madness: walkthrough needs overhaul
• Death penalty and Morale Boost: inconsistent format, repetition, verbosity.
• Effect stacking: Good info, but somewhat convoluted (especially the able; when you need 8+ footnotes, there's probably something you can do to make things more straightforward).
• Category:Unofficial terms: count all articles using an unofficial name. Identify which should be all caps, mixed caps, or lower case according to different viewpoints...and therefore how many articles need to be adjusted. The key point is that GWW is inconsistent at the moment and TEF's goal is to document the cost of consistency. → Evaluation of articles tagged as unofficial terms. → resolved

Sandboxes

• Sandbox (NPC alternative presentation)
• Sandbox 2 (NPC locations, alternative separating quest-only spawns)
• Sandbox 3 (Lists of uniques using template using DPL)
• Sandbox 4 (Lists of NPCs that use a specific skill, with & without template, sourced from {{NPC infobox}})
• Sandbox 5 (Template for uniques, sourced from {{weapon infobox}}
• Sandbox 6 Avail
• Sandbox 7 (Template for NPCs that use a specific skill, sourced from {{NPC infobox}})
• Sandbox 8 (NPCs that can be paid to unlock a specific skill, meant to replace current setup for skill acquisition: trainers.)

• List of unofficial terms (List of articles tagged as unofficial terms for debate on capitalization)
• Location disambiguation template
• New format for shrines?

Sandboxes (long name)

• Sandbox
• Sandbox/List of unofficial terms
• Sandbox/Shrines
• Sandbox 10
• Sandbox 11
• Sandbox 2
• Sandbox 3
• Sandbox 4
• Sandbox 5
• Sandbox 6
• Sandbox 7
• Sandbox 8
• Sandbox 9

Sandboxes (abbr. name)

• Bar compression examples
• NPC skills
• Skill bar
• Skill bar box
• Weapon infobox

Background

Everyone contributes to the wiki intending to improve articles for its readers. And, indeed, the vast majority of edits accomplish just that. Unfortunately, over the course of time, some articles slowly randomly step away from their original purpose (or towards a new one), so that, after some number of changes, the article becomes less useful to the player than it could do.

Over the course of time since I started contributing here, I have made numerous attempts to do some wiki gardening: pull weeds; acknowledge that the tomatoes are here to stay (although we wanted tulips); fertilize; trim/prune; and so on. I hope that most of my work in this direction has helped make it easier for more people to get more use out of the wiki (although I realize some of those attempts have been flat-out failures or unacceptable to a core of reasonable people).

In the past, I've tended to adjust articles as I come across them. This page is an attempt to put some organization into these efforts, allow easier feedback on the overall pattern of changes, and offer opportunities to others to both suggest articles and/or boldly help do some gardening of their own.

Common reasons for being on the list

1. Brevity: 30 words do the work that 10 can do better.
2. Clarity: hard to parse or follow the ideas, especially if it is advice.
3. Conflicting ideas: ideas suggest contradictions.
4. Forest vs. Trees: main ideas lost in details and/or details no longer do their best in supporting main ideas.
5. Non-standard style(s): does not follow otherwise sensible conventions/styles used elsewhere in wiki.
6. Organization: similar ideas are unnaturally separated; dissimilar thoughts are awkwardly grouped.
7. Redundancy/Repetition: same/similar ideas restated.
8. Schizophrenic purposes: the article isn't sure what it wants to deliver to the reader: is it guide? a factual article? a walkthrough? a dessert topping? a floor wax?
9. The two Darrin problem: article is part of a list/category that are out of alignment with each other.