Morrowind talk:Non-Relevant NPCs/Full Pages or Redirects?

I think we need to explicitly decide whether we want to leave the Non-Relevant NPC pages as redirects, or create full pages for them. This discussion started on Morrowind talk:Frink Ruuz, I'm moving it here to get more general opinions on it. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 19:24, 13 December 2008 (EST)

I think this page, along with Morrowind:Surus Velvus‎, Morrowind:Boss Crito‎, Morrowind:Snowy Granius‎, Tribunal:Diradeni Farano‎, Bloodmoon:Raccan‎ and Bloodmoon:Vilbia Herennia‎ (and any other subsequent ones) should be kept.

The only reason that has ever been given not to create pages for all MW, BM and TR NPCs is that nobody could be bothered. Here we have pages, with full stats, links - both from and to (and some of which still have links - naughty Lurlock!). In other words, there's no reason for these pages to be deleted. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 13:23, 12 December 2008 (EST)

I still think these pages should be deleted. Having pages for non-relevant NPCs sets a precedent. It implies that we WANT to have pages for every single NPC in the game, which I think we clearly do not. It's not a matter of "nobody could be bothered." We made a clear case that such pages are NOT needed for everybody. The second criterion on Non-Relevant NPCs clearly states that NPCs coincidentally encountered in the process of a quest are not in and of themselves relevant, unless it is required to interact with the NPC in order to complete the quest. There's over 3000 NPCs in the game, and most of them there's nothing we can say about them other than "So-and-so is a bandit in such-and-such who will attack you on sight." These pages are useless. All the stats that we really care about can be easily summarized on the relevant location pages. (As for leaving the links, it doesn't matter that much, since the pages would still exist as redirects.) --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:45, 12 December 2008 (EST)

You are arguing that if we freeze new pages, we won't have to flesh them out and the site will eventually be complete. That is probably consistent with pages you paraphrased, but unneeded pages are basically icing on the cake for me and (probably) the average user. The more information we have available, the more we can do with this wiki. What if in the future we wanted to include loot, or more stats than just Fight & Health Points, such as all trainers top 3 skills? Having screenshots for each named NPC does give this site more depth too, IMHO. Even generic/leveled NPCs from lists would be relevant at times to some. Complete listings of NPCs could be useful for demographics, and finding locations filled with level 5 bandits might be very nice for a new player. I can see this site evolving to do that easily. Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 01:57, 14 December 2008 (EST)

Well actually trainers do have their training skills listed, and as is tradition, I put my foot in my mouth. I can think of other times when full stats would still be helpful to know. Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 02:06, 14 December 2008 (EST)

I've never understood the line that we don't want these pages. I can understand that when resources were low it made sense to concentrate on only those NPCs that were important; now that the wiki is well-established with a large number of editors, that's no longer a problem. I can just about understand the thought that we shouldn't go out of our way to create the non-relevant pages, but deleting any that do exist seems perverse. The very fact that a page was created shows that at least one person wants it there. Given that it doesn't detract from the rest of the site, I'd say leave it. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 04:00, 14 December 2008 (EST)

To respond to Lukish's points: Loot? Pretty much all of the loot on these NPCs is pretty common and not very valuable, so even that's not worthy of mention. Unless you want to amass the world's largest collection of Chitin Armor, there's very little reason to waste editor time and site resources in order to display that information. It may be of use to modders, but modders can find it just as easily with the CS. There's just no need for the site to try and duplicate every single scrap of knowledge that can be found in the CS. As for "locations filled with level 5 bandits", the location pages already do this nicely. Go to any location page for a bandit cave, and you'll see a chart with all NPCs found there, with a column for their levels. I think this is infintely preferable to having just a list of links to NPC pages and forcing you to check them one by one (with load-time and all) to see what their levels are. I can see an argument for having a page that lists NPCs by level, though this could potentially be done with Categories with a simple change to the NPC Summary and Non-Relevant NPC templates. (You wouldn't want them all on one page anyhow, that page would be so huge it'd take forever to load.) Again, though, it's so easy to load up the CS and click the "Level" column on the NPC section, and you'll get a nice ordered list. Now, as for Rpeh's "at least one person wants it" comment, you should check the history. Note that all of the Morrowind ones were created by someone who is no longer a member of the site, and this was before the criteria for Non-Relevant NPCs were established. The decision not to have pages for every NPC in the game came soon after that. The Tribunal and Bloodmoon pages were created when we still weren't sure what to do with the expansion NPCs (which have a much greater percentage of relevant NPCs.) Diradeni Farano‎ does have one line of unique dialogue, which barely qualifies, but the others do not. Heck, I created the two Bloodmoon pages myself and I don't care enough about them to keep them. As for adding "depth" to the site? You could say that, but you could also say that having thousands of useless pages drowns out the ones that actually have interesting content until you can't find the "good" ones anymore. Do we really want to decrease our signal to noise ratio by diluting the site with pages that have almost no useful content? The existence of these pages implies that we do. A new editor might see them and think "Oh, look! These irrelevant bandits have their own pages, but the rest of them don't! Maybe I should start making them..." And then we wind up with a flood of pointless work being done, both on the part of the editors who do it and those who have to patrol them. It's a waste of time and energy, and I don't think we should set that kind of precedent. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 09:48, 14 December 2008 (EST)

Organizing lots of pointless work is what this wiki excels at. Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 13:44, 14 December 2008 (EST)

Yes, but getting that same amount of effort put into something worthwhile is a much better way of doing things. Anyhow, I have one further point to make on this issue. Taking a look at those pages, it occurred to me that there isn't a single piece of information on any of them that isn't duplicated in a much more convenient way on their relevant location pages. Having the same information displayed in two places is just redundant and wasteful. The only things on those pages that aren't also on the location pages are the pictures, so I'm going to assume that those advocating that these pages be kept are mainly interested in the pictures, as the other information is all available elsewhere in a much easier to access format.

Now, there's nothing wrong with the pictures, but at the same time they're not so great that they alone justify the existence of these pages. Do we really need pictures for every NPC in the game? Given that there's only about a dozen or so heads and hairs for each race/gender combination (a bit more for Dunmer, but still not much), there's a limited number of appearances an NPC can have, and I guarantee you a large number of them are completely identical. (Try lining up all the slaves in the game, for example - they all wear pretty much the same clothes, and there's only about a dozen different looks for each race/gender combo.) This is another major difference from Oblivion, where each face is indeed unique and different from everyone else. So does having pictures for every NPC doesn't really add "depth" to the site so much as it floods it with a large pile of indistinguishable images, and makes the important NPCs seem less so by surrounding them with irrelevant ones. I for one like to be able to look at a location page, and instantly tell simply by looking at the NPC list which NPCs are important and which aren't. Those with a link must be relevant in some way, and those without aren't. If we create a page for everyone, then all of them would presumably have links, and there'd be no way to tell who's relevant and who isn't without wasting time loading up their pages one by one. Nobody has yet come up with a single valid reason why these pages should be kept, other than "there's no reason not to." Well, I've given plenty of good reasons not to, and the only response I've gotten is that wikis excel at organizing pointless work - in other words, you agree that it's pointless, and yet still you argue that it should be done anyhow? Your logic escapes me. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 01:21, 15 December 2008 (EST)

At the moment we're talking about six articles, which is hardly a flood. Of those six, the least visited is Diradeni Farano, and even that one has been visited 752 times. The most visited is Boss Crito, which has been visited 4,732 times. In total, you're talking about deleting pages that have been visited 14,256 times. The pages do not hurt the wiki, they're not getting in the way and have been visited thousands of times. That's why they shouldn't be deleted. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 02:14, 15 December 2008 (EST)

That's a meaningless argument. The pages have been visited frequently because there were links to them from Arkngthand (a page with almost 25,000 views that is involved in the Main Quest). You see a link to an NPC from an article, you might assume there's something interesting on his page, so you check it out. I'll bet that the majority of those 4,732 page views were people clicking the link out of curiosity, looking at it and then thinking "Well, gee, that was a waste of time." Number of views has nothing to do with the value of the page, only with the number of people that have been tricked into visiting it, thinking there might be something valuable there, which actually further proves my point - the very existence of these pages has apparently caused over 4000 people to waste their time clicking the link in order to see basically nothing. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 08:40, 15 December 2008 (EST)

No, the meaningless argument is to assume you know why 4,700+ people clicked on a link. Anwyay, since this isn't getting anywhere, put the pages up for deletion review if you still think that perfectly good pages with thousands of views, and edit contributions from a dozen people should be deleted. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 03:17, 16 December 2008 (EST)

I must concede that location pages with these links are more cumbersome with links to irrelevant NPCs. I am starting to agree with you that there's no need for these extra pictures and redundant details. However, in every walkthrough for the Main Quest, and every site that gives hints to where to find the elusive Dwemer Puzzle Box will undoubtedly mention Boss Crito (including this one currently). Pictures of him would be nice to some people sometimes. He is also the hardest NPC encountered for lots of beginners, I can't remember how many times I had to reload when fighting him, since he always knocked me down with his massive hammer. Now that I think about it, he is the first boss in the game, and is labeled as such. He should be relevant to the MQ IMHO, although sometimes I skip killing him and he's technically not important at all. Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 00:42, 16 December 2008 (EST)

(outdent) the deletion review resulted in the pages being kept –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 14:21, 30 December 2008 (EST)

I realize this question has essentially already been decided. However, a very unreliable network connection during the holidays made it impossible for me to participate in the deletion review discussion. (With my iPhone, I may be able to cope with wifi outages and do a lot of wiki tasks -- but I absolutely refuse to write 5 kB commentaries on a mini-screen with no cut-and-paste abilities!) And after some consideration I think some of my comments might be sufficiently useful to make it worth the risks inherent in re-starting this discussion.

Although I started out without a clear preference (and perhaps even favored universal redirects for non-relevant NPCs), as I read through the discussions and considered the arguments, I've ultimately ended up leaning towards keeping these existing NPC articles as full articles. I still think as a general rule we want to continue using redirects for non-relevant NPCs, but we can allow exceptions to the rule. Some of my reasons are new to the discussion; also, I have some new responses to arguments against keeping the articles.

• Several of these pages have legitimate reasons to be exceptions to the Non-Relevant NPC guidelines. Lukish pointed out reasons why Boss Crito is memorable. There are similar reasons for Snowy Granius. In particular, he is the first hostile NPC likely to be encountered by many players (i.e., by anyone who simply follows the main quest line). He also effectively sets a limit on the character level necessary to proceed with the main quest (level 1 characters can't kill him without exploits or changing the game's difficulty -- an option not available to all players -- and therefore cannot advance in the main quest). In general, all of these NPCs are encountered while doing the main quest, and are likely to met by most players early in the game. The pages are far more likely to be looked up than many pages for "relevant" NPCs. The very fact that these articles were among the first full NPC articles created confirms that these NPCs are notable, at least to some players.
• Even in the more general case of truly non-relevant NPCs, I'm not convinced by the reasons given for why we should overwrite existing, complete, and properly formatted articles with redirects.
  • Reduce work: The primary argument against having such non-relevant NPC articles is the amount of work required to create them -- but in this case, the work has been done.
  • Consistency: With the current system, consistency seems to have few advantages other than symbolism. Whether a NPC is relevant or non-relevant, the NPC information is accessed the same way: through a link/article with the NPC's name. All NPCs appear in the various NPC categories. So for readers and editors, in most situations the distinction has no significance. The only difference is whether you end up at a full article or an entry in a table.
  • Precedent: Were it not for this discussion, nobody on the site would even know that a handful of non-relevant NPCs have full articles. So it seems highly improbable that a new editor on the site would see these articles and use their existence as justification for creating thousands of new articles. In general, I think we've set up a system for the NPCs that reduces the potential for editors to think that articles need to be created. Based on past examples, articles tend to be created when it's apparent that they're missing: when red-links to the article exist, when searches on the topic come up empty, or when the information readers are looking for can't be found. None of those problems should exist in this case; the redirects even make it difficult for new editors to accidentally create the articles, since it takes a bit of extra wiki-knowledge to figure out how to even edit a redirect page.
  • Future work potential: If a new editor were, nevertheless, to start creating full articles for all of the non-relevant NPCs, I'd guess that we would still want to discourage the project. We'd point the editor to the non-relevant NPC criteria and to this discussion, and suggest other projects that would be far more useful overall for the wiki. However, if even after all of that an editor were to insist that NPC article creation was the only contribution that he/she would even consider doing for the wiki, I don't think we would have any real reason to stop the editor. Editors do work voluntarily and choose purely based on personal preference what projects to work on. We cannot (and should not) force editors to only work on an official list of "high priority" projects. For nearly any project someone takes on, there is probably someone else who considers the project a waste of time. But the only person whose opinion matters is the person who is "wasting" his/her time. In short, I don't think that we can use "waste of time" as the sole criterion for whether or not someone else should do his/her pet project.
    • Of course, part of the problem is that a new editor's attempts to "help" often end up creating a ton of work for the site's other editors, with all the fact-fixing, formatting, images, and everything else that's necessary even just to convert a first draft into an incomplete stub. Nevertheless, it's still each editor's choice to do that work; we have a plethora of tags that can be slapped on an article instead of jumping in and doing the work immediately.
  • Identifying relevant NPCs. I agree that it would be helpful for readers to know which NPC links may actually lead to "interesting" information. However, I don't think the absence/presence of links is a good way to provide that feedback.
    • Even for non-relevant NPCs, readers may want to look them up: someone who is trying to complete the Antabolis Informant quest is likely to be curious about why they are having a hard time killing Snowy Granius. That reader should be able to click on Snowy Granius' name when it appears in the quest walkthrough in order to see Snowy's stats (level, health) -- even if the link just leads to a table on the location page. Deleting the link creates an unnecessary obstacle. It also, realistically, makes it more likely that an editor will try to create an NPC article -- the editor will think that no such article exists if the link is missing.
    • Overall, even in a table listing NPCs, I doubt that there are more than a couple dozen editors on the site who even know about the non-relevant NPC distinction, and therefore nearly nobody knows why some NPCs have links and some don't. If we're going to add an identification system to the site, it should be one that is useful to all readers. There are many ways to do it that do not rely upon links, and therefore do not rely upon setting up unnecessary obstacles to accessing the site's information. For example, the detailed NPC tables are using italics/non-italics to distinguish the relevant/non-relevant NPCs. That system could be implemented more widely. It also, really, needs to be explained under the NPC tables so that even new readers know why some NPCs are italicized. Any non-relevant NPCs with articles could also be clearly identified as non-relevant (e.g., breadcrumb trail link to the Non-Relevant NPC page; a statement that the NPC is non-relevant; etc). I'm just throwing out ideas to demonstrate that there are alternatives -- I'm not saying that these are necessarily the best options.
    • If we want the system to be useful to readers and if we want to prevent new editors from creating NPC articles, then we need to do more to advertise and explain the system; deleting links and undoing existing articles both seem to do more to hide and obfuscate the system.

In short, I think keeping the articles helps the wiki, and I think there are better ways than links/non-links to help identify non-relevant NPCs. --Nephele^Talk 03:01, 12 January 2009 (EST)

That all makes sense. As for creating pages for the other non-relevant NPCs, in general I'd be against it - as previously stated. Certainly if a user were to create a set of pages with just the name, a line of text then a NeedsImage and VN tag for the stats, I'd have no hesitation in proposing the pages for deletion. On the other hand, if the pages had all the information supplied, there'd be no reason to remove them. In other words, as Nephele says, it's more about the work required of other people than of the page's creator. The Oblivion Castles are a good example; the stores pages offer another one. In other words, I'm certainly not going to create NR-NPC pages myself, but if somebody else is prepared to do them, I'm certainly not going to support their deletion either. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 03:36, 12 January 2009 (EST)