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It can be done!

Khan Noonien Singh, a fictional character, is today's featured article. Yes, it has a plot summary; in fact, it takes up about 1/3 of the article, and in fact, much of it is in-universe text (set up by out-of-universe text though, of course). What it also has is a "design and analysis" section, and a "reception and legacy" section. So, again, I can only take this as a sign that plot summaries, even containing a fair amount of in-universe text, are not the enemy. In fact, they can help make a nice healthy, well-rounded article, as I have always believed. The key is, to make sure articles about fictional characters feature the all-too-important, well-sourced sections detailing the character's design, development, reception, etc. from an entirely out-of-universe perspective. Khaaaaan!!!!!! BOZ (talk) 00:39, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not the first one. Michael Tritter appeared on the main page. Read it's talk page for tons of anti-fictional character vitriol. At least Khan has a non-free image. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 00:55, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

F$#% 'em. :) Yeah, you got plenty of people around here who can't stand seeing any pop culture or fiction topics get any kind of recognition. Hate the fact that the Simpsons and the video games project have a bunch of FAs and a ton of GAs. So what? Go work on something you like and improve that if you can't stand the pop culture stuff which so many other people enjoy. If we can improve this stuff to any reasonable standard, why be upset about it? That's the silliest damn thing ever. BOZ (talk) 02:26, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but don't let it get to you. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:54, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Plot summaries usually seem to become an issue when they take up 90% of the material and contain exhaustive amounts of trivial detail. It's usually not too difficult to narrow it down to just the major themes so that the reader doesn't become bored. (I usually find the problem becomes knowing what is important and what isn't, at least for a story I haven't seen before.) Plus it's a lot easier to cite up a brief plot summary than a long-winded one. :-) —RJH (talk) 19:22, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

World of Greyhawk Rewrite: seeking opinions

I have basically completed my proposed rewrite of World of Greyhawk on my talk page, and would be interested in any comments about it. It isn't perfect, but I believe it could make a good platform for further improvements if you think it's ready to go live. Guinness323 (talk) 19:57, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

My overall impression from a quick skim through is: Support! Some of the section headers and the like need some rewriting, but this does certainly look better than the current version. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:26, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I also like your rewrite of Greyhawk deities (for those who haven't seen it yet). :) BOZ (talk) 22:36, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, I have gone live with the WoG rewrite. Take it apart and reassemble as you see fit. :) Sorry for the wait, I had the bulk of it written in March, but work intervened. The people who pay me seem to think that I owe them something in return... Guinness323 (talk) 16:38, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

How silly of them! Looks good. BOZ (talk) 21:56, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

If you have a sizeable collection of Dragon magazines...

...then check out this thread. :) BOZ (talk) 01:09, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

R.O.U.S.'s

Interesting discovery on Papua New Guinea:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/07/discovery-species-papua-new-guinea

Possibly the world's biggest rat.—RJH (talk) 15:24, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I googled the reference, I admit. Have never seen this! Hekerui (talk) 15:50, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (published works)

Wikipedia:Notability (published works) would be something to check out, given how it could affect a number of our FAs, GAs, and potentials. FYI! BOZ (talk) 01:12, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Forgotten Realms deities

Out of the character articles listed in Category:Forgotten Realms deities, are there any that have the potential to actually become decent articles? Also, you guys should look into using Template:CharR to list entry to categorize your redirects. It works a lot better than using regular categories. TTN (talk) 17:30, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for helping with some of the merge cleanup; it's been on our to-do list, but there's always too much else to do! Anyway, I think that Lolth certainly has a good chance of becoming a good article (even if not at Good article :). I'd also recommend keeping Orcus (Dungeons & Dragons) and Tiamat (Dungeons & Dragons) as their own articles because of their widespread appearances in the game and, in the case of Orcus, it's uses by Necromancer Games. Most of the others could probably be merged to List of Forgotten Realms deities... I don't think that many would call for deletion, but a couple paragraphs in a list seems about right. There may be other articles that should be kept on their own there, but I can't think of any right now. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:12, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll start up a thread on these after fixing up the Greyhawk gods; I'll have more time to manage any merging at that point. BOZ (talk) 19:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

My personal feeling on gods which replicated entities elsewhere (with roughly similar attributes) was that they should be merged into an article on that entity, and thus Asmodeus, Orcus, Demogorgon, Baphomet, and Tyr (to name a few) - should be merged with ancient, modern and RPG versions of the name into one article. Not so sure about Tiamat. However, as my view appears to be in the minority I haven't pushed the point. Ditto also with various monsters. I think the contrasting and evolution of an idea (and described in an out-of-universe way) is fascinating - eg. Gygax getting Trow from Norse folklore and making drow, when did trolls become large rather than small and pick up regeneration on the way. If you see the bottom of vampire (a FA), you can see how the being picked up attributes over recetn times. also there is some fascinating discussion on ghost's talk page. One of the recent Dragons discussed and summarised Demogorogon and Orcus's development over 30 years quite well and contrasted the two-headed monkey with the former shapeless description of D. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:40, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Heh, you can partly blame me for the separation, because I know I did more than a few splits. :) I found, somewhere back in 2005 or 2006, that a lot of mythology enthusiasts just did not like pop culture sections in their articles. If you put D&D stuff in certain articles, it would be reverted back out, or trimmed to a one-line mention. So, since we had perfectly fine standalones on creatures that had no mythological counterpart, I figured it stood to reason that we could have our own versions of those creatures in their own standalone articles. Of course, there's nothing wrong with D&D articles referencing the parent, and vice versa, but I think merging that way is a bad idea. BOZ (talk) 22:26, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I haven't lost any sleep over it, just another divergence from consensus and how I'd do it...but there you go. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:36, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey TTN. We've been talking about doing some merging. Are you interested in doing some of it? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:01, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's my idea. You could merge all of them, and we could just pull out the few that we think can be improved into nice single topic articles. I think that would be pretty easy. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:09, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Even if merged, there'd be a succinct summary of the notable ones on the list of.. page anyway, so it gives us some flexibility about deciding which ones are notable enough to have articles. (Fav quote "It's all fun until someone loses an eye..." - Vecna.) Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:22, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

As an inclusionist, I've always resisted working on a main article and spinning out when necessary. But, I've gotten older (and possibly wiser) and I think that would be a good way to go. I've been working on the GDQ series, and I think I've seen (barely) enough in the old mags for a nice little article on Lolth. But it would be nice to have the extra leeway of Lolth in a list so I can just slowly add refs to that. It would help with notability for the list in the immediate, plus it's work that can go in an eventual Lolth article. I'm going to drop a note on TTN's talk page. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:49, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

If all the original individualdeity articles are redirects, then there will be material which can be accessed in the article history (otherwise I as an admin can fetch deleted material, actually as can either BOZ or Drilnoth now anyway.) Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:57, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

True. The articles were talking about keeping separate might be the ones that should in a list, and the others be simple redirects. We have maybe 1000-1700 articles, so it's a huge job. I'm too lazy to do it, so it may depend on TTN, or whether Drilnoth can make a bot that makes the process easy. I think that if we made GA our minimum, there are only 50-100 topics and lists that can be created based on sources. Maybe 200 if every little bit of info from White Dwarf, Different Worlds, and The Space Gamer and other non-searchable magazines can be gleaned. That's a project that will take many years, though. A middle ground is probably best for now. Get our article count below 500 would be a good start, I think. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:19, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't know that I'd go that far... you go under 100, and we might as well pack it in as a project. Keep in mind, if you're worried that we have 1700 articles of plot elements, you'd be wrong. That's easily the biggest group of articles, since it was a focus before the "notability wars" got going, but I peronally have put an effort into adding new articles and adding the project template to real people and other media articles for some time, so we have hundreds and hundreds of game designer, artists, movies, novels, and game accessory articles as well; a lot of them are articles we share with other wikiprojects. 500 sounds like a more reasonable goal, but I would be entirely flexible about that because it is an arbitrary number. Also, nothing wrong with merging minor characters into a list; we just don't have to merge the entirety of a huge article on a minor character. BOZ (talk) 12:14, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Editing break: cleanup

I think I did this before, but to toss some numbers out there, we have something like the following (numbers might be slighly inflated due to cross-pollenation, as I threw this together quickly):

• Books: 228
• Novels: 76
• People: 193
• Video games: 58

So yeah, that alone is already over 500 articles. Not saying we need or are going to keep all of those either, but this stuff has been becoming more of an important focus over time, with the fictional elements slowly dropping off. Not that we want to merge all of those either; not all has the potential of a Drizzt, but that doesn't mean we can't keep a good several dozen of standalones (besides lists). BOZ (talk) 12:35, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I do still have a merger tool on my to-do list, possibly as a part of Dazzle!... it couldn't be fully automatic, but it may be helpful. Anyway, I think that merging most of the fictional elements-related articles should still leave us with quite a few articles, but a lot of pages about fictional elements should also be kept. The minimum standard isn't going to be GA... it's notability. I think that a lot of fictional elements-related articles will never make GA but could be a solid C or B with notability established. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:22, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Let's just aim for 1000 article, as a start. We may be close, depending on how messed up our categories are. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:41, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Perfect! BOZ (talk) 16:52, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, how exactly do we do this. Looking at County of Ulek. I'd like to redirect it to Greyhawk, but I'd like to get the categorization and talk page templates working correctly. And, I want the 1737 to become 1736 over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Assessment statistics whenever it is updated. What should I do? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 17:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it updates automatically, but if you change the wikiproject banner on the talk page to "merge" or "redirect" (as appropriate), the bot should pick it up and change the number before long. Consider a merge to Flanaess#County of Ulek? BOZ (talk) 17:20, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I did that to see how I like it. See Flanaess#County_of_Ulek for the result.

The problem is that while Flanaess can probably be made into a nice little article, I don't think that eventual article would contain any of the info I merged. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 18:09, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe so, but in the meantime it's what we got. I believe that things are more likely to improve over time, especially once we've made a good cleanup effort. We've already been attracting more contributors as a slow trickle. :) BOZ (talk) 19:22, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, I guess I'll wait and hear other ideas on how to do the cleanup efficiently, becuase I don't want to be merging information that ultimately will not be used. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:47, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Just FYI, the article count box should update without even a bot... it uses the PAGESINCATEGORY magic word so that it functions "live", except for caching issues. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:59, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

It still says the same number. Does it take a while to update? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:07, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I see your target number of 1736. BOZ (talk) 02:16, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

(redent) I had to purge the page. Now I see it, cool. 1/737th of the way there. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:22, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Alphatia in the Mystara setting

Why was the entry for the Empire of Alphatia deleted and redirected to the Mystara page? I actually went through the trouble of filling the page out, and then someone just goes and deletes it?!? Alphatia happens to be a major power on Mystara, which it even says on several of the related pages, and since other important nations like Thyatis and Karameikos get the own pages, I fail to see why it was necessary to delete Alphatia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Apocryphan (talk • contribs) 01:02, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Well now, hold on there... it wasn't deleted at all. Just look here, and you'll see it just how you left it. It's not protected at all, so all you have to do is click "edit this page" and save and it will be restored back to just how you left it. Keep in mind though, it's not unlikely that if you restore it, someone might just revert it back to a redirect, or even try to actually delete it, but that's the risk you take. Glantri has also been redirected, but unless you were planning on bulking that one up I'd leave it alone because it's really not saying much right now. Karameikos and Thyatis are still around. Although, it might not be a terribly bad idea to create a World of Mystara article to merge them all into and expand on, kind of like the World of Eberron article; that would be better than cluttering up the main Mystara article by merging them there. BOZ (talk) 01:34, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, the page was empty and asked for someone to fill in details about it. I actually took that at face value only to have the whole thing cast aside. In short, someone wasted my time after details were requested. That doesn't exactly inspire me to ever provide details on anything on Wikipedia ever again. Apocryphan (talk) 02:18, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Like I said, it's not gone, just buried although easily brought back. But yes, there are plenty of people on Wikipedia who are terribly worried that all subjects must meet the notability guidelines, especially if it's a fictional topic. I'm certainly not one of them, but there are quite a few "notability police" out there. Believe me, I more than understand your frustration. BOZ (talk) 03:47, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

No matter. I must say in light of this, I feel a perverse inclination to go through a bunch of pages and delete them on a basis of "notability", but then I won't stoop to a childish level. Instead I'll just leave, so please inform whomever to delete my account. Getting my work axed means I do not feel welcome on Wikipedia. Apocryphan (talk) 06:55, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I have moved the article here at D&D Wiki - as far as I know the best place to preserve articles where "notability status" is disputed. Daranios (talk) 20:14, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I've merged a few

I've been merging the locations into Flanaess. I just merged Blackmoor (Greyhawk) into it, and thought I'd discuss it here, since it actually has some out of universe info. It's not the main Blackmoor article, but it may have a modicum of notability to it. Now, we can unmerge it, but it's one of the few entries that is now helping to prop up the rest. I've been going down the line, merging each entry that has its own article. The rest have been little known (at least to me), but Geoff (Greyhawk) is coming up. I'm thinking of merging it as well, and then Flanaess won't be too much of a target (I don't think), but tell me what you guys think. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 18:41, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Geoff is a big'un! If you feel comfortable then go ahead, otherwise save it for last. I like how the Greyhawk Blackmoor notes that it's Gygax's version of Arneson's kingdom. :) BOZ (talk) 19:35, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Planescape: Torment

Would someone who knows more please come settle this? This user was edit warring on the article, and then decided to vandalize a number of my contributions when he couldn't get his way. If I'm wrong, I'll gladly back off. But either way, this person is clearly misbehaving. 67.175.176.178 (talk) 11:41, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Done. As a side note, you should let an admin know this editor is hounding you. Snuppy 13:05, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm on this. I have already warned this user about edit warring, and now it appears a second IP is involved in the situation on this article. BOZ (talk) 17:08, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Signpost article

Hello, everyone! I'd like to do a report on this WikiProject for an upcoming edition of the Wikipedia Signpost. Are there any members here who are familiar with the history and workings of the project and who would be willing to answer a few questions? Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 00:41, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd be willing to help. User:BOZ and User:Drilnoth are the other two who are really active. User:Casliber and User:RJHall also do stuff from time to time. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 00:46, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

That would be great! I've only been here about a year, but I think that I know quite a bit about the project. With Peregrine Fisher, myself, and BOZ if he's willing, that should probably be good. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 00:59, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Wow, really? :) I've been the most active member for some time, but I'm afraid I don't know much about the origins of the Wikiproject. Most of the originators have either moved on from WP altogether, or are still around but just don't edit D&D articles anymore. Any questions, ask and I'll see what I can do. :) BOZ (talk) 04:18, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

It would be cool to look at the D&D talk archives a bit, and put together a history of the project in response to questions. I've been reading the signpost wikiproject interviews, and they mostly stick to current events though, so I think we can answer most/all the questions of the top of our head. The one part of our history that I'm interested in that we can't answer, is the FA for the main DnD article, which is where RJHall could come in. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:55, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, great! I've prepared some questions at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/WikiProject report/Dungeons & Dragons; responses (on that page) from anyone here would be very appreciated. Thanks again! Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 03:08, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Boz, Dril, how do we want to do this? I imagine we'd all mention GAs for question 1, for instance, and we probably don't want to just repeat each other. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:11, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

How about, anyone who wants to can answer the questions individually, and then we come up with a composite answer afterward? :) I'll see what I can do later today; these are some good questions. BOZ (talk) 12:45, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah, OK, Drilnoth got some answers on there already. I'll answer in a sort of "mutual interview" style, where it's like more than one person gets asked the same question, and the follow-up respondents answer both the question and the previous answers.  ;) Not necessarily at the moment, but probably soon. BOZ (talk) 15:04, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I was writing my responses while Peregrine was responding, so I had to make some (small) edits to mine.  :) If anyone else cares to answer, feel free, unless Kirill has enough to go on now. :) BOZ (talk) 17:43, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Please feel free to comment further; the more material we have, the better. :-) Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 03:06, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I commented a bit more after BOZ jogged my memory with a comment. I don't want to be the only one, so if you guys add a bit more, I might as well. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:23, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

You got more questions, I got more answers. :) Not sure what else to say about the current set, unless you want me to ramble on endlessly (I can do that, but be careful what you ask for!) ;) BOZ (talk) 03:46, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, we've got what's good, what's bad, FICT/NOTE, FAC, collaboration, the future. I bet there's a question that's DnD specific that would get our juices flowing, but I'm not sure what. Maybe we could talk about being old school (me) vs. less old school (Dril) or something. Just throwing out ideas, but our project rocks, and after reading the video projects interview, I'd give them a B, and we should write a GA. I'll have to think of some refs to add. ;-) - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:55, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Origins

Hah, you want to know something funny, but this will show you just how faulty my memory is. I have been with the D&D Wikiproject from the start! Take a look at the 50 earliest contributions on the talk page history. Now, I remember... it's all coming back to me. ;) Three years ago we actually had Wikiprojects on Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Greyhawk (and had enough people to sustain them all!!) but not one for just D&D. Do you believe that? I was not the founder of this project, but I was one of the people lobbying to create a central D&D project, and now it's the only one left. It was built ass-backward. :) Here's how the main project page looked on its 50th edit in December 2006. A year later, and the wikiproject was basically torn asunder by deletionists. Another year after that, I began seriously reorganizing this project, after seeing how many important articles we did not have under our banner, such as Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, Wizards of the Coast, TSR, Inc.... you name it, and we were'nt bothering with it as a project. I mean, we had all the monsters, gods, and other in-universe stuff, but at least we did have all the books, but we really had our heads screwed on backwards, and if our focus had been in the right place maybe the deletionists wouldn't have shredded the project like they did. Anyway, at that point I became determined to add the wikiproject banner to every article on which it belonged (many, and I think I accomplished this) as well as to increase the quality of our articles to achieve more GAs, even if I was going to have to do it single-handedly (and, until Drilnoth came along, and Peregrine found his niche, I was!). And that leads us to now. :) BOZ (talk) 04:09, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

You should put that verbatim in the interview. If you do, I'll add to it. I will say I knew about a lot of this, and was disappointed that you got there before me. My first edit was November 13, 2006 (which is weird, because that was my 33rd birthday). You got their November 1, and didn't make another edit until September 1, 2007. Whatever. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs)

LOL. I'll rewrite it a bit, because I wouldn't want this quoted to me as-is, given that I ought to be sleeping right now. ;) In fact... ta-ta. :) BOZ (talk) 04:32, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I was busy with the Greyhawk merge (see above section), so I didn't get around to this. Oh well, maybe tonight. :) BOZ (talk) 22:44, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

It's "live" now! BOZ (talk) 02:31, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The new issue comes out tomorrow (if they're on time), although I saw Kirill move the page. We did a great job. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:37, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's now been published (as Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-09-21/WikiProject report). Thanks everyone for all of your help! Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 02:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey, thank you for showing an interest! Much appreciated. :) BOZ (talk) 04:22, 22 September 2009 (UTC)