Tone Issues

[SigholtStarsong]

 

I've recently been going through the wiki and noticing a distinctly unprofessional, and occassionally hostile, tone within some of the guides. In one specific instance, I removed 20 instances of obscenities from a single guide that actively insulted the competence of our player base.

 

I'd personally like to see the tone of the wiki brought to a properly professional and non-hostile level as quickly as possible, even if it is a massive undertaking to sweep all the pages and rewrite entire sections/guides.

 

[Spacemanspark]

 

Part of the tone is intentional, and the reasoning for this is to demonstrate how silly the game is meant to be in some cases.

What page did you remove the obscenities from.

 

[SigholtStarsong]

 

The blob page, specifically. Even if the tone should be silly, it shouldn't call players "chucklefucks" or variations thereupon.

 

Examples:

 

Virologist: Kill yourself.

...resistance can be useful if some chucklefuck has...

SHIT TYRONE HACK THE FUCKING AUTOLATHES

 

Edited January 24, 2017 by Guest

[Spacemanspark]

 

The beyond the impossible page is an old joke.

I don't see a reason why that's offensive.

And removing profanity just seems rather... odd? This is SS13, it's not even remotely offensive. I don't see "chucklefuck" to be offensive.

The tyrone one is the only one I see that needed to be removed.

You might be overthinking it a bit honestly.

 

Edited January 24, 2017 by Guest

[SigholtStarsong]

The idea, on my end anyway, is to make the Wiki a useful resource that doesn't actively encourage players to kill themselves.

[Spacemanspark]

 

It's been a useful resource for years, and I had no issues utilizing the wiki when I was learning SS13 myself. To note it was probably a bit worse back then honestly.

I see no reason to censor any of it.

 

[Doukan]

 

A lot of the phrasing in the wiki is years old since much of it was originally stolen borrowed from various sources. Admittedly it's somewhat outdated in places and some bits could do adjusting (the aforementioned tyrone).

No need to go ministry of truth on it though, it's perfectly legible, the tone is a part of the SS13 magic.

 

I seriously doubt anyone who finds this very niche game is gonna be all that bothered with a bit humour in their job guide anyway.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

I'm firmly in support of making the wiki a professionally toned resource and cutting choppy humour out of it. I don't mind if there's implied or abstract humour but we shouldn't deliberately convey information in a way that's "funny".

 

Not only do the needless jokes bloat the size of pages artificially, they're also just more information that you need to parse that ultimately make it harder to find what you're looking for.

 

Ultimately the goal should be to make the wiki stand out as a strong resource for new and veteran players alike that's not only easy to access, but easy to understand with little misconstruement.

 

[necaladun]

I pretty much agree with Shadey there, but reading the DF wiki makes me think we could include humour and joke pages easily just with their own little header to make it clear to new players.

[Doukan]

 

I'm firmly in support of making the wiki a professionally toned resource and cutting choppy humour out of it.

No fun allowed? If someone is too dense to get the joke after the first first obvious puns they probably shouldn't be playing in the first place.

It's a game, "professional" shouldn't be coming anywhere near it IMO.

I pretty much agree with Shadey there, but reading the DF wiki makes me think we could include humour and joke pages easily just with their own little header to make it clear to new players.

The goon wiki does it well, cheeto-stained archives and all makes it fairly clear to take everything tongue in cheek.

A little banner in the corner WITH BIG RED LETTERS making obvious wouldn't be amiss though I suppose.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

I'm firmly in support of making the wiki a professionally toned resource and cutting choppy humour out of it.

No fun allowed? If someone is too dense to get the joke after the first first obvious puns they probably shouldn't be playing in the first place.

It's a game, "professional" shouldn't be coming anywhere near it IMO.

I pretty much agree with Shadey there, but reading the DF wiki makes me think we could include humour and joke pages easily just with their own little header to make it clear to new players.

The goon wiki does it well, cheeto-stained archives and all makes it fairly clear to take everything tongue in cheek.

A little banner in the corner WITH BIG RED LETTERS making obvious wouldn't be amiss though I suppose.

 

No fun allowed if it's a serious wiki resource that's going to be referenced frequently. If it's about a memey topic and it's smart sure, but there really shouldn't be jokes on the guides, SoP pages, etc. There are a lot of people who have English as a second language who play on this server, and a lot of context/word specific jokes will never make sense to non-native speakers of a language. Conversely if we were a Russian server I would advocate the same, because people who speak Russian as a second language *also* wouldn't get a lot of these jokes. A great number of puns rely on a strong control of the language at hand, and there's also the matter of idioms or culturally specific jokes that non-native speakers almost never catch onto.

 

The medical guide prior to being rewritten was reamed full of jokes, and I've seen legitimate misunderstandings crop up in rounds because people took them at face value.

 

As for being a game, pretty much every popular video game has a professionally written wiki that doesn't utilize jokes, many of which are maintained by the developers themselves.

 

We market ourselves as a far more serious server than Goon does, and the format of our wiki should present us as such.

 

tl;dr Jokes are probably OK if they're on minor pages such as map pages, item pages, or on a "Guide to playing Ian" sort of page. They shouldn't appear on things like the Guide to Chemistry, Guide to Xenobiology, Guide to Engineering, Job Pages, SoP pages, lore pages, or other serious content. They should also probably be smarter jokes, rather than the usual jokes of "commit suicide" or "as security it is your job to beat the clown to death" that I see plastered on the wiki from time to time.

 

EDIT: A good example of a joke that can fit even on a serious page is the description of the IV drip. "Used for giving or taking blood. Can also be used to inject chemicals, efficiently produce synthmeat, or as a portable coffee machine."

 

I just really don't think we should be laying on the cheetos and go kill yourself sort of humour (which seems to be the bulk of humour I see on the wiki).

 

[jedr]

 

"This section is rated H for HONK"

 

We promote ourselves more serious than goon, sure. But we also still allow biblefarting and other random shenanigans. A bit of well timed good humor never killed anyone.

 

Also what am I even doing here, I don't do wiki stuff...

 

[Spacemanspark]

 

 

As for being a game, pretty much every popular video game has a professionally written wiki that doesn't utilize jokes, many of which are maintained by the developers themselves.

 

...The wiki was made by said developers, and it shows the tone of the game itself. Is that not what said developers wanted?

And since when is SS13 popular I mean I 700 people is a lot to us but by normal standards we're probably sitting around the 93054892574289475209 place in terms of gaming popularity come on.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

 

As for being a game, pretty much every popular video game has a professionally written wiki that doesn't utilize jokes, many of which are maintained by the developers themselves.

 

...The wiki was made by said developers, and it shows the tone of the game itself. Is that not what said developers wanted?

And since when is SS13 popular I mean I 700 people is a lot to us but by normal standards we're probably sitting around the 93054892574289475209 place in terms of gaming popularity come on.

 

I would argue that SS13 is relatively popular by those standards given the duration it's been going. Consider how many other multiplayer platforms immediately die after 1-2 years.

 

The Para wiki was not made by the developers. It is a hodge podge of user submissions to the Bay wiki (then copied over) and a handful of things from /tg/ and goon wikis. I'd say we're at least 50% or 60% unique Paradise-wiki writing at this point. Eventually our goal should be to remove the disclaimer stating that the contents of our wiki have been ported from elsewhere.

 

[dadols]

 

I'm firmly in support of making the wiki a professionally toned resource and cutting choppy humour out of it.

No fun allowed? If someone is too dense to get the joke after the first first obvious puns they probably shouldn't be playing in the first place.

It's a game, "professional" shouldn't be coming anywhere near it IMO.

I pretty much agree with Shadey there, but reading the DF wiki makes me think we could include humour and joke pages easily just with their own little header to make it clear to new players.

The goon wiki does it well, cheeto-stained archives and all makes it fairly clear to take everything tongue in cheek.

A little banner in the corner WITH BIG RED LETTERS making obvious wouldn't be amiss though I suppose.

 

The problem about the wiki is, Too Much Stupid Jokes, there should be less stupid jokes... it should be a bit more clean n` professional, the wiki is there to explain stuff to players not to make them laugh.