Lately, when looking at some of the new wiki entries, I can't help but think that some of them are a bit overwhelming.

Maybe we should decide on some guidelines for the wiki articles? As far as I know, the wiki is for the rules and tagging information, not meant to be used as a generic Wikipedia replacement.

Here's some that seem a bit excessive:

• Breasts: Do we really need a paragraph for breast nicknames? The page is quite long even without those.
• compression_artifacts: Pretty much useless for anyone who isn't fluent in English, and is only looking for information on how to tag it.
• Various Pokemon entries, such as beedrill: Walls of text copied directly from Bulbapedia. Those are kind of irrelevant for this site, and some users have even been quoting those as a justification for tagging Pokemon as real animals: "Wiki says that it is fox-like, so I tagged it as a fox", etc.

^{_{See also: kaithian. One of the longest wiki entries, but no posts left.}}

So I'd like to suggest a couple of basic guidelines for writing the wiki entries:

1) Keep it simple. Many users aren't fluent in English, so try to avoid uncommon words and use images as examples wherever possible.
2) Try to focus on tagging instead of trivia.

Thoughts?

Whenever I edit Wiki pages nowadays, I try to add at least 3 example images.
If one line of text can fully explain what the tag is about, then it should be done (taken the tag isn't super large like breasts).
Adding one or two extra sentences to give a little bit of extra information doesn't hurt either, but preferably not.

help:wiki will be part of the /help pages soon. What do you think of it?

Genjar said:
As far as I know, the wiki is for the rules and tagging information, not meant to be used as a generic Wikipedia replacement.

Definitely agree here. I've always said to treat it less like wikipedia and more as a tagging dictionary.

Here's some that seem a bit excessive:

• Breasts: Do we really need a paragraph for breast nicknames? The page is quite long even without those.

Nah. There's a couple cases where nicknames can be useful for non-English users (for instance, the penis wiki with "Penis, cock, dick;"), but there are literally hundreds of names for breasts, penises, testicles, etc. Generic crappy nicknames like "coconuts" aren't particularly relevant to us, especially when it is presented in a way that disrupts the flow of text.

• compression_artifacts: Pretty much useless for anyone who isn't fluent in English, and is only looking for information on how to tag it.

If it's so long and complex that most people that would otherwise have trouble understanding it would actually get bored long before finishing it, it needs to be gutted and scrapped.

• Various Pokemon entries, such as beedrill: Walls of text copied directly from Bulbapedia. Those are kind of irrelevant for this site, and some users have even been quoting those as a justification for tagging Pokemon as real animals: "Wiki says that it is fox-like, so I tagged it as a fox", etc.

I consider those placeholders. Not particularly relevant but probably better than an empty page as long as it:

• Isn't more than a paragraph
• Is reasonably sanitized for e621 ("Rattata is a pokemon that resembles a rat" is better than "Rattata is a rat pokemon")
• Doesn't try to create random tags ("Rattata is a ground-type_pokemon...") or mislead ("Rattata is a ground-type pokemon...")

That being said, feel free to neuter any of those at will. :P

^{_{See also: kaithian. One of the longest wiki entries, but no posts lefts.}}

I actually like to keep a few massively long wiki entries around for quick reference. kaithian and ganon are probably the best examples I've seen of what not to do with wiki pages.

So I'd like to suggest a couple of basic guidelines for writing the wiki entries:

1) Keep it simple. Many users aren't fluent in English, so try to avoid uncommon words and use images as examples wherever possible.
2) Try to focus on tagging instead of trivia.

Yes and yes.

Edit - I'd like to add this:

3) Avoid gender-related words (e.g., "between a female character's breasts", "between her breasts", "where he puts his penis...")
4) This is more of a pet peeve, but stop doing this: "Images or animations that contain...". It's pointless and redundant.

parasprite said:
help:wiki will be part of the /help pages soon. What do you think of it?

Seems solid, though maybe also add those gender-guidelines from #3.

Nah. There's a couple cases where nicknames can be useful for non-English users (for instance, the penis wiki with "Penis, cock, dick;"), but there are literally hundreds of names for breasts, penises, testicles, etc. Generic crappy nicknames like "coconuts" aren't particularly relevant to us, especially when it is presented in a way that disrupts the flow of text.

Yep.
And oops, looks like I ended up overwriting your edit to breasts. I think I fixed it, but might've overlooked something.

If it's so long and complex that most people that would otherwise have trouble understanding it would actually get bored long before finishing it, it needs to be gutted and scrapped.

I don't even know where to begin with compression_artifacts. So yeah, might be wisest to write it from the scratch.

Edit - I'd like to add this:

3) Avoid gender-related words (e.g., "between a female character's breasts", "between her breasts", "where he puts his penis...")
4) This is more of a pet peeve, but stop doing this: "Images or animations that contain...". It's pointless and redundant.

I concur.
...I used to add #4 to my old edits, but yes, it was a bad habit. What other kind of content is there? None.

Genjar said:
Seems solid, though maybe also add those gender-guidelines from #3.

I'll do that now.

Yep.
And oops, looks like I ended up overwriting your edit to breasts. I think I fixed it, but might've overlooked something.

There were only a couple but I went ahead and corrected them already.

I concur.
...I used to add #4 to my old edits, but yes, it was a bad habit. What other kind of content is there? None.

Also games like CoC tend to invalidate that notion.

What annoys me about certain wiki pages is when someone has obviously copy pasted an entire, lengthy Wikipedia article about it, instead of taking the essentials of it and creating a good, short paragraph about it.

So option A, I guess.

Peekaboo said:
What annoys me about certain wiki pages is when someone has obviously copy pasted an entire, lengthy Wikipedia article about it, instead of taking the essentials of it and creating a good, short paragraph about it.

So option A, I guess.

cough cough princess luna

parasprite said:
help:wiki

Typo:

Avoid using external links (e.g., wikipedia.org), and never include link them within the text.

(emphasis added)

animperfectpatsy said:
Typo:
(emphasis added)

Fixed. Thanks for catching that. :)

Wiki guidelines?

Yes please

Added to forum #159148

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@Genjar ; @parasprite et al:

Completely agree about the wiki having an emphasis on information that's inherently useful, and primarily applicable to the site (e6), rather than leaving it copypasted verbatim from elsewhere with conflicting tagging info

Can't count the number of times I've seen 'but the wiki states [old/misleading stuff]' used as a reason against more recent, beneficial changes that takes the old info into account

--
I made a forum for discussing/establishing wiki standards a couple months ago, which was the most recent attempt (tmk):

forum #159148

There were lots of interesting and meaningful discussions, especially the guidelines parasprite mentioned in multiple places: forum #184692

Along with very useful suggestions/observations by Genjar and friends

Discussion seems to have died down/thread got lost/other before anything official happened though.

I was working on a howto:tag feral gender wiki article that utilized most, if not all of the guidelines mentioned, but it's only about 75-95% completed atm for various reasons

Since we now have a dedicated subforum for tag/wiki discusion (suuuper big thanks to parasprite for both implementing it asap, and single-handedly moving pretty much all the topics),

How about trying again? (in here, or the above forum)

Whatever agreed guidelines could then be added to a sticky or something, which is a step forward in achieving some semblance of true standardization

Moved to forum #159148.