On removing tips and secret strats from wiki pages

[Farquaar]

I noticed that there have been rather substantial revisions to the Assistant page that removed a variety of strategies for "ghetto security", including tips on using stunprods, pipeguns, etc. The reasons given by Dragomagol are as follows:

Removed most of the gamier tips [-is used mostly by beginners, and should accommodate as such, and should not encourage players to violate server rules, or otherwise act in bad faith]

While personally I'm indifferent as to whether this information remains on the assistant page, to remove it from the wiki outright seems quite shortsighted. All it serves to do is keep strong strategies in the hands of longtime players and away from new players. I'm not a powergamer by any stretch of the imagination, but it's silly to act as if having knowledge of items and strategies used to punch above one's weight is incompatible with Rule 12 as it is written.

The wiki should openly share knowledge of advanced strategies, including combat and weapon-crafting strategies. They should not be scrubbed from the wiki in some misguided attempt at curbing "bad faith" play. A simple warning to stay in one's lane and avoid powergaming should be more than sufficient.

[Pandarsenic]

I would support it going in a separate guide, but having it on the assistant page doesn't feel quite right.

[bastardblaster]

Improv weapons has it's own page. It should not be on the assistant's page, as that sends the message that these weapons are an assistant's "thing"

[dragomagol]

While personally I'm indifferent as to whether this information remains on the assistant page, to remove it from the wiki outright seems quite shortsighted. All it serves to do is keep strong strategies in the hands of longtime players and away from new players. I'm not a powergamer by any stretch of the imagination, but it's silly to act as if having knowledge of items and strategies used to punch above one's weight is incompatible with Rule 12 as it is written.

The knowledge on the page still exists in the edit history, and I've talked to the person who added it on Discord, both about it not being appropriate for the Assistant page, and about moving it to its own page.

I've had huge amounts of work reverted by someone who never brought up their issues with it to me directly (making me think there was some kind of error, and that my changes mysteriously disappeared). I dealt with their feedback as they included in their revert reason, and brought my changes back. As far as I know they're satisfied with the changes because they still remain.

tl;dr, It was just put in the wrong place. Didn't realize we had an improv weapon page, so that's where the pipegun stuff can go, otherwise I think we have a tips and tricks page or two that I can dig around for.

[SpaceSmithers]

Since I pretty much gave the order for these edits, I shall give my thoughts. On the /tg/ discord, I stated the following regarding the assistant page:

heavily simplify and wipe a big chunk of that page, move some headers around to keep more relevant information at the top. The advanced stuff can go under a big header saying "advanced stuff". Users coming from the Starter Guide probably don't know squat about chemistry or pipeguns, let alone how to unbuckle themselves.

The wiki is used mostly by beginners, and my primary concern was how readable and useful the page was for new users. Information about pipeguns and shot glasses full of Condensed Capsaicin were not exactly under a "tips" header. In fact, they were below the "duties" header, which preceded even the list of basic gimmicks. References of "bad faith" play were not entirely correlated with these tips, but rather some of the formatting and the implications of stealing and/or tiding.
Communication was made with the user who added these tips in the wiki channel of the discord, and they were understanding. As Dragomagol implied, the changes were made with the intent to move the information, not suppress it.

[sinfulbliss]

It's probably better to give general tips and ideas rather than specific use-cases for various items, especially on guides that are more broad in scope. For instance,

* After killing someone and you're sure they're an antagonist, a broken bottle can be used to slit their throat so you can kick their head off after removing their headgear.

Or

[[IED]]<nowiki/>s can be very powerful if used correctly, how you use them correctly is throw them immediately after you prime them to be used as a tool to allow you to get away from an antagonist or put a bunch of them in a cardboard [[Box]] alongside a water and potassium [[Grenade]] with the trigger of your choice, toss it and detonate the box in-front of someone. Or you could place them in the center of the halls to prevent someone from crossing that 3 by 3 space, if they try, you can detonate the box and destroy them in one blast.

Are way too specific to those items and item mechanics to be on the Assistant page. You could put a little IED blurb in the grenades page, maybe mention broken bottles can be used to slit throats in the improv weapons page, but gathering it all in one spot makes it look jumbled. Also definitely agree with Drago. These guides are intended for new players wanting to get a gist of the role, and reading about very niche technical combat methods probably isn't the best way for them to approach it.

[Farquaar]

I would like to reiterate that my issue is not with these tips being removed from the assistant page. My issue is that they were not moved to another, more appropriate article at the time this thread was posted. It was only several hours after I posted OP that a wiki user by the name of Togh7 would relocate some (not all) of these deleted tips to the Makeshift Weapons page.

There was no intention communicated by the admin who deleted it that they intended to move the tips to a more appropriate page, merely that the tips themselves encouraged new players to violate the rules and engage in "bad faith" play. If it was not their intention to indicate that sharing combat strategies was inherently against the purpose of the wiki (and given what they've posted in this thread, it seems that it wasn't), then that should have been better communicated in the edit summary.

[SpaceSmithers]

There was no intention communicated by the admin who deleted it that they intended to move the tips to a more appropriate page,

This is false. Dragomagol practiced good communication on the discord, providing recommended pages and even an offer to move the information themself.


I am glad to see concern for the wiki and it's editors, but I don't think there are any faults here, except for maybe the edit summary.

[Farquaar]

I am glad to see concern for the wiki and it's editors, but I don't think there are any faults here, except for maybe the edit summary.

Discord might be good for pinging individual contributors, but yes, this thread would not exist if the edit summary was clearer.

[BlueMemesauce]

Also, adding a ton of paragraphs and sentences is not a minor edit. Stop marking every edit as minor for no reason

[sinfulbliss]

I am glad to see concern for the wiki and it's editors, but I don't think there are any faults here, except for maybe the edit summary.

Discord might be good for pinging individual contributors, but yes, this thread would not exist if the edit summary was clearer.

I don't understand what you're taking issue with. The content was deemed unfit for the Assistant page, the person who made the content was told this, and their stuff was moved over all while in close communication with Drago. Why would all that need to go in an edit summary if the contributor was personally contacted? I think you made this thread not knowing that this was the case and are now trying to hold onto the point anyway for some strange reason.

[BlueMemesauce]

I am glad to see concern for the wiki and it's editors, but I don't think there are any faults here, except for maybe the edit summary.

Discord might be good for pinging individual contributors, but yes, this thread would not exist if the edit summary was clearer.

I don't understand what you're taking issue with. The content was deemed unfit for the Assistant page, the person who made the content was told this, and their stuff was moved over all while in close communication with Drago. Why would all that need to go in an edit summary if the contributor was personally contacted? I think you made this thread not knowing that this was the case and are now trying to hold onto the point anyway for some strange reason.

Because everyone else on the wiki doesnt just magically know that they were going to do that. They could have easily just put in the edit summary that they were moving so other people would know why he removed it. Otherwise it just seens like he's removing content from the wiki for no reason.

[ABearInTheWoods]

Alright, the wiki is our most important asset and so I want to clear some things up for everybody, players and administration alike.

The wiki has to meet and cater to contrdictionary uses at the same time:

• The wiki is the codebase's primary information store for how to play the game.
• The wiki is Space Station 13's either primary or secondary information store for how to play the game. (we are the second result for "ss13 wiki" and "space station 13 wiki", but the first result is goon station which has little crossover with other codebases unlike our wiki.)
• The wiki is our primary information store for /tg/station specific administration intentions communicated to the players.

There can be no administrative action on the wiki that doesn't take all 3 concerns into account.

Pages that aren't moderated are not the administration's to control. They belong first and foremost to our players and second most to the players of our downstream community at large, and game-administrative or policy goals should not be the sole reason for content moderation (but can be the sole reason for content de-elevation like moving things to collapsed boxes or non-primary pages, see my edits to the WGW page for an example).

When ssethtide happened the number of unique ips accessing the home page or the forums went up 4x but the number of unique ips accessing the wiki went up 8x.

There is another reason for this. We need wiki content authors, and the more we try to control the content of the wiki and make it one big authoritative document, the less likely people will want to edit it because it feels like they are editing an official document and that seems like something only officials should do.

The wiki is used mostly by beginners, and my primary concern was how readable and useful the page was for new users.

Everything you said in this post seemed alright, and what i'm about to say doesn't actually apply to your argument in this post, but I did want to make sure to put it on record that while beginners are our primary users, they can never be the only users we cater to. Its the experienced users who still read the wiki to re-remember how to do x or find cool things to play with next round that are also the most likely to bother with editing the wiki when they see something out of date. So we always want to make sure there is content for them.

[Jonathan Gupta]

I still use the wiki as a experienced player, it's just good for all things.

[dragomagol]

I am glad to see concern for the wiki and it's editors, but I don't think there are any faults here, except for maybe the edit summary.

Discord might be good for pinging individual contributors, but yes, this thread would not exist if the edit summary was clearer.

Completely valid; I'll keep this in mind for next time

[Farquaar]

Discord might be good for pinging individual contributors, but yes, this thread would not exist if the edit summary was clearer.

Completely valid; I'll keep this in mind for next time

[ABearInTheWoods]