GuildWiki talk:Peer review

Stub Status/Peer Review
Was there a decision on peer review/stub removal made? I suggest, for now, we set some rather low requirements for each stub type for removal and try to remove most of the stubs so we can fill in all the holes in the wiki. For skills, maybe filling in the template, having the icon, and having the game description. Locations would have links to their NPCs, adjacent zones, and quests (make a template for it?). Other stub types (if there are any) would be similar. Once we get a good baseline of information, we can set higher stub removal requirements. This is probably sort of what's going on already, but a stated policy would be good. Maybe it's more of a requirement on what each kind of page needs at minimum out of the easy to fill in information. --Fyren 22:00, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Agreed completely. A guideline for each type of page should appear on the appropriate Skills & Formatting subpage. &mdash;Tanaric 22:35, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)

If no one posts any objections in the next couple days I'm going to move quests and skills out of stub status if they're filled in (skills need picture, in game text/numbers and quests need the overview and walkthrough filled in, though not every profession reward needs be present). --Fyren 21:02, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)

Fyren, this seems reasonable, but as you do this could you also add to their talk pages. This is probably a more sensible process than the default peer review process, since it's easy to tell when a skill is complete, or at least easy to tell when it has enough information for its stub status to be removed. The reason I ask is because it's sometimes hard to tell from recent changes exactly what has been done, and adding the page here would make it a lot easier for the rest of us to voice any objections if we have them. 22:07, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Sure, I guess. I'll do this tomorrow if no one comes up with objections.  Just on the skill pages?  Or on quests, too?  --Fyren 06:23, 2 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Well, I was thinking just on any articles that have their stub status removed. 08:22, 2 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * I went up through the "C" skills. I'll continue later.  For the ones I removed stub from, people need to verify the info and possibly make very minor edits like bolding number ranges.  For the ones still in stub, there's some sort of missing info (question marks, picture, acquisition) or the acquisition section is misformatted.  Look at some of the ones I removed stub from to see what seemed like the prevalent and cleanest format.  --Fyren 04:37, 7 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I'm gonna go through all the changes you made and add them to the peer review page, just for completeness.
 * Done through G now. I don't know if what you did is really necessary (and it's really boring).  --Fyren 04:10, 8 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Done through O. --Fyren 03:21, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I've been thinking about a course of action for when all the skills are done. Should we perhaps aim to get through one skill article every 2 days? I.E, we have a skill article at the top of Peer Review, everyone can have a look at it and say what they think, if after 2 days everythings fine we move it to the archive and go to the next one. What do you guys think? 07:23, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Might be nice to get through the skills within at least two years, though. --Fyren 11:29, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Lol, you wish! :P 20:53, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)

Okay, I've gone through all the stubs. You can find the ones I removed stub from (and some others already in review) at Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Peerreview. What's next would be to fill in the missing info on the ones still stubbed and at least to check the info in the ones in review. An actual plan to remove things from review would be good, but I have no ideas.--Fyren 07:35, 19 Jul 2005 (EST)

Old Stuff
You never actually say what protocols are in use. So somebody requests peer review... and I think it's good. Do I respond and say so? Do I remove stub status myself? If not, who does? How many "yeas" does it take to pass an article, and how many "nays" does it take to stop the process? Is it majority rule or by consensus only? Tanaric 05:07, 16 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Yeah, good points Tanaric. I don't know the answer to these :) I would hope more people would get involved with the process, until we can be satisfied that there are enough "yeas" as you put it. As it is I don't know what we should do, since it seems just you and I have looked at it (or more accurately, only you and I have commented on it!). 06:52, 16 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I don't know how this should work either, really. I guess we have a sort of Council of Elders going on here. I say it's good, the most complete skill we have thus far. That's about all there should be there, with Tan's grammatical changes, it looks like it's ready to be non-stub. Gravewit 07:09, 16 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * That kind of elitism is a good way to discourage random contributions. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's something we need to seriously consider before jumping into.  I'd rather steer more towards the middle -- have a strong "old guard" that maintains high article quality across the board, but also allow individual freedom in editing articles and determining status.  Peer reviewing skill writeups seems a bit fruitless, since, at this point in the game, only maybe 30% of the skills out there are used in any real strategic way (meaning, beyond "it's pretty cool and I've got nothing better").


 * Additionally, somebody today removed the stub warning on a skill after adding a meaningful remark to it. I agree with his choice -- the skill writeup was as complete as your average site's skill page, except it was missing the image.  Should the "Council of Elders" need to approve it before taking off the stub warning?  I don't want to be the person policing stubs to make sure nobody removes the stub tag without Gravewit/Biro/Adam/etc.'s approval.


 * Peer review is not a bad idea in general, but I'm not sure just how well it applies to a Guild Wars fansite. Worse, our application of the idea is rather uneven right now (my pre-Searing Guide and Gravewit's Guild guide, for example, never underwent a formal peer review, and they were the two guides that peer review applied most to).


 * I wouldn't mind a peer review for articles that needed to be cleaned up. I also wouldn't mind a peer review for articles that were to appear on the front page.  But for each and every skill, it seems rather tedious and unnecessary.  Tanaric 21:19, 16 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Yeah, I wondered when I started this if it could be applied to skills. The fact that skill articles are short and for the most part directly copy information from the game, alongside the problems that you've mentioned Tanaric, imply that peer reviews are a waste of time on skill articles (and I would guess for other short articles such as Items etc.) Rather the peer review system does seem best suited to those articles that contain substantial information that has not merely been copied from the game.


 * Regarding the pretty obviously silly phrase 'council of elders', get over it. It was a joke.


 * Anyway, skill articles should probably still be subject to peer review, really. There is only so much info you can put about a skill, however, we need a way to identify between a stub and a proper skill. Basically that leaves us two options:


 * Say, "Here's what makes a skill page." and if they've put all the noted things on it, it's done.
 * Continue with peer review, which is a simple enough process that I think it won't hurt too much. All it will take is perhaps three people to sign off on a page. For a skill perhaps only one or two.


 * Am I missing anything? Gravewit 01:24, 17 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I didn't mean to imply anything about the phrase "Council of Elders." I didn't care what it was called; I was talking about the idea itself.  Sorry if I offended.  I tend to come off as a lot more severe than I intend. :)


 * In any case, I think the "Here's what makes a skill" page is a better idea than peer review for skills. It's simple, it's effective, and it doesn't require a whole lot of work on the parts of prevalent editors.  While peer review would likely be pretty manageable for Guild Wars: Chapter 1, as our site is still rather small and they'd trickle in, the headaches that another 300 skills in Chapter 2 would cause would be extreme, as they'd all get updated at close to the same time (assuming of course that our wiki here continues to grow).


 * If the majority wants peer review for skills, though, I'll be happy to help. My main concern is simply to define a policy, one way or the other. Tanaric 01:32, 17 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Too many colons! Perhaps a section in Style & Formatting/Skills that describes "The Anatomy of a Skill" would be the way to do this? 06:39, 17 Jun 2005 (EST)

Heads up
Over the next day or two I'll be adding most of the skills I've polished up into here, so it might get a little crowded :) LordKestrel 14:32, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Of course, as soon as I posted this, I ran out of time. I still mean to add the cleaned up skills here, it'll happen sooner or later ;) LordKestrel 06:28, 21 Jul 2005 (EST)

Time Limit?
What if we just stick a time limit on reviews? Once a request goes in, it stays up for something like 2 weeks. After that time, if there is no ongoing discussion on the articles talk page that should keep it from being marked as done, then someone can come along and remove the peer-review flag. I think that Peer-review requests are a great way to say, "Hey, I think i wrote a good article and it's done, anyone see anything that needs fixing?" Then if no-one replies/makes changes/cares, stub/review status should be removed and the peer review page cleaned up. A formal voting process seems both cumbersome and unlikely to happen. Does 2 weeks seem too long? Too short? Anyone disagree? --Squeg 07:14, 19 October 2005 (EST)


 * I agree. I would even make it a week. --Karlos 11:10, 19 October 2005 (EST)

Anti Stub Crusade
I think that the majority of stubs in this Wiki make little sense. There are hundreds (litterally!) of perfectly elaborated articles still having stub status. And because of the flood of stubs it is hard to see the articles that really need to be worked on.

Quite frankly, stubs have never really meant anything to me. A stub note on top of an article doesn't motivate me to add anything to it. On the other hand a missing stub note will never stop me from editing an article if I think it still needs work.

May I suggest an extended anti-stub crusade. And I think we can skip the peer review for most articles (unless that's against the law or something)! The admins and the main contributors should be experienced enough to judge if an article is elaborated enough to strip the stub status, without formal peer review.

What I hope to achieve this way is that we prune the list of stubs in order to keep only those articles stubbed that really need work. Then we can all concentrate on those. -- 05:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC)