GuildWiki talk:Peer review

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)