Discussion:Should we really be deleting all these classes?

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Summerscythe 11:04, 10 April 2009 (MDT)

I've been noticing a lot lately that the template delete has been added to classes just because their under powered and weak, i think that this is wrong. Some players love the classes they make and smacking on a template delete is a blow to anyone's self esteem, causing some to stop wanting to add things to this site due to fear of deletion. i would understand deleting classes that arnt formatted or things like that. but people should be entitled to put their creations on this site, regardless of power. At most we should bring up our concerns on the talk page in a respectful and critical manner, trying to help the user instead of a "IF YOUR CLASS IS WEAK WE MUST DELETE" approach. We deleted the a lot of flaws because they didnt conform to the mechanics of flaws per unearthed arcana, but this is not the case. If you are arguing that classes should maintain a level of balance then maybe we should organize the classes into two sections, such as "Homebrew classes", and "Homebrew classes that conform to wizard standards of balance". Part of the fun in D and D is the ability to create what you would like, it makes the game enjoyable, but having your creations deleted would make anyone discouraged to make anything else.

Surgo 12:23, 10 April 2009 (MDT)

If the class was actually well-written and its only flaw was that it was too weak, I added the NeedsBalance template to the page. I only put the delete template on when the class is overly weak or overly strong AND lacking any flavor whatsoever / is overall generic, or isn't actually complete. I've yet to put the delete template on anything that was actually well-written and complete.

There is a glut of absolutely horrible crap in the DnD Classes / Prestige Classes sections. Users should be able to come on the wiki and find stuff that is both readable and playable. If you feel anything I've tagged is actually a good example of something for a new user of the wiki to come and see as their first article, please let me know.

At most we should bring up our concerns on the talk page in a respectful and critical manner, trying to help the user instead of a "IF YOUR CLASS IS WEAK WE MUST DELETE" approach.

Things I tag for deletion are usually inactive with inactive creators. Bringing up concerns on the talk page would accomplish absolutely nothing, because they would never be seen. If the users actually are active, well, surely they'll notice the delete template? Just because the delete template is added doesn't mean the page has actually been deleted yet, or even will be so.

tl;dr version: I will not delete a class that's actually complete, I will NeedsBalance it.

Aarnott 12:52, 10 April 2009 (MDT)

I agree with Surgo here: there are a load of poorly written and poorly executed ideas on the wiki. It can be annoying even for experienced users to wade through bad articles in order to find something interesting to use.

My friends don't even use the wiki for that very reason. There is a lot of very well written things here, but finding them can often be a pain. Traditionally, there are two different ways that websites can maintain good content quality:

1. An active rating system for pages that works (sadly for the most part, the rating system here often fails because people often do not rate)
2. Deleting/Improving poor content

So going on a massive cleaning spree seems like the right approach. That's why I was for Surgo's adminship: he's got the drive and energy to actually go through with it. From the sounds of his post above, it also seems like he has the right approach. I'm sure some conflicts will come up, but that's ok. Problems can be resolved, and the overall wiki quality will benefit greatly from this initiative :).

Ganteka 13:16, 10 April 2009 (MDT)

Easy solution, offer an option to separate out stubbed classes (and probably even stubbed + delete templated) so that people have the option of simply not looking at classes that are incomplete. Go check out the sandbox for a quick example to see what I mean. Heck, and even make a list of just stubs and just delete-templated too while we're at it. Sound like a good idea?

Oh, wait, as an addition to that, vigilance is needed to ensure that people aren't just deleting the stub template to get off the stub list. Because, its easy to see, on the sample list, that yes, there are stubs.

Might as well list out the base classes marked for deletion while I'm at it.

Summerscythe 17:17, 10 April 2009 (MDT)

I agree very much so ganteka, i didnt want this to seem like a personal attack on anyone. I do beleive that surgo is doing a great job in his spring cleaning, it is necesary. However I am just worried that some active still in the works ideas will be deleted in the process, but you are right aarnott, conflicts will occur. I dont want people to be discouraged from useing this site. I am not an admin however, and i will step down from this discussion.

My other concern however, is that i dont feel one person should be the judge of balance on something. There is an ongoing arguement going on one of my PrCs that shows just how varied these opinions can be. I dont knwo if there is some standard we can use. This may be over my head, i am just expressing my concern.

Rith ^(talk) 19:21, 10 April 2009 (MDT)

I have only one statement to add to this discussion, and that is: Template:NeedsBalance should absolutely never be added to a page that you know for a fact is made by a user who is active, cause, in situations were a page made by an active user has it's balance cast into doubt, via someones opinion, well, thats when talk pages come in handy. Template:NeedsBalance should only be added to a class made by an inactive user or an IP.

Surgo 21:10, 10 April 2009 (MDT)

My other concern however, is that i dont feel one person should be the judge of balance on something.

Well, that's why I have to wait two weeks before deleting anything, instead of just deleting it right away.

Green Dragon 05:53, 11 April 2009 (MDT)

What are the thoughts on this: We add Template:Delete onto any page if it would (even if one just judges at a quick glance) get a 0/5 in one of the four main areas (power, wording, formatting, and flavor). For example [[Mary Sue (DnD Class)|Mary Sue]] has a strong 0/5 in power - therefore it would be okay to add Template:Delete to it (reasoning: it's not playable and not fixable). The same would be said if the wording is deplorable and beyond fixable (for example if someone "gizoogled" a page and replaced the contents with that then wording would be a strong 0/5 - aka enough to warrant deletion). The same would go for formatting (if someone deleted all the wiki-syntax), and the same would go for flavor (no flavor present). Of course their is always a two week time limit for someone to adopt the class, fix it, etc.

Green Dragon 06:22, 11 April 2009 (MDT)

However that is still fairly one-dimensional. How about this: It is okay to add Template:Delete to a page if it has 0/5 in one or more areas, 1/5 in two or more areas, 2/5 in three or more areas, and 3/5 in all four areas. Of course it would help to elaborate on the Rating System a bit as well. Thoughts?

Sam Kay 14:29, 11 April 2009 (MDT)

A minimal quality score would be nice (say 10/20?), any lower than that, and we add Template:Delete.

Lord Dhazriel 14:43, 11 April 2009 (MDT)

Let not forget the Mary Sue is an april fools. I agreed with Sam Kay, but then we should be careful with rating. Since not everyone have the same view on balance. What are we going to do with class not following the preload (I tend to dislike it, and rarely fill it myself). This question personally puzzle me.

Valentine the Rogue 15:23, 11 April 2009 (MDT)

I don't think it's appropriate to delete based on balance. That's what ratings are around for: to discuss playability and encourage improvement. Yes, there shouldbe a minimum standard, but not necessarily for deleting the article. If a class is poorly balanced or too weak, the problem should be brought to the attention of the auther via the NeedsBalance template and the discussion page, like it is supposed to be done. If the author fails to respond, the class can be adopted, but shouldn't be deleted if its only fault is to be weak or poorly balanced. Flavor, formatting, and everything else might be great.

Also, you wouldn't consider deleting my [[Mary Sue (DnD Class)|Mary Sue]], would you? I love that thing, in all its terrible, horrible, no good, very bad glory. It's disgusting and unwarranted, but it is only a joke.

Surgo 21:10, 11 April 2009 (MDT)

I think it's entirely appropriate to delete based on horrible balance. The #1 reason my friends from, well, anywhere else in the D&D world avoid this wiki is because, and I quote, "Besides, no class worth reading was ever produced in D&D Wiki, so I'm not sure why waste the time reading there." And he was talking about the absolute "why the hell would I EVER take this" nature of most of the classes and prestige classes here.

How many classes are in DnD Base Classes? It looks like a couple hundred to me. How many are actually usable in a campaign, where you can sit down with your Bard and Rogue friends (let's not even talk about Clerics here) and kill some monsters? Not many. The first random class somebody sees needs to be actually usable, or the attitude I quoted above will not change.

Summerscythe 22:01, 11 April 2009 (MDT)

I just had a fun idea. what if we sectioned of a section of homebrew for lets say "Elite" Things. And we could agree that things that qualified for the elite section must not be stubs and have a minimum rating of lets say like 16, your thoughts? that way people could still add things to the wiki freely, but there would be a section for actually useful stuff.

Lord Dhazriel 22:18, 11 April 2009 (MDT)

And no rated articles? They are going with the bad ones, few would ever dare to look at them. We better delete bad articles (truly bad ones). Adoption is preferable of course. --Lord Dhazriel 22:18, 11 April 2009 (MDT)

Sulacu 03:25, 10 May 2009 (MDT)

Although I agree with the whole rift between needing balance and straight-up deletion, I still feel quite irked that some boffer came by and put it on my [[Agent (3.5e Class)|Agent]] class. Even though he's probably right in some regard.

ThunderGod Cid 14:37, 13 June 2009 (MDT)

So even if we delete the bad/overpowered pages (my use of the word "we" is somewhat erroneous considering I have never tagged a page for deletion), what are we supposed to do about the users who post them? It's one thing for it to be an IP who rarely shows up, but if the author of a "poor" article is a relatively frequent visitor, what's to stop them from reposting it? Not only that, but I think it's pretty easy to see just from Sulacu's comment that people respond somewhat poorly to their contributions being tagged for deletion (at least Sulacu had the class to admit that it was perhaps deserved).

And then with adoption. I understand that someone can more or less just adopt a class if it appears to have been neglected, but what if the original author comes back? The logical explanation is that they left it alone and it was the adopter's right to take action, but what are the chances the original author's going to see it that way?

This seems particularly prevalent if the class is already classified as "Complete", which of course suggests the author didn't just give up on it but thought it was good (refer to the Mystic Blade for an example).

Dragon Child 14:54, 13 June 2009 (MDT)

Has there actually been a case of a poor article being deleted while the author was an active user, when the article was at all salvageable?

ThunderGod Cid 14:37, 13 June 2009 (MDT)

The Mystic Blade (link above) was the reason I brought it up. It's finished (more or less), but is overpowered and a reasonable candidate for deletion due to lack of balance. I'm giving thought to adopting it given the more favorable stance the Wiki has towards adoption, but the class was only finished about two weeks ago and I'm not sure how to proceed.

Dragon Child 16:13, 13 June 2009 (MDT)

IIRC, the delete template was on it because it "didn't have enough info to be played". Which was totally true. There's no indication on what kind of spellcasting it has.

ThunderGod Cid 17:06, 13 June 2009 (MDT)

Fair enough, but I still feel that the ones more deserving of deletion are perhaps the ones where nothing has been written; some people give it a fair shot but just don't seem to bother to learn the intricacies of Wiki formatting, while others put in absolutely nothing.

Alyksandrei 20:40, 15 July 2011 (MDT)

some people give it a fair shot but just don't seem to bother to learn the intricacies of Wiki formatting

Yeah, I can see that. I've got a little experience with html and some variants of whatever wiki formatting is based on, and I still have a hard time figuring it out. A WYSIWYG editing interface would go a long way toward solving that problem . . . but I don't think anyone really wants to migrate the entire wiki to a new setup just for that. Too much headache.

Mercenary Guardian (talk) 23:23, 21 September 2018 (MDT)

I should remind that even though this is "D&D Wiki" this is, at the least, a Slayers Guide.

Therefor, any classes that come should remain at all times. Playing in the site, the Wiki need I remind, is always separate. It might have started out on the principle of kingdoms and knights, formulation and solidarity, friendships and contemporaries but the Wiki is above all else the First Library.

The HeadQuarters of all Dungeons and Dragons. No. Matter. What.

— Geodude (talk | contribs | email)‎‎ 23:47, 21 September 2018 (MDT)

Hi, I'm afraid I don't understand what you're trying to communicate. Could you please elaborate/clarify?