Talk:Meg/Archive 2

Format of questions
We seem to have started the page by rephrasing every question in the form "She wants to...". People have also been paraphrasing the questions. I think we'd be better served by keeping the questions as close as possible to the original wording. I'd prefer adopting Meg's first person wording but it's possible to change every thing to "She wants to..." while retaining as close as possible the exact wording of her questions.

This is relevant because the more the question wording is edited, the harder it is to find the question when going through the list, either because you are a reader looking for the right answer or a contributor looking to add to the list. I just removed one clear duplicate and reshuffled so that another pair which I'm 95% certain is a dupe are adjacent.

Haystacks (talk) 13:42, December 21, 2012 (UTC)

Using exact wording seems like the best natural choice, especially when this page will be used only by people looking for the right answer; so they will be able to press Ctrl + F and look for Meg's exact wording.

I suggest we all start replacing old formatting with exact quote of Meg, using the quotations marks, so we know what's a quote and what's not.

Tallibear (talk) 14:53, December 21, 2012 (UTC)

Evidence Change
So i made a little change to a dialogue in the table.. here is evidence of the change that it is correct. http://i49.tinypic.com/nmly0w.jpg

Going4Quests (talk) 01:14, January 2, 2013 (UTC)

Inefficient
Dose anyone else find it kind of strage that we as experienced adventures would recommend some of these activities at all? She asked me about killing goblins who would bothers with killing goblins surely you would start on Cows/Chickens/Giant Rats which are all better GP & drop raw food that can be cooked to prolong your trip. I'd be telling her not to bother with goblins unless it's needed for a quest. We should be recommending effecient methods for someone of a low level.

Also they don't seem to be based from a new advertures point of view. As someone who was killed by the first goblin I attacked I wouldn't be saying there fairly weak from a new players point of view the goblins are probually the first NPC to kill most people.

Please Check for Redundancies When Adding/Editing
Today I Combined two separate pairs of redundant entries. In each case, the two rows of the table had identical questions and different suggestions for answers.

Please search the table before editing! This is true whether you're adding a new question and suggested answer or simply just correcting the question text for something that was there previously. In this case I suspect that latter was the problem -- there were two earlier table rows with incorrectly paraphrased questions, and two later table rows with correctly transcribed questions. It's good that someone added the correct text but it doesn't really make the wiki page better if that leaves you with two rows with the identical question...

Haystacks (talk) 02:42, January 3, 2013 (UTC)

Mark answers "confirmed" or "perfect adventure"
Suggestion: When we confirm an answer (typically when the adventure is perfect and a huge XP lamp is awarded), it makes sense to mark the answer as confirmed. So far one poster has been doing this my adding the label "(perfect adventure)" after the selected response. I've added "(reportedly confirmed)" after other answers that I don't have first-hand knowledge of. (One was found in a page in the official rs forums, the other was from comments made when the poster added the answer to this page.)

Also, I think it's still up in the air whether there can be more than one possible correct answer to a given question. I think this is likely, given responses I've seen to the pet squirrel question. So I suggest not removing answers unless you have clear evidence they are not correct. This would typically be when you gave that answer and got a Small lamp as a result, or possibly if that answer appeared with another known correct answer.

Haystacks (talk) 21:12, January 4, 2013 (UTC)


 * You are assuming that a given answer will always be correct, which I guess is probably the case. However it's also possible that you need to pick the "best" answer out of a bunch that have been randomly selected. In that case, an answer that works one week may fail the next week if it appears with a better answer. Bronzedagger (talk) 04:44, January 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * What's more, we are assuming that a small lamp implies all answers were definitely suboptimal, and a huge lamp implies all were definitely optimal. There could be some randomness too; that is, 3 correct answers might increase the chance of a huge lamp but not guarantee it, and conversely there might be a chance of getting a huge lamp without all answers being correct. Until we sort this out, it might be better to focus on recording the 3 answers and reward for as many players as possible. Stewbasic (talk) 05:57, January 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree about both of the above possible explanations; a third is that people are just misrecording their answers. I've seen at least one case where one person reported a huge lamp with a set of three answers, and someone else reported a small lamp with one of the same answers. (Though I never liked that particular answer...). Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to gather info? Something a bit more organized than free form typing on this discussion page seems good but I'm not sure how that would be managed...Haystacks (talk) 06:06, January 9, 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I think this may be an exercise in futility. She just got back from another adventure I sent her on, except I gave her all answers that were listed as 'perfect adventure', and she did not have a perfect adventure. Either it's just random, or maybe it only bothers to look at one actual answer, or something like each answer gives a likelihood of a good adventure, but not a guarantee even for the best.

Question table suggestion
I'm wondering whether it would be helpful to have the table with extra colums showing her answers; in apparant order of best to worst, then inserting her answers depending on the response: Once a decent number were collected in this form it would be easier to start comparing lamps to answer type, and it would make it easy to look along the row and pick the best available answer from the options she actually gives on each occasion.

Cloud Shaper (talk) 18:12, January 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * Except that her immediate response to your answer seems to be meaningless - if you end the dialogue and talk to her again, she will give a different response to the same answer. We need to record the three answers and the corresponding reward 1 week later. But I agree with finding a more efficient way to do this. It'd be good to first compile a complete list of questions and possible answers (correct or not). Stewbasic (talk) 21:38, January 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * I think stewbasic is right (see the posts under "Stepping away to re-answer"). On more efficient recording of Q & A: standardized shortened versions of questions and answers would be helpful. So "problems with chickens", "neverempty cup of water", etc. I have such a list that I use to keep track of data I grab from here & the forums. The problem is, where to write it down? The most efficient place would be the main table itself but that would be confusing to readers who just want the answers...Haystacks (talk) 18:00, January 11, 2013 (UTC)


 * I'd suggest making a new page for the worksheet. Give each question a section (so that it can be edited separately) with a table for the data. Each person's observations can be recorded with a new row in the table, where the columns are 1) player 2-n) one column for each possible question, maked X if selected and O if offered but not selected, n+1) reward the following week. Bronzedagger (talk) 01:33, January 12, 2013 (UTC)

Exclusion
I got scurvy seadogs and imps as possible incorrect answers. I gave the answer "magic box" for imps, to which Meg said "are you sure"? I gave the answer "take the most valuable things" for scurvy seadogs. I failed to get the full reward, so one of those is invalid.