Forum:A harsher stance on glitches

Forums: Yew Grove > A harsher stance on glitches

This page or section is an archive.
Please do not edit the contents of this page.
This thread was archived on 9 May 2013 by Suppa chuppa.

Also check out: Forum:Glitch articles & images, Forum:Glitch images/sections, and Forum:Glitch policy

Hi, get ready for quite a read while I spill my heart out over something I despise and convince you to hate it with me. Don't worry, I can be an entertaining fella so you won't be bored reading it. Actually, I have some pictures in here too! Not just example glitches, but visuals as well. I 99% guarantee that you will be laughing either with or at me.

No matter what, I don't want to hear any complaints about my rhetoric. It is what is, get over it.

Text! Glorious text!

Those past forums

2 sentence synopsis of each forum linked at the top for those who don't want to read them because they see that my forum is 10,813 bytes on creation

Glitch articles & images

Christine hates "glitches" that are infinitesimally minor; C Teng disagrees

Glitch images/sections

Ajrabbitz thinks all glitches are encyclopedic and worthy of documentation; this seems to be the first time that I can see notability being referenced

Glitch policy

Aburnett writes a mock-up for an official policy; it goes off without much real probing of what he wrote and it's largely unchanged as I write this, nearly a year later

The obvious

First let me start by restating the points that everyone already agrees upon:

RuneScape is a game; games have glitches
- ∵ RuneScape is a game
- ∵ Games have glitches
- ∴ RuneScape has glitches
Simple enough, right? Basic logic.
Some glitches are notable, others are not

Okay, we can all agree on those two, right? I hope so. If you don't agree, leave now; this thread does not apply to you.

The first statement is an objective fact that I have deduced not only with modus ponens, but with a large amount of observational evidence that has been uploaded to this wiki at some point. Those images (and our plans for them) are just one of the subjects of this thread.

So now I'll jump straight to the point: practically all of these glitches' documentations are useless and should not be on this site. While the obvious solution may be to remove the text and tag the images for deletion, not only do I feel like a malevolent and opinionated asshole in doing so, but some of them are "protected" from my wrath by the lame criteria outlined in our glitch policy. I'd like to amend the policy to fix this, but more on that later after I've finished insulting the glitches (but not those that added them).

Images

First off, nearly all of these images are low quality (not a huge surprise) and a larger amount of them can be described accurately with words. You have probably seen my tagging spam. If you haven't, here's an example of the resulting deletions (to help keep his/her anonymity, I have censored the deleting admin's name in the log once): http://imgur.com/gv2EQwh.png

That's... um... a lot. I'll be completely honest: I am never completely confident when I tag these images. I know I'm right in saying they're junk, but I'm not sure others will agree especially if they actually read the glitch policy. You don't need to mince words or anything to take out a quote from the policy that says that these do, in fact, deserve an image.

This is really unfortunate because these images truly detract from our wiki. Think about it analogously. Our explicit acknowledgement and documentation of these minute bugs as if they were of any significance makes us no better than a tabloid. Tabloids are pathetic. Do you want a pathetic wiki? Along with that, their low quality, horrible placement, and atrocious captures make them stick out like a sore thumb, distracting our readers from an otherwise nice article.

[[File:Candy cane spin glitch.gif|frame|right|Neat!]] We should really redefine what criteria we actually need a glitch to meet for it to have an image. I'll delve into it more later, but I'd like to reference a popularity quantum right now. Well, not an actual quantum, but some sort of measure of popularity. You see this glitch to the right? That's actually kinda neat. Regardless of what I think, a myriad of other players believed it was neat as well. That's an image worth keeping. Now look at the other images used on candy cane. Okay... seriously? ಠ.ಠ... We've seen plenty of stretching glitches and delayed graphics. It's nothing new, it's nothing surprising, it's nothing unique, it's nothing interesting. It doesn't stop there, countless pages have them and I don't even feel I need to list them.

One of the big things you should note, is that a lot of these glitch files are just ancient. They come from a more lenient RuneScape Wiki so it's not like they were reviewed for suitability. They were uploaded, added and that was that. What a mess!

Even more: They're old (remember? I just said that). No one is updating them and if they're patched, no one can. It kinda sounds like we need em then, right? No. Unless they were a groundbreaking, unprecedented, indescribable, game-changing glitch, it doesn't need a picture. Period.

http://imgur.com/AL0f6WS.png

Glitch explanations

Here's the fun part. And where I have to make a fine line on what is actually a glitch. O boy. :)

There's three things that I've seen documented, all of them have gotten annoying:

Glitches - most of them are minor and insignificant; I usually remove them.
Oversights - Someone forgot a period at the end of a sentence or made a common typo or misspelling when they were writing dialogue for a quest. I hope that employee got fired.
Ignorance - I'm not sure if this is intentional... If it is then it doesn't need to be said... But if it wasn't then it's mildly neat but not really... But I'm not sure...

These are seldom notable. Any of these. When they are, we'll document them and when they're not, we won't.

I see so many silly additions about minor stretching or checkered graphics, and not to be mean but... Who the hell cares? I don't want to hear if you care or not, because opinion is irrelevant here. No, I'm not a hypocrite. If I thought my opinion mattered, I would tag just about every glitch image right now instead of making this thread. I truly dislike being the only one tagging these images. I can't recall ever having one of my speedy deletions rejected, but I don't act like I run the streets.

https://i.imgur.com/s5WjNXp.gif
I say this to myself when reading the wiki sometimes. True story.

Defining

You may or may not be confüsed by now. I've been saying all this stuff about notability without denoting the word. Unfortunately and fortunately, I can't just give it my definition. This is where you guys come in. We can't have what we had last time. Everyone may have "just agreed" on Aburnett's draft, but I want to get nitpicky with mine. If we don't, we may or may not have challengers in the future. Also, first drafts are never good.

Since I am the proposer of this thread, we'll use my definitions (which I will keep brief) as a template with which to work. I'll remain very open to suggestions and feedback so long as they have something that backs them up.

My definition

My definition is based around two initial pillars as well as a fallback pillar in the event that the other two fail and then finally a pillar to know what we have is the real deal:

Impact

How much damage did this do to the game? Universal no clipping, item duplication, minigame rune smuggling, μ, guaranteed sigils, etc. You get the idea. Those are huge glitches and damaged the game. Whether it was making it impossible to play or giving players tens of billions of undeserved coins, they damaged the game and a lot. Along with potential damage, the damage actually done as well as how many participated should factor into this. One person making a billion coins isn't of any significance. If he spreads his methods, that's another story.

Notoriety

These glitches don't do a lot of damage to game (actually they rarely damage it at all), but they're cute and so they spread. That's not to say that every smuggled pose is worthy of documentation and perhaps we could even just give it an umbrella term page or section of one.

Persistence

Some glitches are minor and we shouldn't care. Some of these minor glitches keep popping up though. Our current draft of the policy defines "persistence" as existing for more than 3 game updates. Well... that's not persistence. If they're minor, then they're at the bottom of Jagex's priority list. I personally think that a glitch should gestate for at least half as long as a human does before we consider it persistent.

Credibility

Kinda obvious, right? You need an established source and not just hearsay if you want to make claims that a major glitch happened. Simply stating that you and some friends duped an item and then linking to a forum on which you've posted isn't enough.

What this means

This means we'll be severely limiting our documentation of glitches. I can confidently say that there have been literally tens of thousands of glitches of all sizes over the course of the game's history. We're solid on the definition of a glitch, but not truly solid on what makes a glitch notable. We've discussed it before, but none of those discussion had nearly enough analysis. We need a better and truer consensus.

As for the mainspace, we'll see a large and sudden deletion of many files dependent on what we've decided. Removal of text from articles can be gradual and less of an action to be done in haste. Most everything either is or isn't, the few oddball borderliners can be dealt with case by case.

Wrap up

Congratulations, you either read all of my forum up to here or you have the basic dexterity to click the link in the header thinking that I'll have a tl;dr. You're wrong; go back and read all of it. Twice.

There's no concrete proposal here. I'd be fine with my definition being the new basis for the whole wiki. I'd feel guilty, but I'd be fine with the outcome. I'm asking for some legitimate discussion mostly. Frankly, if you don't at least have a mini pseudo-textwall, you're not adding enough.

Last but not least: I hope I've both entertained and persuaded you. If you were offended at all by my rhetoric, please read this. There are millions of way to effectively argue. I stick by this decision of informality.

Discussion

OP is a sexy mudda MolMan 02:14, March 31, 2013 (UTC)

Comment - overall, 8/10. I laughed several times in the first part, but my eyes started to glaze over and my mind began to wander when you started to use strange new words like "universal clipping" (does that involve Clippy the paperclip harassing people ingame?). I also am dismayed that this proposal might lessen my ability to use this wiki as my personal soapbox and report things as glitches that I dislike or am offended by (like SoF not being removed from game after I report it as RWT). Finally, I will just agree with you, confident that my post addresses the substance of your argument in its entirety. --Shockstorm (talk) 02:44, March 31, 2013 (UTC)

lol MolMan 12:57, March 31, 2013 (UTC)

Use common sense - Please. Everything is fine as it is. If you see a minor glitch image, remove it. If it's notable (id est Falador Massacre), keep it. Haidro ^(talk) 02:59, March 31, 2013 (UTC)

Everything is not fine. The entire policy is too wish-washy and lenient. On top of that, we currently operate in a manner contrary to most of the policy. Our definition of glitches in the policy right now sucks. With the way the game is changing right now, so many more "notable" glitches are coming into the game. Whether we remove them or not is irrelevant because when we do remove them, we're technically wrong. I'm fairly certain your definition of notable glitch is close to mine, Terry. If it is, then support the basic idea of what I want changed; just don't tell me that Everything is fine as it is. You do know that minor glitches are, by the current policy, meant to be documented (and that fills up our trivia sections with pointless dribble)? While the policy does disallow a large number of glitches to be removed immediately, many of the ones we remove are protected by it. We're being opinionated and actually violating our own policy. If anyone bothered re-reading it carefully (you should too, Terry), they'd realise all of this. MolMan 12:57, March 31, 2013 (UTC)

~~Comment~~ - Just based on the sheer length of this, I'm having trouble trying to decide if this is an early April Fool's joke or not. In any case, I do like your definition of glitch, and I'd support it. Just tell me if this is early April Fool's or not >.> http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg244/blaze_fire12/RuneScape%20Wiki%20Images/Blaze_fire.png http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg244/blaze_fire12/RuneScape%20Wiki%20Images/12.png 16:31, March 31, 2013 (UTC)

No, I wouldn't be sure about whether or not an April Fools forum would be well received. If I did, I would probably have done one suggesting that we start a RuneScape Wikia jazz band called RuneScat. I'd be the lead rhythm guitarist and Cook Me Plox would be the pianist/singer. MolMan 17:30, March 31, 2013 (UTC)

Support - Well in that case then this is officially a support. http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg244/blaze_fire12/RuneScape%20Wiki%20Images/Blaze_fire.png http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg244/blaze_fire12/RuneScape%20Wiki%20Images/12.png 18:56, March 31, 2013 (UTC)

You obviously didn't read... Don't just support. It needs any sort of nitpicky feedback. MolMan 18:57, March 31, 2013 (UTC)

Comment - Finally, someone else who is willing to take on the glitches. Good luck. In return, please enjoy this textwall.

First, Let me speak a little bit to the glitch policy as it currently stands. My primary reason for creating the first proposal was to clean up Glitch, which was constantly being turned into list of every glitch in existence. My initial plan was to differentiate between which glitches deserved an article and which did not. It quickly became obvious that this was not enough, and as I expanded the policy to include every possible scenario, it got too wordy and objective. This, coupled with limited (nonexistent) contributions from the community has lead to a weak, unused policy. I am still disappointing with the limited feedback that the last topic on this received, so hopefully this time around more people will realize just how important this topic is and give it some attention. If we can write books about something as unimportant as the implementation of a welcome bot, others should have something to say here.

Now let's talk pillars. As you can probably tell from the way I wrote the existing policy, I believe that notability/notoriety is the single most important aspect of categorizing a glitch. That being said, I feel that the pillars you have defined are redundant when you look at why a glitch becomes notable. A glitch with a high impact becomes notable for just that reason. Same with a long-lasting glitch. Is it not easier to look at glitches simply from their notoriety? Based on the failure of our current policy, I feel that simplicity is key, and using as few criteria as possible will help. As for the way you defined notoriety, this sort of issue was a major sticking point for me. Sure the spinning cane glitch (for example) isn't really notable per our definition, but it's fun to look at and it adds to the article. How do we decide which glitches fall into this category and which don't? Saying we should just use common sense isn't a good argument here, because we are trying to create a concrete policy. We need something with backbone that we can reference in deletions and explain to users when their images get tossed. This is where I see a sort of "all or nothing" issue coming in. Sure, a few images might be nice to keep, but I would rather just be rid of them all if it means we have a stronger, more useful policy.

In short, I agree with the basic ideas presented. A glitch is notable when it has significant impact on the game, or when it is long lasting. Glitches that fall into this category definitely deserve mention on our wiki. What primarily needs more discussion is that in-between case. --Aburnett ^(Talk) 00:09, April 1, 2013 (UTC)

Thanks; I guess all I'm going to do as a response is clear up a thing or two: First we shouldn't call them pillars, I did that to sound like a pedant. Now, on a more serious note: it is truly hard to accurately define notability for a universal policy (the reason that part of the proposal is not meant as straightforward). I guess in the way you wanted to clean up Glitch, I wanted to clean up Category:Glitch images. Actually, that was all the original draft was about, but I gradually revised it to eventually being the full-fledged rewrite of RS:GLITCH that it is. From what I'm reading in your response, you know how you and I would both like the glitch policy to be written, but are unable to actually provide a strong draft of that ideal. I'm not saying that as an insult to you; it's a reminder and an example for anyone reading that this is going to be a challenge and we're probably not going to get it right this time; however, we should be converging (and hopefully quickly) to that asymptotically perfect set of guidelines. Truth be told, I realized I had a poor understanding of what the policy truly states as I reread it over and over to quote material for this forum. The criteria that I drafted were more meant to find as unbiased a meaning as possible for the policy. FYI: I purposely left them in a very raw state; if I didn't notice any redundancy, it's because I only looked back at them for grammatical errors. Now, do you have any particular change to my definition of notoriety, or is yours just a completely different idea? MolMan 15:30, April 1, 2013 (UTC)

Don't worry about offending me, nothing is wrong with tearing apart other people's opinions in order to better the discussion as a whole. Let me try to explain myself a tad better. I agree that glitches that have a large impact per your definition are notable. I also agree that persistent glitches are notable, although I'm not sure how we should define "long-lasting" or "repeatedly". Glitches must also be credible, but as you said this essentially goes without saying. My major disagreement lies with your definition of "Notoriety", copied below.

“

These glitches don't do a lot of damage to game (actually they rarely damage it at all), but they're cute and so they spread. That's not to say that every smuggled pose is worthy of documentation and perhaps we could even just give it an umbrella term page or section of one.

”

What makes a glitch cute? If not all of them are worthy of documentation, which ones are? If they spread, does that not mean the glitch is long lasting or has a large impact? I see this statement as far too vague for any potential use in a policy. As I said above, in cases like this I support the total exclusion of glitches/images that fall into this category. Unless a glitch is notable (ie large impact or widespread), it has no place on our wiki. It is simply too difficult to assign a concrete definition to a "semi-notable" glitch, if we can call it that.

Reading your response, I didn't realize you were expecting me to provide an actual draft. That in mind, the following is my very simplistic take on your initial proposal.

“

Only notable glitches should be included on the RS Wiki. Notable glitches are defined as glitches that have had a large impact on the game, or glitches that have persisted for a significant period of time.

”

--Aburnett ^(Talk) 19:11, April 1, 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm... That really is quite a conundrum. Ironically, I've made a statement in my preaching that sort of defends what I'm against. Well, it does literally; I'm sure we both know what I actually meant and the trouble lies with how to word it in a policy. I guess that statement was more to protect those glitches which are extremely memetic (and I can't emphasize "extremely" enough without being disruptive). As for how we define notable: we're left with the ambiguity of the phrases "large impact" and "significant period". The latter can be define easily, it's a measurable quantum, but what about impact? How exactly should we define that? And is there anyway to protect documentation of the most famous of otherwise non-notable glitches? And without screwing ourselves with wish-washy wording? MolMan 23:47, April 10, 2013 (UTC)

Comment - First of all, just to prevent issues with RS:GTS and protect images like this, we should define a glitch image. Iff the subject of the image is a glitch, can it be classified as one.

Moving onto the pillars, I second Aburnett in keeping it simple; impact should be the only criteria for keeping/deleting a glitch image. For all their mistakes, Jagex has a product which is free of persistent AND impactful glitches. Hence the current persistent glitches, like [[:File:Black minimap background glitch.png|this one]], are largely minor and hence non-notable.

I like the 'popularity' factor for some images too, but it's going to be hell trying to enforce it.. Al ch ez 12:53, April 2, 2013 (UTC)

Hey look, that's my name up there. Whee. User:C Teng/sig 16:23, April 4, 2013 (UTC)

#stardom Ronan^Talk 16:31, April 4, 2013 (UTC)

Comment and Support First of all, how is notoriety measured? Do we define it by the amount of forum posts? What is no one bothered but many people know about it? I think this would be hard to measure, and if that's the only thing going for a glitch it does not add to the content and should be removed. What about something like this: Let's assume a glitch in Fletching made steel darts give 100x the normal exp due to a decimal error. Many people abuse the glitch, the money for the items required would skyrocket, people would get massive amounts of exp, but after a couple hours Jagex reverts everyone back before the glitch. Sure it had everything needed to be mentioned, but in the end all it would have going for it would be notoriety. Think about it: Jagex would revert the market, no one would have kept the exp; at best all you have is a ton of people mentioning it on the forums, possibly some bans. It's not like the phat duplication glitch where pink phats crashed and to this day haven't recovered. That brings me to my next point: For a glitch to even be mentioned, but not considered persistent, it and it's effects should at least last for 1-or-so-weeks time before being patched. And on the persistent glitches, I think that 3 months is enough, rather than 4.5 (Half gestation. Also, what about early and late births? Not everyone gives birth at exactly 9 months, you know. I think we should watch every episode of "I didn't know I was pregnant (and my baby fell in a toilet because of it)" and average out the time from pregnancy to birth). I think oversights and ignorance shoud be ignored except when they confuse people. For example: Let's say that in a new grandmaster quest it says that Zamorak returned, they show Zaros, and people think it's Zamorak. At the end of the quest a character mentions "Congratulations on your defeating of Zaros. Now we've got confused players, and conflicting wiki pages. tl;dr; criteria for the glitches should be substantially more strict and specific, and we need very specific measurements of the requirements, but we still have to wiggle, even if a tiny bit.User:King kolton9/Signature 01:01, April 7, 2013 (UTC)

"how is notoriety measured?" - If a glitch happens in the forest and nobody is around to experience it, then did it happen? http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg244/blaze_fire12/RuneScape%20Wiki%20Images/Blaze_fire.png http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg244/blaze_fire12/RuneScape%20Wiki%20Images/12.png 13:01, April 10, 2013 (UTC)

Of course. You said 'if it happens', meaning a requirement for me answering your question is this hypothetical glitch happening, albeit without witnesses. I.e. It happened, because I acknowledged it. And I responded because you proposed it. Thus, yes, the glitch happened, because you wanted it to.

Fsw e1

17:37, April 11, 2013 (UTC)

Blaze, the point of that was just because it happened meant, well, for lack of a better word, crap. If it happens, and the only people who acknowledged it were Jagex it is NOT notable. Think about it, no one was around, therefore it was either not big or nobody cared about the 'forest'. Sure it happened, but we should think about it this way: What should be documented, someone dropping a pin or a planet exploding? I'd say in comparison the former is just a speck in the grand scheme of things, while that planet might have been important. User:King kolton9/Signature 20:19, April 11, 2013 (UTC)

Comment- I can understand your reasons, but i don't agree with you. Some glitches and picutres may be outdated, but that doesn't mean we should get rid of them. Just because something was small doesn't make it irrelevant, and as we are the Wiki, the source of ALL things RuneScape related, I believe that we should continue to document these glitches. Megadog1414 (talk) 22:55, April 10, 2013 (UTC)

We're not all things RuneScape; we're all things notable. Something being small totally makes it irrelevant. Would a biography of you document every zit you've ever had on your body? Because that's all that glitches are... zits on the game. They're not meant to be there and most of what they do is just a visual change that you have to look for to actually notice. They also aren't there for long. My stance on glitches has nothing to do with the information being outdated, it has to do with it being completely and utterly useless to our wiki. Jagex have their own bug team and that's the only group of people that truly needs to know about all these glitches. MolMan 23:20, April 10, 2013 (UTC)

Question- Does this Policy apply to just Image glitches or to All glitches in General? If it applys to all glitches in General then I support. Also on on the idea of notbility and how long the Glitch has been around for I say between 4-6 months would be a long enough time for it to be a noticeably glitch. And One final thing on the notbility having it affect at least 1/4 of the Runescape population would be enough I think. Privatetuker (talk) 06:17, April 15, 2013 (UTC)

Yes, all glitches. MolMan 19:22, April 15, 2013 (UTC)

As Stated Earlier then, I Support! :D Privatetuker (talk) 05:12, April 17, 2013 (UTC)

Lol'd - I'll give you 9/10 for the jokes. Congratulations contestant, you win a box of crayons. But anyway, this is srs business^TM so I'll move on. In my mind, graphical glitches are all minor. So it is my opinion that graphics glitches should not be covered at all on the wiki, with exceptions for something that is obviously a massive bug, like your whole screen turning black for 10-15 minutes or something. So yea, deleting any and all of the pictures/gifs/bukkits of people with delayed animations, stretching, being upside down for a second or two will go down OK with me. Also something on the subject of persistence...if it's a persistent glitch, then it's almost always going to be a minor bug. I mean, if it was actually a problem, Jagex would fix it as soon as they find it - can't sell a broken product to the customer. this may be assuming a lot of Jagex but hey ho Yeah, so if it's around after an update or bugsquishing patch, it's fairly obvious it's minor. Unless, like I said before, it's an obvious exception. But then, RS:UCS is designed specifically to deal with the obvious, so it's probably not necessary to say it under every single bit of a redux of RS:GLITCH. As for gameplay glitches in general, firstly if it's only occasional (as in "I hit 100 times my normal max on a fire giant this one time, but it never happened again") then it's minor and can be removed. If it's got little to no actual impact (so a trap not going off, a monster not spawning in the right place, crashing when doing an obscure combination of skills, items and emotes) it's minor. It's normally quite obvious what a major glitch is, and it can be determined by the magnitude of the fault and the speed at which Jagex rushes to fix it. When it comes to impact I'm not really sure, since it's hard to actually determine how many players are abusing a particular bug, and how many people it affects. I'll leave someone smarter to think of that bit. User:Real Not Pure/Signature 16:37, April 18, 2013 (UTC)

Nudge - If there is no further input within the next ten days or so this should be closed. Ronan^Talk 15:16, May 6, 2013 (UTC)

Closed - There seems to be consensus that we do want to take a harsher stance on glitch images and mentions in trivia sections. Per RS:TRIVIA, only notable glitches should be added within the text, and per RS:IMG glitch images can only be uploaded if they can't be fully explained within text and are notable. Neither of these policies defines what notable means. The trivia policy used to define notability, but this has since been removed due to the closure of Forum:Trivia sections (a closure with which I do not agree). There was no concrete proposal to "support" (thought many users did just that), but the consensus seems to be to use common sense in determining whether or not glitch information should be kept. Additionally, a rough guideline of whether the glitch had a lasting impact on the game or not may be used. Suppa chuppa ^Talk 23:44, May 9, 2013 (UTC)