Forum:Goals for the new year

Forums: Yew Grove > Goals for the new year

This page or section is an archive. Please do not edit the contents of this page. This thread was archived on 6 February 2014 by Liquidhelium.

Hi everyone!

2013 is almost over, and it’s been a pretty low-key year for the wiki. We started off still struggling to adapt to the huge changes the Evolution of Combat brought to a ton of articles, then we completely ignored Old School RuneScape and put all that information on a sister wiki. We abolished User of the Month, got ourselves a fancy new favicon, and finished up the long-running money making guide project, resulting in the most popular article on the wiki. Rune Wiki owner Ryan PM went to Jagex. We made nearly 3000 new pages from Aagi to Zombie cow, and we reacted fairly well to Divination, the biggest update of the year. Wikia is still boning us with increasingly horrendous ads and search, but Darwin looks promising. Most importantly though, we adopted the elefint as the wiki’s official spirit animal.

RuneScape overall lost some of its popularity and player base, and as a result, our traffic is down about 15% on the year. We’re still quite popular though, averaging about 100,000 daily visitors. I suspect that RuneScape’s traffic has gone down more than that.

Our editing base continued to shrink throughout the year, and we weren’t getting too many new ones either – a quick look at Special:WikiStats will confirm that. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. The weirdest catch-22 of wiki communities is that the more complete the content is, the fewer editors we’ll have. Our articles are by no means complete, but most of the outstanding problems are complex and can’t be tackled by a new editor. It’s safe to say that most of us started editing because we saw a low-hanging fruit that we could easily fix without any expertise, and that got us hooked. There are some amazing editors that joined in 2013, but the numbers aren’t what they used to be. It’s not a DOOM! moment yet – in fact we’re doing about as well as we ever have for covering new updates and dealing with vandalism – but it would be nice to have a larger community to draw from.

What did you guys think we did well this year, and what are some problem areas?

2014

‘course, when one year ends, another begins. We don’t have a clue what will happen in the next 12 months, but I would like to use this thread to try to map out some objectives for the next year. It always feels like we’re plodding along without any real direction, without any major projects being undertaken. I want that to change.

Chiefly, I want us to make a concerted effort to attract new users. There are a few different things we can try:

• Use the sidebar as a sitenotice-type communication device, in the same way we used that area as a copyright notice in the past. Communication is huge, and we haven’t had a non-intrusive, successful way to talk to the masses for three years. Let’s fix that ASAP. We can use that area to advertise events, show people the benefits of having an account, list editing tasks that new people can do. We all know that the sidebar is only there to fit a box ad, so why don’t we put something more useful up?
• Related to editing tasks, let’s get the new people involved! I want us to keep a list of things that new people can help with – Mol made a small list here, but we could expand it and simplify it. My hunch is that there are plenty of people that would be willing to help out with editing stuff, but either they don’t know how or they can’t find anything that needs doing. We get literally a million people visiting our site each month. Surely some of them would be willing to participate if they knew what to do.
• Finally, get new people on chat and interact with them! Even if they’re not editing already, just getting them on chat once goes a long way towards establishing someone as part of the community. If they’re editing…great! Thank them, give them advice if they need it, and point them towards other tasks they might be interested in. Even if their edits aren’t perfect, if they’re in good faith it means they have some potential. Don’t bite their head off just because they don’t know the policies yet.

I might be completely full of shit, I don’t really know. But I think that a site as popular as ours can foster a larger community if we put in the time. And even if we only get a few new editors, that’s still worth it.

Now that I’ve bored you to tears with my annual “let’s get new editors” shtick (although I think this one will actually work if we try it), let’s look at some more concrete goals:

• Calculators! With the infrastructure we have, we should have the best RuneScape calculators on the internet. They’re not even difficult to make, and people seem to love them (even if for the most part I personally find them useless). Skill calculators should be the main priority to start with, and then we can start looking at what people have requested on RS:CI, as well as the efficiency calculators I’ve been working on a bit. We’ll have to make a decision on which calculator script we want to use in the long term, since using both Q’s and Stewbasic’s scripts can cause confusion.
• Skill training guides. I want to completely overhaul everything about them, the same way we did with the money making guides. I don’t have too many specifics yet.
• We should overhaul the Treasure Trails guides too. IsobelJ has been doing a great job with standardizing the scan clues, which I think would be useful to expand to the other types as well. More significantly, we should look at splitting the pages in such a way that each clue is searchable through a form and it will display the relevant information for that clue.
• Standardize multiple monster pages. Right now we have a mix of split pages, switch infoboxes, and stats combined on single infoboxes. So far as I know, there’s not really a policy for which ones should be used when. I am not a fan of the switch infobox, but I think when we have level = 18/20/22/24, that’s the time to use it. Basically I want each unique monster entity to have at least its own infobox, if not its own article. That way we can make more sense of the levels, lifepoints, and experience.
• We really should find a way to solicit feedback from readers on individual articles. There’s a lot left to be hashed out, but we’re looking into using the sidebar to send comments and ratings to a talk subpage (in a similar fashion to Wikimedia’s article feedback tool), where the ratings can be collated and reacted to if needed. I think this could be useful not just for seeing what articles need the most help, but also for engaging with a segment of the reader community that we wouldn’t engage with otherwise.

Obviously each of these changes are fairly major, and they’d probably require threads of their own, either for consensus or just for logistics. They will also require significant time commitments from the editor base, but I think if we know what we’re doing and have a plan, they won’t take that long. If anyone has other ideas on big projects we should take on this coming year, here is the place to make them known.

So, uh…yeah. Let’s get shit done this next year. Get more people involved and do projects we can be proud of in the future. ʞooɔ 11:49, December 27, 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Ideas – With world events 1 & 2, we had tons of new NPCs (and thus dialogue) come into the game. I never kept any real tabs, but I think we got most if not all of those dialogues. Along with that, I managed to get all of the postbags up on the wiki (with a little uninvited help from Shoyrukon, whom I never got the chance to thank). I'm note sure if there are any more lores or letters to nab from the actual website, but there is plenty more to transcribe from the game. Unfortunately, that's an extremely tedious task that not everyone is up to, but I'd love to make it a goal for people who are not me.

I do agree we should overhaul the treasure trails guide. Anyone who hasn't seen it yet, I've started an RfS for the full guide. It's currently only proposing a split rather than a format overhaul, but that's honestly the best way to start. It'd be great to see people interested in helping with an overhaul after (what better be) a successful splitting of that page.

For standardization, another one we oughta work on is our strategy pages. With the changes to the combat system, many of them remain out of date, and some of them are possibly rendered useless. Of the ones we do have, they're all out of sync, and we could use a good standardized format for strategy pages.

I think we should also finish off our quick guides! There are 191 quests at the time of posting, and we have 111 guides (102 quests and the 9 subquests for Recipe for Disaster). As much as you may love lore, some people (including myself) prefer a straight-to-the-point, step-by-step guide. RS:QG already outlines a perfect format (which I'd like to reiterate the "perfect" because some guides go a little more in depth than they need to); there's nothing to work out with these guides, we just need to finish them.

Without any debasing of the current calculator scripts, we should have some full on discussion about how good they are. The two calculator scripts we have in place already are actually really really good, but I think before we do anything huge with them, we should take some time to discuss any of the minor things they may lack, etc. Again, they're good scripts, but anything that can be done to improve them in even the slightest way should prove worthwhile. After all, we only deserve the very best.

Small tasks should be a simple thing to list en masse. One idea I've had on mind lately is being more specific about certain quest items. An example is Boot (quest item). Currently, that page only says that it is used in the quest and how to obtain it. Well, how is it used in the quest? Some articles only document the existence of the item. It shouldn't be hard at all to add a sentence or two, and those sentences or two will greatly improve the information quality of those articles. There are plenty of things that can be done by new users looking for a task. Like, really, a lot; we just hardly ever acknowledge those tasks.

As another point with new users, we can certainly expand our image taking team. That would actually help a lot, because we have a buttload of old/bad images that no one even plans to get around to. I'm sorry to say that I don't want anyone who can't take up to standard images to do any large part in retaking images, but, at the same, the system requirements for a good image aren't a 1% luxury. Kq head was just some guy whose computer could handle the proper graphics settings and, after a little mentoring on using the orb of oculus, became an excellent image taker. Also flying mode is due to be fixed! I don't think it should be hard to rope in a couple more image takers. In all honesty, it's not that hard to take a good image once you know what to do. And more with images: we could also do with expanding our image maintenance team (transing, etc.). GIMP is a great program and a free download; I also have a full guide on how to use it (complete with links to other users' guides).

I can't exactly predict what types of users we'll be able to rope in, but it's not unlikely there will be one of each kind. Everyone has their forte, so hopefully some of them can fit what I've outlined. But also more, because I'm just pulling ideas out of my head; there are so many types of users we could use and so many types that exist.

All in all, I think it was a good year. I made a lotsa edits and shit got done. I could easily nitpick what went wrong, but I don't think anything was a significant problem. Besides, what's done is done, and we were above par in just about everything. It's time to start thinking about next year. MolMan 14:19, December 27, 2013 (UTC)

I think the problem with those quest items is that by the time users think "I should go edit that", they have generally already done that quest and can't really find out more about it to put on the wiki. Maybe a certain very rich user could buy bonds and get a newb account to go through all the quests again. Oil4 ^Talk 22:39, December 27, 2013 (UTC)

Just read the quest guide to refresh your memory on what the item is used for. You could even watch video guides. <.< User:Urbancowgurl777/Signature 23:18, December 27, 2013 (UTC)

I... I hadn't thought of that. That's actually a very easy way to do it. Oil4 ^Talk 09:21, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

You completely missed the point: it's a simple task for anyone looking to help. MolMan 14:33, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

Comment - On the subject of calculators, I think it would be very useful if we could load up a user's stats so they wouldn't've have to insert them themselves. That is one of the nicest parts of other sites' calculators that I've noticed. User:TyA/sig 02:27, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

Such as Tip.it's stats getter? User:Jr Mime/Signature 04:28, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

Yup, that is exactly what I'm thinking of. User:TyA/sig 05:06, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

We actually have the {{Hiscore}} template. Haven't tested it much though. ʞooɔ 05:13, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

Bear in mind the extension that uses hasn't been touched in over two years and we don't have many users (possibly none) that are able to maintain it should it require fixing. However, it seems to work for the time being. User:Cqm/Signature

Comment - First of all, to say that this comment is unsolicited would be a major fallacy, grumble grumble. As for the content, I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of the sidebar would be (assuming, of course, that it is technically feasible and that the Wikia overlords don't smite us to hell and back for taking up their precious ad space). While it's useful to advertise events and such, I wasn't aware that our events had an attendance problem. They do have a maximum size before they're no longer feasible. Getting them to contribute would be a great goal, but as already mentioned, there isn't that "low hanging fruit" anymore for people who just want to big-picture edit, while anyone who finds a specific issue with an individual page is blessed with a nice and big "Edit page" button at the top, as well as [Edit] links in the section headers. I agree that a sidebar communication tool could be very useful and is great to get up and running, I am not quite sold on its everyday practicality.

The overhaul with the money making guides was great, but then again there are many ways to make money with the various skills, depending on the current GE prices and the user's level. The same is generally not true for skill training guides. There is really just one good way to train a skill expensively, and another good way to train it cheaply. For example, if I were to write a smithing training guide, I'd recommend either adamant plate bodies or gold smelting. Nothing else is really worth considering, aside from maybe a quite note about the blast furnace. For runecrafting, I don't care how poor you are, I'm sending you to Runespan. For construction, it's either oak doors, flat packing teak carved magic wardrobes, or flat packing mahogany tables. For mining, living rock caverns. Granted, these are just the high level methods, but the fact that skill training guides can be written so concisely makes me wonder if we'd lose a lot of the current content in an overhaul.

I do really like the job we did with the major updates, though, like Divination. That bodes well for when the Invention skill is released this year. Other things I like are the list of tasks for new editors. It looks like a great list to snag unsuspecting wikians and turn them into RuneScape wikians. Lastly, I will never ever go into Chat and just sit there and wait for new people. Send them to the IRC, though, and I'll gladly show them the ropes. :)

Cheers, --Liquid^Talk 07:29, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

We wouldn't be getting rid of Wikia's ad slot on the rail -- we'd just be adding more stuff to the space below it.

1. REDIRECT User:-Matt/sig 08:08, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

People are actually really impressed by how in depth we go on the useless stuff. If we explicate and analyze some of the more obscure training methods in guides along with an improvement of the most efficient methods, we could hook a good number of readers. I too am a man of maximum efficiency, but I also acknowledge that not everyone is. Even if these additional methods are subpar, having them improves the image of the wiki in terms of completeness. MolMan 14:33, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

Comment - As for skill training guides, the current "format" isn't awfully helpful. I would imagine a reader could select their level in a particular skill, perhaps their goal level, and how much money they would want to spend on training (something like "as little as possible", "not too much" and "whatever lol I don't care cuz I'm Cook and rich and shit"), which would take them to a suitable guide(s). Just a quick idea this is, and I doubt it'd actually work, but, yeah, something needs to be done to improve them. Unfortunately, a handy standardised template with a few parameters like the MMG won't work here.

As for acquiring more editors, I believe the most important step, aside from "advertising" through chat or the sidebar or cabbage, would be to read AGF again and keep that in mind properly. Often, when an IP or new red-link editor makes an edit that is not quite up to standard, we are either lazy and revert it if it's really utter crap, or just ignore them and fix the edit. Rarely do we actually contact the guy, who is likely to just be unfamiliar with the editing system or policies/style guide (I'm looking at you, VE), and advise him about stuff on their talk page. We should do that more IMO. Personally, I'm not very inclined to go through "all that trouble" to educate them either (2 minutes is a lot, 'innit?), but if we want to broaden the community, I think this would help.

Finally, a personal goal for me is to finish more of GU, if I find the time for it. Oh, and write more pages listed in my lore project thingy. Fswe1 07:51, December 29, 2013 (UTC)

Also, we could make a survey asking for feedback and suggestions which we could link to via SiteNotice and/or the sidebar on Oasis. Yay or nay? Fswe1 10:09, December 30, 2013 (UTC)

I'm working on a feedback script at the moment, similar to wikipedia's article feedback (which is incompatible for reasons I was never told). If anyone has any ideas about what it should include I'd love to hear them. User:Cqm/Signature

Comment - As there currently are two different ways of making dynamic calculators (Q's and Stew's scripts), I would like to phase out those based on Q's script, as you have to submit the form for the result to update, whereas Stew's scripts can update instantly upon changing a number. Stew's version can also do more than Q's, so I think that all calculators using Q's script should be changed to using Stew's script.

I also think that skill training guides could be improved a lot. Maybe we could standardise them by using some infobox with minimum level, xp/hr, cost/hr or profit/hr, gp/xp and afkability for each viable method of training the skill. You could then enter how much gp you value one hour, your level and how important afkability is for you and it will find the best options for you. Afkability might be expressed in required clicks an hour. User:Tyilo/Signature 23:31, December 30, 2013 (UTC)

I believe Stew's script was meant to replace Q's original, but I don't know if there's any complete documentation on either. User:Cqm/Signature

I don't know if this is good enough for you, but here: User:Stewbasic/calc and User:Quarenon/Scripts/DynamicForms User:Tyilo/Signature 01:43, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Comment - One thing I really dislike is people bashing new editors for using the visual editor or making rookie mistakes. Whilst I and many others are perfectly capable of sifting through large amounts of wikitext for what we need it's not the same for everyone. I'd like to see visual editor errors fixed by experienced users without fuss or a talk page message telling them not to use the ve. Question whether it's a bug, report if if you think there's a chance, and remember we all made simple mistakes when we were new. If they make a mistake link them to a help page, or if one doesn't exist tell them how you'd do it. Driving away new editors is the last thing we want. User:Cqm/Signature

Don't we have a bot to fix all those VE errors? User:Jr Mime/Signature 01:13, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Not all; the new VE for example adds blank new lines after every '{| class(wikitable"' line, unless it's followed by a '|+' or '|-'... IP83.101.44.209 (talk) 05:41, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

I say - Firstly, cookmeplawcks ran a reddit thread that asked about the issues regarding the wiki. Unsuprisingly, what came up the most was the search and the ads. I think the sitenotice or sidebar should be used to give some information to unregistered users (only if possible) about how to sign up and it's benefits. Then maybe the welcome message could be unified, as we now get handy messages about talk pages, in order to give a few tips about editing. A user who has been taught how to make a nice user page might feel more able to help out with the wiki as a whole.

In addition, I looked at the to-do list, which appears to be the only place listing things that, well, need to be done. Was there not a page somewhere before that listed pages that needed assistance, e.g stubs? I think that sort of hub for new editors would be a good place to point them in the right direction, with perhaps links to admin talk pages where they can ask for help.

Wingcap

13:56, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Talk pages - We need a way to respond to comments on talk pages. Tons of comments are posted every day asking questions about the article itself, formatting, tips, etc. No one ever answers them - they go unseen in the recent changes. We should have some sort of way to see recently edited talk pages so that the community, as well as other random editors, can respond and connect. I'm not sure how this would fit in to your idea of article ratings/comments/whatever though. Ratings would be useless if no one ever saw them as well. User:Urbancowgurl777/Signature 13:56, January 4, 2014 (UTC)

I like that idea, we could have a page where it shows all edits to talk pages (I think there's already something like that), or make an abuse filter which catches any new headers in main talk pages. User:Jr Mime/Signature 18:27, January 4, 2014 (UTC)

No things already created (except RC with talk on). But, I found the activityfeedtag: here. User:Jr Mime/Signature 18:47, January 4, 2014 (UTC)

Comment - A problem I've been hearing is that the wiki is an unreliable source of information. Although there would be no way to eliminate the problem, since we're a wiki anyone can edit, improving our referencing could be one way to assuage people's concerns. It is frequently very difficult to verify certain information because no-one adds any references to back it up. This is especially true for controversial statements; if there is nothing to back it up, then people are going to question whether it's accurate. I've noticed a lot of articles talk about the background history of a monster, or the developmental history of a certain skill, but they do not provide any sources I can refer to in order to verify this information. Other wikis, such as Wookieepedia, do a much better job at referencing, and I think we need to follow their example. Perhaps one way we could encourage people to introduce citations is to create a "Needs references" template that states an article needs additional sources. Smithing (talk | contribs) 18:21, January 4, 2014 (UTC)

Something like {{Fact}}? IP83.101.44.209 (talk) 18:33, January 4, 2014 (UTC)

Something like this. This template would be more visible than the {{Fact}} template and could explain why citations are important (without you having to put your cursor over the "source needed" to find out). Smithing (talk | contribs) 18:46, January 4, 2014 (UTC)

Are those the only areas you've heard complaints about for lack of sources? MolMan 22:58, January 4, 2014 (UTC)

I believe you misunderstood. Those aren't areas I've heard about complaints; they are just examples of areas we could focus on. Back when I was archiving the former Game Guides, I did some research into what people though of our referencing and the reliability of this wiki. Most of the complaints were the lore was not very accurate, although I did read one that talked about how few articles contained sources. These are probably long gone by now. I haven't really seen a significant change in our referencing patterns since 2011; in fact, I think it's worse now because of the removal of the former Game Guide, and this concerns me. I think we really need to do something about it. Smithing (talk | contribs) 04:12, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

Got to disagree there. Well, I mean, I've also seen people regard the wiki as unreliable and "full of lies" (best case: "take wiki information with a grain of salt" and worst case: "THE WIKI MUST BE BURNED DOWN") and we definitely need more referencing and such a needs sources template would definitely be beneficial, if only so that readers knew that they shouldn't blindly trust the relevant article. But I don't think we cite less than in 2011 now. A couple of years ago, cites were rarely used (and even more rarely where they used correctly, i.e. using the various Cite templates) and when it came to lore stuff, we basically had Morian Smith. And even he left lots of inaccuracies that persist today. At one point there was an RfD for CiteNPC because it was barely used; now it's on every other page.

Basically, aye, we need to improve our referencing, but I think we are getting there. Though I think that too much is also possible. :P Fswe1 08:36, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

Oh, and another thing; if there are references, people may still not trust them due to the red asterisk putting them in Category:References that need verification. In my opinion, this asterisk is rather...counterproductive. For instance, what point is there is stating that a reference to a postbag or a news post that was added over a month ago could be 'outdated' and needs verifying. There is a 99.999% chance that whatever was being referenced hasn't changed. Not in a month, and probably not in an entire year. The accessdate parameter, which adds the asterisk if the given date is over a month old, it utterly pointless for CiteForum and CitePoll (because they use webcited links), CitePostbag, CiteGodLetter, CitePub, CiteNews, and CiteLore (because I've only ever seen one instance where the text of any of those things was altered) or even CiteNPC, since dialogues may get altered, but that doesn't harm the validity of the reference. When Cam and I made CitePodcast, we deliberately left out accessdate because it's utterly pointless; podcasts and videos have permanent content, which cannot be changed. The podcast could only be deleted completely. In other words, d'you think it would help if we removed the accessdate parameter for everything but CiteGeneral? Note that the CitePostbag template is being reworked to be much simpler atm (it's going to work like CitePodcast) and will also lose accessdate. Alternatively, we could refresh the date every month on every cite template but that would be dumb. Do you think making doing this would make our references more credible to readers? Fswe1 08:54, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

I'm guilty of referencing far too much too (Cook's Assistant). But seriously, I love the amount of references in those articles, it's much better than having none at all.

I definitely think we need to get rid of the asterisks; no-one ever updates them anymore. For sources that are permanent or very unlikely to be changed, I think it would definitely be useful to just get rid of them; these sources won't ever get updated so there's no point in keeping the access date. What I suggested in a thread a couple years ago (but clearly forgot about until now) was we could just list the access date directly, and get rid of the pointless category "References that need verification" that no-one ever updates anyway. This way if a source ever does update, readers won't assume that we made an error or are adding bs references, but that the source was just updated. At the same time, there isn't an asterisk that states that the reference might be outdated, which is an added bonus (especially if the reference hasn't been updated since the access date) and definitely improves the credibility of our references. But anyway, I like your idea and think it should be implemented. Smithing (talk | contribs) 09:39, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

So...would you like me to start a new YG for this or should we just be bold and get on with in? I'd prefer the former. Also, if it passes, we could have a bot obliterate all accessdate or date parameters (but not postdate ofc) on cite templates except for CiteGeneral, for example, right? Fswe1 09:45, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

Starting a new thread would be a good idea. I should probably update the CiteGeneral template so it directly shows the access date, but I'm not sure if too much time has passed since the thread. Smithing (talk | contribs) 09:51, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

Speaking of citing - What are we to do now that webcite has kicked the bucket? We need to come up with a new way to keep our references. User:Urbancowgurl777/Signature 23:16, January 4, 2014 (UTC)

The Internet Archive is one of the two named web archives on WP:CITE. If it's good enough for them, it should be good enough for us. MolMan 23:21, January 4, 2014 (UTC)

Weird, WebCite works fine for me. Smithing (talk | contribs) 04:12, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

How? They stopped allowing people to use their citation machine. I think old references are still okay but who knows how long they'll be able to keep those up. User:Urbancowgurl777/Signature 05:36, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

Webcite still works, for now at least. Suppa chuppa ^Talk 05:41, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

Webcite was going to shut down at the end of 2013 if they wouldn't reach their funding goal. Last time I checked, early November or so, they'd reached about half the goal. A week or two later, the notice about stopping had been removed and one could still archive stuff. Last time I archived something was on 1 January, so it seems they are still running their website (pun intended)...for now. Fswe1 08:36, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

It looks like they're still running for now. Perhaps the cash they raised was enough for the time being? User:Cqm/Signature

Regarding quests - We all know that just because a quest has a difficulty of expirenced or master doesn't mean it's hard. I'd like to see a note attached to quests like Devious Minds, or all quests even, that specify why they got that rating. Was it actually hard, was it lore intensive, or was it both? User:King kolton9/Signature 11:04, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

Those are official difficulties. Who knows what goes on in the Jmods' minds. Oil4 ^Talk 14:16, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

I know that, Oil, I'm just saying it might be better to add a little asterisk specifying that "While not hard, this quest is lore intensive." User:King kolton9/Signature 18:00, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

What if someone says "I found Devious Minds quite hard, so I would not agree with your rating." --Liquid^Talk 18:38, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

I assume RS:UCS would apply here. User:King kolton9/Signature 08:43, January 6, 2014 (UTC)

Let's stay away from anything subjective, it's not an improvement. MolMan 14:05, January 6, 2014 (UTC)

Difficulty, length and "lore intensity" are all subjective and fairly arbitrary, really. Let's avoid them, like Molly said. Fswe1 18:10, January 6, 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, guys. I thought it might be helpful to some like me, whos decision to do a quest can heavily depend on length/intensity. User:King kolton9/Signature 21:51, January 6, 2014 (UTC)

Comment - Can we do this and/or the reddit thread more often? It's really helpful to have the sort of feedback we don't normally get and I'd love to see this continue. Additionally, when this is closed can we move the ideas from here and the reddit thread to a project page so we have something to use as a reference and not have to rely on remembering the name of this forum? User:Cqm/Signature 21:24, January 5, 2014 (UTC)

I like that idea. Cook already had a little pastebin synopsis of the feedback; just mentioning this so no one wastes time going through that post again for what was asked. I'd also love love love to solicit feedback from elsewhere. r/runescape is uncannily in love with us, so the feedback was great, but not enough. Sadly, there's much elsewhere we can ask, is there? In addition, I don't feel comfortable just doing regular feedback posts. For one, everything said in the comments that wasn't about search, ads, or guides was minor. We know search sucks, we know the ads suck, we know a lot of our guides suck. Beyond that, suggestions were small. Also, with this: what if regular feedback solicitation becomes unappreciated? Perhaps Cook should make a thread asking how the subreddit would feel before we decide on our own to make it a regular thing. I'm honestly pretty optimistic about how that question would be answered, but it'd be nicer to know it's invited. MolMan 03:55, January 6, 2014 (UTC)

Feedback about feedback... okay then. We could advertise via twatter or fecesbook or whatever and host feedback threads on reddit or other such sites. Heck, we could even use the YG, or make short surveys, or host in-game sessions (I nominate Ryan PM, the owner of Rune Wiki, to be the host). Not that anyone's going to attend, but you get the point. Fswe1 18:13, January 6, 2014 (UTC)

I doubt the kind of person that would reply to a feedback thread on the YG isn't a person who would generally leave feedback anyway. Other places like reddit, social media, maybe even just a google doc linked in nice brown box (like we do for events) Oil4 ^Talk 19:03, January 6, 2014 (UTC)

If we did them more often, I'd suggest no more than like 3 per year. It would just turn into some annoying/ignored thing if done too often. User:Urbancowgurl777/Signature 20:50, January 9, 2014 (UTC)

Comment - One of the suggestions we got over Twitter was to update our site's design. We alternate from brown to brown, throw in a bit of brown here and there and sometimes even go wild and use a different tone of brown. It's not appealing and it's not doing us any favours. We're talking here about getting people involved. When a new user lands here, the first thing they take in is our design, how we portray ourselves. I know we can do much better than brown with brown featuring special guest brown. Ronan ^Talk 15:02, January 12, 2014 (UTC)

There's been some discussion on that on S:C too. Maybe it's time for another of those nice big change-of-theme threads. I personally quite liked the light blue from the festive theme. Oil4 ^Talk 16:06, January 12, 2014 (UTC)

Please do. I hate this brown theme. --Liquid^Talk 18:37, January 12, 2014 (UTC)

Everyone complains about it, but no one does anything about it. No one has any bright ideas since no threads have been made to change the theme. If you hate it so much, come up with a replacement. Also, I think it would be changed more often if it was possible for more than 4 people to understand all the css behind the theme. It's absurd, the amount of work you have to go through just to change the theme. User:Urbancowgurl777/Signature 18:56, January 12, 2014 (UTC)

I'm trying to do something about it here and now. My bright idea started several months ago with using the citadel backdrop you can see on our Twitter page as our background and switching to a lighter sky-themed design. Unfortunately it also ended there because my only tiny problem is that I have next to no knowledge of css. That's only my personal mental image. I'm putting the idea out there and someone more skilled at design than me can make their own concept a reality. I'm hoping that if editors in this thread are happy to allow the theme to be updated, then a discussion can be opened shortly and our css heads can tackle it. Ronan ^Talk 19:20, January 12, 2014 (UTC)

I did do something about it. I changed back to the default Oasis theme in my personal css. --Liquid^Talk 00:47, January 13, 2014 (UTC)

I'd suggest that we do what we did for the favicon: Ask wiki members to design a theme they think is good.User:King kolton9/Signature 20:56, January 15, 2014 (UTC)

I posted an idea I had a few weeks ago in the H'ween theme thread. Screenshot here, and you can see a live version here. --Iiii I I I 06:55, January 17, 2014 (UTC)

I love it Oil4 ^Talk 13:26, January 17, 2014 (UTC)

I think it's a bit too blue. User:King kolton9/Signature 21:14, January 17, 2014 (UTC)

Very nice, but add the runes back to the main page. :3 Also, I'd support a different background... a player-made screenshot would be most preferable. Or even a new one every month or so. Fswe1 07:33, January 18, 2014 (UTC)

How come the "The RuneScape Wiki" image on the homepage has "The" aligned to the left? <.< Other than that, looks very sleek and nice. I think the boxes could do with darker/more intense background colors, it's a little too whitewashed against the white background. User:Urbancowgurl777/Signature 06:28, January 19, 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, the logos will be the same in the end (if we decide to use this theme). I just wanted to see how the variants would look in context. --Iiii I I I 22:09, January 24, 2014 (UTC)

I've been working on a new searchable database system for things like the bestiary; it's mostly done (it can be found on my wikia.js page.) There's only one bug left, as far as I can tell (naturally I'd like some other people to try to test it too and see if I missed anything before it goes into common): It dynamically generates tables as responses to the searches, but I'd like to make them sortable (like an on-the-page table with the "sortable" class), and I'm not sure how to make them use the existing autosort mechanism. So if someone could help with that, I should be able to get the system ready for use. (I originally planned it for the bestiary, but it's versatile, so it can be used for pretty much any database that we want to make searchable.) Yitzi (talk) 19:16, January 19, 2014 (UTC)

Where do we test the script? For the sortable thing I remember Cook had a similar issue with a calculator that might be of help here. It was something like having a sortable table on the page already that made any future sortable tables created run again (hiding the spare table will probably still work). Running the script again will likely cause some errors on any existing sortable tables, but it can be done if there's no old sortable tables left (I think). User:Cqm/Signature

User:Yitzi/test has a test page, though with only a couple of entries in the associated database; feel free to add to that database for testing, though, or make your own if you want to test with different categories. (If you make your own, note that it must use html, rather than wiki, markup for the table structure, and the first row must be header cells consisting of the categories.) And it's designed to be able to hold multiple tables at a time (and test them and so on), so it does need to be able to work with old sortable tables still there. Yitzi (talk) 16:31, January 22, 2014 (UTC)

Closed - We've discussed things that we can work on in the new year. --Liquid^Talk 13:28, February 6, 2014 (UTC)