Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Archive 24

I challenge you!
Maybe. ;-) I'd like to get a bit of the old camaraderie back. How about we have a competition to each get a D&D article to GA this fall term?  I think I have I most free time, so however we want to do it is fine. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:13, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've got quite a head-start on Pool of Radiance, but when that one's over we'll see about getting at least one more in. :) BOZ (talk) 12:36, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 18:10, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent... sounds good. A competition for each of us to get an article up to GA without much, if any, help from the others? Sounds like a good way to increase article quality in a nice, friendly-competition-y way. When does it start (and would you say that there are any article restrictions or requirements, e.g. must be within top 50 most popular D&D pages? Should we declare what articles we plan to work on ahead of time?)? :) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:00, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't see why we can't help each other. :) Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate are in the top ten and could use some love. I'll probably want to do some more work on modules articles. BOZ (talk) 19:24, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I was thinking about the D-series (see above), but I might do one from the I series. Haven't really decided.  I actuallly used to play Baldur's Gate, but I think an article like that would need 50-100 refs.  Minsc is pretty close.  Where's that list of top viewed D&D articles again? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 21:50, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Article hits. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's pretty sad the number of views the modules get. Things like Half-Orc get more hits than any of the modules.  Death knight (Dungeons & Dragons) might be capable of GA.  Strahd has enough sources, although the article isn't in the best shape currently.  I might do Dungeons & Dragons (TV series).  Ah, but the modules are so easy. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 22:08, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

(redent) In any case, I think I'm going to do the D series. Probably as two articles, although I have to see how much I can find on Vault. If you guys wanna play, tell me which articles, because I want to add them to my watchlist and help. If we can get organized, maybe we can guilt trip Casliber, RJHall, and that one IP (I forget their "name") into doing one too (Ha!). - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 07:53, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh! You mean I have to pick one of my own? ;) I was thinking of improving Fiend Folio, though not necessarily to GA (we'll see!) and I think I had some others in mind. And we have an IP editor dilligently working on Icewind Dale II! BOZ (talk) 11:41, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Cool. Those IPs rock.  I'll keep an eye on those articles. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 17:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I was thinking of working on Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn or Neverwinter Nights... they're both in the top at WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Article hits, and crossover between my D&D and VG interests, although I haven't played either of them. Any suggesstions on which I should tackle? :) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:46, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Go with NWN. :) It'll make a nice set with NWN2 looking good! BOZ (talk) 19:05, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * For the Fiend Folio, it's better than most 1E books because we have a decent amount of info for development. Might be hard to find reviews for 1E/2E but we'll see.  I'm just wondering about the format; since for a typical sourcebook there's no "plot" to summarize, do we just do contents?  Such as finding sources that talk about what creatures were included? BOZ (talk) 19:05, 28 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Not Wil Wheaton? Shadows of Amn has more refs, but I'd go with NWN.  The plot of SoA is a mess, whereas NWN is pretty concise.  That's the harder part I would imagine, if you haven't played the game.
 * I added a White Dwarf review to the FF page (1st ed.). I didn't do a great job, but I did list the monsters it mentions.  It's not possible to summarize every monster, but you could talk do some primary source discussion of the ones that are mentioned by secondary sources.  I feel that adds to the cohesiveness (or something). - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 19:10, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds good - I could move the monsters mentioned in that review to a "contents" section, for example, and use those Wizards.com links and anything else I can find to source it. BOZ (talk) 19:19, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

So, for "The Fiend", what would be a good format?


 * Contents
 * Development
 * Publication history
 * 1E
 * 2E
 * 3E
 * Reception

Something like that, or should there be a better order (before I get started)? Should I have a separate develpoment section, or should that be folded into the pub history? I probably don't have enough info on the 3E and definitely 2E versions to make the article properly comprehensive enough for a GA, but I'm going to at least get it to a solid B-class. BOZ (talk) 22:47, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't even know that there was a 2E version. :) (Although that was before I was playing.) Anyway, that kind of layout looks good. It might make sense to just have one publication history section, without the subsections, but that really just depends on length. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 23:16, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point; I'll try it with the subheads for now, and then we'll see if there's a point in keeping them. BOZ (talk) 23:48, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you'll find the best format when you see what info you have to work with. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:04, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * True dat. BOZ (talk) 01:14, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Whoo! I'm ready for a big ol' break. How's it looking? Not sure where to go next from here. BOZ (talk) 02:09, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I haven't had time to read the whole thing, but it looks good overall. It's certainly not GA yet, but it is very much improved from the last version. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 02:14, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Nah, not GA, and I may or may not be able to get it there, but it should at least be close to a B-class by now. :) BOZ (talk) 02:47, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Lawrence Schick
I created the article. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 07:37, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * And, it was speedied out of existence. ;) I could restore it if you have a better idea of what you want to do with it? BOZ (talk) 12:23, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ooh... Schick seems to be more notable than we thought. The MobyGames bio overviews his past jobs with America Online and such. This confirms (albeit unreliably, but it seems pretty likely) that the various Google news results refer to the same person. Scroll around there for a few pages... he seems to have been questioned for articles and stuff for things like the New York Times and Time Magazine. He's also mentioned in books such as High Score! (see all the Google books results, although a lot of them are unreliable). I can try to work on an article (add it to my list above :) ), or one of you can see if something more substantial can be created.–Drilnoth (T • C • L) 23:09, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Be my guest! I actually had this one (and a few other designers and artists and such) watchlisted in case someone ever created the article. :) BOZ (talk) 01:49, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Big ref
Not sure what articles need it, but it's huge and reliable. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 00:57, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, I used that on Gary Gygax and a number of other articles, but I bet there are other places where it will come in handy. :) BOZ (talk) 01:47, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Might be useful
This website seems to do a lot of interviews. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:25, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I used the one on Tim Kask to help start his article! BOZ (talk) 11:44, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I went looking for ammo in case anyone questions the reliability. Found a good amount.  We might even be able to create an article on him, with lots of sources, then say his blog is reliable per WP:SPS and his views are notable.  I think I read somewhere that he does 60 posts a month! - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 20:36, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You guys know how to include google search links with quotes? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 20:36, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

This is interesting, whether or not it is helpful as a source. :) BOZ (talk) 19:21, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Change stuff
I've got some ideas about how to change our Wproject. If an idea isn't good, that's OK, because I'm just throwing them out there.
 * 1) Redirect our workgroup's pages to this page. I think they're dead, but occasionally someone goes to one of those pages, and thinks they may get a response.
 * Use the spots freed up by 1) for links to our top pages by views, and other things we look at somewhat frequently.
 * Change our B assessment articles a bit. It was accurate a while ago, but now I'd like to look at the Bs and think I was looking at our articles that are closest to GA/FA, so it's easy to find articles to improve.  These may not be improvements.  I don't know.

Can you guys think of anything? I guess I'd like to do something like a yearly check (starting now) on our project's processes. Dril, I don't know how bad ass you're programming has gotten, but maybe your bot can help. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:11, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what to say about the other things, but as far as B-class, there are probably items in that class that should be C-class, but I don't have time to go through them ATM. BOZ (talk) 12:25, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The work group proposal seems fair; I'll get to work on it right away. :) After, that is, I have AWB fired up and working on removing all of the deprecated future templates.
 * I think that a yearly (perhaps even semiyearly) "checkup" on the project would be nice. I don't know how my programming knowledge would really help that, though.
 * Anyway, I've also been bouncing some ideas around in my head recently. First would be the possibility of upmerging this project into WP:RPG. The D&D project's articles are way out of hand (which ties in to my next idea), but if we considered all RPGs instead of just one the scope and coverage might balance out a bit more. Maybe. Just an idea; I'm not too sure about it myself.
 * My other proposal is to organize an effort to work through the (massive) cleanup listing for the project. To do this, I'd say that we go through the categories one at a time and look at all of the articles. For each article, we'd A) fix the problems, B) Redirect/merge it, C) List it in a new section at WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Cleanup for further review, or D) PROD it. I was thinking that articles lacking sources would be a good place to start. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:50, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know that folding us up into the RPG project would help us as much as it would help them; that project seems to be even more dead than this place was before Drilnoth showed up. :) (just look at the talk page for one thing) I'm cleaning up articles once bit at a time; as far as the massive cleanup list, you have one guess as to who placed most of them, so the legitimacy on those is a toss up (some are right-on, some are inaccurate due to personal bias or ignorance). There are probably just as many articles that should be on that list that aren't, as there are are articles (or at least some of the templates) that are on there and shouldn't be. I'd be fine with some directed merge/redirecting though, and fixing what is fixable - but I can't honestly say how much time and energy I'd have for such an undertaking. ;) BOZ (talk) 19:45, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * An upmerge might be good. We'd have to think it would help us as much as the work to do it would take, though.  They seems to a few comments a month on their talk page.
 * Ah, the cleanup. We need to think of an easy way.  I once misread the assessment grid, and thought we had 600 articles, down from 1700.  I was pretty stoked.  Maybe if we could redirect all out stubs that aren't part of any other wikiproject.  I don't see any good way to do it without looking at them individually. Talk:Danger at Dunwater is a low importance stub, but it will probably be a GA someday.  Like BOZ says, I don't think anyone really feels like doing it.  You could spend a month and only take care of 100 articles.  We need something quick and easy.  It will would deletions, because we could then say we're in the middle of cleanup.  I'm going to go redirect a few articles to see what it's like.  Check out my contribs if you want, and revert anything you don't agree with. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 20:58, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I removed all the A's from the stub/low category. I redirected one, and changed four to mid class.  Not the perfect solution.  I'll wait and see what you guys think before doing more.  I called one a redirect class, but I don't think I did it right. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 21:20, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Makes sense to me. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:24, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Rather than going at it randomly or arbitrarily, I think the best sense is to pick a little project and work on that to completion. For example, I have a plan for monsters articles that will take a bit of time to set up (but you can help once I get it going). I also have a plan for gods, starting with the Greyhawk gods. Don't have time to get into it at the moment, but I promise it'll be soon. :) Bear with me! BOZ (talk) 22:39, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Cool! I've been thinking about all of the articles about rulebooks which really don't pass the notability test, and I think that I have a half-decent idea on how to handle them. Give me a few days and maybe I can start work on that. And on Neverwinter Nights. And on image copyvio tagging. And on Dazzle! :) There's just too much to do! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:57, 31 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds interesting. Just brainstorming here, but it would be nice to have automatic criteria where we don't have to think too hard.  I think articles on actual books and video games should be kept.  Articles on people should be kept.  Articles with 1+ independent sources should be kept (1 -> Start class, 2-3 -> C class, 4+ -> B class).  Maybe if it looks like it might pass NOTE, make it mid importance.  Sounds like BOZ might have something for monsters.  Lists can stay.  Things that can probably be redirected (most of the time) are NPCs and locations.  I didn't redirect Ansalon so there will be exceptions, but I did redirect Alaundo.  Fictional events can probably be redirected.
 * Looking at the links in Ansalon. Most of the locations are in a list, so that's good.  Cataclysm (Dragonlance) and Chaos War have a couple of non-independent refs.  Taladas has its own page.  To really make any quick progress, all three of those would have to be redireceted, and probably Ansalon as well.  When we're dealing with maybe 1200 non-notable articles, merging is too slow.  I have a feeling this is too heavy handed, but merging is too hard.  I don't know what to do. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:12, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Arb break
Probably too busy tonight, but I'll keep brainstorming. Drilnoth, feel free to hit up the books without sources as far as getting them into a list or something; that's probably a good idea, although part of me agrees with Peregrine that books should all have articles. The thing is, I feel, it's best to make a plan before proceeding in whatever we do when it comes to a mega-merge, so feel free to discuss here. Peregrine, don't despair, there's no rush. :) Maybe instead of focusing on articles like those, we can look at categories where there are a lot of relatively small ones where we can consolidate a lot at once. I'm willing to do the work, but we need a good plan first. BOZ (talk) 01:53, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * That sounds good. Thanks for talking me down.  I haven't looked at article space categories.  That sounds good. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:03, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I mostly agree that each book should have its own article... except that overall consensus seems to be against that, as very few books past the core and multiple-printing (like Fiend Folio and Draconomicon) are going to pass the notability test. Honestly, with a lot of articles on things like deities and characters, there isn't much worth merging... a good bit of it doesn't really belong here, regardless of whether it is in its own article or in a list.
 * Maybe I can concoct some script to help with article merging... that would at least make that part of the process go faster. There are a lot of articles where merging is the right thing to do, like with Ansalon and Cataclysm (Dragonlance) like Peregrine Fisher mentioned above, but a full, manual merge is too slow. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 02:48, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I guess an important question is how much do we really want to comply with NOTE? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:12, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * LOL Want to? :) I've never been a big fan of it as I'm sure you're aware. I have always felt there's got to be some sort of middle ground. Still, there is some wisdom in tightening things up as far as merging, leaving fewer tempting targets for deletion, so that most of the articles remaining either clearly meet the notability requirements (classic modules, many VGs and some designers, etc), or don't have to worry about being deleted due to popularity. Whatever independent sources we can find for the in-universe elements along the way would be helpful of course, but we'll do what we can. BOZ (talk) 04:01, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * What do you want to do with Mimic? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:11, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * One thought I had were Dungeons & Dragons monsters: M, Dungeons & Dragons monsters: N, and so on. The M article would almost be protected by just what you found for Mimic. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:21, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, you guessed my plan! ;) Although, I wouldn't go with one page per letter (some would be too bloated, others too scarce) so we'd need to come up with a system of "how many per page" (15? 20? 30? 50?) to average it out. It'll take some planning, but I've been thinking about doing that for some time. I think I've got good reasons for that system, too! I'd want to do it in userspace, and then move it when I think it's ready (like I did with the monsters lists). BOZ (talk) 11:38, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

(redent) I guess I was thinking one letter per, with maybe an X-Z page. That may or may not work. I know in the MM1, the D were really big. To insure finding secondary sources for the page as a whole, I think a lot of monsters should go on each list. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 17:19, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

About your bot, Dril. I was going to redirect most of the articles in Category:Dragonlance characters, and they've already been redirected, but they're still in the cat. Alhana Starbreeze for example. If it wasn't for that, I think redirecting based on article space cats might be pretty easy. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 17:28, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * First, when you do redirect an article, it's probably best to just remove the cat at the same time (I know that you were probably aware of that already, but I thought I'd mention it just in case). Anyway, with a small number like that, going through WP:BRFA seems kind of pointless; I'll just fire up AWB and make the edits manually. If wanted, I could request bot approval to remove categories from redirect pages upon request... is there consensus to do this for, say, all the D&D article categories? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 00:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * That's a good reminder. I wasn't sure if leaving the cat was correct or not. I don't think it's limited to that one Dragonlance cat, though.  I've never used AWB, so I don't know how easy that makes it.
 * I think there's a consensus to this among the DnD editors here (BOZ?) If you do ask for permission, it would also be good the remove/replace the Dragonlance and Greyhawk wikiproject tags with DnD tags. And make sure they're made redirect class.  Maybe some other stuff I can't think of. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:25, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Cleaning up the WikiProject banners is also on my bot to-do list... it would probably make sense to wait until after whatever project restructuring we do is complete, however. AWB is very easy to use for this; just name the category that the redirects are in in two separate places, uncheck "follow redirects" and click "start". If we want to do this with a lot of cats, using the bot would be useful though. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:42, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd like to bot it. I was actually ready to condense the dragonlance characters cat from 71 pages down to about 10, when I found out about the redirect issue.  I think I can do 50 articles in a sitting, if it's set up correctly.  Maybe I'll look into AWB for myself, but it may be best to do any redirecting by hand. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:50, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * And, I think I've seen bot requests like this where a day later there's a "done" checkmark. Do we really need a bot request to fix cats?  This isn't redirecting with a bot or anything.  Or maybe you feel you have a COI as a member of our project? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:52, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey, I thought we were keeping cats on redirected articles to help with navigation through categories? (Such as, if I were looking to see what Dragonlance characters were there, and I found a redirect to point me to where it had been merged.) BOZ (talk) 02:09, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * But List of Dragonlance characters is already in that category. I agree that if a redirect goes to a page not in the same category the cat should probably be kept, but if it just goes to another page in the same category, just look at the top-level page. If that makes any sense. :) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 02:46, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

On assessments
Where does an article like Talk:Alphatia show up in our assessment grid? Do we really have 1700, or is it much lower? I keep going to redirect something, and I'm too late. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 17:38, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Redirect-Class, Merge-Class, Image-Class, etc., pages aren't on the grid... the grid only contains actual articles (barring those that have been redirected without their assessments being changed). Anyways, I've actually been thinking about those classes for awhile, and was wondering if we should just delete the talk pages for things that are just Redirect-Class, Merge-Class, etc., unless there is non-banner content there. It does seem kind of pointless and confusing... –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 00:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think we were keeping those talk pages on articles which had been redirected (as opposed to redirects which have only ever been redirects) to help keep track of them. BOZ (talk) 02:11, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, right. Kind of forgot about that. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 02:47, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Now I'm getting confused. Is there a good cat scheme that can differentiate between DL characters that are redirected, and ones that still have their own page? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * None that I know of. :( –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 03:01, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Book of Vile Darkness
If you've got a moment, see if you can check out Book of Vile Darkness. As far as I can tell, it's the only D&D article on the GA sweeps list, because it's the oldest one for our project (one of three that were achieved before I started working on Gary Gygax). Might as well see if we can shore it up a bit before the sweeps reviewer hits it, and if the reassessment hits a few more items hopefully we can fix those as well.

Oh wait, there was one other item there: Ravenloft. :) But for all I know, we may get that one to FA before a GA reviewer even comes along! ;) BOZ (talk) 12:23, 3 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Watchlisted. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 15:00, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think a real GA can be made from that article. I removed some rpg.net reviews, and thought I would replace them with something better.  I didn't find anything.  If we just revert it back to how it was before I edited it, it will probably pass.  Whatever you guys want. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:50, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I figured as much - the GA protocols have changed a whole lot since 2006, when that one was listed, which I'm sure has a whole lot to do with why the GA sweeps are happening in the first place. Yeah, go ahead and revert, we'll do some copyediting and grammar checks and whatever, and if it gets delisted we still have a good B-class. ;) BOZ (talk) 11:33, 4 September 2009 (UTC)