Capitalization of monster names

if you see some change I made (a move or such) affects some of your contributions or other stuff, go ahead and let me know   Okay, how about this: I see your point about the monster capitalizations etc., and I don't really have a counterargument.  However, if you change them in some articles and not others, you leave the content of the wiki the same while making the copyediting worse.  For example, are you planning to double-check all 400+ pages containing the word "baron"?   :>     Ryan W 21:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll certainly try. At least most instances should be covered eventually, as with the "what links here" I can catch the majority. I also like to do this because as I go through articles I can iron out some of the text that has room for improvement, further clarity, or fact cleaning (like in the imp article). I also gathered that if I didn't do it now it would only get harder later, as (at least) level articles are added on a relatively regular basis and they use the monster names regularly. Who is like God? 05:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Don't forget about the search function as well, it's what I use to find various word instances I need to change (usually to turn into wiki-links). Baron, for example, comes up with 491 matches. (yikes!) Nuxius 02:22, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Addendum: actually there is a counterargument.  The names are written as proper nouns in the instruction manual.

I no longer have any of the manuals from the original DOS releases (hopefully somebody does...), so I'm merely looking at things like this, as well as the Depths of Doom manual and the Collector's Edition manual.  If the DOS manuals concur, however, I believe this is a case where the executable itself is inconclusive (because it uses a monocased font), so we should move down your list to the manual.  Unless we're going to reach for a new level of literalism by moving the Shotgun guy article to SHOTGUN GUY, for example...    Ryan W 08:41, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[Responding to this]:   Glancing around the great internet universe, it appears that your view is consistent with analogous usage in preexisting subject areas (e.g. words like "seraphim" and "archangel" are capitalized only under particular grammatical conditions).  I confess that a certain amount of pompous overcapitalization seems more in line with the vibe of the games, but everybody would have their own opinion on how far to push it, and that's trouble.  :>

AFAIAA the statements here about grammar, spelling, etc., are policies only in the sense that one set of conventions was enumerated in order to avoid getting bogged down in a tremendous number of minute technical specifications.  Obviously, for each possible style issue, the English language provides several equally established but incompatible rules (for several months there was, and maybe still is, a scorched-earth argument on Wikipedia as to whether citations like "p. 83" should use a hard or soft space character).  However, in the interest of getting on with the mainspace work, our style guide was written at the very dawn of the wiki, without ever having extensive on-wiki debates over the specific choices made.    Ryan W 18:52, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

"Accurate" article titles

I somewhat disagree with the way you have renamed the articles Doomguy (to "Doom's protagonist") and the Icon of Sin (to "Final boss"). While this type of naming convention is decent, I would still argue that the original article names were better suited especially for this type of informal hobby encyclopedia. This is because Doom's protagonist is called "Doomguy" and the Doom II final boss "Icon of Sin" by nearly all Doom fans on the web. You could even say that calling them using these names is a strong community consensus and that they have basically become standard vocabulary in the community. Furthermore, this wiki's main function (at least the way I see it) is to serve the online Doom fan base, and articles about things should be named based on what names most doomers know them. Naturally this principle doesn't always apply/work and I can imagine there can be exceptions - but I don't think we should make one with these two articles (and in other similar cases). -- Janizdreg 22:25, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The point is accuracy ("objectivity") of information (which is what an encyclopedia especially strives for) rather than "common usage". If you repeatedly use Icon of Sin (a name pulled of the name of the level) and Doomguy (a nickname) here in that way you eliminate the understanding that they are those things, even if you mention it somewhere (any clarification is lost outside of the article itself). Because of the use of Doomguy the article was originally written almost as if it were a piece of fan fiction (the one in the wikipedia still suffers from this to a good degree). Besides, there are redirects for that reason. People will naturally and expectedly come looking for these things by hitting "Go" using the community names and will be led to the articles regardless of how they are named, and they will see their usage on the basic definition of the article. But only if the article is named more properly and that "doomguy" is a community nick do they keep that in mind while reading. Also, look at the quotes by the developers, they don't say "doomguy". In an article about "doomguy" you could define what "doomguy" is (a name given to the protagonist by fans), but is that article necessary? Not really, since that is easily offered in the article about the main character of the game in a handful of words. Doomguy and Icon of Sin are not NPOV. Should it be the wiki's role to further a bias, however widespread it is among certain circles, because we belong to such circles? (This being Doomworld and some other fan sites, where the term is used rather often.) Of course terms like Doomguy, vanilla Doom, classic Doom, Icon of Sin, need to be addressed and put in context... but used blindly?

You must admit that "Doom's protagonist" is in no way ambiguous.

And using "Doomguy" here is the equivalent of saying; "If some dude loads Doom with a PWAD that adds sprites without patching it with DeuTex, it hangs". That's also a very common way of saying things, yet it's not how you write a wiki sentence.

The best way to write an article that clearly informs a wide range of readers is by writing it as if you were from another planet, because your eye is open to describe and point out every relevant detail, and not by writing what is expected (people don't need to get informed about what they expect, because they already know it).

You and I, we clearly understand in the community sense what "Doomguy" is, after years of exposure to it, but someone who is newer to the community has to initiate himself in all these terms (often used in a way that takes them for granted), and that makes a wiki much more obscure to those not in the fandom circle.

These two (Doomguy, Icon of Sin) are obvious examples, but this happens a lot in more subtle ways each time a term is reused loosely without considering what it really implies; sentences become shorter since the reader is assumed to know what all these community terms are, and readable only to some and with a particular bent. A lot of my tweaking has to do with that issue, and it's why I find so much to improve... there's tons to expand and fine tune.

Trust me, edits of mine of this sort may seem arbitrary at first glance, but they have all to do with how I reinforce the text, making it readable so either a guy from the community or someone else can read it and say "ah". If one is alarmed at "Doomguy" is moved to "Doom's protagonist" it's because the article was there first (by resistance due to habit). Who is like God? 23:16, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

You do have valid points there. I stand corrected, and I agree. Thanks for clearing out the reasoning behind your edits. Never the less I'd advice you to consider about discussing renaming/moving major articles with other Doom Wiki members before acting. -- Janizdreg 01:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

myk, thank you for writing the above; it makes a lot of your edits easier to understand.  I think we still disagree about this one, but you apparently agree that "common usage" titles like chaingunner can be described in gameplay articles (despite the difficulty of footnoting them), which at least answers my "misconception" question.

Although I personally give advance notice about large projects, I can see why someone else might not (most contributors only drop in every so often, so it is frequently impossible to generate discussion about a change until after it is made).  I predict however that if you continue to make 1,000 edits per month, this kind of thing will happen regularly.

Janizdreg, I disagree that "informal hobby encyclopedia" is the consensus viewpoint (here is what the policy page looked like when I arrived).  Doom2.net and the ZDoom Wiki are informal hobby encyclopedias.  This is intended as a scholarly project, or at least as close as may be with so few good models to follow.    Ryan W 04:58, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The way I see it, Doom Wiki is "informal" (though a better word would probably be "unofficial") in the sense that this isn't an official Doom database operating under id Software's blessing and control. Therefore we aren't strictly limited to (for example) using wording coined by id and we can and should use or at least mention vocabulary common amongst the fans in addition to the "official" stuff.

Of course if you were referring to the writing/content style of this wiki, then there is nothing to debate about, since I do know this wiki aims to be written in the style of official encyclopedias. -- Janizdreg 21:59, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Spiderdemon

Why did you rename "spider mastermind" into "spiderdemon"? I know it's named "spiderdemon" in the first Doom game, but every Doom game released after it (including Ultimate Doom) has called it "spider mastermind", so one could imagine that id "officially" wanted to change its name into that. -- Janizdreg 23:10, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

By taking anything beyond Doom II as secondary (including The Ultimate Doom, which half the main developers didn't have anything to do with), and Doom over Doom II if there's a contradiction, since it's the original thing. Keep in mind that spider mastermind comes from spiderdemon (it means "spiderdemon that masterminded the invasion"). Who is like God? 23:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd still say that whichever id considers to be the official name should be used. But until we can find it out, I guess we should prefer "spiderdemon", as per the rationale you mentioned. -- Janizdreg 20:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Doom#Extensibility

Okay, so if not "foxing", what is the accepted term?  I thought that was an infamous event in modding history.    Ryan W 02:04, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: Central Processing thread

since decisions should depend on the comments you hid.   Um... what?  I haven't deleted anything, as far as I know.    Ryan W 06:59, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I *think* he might be referring to the CodeImp bio article itself, in which case I have pointed him to the necessary information in that thread. Nuxius 07:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I must apologize here; I meant the CodeImp talk; but it's all still in Central processing, so you can ignore what I said. Who is like God? 07:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

People have blanked their user talk pages before; we had a brief discussion a while ago about whether to revert it as vandalism, but nobody really seemed very concerned.    Ryan W 07:19, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Screen shot guideline / mop-up

myk wrote: For examples of bad screen shots see E1M3: Toxin Refinery (Doom).   I happen to know how those were taken, and I thought they had an acceptable aspect ratio because they had square pixels (letterboxing).  But if I understand your guideline, they are not OK.  For example, this and this meet your guideline, but this and this do not meet it because they have "non-vanilla-like" aspect ratio correction.  Is that what you're saying?    Ryan W 14:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, the latter two make no corrections (Doom95 only adds to the area viewed). The E1M3 shots (640x400) would have looked correctly in the game, where the engine stretches the pixels, but not here (where the browser draws square pixels). Who is like God? 19:21, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

would have looked correctly in the game   Actually no, because they were taken with ZDoom, where the stretching can be turned off.  However, I now understand Fraggle's "VGA card" arguments better, so I think I am going to stop doing that.    Ryan W 14:43, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Was that supposed to be a correction or something? One would assume the user would use 640x400 correctly in the first place. Whether 640x400 may appear as a 16:10 mode would depend on the video card drivers. On my computer these modes show up only as 4:3 modes. Who is like God? 02:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

For example, this and this meet your guideline, but this and this do not meet it because they have "non-vanilla-like" aspect ratio correction.

And that's my problem with this. It takes a blanket approach, adopting this practice to all in game screen shots, instead of just those that are taken using the original Doom executable.

That screen shot of Doom 95, for example, is correct because that is exactly how it appears in Doom 95. To change it would not be an accurate representation of how Doom 95 displays the image, thus changing it would be wrong.

For the E1M9 image, on the other hand, the image that is captured is not correct, because it is not an accurate representation of how it appears during gameplay. In this case, as myk suggests, the image would need to be stretched vertically by 20% to a 4:3 ratio in order to compensate.

Moving on, other source ports use different styles of aspect ratio correction, Vavoom and ZDoomGL, for instance, apply it differently from other ports (Vavoom, for example, never applies it to the status bar, always applies it to sprites, and gives you a option as to whether or not you want to apply it to the "world".) What if I'm showing off a particular project for one of these ports? Why should I have to change them? Applying these guidelines would make an screen shot that is not representative of how the author intended it to look. This is just flat out wrong, and this "guideline" makes no concession for this.

There are also the screen shots for consoles that this rule can obviously not be applied to.

As far as I am concerned,

Screen shots should be taken in software rendered mode, with settings resembling vanilla Doom as closely as possible (unless the screen shot is for showing off a port specifically or belongs to an add-on that requires the use of such a source port).

is a better guideline when it comes to this. I bolded the part that could definitely use some further clarification, however. We can do this by removing the guideline myk added, and instead taking it and using pieces of it here to help a user better understand what "with settings resembling vanilla Doom as closely as possible" means and how this applies to the screen shots they take. Nuxius 05:44, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

And that's my problem with this. It takes a blanket approach, adopting this practice to all in game screen shots, instead of just those that are taken using the original Doom executable.

It takes that approach only for shots that would need stretching or an adjustment to appear as they do ingame. The two guidelines aren't contradictory, and are talking about different things. The E1M9 and Doom95 shots each fail in regard to one of the two guidelines; the former isn't stretched properly (it's in 16:10 rather than 4:3), the latter is not like the standard executable (and thus not suitable unless we're trying to show how Doom95 renders these modes; rather badly). The new guideline never says it has to be applied to everything. It starts by saying that the shots should be suitable for viewing online, and then gives the most common example and how to deal with it specifically. Who is like God? 19:14, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

The E1M9 shot was 16:10 in-game as well, even though my monitor is physically 4:3.  Hence the term "letterboxing".  I used 640x400 because I was imitating Fredrik's screen shots for E1M1, which are also 640x400, but I didn't ask him whether or not they were stretched to 4:3 on his monitor.  Perhaps my graphics card is merely behaving oddly (it wouldn't be the first time).

In any case, I initially chose the E1M1 images to imitate because the "widescreen" format looked cool, not because I had ever seen a DOS version with a widescreen mode.  However, even your expanded guideline does not say that screen shots must be taken with a vanilla executable; it merely says that whatever port I choose must be configured so that its screen shots look like vanilla.  I think I now comprehend your argument for standardization, and will switch to 640x480 as soon as I remember to.  (If people actually start a massive replacement effort, we'll see how many other opinions emerge from the woodwork).

Nuxius, I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with your general point, but I do think the wording "suitable for Internet browsers" is misleading; it sounds like we are responding to some characteristic of HTML or of browser software specifically, which isn't the case.  If I understand what myk is saying, the difference between the in-game view and the image file happens at a much lower level: one could play Doom in stretched 320x200 mode (4:3), dump a screen shot, and then open it immediately with Photoshop, where it would appear unstretched (16:10).    Ryan W 17:02, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

However, even your expanded guideline does not say that screen shots must be taken with a vanilla executable; it merely says that whatever port I choose must be configured so that its screen shots look like vanilla.

I think I know what you mean, but it's not that the screen shot should look like in vanilla (as some might use transparency, dynamic lighting, or pixel smoothing), but rather just to use the physical proportions the artists intended for the graphics. Proper 16:10 would stretch sprites and stuff like 640x480 mode does in ports that make the necessary adjustments (which Doom95 doesn't); it wouldn't just be like a flatter 4:3 640x400 (flatter in a 4:3 monitor, that is).

Using a "desktop" mode with square pixels, an imp in a screen shot from such a mode would look "right", unlike TROOA1 opened in The GIMP. A 16:10 640x400 shot (note the equivalency between physical ratio and pixel ratio) taken in a 16:10 monitor would still look fine in the desktop environment of a 4:3 monitor, although you wouldn't be able to make it fit the whole screen (it'd either get cropped on the sides, or get black spaces beneath and below). A 4:3 640x400 shot, on the other hand, would also not fit as "full screen", but would also look wrong (flat).

The other guideline is the one that says shots should look like from vanilla (unless they are for other engines); this would include +20% height proportions (which should best be applied to any shot for the PC games, even those that otherwise don't need to look like vanilla, unless the engine it is from doesn't have properly adjusted modes), but also other things, such as to use software mode, to not use a HUD, and to add no extra effects (decals, particle effects, transparency, rocket trails, crosshair, HUD, &c).

To surmise, one says, "use a vanilla appearance unless it's for a mod that assumes added stuff", the other, "try to always make sure the sprites and map environment are drawn with proper proportions" (x1.2 height). Who is like God? 22:14, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Cheat code articles improvement

I'm curious, do you intend to improve the cheat code articles in a similar fashion to what you did to the command line parameters list? I think such a treatment would improve those articles equally well. -- Janizdreg 18:41, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I dodn't have it in my immediate plans, but that sounds like a thing to do. At least it would allow links to specific cheats. I did have going over cheats stuff in mind in general though (the other cheating articles also need fleshing out) Who is like God? 19:14, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

i know but it wasnt me who moved iwads it was cyberdemon

it was cyberdemon4