Forum:Establishing rules for FCs

Forums: Yew Grove > Establishing rules for FCs

This page or section is an archive. Please do not edit the contents of this page. This thread was archived on 21 November 2017 by JaydenKieran.

Because of RS:PDDA, we implicitly disallow mentions of specific friend chats within the content of an article. I wanted to open a small discussion about this and to gather thoughts on whether this should remain and become an explicit addition to the policy, or if we should change this.

My thoughts on this, and the reason for making this thread, stems from a discussion that was had on Discord a few months ago when the topic was brought up, where myself and I think Gaz mentioned that we both wouldn't really be opposed to having links or mentions of well-established FCs that are relevant to articles.

I think it could be beneficial for players to look on articles for Penguin Hide and Seek or whatever and be able to see a well-established FC for that activity (in this case, w60pengs). It could perhaps be done as a template, like {{Official world}}, but only mentioning a well-established FC.

This, on the other hand, could cause some slight issues. It may look like we are favouring specific FCs over others, and vetting individual FCs may take time and effort that we may not want to invest in given the small number of editors we currently have. The talk page of relevant articles (like the Peng H&S article) could be used to gain consensus for adding a FC to an article, but I know that people miss messages on talk pages often.

So, I'm throwing this over to everyone else. We're a prominent figure within the RuneScape community, so I think it makes sense to generate some more links with other groups in the community (RS:LINKS is pretty outdated, and most sites linked there are dead, though that's an issue for another time), but there are some concerns that I at least have about how this could be handled. Do we allow mentioning FCs? If so, under what restrictions?

Discussion

Comment - I'm not going to give a support/oppose here yet because, as outlined in the thread, there are reasons that I can see for and against this https://i.imgur.com/xHR7zpA.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/6encXAo.png 19:27, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

Support, but with restrictions TBD - I think well established FCs should be mentioned on the page of the content they're focussed on, but I don't know how it should be determined whether an FC is well established or not. Or what kind of restrictions should be made. However there should be some kind of restriction that can be monitored. Salix of Prifddinas ^(Talk) 19:59, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

See below for updated comment. Salix of Prifddinas ^(Talk) 19:58, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

Support - I agree with Salix that well established and well known FCs for activities should be mentioned. Things like Fast SC for SC, Portables, Raid FC for raids. I do not want to list FCs used for buying/selling things, such as DG floors or FCs that are not public and toxic, like every warbands FC ever. User:TyA/sig 22:01, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

Comment - Just want to comment that Raid FC is fairly notorious for being toxic, unfriendly and annoying to deal with. So would toxic FCs still be added? --User:KelseW/Signature 22:09, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

That is a fair point. I've never actually used them, so didn't really know. User:TyA/sig 22:11, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

I agree that if we were to allow this, we should probably use "non-commercial" as a one of the restrictions/rules. That phrase seems to work as a "catch-all". Maybe we could make it so a FC has to get consensus on the article's talk page before being added as the "established FC" template or whatever we'd have on the page to add some form of quality control? Then any FCs that are added to a page without gaining consensus should be removed https://i.imgur.com/xHR7zpA.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/6encXAo.png 22:30, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

Support some - I love the idea of adding very known FCs to articles, but how will we define them as known or not? SC, Portables and Pengs are the only ones I know on top of my hands, so those can for sure be added. - Jr Mime (talk) _[VSTF] 22:17, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

Oppose - I feel this opens the door to potential endless edit wars between members/owners of these FCs, all wishing to have their FC listed because they believe theirs is superior. As mentioned above, it would be difficult to not make it seem we are favouring specific FCs. To be completely unbiased we would have to either list ALL of the FC's or list none of them. I vote none of them. MAGE-KIL-R 22:57, November 14, 2017 (UTC)

Oppose - First, you'd need to establish criteria for well-established for FCs and which activities/purposes are and are not relevant for mention. Second, even using your example of w60pengs (which is an overflow chat, not a main chat), if you think there's unanimous agreement over which chats are and are not well-established, there's not. Do you really want to invite edit wars to the wiki, because (even for penguins, again, as an example) it's going to happen? User:Saftzie/Signature 09:49, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

Oppose - Per Mage-Kil-R --Scuzzy Beta 15:42, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

Oppose - Although it is helpful information that I would really like to see added, there are just too many unanswered questions which are, perhaps insurmountable. What does "well established" mean? What makes a chat "toxic" for some may be tolerable to others. Why is one chat better than another? (Harmed Ore/Trah Fun comes to mind here). The list goes on. The only way I could see this working is if we had some kind of system by which someone could submit for consideration a relevant FC and have it go through some kind of rating/ranking/voting process by users, something like an up/down vote idea. Even then, a disclaimer would be needed to say RSW is not responsible for the chat, does not endorse, etc etc. So, I am not completely against the idea, but I don't know of a "safe" way to implement this. If anyone can come up with a good system for this, we should revisit the discussion at that time. User:Myles Prower/Signature 16:42, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

Oppose - Whilst good in principle, I think it's bad in practice. There is another way that this could be achieved however: allow them to use the User space instead. I've nae idea if this suggestion is better or nae, but it seems to be working for PODS Fc Template:Signatures/Ciphrius Kane 16:48, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

Comment - Along these lines, I could possibly see supporting the idea if rather than maintain current FCs in specific articles, if we maintained a "database" of FCs on a single page, where different FCs could be added under specific headings, and the talk page for this article could be used for discussion of adding more, removing one because dead/bad experience, etc. On an article such as Penguin Hide and Seek we could put either a link or template box/banner thing at the top that showed there may be an active FC for this activity, 'click here' to visit our FC page. In this way, we could at least make sure that FCs appear on that one page (and ONLY that page) for ease of moderation.User:Myles Prower/Signature 17:02, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

What about if we had a Lua module with approved FCs already mapped to their pages? So then you'd just need to add the template to the specific article and it'll already fill in what has been approved. The module talk page could be used for changes perhaps? https://i.imgur.com/xHR7zpA.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/6encXAo.png 17:09, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

The only issue I see with that is the idea of "approval". I hesitate to say it, but the idea about that single article with listed friends chats was more about telling users "Hey, there are some FCs out there. They might be good, they might be bad. We don't endorse or moderate. Use at your own risk. Batteries not included." It would be moderated to some extent, for example if someone reported on the talk page that the FC is breaking Jagex rules, it would be removed. But as long as the FC isn't specifically rule breaking (ie, the "toxic" discussion above) it is for the user to decide if they want to use it, not the Wiki. After all, the Wiki is in the business of providing information which is helpful to players, not about deciding what information is good or bad, and if we list any FC explicitly on an article, I can only forsee more problems than it would be worth in the form of arguing over the fact that we have inherently "endorsed" one FC over another. If however we make it policy to list and categorize the FCs on that one page only with a sort of disclaimer, we eliminate some (not all) of the foreseen issues. User:Myles Prower/Signature 17:21, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

I feel like having a page that just lists friends chats and not allowing friends chats to be mentioned outside of this might be viable. It would allow for multiple fcs for the same activity to be listed, so edit wars between competing chats could be avoided. The page could be linked to, rather than fcs being mentioned on loads of different articles, which would make moderation easy. We could go without having "well established" as a criteria: this is impossible to define fairly and would exclude some useful things. For example User:Galian prist/PODS is a really useful yet I wouldn't consider the chats listed to be established. This would mean that there could potentially be some unpleasant/unhelpful/inactive chats listed, but I think displaying a warning saying that we are not responsible for quality of chats and that players should use caution etc would be fair enough. We don't want to be involved in trying to sort out unverifiable complaints about friends chats but we could exclude things like chats that no longer work as this would be easy for editors to check up on. IsobelJ 21:43, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

Comment - I support the idea to include FCs in some way, however I agree with Myles Prower that one page of an overview of FCs would be better and would be more informative (let the player decide) instead of promoting/endorsing certain FCs on specific pages and it'll also (hopefully) reduce or even nullify edit wars about FCs as per MAGE-KIL-R's and Saftzie's concerns. It might be too much of hassle though unless we can come up with a way to determine what a well established FC is. Salix of Prifddinas ^(Talk) 19:58, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

Comment - As it happens I was thinking about this recently. Part of the problem is that we basically pretend they don't exist at all. And this goes against our function of helping users get information they need. There are a number of activities where we cannot possibly keep up-to-date information on the wiki (Penguin Hide and Seek/viswax/Soul obbies) and if you asked someone about the activity they would tell you to use the fc (or forums - sometimes a forum thread is just as useful as a fc). That is the most useful advice for the activity. Therefore, for the article to give the most useful information possible we must also give this advice. This could be as simple as "Many players use a friends chat to find the most recent locations for this activity. It is recommended that players search on the Runescape Official Forums for groups providing up-to-date information" (wording could be improved of course). At least then we don't leave readers just as oblivious as before they read the article. Currently, not doing this, we are failing to give the most useful guidance to readers of these articles and failing at what we're here to do.
Any way, if we do choose to effectively endorse certain FCs, we could keep a list of approved friends chats and require any changes to the list come through Yew Grove to avoid all the riffraff getting in. If we're realistic about it, there are definitely FCs out there that are trustworthy and reliable so it's not an impossible task to choose some to include on the wiki. --Henneyj 00:39, November 16, 2017 (UTC)

I don't think going through the YG is necessary for something like this. What about a new process like FIMG called Featured FCs? User:Cqm/Signature

Comment - It seems to me so far most users are in opposition to listing individual FCs on articles, but there is some support for a possible central listing "FC Directory" type idea. In light of this, I created an example page at User:Myles Prower/FC Listings just to give some idea of what I mentioned the other day in case anyone was unsure. I also put a sample messagebox at the top of that page. This messagebox is what we could put on the articles themselves if there is an associated FC to direct the player to the listings. Just my thoughts here. I hope nobody feels like I am hijacking this thread, so if necessary we could move discussion of this idea to a different forum; I just thought it would give a possible direction to move in, as I was originally opposed without further context (so I came up with my own context). User:Myles Prower/Signature 17:23, November 16, 2017 (UTC)

You're not hijacking at all. I opened this thread to start a dialogue, without any real proposal, to gauge opinion and see if anyone can come up with ideas https://i.imgur.com/xHR7zpA.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/6encXAo.png 17:38, November 16, 2017 (UTC)

I like this idea. If this were to be implemented, should we allow all FC's to be listed to avoid appearing as if we are favouring specific ones? MAGE-KIL-R 22:49, November 16, 2017 (UTC)

Why would we create a listing of FCs if we won't allow them to be listed on the article that is relevant to it? User:TyA/sig 22:58, November 16, 2017 (UTC)

A fair point. Again, my only concern is that we need to either list all of them or none or them. Whether that list is on the specific articles or on a "directory" type page. Otherwise it will be endless edit wars. MAGE-KIL-R 00:05, November 17, 2017 (UTC)

I like this idea (Myles' example) as well. Salix of Prifddinas ^(Talk) 00:19, November 17, 2017 (UTC)

Oppose - To be concise, my reasoning is the same reason we avoid uncited mentions of players. It's subjective and can be easily outdated. Superiosity the Dragonrider: User:Superiosity/Signature chat 10:37, November 17, 2017 (UTC)

Further comment - This might also fall under subjectively, but mentioning specific FCs could potentially attract edit wars/malicious editing/vandalism. Superiosity the Dragonrider: User:Superiosity/Signature chat 10:42, November 17, 2017 (UTC)

Oppose - I would advise against placing such accounts in the mainspace due to the potential for edit warring from rival chats. It would be entirely up to individual editors if they want to make their own lists in their own userspace. One option could be to list the chats on the talk pages of the various articles in place of the articles themselves. We would also need to consider how often these distraction chats might need to be replaced as it isn't unheard of that they become abandoned as an activity loses interest in the game should this proposal pass now or similarly in the future. Ryan PM 03:56, November 18, 2017 (UTC)

Oppose - On the grounds that even if this is meant to provide information, we should remain neutral with respect to the FCs. Unless you intend to somehow list every friends' chat there ever was, that is not going to happen. bad_fetus^talk 08:11, November 18, 2017 (UTC)

Closed - There is no consensus here to allow friend chats to be listed on mainspace articles outright, so I'll update RS:PLAYER to firmly establish this within the policy. There is some discussion about ways that we can help readers by providing friend chat info that may be non-disruptive, so if anyone wishes to make concrete proposals regarding those they can do so by creating a new thread on the Yew Grove. https://i.imgur.com/xHR7zpA.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/6encXAo.png 19:40, November 21, 2017 (UTC)