Difference between revisions of "Dungeons and Dragons Wiki:Rating Articles"

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(Rating Rules and Guidelines: one more guideline that should be set down)
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An article that has at least 4 ratings that average at least 3.5 is eligible to be shown on the main page as a community favorite. These articles are shown in a random rotation, with one appearing each time anyone loads the main page, and are a great way for a great piece of work to get the attention of more casual users of the wiki. An article must meet this criteria for a full week before it is added to the rotation.
 
An article that has at least 4 ratings that average at least 3.5 is eligible to be shown on the main page as a community favorite. These articles are shown in a random rotation, with one appearing each time anyone loads the main page, and are a great way for a great piece of work to get the attention of more casual users of the wiki. An article must meet this criteria for a full week before it is added to the rotation.
  
===Article Summary===
+
===Favorite Blurb===
 
The article must have a paragraph or two summary written up about it, in the same way that published works have a product blurb on their back cover. This may be written by anyone once the article has reached community favorite status, though the author of the article retains final say over the form of their blurb.
 
The article must have a paragraph or two summary written up about it, in the same way that published works have a product blurb on their back cover. This may be written by anyone once the article has reached community favorite status, though the author of the article retains final say over the form of their blurb.
  

Revision as of 20:48, 22 December 2012

Introduction

Using the Wiki

Community Portal

Navigating the Wiki

Canon Content Requirements

Homebrew Content Requirements

Publication Transcriptions

General Editing Policy

General Deletion Policy

Uploading Images

Wiki Syntax

Rating articles is a process that helps us find and show off community homebrew favorites, while also providing feedback and critiques of those articles we don't like quite as much. All registered users are welcome and encouraged to rate homebrew articles.

Rating a Homebrew Article

Rating an article is as easy as clicking the link in the information box on the right side of the page, selecting one of the ratings values from the drop down, writing your reasons for doing so, and clicking submit. Your rating will automatically be formatted with your user name and placed on the article's talk page while you continue browsing.

Note that the article will not display your rating in the count immediately. It should display the next time the page is navigated to, not just when it is next refreshed, but it may take a couple of days in some cases. If it still hasn't updated the numbers after that time, you can edit and save the article to show the changes immediately.

Since we use these ratings for helping determine which articles to show or remove, we try to keep everyone on the same page as to their meaning. In general, if you are rating an article with a particular value, you are saying...

  • Favor (or 4 out of 4): ...that this article is good enough to be featured on the front page of the wiki. This is likely work that you would recommend to other games, recommend to players in your own games, or ask to use in games where you are a player.
  • Like (or 3 out of 4): ...that this article is good, but not among the best that we've got. This is likely work that you would include in your own games and ask to use when you played in others, but might not recommend to other games in general.
  • Neural (or 2 out of 4): ...that this article is ok. You would use allow players in your games to use it if they asked, but you probably wouldn't recommend it to others or volunteer it.
  • Dislike (or 1 out of 4): ...that this article is deficient in some way. It's not so bad that you want to see it removed, but you probably wouldn't use it or let it be used in your games.
  • Oppose (or 0 out of 4): ...that this article is terrible and doesn't belong on the wiki. It is so bad that you want it removed from our normal navigation and placed in a sandbox of the author instead.
Manual Rating
If you aren't logged in, it's slightly more involved: you have to fill in a template on the article's talk page. Simply copy the code from the spoiler below into the talk page, fill in the sections as indicated, and save the page. The article will update with the new rating within a couple of days, or you can edit and save the article to show the changes immediately.
{{Rating 
|rater=<-your wiki username-> 
|rating=<-choose one of: love, like, neutral, dislike, or hate-> 
|reason=<-the reason the article deserves the rating you are giving it->
}}

Additional information regarding the use of use the rating template, including examples, can be found on the Rating Template page.

Outdated Ratings

Sometimes an article will go through a substantial revision, and the old criticisms will no longer apply to it. In these cases, it's not fair for a rating to bring down the related page since it no longer applies. These ratings can be marked as outdated and not added in to the ratings on the article page with the addition of the "|OldRating=NewVersion" parameter in the template.

Legacy Ratings

We have previously worked with two different ratings styles, neither of which we use any longer. Both of these used different ratings structures from out current version. We didn't want throw out the ratings that these generated, however, and so we have mapped them to the new scale instead. Some even use a depreciated template and need to be migrated to the new template. They can be identified by their Legacy Rating text, and should be updated by their rater when possible.

Rating Rules and Guidelines

There are several standard practices and rules for rating articles. We have established these chiefly for the purpose of assuring fair and reasonably objective ratings, hopefully eliminating several sorts of bias.

Respect Balance Categories

One of the primary criteria often used in evaluating an article's quality is its relative power or balance. Here on the Dungeons and Dragons Wiki, we recognize that there are many philosophies of balance and that one is not necessarily superior to any other. Therefore, we attach to many types of homebrew a trait that we call "balance categories" or "balance points". When rating an article with a listed balance point (found in the author template), it is imperative that you appraise its balance against its balance point, not against what you feel is the "proper" power level. For more information on balance points, see our Project page on Balance Points.

Rate on Article's Merit

It is important to rate articles on their own merits, and not on the merits of things that they happen to represent. If an article is a psionic power, for example, it is inappropriate to rate it badly because you happen to dislike the psionics subsystem. Such a rating is not helpful for those who do like the system and are looking for quality homebrew within it. Any rating that does not address the merits of an article may be called out as such on the rater's talk page, and potentially removed by an administrator if not altered.

Do Not Self-Rate

We do not allow users to rate their own material. We believe it is reasonable to assume that an author has a biased opinion of an article that he/she has written or adopted, and therefore such self-ratings are removed whenever they occur. If you are the (co-)author or adopter of an article, do not rate it yourself. You are, however, free to ask others for ratings — indeed, several Community Favorites got sufficient ratings for their status by means of asking directly for them. When making such requests, please do not attempt to cherry-pick whom you ask in order to achieve maximal ratings, and similarly do not ask for a specific rating; both such activities compromise the objectivity we seek to establish.

Community Favorites

An article that has at least 4 ratings that average at least 3.5 is eligible to be shown on the main page as a community favorite. These articles are shown in a random rotation, with one appearing each time anyone loads the main page, and are a great way for a great piece of work to get the attention of more casual users of the wiki. An article must meet this criteria for a full week before it is added to the rotation.

Favorite Blurb

The article must have a paragraph or two summary written up about it, in the same way that published works have a product blurb on their back cover. This may be written by anyone once the article has reached community favorite status, though the author of the article retains final say over the form of their blurb.

The favorite blurb can be created by replacing the "Favorite Article (Identifier)" text in the field below with the article name, like "Amazing Writing (3.5e Feat)", and clicking the button. This will take you to a new page with fields that can be edited for the favored article. If there already is a favorite blurb for the article, you will instead be taken to it for editing.

Adding an article to this rotation is not an automatic process, and requires an administrator to complete the process manually. Once the summary has been written and formatted, the author (or one of the co-authors) of the summary will need to ask a user with administrative access to add the summary to the main page rotation. Once added, the summary will be locked so it can only be edited or updated by a user with administrative access. The authors should be sure that they are happy with the summary before it is moved.

If the admin user is unresponsive, the author(s) should feel free to ask another admin user to complete the process. No more than one administrative user should be asked at any given time, however. There's no reason to spam these requests, and doing so may cause all of the admins to ignore the request.

Adding to Rotation

This process is for administrators to add a requested article to rotation.

Community Opposed

Community Opposed is a status reserved for articles that are considered so poor by so many users that we don't want to show them in the main navigation. An article with 4 or more ratings and an average of 0.5 or less qualifies for this status. If an article has this status for one week, it may be moved to a sandbox of the author's user page without further notice. Any user may complete this move, but whoever does so should add a link to the article to the author's user page.

Once an article is sandboxed in this fashion, it may not be moved back into the main navigation until such time as it has undergone changes and revisions that invalidate enough ratings to remove this status. Any ratings invalidated in this fashion should be marked as outdated by adding the "|OldRating=NewVersion" parameter to the rating template. The raters should also be notified of these changes, so that they can update their ratings and remove the tag. If an article becomes opposed again, it will be removed again after another week.

Rated Pages

While adding any rating is useful, users may also want to find pages that have already been rated to add their own voice to. Users may also want to find articles rated by a particular user. The following link is useful for this, but you will need to enter their user name in the "Value" field. This field is case sensitive, so if you enter the name incorrectly you will not get useful results.