User talk:SuckingVacuum

Hey there! I'd like to discuss your recent edits motivated by the discussion at Template_talk:Ability_details.

You moved all wiki_description text into the ability_details field but I feel that this makes the ability more difficult to understand at a glance. It also seem to go against the purpose of the ability_details field which is only supposed to contain minor details, not the general description of how the ability works.

I recognize that your edits makes sense in that many abilities had completely empty, or misused wiki_descriptions that contained way too much information. However, I would much rather see that all abilities without proper wiki_description got a nice, short and clear description than removing the field altogether, as I expressed on that talk page.

Thus, I would like to undo your changes to the Ability Details template, along with starting to revise wiki_descriptions of hero abilities so that each contains the amount and kind of information it is supposed to: A short, general description of how the ability works, similar to the official description, but more clear. -- Ecen (talk) 17:23, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * There is no "supposed to" here. Wikis are determined by consensus. If people agree the ability_details field should contain "detailed ability information that is not contained in the official description or statistics", then it shall be so. You created the template, I'll admit, but you don't own it any more than I own the pages on the page notes I also created yesterday, because nobody owns anything on a wiki. I have just as much a right as you to decide the semantics of the template parameters.


 * Your opinion is that wiki_description is necessary; my opinion is that it should work as it does on the successful Dota 2 wiki, and does not need to be modified with some rarely-necessary nonsense that just makes the cells cramped. Neither of these beliefs is right by itself. So I will do nothing at all, and I suggest you do the same. If other editors besides you revert my changes, I shall accept that consensus was not on my side. SuckingVacuum (talk) 17:59, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I am in no way invoking special treatment of my opinions for any reason whatsoever, and when I say "supposed to" I am only referring to the template documentation as it stood before your change. If I gave the impression of something else I apologize! What I am expressing here is simply my non-consent to your edits. I find it much better to bring the discussion directly to you rather than possibly starting an undo war. As such, I am somewhat offended by your complete rejection of my opinion, as a consensus through discussion is what I am trying to reach with you.


 * Now, what you call rarely necessary nonsense I think is very useful to get a quick overview of the ability. I will take Mercy's passive Angelic Descent as an example. The official description for that ability is "Propelled by her Valkyrie suit, Mercy slows the speed of her descent from great heights.", yet the ability has a stat outlining how quickly the ability will let Mercy regenerate health. That seems confusing. The official description also leaves it very unclear how her ability to fall slow works. Does she always fall slowly? It is listed as a passive ability after all. Or is it only activated in certain situations? With the information of the wiki_description moved to the ability_details field, an extra click is required to find out about this basic ability behavior, and that information could be interleaved with minor details such as "When this ability is active, Mercy's wings are visibly extended." which is clearly much less important to ones understanding of the ability. This is in stark difference to the Dota 2 wiki where ability descriptions are of much greater detail than our official descriptions, and their "Notes" fields are always visible.


 * In fact, if I may share the reason for the initial inclusion of the wiki_description field, it was to allow for ability descriptions that much more resemble precisely those seen on the Dota 2, and similar games wikis, than what Blizzard's official descriptions does. -- Ecen (talk) 19:22, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * If visibility is what matters, why not simply make the "Details" section of the template visible by default, as it is on those other wikis? Could you live with that?


 * I agree that Mercy needs work, and even I felt a little guilty about removing some of that information. I'll see if I can scrounge up some time to fix her soon, but she's quite an exceptional hero. I don't think one hero justifies the extra parameters for all the others. As I recall, every other hero had no information in that field that I felt unjustified in letting the official description speak, or moving it to ability_details. SuckingVacuum (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I properly re-read several heroes official descriptions and most of them are indeed much less ambiguous than what have been my impression. I mostly keep an eye on Mercy and Torbjörn, so admittedly my impression of the official descriptions had grown rather skewed, I simply hadn't realized it. And I agree, one hero, or very few, does not justify extra required parameters for all the others. And with that, I think my previous arguments have no ground.


 * Making the Details section visible by default would still be something one might want to do, but that would probably just clutter the page, especially for those abilities that have rather lengthy such sections. An other thing one could do is add a field, similar to the Details one, but whose header is only showed when it contains something (as should really the Details sections header), that might be used for listing the most important details, or assist in clarifying abilities like Mercy's, or any other odd ability that might have a lacking description. But all those things are really questions or improvements for another day, I think.


 * Thank you for this discussion, and thank you for removing the frankly damn ugly, empty or overfull column on most hero abilities. Great visual improvement! -- Ecen (talk) 22:33, 9 March 2017 (UTC)