User talk:Drebin 679

Hi. I appreciate your analysis ... it's very helpful. One overarching response: UniWiki seems to serve two conflicting audiences: expert players who want detailed, analytic insight into the bowels of the game, and new players who are trying to integrate a wide variety of factual bits and want surveys and examples. I got started trying to edit here when I wanted to find the basic difference between a missile and a projectile, and the two pages were mostly mathematics about explosion radius and falloff distance. I understand those now, but at the time it was very frustrating.

• Tanking. The question that new players ask is "how should I fit my frigate?" They're really not interested in the math of stacking penalties - nor should they be ... one of the things that makes this game so much fun is that there's always more to learn. But I agree with you that the sample fits are out of place. I'll delete them.
• Note: when UniWiki removed the fittings examples from its ship description pages, it didn't just delete information, it deleted authority. Experts argue about how to best fit ship for a given situation, but new players just want to see a fit or two that experts generally agree is OK. (EVE Workbench doesn't provide that ... it's impossible to tell which of their fittings work well.) I can see why it's controversial, but it stills feels like an unfilled need.
• Weapons. The definition of "weapon" is a module that affects an enemy ship. That doesn't necessarily imply damage. It looks to me like E-War is on the line between damage and logistics. But unless it is its own category, it has to be something. (I don't have any experience with the newest weapons, so someone else will have to make those changes.)
• Scanning. If you're a new player, who has never dealt with the words "directional" or "probe", and you type "scanning" into the search box, what should happen? I looked at some of the page links. Many, if not most, of them deal with exploration, and the Exploration template has "scanning" in its list. I don't see why that necessarily should take you to probe scanning, as d-scan is pretty useful in exploration. Many of the others are lines like: "You may refer to the Scanning and Exploration guides if you want to learn about finding wormholes." If you want to delete the page, I won't argue, but I don't quite understand your point ... what did the word "scanning" link to before? Or am I not understanding the problem?
• Yeah, you're surely right that there are a number of incomplete entries, not to mention flat out errors. Ummm ... there's a lot I don't know; and so it goes. I don't envy you the job of trying to keep all this info straight.
• Missiles are slow: The new player's question is - "what's the difference between a missile and a laser?" How do you answer that in one sentence? This gets back to my earlier point. Expert players will read that box and laugh at how simplistic it is. But new players will, one hopes, realize that missiles have to travel while laser beams are instantaneous. Again, if you want to delete it, I won't argue. But I don't see that it's enormously misleading.
• I get your point on the small edits. If I keep editing, I'll find a way to make fewer small changes.
• I went to this page UniWiki:To-Do List expecting to find a list of things to do. User:Noemie belacqua is listed at the bottom as one of the curators, and since I had talked to her a year or two ago, I went to check her page. Her to-do list is still up, and there's no obvious way to see that she's not active.
• I'll have to think about whether or not I want to keep doing this. I honestly don't have time for bureaucracy, benign as it might be. And my main purpose is, you know, to play the game.
• No hard feelings. I DO appreciate your comments - insight into how this wiki works is good stuff.
• Take care and stay safe.

Qwer Stoneghost talk Sun, Nov 22, 2020 11:01 EST US

Appreciate the response.

• For the record, I was against the removal of ship fittings, in part for the very reason that you stated. New players now have to wade through zKill and EWB for decent looking fits, and don't necessarily have the means to discern good fits from bad, or the right fit for their situation. I had an instance a few weeks back where a person tried using a Forward Post Leshak fit as a Forward Operating Base basher, which are two entirely different scenarios! And believe me, I am not pleased in the slightest that an edit I made to the ShipArticle template was then used as justification for why the ship fittings weren't needed. I would like to see them back at some point, but that's not my decision to make.
• My issue with the Scanning page is that since its inception in 2009, it primarily covered probe scanning, and after 11 years that primary function has now been thrown to what amounts to a subpage. For exploration, D-Scan is very helpful, but probe scanning is essential. And survey/cargo/ship/moon scanning don't really intersect with that exploration use. Now, again, I can understand the why of making a generic scanning page, to be able to distinguish between the various functions that are given the "scanning" moniker. In a vacuum, I'd support such a page. But the issue comes with repurposing an existing page with existing inertia. It takes work to wrench it properly in its location as a generic scanning page instead of a (primarily) probe scanning one as far at links from other pages are concerned. And I'm not against biting that bullet, it's just that it is a bullet that ought to be bitten if you want to go forward with that setup. I am happy to help, but I would like to reach a consensus first.
• The inclusion of Ewar as weaponry seems reasonable enough. I'm fine with it, now. Again, my reaction to that was more out of inertia than anything.
• My issue with calling Missiles slow is that it's subjective. Of course, it's slow compared to instant application. But there is a spectrum between the 2-3s of a rocket, and the 14-21s of a cruise missile or bomber torpedo. Is "slow" 5 seconds? 5 minutes? If people don't know anything about missile stats, I'm not sure how "slow" would come off. I like your edit to that sentence. It's more to the point, while avoiding terms that aren't hard and defined.
• A way I do big edits is through use of the "Show Preview" button. Let's you see how your stuff will look without actually "publishing" the edit. Now, with the server hiccups, you may occasionally have to go back a page and refresh to keep your edit progress. Pretty annoying, not going to lie. I've trained myself to either select all + copy before hitting "Show preview", and/or copy/edit the page from a text file.
• You can see any editor's activity with the Special:Contributions page. Noemie's last edit was to the Hauling page on the 4th of August, 2017. Djavin hasn't made an edit in over a year. This can be contrasted with that of more current editors, such as you, me, Jack Colquitt, or Arin Mara. And to be clear, the things to-do from their age are still things to-do! When I was making the "standing on shoulders of giants" comment, I meant to imply that we have not had that level of edit activity or leadership that was around back then. Their problems are still ours.
• While I can understand that I can come off as a whiny bureaucrat, truly things around here are pretty laissez-faire. Outside of specific pet projects (Campuses, Education doodads) and the occasional directorship ruling, there are no steering committees, formal moderation boards, or anything of that sort. The reason I suggested peer review is twofold. First, you can get feedback on things as you make them, or ask questions on particular subjects to improve the page you're working on. I think I can just mention "Active Shield Tanking" and leave it at that. Second, imagine if, instead of going to your talk page, I just went and mass undid all your changes in a page because I didn't like them. No discussion, no process, just click a button and bam, a day's work of yours erased. How would that have felt? What would you think of the rando that went and kicked over your craft?

...

Without discussion, the wiki is but a dozen people running around making changes to a giant document. Without communication, any conflict amongst them would turn into edit warring and disillusionment. The decentralized nature of wiki contributions is a strength, but conflict resolution must come in any moderately sized wiki. I'm not saying to throw every single edit idea into the dungeon of the ad hoc bureaucrats. But just... keep in mind that you're making large edits to very visible pages. People may have ideas which conflict with yours, and IMO its best to hash them out ahead of time. I hope that makes sense. I hope that isn't seen as encumbering.

Your userspace is an easy place to place a bunch of sandboxes to show around changes if you want eyes on them. Can just make a page or few under your userspace, such as User:Qwer Stoneghost/Sandbox. It's what I do for most of my major changes. Capital Ship Modules started as a sandbox page, as you can see from the discussion below. Containers was a page that was dredged up from Christoph Patrouette's userspace. And when I wanted to edit the ShipsMatrix template and make some notable structural changes, I put my changes into a page in my userspace, to make sure that people could see what I had in mind before it got put into hundreds of ship pages. I'd recommend getting some set up. Means you wouldn't have to shuffle drafts in and out of your main user page. Plus, you can throw page ideas together with less scrutiny.

Regards, Drebin 679 (talk) 23:02, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi

I saw that you are working on an overview of Capital-specific modules in https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/User:Drebin_679/Sandbox_5 THat's a very nice idea as it's a missing page. I want to share some thoughts though. First about the oprganisation, modules like the siege module are already described in detail on the page Dreadnoughts and again on Capital ships. If the stats are changed you would have to change them at three places. My suggestion is give the module its own section in Dreadnoughts and add a page "siege module" which forwards there. In the pages "Capital-specific modules" and Capital ships remove the exact stats. Same for nearly all those modules. This way the page is indeed only an overview page.

You forgot to add the "Jump Portal Generator I" if I see it right. I would also merge the carrier sections into "(Super-)Carriers" and then point out that NSAs can be fitted to both while Burst Projection oonly to supers. That also makes me notice that you don't mention the Fighter Support Unit (FSU) which also can only be fitted to (Super-)Carriers.

I'll have a look at the Capital ships page to maybe streamline it a bit. (atm it's a bit inconsistent.)

Keep up the good work Erwin madelung (talk) 04:23, 12 June 2019 (CDT)

Oh, thanks! I did miss out on both the Jump Portal Generator, the Fighter Support Unit, and the Clone Vat Bay. I'll add those in another edit. Regarding the stat duplication issue, I might try and transclude individual modules from their ship pages, and see how that goes. That way, if a module's stats are changed, only one page has to be edited. Drebin 679 (talk) 14:02, 14 June 2019 (CDT)

Any plan to release the page from the sandbox? Maybe you could add the titan and super modules to their respective pages. Titans looks very empty and sad. I would like to fill it a bit more but would consider it bad taste to copy your work from your sandbox. That's usually a kind of faux pas. cheers Erwin madelung (talk) 08:29, 27 September 2019 (CDT)

About your changes to the tengu page. Good idea to add the subsystems but the Magnetic Infusion Basin stats are the ones of the covert(?) subsystem atm. I don't have time to check the proper stats right now and check all the other entries. Please recheck those stats. Cheers. Erwin madelung (talk) 15:42, 2 September 2019 (CDT)

Thanks for catching that Erwin. A copypasta miss that I did. The stats should be correct now. Drebin 679 (talk) 16:04, 2 September 2019 (CDT)

It still had some stats wrong. I corrected them now. As a tip, create tables in a spreadsheet (excel/google/open office) and then use tools to create the wiki code. You can find such tools easily when using your favourite search enginge. It might also be nicer to have "Additional Base Stats" in one more column instead of merging it with "Role Bonus". Would probably look nicer I might try it later. Erwin madelung (talk) 04:33, 3 September 2019 (CDT)

I suggest something like:

Name	Caldari Core Systems bonuses (per skill level)	Role Bonus	Additional Base Stats
Augmented Graviton Reactor	5% bonus to capacitor capacity 3% bonus to energy warfare resistance	20% bonus to ship power output	+2 mid slots, +2 low slots +50 GJ Capacitor
Electronic Efficiency Gate	15% bonus to ship sensor strength 5% bonus to max targeting range	25% bonus to ship CPU output	+3 Mid Slots, +1 Low Slot +1 max locked target
Obfuscation Manifold	10% bonus to ECM Target Jammer strength and optimal range 15% bonus to the benefits of overheating ECM Target Jammer modules 5% reduction in module damage from overheating		+3 Mid Slots, +1 Low Slot

Erwin madelung (talk) 05:31, 3 September 2019 (CDT)

Hey Erwin. I finally followed up on your suggestions, and the suggestions that others have made regarding the tables. I have a new set of tables set up for the Loki. https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/index.php?title=User:Drebin_679/Sandbox_2&oldid=14727 is the link to the current iteration of the page. A note though was that the excel table to wiki table tool I found, while useful, tried directly applying the HTML tags to the copied content, meaning I had to take them out of the excel table, and still put them in at the wiki table edit level. That's more an inconvenience than anything, though. I think this format is a general improvement.

Drebin 679 (talk) 02:53, 27 September 2019 (CDT)

Hi Drebin. The tables for the loki look ok to me. I also saw what cassiel tried in his sandbox. I can see what he's going for but it seems a bit too complicated. Maybe a full overview table for the T3C site would be interesting?

Regarding the excel to wiki table tools: It has been a while that I used such tools and I had a look again and can see what you are talking about. You probably used https://tools.wmflabs.org/excel2wiki/index.php where I ran into the same problems like you. Better converters use plugins. I could not find a google spreadsheets plugin although it seems that one existed (see https://wikitableworks.com/wtw/help website looks terrible and google doesn't have the add on available anymore). I also thought that open office/libre office had some form of plugin but could not find it anymore (could also be that I confused that with a converter into latex tables). Anyways the best thing for straight up conversion I could find was on https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Technik/Text/Basic/EXCEL-Tabellenumwandlung/en I didn't try it but I'm confident that it would work fine at least until microsoft excel 2013 what they write they tested. Anyways, the following editor might be more helpful in the end though: https://www.tablesgenerator.com/mediawiki_tables It's a what you see is what you get editor which then transforms into wiki code.

Erwin madelung (talk) 08:22, 27 September 2019 (CDT)

Hi! Thanks for adding the resists for the EDENCOM ships on the Natural Resistances page :)