Talk:Character guides

TODO: Add Template:Character guide to all these articles. --Flun (talk) 17:21, 10 September 2013 (CEST)

Slude Elves are no more. I think their guides should be Archived. I`m not sure how to do it myself though --BlueCrake (talk) 17:17, 18 May 2014 (CEST)

Most of these should honestly be archived. It's on the to-do list... --MoogleDan (talk) 13:44, 20 May 2014 (CEST)

This page is kind of a mess

This page looks ugly, is not easy to browse (despite the guides being sorted) and a lot of guides are from version 0.12 or earlier. In addition, the bright red advice banner discourages visitors to continue reading this page (I suggest a cyan-ish or purplish colour instead). What can we do to improve this? Can/should we update some of the better but slightly outdated guides? I'm not very familiar with wiki formatting, but can we improve the formatting somehow? --Lokkij (talk) 17:26, 16 March 2015 (CET)

That's actually a pretty good thing to discuss. For the records, the wiki's gotten a lot of flak over the years, in large part because of this page. It used to be that anyone could post their advice up here without attaching responsibility to it, and there were no limitations on what could be posted. As a result, there were a lot of really atrocious guides posted on the wiki that much of the Crawl fanbase openly ridiculed, and for valid reason.

Eventually I started pruning out the most egregious ones, and moved them to the archives. If I were to move stuff out simply because the version number isn't up to date, pretty much everything on this page would be filed away, so usually I only move stuff for really terrible inaccuracies. As for whether or not you can update the guides, I personally feel uncomfortable doing so, but there's nothing stopping any editor from either making suggestions on a guide's Discussion page or just making edits themselves. Most authors never seem to come back, so yeah, adjusting things is unlikely to ruffle any feathers. I'd say knock yourself out, particularly for the older ones.

As for the color of the warning at top, go for it. So long as it's eye-catching and somewhat cautionary, that's fine. It doesn't necessarily have to match the tone of obsolete articles. And when I have a bit more time on my hands I'll consider how to go about making the page prettier :P --MoogleDan (talk) 17:42, 16 March 2015 (CET)

I'll get on it! :)

Would it be a good idea to create a few good, high-quality guides for the easier or more commonly played race/class combinations? It can be a collaborative effort, so it will generally contain better advice and it can be modified and updated without concern. We could feature these guides more prominently at the top of the page.

Why? I feel like I would have greatly appreciated these sorts of guides as a beginner; it took me ages to reliably reach the temple. While I could have read the other guides, I didn't because: the red warning at the top discouraged me; the guides aren't endorsed by the wiki; and most of the guides aren't professionally written. Of course, it's important to keep these guides up to date and professional, which can be a lot of work. I'm also not entirely sure how useful these guides would really be.

Just putting the idea out there. What do you guys think? --Lokkij (talk) 19:25, 16 March 2015 (CET)

I agree. There is a walk-through page, but the advice there is pretty generic, just explaining the places. Not many people will get enough information from that to win their first game, or to even get further than the first few levels. I just placed a caster walk-through on the character guides page, and I followed the convention that they should be named and owned by the submitter, but I really wouldn't mind if this is used as a basis for a collaborative effort for a detailed strategy guide. Majang (talk) 10:05, 17 March 2015 (CET)

I like your new approach. Some more up to date guides would make a difference for newbies! While I'm not happy about your peculiar idea of "professionally written" texts (HEY, it's a WIKI base idea to be written by volunteers!) more encouraging features are a good vision. OTOH you're wrong in stating "the guides aren't endorsed by the wiki". They are subjective reports and so not core mission of a wiki that wants to provide ~objective information. But nobody is hindered to contribute to existing or to write new combo guides, on the contrary! -- Bwijn (talk) 10:38, 17 March 2015 (CET)