Talk:Categorization

This talk is meant to help clear up an issue on this wiki, please read and share your thoughts about it.

FourteenDays proposals on categories!
The categories in the wiki predate the September 15th update, when the categories of every item in the game were made visible. As such, there are some disagreements between how things are presented in the wiki and how they are presented in the game, and I'd like to simplify things and reduce the confusion between the two. I have three proposals:

Naming standards
Wikipedia standards say that the names of categories when used to refer to sets of items should be plural, and I agree with this convention. Currently most sets are plural, with the following exceptions (not counting collective nouns like "Armor" which are fine):
 * Category:Amulet&Pendant -- now moved to Category:Pendants
 * Category:One handed axe and Category:Two handed axe -- now moved to Category:One handed axes and Category:Two handed axes
 * Category:One handed sword and Category:Two handed sword -- now moved to Category:One handed swords and Category:Two handed swords
 * Category:Scroll -- now moved to Category:Scrolls
 * Category:Staff -- now moved to Category:Staves
 * Category:Full Helmet -- now moved to Category:Heavy helmets

Since changing categories is kind of a pain, I don't think we need to do these all immediately, but I would suggest that if they need to be changed for other reasons, that we also change them to the plural in the process.

Update: These are all done now, hooray!

Category names
There are several places where the name established in the wiki disagrees with the name introduced in the game. For consistency, I would say it's generally desireable to have the two agree as much as possible. Here are the cases I could find:


 * Category:Amulet&Pendant are simply pendants in the game. In this case I would suggest changing the category to agree with the game usage, as the current category name is kind of awkward. -- now done
 * Category:Blunt weapons are maces in the game. In this case I prefer the wiki's current usage, as "mace" is not necessarily a term which can be understood by everyone -- I think "blunt weapon" is clearer.


 * Category:Helmets&Caps and Category:Full Helmet are light helmets and heavy helmets in the game. I think "Helmets&Caps" is a rather awkward term so I think I would prefer the light/heavy terminology. -- now done
 * Category:Leather Armor and Category:Metal Armor are light armor and heavy armor in the game. I think the latter terms may be more clear (since some leather armor may contain metal also), but I don't feel strongly. -- This has changed in the November 10 update to medium and heavy armor, so I've moved to those categories
 * Category:Boots and Category:Sabatons are light boots and heavy boots in the game. Again I think the latter may be clearer, since people may not be familiar with the term "sabaton", but again I don't feel too strongly. -- now moved
 * Similarly, Category:Gauntlets are heavy gloves in the game. Here I prefer the wiki's term, since it's less confusing.
 * Category:Shoes and Category:Cloaks are footwear and clothing in the game. Here I think there's not a big difference, so I'm fine either way.

Recategorization
Finally, there are a few places where things should be recategorized.


 * Category:Hats & Helms should be a parent-level category of other categories (the three headwear categories), and not have individual items in it. Also possibly it should be renamed to something more generic like "headwear" -- deleted for now, will create a new headwear category when I introduce new subcategories of Armor&Clothes
 * Category:Armor is very incomplete -- it seems to have been superseded by Category:Armor&Clothes. I would suggest retiring it completely -- moved to Armor and updated
 * I think there should be second-level categories in Armor&Clothes. Basically, I think each of the 12 basic armor categories should be in two parent categories -- for instance, sabatons would be "heavy armor" and "foot protection", and then those should be subcategories of Category:Armor&Clothes.
 * I would argue that Category:Instruments should be considered weapons, also.

Anyway, thoughts are welcome! Please let me know what you think, and if it looks good, I'll start implementing it.

Comments/ opinions/ suggestions

 * Time to get the word out and invite people who have been actively contributing the last week or month to be asked about their opinion on this matter.


 * I do recommend everyone who has read this to voice their opinion, even tough others may have voiced the same or something similar to what you think.



Just some considerations to mention.
This could have easily fit in the item categories talk page.

The use of names rather than armor weights took precedence based on how wiki editors immediately decided to refer to them. With 3 kinds of something it is easy to look at each one and recognize how they fit, even if the terms are unknown.

The biggest problem with referencing armor weight is when we say something is light it can be misinterpreted to the extent that medium armor is light armor, and clothing is not really armor. I showed up early enough to see this and slowly weeded articles that wanted to call medium armor light.

I'll auto clean out the category named armor after I give it a quick check.


 * Ooh, I missed Category talk:Items, but you're right. Sorry!


 * I do agree that calling medium items "light" can be potentially confusing, but now that it's the official game terminology, we should at least make sure that things are as clear as possible on our end. Certainly there are a few cases where this causes problems -- for instance, if we have "boots" when the two categories in the game are "light boots" and "heavy boots" that's not really ideal.




 * Think of them more like boots and armored boots (was almost sabatons&armored boots), similar to leather and metal armor, gloves and gauntlets. The importance of keeping things categorized was just so they're all found in one place.

Current proposal
Here's my current proposal:


 * I will move "Amulet&Pendant" to "Pendants" -- I don't think anyone has objected to this.
 * The armor categories will stay as they are currently.
 * I do think the boots and helmets should use the light/heavy terminology that the game currently uses. If new "heavy boots" are added, for example, it would be unclear (especially to someone not familiar with the term "sabaton") which category they belong in. Plus, you can have footwear which isn't boots, so it doesn't preclude there being a lighter category.


 * Having thought about this some more when adding items today, even I was a little confused about helmets and boots, and I've been looking at this constantly! Plus I realized that having a Full Helmet category and a Full helmet item is just a recipe for confusion. So I'm going to go ahead and change the helmets, and probably also the boots (maybe only change boots to light boots).



Change for One-Handed vs. Two-Handed
I noticed that with the October 29 update, item tooltips no longer display "Two-handed" for anything. However, in the recipe book, items are still grouped with 1H separate from 2H, even though the tooltips don't display the difference (I have 413/416 recipes learned and I looked at all of them). So there is clearly still some internal distinction, but it's not being displayed in the tooltip any more.

I haven't played enough since the update to tell if there's any change to item acceptance (i.e. do the classes that only used to accept 1H items now accept both 1H and 2H items). We should look into this more.

Dwex2 14:17, October 30, 2011 (UTC)


 * This has actually been the case since the September 15th update. The distinction still exists, however -- try suggesting a skull crusher to a healer, for instance, and you'll still get 0%.


 * Actually, I just had a healer ask me for a skull crusher...
 * Dwex2 00:09, November 1, 2011 (UTC)


 * Hmm, interesting! I'll have to investigate further.


 * Looks like you're right -- I also had a healer ask me for a deathbringer, and was able to suggest a skull crusher with a non-zero chance. That's very interesting -- maybe there isn't a distinction between 1H/2H any more as far as acceptance goes. I'll need to keep an eye on this.

November 10 update
Hi all,

So it looks as of the November 10 update, the category names in game have changed. The good news is that they are now extremely systematic: it's simply light/medium/heavy gloves/armor/helmet/boots. The bad news is that this creates problems for the categories which used to be light boots/helmet and now are medium. I guess I will go ahead and change them back. The "light" items I think we can keep their old names.


 * Perhaps it is smart to ask permission and a bit of a walkthrough to ActiveUnique to use BotTraveler. That can automatically do all these changes in a single go and save you lots of work.




 * Oh, I hadn't even thought of that. The boots and helmets are small enough that it's pretty quick to do it by hand, but this is certainly something I should ask about.


 * OK, this is now done -- all of the medium items have been moved to Category:Medium gloves, Category:Medium helmets, Category:Medium armor, and Category:Medium boots. This is consistent with the game, no longer has the light-vs.-medium problem, and is easy to understand, so hopefully everyone should be happy.