Forum:Reorganizing glitches

I think that the glitch documentation on this wiki is in serious need of reorganization. ShutUpNavi recommended that I discuss the issue here.

I'll use The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Glitches as the primary example for my point.

The problem is that the current system forces several glitches -- that are often completely distinct from another and only related by game -- to be described on a single page. This leads to:
 * Difficulty citing sources
 * Citing any sources for multiple glitches would result in completely unrelated citations being jumbled together. REF groups could be used, but doing so would be a terrible abuse of such functionality for a purpose it was not intended for.


 * Forced brevity
 * Glitches often cannot be described in sufficient detail because there isn't enough room.


 * Lowered findability
 * The only way to find a specific glitch on a page, assuming you haven't been linked to it directly, is to slowly and tediously read through the massive table of contents.


 * Longer download times, etc.
 * It takes longer to load the full page. It takes longer to save edits to the page, be they page-wide or limited to a single section. The page uses more memory once it has been loaded (as elements must be kept track of by the browser).

Solutions
There are two solutions, one of which is very simple. Both involve, in a nutshell, giving every glitch its own article. This is not as chaotic and disorganized as it may sound.


 * Subpages.
 * The use of subpages is often discouraged on Wikipedia, but Wikia is set up to allow subpages in any namespace. Subpages would work perfectly for this setup. The subpages for Ocarina glitches could look something like this:
 * The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Glitches
 * A "hub" for Ocarina glitches.
 * The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Glitches/Swordless Link
 * An Ocarina glitch.
 * ...as compared to this:
 * The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Glitches
 * The link doesn't work because the section is (redundantly) titled "Swordless Link Glitch". I'd change this, but then my next point wouldn't be as obvious.
 * Article titles, link lengths, etc., would be the exact same length if this wiki switched to using subpages, but the use of subpage functionality would allow glitches to actually get their own articles.


 * Completely standalone articles.
 * This is the system that Halopedia has used, and it's worked well for them. Each (notable) glitch gets its own separate article, where it can be fully described, explained, sourced, etc.. Glitches are added to specialized categories (e.x. Category:Halo 3 Glitches) and are also added to navboxes.

Pros and cons
The benefit of using subpages is that they highlight the distinct hierarchical relationship between games and glitches. Furthermore, one can tell what game a glitch is in simply by looking at its title. All of the navigation aids that can be used in standalone articles (navboxes, etc.) can be used in subpages. However, linking becomes tedious and more difficult compared to the use of standalone articles ( versus  ), but no more tedious and difficult than the current solution.

Standalone articles can be categorized by game and support several navigation aids including navboxes. They are easier to find and link to because of their shorter titles, but this comes at the cost of ambiguity; one cannot always identify what game a standalone glitch article belongs to without actually reading the article. (Navboxes could alleviate that problem.)

Shared benefits
Both solutions have these advantages over the current system:
 * Increased findability
 * One need not search through a bloated table of contents to locate a specific glitch.


 * More room to actually describe the glitch / shorter download times / etc.
 * Feel free to make a glitch article as long as you like. You won't have to worry about page bloat as much.


 * Organized citations
 * It's entirely possible and even recommended to cite screenshots and videos (be they taken with a capture card or ROM and emulator) when describing glitches. Giving each glitch its own article makes it easier to cite glitches, as citations for distinct glitches are not jumbled together. This in turn can and probably will lead to increasingly-accurate glitch documentation.

So what do you, the community, think? Personally, I would recommend a switch to standalone articles for glitches; again, it's worked well for Halopedia, and in the (few) cases where the Pokemon Wiki has used standalone articles, it's worked (fairly) well for them. DavidJCobb (talk) 23:06, July 18, 2010 (UTC)

= What, if anything, do you think should be done? =