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Forums: Index > Wiki DiscussionIn-game wording
Note: This topic has been unedited for 4724 days. It is considered archived - the discussion is over. Do not continue it unless it really needs a response.

There's some wordings on the wiki that are currently not the same as in-game. Some examples:

  • "Upkeep" (DAO) vs. "reserved" (DA2) for abilities
  • "Battleaxe" (DAO) vs. "battle axe" (DA2)
  • "Chest piece" (the wiki's—DAO does not explicitly list them as such, but rather as "armor") vs. "chestpiece" (DA2)
  • "Helmets" (DAO) vs. "helms" (DA2)

The game also uses "ability" more so than "talents" or "spells" (I had brought this up some time ago, but did not get any feedback on this).

I personally do not think we should switch or use both, unless there's a compelling to do it. Although the wiki should keep things consistent with the game, it should most importantly be consistent with itself. This is to make things less confusing for us and for readers. We categorize each armor pieces by type (as does Origins), e.g. Category:Light boots, but DA2 does not explicitly do so (they are categorized by their icons though).

Additionally, this also includes the use of uppercase vs. lowercase. In most cases, the wiki should keep using the exact naming for items, quests, abilities, but use lowercase for everything else (or almost):

  • "Plot items" vs. "Plot Items"
  • "Weapon rune" vs. "Weapon Rune"

We ought to think of how it is best used for the wiki as well. "Weapon rune" should be kept over the uppercase wording since it's in correct English ("this is a [[Weapon Rune]]" is clearly wrong; "this is a [[weapon rune]]" is right). I think this issue has been beaten to death by now, but I'll bringing this up just in case. I don't think there's a written policy regarding that.

Also, the wiki refers to each time period as "Act" (this was from the official guide, because the game never refers to them "Acts"). Sometimes, it is uncapitalized, and uses the roman numbers. Should we use always capitalize it and use the standard numbers? --D. (talk · contr) 13:37, March 25, 2011 (UTC)

Lowercase/ Uppercase[]

According to my memory there was a discussion regarding the matter (around the end of 2009), and came to a conclusion that we use grammatically correct English as much as possible. This means use first letter of a set of word is Uppercase where rest are in lowercase (such as headings within articles, title of the articles and words such as "Weapon rune" etc. - except names) but unfortunately we didn't write down this as an official guideline (except headings - we already have an official policy for this.). So I think while we are discussing in-game wording, we need to officially finalize this issue as well. -- Snfonseka (Talk) 10:30, March 29, 2011 (UTC)

On GuildWiki, we went with lowercase for anything added by the wiki, like putting " set" after an armor set or something, but capitalize anything capitalized by the game, like quest and item names --Gimmethegepgun (talk) 02:36, April 7, 2011 (UTC)

Comments[]

My opinion is, in cases like "chestpiece" it is OK to use the in game wording. As for me it is not very important matter. We just want to come-up with one standard.

As for the upper case/ lower case issue, I prefer "Weapon rune" rather than "Weapon Rune". Don't we follow similar policies for the headings and category naming? I think we should maintain that in here also.

Regarding the acts, I think that we should always capitalize and use standard numbers. -- Snfonseka (Talk) 02:46, March 26, 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't really mind "chestpiece" since it's not explicitely used in Origins, but the other wordings should keep their DAO ones, unless a lot of people are completely against this idea (this can always be changed later anyway). Right now, it's being split between the DAO and DA2 words which is not consistent.
On the lowercase and uppercase issues, it was just to bring it up just in case someone would object to use the correct English vs. the in-game one. A lot of pages use uppercase, but it's still slowly being changed. Lot of people still use uppercase since most pages have not been updated yet. --D. (talk · contr) 21:10, March 27, 2011 (UTC)


There was a discussion about this a few months ago at Forum:Consistency and I believe that our primary goal is to keep it consistent with the game then consistent internally. The examples you brought up "Battleaxe" (DAO) vs. "battle axe" (DA2) are good ones and I am fine with whatever the majority wants to go with. As numeral convention for the Acts - what does the guide use? Let's use that. -- tierrie talk contr 23:33, March 28, 2011 (UTC)
The guide uses Hindu–Arabic numeral system. -- Snfonseka (Talk) 06:44, March 29, 2011 (UTC)
It doesn't look like there's going to be a strong opposition to use "chestpieces", so let's use this one.
For other words, since no one else replied and you guys don't mind, we should go with the previous naming convention (Origins'). --D. (talk · contr) 17:57, March 30, 2011 (UTC)

On the uppercase and lowercase issue, my opinion is to use correct English most of the time. The only exceptions are when the pagename should be treated as names, not nouns, e.g., quests, items, abilities, etc. These should be capitalized like in-game.

There's also "Qunari" which I'm not too sure now if we should capitalize it or not, since it's capitalized in-game for DA2 (not in Origins, I think). It's kind of race, but not really?

There's also the issue with creatures, e.g. Desire Demon vs. desire demon. I'd personally de-capitalize them, as we don't generally type "the Darkspawn", but rather "the darkspawn". --D. (talk · contr) 17:57, March 30, 2011 (UTC)

I consider "Qunari" as a race. Regarding the creatures I am on the fence, so I can go with either way. -- Snfonseka (Talk) 07:25, March 31, 2011 (UTC)

Since we're discussing naming convention, I'd like to point out this thread that I had posted a while ago (in regards to using plural vs. singular form, as well as using "list of" vs. not using it). --D. (talk · contr) 23:54, April 1, 2011 (UTC)

Re: List of
I am in favor of the pages officially being named "List of" but keeping a redirect to it. That should satisfy any variation when people are just linking to it. -- tierrie talk contr 06:07, April 2, 2011 (UTC)
Sounds like a good compromise to me.
I don't particularly mind not using "list of" if people prefer it that way (I suppose the page name gets pretty long, but it's still less confusing to me), but it's just not very consistent right now. --D. (talk · contr) 17:42, April 2, 2011 (UTC)
I hadn't realized this, but if we do decide to keep "list of" as a page name convention, this means we may want to split some pages. The alternative is to, of course, not use "list of" at all. There are some implications that I hadn't thought before as well.
For examples, Staves (Origins) have a explanation on the mechanics of staves. It's not that it'd be completely wrong to have additional information like that on a list (for example, on Wikipedia, some lists have additional information on the topic). Using the "list of" implies that we should actually move Gifts (Origins) to "List of gifts in Dragon Age: Origins".
Because of that, I think we should actually just drop the "list of" to keep this simple. --D. (talk · contr) 23:54, April 5, 2011 (UTC)

In regards to chestpieces and armor, I think we're better off splitting them as heavy armor being the type of armor, and chestpieces being for the chestpieces. Right now, they're the same on the wiki. I think it should go like this for categories:

  • Dragon Age II heavy armor
    • Dragon Age II heavy chestpieces
    • Dragon Age II heavy gloves
    • Dragon Age II heavy boots
    • Dragon Age II heavy gloves

--D. (talk · contr) 17:42, April 2, 2011 (UTC)

So... no any other comments from anyone else? -- Snfonseka (Talk) 09:58, April 5, 2011 (UTC)

I've contacted Loleil regarding that matter, since she didn't reply here yet, so I'd like to wait a bit before making any changes (as this is kind of a major one). --D. (talk · contr) 23:54, April 5, 2011 (UTC)
Okay this is a big one, so forgive me if I miss anything.
  • I think it's more important for the wiki to be consistent internally, than it is to follow the game, as long as it still makes sense. Do D-day's break down of how to categorize the heavy armour for example, looks good.
  • For capitalization I completely agree with D-day that "On the uppercase and lowercase issue, my opinion is to use correct English most of the time. The only exceptions are when the pagename should be treated as names, not nouns, e.g., quests, items, abilities, etc. These should be capitalized like in-game." For Qunari, even though they explicitly said it was lower case in Origins, they certainly appear to have changed their minds, so as the capitalized version is the latest info we have, I say we use that.
  • The use of the term "acts" seems pretty wide spread, and even though it isn't official, it's easy to follow, so I favour keeping it at this point. For simplicities sake, I would follow the guide and use 1, 2, 3.
  • I fear that with "List of" the titles can get a little unwieldy, so I'd favour using disambiguations.
Let me know if I missed anything. Friendship smallLoleil Talk 08:08, April 6, 2011 (UTC)
I didn't get Loleils' idea, clearly; regarding page names. So do you think it is better to follow the letter appearance as they are in the game? for example if the game use "The Way It Should Be" as the name of the quest, do you think it is better to use that name as it is for the page name or is it better to change it to "The way it should be"? -- Snfonseka (Talk) 10:19, April 7, 2011 (UTC)
The former. Think of the quest as being a title. You should never lowercase a book's title because it'd be the correct English, but leave it as it was intended to. As such, if "The Way It Should Be" is the quest's name, then the pagename gets named like that. --D. (talk · contr) 15:42, April 7, 2011 (UTC)

Unless there's any objections or I misinterpreted something, the guidelines are as followed:

Naming convention (or it can be named as "Article titles"... that's the name on Wikipedia)

Categories and page names are to be written in correct English, unless they refer to a name or a title.

The following should be typed exactly as they appear in-game, as they are treated as names, not nouns:

  • Quest, e.g., "The Way it Should Be"
  • Item, e.g., "Stonehammer Boots"
  • Ability, e.g., "Winter's Blast"
  • Place, e.g., "The Hanged Man"
  • Any kind of title, event, etc., e.g., "Fifth Blight"

For the rest, use correct English.

  • Creatures, e.g., "rock wraith", not "Rock Wraith". While these types of creature encountered in-game are written in uppercase, they are not names.

Exceptions
Some words must be always capitalized, regardless of the above guidelines.

  • "Qunari". From the Qunari page:
While all of Thedas identifies the race of horned giants as the qunari, this is inaccurate: qunari means "people of the Qun", and includes any who follow what the Qun teaches. Therefore, any and all who accept the teachings of the qunari, be it humans or elves, are themselves qunari. On the other hand, horned giants who do not are actually Tal-Vashoth.

Game terminology Sometimes, the terminology in Dragon Age: Origins differs from Dragon Age II. In order to keep the wiki consistent, use the established naming convention:

  • Helmets (instead of helms)
  • Battleaxes (instead of battle axes)
  • Chestpieces (instead of chest pieces)
  • Upkeep (instead of reserved)

Keep in mind that the list may be subject to changes, but do not change it without discussing it first.

On creatures, we could possibly apply exceptions. However, we'd have to list them, e.g., Flemeth the Shapeshifter, Gaxkang the Unbound. This is because it's really a name, not a type of creature (like "desire demon"). It may be a bit confusing to discern them though.

(Just a note, "Archdemon" is sometimes capitalized on the wiki, but it's really "archdemon".)

On the terminology, there may be more to add.

The guideline should have its own page ("Naming convention"), and have the "disambiguation" part from DA:MOS merged with this one, as they're related. Ideally, a different category guidelines will be written (as a follow-up from past discussions). --D. (talk · contr) 00:45, April 9, 2011 (UTC)

I just realized they capitalize "Archdemon" in DA2 (but not Origins... if my memories are correct). --D. (talk · contr) 15:09, April 9, 2011 (UTC)
That looks really good D-day, and in Origins the capitalization of archdemon was inconsistent, I remember because it bugged me at the time Tonguesmiley. I'd suggest we capitalize it myself since they seem to have settled on that style now. Friendship smallLoleil Talk 02:50, April 10, 2011 (UTC)
I've added "Archdemon", "Qunari", and name creatures as exceptions.
There's one small thing in regards to names, that is, when they have "The". I've lowercased it in the past for characters (e.g., "the Warden" as opposed to "The Warden", "the Architect" vs. "The Architect", "the Bone Pit" vs. "The Bone Pit" (for the place, not the quest). For correct English, it's supposed to be lowercased, but quest names are different (since they are integral part of their names, it cannot be lowercased). There's also the issue on whether we include "the" as part of the name, e.g. "The Band of Three" or "Band of Three", "Templar Order or "The Templar Order" (as well as whether we capitalize "the" or not). I am nitpicking, but this will make writing on the wiki more consistent and better.
I forgot to address the "list of" issue. Since there isn't a clear consensus, I'll go with dropping the "list of". I'd like to know if there are any objections (in particular from Tierrie, since he preferred the keep "list of" as the official names). --D. (talk · contr) 04:13, April 10, 2011 (UTC)
Looks good, I have nothing to add at the moment. -- Snfonseka (Talk) 17:10, April 10, 2011 (UTC)

Are we still building consensus? :) -- Snfonseka (Talk) 03:55, April 12, 2011 (UTC)

Just the "the" issue that I brought on, but the rest is now effective. Just need to find the time to start doing these kind of things, heh.
I'll be adding the page soon, under "Naming convention". --D. (talk · contr) 03:59, April 12, 2011 (UTC)

DA:NAME is up. It's a bit different than the one I typed above, but it conveys the same idea (it's better organized).

I didn't list the "list of" (I should, probably), but these pages should probably be moved now. We can review this later on, but for now, I think we should just move them. --D. (talk · contr) 04:38, April 12, 2011 (UTC)

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