Talk:A beginner's guide, lesson 7 - Using Scripts in Quests

Update

This needs headings, some spelling and grammar errors need to be fixed, and the guide needs to be checked for errors. This is a long guide, so feel free to do what you can and report what you've done here, because no one's ever going to get through this whole thing in one sitting.
Dragoon Wraith TALK 11:42, 20 August 2007 (EDT)

I did a bunch of formatting, mostly on the scripts so that they were consistent (and probably missed a bunch of things). Also put in headers to where I thought they should be. I may have missed more there as well. You get a little bleary eyed when spending that long doing formatting.

--ShadowDancer 14:34, 20 August 2007 (EDT)

Byline

All the Beginner's Guide articles are bylined, I thought we made an exception for these. Did I miss something?

--Qazaaq 15:12, 20 August 2007 (EDT)

I believe that the bylines on the original Beginner's Guide articles were left because they have been on here for so long. Essentially, they were grandfathered in since it was doubtful that the original authors for most of them could be found. All new articles are supposed to not contain bylines (although I believe that mentioning who wrote an article on another site was considered appropriate?). Correct me if I am wrong DragoonWraith.

--ShadowDancer 15:22, 20 August 2007 (EDT)

These articles were written in a way that a person talks to you. Tom Dawson guides you through during these lessons. That's why there was decided not to remove the bylines from these articles. At least that's what I understood, apparently that's not correct.

--Qazaaq 18:07, 20 August 2007 (EDT)

These guides were never mentioned except as an example of "narrative" guides as opposed to "manual" style guides. And while I do not believe it is necessary to remove the bylines, the tag should still remain - these guides should not be frozen, but updated, and the tag explains that to readers. There are a couple of dtom guides that have been updated substantially by people other than dtom before the discussion ever took place - I think perhaps the bylines should be removed from those, because it is no longer truly accurate. Should the same happen here, we should consider removing the bylines.

For now, these are dtom's words, and so the byline should remain. However, I do not believe that guides with a "voice" require a "name" - if you read this without a name attached to it, it still talks to you just as much. Do you know dtom? I don't - it's just the name of a guy who wrote some wonderful guides as far as I know. "Narrative" style guides are not an exception.

Personally, I like the tag as a compromise to those authors who cannot be contacted. To remove the byline without their consent may be very rude, so we can leave it there and use the tag to explain the situation. This seems fair to me.

Perhaps another tag could be made for ESF posts which got transfered to the Wiki for safe-keeping - explaining where they came from originally and such. I'll think about it, and you may certainly have input. This is kind of an awkward transition for content, because you're moving from a very private medium (your posts are very much your words) to a very public medium (the Wiki). When possible, explicit permission is best, but because of the pruning practices on the ESF, sometimes we want to save something by an author we cannot contact. That would be the aim of such a tag.

Anyway, as always, discussion is welcome, but perhaps this ought to continue in the appropriate area of the Community Portal?

Dragoon Wraith TALK 18:21, 20 August 2007 (EDT)

I don't think further discussion is necessary, I didn't think of it this way. I'll add the same tag to lesson 6 I added today. However, dtom is not unreachable, I saw he responded on BSF a few days ago. I sent him a PM about removing the bylines from these two articles.

--Qazaaq 18:54, 20 August 2007 (EDT)

<snip>

I would add that one small advantage of having a byline has been the number of people who have contacted me for advice which has been used to inform the content and direction of subsequent articles.

However, I bow to the wisdom of the community and as I pointed out, I am happy for my byline to be removed not only from 6 and 7, but from 1-5 as well.

Dtom

Above is part of the response I got from the PM I sent yesterday. I think we should move the byline to the talk page with a message that dtom can always be contacted with questions about the current and future lessons of A beginner's guide. And I also think a link to the forum thread is appropriate.

--Qazaaq 08:43, 21 August 2007 (EDT)