Forum:Which items should get pages
Hi all, I believe it's now the case that every obtainable item in the game, and all the items on the Unobtainable items page now have their own page. However there are still thousands of other items only used in interfaces, animations, or elsewhere. The granularity policy only states that "All items...are worthy of their own article, except in special cases where it is decided to combine or delete an article by consensus." Obviously banknotes, placeholders, and stack items aren't included but that still leaves many others.
The issue is really how far do we want to go with these. So far several have been created but there's no specific criteria on which should have a page. As far as I can tell they can be broadly split into 5 categories:
1. Items that have names
Examples include Symbol, Board game piece, Dummy
2. Null items that had names until the config update in February 2006
Examples include Spell, Key outline, hex edit detected
3. Null items that had no names but displayed the debug name until the config update in February 2006
Examples include Black ring, Chompy bird obj, Telescope dummy
4. Null items that have never used any name
Examples include 7670, 8843, 9628
5. Items that are used in skill guides
Examples include Elf crystal, Seeds, Spirit tree A lot of these could be placed on the page for the specific thing they're referencing, e.g. construction scenery, pickpocket npcs, slayer monsters - though sometimes they don't correspond and I don't think a separate item infobox could be added to these.
How to name all these pages would be a separate issue but I would be interested at the very least to get peoples' thoughts on which of these categories are deserving of a page for each item.
Hlwys (talk) 20:29, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
Discussion
All items - Andmcadams (talk) 20:30, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
All - Might be a challenge naming them appropriately, but would love to see everything documented. User:Kelsey/Signature 10:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
All except 5., because when you consider objects such as skillguide icons or the "next page" button in the cape rack menu, this is well past the point of these being functionally "inventory items". I believe spell icons also used to be stored like this at some point? And so the question is, if these assets deserve their own articles as items, then why not noted items that players actually manipulate on a daily basis... 5-x (Talk) 00:01, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- I don't see how this is an argument against the items in group 5. We document plenty of items that are not "inventory items" by most definitions. Some of them do have interesting info about them, including where they are found in game and why they exist (collection log item placeholders for example). I would hesitate to make pages for noted items precisely because they are well known and often used, we would have to be really careful to avoid confusion for readers. - Andmcadams (talk) 00:50, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
1, 2, and 3 yes, 4 maybe, 5 no - In terms of #4: if we're talking one big page with broad categories (here's the Tutorial Island dialogue icons, there's the quest dialogue only items, etc.) that's fine with me. However, I personally don't see any reason why something like this generic spirit seed item used only in Guildmaster Jane's dialogue (but only if you're trading spirit seeds in and hit the "all" button) would be worthy of its own page, because there wouldn't be much to say about it and the page would basically be a permanent stub. As for 5 I have the exact same concerns that 5-x does. YoshiFan12 (talk) 00:27, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- Would these pages actually be stubs? They might be short, but as long as it covers all the information then it generally shouldn't be considered a stub. - Andmcadams (talk) 00:50, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- Let me rephrase my statement: the pages for these items would be so short that they would be akin to stubs. I cannot think of a way to squeeze more than one or two sentences out of the spirit seed item I mention above. You could make the argument that there are many item pages that are also that short, or that a page being that short is not necessarily a bad thing, but the main difference a theoretical "Spirit seed item" page and something like the frogspawn gumbo page or Bookcase (Karamja) is that the latter two can be directly interacted with in-game. There is a non-zero chance that someone could get their hands on frogspawn gumbo, have no idea what it is or does, and consults the Wiki for information. I do not believe the average player/Wiki user will see an image of an item that only appears once in the entire game in one piece of dialogue (eg. the aforementioned spirit seed item, Evelot's amulet from SotN, etc.) and thinks to themselves "What is this, and why does the Wiki not have a page about it?". Again, to me, having information about all of these category 4 items on one general page is fine, but giving them all separate pages isn't. I have no complaints about making up item names as redirects to the item category 4 page, however. YoshiFan12 (talk) 01:30, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- What is the actual harm in having them be their own pages? It sounds like you don't think they will be that useful, but pages are free so to me that doesn't seem like a problem. We already have plenty of pages that are only useful to a small group of people now like Left-handed banana and Farming helper - do not add!. This is in line with the existing granularity policy, which should support pages for all of the categories of pages mentioned here too. Realistically, we can't really put all the information for each of these items on a single page unless you want a page with a ton of infoboxes (release date, examine, weight, options, etc), which feels unhelpful for the people who do care about these items. If you're worried about readers looking for actual items and stumbling on these pages instead, I think that's reasonable and should be approached so that we don't end up in a situation like we had on the GWD pages for the pvm arena npcs that very few people care about (link). - Andmcadams (talk) 11:26, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
- Let me rephrase my statement: the pages for these items would be so short that they would be akin to stubs. I cannot think of a way to squeeze more than one or two sentences out of the spirit seed item I mention above. You could make the argument that there are many item pages that are also that short, or that a page being that short is not necessarily a bad thing, but the main difference a theoretical "Spirit seed item" page and something like the frogspawn gumbo page or Bookcase (Karamja) is that the latter two can be directly interacted with in-game. There is a non-zero chance that someone could get their hands on frogspawn gumbo, have no idea what it is or does, and consults the Wiki for information. I do not believe the average player/Wiki user will see an image of an item that only appears once in the entire game in one piece of dialogue (eg. the aforementioned spirit seed item, Evelot's amulet from SotN, etc.) and thinks to themselves "What is this, and why does the Wiki not have a page about it?". Again, to me, having information about all of these category 4 items on one general page is fine, but giving them all separate pages isn't. I have no complaints about making up item names as redirects to the item category 4 page, however. YoshiFan12 (talk) 01:30, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
