Talk:Artificial Intelligence

This article is almost unreadable. The flow is completely messed up, it interrupts itself twice, it says almost nothing about actually PLAYING the AI, and the tertiary pages are sort of slapped in there with no context or introduction beyond their link titles.

What SPECIFICALLY were the complaints with the old AI page, so we can improve it? While the old page was far from perfect, this new version is a huge step down. --Coolguye (talk) 22:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not Dunnoman, but the old one was 1) long as fuck, and then half the information was repeated in the "Guide to AI" article. 2) It had some advice that made for boring AI, such as explicitly telling them to hunt antagonists.
I'll withhold judgement on this new one since I don't have any good ideas for fixing it. Darth various (talk) 22:59, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I left a note on his page to come and explain himself on this. I was not very polite, but holy fuck this page is terrible right now. Regarding length, a lot of that is ameliorated by having the laws on a separate page, which is a good thing all around, since laws aren't specifically an AI thing per se. I definitely see some repetition, but not a ton, most of it just touches on similar concepts and goes into greater detail, which is what guides are for. Could you give an example of something you'd get rid of?

"Right, now, I pray you're not actually reading this while you play AI for the first time" You know, if anyone used that, they probably did exactly that. The part about how AIing works should probably go back in somewhere, but it's a full screen of dense text. The guide should probably start with "Do all this shit on Gibbed #4 when it's mostly empty" and go from there. And it probably doesn't need to tell the AI how to set up the solars right in the newb guide. (Fourth section under "New player picked as AI?") Darth various (talk) 00:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

This sounds good. I'll mess with this a bit more after we've got the rest of the considerations pulled in. --Coolguye (talk) 19:42, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, I do not see where on the old page it was telling you to hunt antagonists, just how to handle them when they inevitably show up. This is a serious problem for newer players, who will occasionally come onto the station and try to murder the first traitor they see. I could definitely see adding a note that any antagonists you catch in the first 15 minutes of the game or so should be ignored as really helpful. But I'm just not seeing where it says to hunt people. Could you point that out? I'd be delighted to change that in another draft. --Coolguye (talk) 23:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

On a fresh read, it doesn't do that as much as I recall. Sorry about that. Darth various (talk) 00:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

No Coolguye, just no. That old guide was so shitty that every other round new people reading it were convinced the AI's purpose was traitor hunting and dealing with that is not good. You're the only one talking on this page about it and it's been more than a week after the edit. If you're really so misguided that you think the old guide was good or that telling new AIs to not be meta-gamey shit heads is bad then please get out. P.S. Use the signature command so I don't have to check history to see who's writing. ** Edit ** I just checked my talk page, you're upset because I "interrupted" myself twice on one page? I'm not sure what to think about your complaint or whether that is its true nature, but I digress, make a specific complaint with citations and we can fix it. No more edit wars. --Dunnoman (talk) 05:08, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Well apparently the person right above you disagrees with that because he just reread it. You might want to do the same, because it simply told you how to deal with antagonists, which is an absolute certainty when you're playing AI. Also if you want to play the seniority card, the old page was there for MONTHS without a single comment on it before you came by and took a massive, messy dump on it, totally unilaterally. Also, fucking read the top line. The fact that the page interrupts itself by putting rambling, annoying red box text down below the job TOC (in total violation of, you know, EVERY OTHER page on the wiki) and needlessly breaks up the introduction by having a totally useless 'or the author will cry' heading. Then you made the page for one of the more complicated jobs on the station into a zero-calorie article that really covers next to nothing. Also, I did use a signature on everything I've written on both this page and your talk page. And for your 'specifics' comment, I have pretty clearly spelled out what my complaints are, and already proposed some fixes to complaints someone else has had. If anyone is being a bonehead about this, it's you. I'll be nice and give you one more chance to come back civilly and work things out, otherwise I'm just going to revert everything and work with Darth Various on improvements. Quite frankly, I checked your contribution history, and you have a huge number of reverts or shunt-offs (including some RIGHT BELOW this discussion!) to other areas so I don't think anyone will find it too strange that yet more of your stuff is being un-done. --Coolguye (talk) 19:42, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

What's with the hostility?! Calm down, please. To address your issues with me specifically, yes I do edit my contributions quite a bit but if you look at the time-stamp next to each one you'll see that I do it rather quickly, in fact I did the one you're citing in twelve minutes or so. As for your complaint about it being a 'zero-calorie' article or whatever made up jargon you have there, if you look at the index and select "further reading" you'll find a link to a cleaned up version of your guide with some additions by Darth as well as another guide made entirely by Darth. Now for the 'annoying' red box, I followed Mozi's example on this one, on top of that Darth said the red disclaimer box wasn't bad either right below this discussion. --Dunnoman (talk) 20:56, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

In Dunnoman's defence, I didn't consider the moved AI Laws article at all. I started with the laws part of this one and contracted and cut stuff. Darth various (talk) 21:03, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

"What's with the hostility"? Dude, you are the one who told ME to get bent, you don't get to pretend like you're a victim. You also don't get to pretend like there's an edit war going on, you made a revision, it sucks really bad, and we're hashing through how to get it fixed. If you can't handle that process then you won't be a part of it, plain and simple. As for complaints, I'll repeat myself a third time but that's the end of it. The red box is completely separated out, the message in it doesn't actually say anything substantive and when you click on it to read it further it violates the flow of every other page on the wiki and is confusing on both a layout and content level. Mozi's example on chemistry is very short, to the point, doesn't require any further reading, and is illustrative of a rule on the wiki. Adding to the things you don't get to pretend about, you don't get to pretend those are the same usage. One more thing you don't get to pretend about: calling simple language 'made up jargon' when there's an elaboration literally one comma later even if you've never heard the term before. The further reading thing is a problem because "tertiary pages are sort of slapped in there with no context or introduction beyond their link titles" - which I put in the initial complaint at the top! Most pages that have tertiary reading (such as the Research Director page) introduce what they're going to be covering to provide a smooth introduction and smooth handoff to the next page. Presumably, people reading tutorial pages aren't familiar with specifics, which is precisely why they're reading a tutorial page in the first place! So, I'll ask one last time: What parts of the old page did you specifically not like, so we can work through them? --Coolguye (talk) 15:37, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, how about we all just collect what things we liked and disliked about both the new and old guides into our own individualized lists. Afterwards we can all just work on one new guide, together. --Dunnoman (talk) 16:57, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Good lord, what the hell is going on here? Regarding the old article: I was responsible for about 95% of that, and looking back on it after Dunnoman completely changed the article I did notice some definite, horrifying flaws in the old one, namely that it was a dense, overly wordy mass of paragraphs. I still think most of the work itself was good, though, and I don't recall ever telling people how to hunt antagonists, not to mention the bit after the antag bit telling them that they shouldn't be supercop supreme AI if they catch someone 5-10 minutes in. Personally, I'd take the old article and pare it down into separate, shorter articles. For instance, put the super in-depth guide on exactly what you need to do on its own "New Player as AI" page, instead of making it the entire center of the article. Not that everything on this new page is bad, but parts of it and the old one would be spread across multiple pages to keep your eyes from glazing over and to make it easier to find specifics.--Dachshundofdoom (talk) 18:48, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

---

hi dunno, those giant text boxes are pretty jarring, they really only make sense on the security page which historically had a disclaimer for a long time

• I guess the blue one doesn't need to be there, but AI is different enough that the red one doesn't hurt. Darth various (talk)

• • Why is there a picture of me in the AI blue box? I demand royalties for being the example of a dummy Frontlineacrobat4 (talk)

• • • The blue text box is supposed to ensure the reader sees the red box, there's more to writing articles than words. Drawing the eyes of your reader to where you desire is also important. --Dunnoman (talk) 14:07, 5 February 2013 (UTC)