User talk:Longweird/Guide

Feedback

This is as much feedback for Lefinch as it is for Longweird. In fact, I mostly consider this feedback to the latter, because he explicitly mentioned watching the talk pages. I want to offer my thoughts on the page's content, prose, and the fact that a user page is linked in main space. Then I'll talk about why I think moving it to user space was still a good idea.

Regarding the guide's advice, I'm not sure there is enough to warrant its own page. It seems like it would be simple to include these tips on Rancher. Hosting multiple guides of similar scope can also lead to issues. For example, if the method for obtaining one chicken changes, and one guide is updated while the other is not, that could really confuse people, because there are multiple sources telling them different things about the same subject. (Different scopes are fine. Medical Director for example has different priorities than Doctoring.) This was what happened with Pathology for Dummies and Pathology Research (old), back when it was called just Pathology Research.

As for the writing, I found the "mmm"-ing confusing at first, because I did not realize Blanco is supposed to be a cow. This does not necessarily mean it needs to go to the chopping block; it's just something to consider. On a positive note, I do appreciate that the writing gimmick is not so intrusive that it hampers understanding. The prose itself is decent and flows relatively well. (There wasn't a sentence where I went, "That's a weird way to describe that.")

I noticed this was linked on the Rancher page. Places like Wikipedia advise against the practice of linking to user pages in main space (see Wikipedia:Linking dos and don'ts for example), because user pages are intended as places where people can describe themselves or include small tidbits they find useful, rather than hosting full wiki guides. I know Paperwork does this, but I also consider that badly made, because this basically means there are five different places for people to find templates. I would much prefer if all these users' templates were on one page for convenience. I would like to consolidate them in the future, but it looks like a lot of work, I have much on my plate, and that task is on the lower end of my priority list.

The train has already reached its station, but I still think moving this to user space was a good idea. A guide with a specific name attached is generally a bad fit for wikis, as the very nature of wikis works against attributing a single author. People are free to edit pages at will, and they are often trimmed, expanded, changed, etc. At some point, the changes often become substantial enough that you can't really consider the namesake the main author. (This was basically what happened to Beesmark's Goon Guide to Robust Security.) Because pages typically have multiple contributors, it also doesn't make sense to use first-person perspective (like "I think..." or "in my experience..."). User pages don't have to deal with this, so it's okay that this has the first-person POV and "Blehblar Blanco's Guide to Ranching" attribution.

Studenterhue (talk) 08:59, 25 February 2025 (GMT)