Minecraft Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 35

Convert the Tutorials pages into their own namespaces

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
 * Outdated: 9 months since last re. If somebody would want to start this topic again, feel free to link this section --TreeIsLife (talk) 09:34, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm reviving Minecraft Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 26

That discussion actually is worth of reopening. Tutorials are an important part of any game wiki, as it is a secure way to keep documentated facts that aren't able to be into normal articles.

This was opposed before mainly because (if I read the old discussion correctly) other namespaces couldn't be accessed with the "Random page" link. However, that is no longer the case, as now Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Earth articles can be accessed with the link.

If we do this, then we should do this (see the table):

The reason is that tutorials are an important part of the wiki. Though the Minecraft Wiki is meant to explain factual data about the game, it can't do that completely without the tutorial pages. Things such as redstone circuits, general farms, game quirks, functions, and information about the game's UIs all are stored within tutorials. This is factual evidence that can only really be given in a tutorial format, as the main articles oesn't alllow tutorial-like content.

Now I'll show another table showing the advantages, disadvantages and arguments for them: What do you think of this proposal?, as this really needed to be discussed again. Thejoaqui777 (talk) 00:03, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I actually had forgotten for a while that they weren't a separate namespace. (Or did they used to be?  I honestly can't remember.)  In any case, Terraria Wiki uses a namespace for their equivalent Guides, so its feasibility is demonstrated by example. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 00:30, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * per my comment on #The problem with subpages.Humiebeetalk contribs 00:54, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * . I don't see how any of the four advantages are substantial or valid. Most visitors would get to tutorials from the search engine (not even the on-site search or the random page button), which means optimizing for the latter two ways should not be done at the expense of the first one, and page moves of any kind are harmful to search engine optimization, while the subpage structure is very well understood by search engines. So #1 is an advantage that will be targeted at the expense of the average reader. #2 is invalid, any policy can be changed to adapt to circumstances, and we shouldn't try to adapt circumstances to policy at substantial expense of user experience. The talk page issue doesn't seem problematic at all, at most weird for the more involved of readers (most of who won't even use talk pages). The namespace shortcuts are not going to be used by readers as they won't have any idea of them (and once again, they'll most likely be coming from search engines who at best won't care about shortcuts); in addition, the proposed shortcuts can conflict with potential "talk" shortcuts. --AttemptToCallNil (talk) 10:02, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It is true. The policy can be changed so how to write tutorials should be explained better than how it is done now. The main reason of this is the point #1, which explains that subpages can't be accessed from the Random page link. If this can break the search engine, maybe we could find a solution to this. Subpages can't be shown easily, and that's another reason of why. Thejoaqui777 (talk) 13:15, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * - Namespace? No. I feel we should not make an soup opera from Namespaces. Namespaces are here to seperate functions between pages. All namespaces have purporse. With creating new, however, we should consider why it is needed to make a new namespace. For example, with Minecraft Earth and Dungesons - "Different games". Games, which are not 100%-ly Minecraft, but are from Minecraft Universe (Minecraft Earth, Dungeons, Story Mode) and have potential to have more content, yes. This doesn't. It may have more content, but it is really needed? No. --TreeIsLife (talk) 14:09, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * . Tutorials serve a very different purpose to definitive fact-based Minecraft Wiki articles, but are a necessary commodity for this Wiki to serve. (Is there anywhere close to as good a resource as we have here for Redstone logic gates? I don't think so.) New and old players utilize these resources, and they are key to this Wiki's helpfulness, while being very different from say, and article about a block or item. For this reason, and since most people find tutorials through the search bar anyway, and for categorization and organaiztion purposes, I dig this idea. --DigiDuncan (talk) 03:59, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
 * These pages have been in the mainspace for far longer than they should have been and are well overdue for being kicked out. The style guide specifically forbids tutorial info from mainspace articles, so why these insisted on remaining mainspace articles for a decade plus is beyond me. - User-12316399 (talk) 04:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
 * For the shortcuts, MCT is already used (Minecraft Wiki talk). Possibly MT and MDT/DT? (consistant) and the talk would be MTT and MDTT or DTT) Humiebeetalk contribs 14:05, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * , for now. Not a single one of the advantages listed is compelling. Going through them one at a time: (1) We don't need badly-written tutorials to be accessible via the Random Page link, as they are not representative of article-quality pages. (2) Lacking a dedicated name space doesn't preclude creating a standard definition for a tutorial, this can be done with or without a name space. (3) Tutorial talk pages are already specific to each tutorial. Tutorials are sub-pages, each sub-page has its own dedicated talk page, and some of those talk pages have already seen heavy use (such as Talk:Tutorials/Drowned_farming, for example). If this isn't a problem for other wikis, I don't see why it's a problem here. (4) Consistent shortcuts can already exist without a name space; we just have to agree on what they are. No name space is needed to create redirect links. Before we rearrange an existing mess, we need to clean up the existing mess, and develop clear guidelines about what should be in a tutorial, how to write them, what the video policy would be (not well defined at the moment) and how to prevent tutorials from growing into indiscriminate lists of "helpful" advice. Amatulic (talk) 03:10, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * now for a couple of reasons:
 * This discussion was opened because the tutorials aren't easily accessible for users and they are difficult to maintain. However, as mentioned, namespaces should be about a topic, and for example Minecraft tutorials being in the (main) namespace makes sense. Same with tutorials on the Minecraft Dungeons namespace.
 * Our real issue is handling all those badly written tutorials, the horrible navbox that includes all of them, and their accessibility id just the least important part of their problem.
 * Enabling 2 namespaces would reduce our chances to be able to receive/enable more custom namespaces on the future,and there will probably be more Minecraft games on the future.
 * Oppose per AttemptToCallNil's, TreeIsLife's and Amatulic's comments.
 * A solution I can give is linking them on the main page similar to what Template:DidYouKnow does.
 * Those are my reasons of why it wouldn't be a good idea. Thejoaqui777 (talk) 14:35, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

How are people getting perfect mob models?
Is there some sort of model viewer that can view every mob? How are people getting images of blocks and mobs at perfect angles? -- XZippy (talk) 23:58, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * You're referring to isometric renders. You need software or a mod to make those; for example see https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/isometric-renders or Google for "minecraft isometric render". On this wiki, the renders appear to be made with Blender, and you can find a huge amount of detail, requirements, and instructions about that at Minecraft Wiki:Standardized views. Amatulic (talk) 18:35, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The renders are made with Blender, with models extracted from Bedrock Edition Vanilla Resource Pack. - Magiczocker (talk) 18:42, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I got the mod working, thank you guys for telling me about it. The mod doesn't seem to render mobs with weapons. Am I missing something? Does the mod actually do that or is there some other program for that? -- XZippy (talk) 05:48, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
 * If you don't want to use the graphic programs (which may be more complicated but always up to date and I understand that) try using Mineshot mod, latest release seem to be compatible with 1.16.5. What mod is doing is basically letting you project camera into orthographic view. Oakar567 (talk) 12:14, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I used that isometric mod to make the image on the mobs page. Is it good? Do you like it? -- XZippy (talk) 01:12, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It looks good for the lead image, but for individual illustrations the camera angle and other stuff (like no dropshadow) needs to comply with the MCW:Standardized views guideline. Amatulic (talk) 17:25, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I understand how all the images should work here. Are there any other pages that need my image magic like I gave on the mobs, undead and biome page? I don't want to leave any page non-beautified. -- XZippy (talk) 16:19, 8 October 2021 (UTC)