Article Workshop

[WeiryWriter]

So a thought has occurred to me.  Many of us who work on the wiki like to work on articles, especially long or involved ones, in our user pages and then transfer them over to their actual pages when we are done.  And I for one generally go through a "I want outside input on this before I move this" close to the end of my process.  It isn't always obvious though when someone like me wants outside opinions on something.

 

And so the idea of this thread came to me.  In this thread we can post when an article is close to being finished but you just want someone else's eyes to go over it.  I will try to update this post with links to all of the user pages people want looked at.  Hopefully someone else thinks this is a good idea as well.

 

While comments can be discussed in this thread, I think the ideal place would be in the respective page's talk page.  That way this thread doesn't get cluttered and comments don't get missed.

 

Pages in need of critique:

 

Kaladin - cem

[Aether]

Comments on "City of Elantris". Spoiler-tags added for clarity (though it does, on the surface at least, look a bit messier this way):

 

 

HISTORY

Construction:

• I would have said "the Shard of Devotion", even though it is technically a name.

The Reod:

• 1st paragraph: Aesthetically, I'd extend the link from "Chasm" to "the Chasm".
• Add a comma: "(...) called the Reod, from Aon Reo (...)"
• I'd change "including the massive Aon Rao the Elantrian Metropolitan Area formed" to "including the massive Aon Rao formed by the Elantrian Metropolitan Area" or "including the massive Aon Rao formed by Elantris itself and its surrounding cities".
• ideally, I would consider moving that part to the next sentence: Because of this, the Aon Rao formed by (...), being what controlled and maintained the Shaod, would no longer work properly, and Elantris fell.
• "The strongest and most powerful Elantrians", I'd replace "Elantrians" with "practitioners of AonDor", because the Dor would only attack those, not Elantrians in general.
• "leaving them effectively immobilized". This too is rather imprecise. Replace with "cyclically attacking and immobilizing them" or something to that effect. Consider adding ", threatening to knock them out permanently" or something
• 2nd paragraph: Add a comma and consider a "which" too: "caused a destabilization of Arelish society, prompting an uprising against their former leaders", or "Arelish socity, which promted (...)"
• "Iadon came to power and eventually became King". Do not casually mention someone for the first time without giving a short line of introduction: "Iadon, formerly a successful merchant, came (...)".
• "population to plantations, leaving Kae (...)". Comma.
• 3rd paragraph: "and without the Dor sustaining, it the city". Comma.
• "decay; the stones themselves started to rot." You use semi-colons way too often. You can easily just replace this one with a punctuation. Also, consider changing to "The stones themselves appeared to rot". It was the lichen covering them - not the stones themselves - that were in the process of decaying.
• "Since the Elantrians could no longer heal and could not die from their wounds or starvation". Recommend changing to "no longer heal, nor die from their wounds or from starvation, (...)".
• "Afterwards their only interaction with the outside world would be a phrase, unique to each person, that they would repeat over and over again as if in a trance."
• "The Elantrians thus affected became known as the Hoed.
• 4th paragraph: "and cared for the children residing in the city"
• "took residence in the University and used". No comma.
• "Shaor, who was in reality a petulant and capricious child"
• "Shaor's base of power was the former Elantrian bank"

New Elantris:

• 3rd paragraph: "Around this time Raoden, along with Galladon and Karata, discovered that some of the Hoed are Elantrians from before the fall". It was never confirmed that there were more original Elantrians. Raoden and Galladon only found the one during his time as Spirit.
• "They are shocked because it was believed they had all died in the chaos following the Reod." Clumsy. I suggest "This shocks them, because all original Elantrians were believed to have been killed in the chaos following the Reod."
• "One of these Hoed". Again, there's only the one. "The Hoed leads them (...)"
• "In this library, Raoden was able to gain an understanding of certain aspects of the fall". Comma and a slight change.
• "given off by the city. When it grew dark the organisms died."
• "was able to make working though noticeably weak AonDor equations by adding a line representing the Chasm to the Aons". He didn't fix AonDor at that time, he was only able to make usable equations.

The Restoration of Elantris:

• "During the events following the invasion of Arelon EDIT: by enemy Dakhor Monks, Raoden is (...)". I wouldn't capitalize the "i". Also, comma if you open a sentence with a time interval.
• "On the way, Raoden subconsciously noticed". You've already introduced Galladon as a second possible "he", so you have to say Raoden specifically, or at least use some "the former" shenanigans. Also, comma, for the same reason as the previous point.
• "After refusing the peace offered by the Lake he added the Chasm line while avoiding capture by Dakhor monks, Karata died protecting him." The sentence is long and cluttered. I suggest splitting it up. Also comma, for the same reason as the two previous points: "After refusing the peace offered by the Lake, he returned to Elantris to add the Chasm line, all the while avoiding capture by the enemy Dakhor monks. Karata died protecting him." Also, this is the first time in the article you mentioned Dakhor monks. You should add enemy or something to quickly define their antagonism, and link to an article about the Dakhor magic. EDIT: I found it better to do so when you first mention "the invasion of Elantris".
• " Once the Chasm line was added, Elantris and the Elantrians were restored to their pre-Reod state." Added a comma as per the three previous posts, and removed the superfluous and incorrectly placed one.
• "Following Raoden's coronation, Elantris was re-instated as the Arelish capital." Added a comma as per the four previous posts.

LANDMARKS

 

Royal Palace:

• "(...) buildings in the city; large enough to (...)". You are a bit too liberal in your use of semi-colons. As a general rule-of-tumb, you should only use them if 1. you want to indicate a distinct connection or contrast between to separate sentences, and 2. you can replace it by either ", and" or ", or". In this particular case it works better to just replace it with a comma.
• "It has five wings, with domes topped with spires". Wrong use of comma. Remove.

University:

• "It consists of five or six long buildings." Five or six? Why is it uncertain?

Hidden Library:

• "The reasons why are unknown, but as a result, the library". Two commas needed.
• "(...) murals depicting scenes important to the Elantrians." I'd add an example.
• "During the Invasion of Arelon,". Correct use of comma as per the previous comments about time intervals. I also still object to the capitalization of the "i" in "invasion of Arelon". Though rather gruesome at the time, it was a rather quickly contained event that proved to be insignificant in the long run. IMO, it was a simple invasion, not a significant historical event. If it is given its own article, I might change my mind.

Bank:

• "(...) which, before the Reod, was (...)". Missing comma.

Korathi Church:

• "The fact that the Elantrians, themselves viewed as gods before the Reod, allowed another religion to have a place of worship in their city is somewhat surprising to most". I'd move the part between the commas further back. I also find "pre-Reod" to be unnecessary: "The fact that the Elantrians allowed another religion to have a place of worship in their city, themselves being viewed as gods by some, is somewhat surprising to most"

AONDOR

 

• "(...) practitioners of the art, but the city itself (...)". Comma
• "In turn, the city (...)". Comma

Elantrians

• "The Elantrians are those who have experienced the Shaod and can afterwards practice AonDor". Experienced implies an isolated event. They are really more subjected to, chosen by or afflicted by the Shaod. Also, I am not sure I agree with the way you tie in their practise of AonDor. I'd go for something like "The Elantrians are those who have been chosen by the Shaod, which changes their appearance and gives them the ability to practise AonDor."

The Shaod:

• I'd add the to the title.
• "(...) within area of the Elantris effect." Clumsy. I suggest "within the reach of Elantris" or something. Alternatively, add "(...) of the power of Elantris".

Power Amplification:

• "(...) massive Aon Rao that targets that greatly increases the strength (...)". Seems like a mistake following a copy/paste edit.
• "(...) Elantrians in close proximity to it." I am note sure close is correct. The effect of the magic greatly decreases with distance, but they are still usable even in Teod.

TRIVIA

 

Nothing to say here. Well done!

 

General thoughts:

• I feel "Elantrian Metropolitan Area" is a bit distracting. It can technically be called that, but I feel like it is a bit out-of-place.

.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

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.

I might have overdone it a tad, but I hope that can still be useful. Permit me to say that it is a really nice-looking and well-written article, but there are a substantial amount of things that has to be corrected. Some of it is negligible - feel free to ignore that - but I feel like most of it is rather pertinent. My suggested changes aren't necessarily the best, though.

Edited January 11, 2014 by Aether

[WeiryWriter]

Thank you, Aether, I just incorporated a lot of your comments.  There are some things I didn't do, such as un-capitalizing "Invasion" because it is an article on the coppermind, and most of the time it is because I'm going off what is in the book (as with the "five or six building") or WoB (the Elantris effect).

 

Any other comments are more than welcome, either by you Aether or any other members.

[Aether]

Happy to help. Feel free to throw anything else you might have laying around, or even previously written.

[cem]

These are rather small things.

• The article starts as "The <bold>City of Elantris</bold>". That seems a bit superfluous to me. I would just write "<bold>Elantris</bold>" and be done with it.
• The three quotes you have in the article all have a blankspace at their beginning.
• Can you make the Trivia section into a list? It just looks better that way.

[Aether]

I just took a quick look at the article in its final form. I might drop in with some minor grammar later, but just in passing:

 

• You do link to the article "the Invasion of Arelon" in the introduction, but I would also link to it when it shows up a second time much further down on the page, under "the Restoration of Elantris". By then, they would have forgotten about the link higher up on the page.

[Joe ST]

I am tempted to agree with Aether, you don't have to stick with the first link, if there's a good place to relink much further down?

[cem]

I wouldn't mind some critic on Kaladin revamp. It's rather long, and only done to Kaladin's sale to Sadeas' army. It'd be great if someone could proofread it and check my grammar too. You can fix the mistakes directly or just post it here.

[WeiryWriter]

I wouldn't mind some critic on Kaladin revamp. It's rather long, and only done to Kaladin's sale to Sadeas' army. It'd be great if someone could proofread it and check my grammar too. You can fix the mistakes directly or just post it here.

 

link added to the OP.

 

I might do a more in-depth post later but right now I just want to say the "intro" is kind of long, and is too focused on his history.  If that makes sense?  Personally I think the intro sections should be fairly brief.

[Joe ST]

I agree that your intro is rather verbose. I'd probably (as a stupidly subjective and very rough guide) say that an intro shouldn't be any longer than the infobox? But that's just a random decision. I also agree with Weiry, it shouldn't necessarily be so focused on history.

I don't know how to express this, but I don't know if we should have our articles being so detailed? I mean, we've had one book so far, and you've already pushed it to the fifth longest page. I don't know how close we want to get to actually just re-describing the story? Especially considering we have coming-up 2000 articles which that could potentially happen to?

These are just my immediate reactions, not any way policy or anything. I want to discuss them rather than enforce my possibly wrong views as 'law' ><

[cem]

link added to the OP.

 

I might do a more in-depth post later but right now I just want to say the "intro" is kind of long, and is too focused on his history.  If that makes sense?  Personally I think the intro sections should be fairly brief.

Okay, shortened the intro a bit. I think it's fine now? I'd tried to keep it detailed because history was this long, but it was too much, yes.

 

I agree that your intro is rather verbose. I'd probably (as a stupidly subjective and very rough guide) say that an intro shouldn't be any longer than the infobox? But that's just a random decision. I also agree with Weiry, it shouldn't necessarily be so focused on history.

I don't know how to express this, but I don't know if we should have our articles being so detailed? I mean, we've had one book so far, and you've already pushed it to the fifth longest page. I don't know how close we want to get to actually just re-describing the story? Especially considering we have coming-up 2000 articles which that could potentially happen to?

These are just my immediate reactions, not any way policy or anything. I want to discuss them rather than enforce my possibly wrong views as 'law' ><

Eh, it may have gotten a bit out of hand because I've been hanging around wikis with really long pages recently. I guess it rubbed on me. I'll try to moderate from now on. I'm fine if anyone wants to shorten it by the way, don't think I'd get angry or something.

 

Looked in that light the article is probably done, content-wise, until WoR comes out.

[Joe ST]

I'd rather have more input from others before agreeing that you should stop, I'm not exactly the person you should rely on for judgement of completeness or verbosity considering how many stubs I make XD

[cem]

I'd rather have more input from others before agreeing that you should stop, I'm not exactly the person you should rely on for judgement of completeness or verbosity considering how many stubs I make XD

I don't know whether I'll stop or not yet. I'll wait for other comments before that as you say, but I went over the article and saw you were right. I just cut some parts from the article, and for the time being I'm content with its length.

[Chaos]

I like the current length of the article; I think it has the right amount of detail. More detail is always better.

[Joe ST]

To the point of recounting the story though?

[Chaos]

I fail to see how that is an issue; we are here to provide a complete reference on everything in Brandon's books. This is part of it. The Kaladin article should contain absolutely everything that is relevant to his character, and every scene in a way can be considered relevant, or else the scene would not have been included. I have absolutely no qualms with this. Haven't you ever gone to Wookieepedia or Memory Alpha and just read an extensive and awesome wiki article and get totally absorbed in it? That's what I want here.

So cem, I applaud you. This is great.

[Joe ST]

OK, so I guess cem should put the rest of his detail back in the article, sorry dude ><

[cem]

Should I? I mean it was very detailed before.

 

http://coppermind.net/w/index.php?title=Kaladin&diff=25986&oldid=25979

 

Which one's better: before or after?

[Chaos]

I prefer the former. It's just better. And I would not say that it is "ludicrously detailed" as some would suggest. It's fine.

[WeiryWriter]

So I'm resurrecting this thread so I can get some feedback on an update to the Shalash page (which in part is a mock-up of updates I want to make to the rest of the Herald pages).

[Blaze1616]

So I'm resurrecting this thread so I can get some feedback on an update to the Shalash page (which in part is a mock-up of updates I want to make to the rest of the Herald pages).

 

Alright, I just ran through it a followed up with some of the sources. Grammatically the page looks fine. There are three things of note I want to make sure are brought to attention, in the event that you haven't already noticed:

 

1) Under Appearance and Personality, the third paragraph, you note "Her destruction of said art appears to be a perversion of her divine attribute of "Creative" and may be a symptom of her forsaking of the Oathpact." To my knowledge this is a popular theory, but not proven, a fact that is slightly noted on by the word "appears" but is not outright stated. If this hasn't been confirmed, I am unsure if we should tag it (as that makes a rather large header) or simply remove it.

 

2) Under Formation of the Oathpact, "Shalash was chosen by the Shard Honor to be one of his Heralds, this relationship was the formation of the Oathpact and as part of it Shalash received one of the Honorblades in exchange for her service." Is this confirmed? Specifically the "chosen by Honor" bit. I am lacking in my Herald knowledge. I checked the reference at the end of the paragraph, but Chapter 5 only proved the second half of the paragraph, so I'm not sold on this being confirmed.

 

3) Under Trivia, you have no reference. I had not heard of Shallash being featured, only Taln. Not that I'm doubting you, but oversourcing is better than undersourcing.

[WeiryWriter]

Alright, I just ran through it a followed up with some of the sources. Grammatically the page looks fine. There are three things of note I want to make sure are brought to attention, in the event that you haven't already noticed:

 

1) Under Appearance and Personality, the third paragraph, you note "Her destruction of said art appears to be a perversion of her divine attribute of "Creative" and may be a symptom of her forsaking of the Oathpact." To my knowledge this is a popular theory, but not proven, a fact that is slightly noted on by the word "appears" but is not outright stated. If this hasn't been confirmed, I am unsure if we should tag it (as that makes a rather large header) or simply remove it.

 

2) Under Formation of the Oathpact, "Shalash was chosen by the Shard Honor to be one of his Heralds, this relationship was the formation of the Oathpact and as part of it Shalash received one of the Honorblades in exchange for her service." Is this confirmed? Specifically the "chosen by Honor" bit. I am lacking in my Herald knowledge. I checked the reference at the end of the paragraph, but Chapter 5 only proved the second half of the paragraph, so I'm not sold on this being confirmed.

 

3) Under Trivia, you have no reference. I had not heard of Shallash being featured, only Taln. Not that I'm doubting you, but oversourcing is better than undersourcing.

 

1. Good point, I'll have to give it some thought.

 

2. Yeah this has to do with the fact that I wrote the article at a different point in time than sourcing it.  We do know that the Oathpact was between Honor and the Heralds. And that the Honorblades were created and given to the Heralds. (by Honor, because he mentions the spren started bonding in imitation of what He gave mankind, i.e. the honorblades)  I'll make sure to add these.

 

3. This again is a artifact of me working on this over a period of a couple weeks.  We do have a source for this.  (We first heard about it secondhand from one of the UK signings last August, but we have it verbatim from the recent Chicago one--which is in the process of being transcribed)  I'll add a cite note to add it for when it is added to the database.

[Blaze1616]

2.  We do know that the Oathpact was between Honor and the Heralds.

 

That does not prove that the Heralds were "chosen by Honor," but merely that the Oathpact was between two parties, the Heralds and Honor. Unless the Oathpact was the event in which the Heralds gained said title. Again my Herald knowledge is lacking. Otherwise the page looks good.

[WeiryWriter]

That does not prove that the Heralds were "chosen by Honor," but merely that the Oathpact was between two parties, the Heralds and Honor. Unless the Oathpact was the event in which the Heralds gained said title. Again my Herald knowledge is lacking. Otherwise the page looks good.

 

Well sense they thought abandoning the Honorblades was enough to break the Oathpact it follows that they were given them when the Oathpact was formed?  I don't really know of an alternative to this?

[Blaze1616]

Well sense they thought abandoning the Honorblades was enough to break the Oathpact it follows that they were given them when the Oathpact was formed?  I don't really know of an alternative to this?

 

My point was more along the lines of their ascension to Herald status (and being granted their non-Honorblade powers) possibly hapenning prior to the Oathpact, and potentially happening independant of Honor. I wasn't sure if it was definitively known that Honor specifically picked the ten of them and made them Heralds or not. I am in complete agreement that the Honorblades were granted to them by Honor.