On Merging two pages, SP1 spoilers

[Firesong she/her]

I am strongly of the belief that Aether and Aether Spores should be one page, but (afaik) the merger note I left is being ignored, even though the information about Aether Spores is all already on the Aether page. Furthermore.

1. Aether Spores are referred to as simply being compressed aether drops. We know aether drops already exist in the other one because it is called "a bud of Silajana"
2. Aether Spores and Aethers have a ton of the same properties, such as Roseite being growth of rose crystals when exposed to water
3. Aether Spores as a title ignores what they are, seeds/buds of the Aethers on the moons. Thus, Aether Spores is incorrect and should be changed if kept as a separate page. It would be like calling Gravitation "lashes". It misses the more important part.
4. Both can choose somebody that they place a bud into and drain water from. Aetherbound and Spore Eaters. The main difference is merely that Aetherbound do it by choice and Spore Eaters are forced. 
5. Surges are all combined into one page due to the similarities and connections, same with Spren and Corrupted Spren not being seperated; and I feel it goes against the way we do things to just, completely separate things over relatively minor differences, not enough to treat it as an unrelated system. As the main differences are, 
   1. They don't create complete bonds (typically)
   2. They have more compact and less stable seeds than the buds of Prime Aethers
   3. Are more parasitic, force water than asking for it

Due to this and more, I feel they make more sense merged. I would do it myself, but I don't want to step up myself to delete the info on the page for a redirect, and also I can't edit the bar which has them there, so would also be nice for someone to delete that link, as Aether already covers everything.

Edited January 4, 2023 by Firesong

[Firesong she/her]

I very strongly disagree with Chaos' decision and want to talk about why it was decided that two nearly identical things deserve to be separated. And if this precedent is set, then should we go and make separate pages for each Surge, and divide up Hemalurgic Chimeras into the two strands of themselves, to fall in line with the new way of going about things, given this is a pretty massive change to how things have been done previously.  

For reasons as to why the mechanics are not "different enough to warrant a seperate page", see above.

The lack of any explanation as to why such a big change to sitewide policy in the edit that has decided this massive change is also rather unprofessional, and an explanation should have been given beyond mere statement of opinion. As this changes, most notably, the Spren page and Surgebinding page. Given things such as Spren and Corrupted Spren have huge differences in powers, appearance, behavior, and allegiance (far greater than the difference between Prime Aethers and Lumar Aethers) and yet have been counted on the same page for years. Same with Corrupted Mistspren and Mistspren pages being one. I know I am repeating myself, but this decision just has such a big domino effect, so I don't just disagree with it, but worry about all the sitewide changes it inherently demands. 

 

Edited January 4, 2023 by Firesong

[Chaos he/him]

Hi Firesong. My apologies, I had not seen your initial message here, and I would have responded first before removing that template, had I seen it. Always a bit tricky keeping attention on edits, Discord, and here. 

48 minutes ago, Firesong said:

The lack of any explanation as to why such a big change to sitewide policy in the edit that has decided this massive change is also rather unprofessional, and an explanation should have been given beyond mere statement of opinion.

Let's talk about this. I am a bit confused as to what policy you're specifically referring to, as I'm not aware of it. From staff perspective, we have two competing move templates, one saying the aether spore stuff should be on its own page and the aether spore stuff should be on the aether page. Ultimately, we will need to adjudicate between these, right? 

Though I think what you're actually saying is that because the Surgebinding and Spren page look like this, aether should follow. I see the reasoning. However, I would say that those pages need a lot of work and there definitely is room for things to be split off. In regards to Surgebinding, how much should be there, versus on the Knights Radiant page, individual order pages, Fused, etc. is a fairly difficult question to structure to minimize duplication and have something sensible. Structure is definitely a thing Keepers think a lot about. Both Surgebinding and Spren are colossal projects that will take a big amount of effort to sort out. But I think you're expecting this to lead to a lot of different changes, which does not necessarily need to be the case. Each of these situations is a bit different and will need to be considered separately. There's not a coherent, specific policy that works for all pages to delineate what magic thing gets its own page or not. I think that would be impossible. So I don't think you need to worry about that in particular, but for those pages you say, indeed! There needs to be work done there. It reminds me of the Investiture page, which really should also have an Invested Art page to go along with it. These magic things are complicated to sort coherently. Structure can change as time goes on.

In regards to aethers, we have a brand-new magic system that we can structure properly from the get-go, with the foreknowledge of how the last twelve years of Coppermind experience worked in regards to these magic pages, so we can build something sensible. We are currently trying to hash out this structure into something sensible, so maybe wait a little bit for us to hash that out? It's much more complicated than just aether and aether spore, too. Here are additional considerations: Primal Aethers, Silajana herself, aether moons, Luhel bond, individual aether spore sea pages. It's a web of knowledge and information that needs to be sorted.

There's a ton of stuff to go on here. In particular, I imagine the main aether page, that would probably be more of a hub, which would surely talk about the primal aethers and spores, but maybe be more of a hub, and talk about cosmere-wide history/knowledge of aethers, as well as the twelve types. We don't think it would go too in-depth on the spores, because imagine a spore page. It's more than just listing the types. There is culture around the spores, technology around the spores. Sprouters, etc. That stuff is not relevant on the main aether page, which is a good reason to separate them. That core aether page is going to get very busy if we try to jam all the spore stuff, all this tech, and all the traditional aether stuff too, as I think the traditional aether stuff is going to be very extensive eventually... 

So... it's really quite complicated and intricate. Keepers do think it's probably better to have a separate aether spore page. I might ask you to withhold judgment to see how these pages evolve in the coming bit, and I think you might be surprised how it can diverge. I can definitely see the rationale in splitting it. In particular, Windrunner is doing extensive work on this stuff, so stay tuned. Currently there is a lot of cooks in the kitchen on a brand-new magic thing and we will need to make some executive decisions hashing through this. 

There's also hopefully a spoiler stream on Tress stuff that can hopefully illuminate some stuff on this strain of aethers, Midnight Essence, and more, that could inform this.

I'd like to address some things in your initial post. I believe I addressed the Surgebinding and Spren page above.

22 hours ago, Firesong said:

Aether Spores are referred to as simply being compressed aether drops. We know aether drops already exist in the other one because it is called "a bud of Silajana"

You're making an assumption there; I do not believe these are the same. 

22 hours ago, Firesong said:

Aether Spores and Aethers have a ton of the same properties, such as Roseite being growth of rose crystals when exposed to water

This is true, and you are not wrong there, but there are some mechanical differences in that bonding with Primal Aethers seems much more intentional than just simply exposing to water.

22 hours ago, Firesong said:

Aether Spores as a title ignores what they are, seeds/buds of the Aethers on the moons. Thus, Aether Spores is incorrect and should be changed if kept as a separate page. It would be like calling Gravitation "lashes". It misses the more important part.

Definitely not an invalid point; let's see how some of Windrunner's work on the aether spore page works in practice. It may need to be renamed. 

I hope this helps; I do sincerely apologize for not getting to your message before. I legitimately had not seen it.

[Firesong she/her]

29 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Hi Firesong. My apologies, I had not seen your initial message here, and I would have responded first before removing that template, had I seen it. Always a bit tricky keeping attention on edits, Discord, and here. 

Sorry for being a bit aggressive, I sometimes get more stressed than I should. And am also not good at moderating my tone and remaining formal when stressed. You shouldn't be sorry, getting upset is on me.

I think what we could do is keep my section on Lumar Aethers on the Aether Page, and mark Aether Spores as the dross of them. Because the Aethers are still on the moons and such. It is a middle ground that I feel makes sense, seperating spores from the Aethers themselves, as I feel it is a bit odd to entirely seperate even the Aethers on the moon. But do see a logic in separating the Spores from the base page, your explanation does make sense. I just really like having things organized in one place, makes more sense to me personally than splitting them up a lot. 

So you could suggest to them that we keep light talk of Lumar Aethers in the section I have there, and the deeper details about spores go into the Spore page. If that works. 

(And sorry I don't do the Discord, I have an account, but I see it as more personal and don't join many servers. Would have to make a new one for Coppermind stuff.)

Edited January 4, 2023 by Firesong

[Chaos he/him]

58 minutes ago, Firesong said:

Sorry for being a bit aggressive, I sometimes get more stressed than I should. And am also not good at moderating my tone and remaining formal when stressed. You shouldn't be sorry, getting upset is on me.

Don't worry about it! Again, I definitely would have replied here had I seen this.

59 minutes ago, Firesong said:

I think what we could do is keep my section on Lumar Aethers on the Aether Page, and mark Aether Spores as the dross of them. Because the Aethers are still on the moons and such. It is a middle ground that I feel makes sense, seperating spores from the Aethers themselves, as I feel it is a bit odd to entirely seperate even the Aethers on the moon. 

Could you perhaps expound on what you mean a bit more? I don't quite understand what specifically you're saying (other than keeping your section on the aether page). Thanks!

1 hour ago, Firesong said:

So you could suggest to them that we keep light talk of Lumar Aethers in the section I have there, and the deeper details about spores go into the Spore page. If that works. 

I think that will likely happen, but it might look a bit different in practice. Surely there will be a section or subsection doing a brief overview with a "Main article" link to detail more.

1 hour ago, Firesong said:

(And sorry I don't do the Discord, I have an account, but I see it as more personal and don't join many servers. Would have to make a new one for Coppermind stuff.)

Totally fine! If you ever would like to, it's there. We do find it very helpful for coordination. But my post wasn't meant to be a "get on Discord" type thing, more just, "Oops, sorry I didn't see this before I did a thing." 

[Firesong she/her]

1 hour ago, Chaos said:

Could you perhaps expound on what you mean a bit more? I don't quite understand what specifically you're saying (other than keeping your section on the aether page). Thanks!

I mostly just meant that the Aether Spores page should be marked as not fully being the Aethers themselves, but being like, the seeds of them (Hoid called them their dross). Mostly was just talking about rewriting the Aether Spores page to be more accurate about what the spores are. 

[Chaos he/him]

44 minutes ago, Firesong said:

I mostly just meant that the Aether Spores page should be marked as not fully being the Aethers themselves, but being like, the seeds of them (Hoid called them their dross). Mostly was just talking about rewriting the Aether Spores page to be more accurate about what the spores are. 

That will be dealt with for sure, but not sure if we would call it dross necessarily. But certainly the introduction needs to be super reworked, for sure.