Category talk:Worlds
Qualifications for world pages?
There's been a fair bit of discussion on the Discord about what sorts of worlds should be qualified for having pages on the wiki, and I want to port the discussion here for better transparency. Official worlds have always been a given, but there's a range of opinions regarding the inclusion of other worlds. I am of the opinion that there should be eligible community worlds, but that there should be some minimum criteria for qualification. This stems from both the principles behind Wikipedia's Notability Guidelines and various elements of What Wikipedia is not (particularly because pages shouldn't exist for promotion/advertising purposes), and because as editors our time and attention is finite, and we can not reasonably maintain standards of quality and reasonably content controls on every possible world. As such, I'd like to propose the following criteria for release scope, with reevaluation intended to occur within a few weeks of public release to see how we're feeling.
Proposed world page eligibility criteria:
- Official VRChat worlds
- Worlds featured by VRChat (Spotlight and official event category worlds) [NOTE: I'm not set on inherently including jam worlds for reasons I will expound upon later)
- Worlds that meet any of the following notability criteria:
- Worlds that the average VRChat user would reasonably recognize by name (as determined by an unbiased 3rd party) [NOTE: hard to quantify, but it leaves room for certain special exceptions. those involved with the creation of the world should not be involved in creating pages under this criteria, but can be involved in editing/maintaining it so long as their contributions remain unbiased and aren't promotional/advertising in nature]
- Worlds with at least 100,000 visits or 10,000 favorites [NOTE: popularity is a metric of notability, and one VRChat itself uses to highlight worlds it believes are of interest to people by virtue of already being of interest to people. whatever number we use here is intended to make it easier to quantify, and should be a fairly low bar]
Additionally, worlds pages should include the filled out world template, and contain some degree of additional information describing the world. [NOTE: world pages should serve a useful purpose to the reader, and stubs that exist simply to exist should be rejected]
These are the criteria I'm implementing on the category page for the moment while we still have time before public release, but is absolutely open for discussion, and I'd like to keep a moratorium on new world pages (except official ones) until we reach a consensus. Whatever criteria we go with I want to ensure we have a consensus on it, but as final a personal recommendation I strongly suggest we start out intentionally more restrictive than we want to end up, because it's easier to open up more in the event that we have the capacity and interest, than to close down more in the event that we're overwhelmed by submissions.
If you agree with the above proposal or have suggested changes please add your comment under this one. If you dissent overall and would like to propose a different criteria altogether, create a new level 3 heading with your proposal for discussion on it to continue under. --Prismic247 (talk) 22:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Popularity Metrics to allow Worlds here are flawed and should not be used
Above it is suggested, that one criteria to allow Worlds to be presented here are those with at least 100,000 visits or 10,000 favorites. This would mean only the top 0.1% most popular Worlds can be represented here. This metric is yet another way to strengthen the notoriety of a few select worlds and also puts another dent in discoverability of new Worlds. I understand this wiki is no primary source of discovering worlds. However for a project like this, that strongly encourages Community Content, locking out the vast majority of world projects from being allowed to be represented here is flawed and demoralizing for World Creators. Further it robs us from learning about interesting world projects and their potential to sprawl into further wiki articles, which would go more into detail of unique concepts applied to such world projects. It is certainly much easier to moderate the few world pages, that are going to be written from a fraction of the 0.1% of all worlds that are eligible. We have plenty of people keeping an eye on this wiki, with likely more to come once this goes fully public.
From what it feels like, the fear of vandalism and low effort articles will push moderators of this wiki to impose restrictions as a peace of mind, so here is what can be done to enforce a popularity metric, while still allowing those dedicated enough to help enrich this wiki with a World page:
Dual-Queue
It is as simple as running a dual queue system. Should a majority agree with the restrictive criteria above, then it can go ahead as Prismic has envisioned. However there should be a separate form, that allows anyone to submit a full World Article, which can then be reviewed by wiki moderators and/or wiki volunteers to be officially part of this category. This would alleviate all fears of being overrun by spam, while still allowing creators, or those adjacent to them, to present their work. For all intents and purposes a simple google docs form or discord bot would do. The queue itself would make it easily apparent who put a genuine effort into making a quality World articles at a glace. Something that fits the standard we set so far. As a secondary queue, there is no pressure either. Anyone dedicated enough may come talk to us to take a look at their submissions as well, something those with low-effort entries would likely not bother with. For fitting submissions a simple clearance can be given to a submitter to add it to the wiki and it would be a wrap.
For the record, I would prefer to have no restrictions at all and simply remove low-effort World pages instead, I would hope more were to agree to this much laissez-faire. Having a secondary queue, is the next best thing.
