Since there is a restriction on posting threads for new accounts, I'll put it here.
Neutral point of view on BG Wiki?
Information resources best serve a community if they carry a neutral point of view, not speaking for or against what they discuss but rather simply presenting the available data and letting the user decide for themselves what it means and if the material being discussed has merit or not.
This does seem to hold up here, most of the time. I take issue in particular, with the content page for Ballista. A few things before I proceed:
~ Yes, I know it's not popular content. But there are those who enjoy and partake in it from time to time.
~ Yes, I know it has a lot of issues, largely stemming from the addition of numerous progression mechanics to the game while Ballista itself hasn't been adjusted to take those into account well.
That does not mean that the content article should not be presented with a neutral point of view. There are lots of other contents in the game that are generally not popular:
~ Garrison
~ Moblin Maze Mongers
~ Most low level BCNMs
~ Belligerency
~ Countless sidequests with no/minimal rewards
~ Campaign (debatable, though I never see anyone doing it or asking about it)
And more- Typically because it's simply not current content anymore (and probably why BG Wiki doesn't even really have a page on Garrison, for example)
Now, I'm both ready and willing to help fill some of those gaps, as despite the hard work made here which I definitely recognize, there are areas where other information sources have done better and BG still needs some work.
However, none of the contents I described above, if the pages exist, contain an opening paragraph describing the content's popularity. And this is a good thing, because if someone's looking to try or complete everything in the game, they should not be discouraged from doing so by such statements.
However, my attempts to make the Ballista page more netural, while still recognizing the issues, have gotten reverted (Not wholesale, to be fair, I'm not accusing BG of suppression, but specifically the text change I put in to make the page more neutral). And the biggest reason I have an issue with this, is because it is inconsistent with the rest of the wiki. Other articles generally don't lead with "this content is popular" or "this content is not popular."
I would like to help make BGWIki better. But I need to know that I can do so without that effort being undermined needlessly. Nobody needs to be told in a guide about a content that said content isn't popular. That's easy enough to discover through chatting with other players, reading about the content and not finding it interesting, or observing people's participation or lack thereof.
Neutral point of view is fundamental to an encyclopedia of knowledge, whether it's about a game, world history, or pop tarts (Yes, there's a pop tarts wiki). It really should be here as well.