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Wiki Discussion

Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in) - Page 2

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-09-08 22:26:33
Alright. In the end…I don't feel the "clash". However, that's not all there is to discuss and I'm not saying it can't exist; if another user does see a significant difficulty in navigating a page when they just want a technical rundown, they should say so. Once again, as you said, as many users as possible should weigh in, in particular to see if that's an issue.

I'll use the Trainer escape glitch page as an example for a handful of things again. For a glitch scientist, there are technical explanation sections. They don't take up much of the page, but they can easily be clicked to and there's not a whole lot to say on that front anyway. The glitch artist is plenty satisfied for obvious reasons. The glitch technologist can click directly to any section labeled "method" or "procedure". A possible solution in the case of this page, if the clash is significantly perceived, would be to reorder the sections. (There are other issues with it–for instance, the phrase "for some reason" should never appear for any reason–but those are sidenotes for now.)

About one of your main proposals, while the page can do with some cleanup, I don't see how additional collapsibles would help it as there's already the index at the top. Envisioning collapsible sections on there, I can see them making the page look worse, but not better or cleaner. On the topic of collapsibles, though, the "Major glitches" one at the top would be a good tool if it were better-maintained; additionally, a "Generation I glitches" template at the top would be better for page visibility than continuing to rely on the sidebar and categories in the footer, some of which are very particular instead of the central hub pages something like "Generation I glitches" should be. Somehow linking these folders to the categories would be a huge help, and is conceivably possible.

Templates…hmm. A good quality of life addition in theory, but what use would they practically serve? The wiki's pages are varied enough that there is no "one size fits all" or even "one size fits a significant amount", at least as I see it. Unless a decent handful of users agree on the clash being an issue, in which case one that separates procedure, method, and results could be incorporated into most of the pages under Major glitches. For the Dexes, it's already common sense to copy an existing one and replace what's in each field. If there's a specific way a particular template could be improved (the GlitchDex base stats one isn't much different to any old table, and arguably even less convenient), that could be its own discussion.

The style guide could do with a cleanup or rewrite given how it hasn't aged with the rest of the site. About hexadecimals,
1. The poll didn't have an option "anything, as long as it is consistent". I think it is rather likely that most people who voted on any of the first four options would be more OK with any of the other three than with the status quo.

2. Well, I am already proposing across-the-board changes. And we don't actually need to go over 3,400 pages. Simply put something in the manual of guide, and edit some major pages to establish the rule, maybe mass edit Dex pages with robots — I believe the rest will be brought in line in time.

Good calls. I don't have any counterpoints.

3. We might not be able to look over every page, but we are able to look over every future edit. In this regard, our lack of wiki activity (especially new contributors) could actually be an advantage. We can put something above the edit area to the effect of: "We are serious about our style guide, but don't worry about it if you are new to the site. Our staff will review any edits and gladly fix any style problems for you!" I don't think that would be a deterrent to any new contributor.

That's a good start. I'll throw that on the main page right now, because…
the status quo of inconsistency may be a deterrent to some new contributors. How so? Editing the wiki is mostly thankless work. I think most people do that because they believe they are creating something good. And inconsistency does not look good — at least to the conformists it doesn't. So those inconsistencies may be enough to make them think again about contributing.

It might be argued that there are more non-conformists out there than conformists. But even then, I don't think the approach of "feel free to edit, staff will catch problems" would alienate non-conformists. It might alienate anti-conformists, but I don't believe anti-conformists would be a significant portion of the crowd. Maybe we can also mention that we are open to exceptions, as long as there is a good reason — that can be determined on a case-by-case basis.

As a bonus, if we can make it a wiki task to fix the pages to adhere to a more strict style guide, it might well incentivize some lurkers to contribute! It isn't unthinkable that, having gotten comfortable with wiki editing, they go on to contribute in other ways, like bringing new information to the site, right?


(Not sure if I have access to the editing area itself. For now it's on the main page.)

Good suggestions for the new style guide so far. I'll add any if I think of them. In the meantime, a potential new manual of style is anyone's to write.

CSS isn't something I'm familiar with, though I should probably do something about that. I can edit the forum CSS, but that's tied to the main site's source code on Monarch Pass as I recall. Probably best to wait until the forthcoming SMF update to address those issues.

That's all I can think of to add for now. Page visibility is the first priority to me, but these elements all tie into it.

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: bbbbbbbbba
Date: 2019-09-08 23:01:27

I'll use the Trainer escape glitch page as an example for a handful of things again. For a glitch scientist, there are technical explanation sections. They don't take up much of the page, but they can easily be clicked to and there's not a whole lot to say on that front anyway. The glitch artist is plenty satisfied for obvious reasons. The glitch technologist can click directly to any section labeled "method" or "procedure". A possible solution in the case of this page, if the clash is significantly perceived, would be to reorder the sections. (There are other issues with it–for instance, the phrase "for some reason" should never appear for any reason–but those are sidenotes for now.)


There is another piece of technical explanation that cannot be seen from the table of contents. In the "Special stat encounter" section, anything related to $CD60 and $D730 are technical explanations. They are intermingled with descriptions of methods, possibly making the tasks of both the scientist and the technologist harder.

The section "Textbox ID matching" also contains some technical explanation, and it really needs to be expanded a little, but I feel that it would just get in the way of non-scientists. Same for "Encountering Trainers" and "Trade NPC Pokémon and resulting Pokémon". Similar for "Getting Pokémon at level 100 with this trick", "Going up and down the stairs infinitely", "Removing Snorlax", "Glitch meta-map script activation", although those all have their own pages — then again, one cannot see this from the table of contents.

The technologist is probably also confused because there are a bunch of procedures, like three that claims to be "initial steps of the glitch", one with screenshots that goes from the start to the end (although it seems to assume that its readers already know how to do the actual Trainer-Fly input, as this most important part only gets one screenshot, after the whole thing is done), another that refers to both "initial steps of the glitch" and "Special stat encounter" ("wait, there are a bunch of methods there?"), and so on.



Edit: I guess in any case, reordering the sections will surely improve the page's navigability, and also give us a better insight whether collapsibles would help further. This page is special in that it kind of already have "scientist's procedures" (the descriptions in "initial steps" and "special stat encounter" are pretty general) and "technologist's procedures" (like "Mew trick" and "Level 100 Pokémon before Brock"). The question is how to organize those contents to make them easy to find for their respective target audience.

I am surprised that you seem to think this page is an example of good organization. It does have a lot of good information like I mentioned above, but I've always felt that it is an organizational mess.

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-09-09 13:55:54

I am surprised that you seem to think this page is an example of good organization. It does have a lot of good information like I mentioned above, but I've always felt that it is an organizational mess.
I didn't mean to imply that. While it's a big example of inconsistent structuring, I think it can also serve as an example of how well certain systems in place already work despite that.

Reordering the sections in that page would benefit it, but between us it seems to be unclear whether each main section should
be a sub-glitch (which I'd do) or whether technical information, procedures, and results should be the main sections. Maybe first dividing it by sub-glitch and then by each of those three would be a good precedent to follow for pages like that?

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: bbbbbbbbba
Date: 2019-09-09 15:33:28
Fair ;D Honestly I'm not sure. First dividing by something like "technical information, procedures, and results" would help everyone to find what they need most in one place, but it also seems like it would put too much content out of context. If you think first dividing by sub-glitches would be better, then let's try that first.

Actually, I think it would be also important to clarify the relations of the "sub-glitches", seeing as they are neither all parallel or all sequential. Maybe "sub-glitch" is not a good word to use, and they should be divided into varations (different ways to do the same thing) and consequences (non-natural glitches enabled by the "main glitch"). The thing is, the whole "special stat encounter" part is a consequence of the actual trainer escape (I actually feel that the section name "initial steps of the glitch" might be difficult to process), but they are so closely related that it makes no sense to separate them into two pages. Also, part of the "special stat encounter" is actually "escaping the trainer-escape state" ;) I don't know if that part deserves its own section too.

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-09-10 16:45:59
Glad we can agree on where to start with organizing it!

Anyone's welcome to start editing that page. Reorganizing and rewriting it thoroughly could turn it into the opposite of what it was at the start of this thread: an example of how we want other pages to look going forward. [size=6pt](Yes, volunteering everyone includes myself…)[/size]

The way I'd define "sub-glitch" is an occurrence or potential procedure that results from the same error in programming as another: I'd call both LGFly and oobLG "LOL sub-glitches". The Pomeg glitch is especially full of them, but I don't know the intricacies of that one too well. About dividing into "variations" and "consequences", I don't see a strong need to do so. So long as the consequences line up reasonably well (the Trainer escape glitch's being encountering a specific Pokémon), I would say they fall under the same umbrella. I suppose that puts me in the "technology" camp. While Meta-map script activation requires an initial step of the Trainer escape glitch and is listed on the page, I would separate the two completely.

As I was typing the above section I realized more and more how the approaches clash, as Meta-map script activation requires reaching the "trainer escape state" and hatching a Jirachi egg requires reaching the "Pomeg state". I think a case-by-case approach can solve this, though: in the case of the Pomeg glitch page, for instance, it should be split up into many, and in the case of the Trainer escape glitch one, there can be a bit in "See also" that says "Meta-map script activation, used for […], is achieved through some of the same steps of the Trainer escape glitch.")

Did anyone in Discord talk more about this, by the way?

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: bbbbbbbbba
Date: 2019-09-10 17:41:51
Actually, I'm thinking that "meta-map script activation" should be a general name for a class of exploits, just like "arbitrary code execution". The specific exploit — using trainer escape to get to meta-map script ID 4 — should have a more specific name. Where is the mastermind behind "Glitzer Popping"? :P



I am also seeing how it might be difficult to differentiate between variations and consequences, as this specific case of meta-map script activation may be regarded as either a variation or a consequence of text box ID matching. I would tend to say it is a variation, because after seeing the glitched Trainer text box, the player does not need to do anything else special to achieve invalid meta-map script activation.

I think a clear-cut case of variations would be the 2x2 block encounter glitches. The left-facing shore tile glitch is one of its variations, and all of the applications mentioned on the left-facing shore tile glitch page are sub-variations. To trigger them all, the player ultimately does the same thing, although with different setups.

If we draw a box diagrams of glitches, then variations would be boxes within a box, and consequences would be indicated by arrows pointing from one box to others.

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: Torchickens
Date: 2019-09-11 07:29:31

Actually, I'm thinking that "meta-map script activation" should be a general name for a class of exploits, just like "arbitrary code execution". The specific exploit — using trainer escape to get to meta-map script ID 4 — should have a more specific name. Where is the mastermind behind "Glitzer Popping"? :P



I am also seeing how it might be difficult to differentiate between variations and consequences, as this specific case of meta-map script activation may be regarded as either a variation or a consequence of text box ID matching. I would tend to say it is a variation, because after seeing the glitched Trainer text box, the player does not need to do anything else special to achieve invalid meta-map script activation.

I think a clear-cut case of variations would be the 2x2 block encounter glitches. The left-facing shore tile glitch is one of its variations, and all of the applications mentioned on the left-facing shore tile glitch page are sub-variations. To trigger them all, the player ultimately does the same thing, although with different setups.

If we draw a box diagrams of glitches, then variations would be boxes within a box, and consequences would be indicated by arrows pointing from one box to others.


Yes! :) Some kind of diagram sounds like a good idea. Certain glitches as well are sub-glitches of multiple glitches (like using the Trainer escape glitch to activate meta-script ID 4, or using the expanded PC to acquire it) too; and using a visual diagram might be a good way of showing that. The only thing is we might need to have many of the diagrams or they would become extremely large.

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-09-11 16:52:28

Actually, I'm thinking that "meta-map script activation" should be a general name for a class of exploits, just like "arbitrary code execution".

That makes sense given its nature. I can't think of many uses for it off the top of my head, but it makes sense from an organization standpoint, especially considering there will likely be more uses looking forward.

The specific exploit — using trainer escape to get to meta-map script ID 4 — should have a more specific name. Where is the mastermind behind "Glitzer Popping"? :P

Rerouting Gaia, grinding Japanese Stadium 2, or otherwise just being awesome…"mastermind" is very apt. If I ever discover something new I'll be sure to take a page out of his book. We could try and come up with a name for that specific example right now, though…The Bankforest?

I am also seeing how it might be difficult to differentiate between variations and consequences, as this specific case of meta-map script activation may be regarded as either a variation or a consequence of text box ID matching. I would tend to say it is a variation, because after seeing the glitched Trainer text box, the player does not need to do anything else special to achieve invalid meta-map script activation.
I could go either way. Text box ID matching isn't much in and of itself, but meta-map script activation is one of the few uses for it.

I think a clear-cut case of variations would be the 2x2 block encounter glitches. The left-facing shore tile glitch is one of its variations, and all of the applications mentioned on the left-facing shore tile glitch page are sub-variations. To trigger them all, the player ultimately does the same thing, although with different setups.
I think I'm starting to see what you mean with the terms. In that case "variation" seems appropriate for all the examples provided.

If we draw a box diagrams of glitches, then variations would be boxes within a box, and consequences would be indicated by arrows pointing from one box to others.
Iiiiii see now…

No new input from me. Just can't come up with anything more to add yet. I think with what's been gotten out of the way we can safely go ahead with reorganizing existing pages. Use of categories is another thing (as you said in the talk page, all the first three Generational ones are bloated, so linking them all separately in the header for each page wouldn't be the best idea. Maybe there could at least be a more prominent category link at the top, though.)

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: bbbbbbbbba
Date: 2019-09-11 19:17:48
On the categorization problem, I think maybe the best solution is still to revive the "natural glitch" category. The thing is, in theory any glitch could be reached by only following "consequence" links starting from natural glitches (except cheating/ACE only glitches, which can have their own category). For giving newcomers a tour of the site, they are as good a category as any. And they have a rather well-defined boundary, which, in my opinion, is important for a categorization system to work, especially if we don't want it to be maintained by a single person.

One problem with natural glitches I see is that there are still too many of them, especially for Generation I (see list of natural glitches in Generation I). It might still be necessary to have a notion of "major glitches" based on their perceived usefulness/destructiveness. I currently don't have a satisfactory idea, but I hope we can come up with a definition that, while probably not completely clear-cut, is at least objective and logical, so that people can argue for a page's inclusion or exclusion.

If the "major glitch" category turns out to be too broad in the other direction (ACE programs tend to be useful, after all), we can always focus just on natural major glitches (of course, necessary precursors of major glitches would all be major glitches). I don't want to argue that something like item underflow is not major, but they don't need to be exposed through a "public-facing" category.

About the definition of "major glitches", we can open another thread if people feel it's worth it.



Another idea: Maybe we can have a "glitch infobox" template, similar to our Template:ItemInfoGenI or Bulbapedia's Template:Pokémon Infobox, and put there some basic information like affected version(s), variations, consequences, precursors (for non-natural glitches), etc. It can serve the dual purpose of helping people decide if they are interested enough to read the text, and facilitating navigation. It can also contain a good screenshot (gif if necessary) that showcases the glitch, which would be nice too.

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: entrpntr
Date: 2019-09-17 20:45:22
I was just recently clued in on some of the discussions you guys have been having as a community in 2019 (RE: approaches and common goals, organization, documentation, etc). The intersection with speedrunning seemed like one common theme, and I figured I'd mention I don't mind helping with specific gaps in knowledge where I can. Glitches themselves aren't my immediate interest, but I've at least had a hand in the majority of interesting developments in Gen 1-2 glitched speedruns since 2016 (one admittedly large exception being pretty much anything to do with Gen 1 Catch 'Em All runs).

I got roped in more and more because luck manipulation was the secret sauce needed to enable direct applications of things the more hardcore Gen 1-2 glitchers in PSR (luckytyphlosion, gifvex, krazyd4n) came up with for various glitched routes. But I also have a decent amount of knowledge at this point from going through enough iterations of the "BGB + pret + a bit of time/effort" formula from looking into mechanics for Gen 2 luck manipulation, as well as from routing the various glitched runs I've done. I also have a decent amount of practice translating "luckyspeak" into written English, which I imagine might be helpful on the documentation front.

I don't really want to spread myself too thin by trying to identify glitch-related stuff from PSR that needs to be documented or explained better, but I can try to help with writing stuff up on the wiki (or whatever) if there are any specific requests where you think I could be useful.

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: bbbbbbbbba
Date: 2019-09-18 03:22:19
Hmm… I think just your presence would help us a lot. Maybe just hang out in our discord, explaining things you are familiar with if someone asks. Maybe look up the relevant glitches here when you are working on a route, noting if there is something missing, incorrect, or difficult to read. (If you don't want to fix something yourself, you can just inform us. I'm sure if you bug us enough, some of us would do it. ;D)

I am not really familiar with the speedrunning community, so I'm not sure about my suggestions. (I've tried to join the Pokémon speedrunning discord, but I left when the server asked me which game I ran. Obviously I didn't run any, and I took that as an evidence of the speedrunning community being unfriendly towards non-runners. I was probably thinking too much…)

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: entrpntr
Date: 2019-09-18 14:53:17
Okay, I'll probably hop in the Discord at some point so I can at least be DM'd or pinged. I reached my point of exhaustion on routing/running last year, so I haven't done very much in the past 12 months, which is why my attention turned a bit more towards peripheral stuff like understanding and documenting various mechanics.

I think they have that check in the PSR discord to make sure the core community is the actual runners, but there hasn't been issue before adding major contributors from pret or GCL (Sherkel is in the discord, for instance). You may need to directly contact an admin (Dabomstew would be my recommendation) to introduce yourself and see what you should do to get added.

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-09-20 10:59:30
This is a very pleasant surprise! :) It's great to have you here, even if it'll just be intermittently. Out of curiosity, what brought you to swing by again?

I am in the PSR Discord, and have actually been there for much longer than in the GCL one (soon followed by me coming back here), though I've hardly ever said anything there. I was trying to run something at first, RBA I think, but my patience quickly grew thin and I played around with NSC routes instead. As soon as frame-perfect RNG manips made their way into that category, though, whatever patience I had quickly gave way. Optimization is optimization, though! I'm also more interested in why it works than "grinding".

[size=8pt][derail]…I do want to give RBA another go now that I mention it, though. There's just such a charm to it. Has the most updated route been written up yet?[/derail][/size]

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: entrpntr
Date: 2019-09-20 21:30:31
Someone pointed out this thread to me, and then I also came across this one when browsing the forums. My time with speedrunning is winding down, but I'd rather not have any useful knowledge I may have go to waste, and there were comments in those threads that suggested it would be nice for speedrunners to separate the routing parts of various runs from the mechanics parts.

While speedrunning was my core interest, digging into the mechanics was also fun, and I'd say GCL has more inherent curiosity towards such things than PSR as a whole (as lucky alludes to in the 2nd linked thread). Lucky also mentions the fact that PSR people who do know the mechanics haven't really documented things in a very organized fashion; a hidden motivation I have for helping out is to hopefully motivate lucky into documenting stuff that currently resides exclusively in the recesses of his brain.

For RBA, I only know the recent routes, but they rely on manip (in particular, a Ditto encounter+catch manipulation for use in double distort Cooltrainer shenanigans). An old route that doesn't use manip can be found here, but I don't know what recent discoveries or optimizations in the newer routes may be left out. (For reference, I'm pretty sure the best run with the non-manip route is this one.)

Re: Organization discussion thread (everyone please weigh in)

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-09-24 14:14:09
Awesome to finally have his Watson here. I've had a lot of trouble focusing on the site if it wasn't obvious yet, but I'll let you know if any particular page comes to mind that needs more clarification and/or elaboration. If there's anything completely absent, you can just start the page. (We got an example very quickly with the Defense Up 1 glitch, plus Colosseum's X item glitch.) As embarrassingly slowly "branching out" has happened, at least it's finally starting to.

That RBA run is officially one of the coolest things to watch ever. I'm gonna do it timerless a few times this week to hopefully get a feel for it again. From the routing document it looks like the only strictly necessary RNG is the TID manip, so that's nothing. In fact, I wonder if it could be a good starting point for new users…straight NSC is too short and now optimized in the wrong ways for those who want to understand it, not to mention the sheer drudgery of the newly discovered steps, but this one guides the player through a variety of loopholes in a way that allows them to see what they're doing and thus experiment with them in their own ways. Could a commentated RBA run be an ideal "this is what we're about" for the front page?

Further on topic, bringing back the "natural glitches" category and displaying it prominently is a good suggestion, though I might want to put more emphasis on what…well, cuts to the core of the game, basically. Not just something that happens to be doable from a new file. "Essential glitches", or something? In my case, if it wasn't for the techniques in 151 and RBA, I might not have ever come back here, for instance.

About collapsible sections, by the way, I looked at a page here on my phone a couple days ago and instantly realized what you were talking about, so in short I'm on board in theory with using them for longer pages. There is still the question of practicality for those using a bigger screen, as I don't know if enough pages need entire sections hidden to look cleaner.