Forum:Project Planet Data

I have been checking in-game planet data (= description and details) and compared them to the data in corresponding articles. Almost as often as they are accurate, they are not.

Correcting transcribed text is hardly difficult, if numbingly tedious, but the question of what to do with planet data that is different from one game to another has never been resolved properly – or at least the effects of such an agreement have not been carried out adequately. I have no delusions about how much people care about planet descriptions, but I'm pretty sure everyone still agrees they should be accurately transcribed &rArr; some action needs to be taken.

I apologise for the lengthiness of this post (and the tedium and frivolousness breathtaking awesomeness and unquestionable importance of this topic), but if you feel informed enough, the Background section is largely skippable.

Background
First Overlap= I'll start with the beginning: overlap in the original Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. The only cluster that is used in both games is Hawking Eta, with the sole ME system (Century) preserved and a few new ones added in ME2. There was some discussion about how this was supposed to be dealt with, and while the navigational issues were resolved, this was not true for the differences in the individual planets' data (see other tab).

The community line was apparently that it was not desirable to split the articles into separate pages, or even sections, according to game. At first it seemed that the ME2 versions were to be treated as updated information, but no real decision seems to have been made, because the ME data simply remained in the articles (and has remained to this day, which tells something about how this matter has been handled up till now: not at all, really). Markup: removed from ME data, added to ME2 data
 * -|Hawking Eta: ME vs. ME2=

these updates were always persistently reverted, so the old descriptions are still there.

Tharopto is a typical hydrogen-helium ice gas giant with traces of chlorine and sulphur sulfur in its atmosphere. It has over 100 moons and an extensive ring system composed of pulverized rock, presumably the debris from shattered moons.
 * Tharopto

Orbital Distance: 29.4 AU

A terrestrial world of average size, Canctra's Cantra's atmosphere composed of nitrogen and argon. Its frozen surface is mainly composed of tin with deposits of calcium. Aside from some spectacular formations of water-ice at the poles, the planet has little to recommend it.
 * Canctra Cantra

Klendagon is an arid terrestrial, slightly larger than Earth, but with a lower density that reflects its relative lack of heavier elements. The crust is composed of tin and aluminum, with wide deserts of dust-fine sand that are easily stirred by the wind.
 * Klendagon

Klendagon's most striking feature is, of course, the Great Rift valley that stretches across the southern hemisphere. What is most fascinating about the Rift is that it does not appear to be natural. The geological record suggests it is the result of a "glancing blow" by a mass accelerator round of unimaginable destructive power. This occurred some thirty-seven 37 million years ago.

(no differences)
 * Tamahera

Tamahera has a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide and xenon. The surface is icy, and composed of sodium oxide with deposits of calcium. It contains a few unremarkable metals, but mainly consists of rock. The presence of canyons and flood plains idicates that liquid water once existed, suggesting Tamahera had a thicker insulating atmosphere in the past.

The possibility of even further updated planet data with the future ME3 was also brought up, but still no agreement was reached on how discrepancies/updates were to be treated. Subsequent attempts at inserting new information into the overlapping Hawking Eta planets' articles were reverted "for now".

Then ME3 came out – with loads of clusters and systems overlapping with both of the previous games – but by this time, most of those "in charge" at the time of ME2 were absent. The overlap issue hardly seems to have come up at all, with admins and other editors "making it up as they went along", planet data being updated or added as new sections somewhat inconsistently.

The in-game updates introduced in ME3 are of two types:
 * (1) minor corrections and rewordings that don't change the information
 * (2) clear addition of new information, mostly an extra sentence about Reaper invasion stuff at the end.

The release of ME3 was evidently a very hectic time, and it is possible that the relatively trivial planet updates drowned among the tons of other stuff that demanded attention at the time. Edits of type (2) introduced new ME3 sections, while many type (1) edits were simply "updates" based on ME3, the articles retaining a single description section. However, some type (1) updates were also made by creating new sections.

Looking at the edit history of the MOS page on Planets, the Description section was never updated in response to overlap issues. If "text from the in-game description (only)" is to be interpreted as exclusively verbatim – and that separate sections are needed whenever data differs across games, if only by a miserable comma – a lot of planet articles were updated erroneously, without being reverted or changed later.

Current situation
The background section was just me doing some detective work to figure out why things are the way they are. Since nothing was ever done about the ME/ME2 overlap, it can only be inferred that no consensus regarding a standard procedure was ever achieved.

More recently, a revert and subsequent admin instruction suggest that "descriptions were always verbatim and sectioned according to game" – a survey of the current state of the planet articles shows they are inconsistent, their data often only almost verbatim. Like I mentioned in the previous section, many of the new descriptions with minor type (1) differences were treated as updated information, not added as new ME3 sections.


 * 1. Would we even want separate sections with two very similar descriptions, possibly just one word swapped for another? While I dislike flimsy compromises, I've only seen clear-cut cases where in-game changes indeed seem intended as updates by the devs: spelling and grammar mistakes are done away with and phrasing is made more clear. This could easily be treated as updated information by the wiki, as well.
 * If that one changed word merits an additional section, why wasn't it done before, and, more to the point, who is going to do it now? Doing anything at all to verify these wretched planet descriptions is extremely time-consuming, tedious and boring – and for what? So we can have one section for Juncro that says "Like Uranus is [sic] the Sol system, ..." and another that says "Like Uranus in the Sol system, ..."? (this error, among many others, has previously been missed, btw.) This would be a nightmare, serving the sole purpose of having verbatim data for the sake of having verbatim data. In a ****load of near-duplicate description sections.
 * 2. Alternatively, it is formally agreed that type (1) differences are to be treated as updates. This has alredy been done with planet details (the numbers) extensively, many orbital distances having been added only in a sequel game.
 * This could be done for planet names, as well, specifically Cantra (the only one I know of). If it's spelled Can c tra in the first game and Cantra in the next and you have to make a choice, why would the first version override any subsequent ones?
 * Type (2) differences (new information) should naturally warrant new sections, in any case. Fortunately this has been done fairly consistently, with only minor basic transcription errors.
 * 3. the MOS and the reality of the articles need to be brought closer together. It seems adjustments are needed on both ends.

Discussion
Regardless of what is (hopefully) decided here, I volunteer to check the in-game planet data and adjust the wiki's data as appropriate.

Optimistically: some input on this would be appreciated. Elseweyr (talk) 07:24, October 1, 2013 (UTC)