Talk:Suburb

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Reporting Guidelines

How to Update a Suburb Danger Report

First find the report you wish to update, you can search for it by typing "User:DangerReport/Suburb" in the search box. You can also find it listed in this category, just scroll to the bottom of the page. The is also a link listed on each suburb's page in the template on the right. It can be found just below the 9-suburb map.

You then need to change the |Danger= variable to one of the possible statuses. You can briefly explain the reason for the change in the edit summary. Longer explanations are best left on the page of the suburb in question under the news section, or on the suburb page under the reports section.

Example

Example User wants to change the danger level of Hollomstown from moderately dangerous to safe, since he has scouted that suburb and found almost no zombies outside, and no PKing activity was reported for some time.

Example User then goes to the Hollomstown page and follows this link: Update Hollomstown's Danger Level which leads to the danger report page for Hollomstown.

Now he changes the danger variable from |Danger=moderately dangerous to |Danger=safe

He can then note the change on the Hollomstown page in the news section. Or add a report on the Suburb page.

May 10th - No zombie or pking activity in this suburb. This suburb is now safe. --Example User 16:25, 13 August 2006 (BST)

If a suburb is deemed noteworthy, change |Notority=normal to |Notority=notable and this will bold the suburb's name on map output.

Danger colors discussion

main article: Suburb/Color System Discussion

Noteworthy Suburbs

Simple Guidelines for Noteworthiness

For a suburb to be able to be called Noteworthy, important events on the history of Malton must have happened on it. The place where hordes were born, important sieges, or events that gained attention from the entire community.

• An important and unique event must have happened in the suburb

Events like Stanstock, the first and second sieges of Caiger Mall are nice examples of unique events that marked history. The first united the entire urban dead community, and the second and third were HUGE sieges where survivor-kind won against the hordes. Events like the Mall Tour and the Big Bash, on the other hand, doesn't make a suburb noteworthy, as several burbs took part of this event.

• An important and/or historical group was formed in that suburb

When a group manages to draw the attention of the entire community or influence the gameplay centers his actions around a burb of birth, that suburb can be called noteworthy. Examples of this are Ridleybank and Yagoton. The first is the infamous homeland of zombie-kind, homeland of the Ridleybank Resistance Front, while the second is the home of the Yagoton Revivification Clinic, the first and most famous group dedicated to revivification.

• A unique and noteworthy building exists in this suburb

This usually doesn't make a suburb noteworthy at all, unless important events on the history of Malton happened there. Resiting two huge sieges inside Caiger Mall make that unique building noteworthy, while having the only Zoo in the city isn't noteworthy as nothing important of note happened there.

Note that merely fitting in any of these categories doesn't automatically make a suburb noteworthy. It still needs the approval of the community. Nominate and discuss a suburb in the below header.

Nominations

I'd like to nominate Lukinswood for notable suburb status, due to it now containing the Emergency Brodcast system.

General Discussion

Special formatting on group listings

During the Great Suburb Group Massacre, I've noticed some groups using the code for big text (<big></big>) and bolding (<b></b> or ''' '''.) I know that code has been historically used for alliances, but does anyone object to me removing that code when it's individual groups that are using it? Linkthewindow  Talk  07:03, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

There's no reason for any groups to be using additional markup to give themselves undue prominence. The bold/big combo was just used to show the name of organisations with their member groups underneath. It's there to to help people navigate, nothing more. The recommended guidelines are well documented on the template page. All group listings should conform accordingly. --  RoosterDragon  17:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Updating the DangerMap System

This is probably the most updated system of any we have. It's not the easiest to update though and could also do with some other minor tweaks. So here's a few suggestions I'd like some discussion/agreement on before changes are made. Each of these points is independent of the others.

1. Change the code on all 100 suburb danger reports to this.
This is intended to:

• Make it easier for users to update the map correctly by providing the options, with a legend and an example on page so they can tell what the change is as soon as the page saves. This also makes errors dead easy to spot.
• Prevent confusion when using the special/map variations by making it an option the average user will not need to edit.
• Provide flexibility for other pieces of coding by allowing the techie types to call their own formatting templates.
• Make it easier to provide instructions by adding it in a template.

Other notes:

• The current map templates would be renamed to something more explanatory, since the user needs no longer know the name.
  Proposed: "DangerMapNotorietyStatus" where Notoriety would either be 'normal' or 'notable' and Status would be the status.
• After a quick inclusion limit test, I found this code would not endanger any existing templates and force them over the limit. The pre-expand include size, the important one, was unchanged between the current template and the code above. Post-expand and template arguments went up, but these are not factors towards the limit.
• Note: The link on the test page, "2", will link to the suburb when actually used, and not a red page.

2. Change the available status text to one form of English. EG: 'safe' 'moderately dangerous' 'dangerous' 'very dangerous' and 'abandoned'/'a ghost town'

• To allow text based status to be shown, such as in tooltips, without odd English. 'Havercroft is safe' works now, 'Havercroft is moderate' does not.
• For the sake of being uniform.

3. Change the suburb border colour and unify it with the block border colour
Proposed: A darker shade of grey for the cell border and fill. Not as dark as the block one, somewhere in-between probably.

• This makes it easy to distinguish from the ghost town colour at a glance.
• Making the colours the same is a sensible thing to do.

--  RoosterDragon  19:58, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

All good. But do we need a separate danger report for notorious suburbs? Really? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 20:03, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

You mean you want to get rid of the 'special' status that gives bold text for such suburbs? That's another discussion. Anyway I'm going to go ahead and implement No.3 since it's not particularly major and easy to revert. 1 and 2 will happen in a few more days in some discussion doesn't show up between now and then. --  RoosterDragon  12:50, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Can you explain to me in practical terms how this will be easier to use than the original? I still don't get it. Regardless, I am for a change in this system, and if you want I'll help change the templates for you. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 13:16, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

You get to see the output as soon as you save, so spotting a wrong status or total muck up is easy. The legend gives you a list of available statuses and their meanings on site so you don't have to trawl around to check what they are (Great for the new guys). If the available statuses change or definitions are adjusted, they can be propagated by template in one edit rather than 100. That's about it for the updating user, but the coding bunch can make the template work for them even more. Right now you're stuck to just using the table info the template gives, the new one can allow you to actually use the status to work for you allowing you to reference images or other pages or output text strings or all sorts without resorting to switch hackery which inflates the template cost of the system needlessly and also breaks if anybody changes the colour definitions, even just a little. --  RoosterDragon  13:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Right well, it's been done. I'm still darting about the wiki updating documentation and keeping an eye out for broken maps. Seems to have gone smoothly for the most part. --  RoosterDragon  16:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Other Maps

Needs to me morphed into a template. It shouldn't have been added in that manner in the first place and compromises the readability of the page. --Karek^maps?! 08:00, 2 April 2009 (BST)

Map Errors

Anyone else noticed how inaccurate the maps are becoming since they started basing them on EMR reports instead of eyewitnesses? EMR is a poor indicator of danger level. I think the overall accuracy level has gone down, although at least they all get updated regularly ... even if it is with bad info. -- Grogh 02:49, 11 May 2009 (BST)

The EMR system is the best we've got for suburbs like Miltown and Greentown were there are very few eyewitnesses around that update the wiki. Sure, it's not perfect, but unlike eyewitnesses, it's completely neutral.

By the way, if you've got information, stop complaining and go ahead and update it :P Linkthewindow  Talk  08:19, 11 May 2009 (BST)

No one said you can't edit a map based on eyewitness reports, unless it was while I was away. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 10:06, 11 May 2009 (BST)

I agree a scout (particularly of the detail NecroWatch provides) will always outdo an EMR, there's just not the detail in the EMR, but they make a good general indicator for keeping the maps recent. Recent, if patchy, data is always preferable to outdated information. The only way 'accuracy' of the levels could degrade was if people were using the EMRs as a definitive yardstick despite recent news suggesting otherwise. --  RoosterDragon  16:43, 22 May 2009 (BST)

Report cycling

Why a month? I don't think we would miss much if we changed it to 2 weeks. Not only is this underused as a source of information when compared to individual suburb pages, but most news would be out of date within a week or so anyway. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 13:40, 16 May 2009 (BST)

Would anyone like to discuss this? If not, 2 weeks from now, I'll change it to 2 weeks. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 08:15, 18 May 2009 (BST)

Silence implies consent, in most cases. I don't have a problem with it. Linkthewindow  Talk  08:23, 18 May 2009 (BST)

Silence implies no one was alerted, it's being readded and going to see use. If you see something not getting activity step one is to actually encourage activitiy and this page and it's news played a major role in the game's community when it actually saw use. It's the easy access high visibility way to get the pulse of the game. You're both fail for not having really discussed this at all >_>.--Karek^maps?! 09:21, 21 July 2009 (BST)

Get off ma wikiz! --xoxo 09:27, 21 July 2009 (BST)