UDWiki:Open Discussion/New Dangermap

The purpose of this page is gauge some opinions on what changes should be made to the Dangermap (currently located on Suburb and accessible from the sidebar of this wiki) to make it more relevant for current users of the wiki and the game. I'm hoping, for the purposes of this discussion, that we can all agree that something should be changed in the current system, be it large or small.

The reason for this is because, going by the statistics of the game, there are 66 people per suburb on average, and taking into account player density across Malton, most suburbs under the current system should be Ghost Towns. And that doesn't count the statuses which are grossly out of date and don't have an "unknown" status that exists for them.

We have a couple of options. We could change the numbers for each Danger status so the numbers scale closer to the numbers we have now, or rewrite the meanings altogether. This previous open discussion has some interesting ideas for rewriting the entire system, and my favourite solution, which I think would also be the easiest, would be replacing the Dangermap with the Danger Center, which I find much more helpful and accurate on the general wellbeing of a suburb.

What do you all think? Should we be fixing this up in a large or small way? I personally find it a great time to do something exciting and overhaul the entire system, or if you don't think we should change anything at all, please pipe up. A ZOMBIE ANT 08:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

When I saw the title of this page on RC, I thought you were referring to a proposal on the works from last year, but I was wondering when someone would raise this. I don't edit the Dangermap itself due to this -- majority of the city's suburbs are classified as "safe", following the historical (and current) definitions, even if break-ins happen at a daily basis/even with a very active zed horde.

This discrepancy/dissonance is also why I call buildings that have less than 10 survivors across the 'burb, while not having any zeds and/or ruined buildings as "reverse ghost towns" (since the "ghost town" tends to refer to something so broken by zeds that neither zeds nor survivors inhabit the place.) I also considered changing the numbers stipulated in the DangerReport Building Status indicators to reflect the current number of characters, especially since more people seem to edit those than the suburb danger statuses. -- ^{(stalk · KT · FoD · UT)} 13:50, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

That's an interesting page indeed, but for now I want to focus on the suburb danger levels. Like you said, I think the numbers are all wrong, though I think doing statuses (either for suburbs, or individual buildings) based on numbers is wrong- seeing as as long as the game's player count will change, the numbers will always end up being redundant eventually. That's where I personally think the building statuses generally have the right idea, they are based on the threat of the building to survivors, just not based on an arbitrary number of survivors vs zombies. For this reason I think UDWiki:Open Discussion/DangerMap Version 4 got it right by making it a ratio. However, that discussion was made before the DangerCenter existed and I'd love for that to somehow become the standard for people in future. A ZOMBIE ANT 14:24, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Now that would have been interesting. I kind of wonder why that wasn't the standard that ended up being used for the DangerMap. Using a ratio instead of an arbitrary number is more in keeping with NPOV. It's also a more sensible approach -- like you said, I think the DangerCenter was in the right direction. I see the numerical values in the current descriptions making sense in the past, but not now. -- ^{(stalk · KT · FoD · UT)} 15:32, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I think the honest truth is that the amount of different opinions overwhelm whoever proposed changing it and they end up abandoning the idea. People tend to think that everyone needs to be pleased before they change something, which I tend to disagree with. It's mostly why good improvements of the main page haven't been made since AHLG did it in 2009, and also why some other parts of the wiki have been so static. For example, I think a lot of people think DangerMap was a community consulted creation, but as far as I remember hearing it, Hagnat just up and "made it" one day and just plopped it on there and it became the arbitrary indicator of survivor safety in the game. Same for Main Page and Community Portal. They were very dated before AHLG just added changes. He did consult the community, but it takes someone to care enough to push it through eventually. A ZOMBIE ANT 11:42, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

My favorite iteration of the V4 discussion was EMR based danger map. It was the least subjective, most informative idea. The problem was displaying the info in a way that does not look like shit. I think there is a sandbox page in my userspace somewhere with all those icons and it looked as terrible as you might think it would. I had the idea of replacing the icons with smaller squares, but that's about when the discussion died I think. I've since accepted that the Danger Map has outlived its usefulness outside of just being a map (which is all most people probably use it for these days). Remember that suburb danger levels are user driven and will always be inacurate as long as people don't care enough to update. For that reason alone, perhaps an EMR based system would be best since one or two dedicated people could cover practically the entire city with minimal effort. ~ _{04:20, 18 June 2014 (UTC)}

After reading through this entire page I also agree that we should replace the danger map entirely

--__/Storm\___ «^^^» 08:00, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Technical Issues

Just to point out the obvious, unless someone has a bot available that can make the changes for us, we can't make any changes that involve changing the name/number of different statuses, unless someone plans to go through all 10,000 blocks and modify those old names to match the new ones. We can rewrite their descriptions with numbers or ratios instead, but when it comes to the templates themselves, any changes to them will need to be done by bots, and I'm not aware of any current users having any to run. That kinda puts a limitation on the scope of the changes we can talk about.

Also, before I discuss any of this further, a disclaimer: I'm biased against changing the way the infrastructure for it works, for the simple reason that I suspect I'm the one who will get stuck implementing any changes, given how the system works. —Aichon— 14:40, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out that limitation! I overlooked this because the descriptions/instructions other aspects of User:DangerReport utilize templates, but I failed to consider that any change that would require changing the names of the statuses would require a bulk edit. In that event, the old status templates would probably need to be retained for the sake of posterity/archival purpose, until updates with the newer status indicators will deprecate the older ones. (We know that isn't happening, though - I've edited some building danger statuses that have not been edited ever since the creation of their entries on the then-new, now-current User:DangerReport.)

I do have a concern about changing the entire system - I only started with 'contributing' to the wiki in 2010, by editing Danger Report statuses. It was easy for me to 'return' to the wiki after not caring about it for a long while, because the familiar syntax for updating building danger reports. Just modifying the descriptions of the currently available statuses, with no additions/deletions, seems to be the option of less hassle. -- ^{(stalk · KT · FoD · UT)} 15:32, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Sure, keeping the old names is the most sensible, rather than a complete reworking. I prefer to base the definition of the danger levels on ruin/unruined/lit, since it is practical (it can be determined "on the ground"). Although it also makes sense to consider or incorporate survivor and zombie populations. (Depends on what we want out of a suburb map that is updated to reflect an ingame reality. If we're keeping the suburb danger idea, it makes sense to include survivors/zombies since they'll affect how hard/easy it is to stay alive or not-dead.) --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 20:29, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Having the danger levels' descriptions revised (albeit probably with the same names) based on barricade levels would make my life (and those of a few others) much easier, oh GOSH YES. I'm usually bad at explaining what I suggest with words; I once wanted the danger reports to be revised to be based solely on barricade levels, but no survivor/zombie counts, but you have a good point.

Assuming a revision based on barricade levels,

Safe: VSB(0) to EHB(+~), with 0 ~ 1 zombies across the block.

Under Attack: Loosely barricaded to QSB+2, with 2 or more zombies across the block. (This criteria seems closer to "Vulnerable", but we don't have that status, so...)

Under Siege: Loosely barricaded to (EHB? idek,) with 5 or more zombies across the block.

The other building statuses seem to be fine at this point, though. -- ^{(stalk · KT · FoD · UT)} 22:00, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

It surely would suck if you had to do it all yourself, though I doubt that will happen so don't worry. However, I don't think the task will ever need to be that mammoth. Firstly, I was hoping the discussion would be focussed on Dangermap, not the building danger statuses, since I believe it's arbitrary and irrelevant numbering system is contributing to its low use. And secondly, if we were to do a rework of the danger statuses, there wouldn't be 10,000 templates to edit since there aren't 10,000 buildings in UD. Also, surely a transition could be made? You keep the old templates, make new ones, change the guide under the building danger status templates to only include the new ones and wait for the new ones to get adopted first. You'd have to give them different names, but surely that would work. A ZOMBIE ANT 01:35, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

In fact, don't template inclusions work through redirects? You could redirect 'safe' 'under siege' etc to their equivalent statuses through the transition period. Phase it out, and only do it manually when the old template inclusion rate gets low enough for a human to be bothered doing it. A ZOMBIE ANT 01:37, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't know if it'd work or not. I can't recall how inclusion limits work, so it's possible a change like that may very well push the Danger Center over the limit just by adding that extra redirect. We were having to do stuff like make templates with names just one letter long since two letters was causing things to break, so without testing, I won't know whether we can do something like that. I suspect it'll work, but I'm not certain.

Regarding the Danger Map, those were the changes I was talking about not looking forward to if I had to do them myself. The problem isn't that there are a lot of changes (just a few hundred, probably); the problem is that any changes to it will be complicated. Rooster made that system, as I recall, and though it works great, the stuff ties together in ways that aren't easy to notice until you break them. A lot of templates get used, but don't have any links going to them since the transclusions are dynamically created. That sort of stuff is difficult to sort out.

Regardless, I'd be okay with replacing the Danger Level for a suburb with the Danger Center template for that suburb in most places where the suburb's Danger Level is currently being used (e.g. on the suburb pages themselves). And I can already imagine one way to determine the overall repair/ruin status of a whole suburb in order to do something like, say, produce a box that provides a color representing the overall state of the suburb (i.e. something akin to the current suburb Danger Level), but it'd be an incredibly heavy set of templates, so I'm not sure that it's something we can actually do in practice. —Aichon— 02:13, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

That sounds awful, I hope it isn't the case. A ZOMBIE ANT 02:52, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

What would you all think of the super simple proposal of replacing the Dangermap with the DangerCenter on Suburb? A ZOMBIE ANT 11:32, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

A quick story: I thought I was okay with your proposal, since no objections came to mind, but I wanted to do a quick double-check on some stuff, so I went to the DangerCenter to look it over again. I noticed a block that had a weird color and wanted to see what was up at that block. I clicked on the block, but all I got was mouseover text with the name of the suburb. So, I clicked on City Map on the nav bar to the side, clicked on the name of the suburb in the Dangermap, and then went "oh crap, the main use I have for the dangermap has nothing to do with danger levels, and everything to do with how quickly it lets me jump to a suburb!". There may be ways to address that issue, such as layering an invisible set of divs over the DangerCenter that adds links to each suburb, but we'd have to do that on Suburb, since I doubt we could add that much code to the DangerCenter template itself. Long story short, the dangermap serves more purposes than merely displaying the danger, and we need to consider those as well, since I'd argue that they may actually be more important than the danger levels. —Aichon— 16:51, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

You're certainly right, I had thought of that tradeoff at one point and I was thinking perhaps it might be worth having both a Danger-related map on the suburb page, and also further down, one that has clickable suburbs on it (if we can't have both in one), or the other way around. Might be a bit cluttered, but it would at least serve both purposes? A ZOMBIE ANT 01:13, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe we'd be able to tansclude the Danger Center on the Suburb page because of template call limits. If memory serves, Danger Center is already at the very limits of what is allowed. Transcluding it might be too much. Also, there are server strain concerns with Danger Center. I remember after it was completed, the wiki ran very slow for a while. Assuming it could be transcluded, it might be potemtially wiki-breaking to try transcluding it on the most widely viewed page on the wiki. At the minumum, some tests should be ran before even continuing with this particular idea. ~ _{04:20, 18 June 2014 (UTC)}

Really good point, I also remember when the wiki almost died as a result of the newly completed DangerCenter. Like you said, a test would be absolutely necessary. For example, perhaps putting it on the suburb page, with a notice explaining that it's a test and if any adverse experiences are felt, to note them on the talk page, etc. A ZOMBIE ANT 05:38, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I suspect they'd be pretty obvious. ;) —Aichon— 15:01, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, there are a few ways to approach the problem. I think the moral of the story is simply that I'm okay with eliminating Danger Levels, which we represent in the Danger Map, and replacing that functionality with the Danger Center instead. We'll simply need to add something that allows for easy navigation to suburbs. It just occurred to me that it might be possible to add it as a mouseover in the nav bar: mouse over some link, out pops a minimap that shows you suburb names on hover, and you can click the one you want to jump to it. Although, it'd only work if we could get everyone using an updated CSS, which was the technical hurdle we hit with the main page update. —Aichon— 15:01, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

The wiki always lags for me when I (or maybe someone else also) accesses the Danger Center. Are we sure about this? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 21:11, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

The Danger Center also gives me massive wiki lag. User:DangerReport, not so much. I wouldn't mind using it MAYBE if it didn't make pages take 3 minutes to load. I can imagine it has a lot of templates called. -- ^{(stalk · KT · FoD · UT)} 21:57, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't aware lag occurred still from the Danger Center. If that's the case I think, sadly, it might not be worth doing. It'll always be a dream... A ZOMBIE ANT 01:00, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

And dreams (may) come true. There were some changes from last year that reduced the lag, but it's still an issue for me sometimes. -- ^{(stalk · KT · FoD · UT)} 03:47, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps I never experienced it because I usually go on at the times when the wiki is at its slowest. A ZOMBIE ANT 07:59, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

It's slowest after someone updates a building's status and then someone loads the Danger Center, since it needs to redo all of those templates. —Aichon— 16:42, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Just a thought, and I am not sure if it would be actually possible or help. But what if each burb was an image uploaded/updated once daily? This would require a bot that could upload stuff to the wiki and it would be required to store the information on someones actual computer in order to the render images and such. In that fashion loading the page would only require calling 100 small images instead of however many templates, I can't actually even load the edit tab to see whats under the hood. Might not be possible or worthwhile to do but I figured it was an idea to take some of the stress off the wiki so might as well mention it.        18:49, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

I briefly considered that idea, since I agree that it'd fix pretty much everything. The problem is getting someone around here to build and run the bot on a consistent basis. —Aichon— 19:02, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

I like that this hits more than two birds with a single stone. Will it reduce the strain to encode the images as base 64 strings (that can be converted into .png format if the user so prefers?) I'm very rusty when it comes to this thing, so sorry if it's a stupid suggestion. I'm just not sure someone can run the bot that often. Perhaps twice/thrice a week? -- ^{(stalk · KT · FoD · UT)} 01:21, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't bother with the base 64 string stuff. The reasons why that was/is done with images in web pages don't apply particularly well here. The image will only be a few dozen KB at most, so it's really no concern at all since the Recruitment page would be many times larger, and the bot could be rigged to simply upload it as a fresh image each day, all of which would be trivial for any sort of bot that knows how to work with wikis. And a cron job could automate the running of the wiki so that it automatically happens each day. The only tricky part is getting someone who's faithful in doing it and is interested in putting together such a bot. That person isn't me. —Aichon— 02:07, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Rooster once made a bot to visualise the suburb dangermap colours into animated gif images to show the dangermap over time (similar to my old 200 Days in Urban Dead video from 2008). But as long as we have no one with bot experience we might want to shelf the idea of solving with this bots, sadly. A ZOMBIE ANT 05:56, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

NPOV

I don't care what you do with it, fuck you guys, hate you guys, but whatever's done--get the shit rid of the whole "safe" and "dangerous" spectrum since it's clearly one-sided. Survivor-held, zombie-held, and shades in between, should really be how things are described. Though personally I'd use "fortified" as the strongest survivor-friendly setting, "barhah" as the strongest zombie-friendly one, "embattled" in the middle, "survivable" as the survivor middle-ground and "barggrh" as the zombie side of middle-ground. I also still think that the zamgrh name of a burb should be displayed if (big if nowadays) the burb is in zombie hands; here is a list of what those are. Fuck you guys. Hate you guys. 03:17, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Haha, thanks. NPOV is definitely an issue, but one I'd like to prioritise the numbers for each status before changing their names etc. I have a fear that if we try and change everything at once, the project will become overwhelming and will just get shelved like previous ones. A ZOMBIE ANT 04:26, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Don't get bogged down by names just yet. Get a system worked out first. And from what it sounds like, most of us want to ditch the current system entirely, if not for the technical issues. —Aichon— 05:02, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm for baby steps. However, I'll say now I'm not of the particular opinion that the dangermap is inherently biased- just the names (safe, dangerous) etc. I do like the colours, the levels and I even think the ratio of survivors to zombies isn't... terrible. However, the numbers associated with those ratios are obviously out of date and the names should be changed in future. A ZOMBIE ANT 06:41, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Mis lives! :O Re: changing the names stat, my opinion on it is as DDR and Aichon.

I personally prefer the idea of going for a classification that is more barricade-level dependent (i.e. fortified -> barricaded -> secured -> vulnerable/breached/unprotected -> ruined,) albeit retaining the old colours/levels. Perhaps the "safe"/"under attack"/"under siege" qualifiers can just be modified to scale to barricade levels, instead. Ratio-based isn't bad, either. I've been hesitant/confused as to how I should do DangerReport updates with the current system, especially since there's a lot of things that the current system doesn't account for if you're going for NPOV (like unbarricaded buildings that have neither ruinage nor zeds -- I usually still list these as "safe", with a comment on the barricade level.)

Gradual changes may be more welcome than a rapid shift - i.e. solidify and polish what new system will be made, or gradually make a transition from the old, to the new. Somewhere up this page, there was a suggestion to keep the old templates (as grandfathered cases), but only have the documentation for the new ones, so that the transition can be done in a smoother manner. It was easy for me to return to updating danger reports because the system didn't change since the time I took a wiki hiatus in 2010 - I see the occasional person spring back up from activity, and changing the entire system without a guided transition can confuse/alienate someone from making the edit. -- ^{(stalk · KT · FoD · UT)} 12:48, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

We really need to do a better job of clarifying what we're talking about, since we're mixing topics.

• Danger Map is what we're talking about with this whole discussion. It's the system that labels suburbs as safe, moderately dangerous, dangerous, very dangerous, and ghost town. We're talking about how to deal with it since it uses numbers that are no longer valid, meaning that everything pretty much gets marked as safe or ghost town, even sometimes when hordes are going through.
• DangerReports are how we label individual blocks. They're generally NOT what this whole discussion is about, and it's a tangential issue with a load of gotchas and other problems.
• DangerCenter is a system for combining every single DangerReport onto one page. We're discussing the possibility of outright replacing the Danger Map with the DangerCenter, that way we get around the issues with the current Danger Map, but there are technical issues in doing so.

So, long story short, let's not get hung up on DangerReport changes, since that's another topic entirely (and one I'm guilty of bringing up), and separate from this discussion. Stick to Danger Map and DangerCenter stuff. —Aichon— 18:56, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Yep. All of them could do with updates if we wanted to be pedantic, but as far as I'm concerned Dangermap is the only broken one, by virtue of it being grossly out of date at any one time. A ZOMBIE ANT 07:22, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

"Unknown" suburb status

Anyone have any thoughts on this? My opinion is that it is surely needed. Maybe do a timeframe of one month or so? A ZOMBIE ANT 06:49, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

I like this. I wonder if the colour for ghost 'burbs would have to be changed, or if "unknown" statuses will require a new colour delegation, though. -- ^{(stalk · KT · FoD · UT)} 12:38, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

You're right, either the colour would need to be changed or Unknown would need something (perhaps even more dimmed-out greys). I hope there's a strong consensus to have it in place, however. A ZOMBIE ANT 07:24, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

A more dimmed-out grey could work for "unknown", if the colours of the danger reports were to be kept (and if people prefer for it to match the building status reports, that is.) -- ^{(stalk · KT · FoD · UT)} 16:17, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Progress:

So, we've kind of discussed and there are some overriding themes:

• Bots are an option, if we had someone who could do it (I wouldn't want an entire wiki dangemap to rely on one person's bot anyway)
• Replacing Dangermap with Dangercenter is preferred but probably not an option
• If we keep Dangermap, we would need to:
  • Scale down the numbers, preferrably in some sort of survivor:zombie ratio that will stay current regardless of game numbers
  • Add an "Unknown" status to Dangermap
  • (Eventually) fix POV status names, although unless people get too upset, I'd prefer to leave that for another day

Does that sound right to you? What are your thoughts on that summary? In terms of ease of implementing, would you agree we could fix the Dangermap's issues as a first priority? My thoughts are currently that, despite some arguments (and in the past) that Dangermap needs a total overhaul, my biggest concern is that it isn't being used, so going through the dreary process would likely be a waste of time. However, some changes could be done quickly- namely the above, and may contribute to DM being more relevant in future, and after that it may enjoy a better upkeep. Does anyone agree/disagree? A ZOMBIE ANT 06:08, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Sounds right to me. I'd focus on revising the definitions for each level without revising their names, first. I'd honestly leave off the Unknown one, since most of the time they don't get updated, it's because they're the same as they were before. Later on, we can swing through and revise the names to be oriented around the status of the suburb's buildings. Gennies use "intact", "dented", "battered", "damaged", and "badly damaged", so we may want to borrow some of those terms and go with "intact", "damaged", "badly damaged", and "ruined", perhaps, but again, that's a change for another day. —Aichon— 14:27, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Sounds right to me too. We should start with an update of the numbers/definition of the danger levels. That shouldn't be too difficult, and if (later) we want to do more, we can always do that (or whatever turns out to be doable). --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 22:46, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, what do you two think about adding a small "edit" link under the suburb, or somewhere on the map, maybe similar to Template:DangerMapUF except less intrusive? Or do you think that's a bit much? I'd personally love for more ease of access to updating it, but I understand clutter is something to avoid. A ZOMBIE ANT 12:54, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Also, I'd like to make a case for Unknown statuses. I think the benefit of them is that they do create a realistic idea of what the city truly is like; sure, some suburbs have remained safe in this time, but others have half the buildings ruined as per Building Statuses but haven't been updated, others haven't been updated since October 2013. Simply acknowledging that the information may be out of date is not only accurate, it paints a more realistic vision of the city where information isn't flowing as well as it used to. And, if, in the case where a suburb is still safe, all it will take is for someone to notice and care and update it and it won't be a problem at all. I actually think one of the advantages of DangerCenter is it does accurately visualise what suburbs have dropped off the information grid, so to speak, and I think it actually makes the city a more interesting place. I'd love to be able to incorporate that into the suburb map and stop misleading players at the same time. A ZOMBIE ANT 13:02, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not strongly opposed to Unknown. I just don't want to end up in a situation where half the map is marked as Unknown and people are complaining about having to constantly update their recruitment ads their home suburb when nothing has changed. We can give it a try and see how it goes. And I'm okay with adding a little "(edit)" link. —Aichon— 14:40, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Damn. I mean, it's like once a month, or once every two months. If they care that much they can take the 15 seconds every two months it takes to confirm their suburb is the same? A ZOMBIE ANT 01:19, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Doesn't stop folks from grousing about recruitment ads. ;) Anyway, like I said, we can give it a try and see how it goes. Worst case scenario, we roll it back. It's an easy change. —Aichon— 15:23, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good. Obviously I'll have no qualms about rolling it back if it doesn't appear to make any difference. A ZOMBIE ANT 06:47, 28 June 2014 (UTC)