Talk:Cocoa Tree
Although I think the Plants and Seeds page should contain info on Cocoa Trees, I don't think the Cocoa Tree page itself should be rolled up into it and lose it's own page for a number of reasons.
- Search engines that spider UOGuide content will rank topics with pages higher than pages with topics.
- Linking
- Easier linking for external reference(forums, in-game, etc.)
- Easier linking internally
- While redirects may make Linking moot from a human perspective, they require several more operations server-side.
- While the page may not be terribly exciting on it's own, in relation to other seemingly mundane topics, I believe having them start modest encourages people to flesh them out more and add in more details, perhaps somewhat arcane, but I think UOGuide should strive to be the most comprehensive repository of UO-related info. Conversely, rolling them up into larger, more general pages discourages the continual layering on of additional information as times goes by.
The Spring Décor Collection page is another example, in my mind, of a page that should certainly round-up the items/topics in a general overview, but there should be sub-pages for each specific item.
Would love to hear additional input, pro or con, from everyone on this. --Tancred RedStar 22:56, 10 October 2008 (PDT)
It is something I've had on my mind from time to time, such as in the case of resource based items (all the different forms of ingots, different forms of boards, yadda yadda). In the end I decided it was a royal pain in the rear having to browse through so many pages with so little info on them, so one large page which covered all of them would be the way to go.
I figured the same approach would be best served in terms of plants. They're all pretty much the same thing - You take a seed, you end up with a bit of decoration. The final difference between them in most cases boils down to just the graphic.
In the case of the cocoa tree, I'm not sure that the current layout discourages edits. If the tree was mentioned in passing by some random paragraph, sure, I'd agree... But with it's own page section I don't think there's an issue. Though other then the fact that it looks like an o'hii tree, what more is there to know? It's the same as all the other plants, functionally speaking. To put it away from the general plant info would surely just confuse people?
If one type of plant gets it's own page, why not all the others? I'm kinda thinking the hedges and cypress trees are gonna be a heck of a lot more popular then the cocoa tree.
I mean, granted, all plants could have their own page (or redirect). I honestly have no idea how such things work in terms of server load, I just consider individual pages with similar content a nuisance to actually browse through.
Mind you, all this is just my own thoughts, and not to be taken too seriously. I'm also interested in knowing what the general consensus is, and I do realise that having one page deal with too much info is a problem.
A prime example (in my opinion) is the current incarnation of the Naturalist Quest, which is mirroring the location information for the Solen Hives in graphic detail. I reckon that, while it looked rather vague, the previous page version gave adequate information on that subject using a singe page link.
(And that's putting aside the matter of the ton of images now on the page... But since I've gone and mentioned it, who's in favour of me removing at least half of them? Sorry Kitiara, they're just too large, repetitive, and irrelevant for my tastes!)
Your comment on search engines led me to test if UOGuide's cocoa tree comments could be found on Google (yeah yeah, early days and all, but still)... They can't. So I tried a few other searches, and found that it's pretty hard to get a UOGuide page to come up at all unless you specifically add the site name to your search string.
Taking a look at the page keywords used in random documents I see that they include the page titles, and the pages they link to. They really should include some variants of "Ultima Online" as well.
But yeah, I can see a given subject is a lot more likely to turn up on a search engine if it has it's own unique page - as things stand. Perhaps if we could get all pages that redirect to a given page to turn up in the keywords list as well, maybe that'd fix the problem?
- Bomb Bloke 01:36, 11 October 2008 (PDT)
Thanks for the input BB! I've also done a bit more pondering on this topic. Overall, I'm thinking it's better to overkill with info than coming up short. Also, especially when new items first hit, people want a definitive source of info on the object/item/quest/skill/etc. and a page dedicated to it, as I created for the Cocoa Tree when Pub55 went live, was one-stop shopping for people looking for info on it. Also, as time goes on, more info may need to be added to a specific item/topic, but if it's in a larger page, that section will become rather burdensome. Also, as I've written more pages here, I recognize that some of my earlier pieces, say about Compassion, kinda turned into pages about a larger overall topic, like Compassion page getting a bit far into NPC quests, lol. At the same time, that's why there is an Editting process, to keep topic pages succinct. So, perhaps in regards to the Cocoa Tree, it should be covered in brief on the general plants page, but have it's own page where more detail exists as well as readily available room for more. Would this mean more or less a page for every item/object out there eventually? Yes, and as I mentioned earlier, I think this is overall a good thing, I suppose the drawback being a modest reduction in ease-of-use.
Lastly, discussions such as this would make excellent fodder for a New User FAQ on contributing or a Style Guide, for gently nudging new contributors towards checking out, reminiscent of a similar, recent matter.
Of course, I'd also like to hear some other people chime in with their opinions. I'm often wrong, altho my gf isn't here to point it out :)
--Tancred RedStar 08:55, 11 October 2008 (PDT)