Topic on Talk:Malnutrition

Opening the floor for discussion

Ailments (like Animals, currently) is just waaay too big already (approx 5,000 words). I'm 100% in favor of a summary for each under Ailments, and then a separate article for each (that deserves/needs it), or (better?) several related ailments/article with full details. Several (e.g. bad back, cataract) are so short that no "summary" is needed, but others are, indeed, article-worthy on their own, or with related topics (e.g. heatstroke and hypothermia, separately or together). So, 100% keep this article here - massive WoT articles are as bad as Stubs imo, just the other side of an ugly coin.Albedo (talk) 08:06, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

On further consideration, the correct destination is Saturation. "Malnutrition" is not so much an "Ailment" as it is a stage of hunger. Altho' they do overlap a bit conceptually, it's 1) a core part of the Saturation mechanics, and 2) not something that needs "doctor" treatment. Albedo (talk) 20:22, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

The naming choices are confusing but Malnutrition IS an ailment separate and distinct to Malnourished, the stage of the saturation bar. Its caused by having low saturation, but its not hard linked. Once you have malnutrition, having a full sat bar doesn't immediately fix it. having 0 saturation (Malnourished) and has its own set of effects, one of which is causing Malnutrition severity to tick up, which in turn has its own effects.

As for "not something that needs "doctor" treatment", requiring doctor intervention is not a requirement. Hypothermia doesn't need treatment, neither does cryptosleep sickness, or brain shock or a bunch of other things.

This leads into an editorial philosophy issue that I've been seeing crop up, so let's talk about it... I have to wonder if "Ailment" is an in-game term or whether it's an editor-created catch-all, because I haven't run across it anywhere in the game. That leaves me wondering if it's then a sub-game coding tag - in which case, it's only a useful organizing category for modders. And while organizing the way "the code" organizes is all well and good, and we certainly should (at some level) serve modders, we, as Editors, have to ask ourselves if organizing the information here strictly by coding is the best presentation for the typical reader.

I/we have recently seen several cases where "organizing by topic" has been prevented due to how the game is coded, how items are categorized behind the scenes. Respectfully, while it makes some sense to organize that way, it's not always the best for a Wiki for players, few of whom will ever see or care about those distinctions and only care about having "all" related information together. As I see it, something like "Getting hungry/ Eating/ Problems with NOT eating" are all directly related, all one inter-connected topic, each part intrinsic to the whole, and as such should (bloat permitting) all be viewable together in one tight(ish) article. A player doesn't care about the distinctions between "malnourished" and "malnutrition" (and will be slower to understand them if they're on different articles) - a player wants to have those connections all together on one page, so they can understand the whole issue. Some of those collected discussions will be larger or smaller, but the info should not be scattered across different pages simply because the code sees it that way - because players don't (at least not new players, the type that are most likely to use the Wiki).

The alternative, which also works, is to collect related information into a practical "Guide" for every such topic, the way that Human resources had to, and leave all the technically organized info where it is, scattered as stubs for modders.

You're the boss, what you say goes - I'm just thinking out loud (and, as you've seen my editing tendencies/assumptions, those thoughts should not be too big a surprise). 0;) Either way, I can get on board with either, just an observation. Albedo (talk) 19:18, 6 February 2022 (UTC)