Growing pains - Turbine what do you do about editorial disputes?

Please refer to the change history for Mechanics: Relative Weapon Damage Factors and its associated Talk page.

Then see this thread over on the Combat forum: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=74490. Pay special attention to post #14 in that thread, where the other person threatens "I can just as easily move your entry to the discussion tab. I will be moving mine back. I suggest you leave it."

What do you do when two community members get into a p*ssing contest over the legitimacy of their content? More to the point, what do you do when one of those members attempts to resolve the conflict by fairly presenting both points of view in a manner that keeps the original article readable, but the other party refuses to accept that type of revision and simply reverts or overwrites the article with their original mess?

I've already reported the "other" party both through the Lorebook and through the forums, but really, this is ridiculous stuff. I'd love to eventually see a Turbine moderator's statement either in Lorebook form or here in this forum about adherence to commonsense ethics, wiki ettiquette, and the conflict-resolution/moderation process.

Yes what do you do when a poster moves anyone who has a differing viewpoint to the discussion tab, without asking!

And A viewpoint that is obviously correct if the original poster would just read it.

I should also point out that I have taken the criticisam of the article and have edited it down to a smaller size.

This is rediculous stuff!

Why would someone be moving other peoples articles around, and get mad when it is pointed out that theris can be moved just as easily.

I suppose now I have to report Shannong.

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Originally Posted by Hakon_Stormbrow

Yes what do you do when a poster moves anyone who has a differing viewpoint to the discussion tab, without asking!

And A viewpoint that is obviously correct if the original poster would just read it.

I should also point out that I have taken the criticisam of the article and have edited it down to a smaller size.

This is rediculous stuff!

Why would someone be moving other peoples articles around, and get mad when it is pointed out that theris can be moved just as easily.

I suppose now I have to report Shannong.

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I'll try one last time, Harkon, to reason with you.

• When I moved your stuff to the Discussion page, I moved it intacto. Everything. No substantive change to your contribution. I also gave detailed reasons for the move. Finally, I replaced your new section with slightly different (and much more concise) content that clearly stated that some players had differing opinions that could be quite useful to readers, and to explicity urged them to look at the Discussion page to see your original, unchanged content.
  
  
• Your new content that you tried to stick on the main article was a combative refutation, forum style. It was also quite overlong and poorly formatted. It followed practically no wiki conventions for readability or consistency of presentation style. For both of those reasons it did not *belong* as a new, huge section stubbed directly into the original article content.
  
  
• Despite all these very reasonable editorial measures that did nothing to harm nor dilute nor change the (mistaken, I might add) information that you were trying to convey, nor to prevent readers from knowing about it and seeing it, YOU saw fit to remove an entire section full of substantive content--WHOLESALE REMOVAL OF ANOTHER CONTRIBUTOR'S SUBSTANTIVE AND ACCURATE CONTENT--and replace it with your original monstrously long, inappropriate content as a punitive and childish attempt at one-upmanship.

Deal with it, Harkon. You are seriously in the wrong here and you need to get over yourself. You've got no business goin g anywhere near a wiki unless you are capable of comporting yourself in an ethical fashion and you are willing to learn and adhere to some simple standards and guidelines that are spelled out in numerous places.

I think the right thing to do is work together to resolve the content into a single article. In this particular example, I think both parties have had a lot of trouble giving up ownership of their particular content. I've said as much on the discussion page. Right now, both sides have their own sections and are not working to integrate them into a single article.

We've all been there. It's incredibly hard to put forth your work and then to release ownership and let other editors have at it, whether it's a lorebook entry or any other kind of creative work.

The best I can offer is to not take input from other editors personally. It's ok to have differing views. It shouldn't be personal when someone provides differing input or corrects a potential mistake. At the same time, editors should work to not give their feedback in a personal way.

I'm not directing this at either side. I think both have had trouble accepting input from the other and working together to make it a better article.

I'm not going to try and step in and resolve any of the issues with the technical information in the article. However, I encourage you both to unify the content and work together to correct any potential errors. If it's a strict error in math, that should be easy to address. If the problem is in the underlying assumptions, then work together to clearly spell out the assumptions involved in the test case, etc.

I was very active on wikipedia for a long time, and did a ton of editing on hotly disputed articles. In this case you are both in the wrong.

Removing a huge section someone worked on and placing it on the talk page is very poor form. Edit it or fix it.

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When I moved your stuff to the Discussion page, I moved it intacto. Everything. No substantive change to your contribution. I also gave detailed reasons for the move. Finally, I replaced your new section with slightly different (and much more concise) content that clearly stated that some players had differing opinions that could be quite useful to readers, and to explicity urged them to look at the Discussion page to see your original, unchanged content.

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You should never ever have an article tell people to read the discussion page. If there is a valid dispute the page should present all the facts about it. You can discuss on the talk page how to present that dispute, but never ever ever should an article tell people to view the talk page for more information.

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Your new content that you tried to stick on the main article was a combative refutation, forum style. It was also quite overlong and poorly formatted. It followed practically no wiki conventions for readability or consistency of presentation style. For both of those reasons it did not *belong* as a new, huge section stubbed directly into the original article content.

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If it had format issues or spelling issues you should have fixed them for him. That is how a wiki works.

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Despite all these very reasonable editorial measures that did nothing to harm nor dilute nor change the (mistaken, I might add) information that you were trying to convey, nor to prevent readers from knowing about it and seeing it, YOU saw fit to remove an entire section full of substantive content--WHOLESALE REMOVAL OF ANOTHER CONTRIBUTOR'S SUBSTANTIVE AND ACCURATE CONTENT--and replace it with your original monstrously long, inappropriate content as a punitive and childish attempt at one-upmanship.

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The fact that you are yelling at him for removing a large chunk of your work, and at the same time trying to justify why you removed a large chunk of his, is kinda bleh.

The point of a wiki is to work together to make an article better. NOT to post an essay by one person. You do not own any information you put on a wiki, it can be edited by anyone else. Unless your a dev editing, your not an authority on the information, your simply making observations. People should remember that ^_^

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Originally Posted by Aylwyne

I think the right thing to do is work together to resolve the content into a single article. In this particular example, I think both parties have had a lot of trouble giving up ownership of their particular content. I've said as much on the discussion page. Right now, both sides have their own sections and are not working to integrate them into a single article.

We've all been there. It's incredibly hard to put forth your work and then to release ownership and let other editors have at it, whether it's a lorebook entry or any other kind of creative work.

The best I can offer is to not take input from other editors personally. It's ok to have differing views. It shouldn't be personal when someone provides differing input or corrects a potential mistake. At the same time, editors should work to not give their feedback in a personal way.

I'm not directing this at either side. I think both have had trouble accepting input from the other and working together to make it a better article.

I'm not going to try and step in and resolve any of the issues with the technical information in the article. However, I encourage you both to unify the content and work together to correct any potential errors. If it's a strict error in math, that should be easy to address. If the problem is in the underlying assumptions, then work together to clearly spell out the assumptions involved in the test case, etc.

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Without a formal adjudication process, contributors like myself will simply walk away and stop contributing. Why should I spend potentially hours arguing a disputed point with one person who stubbornly refuses to budge, posts a bunch of garbage (that will take massive time to clean up and reformat and purne, etc.), and then likely undo any work made to attempt to revise their content into something usable/readable?

If no moderator or arbitration committee is available to turn to in such cases, my most rational choice is to walk away from the whole mess because I could be doing more productive or fun things with my time.

Like this example. The first test case of a dispute. The answer from the owners of the wiki is "we're hands off, you two go work it out". Yet you have provided the community no means of arbitration. Wikipedia has a group of overseers from the community who arbritrate such matters. GuildWiki has something similar. Where is the community arbitration mechanism for the Lorebook? How do you empower a group of peers to resolve a dispute between two contributers?

I'll be back once I see such an arbitration mechanism is in place. In the meantime, issues like this aren't worth the time or personal frustration. Best of luck; the Lorebook is off to a mostly-good start . =)

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Originally Posted by Shannong

Without a formal adjudication process, contributors like myself will simply walk away and stop contributing. Why should I spend potentially hours arguing a disputed point with one person who stubbornly refuses to budge, posts a bunch of garbage (that will take massive time to clean up and reformat and purne, etc.), and then likely undo any work made to attempt to revise their content into something usable/readable?

If no moderator or arbitration committee is available to turn to in such cases, my most rational choice is to walk away from the whole mess because I could be doing more productive or fun things with my time.

Like this example. The first test case of a dispute. The answer from the owners of the wiki is "we're hands off, you two go work it out". Yet you have provided the community no means of arbitration. Wikipedia has a group of overseers from the community who arbritrate such matters. GuildWiki has something similar. Where is the community arbitration mechanism for the Lorebook? How do you empower a group of peers to resolve a dispute between two contributers?

I'll be back once I see such an arbitration mechanism is in place. In the meantime, issues like this aren't worth the time or personal frustration. Best of luck; the Lorebook is off to a mostly-good start . =)

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I'm not sure what you are talking about. There is no system on wikipedia to determine which content is permitted in an article. Arbcom on wikipedia does not handle content disputes. They will pass you onto mediation where a 3rd party assists with the creation of a compromise version of an article.

Nobody "owns" a Wiki article... it's a collaborative effort by all contributors. If there are two competing theories about how something works, put a concise description of each in the main article, and save the discussion about which is "right" (including detailed numerical data for or against) for the Discussions page. If there really "needs" to be a few thousand words for a topic, consider breaking it up into more readable subtopics.

Moving each other's content back and forth and dropping in large amounts of data that's going to be basically irrelevant to most people who want to read about that topic simply isn't helpful, nor does it make for a particularly good article.

Hakon: think about a typical reader, your intended audience. Do you really think that they want what amounts to large amounts of detailed "footnote" material stuck in the middle of the article they're reading? I know I don't. If I'm interested in those numbers, a simple reference to them would suffice. I can go look on the Discussions page (or even a separate "Details" page) if I want that level of detail, and if I do... then I might find them useful.

Shannong: sweeping a large contribution someone else has made off the front page without prior discussion is almost certainly going to produce an angry reaction. It's just human nature. While I think your suggested organization for the information is better for the average reader, I suspect this dispute may have been able to be avoided altogether with a few friendly PMs first...

I'm not getting on anyone's case. I've made more than my own share of mistakes with collaborative communications/projects (including Wiki) where I work, and I'm sure I'll make more. I'd hate to see either of you stop contributing over something like this, especially so early in the process.

Khafar

Just on the format, and nothing else: the long section added by Hakon makes the article practically unreadable. Few people will get through the pages of numbers to pull out anything meaningful. It needs to be an executive summary, not a doctoral thesis.

The most poignant material is ineffective if presented poorly. If an article isn't easy to read, it will not be read. If it's not read, it may as well not exist.

Writing isn't about the writer; Consider the reader when you write.

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Originally Posted by SeraXI

I'm not sure what you are talking about. There is no system on wikipedia to determine which content is permitted in an article. Arbcom on wikipedia does not handle content disputes. They will pass you onto mediation where a 3rd party assists with the creation of a compromise version of an article.

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Point being that there *is* an arbitration/mediation process. There is a way to escalate a dispute to a 3rd party(ies) so that the dispute doesn't need to drag on. That's exactly what the Lorebook is missing at the moment. I don't care to go round and round directly with Hakon anymore. I tried a compromise approach with full explanation every step of the way and it yielded no effective results. Why bang my head on this any further? Turbine refuses to step in and there is no other process that both parties can read about and follow.

Net result; I'll do something more productive with my time than bang heads one on one with another party.

May I suggest a compromise?

Keep the main article concise and easy to read. Summarize the information. Then create a new article containing the gory details, all the underlying math, etc.: the stuff for the advanced class.

Link the second article as a sub-page of the original.

I already took that advice and moved (left what she had moved) the raw data in the discussions section and put only a summary on the main page.

If it is appropriate I can do the same with the examples of the spreadsheet. I have attempted to work and make changes to the format of the article. The problem from my end is shannong will not even consider nor answer my primary problem with her analysis. That is the fact that she begins combats with a one phase pause instead of an attack. Sounds like a small thing, but it totally swings the answer. She has not even ackowledged the problem.

I am planning to do some more number crunching, and then will rewrite the article to remove any numbers and only focus on results. Will have to wait till friday or saturday though as I do not have access to my data right now. If it is prefferable I can just remove any of my material till that time.

It should also be pointed out that I am not the first person who has had there material summarily moved by this user. It was not I but another user who posted the "it's not about ownership". That makes two people who saw your article and thought it wrong, and did something. How many more saw it thought it was wrong and didn't bother to correct it? So don't make it sound like I am some rougue mathematician trying to subvert the truth.

I did not start this disagreement, I merely posted in very cold and scientific language my take on the "damage race". I purposefully removed any I's or personal identifications from my article. It reads like a science experiment report. The article you posted, NAMED ME! in a wiki?!?? Plus the info was already in the discussions page. That is why I removed it. Plus it was referring to my article which you had already removed.

Please just go back and look at your analysis and add in the attack before the first "round". Or simply take the "n" number of rounds needed to get to 70 or whatever damage you need and use n-1 rounds * speed.

Then it should look like this:

2H
30 damage per hit
3 sec

DW
10 damage per hit
1 sec

2H needs 3 hits or about 4 swings with 25% miss
DW needs 7 hits or about 10 swings with 25% miss

2H will swing 4 times, but in 9 seconds looking like this:

swing [pause] [pause] swing [pause] [pause] swing [pause] [pause] swing

DW will swing 10 times in 9 seconds with the same n-1 issue.

So now they are tied at 70 damage, but at 75 or 80 or 85 or 90 the 2H will win!

Totally changes your results! On average in any fight 2H will win beacausse of this.

The other issue is probabilities:

2H chance of hitting all three needed is .75^3 = .421875 or 42% taking 6 seconds
2H chance of hitting 3/4 hits is 73.6% ( a little more complicated to show the math here) taking 9 seconds
dW chance of hitting all 7 needed is .75^7 = .13348 or 13% taking 6 seconds
DW chance of hitting 7/8 hits is 36.4% taking 7 seconds
DW chance of hitting 7/9 hits is ~59% taking 8 seconds
DW chance of hitting 7/10 hits is ~ still figuring (lol)

And this is all for a total damage of 70 which is pretty unfavorable for the 2H since it is just over the 60 dmage it would do in 2 hits. Better would be to make the DW a little slower like 2 seconds, or change the number to something more fair like 75 (in between waht 2H can do) 90 might not be the best choice as it doenst take into account that 2H has bigger chunks of damage.

On average in short fights 2H will win due to this. as the fight gets longer the odds of either method not missing go to almost zero.

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Originally Posted by Hakon_Stormbrow

She has not even ackowledged the problem.

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That's simply because my stuff has no problem. Your conclusions are flatly incorrect. I've tried to help you understand that (over in the combat forum) but you cannot see it.

It matters not; I'm done with putting out effort to write (or maintain) further lorebook articles until we have an arbitration system in place. Do whatever the hell you want with the article. Hope you can live with being wrong, though, lol, and putting your name all over it.

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Originally Posted by Aylwyne

I think the right thing to do is work together to resolve the content into a single article. In this particular example, I think both parties have had a lot of trouble giving up ownership of their particular content.

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For what it's worth, I don't think it's as much ownership as very different perspectives on what's correct: something not so easy to just dismiss.

If an article is to be of any use, it needs to speak with a single voice. That doesn't man a single author's voice, but rather the article needs to sound as though it's speaking to you as an authority on a subject. How is this possible when multiple authors don't agree on the correctness of the content? It's easy to say, work it out, put in all points of view, but let's be realistic.

We've all read the forums: They're littered with arguments, not about what is correct, but who is correct, each side refusing to open their minds to peer review. What makes anyone believe it'll be different in the lorebook? If anything, it could very well end up worse, because at least on the forums you can't edit other player's ideas and redefine them as your own.

And an article that waffles over diametrically opposing positions:

"Well, there's this theory. Then there's that theory. You decide."

I'm sorry. I wasted my time reading that, why? To tell me that nobody can agree? I came to the lorebook looking for answers, not, "You decide." If I simply wanted to randomly decide, I'd have done it by myself instead trying to research it.

The hallmark of any good publication is peer review: put forth your ideas, and let the community at large determine if your facts are accurate. It's a wonderful principle, and works reasonably well in professional communities. This isn't one of those, in case that's escaped notice. This is a diverse community of people who strive for the right answer, whatever it may be; people who make an assumption and cherry pick "facts" to support their assumptions; people who talk through their hats with no idea what they're talking about, but by golly they're right; and people who talk just to sound important.

Leaving this open to sheer anarchy, without some type of formal review process, is asking for trouble. The first volley has been fired. We shouldn't just let a laissez faire approach let the lorebook crumble to ruin before it gets it feet wet. This is something from which we can learn, or we can bury our heads and trust it'll all work out fine.

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Originally Posted by Northwoods

I came to the lorebook looking for answers, not, "You decide."

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This is a customer contributor wiki. That means it's simply not going to be 100% accurate, particularly when it comes to game mechanics (some of which are very purposely left hidden by game designers... once the pattern is completely understood, it will lose a fair amount of its fun).

The only canonical information is going to come from Turbine on issues like this, so when it comes to reverse-engineering the game mechanics, I see nothing wrong with providing theories and supporting evidence to back each of them up. If some people don't find that useful, they don't need to read articles on game mechanics. Chances are that those articles will be pretty much in the ballpark, though, particularly after people have built on the experimental data provided by others, using it to help refine their theories.

Khafar

Northwoods grasps the essential problem posed by my OP in this thread (and by this test case). It's too bad the Turbine moderators either don't grasp it, or don't want to create more overhead for themselves despite the fact that they grasp it.

I'm a professional technical communicator. 24 years now, in the software industry. I've seen it all; done it all. I was one of the members of the working group that created the DITA standard, among other things. I understand collaborative authoring (and its pitfalls) inside out.

It's hard enough to collaboratively author *within* a community of professionals. Even there, you sometimes need to appeal to some arbitrating body to resolve (usually) minor conflicts or disagreements. In the case of disagreements between departments in a company, the appeal is to senior management. In the case of disagreements between members of a committee, the appeal is to the majority opinion of the committee. In the case of disagreements on a forum, the appeal is to the forum moderators. And so on.

A wiki needs an arbitrating body even more than any of the previous examples. Ultimately, disputes about what the content of an article *will* arise, as this case demonstrates, and you cannot just "leave it up to the conflicting parties to settle the matter". Ultimately, there must be a process to appeal to arbitration.

Look, realizing this current problem, since Turbine hadn't written any article dealing with editorial style, ettiquette, conflict resolution, etc., I even created several explicit such statements a few days before Harkon came along. I added verbiage to the Help:Contents page talking about ettiquette for Talk pages. I even created a specific Mechanics:How to Create or Revise Game Mechanics Pages article and placed it as the very first entry in the Game Mechanics section on the home page. That article contained *explicit* guidance about how to discuss an assertion with which you did not agree and gain community concensus *before* going in and adding conflicting language to an article.

Ironically, that page was posted the day before Hakon did his thing.

So what the hell else am I supposed to do? In good faith I created prophylatic articles attempting to steer discussion into productive channels and prevent conflict within an article itself. In good faith I essentially REVISED Hakon's original content into a shorter summary that pointed to his full, original content right next door on the Discussion page. I did not delete his content out of hand (unlike what he did to my content). I did not "just move" his content elsewhere. I did what any experienced wiki contributor would do when content that I am certain is either incorrect or otherwise inappropriate to the article would do: I *revised* it to bring the article back into balance.

Subsequently, Hakon unilaterally deletes my newest content entirely, replacing it with his original ****. At which point I did what any professional would do: I appealed to arbitration.

And at this point, Turbine has dropped the ball. You can't do that if you want your Lorebook to succeed. You can't do that if you want your Lorebook to be *trusted* instead of viewed with suspicion like forum threads are.

Step up to the plate, here, Turbine. If your moderators don't want to get involved with resolving disputes, then *create a user-based body of arbitrators*. Senior editors, Senior contributors, Knights of the Oingo Boingo... I don't care what you call them. But assign some type of arbitrating body. Then let the arbitrating body write some articles to describe the conflict resolution process and give the arbitrating body the power to limit privs on offending forum users who won't play well with others.

Until something like this is in place, I'm wasting my time putting any effort into the Lorebook. I've seen what happens to wikis that have no oversight.

So first makes right. Now I understand.

I have come up with a simple extreme example to make my 2 points.

DW weapon does 1 dmage hits every second or 1 DPS
2H weapon does 85 damage hits evey 85 seconds ro 1 DPS

Each warior has 75 hit points.

Point #1 - starting combat with an attack instead of a pause

The first instant of combat the DW has a 75% chance to hit for 1 damage
The 2H has a 75% chance to hit for 85 damage.

75% of the time the 2H would win

Point #2 - Probabilities in low sample experiments

Assuming that we start the combats with a pause instead of an attack (as you did in your analysis) the DW will need about 100 sec to get the 75 hits to kill.
2H will, at the 85 second mark, have a 75% chance to hit for 85 damage killing the DWer.

I did not have the time to figure the odds of the DWer getting the 75 hits in 85 sec (it is very low, you could only miss 10 out of 85 hits or about 12 % miss rate) but I would guess that 2H would win about 73% of the fights.

This is an extreme example, to be sure, but it effectively shows the two problems in your article.

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Originally Posted by Khafar

This is a customer contributor wiki. That means it's simply not going to be 100% accurate, particularly when it comes to game mechanics...

I see nothing wrong with providing theories and supporting evidence to back each of them up.

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Ideally, the article should present the most sound theory (as per available evidence) in the main body. and perhaps alternative approaches in a later section or perhaps an addendum. The article still needs to speak with one voice, however. It cannot be self-contradictory. If theories are presented that directly oppose one another, the article isn't going to be seen as an authority, as it should be, but rather as careless speculations at best or, more likely, an argument. That's best left to the forums.

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Originally Posted by Shannong

You can't do that if you want your Lorebook to be *trusted* instead of viewed with suspicion like forum threads are.

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And that's the key. If the lorebook isn't a trusted source of information, it loses its raison d'etre.

There's also a matter of how a controversial edit should take place. Changes to standing articles should be proposed and discussed, not just made wholesale. This isn't a matter of ownership of the articles or ownership of ideas. It's a matter of maintaining consistency, and keeping the authority of the work intact. If a reader examines an article on Monday, then comes back Wednesday to find that it contradicts what it said on Monday, the article loses credibility. If its information waffles back and forth, it's worse yet. And worst of all, once one article becomes suspect, it starts to infect the veracity of the lorebook as a whole.

We have the forums for the coffee shop discussions and arguments. That should be wherein the wheat is separated from the chaff. The lorebook should present only the best of what we've learned. If it simply becomes another venue for argument and dissenting viewpoints, it's redundant.

Based on all the discussion here I am going to remove my article, I shall attempt to word it better and used soem new data.

But In the meantime I have to ask shannong to look into the two specific issues I have raised, so that when my article is ready, we can make the appropiate switch.

Northwoods and khafar, you have been helpful in trying to mediate this, but I also must ask you to look at the actual issue, rather than as a he said she said. IS the substance of my analysis showing 2H to perform better correct in your view? In the end we cannot both be correct.

If Shannong will not look into this I shall start a new section in game mechanics for DW vs 2H. This would be unfortunate.

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Originally Posted by Hakon_Stormbrow

IS the substance of my analysis showing 2H to perform better correct in your view? In the end we cannot both be correct.

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Frankly, I found the format and presentation of the material so confusing, I find it hard to judge on its merits. It could be dead-on accurate, but unless I, as a reader, can clearly understand what it's saying it's of no real use to me.

Something to consider is context: The reader doesn't have the same context as the writer. The writer makes a lot of assumptions, and has a lot of background the reader doesn't see. The idea isn't to just dump it all out there, but to summarize it. No small task, to be sure.

Lastly, be critical of your own work. Ask the questions others would ask. Don't assume your conclusions are correct. Look for the flaws. Tear apart your own argument and see how it could be attacked. The greatest service any of us can do with our writing, especially when doing research (which is what a lot of this is--research and discovery) is to constantly ask ourselves, "What am I missing? What didn't I think of?" Don't look for examples that prove what we're saying. Rather, look for examples that disprove it.

The harder we try and disprove our own conclusions, the more seriously we take on that task, the better our work will be overall. We can go, "What if," all day long on the forums, but we ought try and really nail it for the lorebook.

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Originally Posted by Hakon_Stormbrow

But In the meantime I have to ask shannong to look into the two specific issues I have raised, so that when my article is ready, we can make the appropiate switch.

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Shannong shall be looking into nothing until an process for arbitration is in place.

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Originally Posted by Hakon_Stormbrow

Northwoods and khafar, you have been helpful in trying to mediate this, but I also must ask you to look at the actual issue, rather than as a he said she said. IS the substance of my analysis showing 2H to perform better correct in your view? In the end we cannot both be correct.

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Hakon, one last time... Please look at your own (poorly formatted and hard to understand) 3rd table from your original mess. Please count up the number of times the DW setup has achieved *more* total damage after 30 seconds than the 2H weapon. Now please count up the number of times the 2H weapon has achieved *more* total damage after 30 seconds than the DW setup. The answer? DW wins 16 times. 2H wins 9 times. 3 times they tied for damage.

This is your own fraking data. It's staring you right in the face. Go back and absorb my original statements completely. Compare my original statements to your 3rd table. Your OWN fraking data proves my assertion. As I've explained numerous times, both on the Discussion tab and in the Combat forum on the related thread, your tables for a 5% miss rate and even 10% miss-rate are superfluous for the purpose of illustrating the principle behind my assertion. OF COURSE if you have a low miss rate, the 2H weapon will come out ahead. When you look at more typical miss-rates versus even-con mobs which are more like 20% (or higher for yellow or orange mobs), the data starts looking like your 3rd table, and the data agrees with my assertion and the basic principle it is laying out for consideration among other damage factors.

Let me approach it a different way. Do you have a Champion? Do you watch the Champion forums? Are you aware of how many champions fervently prefer a DW setup over a 2H setup? Sure there are folks who prefer 2H weapons but even they admit that you must use a very different set of skills when using 2H weapon. For pure auto-attack damage output and simple mashing of available skills, there's a *reason* why DW weapons are perceived as superior by many Champions.

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Originally Posted by Hakon_Stormbrow

If Shannong will not look into this I shall start a new section in game mechanics for DW vs 2H. This would be unfortunate.

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Yes it certainly would because it will ultimately reduce trust in the Lorebook, because readers who understand what I'm saying will go "what the hell is this nonsense?". That article has been up for 4 weeks and only one other person contested it (and was informed where they made their fundamental error--did they rebutt after that? No.) If I'm so off-base, 4 weeks is enough time for a major riot to occur. And long before I even posted that article to the lorebook, it existed in "guide" form on the Combat forums and had been thoroughly debated and vetted by the community on that forum. Many refinements, additions, and some changes were made to that guide during this process based on community feedback. What was posted to the Lorebook had already been vetted by the community long before it was inserted into the Lorebook. In other words, I stuck a early draft of the article on the forums, revised it frequently through community feedback, and waited until the dust settled before even putting it into the Lorebook.

Had you chosen to challenge my assertion in something like the combat forums (per the guidance in the fraking "how to" article at the top of the list of Game Mechanics articles), I or anyone else might have had a chance to go back and forth with you until you understood where you are making fundamental mistakes in your reasoning about this. Any one statistic you are throwing out is correct. It's what your basing your conclusions on that is wrong. You are failing to make the (difficult) intuitive leap that is required to "get" this principle. I clearly state up front in that section that this is a counter-intuitive concept.

But no. You've stuck your foot in it and now you need to prove something. So you're begin stubborn, reactionary, and unethical. Own. Your. Problem. Then please put the article back to the state it was at the time of my last revision to it (feel free to remove the clearly-marked "temporary" section because of course it's no longer relevant).

Then if you still feel the need to debate the issue with me and the entire world, feel free to do so. On the forums. If you can prove me wrong (and you won't be able to, sorry) and the community says "sure enough, Shannon was wrong", I'll happily watch you revise the article accordingly. (Assuming you actually do it in a concise, reader-friendly format.)

Ok, Thanks. Thats all I wanted to hear.

More data coming....

And as I said to you the third data set was too small to support your analysis, The standard deviations were too big.

I notice you ignore the more simple and concise example I made.

I'm glad to see at least one side is trying to be reasonable and work out the problem. Shannong, you just don't seem to want to work together in a calm, non-inflammatory manner. You're taking input on the article way too personally.

Take a breath, step back, and then try presenting your information without being derisive about it. Based on the fact that Harkon is already taking steps towards a compromise, I imagine you'll find it's easy to work things out if you're not belligerent about it.

Something missing here is process. Let's step back and answer some questions:

• Do we have a good (or at least agreed upon) understanding of weapon mechanics? Do we know how one hand differs from two hand from dual wield?
• Do we understand how weapon speed affects skill shots, vs how it affects auto attacks?
• Do we understand how skill shots affect auto attacks?

If we can't agree on that part, there's no point discussing relative damage, if there? That's be putting the cart way before the horse.

Now, if we do understand the above, the next step should not be to go out and test it, but to use that information to predict what should happen. Build a little variance into the model, just to account for player reaction times, differing play styles, etc.

Now, once we have a working hypothesis, we test. Ideally, we get results from a variety of sources. One player, not matter how many iterations they perform, will fall into a distinct pattern. The data collected won't necessarily reflect how the system works as a whole, but how it works for that player. And we need to collect a reasonable sample size. Two few iterations and random chance looms large.

Then we need to see how well the data fits our model. How good were our predictions? Do we have results that are way out of range? Skewed toward one edge of our predicted range? Did we miscalculate in our model? How do we adjust?

And adjust and repeat until the model reflects the data we're collecting to an acceptable degree.

Lastly, we publish the model. We don't need to publish the whole of the data. We know the data collected will fit the model. We can invite others to test the model for themselves, confident in our results. Not to mention, the model will be a lot easier to read and understand than all the data interpretation.

A lot of work, you say? Yes, it is. What's the price you're willing to pay for publishing correct and robust information? Anyone can publish a, "This, I believe," treatise, and one almost certainly to be challenged by someone with a differing belief. But, if you do it right, then even in the face of so-called, "conventional wisdom," the work will stand.

I don't really expect too many people to go through all this. They ought, but I'm a realist. What I mostly intended to show was the failings we're seeing here are not failings of people, but failings of process. If we had a solid process for doing this kind of work, we can better pull people out of the equation.

Nice idea northwoods. And normally I would agree. But until turbine releases more data on the combat mechanics (or allows us to parse it)it is highly unlikely we will figure it out.

The second problem is that the article was already there. I merely read it and knew it was wrong. Should I just leave it there?

Anyway, I have completed my new analysis with more simplified results and examples. IT does make some simplifications to the combat engine (as the original article did) but it is generally accepted that overall DPS between DW and 2H are about equal, so my analysis should be relevant, even if now exact.

I started a new thread for it, since we seemed to have gotten off to a rough start in the last one.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...482#post876482