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Hi folks,

I'd like to talk about a little concept in Pathfinderwiki writing I like to call verbosity. I first encountered the term back in the mid-eighties when I was playing games like the Zork series, Planetfall (my fav), and Leather Goddess of Phobos. While swapping 5.25s I discovered that if you typed the command "verbose" it would give you the full description of a room, even if you had already visited it. Without it, the description of an already-explored room would be shortened.

So how does this apply to the wiki? Well, when I'm writing an article I pay attention to make it make sense all on its own. I pay particular attention when writing a whole series of articles on related subjects.

For instance, let's say I am writing an article on the Shimmerglens. The easiest thing would be to say something like, "The Shimmerglens are a spooky swamp-land inhabitend by the fey and avoided by humans". Although everything would technically be true, a person who knew nothing about the Shimmerglens would receive very little information. In which country is the swamp? Near what city? Why do the humans avoid it? In my opinion, it is important to put a given subject within a greater context, otherwise readers who don't already know some info will have to go searching around the links to figure out what you are talking about.

I am not saying that one has to include all the possible related info on a subject, but I think it is important to put in a bit of "window dressing" in to make it make sense on its own.

Any thoughts/comments?

BrOp

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