Talk:Hay

This talk page is for discussing Hay.
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Article instead of Redirect

I'm reinstating the new article I created for Hay because the vast majority of information on the page was never previously available (all the new ways to get hay in v1.4, gifting, bundles, etc., etc.). There's no reasonable way to cram this info into a section on how-to-feed-animals. Adding missing information to the wiki should not require approval. Nebulous Maestress (talk) 17:38, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

In the absence of any direct response to my first post, I'll respond to comments made elsewhere. I feel like this is way too long and I'm making many arguments that seem almost self-evident, but the short-and-quick approach apparently wasn't enough. Just in case anyone happens to find this talk page without first seeing the article revision history, this is the article I'm proposing.

This would require multiple cascading changes across 12 wikis.

My sole intention here was to make a good-faith, constructive improvement to the wiki -- the existing information on Animals#Food was out-of-date and I wanted to add information that is not available anywhere else on the wiki. To me removing it is therefore equivalent to saying that editors should intentionally leave incomplete / out-of-date information on articles -- because it's more important to make sure all 12 translated versions of an article are the same (i.e., equally incomplete and out-of-date).

In short, I disagree. But I don't think this is the place to make that case. This talk page should be about the value of this specific article and/or what to do with this specific chunk of content. Whereas multilingual article management is a general wiki-wide issue, and comes down to overall wiki priorities and policy. So unless this ends up being the only argument left standing, I'll move on.

Changes of this magnitude are normally discussed on talk pages.

• My opinion was (and still is) that turning Hay into an article was simply following wiki standard practice which seems to be creating individual articles for every item in the game.
• Hay already had been article. The reason given for changing it to a redirect was: Redirecting, unless there's enough information for a main page. Which implies that once a non-stub article is available, it should be posted. Nothing in the page history suggests that the article was considered to be controversial.
• I also believe that any discussion is going to be far more constructive if it's based on a real article instead of a hypothetical unwritten article. How can other editors decide whether or not it's a stub without seeing the proposed new contents? How can the presence of this article be so damaging to the wiki that it can't be left visible to readers while its merits are discussed?

We can make changes on the Animals page, and refer to other pages as necessary

• Hay is not an animal: it doesn't belong an an article about animals; it's confusing to click a link to Hay and see an article on animals start loading.
• Hay is not just food: the section at animals is titled #Food so that's what belongs in the section. Information on gifting, tailoring, selling hay, etc. is out of place.
• Hay deserves an article more than Ornamental Hay Bale: Virtually every other item or object in the game has its own individual article, even though the vast majority are so unimportant that there's nothing to put in the article. There are even articles for items that don't even appear in the game (e.g., Rapier) -- even if the content is 100% redundat (e.g. with Weapons).Yet an individual article on Hay, a vital resource, is not allowed??
• Hay needs an infobox: an easy-to-find summary, in particular so that all important sources can be quickly seen. Readers shouldn't have to dig 5 paragraphs down then scan through multiple paragraphs (and even then get incomplete info).
• All uses of hay need to be on one article. I regularly use the wiki's other item articles to review all the recipes/bundles/quests/etc. so I can anticipate future needs. That info cannot be added to animals (having a subsection saying hay is not used in any quests?). Having it scattered across an unknown number of articles defeats the purpose.
• Hay needs a gifting section: I've found the gifting sections on item pages to be the most straightforward, reliable way to find out what the reaction is going to be of NPC x to item y. The only current option is inconvenient: loading the entire Friendship article, searching on Hay, hoping that your search didn't miss some collapsed section containing an exception, etc.

Nebulous Maestress (talk) 23:50, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree that Hay requires its own article, not simply a redirect. There are a great many minor items that have their own article. But Hay is not actually a small item, or a small topic. Nebulous describes the basics in the proposed article, which, while not a stub, will need expansion.

• Hay management can be tricky. You need Silos. They are tall and obstruct vision at many locations, so they are also undesirable in large numbers. You can obtain Hay several ways, but how do you store it then? My own answer is that Chests are an alternative. Withdraw existing Hay from Silos into inventory, then store in a chest.
• But Hopper behavior prevents flexibility because no withdrawal is permitted in a building where the Hopper is full, as they always are in Deluxe animal houses. Spouses may also try to help by feeding animals, filling a hopper, when that is exactly what one may not want. So planning is necessary. Myself? I opt out of marriage entirely to avoid that difficulty. Seems antisocial perhaps, but so is insistent and continual interference in farm operations.
• So Hay management ties in with multiple objects and even social interactions. Where do we put all that material in a paragraph on feeding animals? And some behavior might be viewed as bugs. At least I do. The bigger point is that substantive choices must be made about how to play the game anyway, and Hay might (or might not) figure into those choices, depending on your objectives. Only a full article has room to present such matters.

Having argued for the article, I will say that the wiki also needs to be managed. Discussion here is well and good, and decisions can be made. But the question of the timing of larger changes is also a legitimate consideration. I do not look on translation as a small or unimportant matter, and would take issue with Nebulous to the degree that it is minimized. Translation is a difficult thing to do, and requires relatively rare combinations of skill, so workers are few, especially for a game wiki. But having materials available in the native languages of players is no small deal for them, and Stardew is worldwide. In the US we are all too provincial and pedestrian when it comes to putting a value on those things. And I think those questions should be handled not so much by editors as by moderators, who are in a position to understand the wiki better. "Standard wiki practise" is often a synonym for "how Wikipedia does it", but I can testify that the way things are done at Wikipedia leaves a lot to be desired also. And it certainly doesn't all carry over to here intact. We don't use a 14-wheel truck to go to the grocery store.

So-- I do think we need the article, and see no reason why we can't start with what Nebulous has proposed. But I don't think we should include it until the translations we have going here can handle the load. Why not let the proposal be put into a page on the wiki, but outside of the article name space, and let editing proceed on that proposal as it would on any article? Let it have a talk page too. When the time comes to integrate it into the wiki, pages can move, along with their history, and the integration process should also go more smoothly because all needs can be anticipated. Neither work on editing nor work on translation should be halted or impeded. Butterbur (talk) 08:23, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Definitely agree with the points made above. Hay should be a page on its own; the Animals page is very cramped. What else needs to be done to get the page published? We're almost 2 months in since the page was created with no new updates regarding it.

SPanda (talk) 20:02, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

There aren't any updates because nothing has changed. The original points are listed above and in the linked to discussion. margotbean (talk) 21:27, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I just discovered an even more important reason why this article needs to be restored:

Most readers never find the information within Animals

The vast majority of readers rely on google search. But a google search for 'Stardew Hay' lists the Fandom wiki as the top hit. The only pages from this site that show up are Grass, Silo, and Hay Hopper -- meaning people think this site contains no information on Hay itself and feel forced to go elsewhere to find that information.

The purpose of this wiki is to provide readers with information, and right now the wiki is failing to do that. That's a higher priority in my opinion than details of when/how content gets translated. Creating a sandbox version of this article doesn't help readers find it. It needs to be an article and it's long overdue. Nebulous Maestress (talk) 23:49, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

I am in complete agreement, and have long been so. I find the reasons given for not including an article to be insufficient to the issue. If there are others, I think they should be given. And all issues should be discussed. It's the wiki way - any wiki. I say yes to the proposed article. Let's include it immediately. It has been far too long that we have been waiting on translation issues. I think those will have to sort themselves out separately since there has been no development on this material many months since the article proposal was made. There are many English readers who play the game. Let them (at least) have access. Butterbur (talk) 14:48, 16 August 2020 (UTC)