Discussion Main / ThePaladin

I ported over my rewrite from the original Paladin page (which I didn't realize wasn't properly launched from YKTTW — oops). The original article was, to be frank, not very good. It was too long, somewhat repetitive, and focused too much on the various mechanical builds that are sometimes called "paladins". The merge just made this worse by keeping all of that and adding in some of my rewritten stuff as well. Don't mean to offend anyone by wiping out their work, but I figured this was the easiest way to fix it for now, as it basically needed a complete rewrite anyway, and I'd already done that once. I would've brought it up on the Trope Repair Shop thread, but someone locked it after the clumsy merge. Bleh.

That's because A) The Trope Repair shop focused on how they needed to be merged.

I don't see why we couldn't have the various mechanical builds in the main article - this is as much a Character Type in RP Gs/Tabletop Games/what have you as they are a personality type. It's like the Mighty Glacier page - they state that there's outright personalities that fit this character the best.

I'm undoing your rewrite. My apologies bro, I cleared up most of the redundancy, and if there's anything in particular you want me to revise, I will, but go through discussion or Trope Repair Shop channels before completely wiping a description and rewriting it again. We can discuss the civilly.

My main problem with the article as-is is that it's far too long. It's also sort of rambling. It generally reads like it was written by commitee — which it was, taking bits and pieces from the original YKTTW, your edits, and my rewrites and combining them rather haphazardly. This was true (though to a lesser extent) of the original article under Paladin, too. The only practical way to simultaneously cut it down to a reasonable length, restore its focus of voice, and retain all the useful information necessary for the trope is to rewrite it from scratch... so I did.

Let's look at how the article's constructed. First paragraph: Paladins are Magic Knight Church Militants who fight undead and demons. Second paragraph: Paladins work for good deities using holy powers tuned to fighting evil. Third paragraph: Paladins usually work for religous groups dedicated to a god or The Force. That's redundant where it isn't contradictory (Paladins always worship a good god, except that they just as often worship The Light instead. Huh?) and needs to be fixed.

Fourth paragraph: lots of mechanical information that doesn't need to go here. That's what we have An Adventurer Is You and Competitive Balance for. Deserves a mention and a couresty link or two, certainly, but not nearly this much detail. Ditto sixth paragraph. One line on this would be sufficient; two entire paragraphs is silly.

Fifth paragraph and eighth are virtual repeats of each other, on the paladin's relationship with tabletop RP Gs. One or the other of them needs to go.

The seventh paragraph is mostly okay, but contradicts itself at the end. Paladins are in the middle of the cynicism scale and their armor may be shining or sour, and are not necessarily nice, except that they're inevitably a Knight in Shining Armor and The Fettered. Oi. That needs to be fixed.

Ninth paragraph is a nice little vocab/history lesson, but ultimately has nothing to do with the trope. Nuke it. Move it to the trivia namespace if you really want to keep it around.

So basically the entire article needs to be altered or removed. Which means that it amounts to essentially a complete rewrite, with the added bonus of a rewrite adding the focus that the current article sorely lacks.

I still don't see how little bits here and there constitute an entire rewrite. Third paragraph I'll alter, since yeah, it's confusing.

As for the paragraphs containing mechanical information, a bunch of other pages have a combination of personality and how they play (Which I believe is important, considering Paladins were mostly codified in tabletop and video games anyway.) I can rewrite it to make it a bit more consistent, but it's still an integral part of Paladins as a whole.

I'll merge paragraph five and eight, or at least rework them so they aren't entirely separate.

I think what was meant there is that the 'basic' Paladin is inevitably either the Knight in Shining Armor or The Fettered. But I can give you that.

The ninth paragraph I don't have any real reason for keeping other than it was in the original YKTTW and some trope have their word origins in the article as well. And hey, What's wrong with wordy?

"Little bits here and there"? I just listed things wrong with the entirety of the article. If you want to be the one that rewrites it, fine, but it's not very good as-is and I don't see why you're objecting to my trying to improve it. (I mean, was my rewrite bad? Did it make the article worse than it is now? If nothing else it was shorter and less redundant.)

Mechanical information I agree should be in there — links to Stone Wall and Combat Medic and The Tank and all that, definitely. I just don't think it needs to be much more than that. The discussion over paladins using two-handed weapons versus paladins using sword-and-shield sounds like a straight-up World Of Warcraft discussion, which we certainly don't want in the main article. Discussing equipment setups is irrelevant past the understanding that most paladins are defensive protection-and-healing oriented characters (with the possible exception against undead or demons or whatever).

The "basic" paladin being a Knight in Shining Armor was already covered earlier in the paragraph — "The archetypal Paladin is a Lawful Good Knight In Shining Armor, but this isn't always the case."

The problem with wordy is that the internet has a tendency to declare tldr. It's been said that the goal for this wiki is "clear, concise, and witty" (and that acceptable is "clear"). Right now, this article is not clear (it's contradictory throughout and overly-specific in places), and it's not concise (it has stuff that's irrelevant and stuff that's redundant). We need to fix that.

Honestly, the only reason I haven't done so already is because I don't want to start an edit war.

First off, calm down. One of the other rules of TV Tropes is that We Are Not Wikipedia and as sch, not everything needs to be such Serious Business. Though if you want the truth, I honestly felt your rewrite was far too concise for a major archetype of character/personality type. I agree the article needs some rewriting, but we don't need an -entire- do over. Which is my big objection here.

As for the discussion about One-Handed versus Two-handed weapons, Paladins in just about every game will play different depending on the sword-and-shield/two handed weapon variants. As mentioned in the article, Two-handed Paladins are always more prone to trying to hit For Massive Damage while sword and shield Paladins will invaribly lean toward the Stone Wall - won't do much damage, but will take a hell of a beating. They're still combat characters, and a bit of mention of this is relevant.

That's fine. We can keep that and clear the last line then.

I've seen much wordier articles on similar topics. And if you're coming to TV Tropes... well, chances are you aren't exactly looking for concise, considering the tendency for articles and examples to be long.

It's a good idea to hold off on the editing - I would rather not get in an edit war myself, but I do not think an entire article rewrite is necessary.

No point in sitting here butting heads. I made another thread in Trope Repair Shop.

First off, this is a page for the character type in general, not just the game character. That emphasis needs to be toned way, way down.

Replis, "Informal" doesn't mean rambling and verbose is ok, and assuming that everyone who comes here wants to spend a lot of time reading a long, repetitive, disorganized and highly-detailed page is a mistake. "There are longer articles" is no reason to leve this one overly long.And finally, even though you launched a page, it is not "yours". Wikis don't work that way.

I didn't imply it to be mine, but fine. I concede to those points.

I still don't think an entire rewrite of the page is necessary, but take that for what you will.