I find it weird that after so long, not a single DR track has its own page, unlike Undertale Wiki. I can only assume there’s a rule preventing it, but if so, what’s the reason?
Personally, I liked the info and trivia (time signatures, BPM, etc).
I assume they’re still gettin’ to it.
Currently the wiki is still being cleaned up, with trivia and other such things.
also welcome to the wiki
I see.
Mostly because soundtrack pages are ~80 additional pages, and we didn't see them as high-value enough to bother with something like that. I'll list some pros and cons here so we can get the opinion of other wiki editors on this topic:
1. Album pages only
All tracks are only listed on respective album pages, which includes information on track length, location, leitmotifs, a music player and additional trivia. When linking to tracks from other pages, we link to specific table rows.
Pros
- We don't have to create hundreds of new pages for each track and maintain all that information.
- We don't add many short pages to the wiki.
Cons
- Users who search for a specific track are less likely to find what they need in the table.
- The album pages get a lot of trivia, which we are trying to clean up.
- There is no place for more specific information, such as BPM or time signatures of individual tracks.
- Because of our automated leitmotifs extraction, all our track data is stored in a Lua module, which isn't intuitive for new users.
2. Separate pages
Each track gets its own article, and the album articles list the same information as currently, but with links to track articles for additional details. Each track article has an infobox for itself with additional information (filename, key, time signature, BPM), and at least an intro paragraph explaining where it plays and any additional details.
Pros
- It is easier to link to track information.
- We presumably get better discoverability in search engines, because users searching for specific track names get surfaced wiki pages for these tracks.
- Instead of storing all track data in a Lua module that not many know how to edit, we store it in infoboxes.
Cons
- We have to create 80 pages, and many more when new chapters come out. We're not quite sure how many people would find a use for this information, and if it rationalizes the amount of time required to create all these articles.
- Many of these pages would be short.
- Historically, we were never sure how accurate were key, time signature and BPM information in infoboxes.
3. Separate pages but only for important tracks
Like the previous proposal, but we only create articles for tracks that are noteworthy enough.
Pros
- We don't have to create so many pages.
- The pages won't really be short.
- We can link to some tracks more easily, and some tracks are more easily discoverable in search engines.
Cons
- How do we determine noteworthiness for tracks?
- We'll still have to use the same module for storing data on all the tracks.
- Only select tracks will have additional information on them.
What does everyone else think? Which of our options is best? Are track articles worth the time required to create them?
I like option 2. I don’t see short articles as inherently an issue (several item pages are the same way), it’s consistent both internally and with Undertale Wiki, templating can let us make the articles quite fast, and it resolves the trivia bloat. Also, while adding 80 pages in the next 25 days is a decent amount of work, it’s work that should do a good job of separating us from the Fandom wiki.
Noteworthiness could be big area themes and boss themes
I believe we should not have information for every track stored in some massive table that would be difficult to navigate, especially on mobile devices. Having separate articles for each track would ensure that people can find what they are looking for much easier. We are in no rush to add all the pages, even when the new chapters release.
If we can do this on Undertale Wiki, we can definitely do it on Deltarune Wiki.
I’m in favor of 2, for separate pages as well. Consistency with Undertale Wiki makes sense, and reader-wise, there’s more benefits. And the articles look better on mobile than the table. But I’m not music savvy, so I can’t help out as much with these articles…
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Go big or go home.
Now’s your chance to be a
i don’t feel strongly either way, but it should be one or the other-all on their own page or all on their album page, not only pages for “notable” tracks. it’d be too arbitrary for many of them, imo.
In order of preference: 2, 1, 3.
I’d most prefer separate articles for multiple reasons. It provides consistency with the other wiki, and information about specific songs is not cluttered and confusingly placed in a large “Trivia” section on an album page. Song pages are also some of the most searched-for non-entries. Having pages on only “notable songs” is my least preferred option simply because any standard of notability would be overly arbitrary.
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I still think level and boss themes are a good standard
Or even including shop themes
For example, “BIG SHOT” and “A Cyber’s World” would get their own page but “Fanfare” would not
The thing is that… there’s probably more to say about Fanfare than about Chaos King, ironically enough. Fanfare originates from Rose of Winter, a game made by Chess, one of Deltarune’s (and Undertale’s) developers. It even has a full version. Chaos King doesn’t have any such interesting details to be said about it, to my knowledge.
Huh, didn’t think of it like that.
Personally, I’d prefer option 2. I was always confused why the Undertale wiki had individual track articles while Deltarune didn’t.
I also don’t see a problem with really short articles because we already have that, on the Undertale wiki.
Option 2 is great even just to get rid of the huge amount of trivia at the bottom of those pages.
Only issue with BPM and time sig is that Deltarune’s tracks change tempo and meter a lot more often than Undertale’s (The Legend and Queen being pretty decent examples of both of these), so the descriptions would just have to be robust enough to capture all that jazz, preferably with time codes rather than vague section letters like Undertale’s track pages sometimes do (see Home as an example).
I’m doing melodic transcriptions of all the Chapter 1 and 2 OST tracks to help with leitmotif/melody hunting, so I have a good bit of the time sig, key, and tempo metadata to plug in for these already. Keys are especially weird with Toby since he doesn’t like tuning to A440 lol. Rude Buster and Spamton are both halfway between F# and G but not quite in the same place as each other.
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Deltarune Wiki now has pages for tracks! They are currently rough stubs containing what were previously their descriptions in the big soundtrack table, so if you have time you can fill them out with information.
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[Hooray!] YOU’RE A REAL [BIG SHOT] FOR GOING WITH THAT [Ludicrous] IDEA!