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::::::It may seem like a small thing, but simply renaming it and washing a bit of its background to be more generic or more in tune with D&D lore easily fixes it. I could make that class, have it chock full of Ayn Rand quotes and the invisible hand of the free market and have it all about destroying government services and call it the Rebel or the Anarchist* or whatever. Or have the religious man who worships aliens and is all about selling woo and call it the Cultist of Yenu who is definitely not a Scientologist. You could rename is [[Adversary of Faith (3.5e Class)|Adversary of Faith]] or... actually nevermind, stole that one. But you get the idea.
::::::(*Yeah yeah Anarchists is also a political group, but its also the name of an ideology in general so we're good. That's also why Evangelist is fine. It's Evangelist, not Southern Baptist Evangelist.)
::::::Unfortunately the nature of the situation is inherently fuzzy, so you're not going to get a hard and fast rule to follow out of this. It's really more of a politeness thing, and it's pretty easy to fix. Anyway, personally I like it when you work a class into pre-existing lore. Tell me how you make a worshiper of Asmodeus or something. Or at the very least purge it of referring to reality. If you're going to import Satan or Yahweh or Me into your game tell me how it interacts and works in a world of Pelor and Friends.
::::::So yeah, strictly speaking it's not "illegal" or "against the rules" to do this. But I do think that the subject matter and how it's handled is in fact fair game in ratings. A negative rating won't hide your work, it just says your work is not desired and here is why. -- [[User:Eiji-kun|Eiji-kun]] ([[User talk:Eiji-kun|talk]]) 03:18, 28 February 2019 (MST)
:::::::I'm here to lay down the law. And it is this: no hamfisted real-world reflections onto the wiki. That's perfectly fine to be judged by ratings, and I encourage it. Earlier in this thread, you were given by Zhenra-Khal a number of suggestions. You could reflavor your class a bit to make it less hamfisted and more widely applicable. If you dislike the way it is interpreted here, you could also sandbox it, or move it elsewhere. Hell (pun intended), you could even refer to the fact that Satan is a title and be like “any evil demon can be your satan” and have satanists of demogorgon or whatever. Or if you want to stick with the atheist theme, make a class out of rejecting the gods.
:::::::I'm not as a rule opposed to real-world things on the wiki. It's possible that someone make, say, a Pastor of Saint Something for an urban modern setting and it ends up being great. But that's the sort of thing you have to be ''pretty careful'' about, and I and the rest of the user base do not think you showed that level of care.
:::::::You've been given options on what to do here. There are many options available to you. But one of them is not leave the page as-is. You will do one of the available options, or I will delete the page, as I am this site's Satan, the God of This World and its final authority. [[User:Surgo|Surgo]] ([[User talk:Surgo|talk]]) 16:59, 28 February 2019 (MST)
::::::::That would be missing the whole point. My class does not interpret satan as an evil supernatural being. The class permits all alignments and mostly uses Extraordinary abilities. There are over 30 different christian-based classes on this wiki. If you refuse to allow a satanist class, you admit to favoring one religion over another.--Franken Kesey 17:54, 28 February 2019 (MST)
:::::::::You seem to be laboring under the assumption that this is an argument or in any way up for debate. It is not. [[User:Surgo|Surgo]] ([[User talk:Surgo|talk]]) 18:41, 28 February 2019 (MST)
==The full list of strongly religious (and mostly Christian) inspired pages on this wiki==
The full list of strongly religious inspired pages on this wiki:
:1) [[Bishop (3.5e Class)]]: only Christians have bishops.
:2) [[Deacon (3.5e Class)]]: Only Christians have deacons.
:3) [[Templar (3.5e Class)]]: A real world order of religious knights.
:4) [[Hashshashin (3.5e Class)]] A real world cult.
:5) [[Church Hunter (3.5e Prestige Class)]]: Only Christians call their temples churches.
:6) [[Exalted Saint (3.5e Prestige Class)]]: Even uses biblical language.
:7/8/9) [[God-blooded (3.5e Class)]], [[Godseer (3.5e Class)]] and [[Godling (3.5e Prestige Class)]]: It is in the name. Only Christians use the term god. Muslims call him Allah, while Jews call him Yahweh. Thus Christian.
:10/11) [[HellFire Destroyer (3.5e Prestige Class)]]/[[Hellmaster (3.5e Prestige Class)]]: Hell spelled with two “L”s is Christian, Jews would say Sheol, the Norse would spell it with one “L”.
:12-18) Cleric, paladin, and at least five different homebrew paladins on this site
:19-28) The entire [[Tome of Fiends (3.5e Sourcebook)/Classes; Base and Prestige|Tome of Fiends]] uses a Christian interpretation of evil. Which includes 4 base classes and 6 prestige classes.
:29/30) [[Priest (3.5e Class)]] and [[High Priest (3.5e Class)]]: Sure it could be argued that other religions have priest (i.e., Hindus), but both leans hard towards Judeo-Christian origins.
All these could be called shamans (a religious neutral term). Yet technically the word shaman comes from one religion (then was used by anthropologists for decades as a name for all tribes’ spiritual leaders).
However, there is only one class that takes a neutral approach to Satan (the [[Satanist (3.5e Prestige Class)]]). This is the only class that is criticized for using real-world religious inspiration. Which is out of balance. Do we only allow Christians here?--Franken Kesey 17:39, 28 February 2019 (MST)
:Sorry, I'm gonna field this one. This is disingenuous and a silly hill to die on.
:Bishops is a generic term too in common parlance, much in the same way that Band-Aid is technically a company and not the name of the product (adhesive bandages). Otherwise, you're gonna have to explain to Games Workshop that that pseudo-Roman society of space marines are actually worshiping Christ and not the God Emperor. This also applies for Deacon, Saint, Church, and so far. They're titles. You can even refer to a pope because that's like a lord or a king or a czar, and that's fine.
:Templars and Hashshashins are "dead". Throw it in with the Norse gods and other groups that no longer have a major presence.
:Godseer and company. Are you really trying to claim that the word "god" is owned by Abrahamic religions? You literally can't get more generic. They aren't referring to the middle eastern war god of the Jews with "Godseer", they just refer to their god as a generic title.
:Hell too. That's not a special word. No one owns hell. No one is going to go to bat over someone slandering their interpretation of hell.
:Paladins are generic. Crusaders are generic. A lot of these words are generic. This is weaksauce, bring me specifics.
:Tome of Fiends... well, yeah. More specifically it's based on occult hearsay and a lot of Paradise Lost and myths and legends that aren't actually religious specific. As a former Christian I feel I have authority to say that no, absolutely none of this is part of their dogma. In fact they typically go out of the way not to address any details about devils or angels other than "they're a thing, might be scary seeing as they keep saying don't be afraid, demons sure like living in pigs lol". All these names and details came later, or they were stolen from their original sources when they took over places and turned local deities into various demons.
:I don't get why you're fighting so hard on something so incredibly easy to fix. There is literally half a dozen fixes right in front of you, what is wrong with those fixes? The easiest one is also the best one for flavor: generic it up for D&D so it can be used in games other than "This is a setting with real world religions." -- [[User:Eiji-kun|Eiji-kun]] ([[User talk:Eiji-kun|talk]]) 18:08, 28 February 2019 (MST)
::Oh I agree, most Christians know more about the Legend of the Fall from Paradise Lost, than books from the bible.
::Name one other religion that uses the term Bishop or Deacon as a name for their priests (and other denominations of Christians do not count).
::Thus far, only one person has mentioned mechanical or balance issues with the page (and he has been very helpful with the page). However, nobody else has mentioned specifics beyond: “The name Satanist hurts my feelings.” I have always been welcome to changing class features and mechanics. But if a website states it will not allow any religion, but have so many Christian specific articles it is being disingenuous.
::If you are sincere that all class features are just titles. Satan is a title. It is not even a name in the original Hebrew Bible, it is just a title (literally the accuser, like a job). Thus, such an argument (a class name is just a name and title) is used to justify the above classes already -- the same argument is being used here to justify satanists. The rule could be changed to remove all religious inspired articles, but this would have to include all the above classes for they have no different justification that the satanist. --Franken Kesey 18:19, 28 February 2019 (MST)
:::The Bishop or Deacon point isn't relevant. My point is entirely that it's a generic term like Band-Aid. It can have religious origins, that's fine. It's just people understand when you say "Bishop" you mean "a religious dude, maybe in a funny hat" and not always specifically a certain religion. But since it was brought up and you insist, have some [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caodaism Caodaism] for your trouble.
:::We're not Christians. I'm certainly not. I care about references to the real world. It's an easy fix, make your work operation with fiction, either a specific fiction like Forgotten Realms or Dark Sun or your own homebrew, or a generic one. One of your solutions is mentioning that Satan is in fact a title which can be applied to any demon and, boom, instantly it now works with Asmodeus, with Demogorgon, with Cthulhu, with Wibblewobble the Lord of Badwrong in the setting of Derpitydoo... because right now this is, specifically, "Satan as understood by Christianity in real life" and that don't fly.
:::I'll... get to the mechanics eventually. I haven't bothered with it because this is more pressing and to be honest I wasn't impressed. tl;dr "You're running into the Ninja problem, where you are trying to make a ninja class but you are trying to be all versions of all ninjas at once and it's clunky because you have murderous peasants standing next to orange wizards using burrshittu no jitsu." (Add on: Also behinds the mechanics the fluff is so.... tryhard. There are like 4-5 pictures. You have Hail Satan in bold and super large text. You keep talking about wearing all black and being all m'lady tips fedora europhia. If I didn't know better, I'd say you'd be making fun of them. You're Poeing yourself and you don't even know it.)
:::Just redirect the class fluff from "this is real stuff that is totally accurate and real" to "this applies to fiction". It's eaaaasy. In the words of our great Sith lord Palpatine: '''Do it.''' -- [[User:Eiji-kun|Eiji-kun]] ([[User talk:Eiji-kun|talk]]) 18:34, 28 February 2019 (MST)
::::All you want is a disclaimer. Too easy. Added to page. Obviously the class is fictional. I thought you wanted me to change the name. I am shocked that people would think it literal. But you have a point there are plenty of religious fundamentalists. Franken Kesey 19:53, 28 February 2019 (MST)
:::::I'd also make an argument for a different name, but yes, ultimately I want to make sure it's well divorced from its source material. I suppose with that done... well, I'll move it to the actual article page, but as I stated before I have issues with the article itself beyond the name. Still, one down! -- [[User:Eiji-kun|Eiji-kun]] ([[User talk:Eiji-kun|talk]]) 20:46, 28 February 2019 (MST)
== Revision of Rating Blocking Policy ==
As seen in the [[Talk:Wildknife (3.5e Class)|Wildknife Talk]], I think that the rather generous policy is being pushed to it limit. There is barely a few thousand characters changes TOTAL between the first iteration of the wildknife and the last, and ratings were blocked three or four times, sometime blocked in the same day they were done. The class isn't even being hatebombed and several ratings were still correct when blocked.
This is a tiring experience, the Wildknife received more attention than any other base class in this site history while getting at most moderately ambitious revisions, which were mostly just class features addition. This isn't just the wildknife, the feat hothead also had very similar treatment. What kesey is doing is not against the rule, and we as a community value the rules... well at least I do.
I want to start a discussion on reevaluating our current position on blocking rating. Making it more restrictive or also apply to positive ratings? Any input from anyone? --[[User:Leziad|Leziad]] ([[User talk:Leziad|talk]]) 12:34, 6 June 2019 (MDT)
: The biggest issues about rating blocks are surrounding: what constitutes 'significant' changes?; the author gets to cherry-pick which ratings that they block?; and the former rater's ability to discern what has been changed. The first two are issues that have been brought up, but the latter issue is something that I feel is something that's pretty dang important. The history of an article is a useful tool to figuring out what exactly has changed, but if you've rated an article and now have been told that it has gone through "significant changes" - the onus is now easily just on you to go and find out what has changed and if that change is relevant or even significant enough to nullify your rating.
: Should we be expecting some kind of patch note like include on the Talk Page for these significant changes - after all, a significant change would indicate that a lot has changed and it is now up to the Former Reviewer to be able to take stock of what once was and what is now. That seems like putting a lot on the person - if we decided to actually note that a significant change is not just a few minor tweaks here and there. --[[User:TK-Squared|TK-Squared]] ([[User talk:TK-Squared|talk]]) 13:05, 6 June 2019 (MDT)
::A good definition of what is significant and insignificant would help. Currently it is pretty vague.
::If a rater names an issue specifically within the article, and that issue changes the rating is no longer relevant. I support specificity in articles. Metrics and math are always good. However, these are the most easy to change. And thus a common reason a rating gets blocked. Thus general broad ratings, while inferior, are more likely to remain relevant. But the rating style is the choice of the rater.
::Thus ratings based on theme or flavor are more resilient, but can be insufficient; while those on mechanics are less resilient (because mechanics change easily) but are more sufficient.--Franken Kesey 13:20, 6 June 2019 (MDT)
:::I support a change to this policy as it is confusing to the person who was blocked to try and figure out what changed. Not to mention I have seen numerous occasions where the person putting the rating says something broad or thematic and just because the user has made "changes" on the page, they'll block a rating and claim substantially different article, when in reality, the broad thematic problem wasn't really solved at all. I also agree that this starts with defining what substantial change means, however I dont think that it should be measured in characters, because I could write an article that is 15,000 characters long, get bad reviews, and then scrap most of what I had and write completely new abilities and completely new mechanics and could end up at 15,001 characters. So while on the surface the article is the same length, it true is substantially different. So I dont think we should take character length into account.
:::I think a bigger thing is you shouldn't be able to block a rating '''at all''' unless you have addressed '''all''' of the issues. Because if you still have valid points in your rating that are not addressed, then most of your rating still stands. I think that the author should have to reach out to other users and request a rerate if '''all''' of the issues are not addressed. So if I list 5 things wrong with an article, and someone vastly fixes 3 of the issues, but 2 are still there, they should not be able to block my rating, they should have to reach out to me on my talk page and tell me they've made changes and would like me to have another look, but if they fix '''all''' 5 issues, '''then''' they could block my rating for being substantially different.
:::Maybe even have it where if the author has changed 3/5 items in a rating and let the user know in their talk page, after a few weeks, if the user hasn't replied to a request for a rerate, then the author can request permission of an admin to block a rating where 3/5 things was fixed and the user wouldn't respond. Something along those lines possibly. [[User:The-Marksman|The-Marksman]] ([[User talk:The-Marksman|talk]]) 14:05, 6 June 2019 (MDT)
