Category talk:Root

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Not sure whether Root truly is the place to start this discussion but the category tree has been bothering me for a while now. For starters, ArenaNet's category is a sub-category of Guild Wars 2. This is a logic's mistake. Guild Wars 2 (and the Guild Wars 2 Wiki) are owned by ArenaNet, ergo, ArenaNet should be the top category of the tree. That said, where will its sub-categories end up? We have 3 sub-categories within the ArenaNet category: Images, Employees and Former employees.

ArenaNet images has 8 sub-categories, most of them entirely dedicated to any form of artwork appointed to Guild Wars 2. Except one: Guild Wars 1 Images. The golden rule stated on the main page strongly suggest that anything that is part of Guild Wars 1, should go on GWW. Therefore this category is redundantly stand-alone, and especially faulty placed in the top category "Guild Wars 2".

Of equal mistake is the subcategory Staff Pictures. Admittedly, ArenaNet has a team working on Guild Wars 2 and the Wiki has photos of said team members and they are therefore part of Guild Wars 2. However, ArenaNet's team is not part of the actual game, they stand above it. That said, I will come back to what to do with this category momentarily, because:

ArenaNet's employees and former employees also stand and stood above the actual game. Guild Wars 2 is their project and therefore, a sub-category to their company. As stated above, ArenaNet should be the top category, and should have the following sub-categories: ArenaNet employees (which should hold the sub-category Former employees), Guild Wars 2, Guild Wars 2 Wiki and Root.

Within the ArenaNet employees, all current sub-categories should remain with an alteration to Voice actors (becoming ArenaNet voice actors), the new sub-category Former ArenaNet employees and last but not least the addition of ArenaNet Staff pictures (coming all the way from ArenaNet content > ArenaNet images). 6

Also, on a related note, NCSoft stands above ArenaNet, making that the top-top category. As far as I am aware, NCSoft's employees are not all directly tied to Guild Wars 2, making their employee category trivial and not required.

So far, the suggestion looks roughly like this:

  • NCSoft
    • ArenaNet
      • ArenaNet employees
        • ArenaNet artists
        • ArenaNet community co-ordinators
        • ArenaNet designers
        • ArenaNet programmers
        • ArenaNet voice actors
        • ArenaNet staff pictures
        • ArenaNet employee stubs
        • Former ArenaNet employees
      • Guild Wars 2
      • Guild Wars 2 Wiki

As you can see, it dishes out all ArenaNet content and places it next to Guild Wars 2 and GW2W. This makes sure all sub-categories related to ArenaNet are not lost in the sea of sub-categories in Guild Wars 2. This also opens a new perspective on the actual Guild Wars 2 category, namely the containing of all sub-categories directly found in and on the game. Whereas finally, all non-ArenaNet staff, non-game related categories and its content - as long as they are in fact applicable - end up in the Guild Wars 2 Wiki subcategory. This allows a full overview of ArenaNet's project, divided into 3 clear sub-categories.

Post-ArenaNet-category re-organization[edit]

Now that is all clear and explained, we need to focus on the debris I haven't yet taken care of. Severely ripping apart the ArenaNet category where it is located at this point in time, I've left uncategorized the following categories: Screenshots, Guild Wars 1 images (more on this one later), ArenaNet concept art (Eras will have my head for that if I don't act quick from here on out ;P), ArenaNet icons, Animations, ArenaNet custom images and ArenaNet renders. Having explored these categories I can conclude the following: Not only are there a lot of duplicate sub-categories in the overall category, mostly should deserve a better place. Because all sub-categories in there are related to either Screenshots, Concept Art, Icon Art or Animations. And again, most of them are duplicates.

What I suggest is the following; We create a top category solely for conceptual-related documentation (Guild Wars 2 Conceptual) next to the top categories I have mentioned before. Because concept art and demos are all just the concept of what the game should be like finalized, it is not a part of the Guild Wars 2 category and further not applicable else-where, hence the new category.

We then need to sort the current contents of the freshly moved categories as some files in them are applicable to the game directly already or applicable in another fashion. It is mildly dependent on what new top category we should use as to what files need a re-categorization process, but we need to decide on that if there is consensus on this project of course.

So far, the proposed tree looks roughly like this:

  • NCSoft
    • ArenaNet
      • ArenaNet employees
      • Guild Wars 2 Conceptual
        • Concept art
        • Renders
        • Demo content
      • Guild Wars 2
      • Guild Wars 2 Wiki

The concept art category is a direct move from the current ArenaNet concept art category. The same can be said for the renders, with the category we currently have of the same name and the demo content is a new addition, where ALL demo-related, non-concept art and non-render art should go that has originated from a or multiple demos pre-release. This fully encompasses the released documentation for the non-finalized, pre-release (but likely NOT Alpha- and Beta-stage related, if both/either are/is allowed documentation by ArenaNet on the Guild Wars 2 Wiki. We now have dished out all content that is not directly-applicable to the actual game from day one onwards or not Wiki-related overall. We now have a top category dedicated to the actual game and a category dedicated to the actual wiki.

Post-top-category re-organization[edit]

After all that is taken care off, we can finally focus on documenting the game without searching as to where specific files and articles should be categorized into. We have rid the Guild Wars 2 category of content and categories that are in fact not part of the actual game, but more so its creation and pre-release days. The biggest re-organization begins here.

There are a few categories in the Guild Wars 2 category that make me cringe at this point. From the remaining ones (as in not covered above), they are News and Trade and fan shows. News has 3 pages in it. One of them is ArenaNet Blog Posts. Not all Blog Posts are directly of effect to the actual game, some are conceptual and some are posted to keep us updated on what the team is doing whilst working. However, it is not fairly hard to split News up and putting certain types of blogs in the proper categories (we now have a category for ArenaNet, another one for Conceptual documentation and one for the actual game, after all). We simply have a News category in all the respective top categories. And in those, we have articles with Blog posts sorted based on subject of effect. If they have multiple bits of information, we can post them on both or all Blog pages.

This would mean multiple Blog Posts pages: ArenaNet Team Related Blog Posts, Guild Wars 2 Conceptual Related Blog Posts and Guild Wars 2 Related Blog Posts. Note that the team-related posts are about how the team is doing and their perspective on their project(s). The conceptual-related posts are about every feature they are planning on for not only the actual release, but also after the release. And of course, blog posts about the actual game, such as updates, implemented new features, etc.

In other words, recreate and move about the different posts in the articles which can be found in the News category and re-collect them into new, topic-/content-biased articles in the new News categories in the different top categories (who knows, maybe even blog posts about the wiki itself in time!).

As for the Trade and fan shows, believe they are better off in the Conceptual top category. They are not part of the game, they are promotion of the game, much like Concept art and demos are. Similarly, you tend to find a lot of conceptual information at these shows.

As per visualization, this is the current tree I had in mind:

  • NCSoft
    • ArenaNet
      • Guild Wars 2 ArenaNet
        • ArenaNet news
        • ArenaNet artists
        • ArenaNet community co-ordinators
        • ArenaNet designers
        • ArenaNet programmers
        • ArenaNet voice actors
        • ArenaNet staff pictures
        • ArenaNet employee stubs
        • Former ArenaNet employees
      • Guild Wars 2 Conceptual
        • Conceptual news
        • Conceptual art
        • Conceptual renders
        • Demo content
      • Guild Wars 2
        • Guild Wars 2 news
        • Activities
        • Alcohol
        • Bestiary
        • Community hosted events
        • Dye
        • Extended Experience
        • Game mechanics
        • Glossary
        • Items
        • Locations
        • Lore
        • Maps
        • Merchandise
        • NPCs
        • Noncurrent content
        • Official videos
        • Player versus player
        • User interface
          • Icons
          • Renders
        • Weapons
      • Guild Wars 2 Wiki
        • Guides
        • Humor
        • Images
        • Maintenance
        • Practices and processes
        • Projects
        • Redirects
        • Templates
        • Users
        • Wiki operations
  • Root

Please note the two sub-categories I have added in, that is where icons and renders should go (granted, as long s they have been used in the actual game).

The goal is both to simplify and organize the Wiki. If categories become even more topic-related, it makes articles and files easier to properly categorize. I know it sounds and very likely will be a huge project, but if it helps us sort out the wiki structure prior to the next information stream, we can easily deal with any further documentations.

I think that is all to introduce this plan.

Constructive criticism VERY much appreciated as I have never, on any Wiki, proposed a full category tree re-organization. I do believe starting this project, or a similar project is a good cause to documentation-oriented purposes on the wiki. Thank you for your time, responses please at the bottom until we have a form of consensus, where-after a re-write can be done on an official project page. :)

Infinite - talk 18:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

"The golden rule stated on the main page strongly suggest that anything that is part of Guild Wars 1, should go on GWW." - Not necessarily. GW1 images are mostly used in userspaces, and those that aren't are, more or less, "placeholder" images - such as the images on the god pages - and the later would be removed once re gain a replacement. Regarding the NCsoft category - I find that to be redundant. What will be in it? We have no NCsoft-related articles as far as I'm aware of, so all it would be would be a replacement of Category:Root. -- Konig/talk 19:22, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
NCSoft as a top-level category would only make sense if we were an NCSoft wiki (or a general MMO wiki, or Wikipedia). Similarly for ArenaNet: we're not an ArenaNet wiki, we're a Guild Wars 2 wiki. We only care about ArenaNet as far as they relate to Guild Wars 2. It may help to think about the ArenaNet category as a "Guild Wars 2 Developers" category, except it makes no sense to call it that when we know their name is ArenaNet. - Tanetris 19:55, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
@Konig: Well, there's the actual page NCsoft and we have Patrick Wyatt. We could also see if these pages could fit elsewhere, and remove the NCsoft category from the project entirely. :) I agree on the "placeholder" issue, but maybe the GW1 images could go into the Wiki category, due to it being unrelated to the documentation of GW2, and as you said, mainly used on user space.
@Tanetris: As per my comment at Konig, the NCsoft category can go if desired, but I reasoned a top category ArenaNet as per display that whatever we document, it's owned by ArenaNet and therefore should go in their category. In the very least we should split developer-related and game-related content, I believe. Given what we already documented there is currently no split and yet we documented blogs and other items that were almost for 0% dedicated to the actual game. That's my 2 cents, anyway. :) - Infinite - talk 20:04, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm only really concerned about the image categories. It bothers me a bit that the ArenaNet images would be spread among different main categories, instead of being grouped together nicely as they are today (but if people accept this idea as a whole, I wouldn't really insist on this). Some things I would like to change:
  1. Lower case for almost everything ("Guild Wars 2 conceptual" instead of "Guild Wars 2 Conceptual").
  2. Trade and fan shows would be a bit weird at the Conceptual category; once the game is released, I expect we will have less concept material released in those. IMO they would belong together with the Merchandise category, which means at the Guild Wars 2 category (we are only documenting the GW2 aspect of those events anyway).
  3. I think the Guild Wars 2 subcategories could use a bit of fine tunning (Alcohol and Weapons would likely be a subcategory of Items?), although that's the kind of thing we will likely learn as we go.
  4. Having two Renders category feels a bit redundant to me. Instead of having a Render category within the user interface category, I think it would be better to keep only the Conceptual renders category; renders are usually not a part of the user interface, not more than any screenshot is.
  5. I like the idea of having all pre release images in a single place, but I would suggest removing the "Demo content" category (everything left for it would be screenshots) and adding a "Conceptual screenshots", as a direct move of the current screenshot category, keeping everything from before release (including stuff that was not found at the demo, such as the trailer screenshots and etc).
  6. There are a few things I don't know where would be. For example, where would the Guild Wars 2 trailers be? Within a subcategory within the Conceptual category? In the main Conceptual category? Or somewhere else?
It's an interesting idea, and I applaud Infinite for trying to organize our entire category tree (I have been trying to organize only the images and it's giving me a headache, I wonder how bad it would be if I were trying to organize everything). Erasculio 21:19, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
I mainly wanted to leave the actual orginization for the Guild Wars 2 category to a later stage, when we find a working model. I see how Trade and fan shows could work better in the Merchandise category now. It was one of those categories I wanted some insight on, but didn't exactly expect it this soon remarked. Sounds good to me, though. :) As for the double renders, that is silly of me and likely we'd have two types of renders in the end (the current ones and actual renders of in-game objects. That, though, was the origin of the idea and I guess I didn't think about the split. (It's not important enough to split, now that I think of it.) Also, the conceptual category was indeed proposed due to it making your job easier and more collected (albeit I do not know if it is actually confusing at this point. Headache sounds it, though. Don't push yourself too much to counter that one. ;P The trailers are currently in a sub-sub-sub-sub category to Official Videos, I believe. I didn't move that here (as of yet). Obviously this can be put up for discussion, if there is a better place to put them. :)
Also, may I thank you all again for your time, it certainly is a lot of text to go through! Looking forward to more responses. :) - Infinite - talk 21:46, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Right, putting the C&C into theory-crafting practise, this is the current state of the category tree:

  • ArenaNet
    • Guild Wars 2 ArenaNet
      • ArenaNet news
      • ArenaNet artists
      • ArenaNet community co-ordinators
      • ArenaNet designers
      • ArenaNet programmers
      • ArenaNet voice actors
      • ArenaNet staff pictures
      • ArenaNet employee stubs
      • Former ArenaNet employees
    • Guild Wars 2 conceptual
      • Conceptual news
      • Conceptual art
      • Conceptual renders
      • Demo content
    • Guild Wars 2
      • Guild Wars 2 news
      • Community hosted events
      • Extended experience
      • Merchandise
      • Official videos
      • Bestiary
      • Game mechanics
        • Activities
        • Dye (Better to categorize just the article under Game mechanics only and get rid of the category, though.)
        • Events
      • Glossary
      • Items
        • Alcohol
        • Weapons
      • Locations
        • Maps
      • Lore
      • NPCs
      • Player versus player
      • User interface
        • Icons
        • Renders
      • Noncurrent content
    • Guild Wars 2 Wiki
      • Guides
      • Humor
      • Images
        • Guild Wars 1 images
      • Maintenance
      • Practices and processes
      • Projects
      • Redirects
      • Templates
      • Users
      • Wiki operations
  • Root

Whilst I agree we are not an ArenaNet wiki, we are their wiki, to document their game. So whilst I agree with not having the top-top category NCsoft, I disagree with not having ArenaNet as the top-top category.

Note how I put Guild Wars 1 images in the Wiki top category. They are not going to affect any article in the Guild Wars 2 category, ergo, they should remain in the Wiki-only category (as I can't think of any other use for GW1 images other than user space, to be honest).

..Conceptual is now lower case, so is ..Experience, as seen above. This abides standard category formatting.

Double render stays, though the second one might need a name change. Based on these conceptual renders (which actually need sorting out themselves, too), there is concept art rendered and it is pre-release material. Ergo it is conceptual and should end up in a category dedicated to that. As for the cut-outs (like the cut-outs on GWW), those should go into the render category for Guild Wars 2 and only if they are post-release cut-outs. I named it renders because cut outs struck me as an odd looking name. Other names welcomed.

Tried a shot at the actual GW2 category... What a bitch. I'm not sure if the order (which is triple alphabetic) is over-doing it, but currently reasoned as: first part is overview of the game and its extras, second part is actual game categories and last part (noncurrent) is the past.

I don't know if this is more desired, so again, more insight would be nice. :) - Infinite - talk 13:57, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Top category should be Root (otherwise that is pretty redundant). Below that, I would place GW2, ANet, GW2W (and every other category that does not fit into one of the first three). Why not GW2 in ANet? Because the game is much more important for us than anything else ANet related. It should not be bumped down into a subcategory. --Xeeron 16:55, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
A* top category should be root, as it is right now. Unless we organize it like on GWW and have multiple root categories, but I don't have the knowledge as to how that works (again, my first full tree re-organization). But I really like how you imagine Root > GW2/ArenaNet/GW2W as foundation, I can't believe it wasn't part of my initial tree ideal. Nice. :) - Infinite - talk 17:15, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I would like to start this re-organization after Erasculio's Concept Art project is done. Is there a chance we can bot this re-organization too (because a lot of changes must be made in a little timeframe, to keep inconvenience to a minimum)? - Infinite - talk 00:00, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, for now we may continue to discuss the category trees : ) I'm curious to see how your tree would look under a "Root -> ArenaNet/GW2/GW2W" foundation, as mentioned above. Erasculio 00:13, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
I assume Xeeron imagined it much like this:
  • Root
    • Guild Wars 2 ArenaNet
      • ArenaNet news
      • ArenaNet artists
      • ArenaNet community co-ordinators
      • ArenaNet designers
      • ArenaNet programmers
      • ArenaNet voice actors
      • ArenaNet staff pictures
      • ArenaNet employee stubs
      • Former ArenaNet employees
    • ((Guild Wars 2 conceptual
      • Conceptual news
      • Conceptual art
      • Conceptual renders
      • Demo content))
    • Guild Wars 2
      • Guild Wars 2 news
      • Community hosted events
      • Extended experience
      • Merchandise
      • Official videos
      • Bestiary
      • Game mechanics
        • Activities
        • Dye (Better to categorize just the article under Game mechanics only and get rid of the category, though.)
        • Events
      • Glossary
      • Items
        • Alcohol
        • Weapons
      • Locations
        • Maps
      • Lore
      • NPCs
      • Player versus player
      • User interface
        • Icons
        • Renders
      • Noncurrent content
    • Guild Wars 2 Wiki
      • Guides
      • Humor
      • Images
        • Guild Wars 1 images
      • Maintenance
      • Practices and processes
      • Projects
      • Redirects
      • Templates
      • Users
      • Wiki operations
Though I have no idea what happened to the Conceptual/pre-release categories I proposed. :P - Infinite - talk 02:02, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
I approve of the (one comment up) organization tree. Aquadrizzt (talk)(contribs) 02:40, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure the "conceptual" categories really need to exist as distinct entity to themselves. To the degree that pre-release information and images are about the game, they should be under Guild Wars 2 somewhere, and to the degree they're not, perhaps they'd be appropriate under ArenaNet?
I don't agree with GW1 images going under Guild Wars 2 Wiki, as they're even less related to the actual wiki than they are to GW2... Maybe under ArenaNet? I'll also note it's not impossible a GW1 image could be used in mainspace. Ventari comes to mind as an example (clearly important to GW2 (arguably more than GW1) yet not physically appearing in it (probably)). - Tanetris 04:08, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Since we are going to have a single ArenaNet category (the organization near the top of this page had two), maybe we could change "Guild Wars 2 ArenaNet" to "ArenaNet"? I have been wondering about changing the word "conceptual" to "concepts"; no idea if it's because I have been swimming in concept art these last days, but the latter word sounds a bit more natural than the first. Erasculio 13:34, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Alrighty then, let's see:
  • Root
    • ArenaNet
      • ArenaNet news
      • ArenaNet artists
      • ArenaNet community co-ordinators
      • ArenaNet designers
      • ArenaNet programmers
      • ArenaNet voice actors
      • ArenaNet staff pictures
      • ArenaNet employee stubs
      • Former ArenaNet employees
      • Guild Wars 1 images
    • Guild Wars 2
      • Guild Wars 2 news
      • Concepts
        • Concept news
        • Concept art
        • Concept renders
        • Demo content
      • Community hosted events
      • Extended experience
      • Merchandise
      • Official videos
      • Bestiary
      • Game mechanics
        • Activities
        • Dye (Better to categorize just the article under Game mechanics only and get rid of the category, though.)
        • Events
      • Glossary
      • Items
        • Alcohol
        • Weapons
      • Locations
        • Maps
      • Lore
      • NPCs
      • Player versus player
      • User interface
        • Icons
        • Renders
      • Noncurrent content
    • Guild Wars 2 Wiki
      • Guides
      • Humor
      • Images
      • Maintenance
      • Practices and processes
      • Projects
      • Redirects
      • Templates
      • Users
      • Wiki operations
I believe we are getting there now.. Also, is the dye article proposal a good idea or do we reckon the category is still required? (As per dye article, we unlock now, rather than buy/loot them.) :) - Infinite - talk 14:10, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Looks good to me : ) I agree with your idea of removing the dye category; I doubt we are going to need an article for each color. I have a few doubts left, though: where would the categories "Professions", "Skills", "Skill animations" and "Screenshots" go? Erasculio 14:20, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Professions are hiding in a sub-sub-sub-sub category to Game Mechanics (right now), Skills and their animations are split currently, Skills are in Game Mechanics and Animations are in ArenaNet images (hence I propose this full-tree re-organization ;P). Screenshots are currently residing in ArenaNet Images as well. I'd propose to move Professions, Skills and Skill Animations all to the Game mechanics category, whereas screenshots can be added as a seperate category, or sub-category to whereever they should go (maybe bump down User Interface into a Visualization category and add Screenshots there). Again, a better name might be desireable... :) - Infinite - talk 14:34, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
I haven't read or seen anything else here, but it should be "Guild Wars 2 Wiki", not "Guild Wars 2 wiki". pling User Pling sig.png 18:50, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
That's what it was initially... I can't remember altering it myself. Odd. - Infinite - talk 19:43, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
EDIT: All Guild Wars 2 wiki is back to Guild Wars 2 Wiki. - Infinite - talk 21:05, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Guild Wars 2 Wiki[edit]

As a spin off from the above discussion, I would like to discuss the reorganization of the Guild Wars 2 Wiki category. I would like to discuss it here, and not at the category itself, so we keep this entire discussion in a single place. Here's the category tree:

Now, the above is a very big mess. I would like to reorganize the subcategories, but in order to do so I would have to make some significant changes to the wiki, so I would like to hear some other opinions. Going section by section:

Guides[edit]

Currently this has a single guide, the sysop guide. Now, having a subcategory with pages focused on helping people is a good idea, but the name "Guides" is more often linked to game guides, not wiki guides. I'm rather sure we will have some sort of guides category for Guild Wars 2, so I would like to rename this category something else.
Meanwhile, everything in the Help namespace here is not categorized. I would like to add all help pages to the Help namespace (including the FAQ, the Helpers page and the sysop guide), add a Help category with all pages in the Help namespace, and replace the Guides category here with the Help category.

Humor[edit]

Frankly, I think this category should be removed, and its content be kept simply as part of the userspace (since half of the two articles here is already in the userspace anyway). I'm guessing other people would rather keep this here, though, so it could stay.

Maintenance[edit]

The category tree here is a mess, as seen by how we have repeated subcategories all over the place. This category has two main kinds of articles: things which are waiting to be changed (candidates for deletion, articles to be split, pages to be merged, the rewritten subcategory, and so on) and things which are part of the wiki structure (protected pages, archives, hidden categories, etc), although a few articles that could be part of this latter kind are actually within other subcategories. The category tree here also keeps alternating between “article” and “page” without much logic. I suggest, then, the following category tree:

  • Archives
  • Disambiguation articles
  • Hidden categories
  • Not orphaned images
  • Orphaned talk pages
  • Protected pages
  • Articles to be modified
    • Articles possibly not relevant to GW2
    • Articles to be merged
    • Articles to be moved
    • Articles to be rewritten
    • Articles to be split
    • Articles with disputed content
    • Articles with missing citations
    • Candidates for deletion
      • Candidates for speedy deletion
      • Suspected copyright violations
    • Stubs

Practices and processes[edit]

I would like to keep the main Practices and processes category as it is. However, about the Suspended policy proposals subcategory... I would actually like to remove this category from here, and keep it in a loop (add the category to itself), thus keeping that part of the wiki self contained; another option would be adding it to the maintenance category instead. The idea is to make clear to people that those are archives, not current policies – I'm worried that keeping them together with the “real” system we have, of practices and procesesses, is going to lead people to the wrong assumption that there is still a policy system here.

Projects[edit]

This one I would keep as it is.

Redirects[edit]

Do we really need so many subcategories of redirects? I can't help but feel that this system is only adding unnecessary complexity by creating redundant and minor subcategories which don't really help the wiki. Each kind of redirect has its own template, so the more kinds of redirects we have, the more templates users have to know in order to properly tag the redirects themselves (not to mention knowing the difference between all those subtypes of redirects). Examining one by one:

  • Abbreviation redirects: used for anything that shortens the title of an article. Currently, we have here “Ele” (shortening Elementalist), “Elite” (shortening “Elite skill”), and “SB” (shortening “Shinning Blade” - which by itself doesn't make sense, but anyway). As seen below, this category makes many of the next ones redundant.
  • Capitalization redirects: for expressions that users may capitalize in different ways.
  • Common misspelling redirects: this subcategory is different from the others as it's the only one in which we keep mistakes, so the content here is clearly set apart.
  • Common name redirects: the only article currently here is “Dynamic event”, which is shortening of Dynamic events system. The example the subcategory gives is “FoW armor”, which is shortening for Fissure of Woe armor. In other words, it's the same thing as the abbreviation subcategory.
  • Disambiguation articles: this one is needed, as content here is very different from content in the other subcategories.
  • General term redirects: this title doesn't mean anything. The only article here is “Trainer”, which is a shortening (see a pattern here?) of Skill trainer. The example is “GW2W:REDIRECT”, which is a shortening of Guild Wars 2 Wiki: Redirects formatting.
  • Grammatical derivation redirects: this one also doesn't make much sense. It has one redirect, “Persistent”, redirecting to Persistence. I wonder how many redirects of this specific kind are we going to have in the future.
  • Omitted punctuation redirects: the content here is either shortening or a variant spelling of other article titles.
  • Plural redirects: variant spellings again.
  • Short name redirects: as the name of this subcategory implies, it's just shortening of article titles, just as seen on many subcategories above.
  • Shortcut redirects: again, shortening of article titles.
  • Variant spelling redirects: the text in this subcategory states, "This is mainly to address the slight differences between British and American English". IMO, such a specific goal does not need a redirect subcategory and a redirect template dedicated only to itself.

I would therefore suggest an overhaul in the redirects category:

  • Abbreviation redirects (merging Abbreviation redirects, Common name redirects, General Terms redirects, Short name redirects and Shortcut redirects). I'm not sure "abbreviation" is the best name for this (shorterning redirects?), but the idea is to gather all the redirects which consist of shortening of article titles.
  • Common misspelling redirects (as it is today).
  • Variant spelling redirects (merging Capitalization redirects, Grammatical derivation redirects, Omitted punctuation redirects, Plural redirects and Variant spelling redirects). Again, I'm not sure "variant spelling" is the best name for this, but this category would gather all redirects based on (correct) variations of an article's title.

Disambiguation articles, which are not redirects, would be moved to the Maintenance category.

Wiki operations[edit]

Orphaned talk pages should be moved to the Maintenance subcategory. The Wiki projects subcategory is redundant with the Projects category, and so should be deleted. The other subcategories, wiki essays and wiki proposals, don't really make sense - no one is going to find those (old) discussions hidden in this part of the category tree, and they are outdated now anyway. I would rather move the articles in those subcategories to the userspace (almost all of them are there anyway; there's only a single exception, which could go to Tanaric's userspace since he was its author) and remove the subcategories themselves.

New category tree[edit]

Excluding the Images category (which will be reworked due to Infinite's proposal above, so I would rather wait until he's done before trying to change it) and the Templates category (which will need to be reworked for last, since the templates will be changed due to the changes myself and Infinite have proposed), my proposed category tree for this part of the wiki is:

Thoughts? Erasculio 12:57, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps push Humor down into the User category, as it's too trivial to have it's own top category within Wiki. It's the Users who come up with said Humor anyway. :) - Infinite - talk 20:11, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Two things I had left behind were the Templates and Images categories, since I was waiting for Infinite's proposal regarding the main GW2 category. Now that his proposal has been presented and apparently accepted, I tried to give the two last categories a shot. Both are extremely confusing; the Templates category is a big mess, with some templates in multiple sections, and subcategories that are not really easy to understand (a maintenance category and an organizational category and an utility category?).
I would like to suggest some changes to the Images category:

  • Rename it from "Images" to "Wiki images" (so people realize it's not game images, just wiki images)
  • Rename the "Icons" category to "Wiki icons" ("Icons" will be a subcategory in the GW2 section)
  • Rename the "Organization images" to "Organization icons" and move it to the "Wiki icons" category.
  • Delete the "Profession icons" subcategory and move its entire content to the userspace - those are the GW1 icons, I think it's misleading to present them here as icons for professions.
  • Delete the "Tango icons" subcategory since it's filled with GW1 profession icons, and do as above (move the images to userspace).
  • Delete the "Logos" category - whatever in there that doesn't belong to the "ArenaNet logos" category belongs to the "Wiki icons" category.
  • Delete the "Special images" category and move their content to the main "Wiki images" category, since that's what those images are anyway.
  • Delete the "Signatures" subcategory in the "User images" category, and move the content from the former to the latter. It's barely used anyway, and it's one less thing for users to keep in mind when uploading images.
  • Switch around the "Flag images" and "Flag templates" categories: currently, the latter is within the former. Since those flag images were uploaded for the templates, I would like to keep "Flag images" within the "Flag templates" category.
  • Move "Not orphaned images" to the "Maintenance" category (as mentioned above).

The "final" category tree for the Images category would be:

  • Wiki images
    • User images
    • Wiki icons
      • Button icons
      • Copyright icons
      • Organization icons

I'm not sure what to do with the "Images by license" category, though. We have moved all the ArenaNet images to either the GW2 category or the ArenaNet category, so I don't think we need an "ArenaNet images" category. What do you people think? Should we just keep a "Wiki images by license" subcategory with a "Public domain images" and a "GFDL images" subcategories? Erasculio 23:27, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

As per your comment, all "ArenaNet images" should end up sorted in proper categories, so I don't particulary see the purpose for that category either (like Tane told me a few months back, it's liek sorting the entire wiki in an "ArenaNet" top category. License is important, though, so I think the "Wiki images by license" category is a good idea. - Infinite - talk 10:45, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
And the last part, Category:Templates. That one is a very big mess, but this time I'll keep it brief. I suggest the following scheme:
  • Templates
    • Formatting templates
      • Infobox templates (NPC infobox, skills infobox, and so on)
      • Color templates (once we settle on a color scheme)
    • Image templates
      • Flag templates
        • Flag images
      • Icon templates
    • License templates
    • Maintenance templates (borrowing the name from the main GW2 Wiki category)
      • Archival templates
      • Disambiguation templates
      • Modification templates (deletion templates, stub templates, rewrite templates and so on)
    • Navigation templates (exclusively for the navigation templates we all love so much)
    • User templates (for the records, everything Mew did would be moved here)
      • Userbox templates
Erasculio 11:29, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Duplicate categories[edit]

Have been bothering me to the extreme. They create category loops, look messy, are duplicate. You can't specify something to them without also having things appear somewhere else. I will be reworking duplicate categories to avoid category loops and for more specification -without- losing ourselves in a maze of categories. In a few hours/days I will have solved (pre-consensus, obv) all duplicates. :) - Infinite - talk 20:02, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I think having a few duplicated categories is not a bad thing (for example, having "Ranger skills" both within "Ranger" and within "Skills by profession"). However, I definitely agree with you that the current system is a massively huge mess of entagled categories; the asura Colleges appear more or less five different times in the categories tree, which is far more than they should. Erasculio 20:35, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
See my sandbox as to what I've been doing to them so far. (It's a temporary edit today, so please refrain editing until I worked down the entire GW2 tree.) - Infinite - talk 22:06, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
I did a sketch here to show some of my ideas. I would like to change the "Game mechanics" category:
  • Remove the "Character affiliation" category. It's a very big mess, and the content there is being repeated all over the place. At the same time, I think it's a good idea to have the race specific affiliations to be part of the race categories.
  • Promote the "Professions" category to a subcategory within the "Game mechanics" category. I think the professions are too important to be hidden further down than the second category branch, so I would like to keep them more visible. Besides, I think it's nice to have them in the same category as skills and traits.
  • Move the "Playable races" category to the Bestiary. We avoid repeating the racial categories, while we still have a single place where to gather them all.
  • The organizations (including Colleges, Legions and etc) would be kept at their racial categories and at the Lore category. Each would appear only two times at the entire category tree. The multiracial organizations such as the Vigil would be kept only within the Lore category.
  • A new main category (within the "Guild Wars 2" category) would be created: "Player versus environment", keeping the PvE only part of the game (dynamic events, activities, achievements, feats, crafting). Since we already have a PvP category anyway...
Erasculio 23:17, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
My current sandbox avoids all duplicate categories in a simple, yet effective manner. I've also re-sorted aplenty. Take a look if you will. :) - Infinite - talk 00:28, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Guild Wars 2[edit]

First, I would like to stress that I'm not trying to override Infinite's suggestion above: many of my own ideas have been inspired by his work, and it is my hope that we will find a consensus uniting the best aspects of both proposals. Second, I would like to make clear what I see as the point of the category tree. IMO, the categories have two goals:

  1. To allow for the creation of useful DPL lists, when applicable.
  2. To allow common users to navigate through the wiki by moving between related pages.

The category tree of GW1W fails thunderously at both those goals. Taking a look at some articles (Aidan, with one thousand categories making it extremely confusing for a common user; the list of ritualist skills, which is filled with information that should not be there despite the use of the notcategory command in its DPL, and so on), it's not surprising to see why, and it's also not surprising to learn that almost no one uses the GW1W categories for browsing, being forced to rely on navboxes and alikes. IMO, that's a flaw of the older wiki that I believe we may avoid here, as long as we sort the categories properly and avoid overcategorization. Therefore, I think we need some guidelines when making a new category tree:

  1. No excessive complexity. Which means, we should not oversimplify the category system and thus make it useless, but at the same time we cannot make it so complex that each category has dozens of subcategories and dozens of major categories linking to it. A system in which categories are so specific that an user would not intuitively know what category to add to a given article is exactly the kind of thing we have to avoid, in order to make the categories useful for everyone.
  2. No excessive simplification. Which means, we should not overcomplicate the categories, but at the same time we can't remove useful subcategories just to keep the tree simple. In order to make the category system an useful browsing tool, an user should be able to go from a major category to all subcategories relevant to that subject, even if we have to repeat some categories a few times (stressing “few”) in order to do so.
  3. Keep browsing in mind. In theory, everything about GW2 could be within either the game mechanics category or the lore category. In practice, keeping all pieces of information within layers and layers of categories is a bad thing – it makes navigation harder and more complex, with no significant benefits. Just as we make the most important pieces of Guild Wars 2 information clearly visible at the main page, so should the most important GW2 categories be easily found as major categories in the tree, even if theoretically they could belong within the game mechanics category.
  4. No obvious mistakes. Category loops and categories being duplicated within the same section are examples of things we don't really want at the GW2 tree.

I propose, then, the following main categories for the Guild Wars 2 category:

  • Guild Wars 2 News: Self explanatory. This category would have all news regarding Guild Wars 2, be them from the GW2 website, from the log in screen or from whatever.
  • Concepts: For concept art, screenshots from before release and renders obtained from before release. Our current naming scheme for screenshots already assumed, from its implementation, that we would have different categories for screenshots from before and after release; creating the “concepts” denomination fills that necessity while allowing us to properly document the development of Guild Wars 2, something lacking at the GW1W. Concept art and renders from the developing phase of the game help to complete such goal; the concept art category would not have the current “concept art by race” subcategory as the new naming scheme for concept art images already states which race each image portrays.
  • Bestiary: This category already exists, documenting the kinds of creatures found in the GW2 world; it has been made to mostly mirror the Bestiary article, with a few differences. The main change I would like to implement is to add the Playable races category to this section – while today it already documents each race, there is a Playable races category elsewhere basically repeating the same information found here. Grouping the five races in this category allows us to have a Playable race category in a single place, avoiding unnecessary repetition and keeping the article about races together with the rest of the Bestiary. Each of the playable races subcategory is expected to have everything of relevance about its race, so someone looking for any information about humans would have a single place to look at. While this creates some repetition (the category of racial skills is repeated here and at the skill lists, the category of racial settlements is repeated here and at the Locations category), I believe it's a price worth paying, since each subcategory is being repeated only two times in the entire category tree.
  • Game mechanics: I have kept this category purposely light, by taking some of its content and moving it to other places. I propose we keep here only the subcategories Attributes, Skills, Traits and maybe Titles, if they exist for both PvE and PvP. The Skills category would be basically what we have today, and the Traits category would be our current system with a new “Traits by weapon” subcategory.
  • Glossary: Self explanatory. Instead of an “Unofficial terms” subcategory and a “Fan-named topics” subcategory, I have kept simply the former, as both are more often than not the same thing.
  • Items: This one is also rather simple. Armors, weapons, miniatures and consumables would go here. We will likely learn of more kinds of items later on, but they are probably going to fit here without too many issues.
  • Lore: this category has been reorganized to remove some redundancy (Destiny's Edge was twice within this category, for example).
  • Locations: reorganized to sort locations by two parameters: region and type. The event map we have been shown for some areas of the game allow us to make a clear tree based on regions, and the type of region (dungeon, settlement, etc) allows us to sort locations based on what their role in the game is.
  • Media: for screenshots from after release, renders captured after release, skill icons, skill animations and other media-related content. Official videos could go here, which is why I haven't named this “Images”.
  • Merchandise: self explanatory.
  • Player versus environment: since we already have a Player versus Player category, this one was a natural extension, featuring content such as “Dynamic events” and “Crafting”.
  • Player versus player: for the two known types of PvP, World versus World and the more structured type.
  • Noncurrent content: self explanatory.
  • NPCs: while the Bestiary documents the races in the game, NPCs documents creatures based on their role in the game. So Bob the human armorsmith would go into the Humans category at the Bestiary, but the Armorsmith category here; the Shatterer would go into the Dragon champions category at the Bestiary, but into the Bosses category here; and so on.
  • Professions: listing all professions, with subcategories for their skills and traits. While this category could go into the Game mechanics, considering how the professions are one of the most important aspects of GW2 I think it would make navigation easier for common users if it were part of the main category tree.

The new category tree for the Guild Wars 2 category would be:

Thoughts? Erasculio 19:15, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Bestiary: Playable races should not go there. A bestiary depicts species, whether they are playable as race is not in question when visiting a bestiary. We need to think logically about the Playable Races category. What articles would go here? Why does it need a category? The current state of the Playable Races category is to categorize the playable races and has 1 article in it (Playable races). I think we could split the Playable Race article into Game Mechanics somewhere and it'd suffice. We can also put every race into the Bestiary category seperately. (Think of it, when are we to tag an Asura that's not an NPC? The NPCs will be entered into the bestiary, ergo the "playability" of a race is never in question.) Also note we can't choose Flame Legion as Charr characters.
Items: I suggest a sub-category under Armor named "Upgrade components", which will contain the Crests, Marks and Talismans.
Locations: We'll have to expand that so it encompasses all regions and their areas in time, obviously.
Media: Lacks a proper sorting at the moment. Animations will differ based on race, there are no categories to reflect this. (Also you missed Norn.) The rest is fine.
Player versus environment: Great addition, allows better grouping of game content that is not relevant to PvP. At the same time it raises a question as to its quality, being such a small category, I would assume a lot/all PvE-only articles get tagged with this.
NPCs: As all non-players are NPCs, one could question whether Bestiary shouldn't be a sub to this. Other than that I think it looks alright for now.
Professions: I strongly disagree on moving it out of the Game Mechanics category. I see no point in moving it. Professions are a game mechanic so why should it be directly under GW2?
And for some home-made 2 cents:
Ingredients: Whereas it should have a sub-category within crafting, they are also items. Should go there as well. :)
I think that is all I noticed so far that I would like to comment on. =] - Infinite - talk 20:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure that Organisations is a tidy fit under Lore. Mainly this is because I think of lore topics as ones which purely feed the background, history and feel of the world. Many are groups you end up joining (Vigil) or fighting (Inquest) are very much part of the current game world we're going to be documenting. Lore is an part of everything in the game because most things have a story or history to them - but I don't think the Lore category should be a catch all for things we can't find another home for. My suggestion is to bring Organisations up to the same level as Bestiary, NPC and the rest.
I think you have Bestiary in the right place, Eras. NPCs is about specific individuals, Organisations is about groups of individuals, Bestiary is about types of creatures/individuals.
You guys have put a tonne of work into figuring out these categories. Nice work. :) -- aspectacle User Aspectacle.png 23:49, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I think the collective comments on Eras's tree can wrap up the reorganization, but I must note that category loops should still be avoided. For instance: Colleges are in Organizations, so there is no need to also categorize them under Asura. Asura is the Bestiary Asura, whereas the Colleges are the Organization Colleges. Yes, they belong to the Asura race, but they are not part of the bestiary (which is two (though I prefer one as explained in my previous comment) categories up from Asura). See what I mean by that? Clever categorization of articles would be nice and welcome. - Infinite - talk 20:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
I would actually like to wait a bit more; since this is quite a big change, and no one has commented on your proposal yet (you should copy it here, I'm not sure most people have seen it yet), and we're just coming out of the end of year holidays, I would rather wait and see if there is an agreement by more people before changing anything. Erasculio 23:01, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, yes, that is what I meant; propose the finalized version of the entire proposal and await comments/remarks. It should be up by the end of the day. - Infinite - talk 09:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
To avoid overflow on the page, I will link to my proposal here. The base is the tree provided by Erasculio above, the commentary is incorperated into it, the biggest change is the professions category which I bumped back into Game mechanics, to keep all category looping there within the game mechanics category. I will probably still up the organizations to the same level as Bestiary after this comment, so if it hasn't changed for you yet, it quite possibly will be later. - Infinite - talk 10:38, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
I could live with Infinite's proposal (I would prefer the one at my page, of course, but both are similar enough that I'm willing to compromise). The only change I would suggest is something which doesn't exactly have to do with the categories, rather with the skill animations project: I doubt very, very much that we will be capable of recoding all skill animations multiple times (one for each race) and keeping all of them updated after the relevant skill changes. I don't really think we have to - the original intention of the GW1W skill animation project was to record the visual effects of the skills, not necessarily the generic casting animation of the characters (which change based on casting speed anyway). I think it would be enough if we just recorded the GW2 skills with a single race (I'll leave the details to be discussed later), so we would not have the "Asura elementalist skill animations" and "Charr elementalist skill animations" and etc categories. Erasculio 13:16, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
I also prefer the recorded animations to be executed by a single race unless that option is not possible (to be racist, let's say human), though for complete documentation, it might prove useful to have all animations for different races as well. I shall propose it on the skill animations project's talk page. If it's not too much a problem we can add the various race-specific animations in time, I suppose. Note that currently, the skill animation project seems to be going by humans for non-racial skills as well. :) For now I'll remove the various categories you mentioned and revert them to the normal animations categories. - Infinite - talk 14:05, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) And here it is; the currently accepted tree for Guild Wars 2:

Guild Wars 2[edit]

If people agree with this we can complete the other two top categories and implement. Equally, if there's any additions and/or new notes we wish to add, feel free to speak up as well.

EDIT: I'm not going to lie, I'm extremely iffy about the colleges/seasons/etc being linked to the Bestiary categories, as they are also (partially) in organizations. But I can see use for that in tagging NPCs, so I'll live. - Infinite - talk 10:54, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

The only thing I would change is that you are linking to the Racial skills twice: once as a subcategory of Skills (which I agree), and once as a subcategory of "Skills by type". The latter is something I think doesn't really fit, since the racial skills themselves are also divided by type (into utility skills, healing skills and elite skills). Otherwise I agree, I think we can implement it if no one opposes. Erasculio 11:26, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Looks mostly good to me. We have to keep in mind that the game is not out yet, and plenty of people are not yet editing here, so all of this is preliminary and might be changed later on. So, while it is good to discuss this, we don't need to come up with the gold plated deluxe best-ever version of categorization. Imo, implement this now (maybe with Erasculio's change, we can always add more categories later on). --Xeeron 15:41, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Eras' changes are already edited in, my bad for not mentioning that after editing. :) - Infinite - talk 15:47, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Since this appears to be settled and the discussion has been going on for a bit more than a month, I think we can begin implementation. Considering the size of this thing, I have began a project for it at Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Projects/Category reorganization. For now it's rather empty (I just took the category tree from here and added the guardian sections), I'm waiting for more people to chime in. Erasculio 12:15, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
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