Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 5

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Models for personal pages

I'm looking for a character presentation model for my personal page and other stuff. Since I don't have the time to write it this time, i'm looking for something already made. I found numerous models shared on personal pages, yet not knowing wich one the authors where ok for use. I was wondering... I am the only one in this situation ? Would it be a good idea to make a categorie with personal page models, maybe even create collaborative personal page models, so that users would have ready to use stuff to create nice personal pages ? This could be helpfull for users, help new users to understand advanced model use, incite new users to test first time modifing templates with no risk, help sentiment of community by making users proud of them personal pages. --Dreams Factory 13:08, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Usually (as in, I have yet to see anyone be against it) anyone's fine with people using their templates - especially those who present the code on template pages like I do. Those who don't tend to have their info embedded into the code and thus you'd need to copy/paste it into a new page under your own userpage and alter it as you need. Though it is appropriately nice to give credit when you take others' templates. Konig/talk 17:24, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for information. Do you think we should create a category for userpages models so that people can share it more easily ? --Dreams Factory 22:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Probably best to discuss on the category cleanup project, since it'd be their territory. Konig/talk 23:49, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Speaking as the only currently available contributor with the category reorganization project, it would be fine, provided that it was a single category (i.e. Category:User page templates) and was kept under Category:Users. Seems like it could be useful; in fact, I already started a list, though I wound up being too lazy to update it. Aqua (T|C) 03:22, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I have found the opportunity to reply on the project's talk page and hope it leads to interesting concepts in the nearby future. - Infinite - talk 23:28, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Navigation Bars

I have been experimenting with a new navbar style that is reminiscent of the infobox style. See here for assorted details and appearances, but pay heed to the fact that you won't see anything special until you've updated your css as stated there. I'm also proposing assorted color changes (also viewable there) and a handful of minor changes to infoboxes (color wise). What are people's thoughts? Aqua (T|C) 00:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

If one has to change to your css in order to see the specialness of it, why make it a commonplace thing where people will be looking at it as an ip (thus no unique css)? Sounds rather idiotic to me (no offense intended, I get the point of making things prettier, but when something relies on a client-based alteration to look better, it's not something to put for all to see unless it still looks better without that alteration). Konig/talk 01:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Changing CSS is only to view the proposal: if consensus on the proposal is in favour, the common CSS will be updated to enable it for everyone. :) - Infinite - talk 01:08, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

It's the same thing we did with infoboxes... Aqua (T|C) 01:12, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Didn't realize the css was altered for infobox (forgive me, I was not paying complete attention for that discussion). Konig/talk 08:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Other than the fact that it looks like a rainbow melted all over those race ones, I like the design. Fits nicely with the infobox designs Venom20

18:32, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I like them, although I would rather have the race storyline lists to be horizontal, like the other navs, rather than vertical (if vertical, the large list would make the page longer than it needs to be, with unused whitespace on the sides; it'd also be confusing when changing from a page that has a horizontal nav). Also, I prefer silver borders to coloured ones (matches the normal header separation in articles), and the colours themselves need to be a bit more vibrant (the weapon and HoM ones, for example, are a bit boring and... watery?). pling

15:04, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I think in terms of design — save the changes to personal storyline and the addition of the currency navigation template — we're all set. I think it will be best if we open a pure and focused colours discussion, for the navs, infoboxes, templates, and other applicable designations now. - Infinite - talk 00:17, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I am going to be requesting these designs (note; design itself, with the currently applied wiki colours if it pleases users; alternatively all navs in silver until the colour discussion leads somewhere) to be pushed live, if no one else is going to object at this time. The storyline navs should be reworked in the meantime, or I can do it now. - Infinite - talk 20:39, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Voting

I think it’s time to implement voting on the wiki.
Now, I know what’s the gut answer to the above: voting is bad. Wiki are based on consensus. A group of collaborators trying to discuss a resolution to an issue is infinitely better than just voting, which is mindless and just takes in account how many people there are in a discussion, not the merit of each argument.
The above is true, of course. But not always true. Right now this is a small community, so I’m sure all of you people have seen when consensus has failed – when a small and almost insignificant issue begins to be discussed between a lot of people, then the discussion loops around itself, no one can reach a proper resolution, a lot of options are presented trying to please everyone, while achieving only results that are mediocre for everyone instead of being great to some and bad to a few; and eventually, apathy settles in and people just leave the discussion alone without any effective resolution. This has happened often around here, as everyone reading this right now knows (and remembers). Consensus is our best option… But it’s not a good option.
I believe, then, that a few matters deserve to be voted on. All trivial, aesthetic-based things, the kind of discussion that often hits a blockade simply due to how the argument “but it doesn’t look good to me” isn’t something that accepts many counter arguments. Do we really need to spend months arguing if the best color for the guardian is cyan instead of blue? If an infobox for armors work better being orange instead of being yellow? When this kind of thing becomes the target of a long discussion that appears to be reaching nowhere and taking time that contributors could be using to more important things – things that would actually make more or less people use the wiki – I believe it would be worth settling it through voting. It’s quick, simple, and removes those discussions from the way of more important work.
I believe it would be the perfect time to apply that solution to the discussion about the main page. Of course, the main page is important. But, as usual, the discussion has settled down based on apathy, and no resolution is anywhere close to appearing. We have a few options, all of which are great – is it really that important which one will we settle for? Aren’t all of them so much better than the current main page? Is it really worth spending so much more time and effort in this discussion, knowing that soon we will have significantly more important things to do, as in, actually adding content to the wiki when the press reveal begins next week?
I believe it’s time we accept voting as a suitable resolution to aesthetic-based conflicts of opinions in which there is no expectation of a solution in a reasonable time frame, when there are enough valid options to vote on. Nothing more, nothing less. Erasculio 00:17, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I hate voting. But if it absolutely, definitely, positively must be used to settle an issue, we should decide to use it for that specific issue only. I don't want to "implement" a generalised voting system, where we say we use voting for this kind of thing or that kind of thing (e.g. aesthetic-based conflicts). If the consensus is to vote for a main page design because nothing else is working, then that's the consensus, and you can vote on it. Every other thing on the wiki should be unaffected by that decision, and it shouldn't set a precedent, even if there's another redesign a year from now or next week. pling

00:54, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Knowing that this is in reference to the great main page struggle, I still am not entirely thrilled by the idea.

Consensus encourages improvement, voting just encourages satisfying more people than another one. There is absolutely no reason why we couldn't (given enough time) come to a general consensus on how it should be, and I feel like the enforcing voting there and otherwise is just an attempt to speed up the lengthy process (there were no calls for votes when we did the first round of main page overhauls, and that went on for much longer). Saving a bit of time now is not worth the loss of potential improvements in the design process.

tl;dr: No, I dislike the idea and there is no reason to use voting there or otherwise other than to save a bit of time now. Aqua (T|C) 01:15, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I too believe voting to be a horrible idea in general for a wiki, it may help to merge ideas. Most certainly it cannot be applied in general but only as a last, last, last resort to an unending discussion that needs a kick start. I may have more to say on the matter, but I am le tired. Venom20

01:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Aqua, I think the issue of most of the long discussions we have in the wiki is how they usually take more time and effort than they are worth. They also lack resolutivity - we almost never reach organically a point in which the discussion is fully resolved, and even when someone tries to call the others to attention in order to reach some kind of closure, the entire matter more often than not just fizzles. This pattern isn't really a good way to solve discussions - someone mentions an issue, a lot of discussion follows, then the discussion goes back to the beginning, then there's a lot more discussion, then people lose interest, apathy settles in, and some time later a bunch of people tired of the subject make a last effort to finally deal with it and find some kind of solution. The results of this kind of process aren't exactly great; it feels like a great way to waste the community's effort, especially considering how the result can feel like something rushed despite all the time spent in discussion. For important matters we simply have no better alternative, but for other things... Erasculio 02:34, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed with Erasculio, its to the point of retardation imho we keep making new designs in the pursue of a new main page and it seems like its endless we need to come to gather and all get behind one design and voting is the best way to do that instead of endlessly discussing nit picky things lets pick one design we like (ie a majority) and then work from there. or we will never see a end to a discussion it was what had to be done with the new icon discussion a wile back and i think it is what needs to be done with the main page as well.-

Zesbeer 02:59, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

That's not what retardation means, Zesbeer. I agree with Pling- voting as a last resort, but it can be useful for some cases. No need to institutionalize it though.

05:26, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

@Felix i am calling the situation we are in retarded so to the point of retardation would be the correct way to say that. imho-

Zesbeer 07:23, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Constantly changing something in an attempt to make it better among multiple opinions of what would be better is not retarded/retardation - nor is the situation of being in such a standing. If anything, that's evolution - the opposite of retardation (which is, in a literal sense, to be held back).

On topic: Voting should, in my honest opinion, be limited to when discussions are at a standstill. That means that neither side will budge preventing consensus, and both sides has equal merits (and the chance of a new party coming in to tip the scales is minimal). Such situations are rare - and I mean very rare - and are more or less impossible to foretell.

tl;dr (lazy bums): Vote only when discussion stagnates, as a last resort, and, most importantly, do not disallow voting like the GWW. Konig/talk 19:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Official forum announcement

With word from on high that ANet plans to open a forum, should we change... anything? Currently there's a ton of discussion that crops up on various pages - the profession talk pages in particular have grown massive, full of spammy forum-like posts. We've never come out and said "off-topic or nonconstructive banter is disallowed," instead opting to do rather half-assed attempts to move sections to the OP's talk page or simply end discussion in a section.
Do we, as a wiki, want to forbid that discussion? Should it be kept entirely to the official forum? Is there a good middle ground? I honestly enjoyed (and learned from) many discussions on gwiki/gww talk pages, but with GW2 gearing up to be a PvE MMO instead of a niche PvP game, we're going to get *swamped* with new users. More than we've ever seen or dealt with before. And most will be retarded - I play WoW, I've played EQ2 and Rift; the communities in those games are not very enjoyable, and not very intelligent.
So I'm torn. I don't have a preference one way or the other. This is, however, a discussion worth having for the wiki's sake - should we change our rules on spammy posting? If so, how strict should we get? Forbid all nonsense posting and direct users to the forum, or allow it and watch as talk pages get massive? Maybe just lock certain pages that are prone to spam? -Auron 13:27, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I think we should continue to encourage discussion that isn't regarding revisions to be organised within user space (or be moved to user space). It seems to catch on and the official forums can deal with the wild speculation and terribly lengthy non-wiki discussions. At least that's what I feel. Pretty much unchanged from before the news. - Infinite - talk 14:05, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

These kinds of discussions will probably move onto the forum by themselves; we're no longer the only official ANet-connected 'forum' (in the general sense of the word), and the forum will no doubt be more popular than the wiki. In other words, I don't think we'll have to change anything on the wiki.

(If however it turns out we do end up with too many spammy discussions, we can deal with it when we realise it's a problem. Let's not decide to ban certain types of discussion based on the fear it'll get out of control and omg it'll asplode.) pling

19:28, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Pretty much what pling said. A forum is actually designed for this kind of discussion, and I suspect that if we nag just a little, people will (hopefully) move to a forum because it both is better suited to the discussion and they won't get nagged. Hypothetically, that should prevent most of the issue, but more drastic measures might need to be taken should serious issues arise. Aqua (T|C) 21:06, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I think adopting a wait-and-see approach right now is the best course of action.

08:41, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Wait and See, When i played The Matrix Online, we had an offical forum and a wiki page. Needless t osay all the lenthy discussions almost automatically got posted on the official forums. I believe it will be the same here, as people tend to disregard Wiki as a knowledge site not a discussion site (generally).

Sunny Storms 15:11, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Administrators

Infinite and I have been discussing, and we feel that now is a good time to develop a new, active administrator team. As of right now, there are only about 4-6 admins who regularly appear to check the wiki. While that's all well and good, we think that it is time to clean out old admins and bring in some new, more active ones. While I realize this really is a community decision, here are our suggestions for admins:

Retaining adminship - Auron, Felix, Jon, Poke (and Wikichu), Pling and Tanetris
Admins who would need some form of reconfirmation - Aiiane, Biro, Aberant, Xeeron, Gares and Emmett
New admins - Myself (Aqua), Infinite (temporarily), Redshift, Aspectacle and Chriskang

Aqua (T|C) 21:21, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I know that Gares recently engaged in some administrative activities, but he's on the reconfirmation list mainly because I'd like to know his personal perspective on the position he is in.

This basically also works for the other admins we request for reconfirmation, but they haven't visibly undertaken administrative actions in the recent past. However, I do know they are active in one way or another, or at least close by enough to be active.

My own stance of declining any administrator positions still stands, but Aqua feels that it can't hurt to have me temporarily in a sysop seat, to at least speed up the fight against vandals at Europe hours.

All in all, mostly a check-up for the admins in place to see what they would like and what the community feels about the current team.

Infinite - talk 21:26, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Do you want the administrators you haven't listed in any category to be removed from the sysop group? Granted, they're all just gathering dust right now. Additionally, I'm familiar enough with Infinite, Aqua, and Aspectacle, but I wonder if you could share your rationale for suggesting Redshift and Chriskang as sysops.

22:23, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

~~or instead of demanding admin-ship how about you go start a RFA for your self, and start recon's for the admins you listed?~~-

Zesbeer 22:36, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

We don't have formal procedures for that stuff here. That's why they started a discussion.

22:37, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

oh lol my fail then-

Zesbeer 22:58, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I think Aqua and Infinite would be good. Don't think I know anyone else on either the new admins or reconfirm lists.

23:23, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

What would be the reason behind these changes? You say you want to develop a "new, active administrator team," but I don't really see a reason provided for why that would be necessary. The easiest answer to combating vandalism, and in fairness the block log has seen a lot of action this week; however, are the currently active admins unable to respond quickly enough because there aren't enough of them? (I don't know the answer to this question, having not been here. Do you legitimately feel this is a concern that needs to be addressed?) I am also wary of promoting sysops just because of vandalism-- I started off as one of these "mediocre sysops" promoted to stop vandalism, and looking back I'm really not a fan of "why not" promotions. Additionally, if you claim that the wiki needs more sysops to ban/del/prot, where is the sense in cleaning out the old ones? I agree that nothing would be harmed by removing the sysops who have truly fallen off the face of the earth, though also note there's nothing to be gained except a cleaner list of administrators (and that's not a huge benefit).

I also want to hear your thoughts on how any "RfAs" and "reconfirmations" would go, since all we have is our practices and processes which don't have any suggestions about what process we would go through in such a situation. :p – Emmett 23:16, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit: This is also not a comment on the quality of any of the "potential candidates" listed-- I'm not familiar with any of their contributions. The above is more of an abstract statement about any promotions in general, not just with regards to this particular suggestion. – Emmett 23:19, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

The other benefit of removing system operators that haven't done anything in years is people being able to look at the list of system operators and not think that most of the people given such a responsibility stopped caring long ago. To make it look like things actually, you know, work well and efficiently and that most of the people they can ask for help will respond. That it's something important and valued enough that you have to earn it. Manifold

23:23, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if it is possible to signup, but i'm on wiki each and every day and would love to be part of the admin team. I'm a fast learner with code so stuff i might not know yet i'll learn really really quick.-- Sunny Storms 07:26, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Sunny.

Thanks for the thought, but at any one time there's invariably more people who'd like to be Administrators than what is entirely necessary. Normally everyone on the wiki would be given the chance to provide feedback on specific candidates, which manifests itself as 30 - 40 people descending on the page to give their opinion. Mean things can be said, and feelings can be hurt.

I don't mean to be blunt or insensitive, however nobody here really knows who you are. You don't have a record of a lot of constructive edits improving the wiki. You havn't been involved in many (or tbh, any) discussions regarding how the wiki / community should do things. What do you think constitutes vandalism? Can we trust your judgement? Where can we find examples of your judgement? Long story short, while you're certainly welcome to contribute and we'd all love to get to know you better, I think the answer currently has to be "not right now".

Sorry.

A F K When Needed 23:50, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

this is 2 different discussions imho and should be split to reflect such one is changes to the admin team, and the other is 3 requests for admin.-

Zesbeer 00:13, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't have enough time atm to make a more substantial comment, but I thought I'd just link Guild Wars 2 Wiki:User rights changes (there's not much on it though). pling

00:20, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I honestly think we should remove all the admins who are inactive (or barely active) in this community and promote new sysops who actually contribute to this wiki and to this community. Admins from GW1W were carried over since we didn't have that many choices, and GW2 didn't have its own community at the time. Now, though, it's easy to see that the GW2W community is not the same as the Gw1W community, and our admins should mirror that.

In fact, looking at the list of administrators, I would remove all of them, with maybe a couple exceptions just to avoud having only people without experience (I would keep only Tanetris and Fenix, maybe Jon). Almost no one listed there contributes regularly to this wiki or bothers to join the biggest discussions we have. I would replace them with people who are actually active and involved in this community, such as Infinite, Aqua and maybe a few others. Erasculio 01:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm with felix on reasoning behind chriskang and redshift, but i think aqua, infinite, and aspectacle would make good additional admin/sysop faces. not that i'm saying chriskang and redshift wouldn't be, just that seems more like friends bringing friends along for the sake of being friends, imo... but i'd be happy with them as new admins/sysops, so... *approval* ? ~~

Kio madoushi 01:23, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Well that's not going to happen. We need one discussion per candidate + another for removing inactive Sysops (which I support). I'm for some candidates and against others, and I do not wish to be pigeonholed into giving a broad 'support'.

A F K When Needed 04:16, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

While it might be good to have some new admins and to figure out what admins aren't going to be active at all, I think the team as-is works fine. If we wanted to add more admins, they should be added on their own merits and not just to deal with vandalism or a perceived need for more admins. To that end, each potential admin should be examined individually, and we'll need a separate discussion (or separated out) to determine how to deal with grandfathered admins, active or otherwise. --JonTheMon 04:52, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

While I appreciate that it seems that I am making positive contributions to this wiki, I actually am wary of how more I can assist--I try to be as active as I can, but my work and interests have been more demanding of my time. In terms of my continuing contributions to this wiki, I believe that the ways that I think I can help most effectively--grammatical edits, better copy/language, updates of new information, nipping vandal edits in the bud with everyone else, feedback on new designs--are already within my purview. To be frank, this probably shows how much I don't know about wikis or what admin roles mean, but for what it's worth, I am content to help out as I can, as I am. Redshift 12:12, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

That actually brings up a very good point, Redshift. When we start getting a lot of new editors and forging a new identity, we don't necessarily need more admins, we need more example users. Sure admins can put down vandals more effectively, but finding vandalism and helping new editors is something anyone can do. --JonTheMon 12:26, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Less heads and more hands, no? 193.127.207.152 12:35, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) The main reasons I have for initiating new sysop elections remains as it always has. To combat increasing vandalism (right now we only have a few advertising bots, for the most part) and to fill in the gaps of time zones (like Infinite said regarding him becoming an active admin for Europe hours). At this time, I do not believe having new elections is necessary. I know my stance will change as the community grows. I’m predicting a more appropriate time would be around the official release. That is not to say the users listed would not be a good fit. I have looked over some things getting reacquainted with major events that have happened, and with what I have read, Aqua and Infinite will make good candidates when new sysop elections are needed. I don’t know much about the others listed yet. Also, as Jon said above, having great quality users to set an example are more important than a larger admin pool at this time.

As for the issue of removing all the current sysops, I do not think that is such a good idea. In a few months (wishful thinking?), this community will see a mass of new users and IPs editing. The experience the current sysop team will be invaluable for quickly combating vandalism, helping to organize policies, adhering to those policies, and are generally trusted. If trimming the inactives is a concern, sending emails and setting up reconfirmations is a future possibility. — Gares 15:26, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to say that I support Aqua's and Infinite's ... errrr... nomination (don't know how to call it). I can also offer my humble service in UTC+4 zone, if needed. Alfa-R

16:26, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

@Gares: The main issue I have with the grandfathered sysops is just that, they were grandfathered to their position. While there are many who have contributed, there are a lot more who were promoted and have not done anything since then to help this wiki or its community. Hell, most of them aren't even active on GWW anymore. Grandfathering was a good idea then, when GW2W was, effectively, a side project of GWW, but now GW2W is its own wiki, with its own userbase and I think that we should acknowledge that by removing those who haven't done anything to help it and promoting those who have. There is absolutely no reason to assume that people who have sysop privileges and have made less than 10 edits since they were sysoped 5 years ago will suddenly be like "Oh, I need to go fight vandalism on the GW2W." I am not suggesting the removal of active sysops; I'm suggesting the removal of those who don't and won't help.

On another note, when I RFA'd last year, I was told that I needed to work on the community end more (being active in policy/formatting/wiki-wide discussions), instead of just the wiki end. If that is true (and it was), then why do I have to be active in various important discussions to "earn sysophood" while others, who haven't done anything for this wiki, just receive it for actions elsewhere 5 years ago. Its a double-standard. If sysophood must be earned on a per-wiki basis, then why does earning it here only matter if you weren't an admin on GWW (or GWiki)? Aqua (T|C) 16:57, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

@Aqua. Some of the sysops became so longer ago than that... like 6-7 years ago, and many who were sysop'ed years later were involved in deep discussions about policy etc for years. They are grandfathered into being sysops because their judgement is trusted, and have experience as a sysop on a wiki setting. They may be replaced in the future as natural turnover of users change things around.

Replacing or removing the current sysops is definitely a bad idea. Some of the current sysops have been around since the original guildwiki and have a ton of experience in dealing with various conflicts that arise with an influx of new users and vandals. New sysops will be needed fairly soon in the coming months closer to the release date as Gares said but not yet. The reason some sysops are inactive or aren't on very much is because there aren't many instances of conflict on this wiki right now. The community is still fairly small, and most of us work together decently, and the level of vanadlism isn't very high. However, it wouldn't hurt to reconfirm some of the very inactives in the near future.

Also I think some people are misunderstanding the core role of a sysop on a wiki. Being a sysop isn't about editing, learning code, and being active all the time, and make great edits to the wiki. It's about "greasing the gears of the wiki" by helping to maintain the editing community via conflict resolution and acting as a moderating force on the wiki. Also sysops do have to deal with banning vandals, and various clean up duties related to that, such as "deleting" revisions containing offensive/illegal material. As such, being a great wiki editor doesn't necessarily make a good sysop, and keeping a great editor in a editor role instead of a sysop role is better for the wiki, as they don't have to be distracted by other duties. As someone stated a while ago, a sysop is a glorified janitor and/or a cop for the wiki. Sure sysops can also edit and take part in normal constructive discussions but a regular user can do that as well. --Lania

17:34, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

@Aqua, I agree with you. As a user, I would want to see active admins when I first come to the wiki. It helps to set a good example. All I asked was to send courtesy emails before or at the same time a reconfirmation occurs. I thought of it from my point of view and my situation for the past year and a half. And I would even be willing to write the email to send to those inactive admins. One of my goals for this wiki is to have a healthy number of actively monitoring, actively contributing admins spread across all time zones.

With what I have read, I would support you and Infinite and you two would deserve it, but it also comes down to the need. If we promoted just on who deserved it, we could possibly have hundreds or so admins running around. Right now, the need isn't there. I say wait see what the state of things are later down the road, but I am predicting we will need to make a decision on a more active admin structure once the release date is announced and no later than the first open beta. — Gares 18:42, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

It might not hurt to start the process for reconfirming or just send out some emails if the current semi inactive and inactive sysops want to stay as sysops, and see if they are willing to be active when the game is close to coming out. I think some people are getting restless because when the unexpected happens like GW2 getting released way earlier than predicted, we'll end up with a flood of problems/conflicts and vandals and overwhelm the current admin team. I think some people want some assurances or even a head count of potential actives when the need arise... how useful such a "assurance" would be im not sure. At the moment though, i think we have sufficient reserve capacity in being able to deal with a small flood of problems, so the need isn't immediate. Don't forget though, regular users can always participate in conflict resolution as well. Aqua, Infinite, and a whole host of other non admin users are more than capable in doing just that. --Lania

18:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

If my opinion is valid and heard I would ask you not to discuss this subject here. GW2W administration is serious enough not to be visible to all people. Especially since, after all this time, you are well known and people of good judgment, and good friends. Please consider talk in private (email, msn, Team Speaker, gtalk, private forum...) and excuse my bad English. Thank you very much. Lasha 18:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure I understand you correctly but I think you are saying that discussion on GW2W sysop-hood and other admin related matters should take place off wiki or on non-public talk pages? I apologize if I understood you incorrectly... One of the "pillars" of a wiki is transparency. If sysops and bcrats had discussions behind closed doors and make the decision for the wiki, then that's something that won't work. Sysops and bcrats don't set the policy but rather the community sets the policy by open community discussions, and the admin's opinions aren't weighted more heavily than regular users. Like I said before, sysops are regular users that are trusted enough to use sysop tools effectively and fairly. --Lania

18:30, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

An important note: Sysophood is not a "reward" that is "earned". It is a set of tools one is entrusted with.

Fairly obviously, the initial GW2W community trusted the grandfathered sysops (myself among them), because the initial GW2W community was made up almost entirely of GWW editors who made them sysops on GWW in the first place because they trusted them. As GuildWiki editors filtered in, we also brought over some GuildWiki admins (though historically there's been a fair amount of overlap between GWW and GuildWiki admins anyway, for obvious reasons). The reason most of those sysops have not lost their adminship due to inactivity is the same reason we don't demote for inactivity over on GWW: we don't suddenly lose our trust in them just because they haven't been around in awhile, and over here in particular, there's a good chance that they will become active again in time (like when the game releases). Now, that being said, there's always been an intention that the sysop team should be reconfirmed by the future community, as it necessarily won't entirely be GWW people, or even GWW and GuildWiki people. The thing about that is, this is not the "final" GW2W community. While we've certainly grown quite a bit since then, I very much doubt we have all the "big-name" editors now that we will have come release. Is it an appropriate time for reconfirmations? Maybe. But it's certainly not the be-all and end-all time for them, and I'd like to see attempts made to reach out to all the inactive sysops to get statements of intent on whether they plan to become active on GW2W or not before decisive action would be taken.

Now there is no question that you (Aqua, as well as the other proposed admins and in fact probably most people who are reading this at all) have done more for this wiki than a number of the current inactive sysops. No one is suggesting otherwise. That was true the last time you RFA'ed as well, in fact. So why aren't you already a sysop? To be blunt, the one has nothing to do with the other. When we say we want to see you get more involved in this and that, it's not that you haven't "paid your dues", it's that these show important aspects of how you're likely to deal with the sorts of situations that come up as a sysop. Are you level-headed? Objective? Mature? Do you communicate clearly? You can tell us you are and you do until you're blue in the face, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

With regard to new sysops more generally... Well, I want to state right off that I'm not worried about vandalism. Not even slightly. Does it happen? Sure. But we've got tools to deal with that, not the least of which is the undo button that every regular editor gets, along with AbuseFilter that works 24/7 without needing more than the occasional check-up to make sure it's not hitting false positives and to occasionally refine filters. If there are further vandalism problems, there are further steps we can take. What I am worried about as we look toward the influx of new editors that will surely accompany release, is user conflicts. Aside from a few abrasive personalities, the community has largely been great about keeping things civil, but as the community grows, there will inevitably be some heads butting against each other, tempers flaring, misunderstandings ensuing, etc. These tend to be complex situations, and an admin stepping in in the wrong way can make things worse rather than better. These are the situations where the number of sysops doesn't matter; it's how strong the weakest link is, to abuse a metaphor. So agreed with Jon, any potential sysop needs to be examined individually for their potential to be a good sysop, rather than trying to meet some arbitrary quota of a certain number.

I have said before and I will say again: being a good contributor does not and should not necessarily lead to adminship. It's not a "promotion" in the employment sense where the best person at the entry-level position moves up to the next rung on the ladder. There are so incredibly many non-sysops who are better editors than me on both wikis (not that I'm a bad editor, but we have some amazing ones), but I will be absolutely blunt and not even slightly humble to say that I am a better admin. That's just how it is; they're different skillsets.

Now, while this WoT may seem rather negative, I'm certainly not against getting some new blood involved in the sysop team. I'm not immediately convinced by the names put forward, but I'm not saying no. I would like to hear from Aspectacle and Chriskang on any thoughts they have, and I wouldn't object to "proper" individual RFA pages to discuss the merits of interested candidates (Aqua's proposals and anyone else the community feels should be put forward). I remember back when Aqua did his last RfA, there was some discussion on how future RfAs should be formatted, and I leaned toward something along the lines of Wikipedia's AfD pages. So that might be an idea if a particularly "formal" process is desired, but even just freeform talk pages for each individual would be worthwhile.

Hope that helps. - Tanetris 18:49, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

The formatting for wiki's AfD policy looks good. +1 that for a possible formal process.

Speaking of user conflicts, it reminds me of situations that occurred in the original guildwiki and GWW where an influx of users with poor intent from PvX wiki caused a lot of problems at GWW. Similarly back when builds were documented in guildwiki, conflicts from that often spilled out into the mainspace also leading to a lot of problems. Trolling was a huge problem when the wiki was at its high point in activity, and can cause a lot of problems if not handled properly. The most complex of these situations is where users genuinely want to help the wiki but for some reason or another they cause conflict after conflict with many people. Experience is the only way to learn how to mitigate these situations, and a resolution takes patience, time, and a cool judgement. For me this is the main reason in addition to others I've said why I want to keep the old sysops because they are very experienced in conflict management and all of them have taken a part in many major wiki-dramas in the past.

I'm also going to change my stance slightly and say that some of the GW2W only users that could be sysops have never experienced the level of trolling, conflicts, stress, and general ugliness that GWW and Gwiki experienced in the past. This makes me nervous as to how admins who aren't ready react to unprecedented situations on GW2W. This exact issue has been a problem in GWW and Gwiki, where admins whom their edit history looked good were not quite level-headed enough caused a lot of drama, conflicts, and even trolling, which has led to their sysop tools being revoked, and some of them were banned.

I know I'm looking to the past a lot but I think it's very helpful in trying to gauge how things will change when the game is released. --Lania

20:41, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Just going to say that I've seen how aqua and infinite handle situations among people that just simply aren't getting along, on a non-admin level, and have calmed things a little; and I personally trust how they respond in general, and sometimes weigh what they say just a little heavier as I do with jon, felix, tane, poke, and pling... now i've only ever seen Gares on here, and Auron, the other active admin, very sparingly, and I know my personal opinion certainly doesn't mean very much among the sea of users, nor do i feel i'm even a somebody within the wiki, just another face in that sea... I still say that I believe Aqua and Infinite would make a fair addition. And if they did get used to the sysop and admin controls now, before we have a need for more active sysops, then when we do need them, they'll be ready and raring.

Also. I don't believe we should drop the inactive ones, even with a response of denying helping in the future... Perhaps not display them so readily so people viewing the page don't think "wow, that's a lot of inactive admins, with only a few that actually do anything." If they were trusted with the role and new set of work, and they still are, then they should be free to come back and help whenever, unless they personally choose to be removed. Essentially, plaster up our active and semi-active ones. Everyone wants to see and know who they are, and probably even fangirl (or boy) over the wikichu >.< If the new sysops really aren't needed, is there any harm done in entrusting them with the tools (even with a rigorous interrogation, pat-down, etc etc just to be approved)? I highly doubt these two would go rogue on us and start pulling some GLADoS **** on us. again, just a nobody's opinion. ~~

Kio madoushi 22:14, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Your opinion is valued as much as anyone else's. As brought up somewhere above, these discussions take place in public not just for transparency's sake but because these are community decisions - i.e. involving you too. (

If people think that the long list of red blocks on GW2W:ADMINS portrays a bad impression of the admin team (and I wouldn't exactly disagree, although I wouldn't say I completely agree either...), then ok we can take the red admins off the page, keeping blue and orange ones only. I don't think we should demote inactive admins because they're inactive for all the reasons we decided not to do that on GWW, which are just as valid here. Removing the red blocks is, I think, a fair compromise.

Now, this is kind of a separate issue to reconfirming GWW/GWiki-grandfathered admins. I think we should have reconfirmations for all of them (in whatever way that might be done, whenever we choose to do so). Also, I disagree with something Gares said, that 'admins aren't needed so there's no need for elections' (paraphrased); if they're capable of being admins, then why not make them admins? Temporary admins should only be admin'd when they're urgently needed (e.g. vandal rampage and no active admins), but those we intend to keep indefinitely should be added to the admin pool whenever we identify their capability. Because, well, why not?

tl;dr: I agree with Kiomadoushi. And, apparently, disagree with Gares. A bit. pling

23:52, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I would like to reiterate my opinion on removing the old administrators. I have seen the opinion above that even the inactive sysops were chosen due to how the community trusts their judgment, so they would still be a valuable asset if one day they decide to come back - but that's false. Those admins were chosen by their clear judgment regarding the GW1W community, but this is not the GW1W community. Most of them have had little to no experience on the GW2W community, and so I don't expect them to know anything about how this wiki thinks or works. In fact, I believe it would be incredibly detrimental to this wiki if those GW1W sysops came here and began acting as if being an administrator here were the same as being an admin on the GW1W.

Besides, having a list with so many sysops leads to the kind of thought seen above - that we don't need more because there are already a lot. The existence of the old GW1W sysops should never be a reason to prevent the creation of sysops who are really a part of the GW2W community, but that's one of the bad effects the grandfathered syops have here.

In other words, I think having all those inactive GW1W sysops is actually detrimental to the GW2 Wiki. When faced with the question, "Why not just keep them?", I see at least a couple replies. I would rather remove them and get sysops from this community than keep them in a hidden list that people would not be able to see. Erasculio 16:25, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

What Erasculio said directly above me is very wise.

If - as I fear it will - it falls on deaf ears, that's fine. I will personally start a Request for Confirmation for each and every one of them. To the best of my knowledge, this wiki has no requirements for RfCs being created.

A F K When Needed 16:47, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I really think we should start from a clean slate based on actions taken here, since, as I've heard so many times, "this isn't GW1W". Manifold

17:02, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Anyone who thinks that the GW2W community will stay like this once the game is close to being released is grossly mistaken. All game wikis, once they reach a certain threshold of number of active users, become a cesspool of drama and trolling unless it's controlled carefully, regardless of what the starting community was like. The reason: In contrast to wikipedia where the median age is quite old and the maturity level is high, game wikis tend to have a lower median age and maturity level. Dealing with BS like that requires years of experience... something that no one who are GW2W only editors has experience with because GW2W has never had near to that level of "wiki drama shit storm" to rain down on it.

For anyone who are still confused about what a wiki admin does, I'll list out what they do in a concise manner. 1)Ban Vandals. 2)Adjust filters. 3)Step in during conflicts to cool things down and act as a moderating force when things get out of hand. 4)Use sysop tools to hide/delete illegal or offensive material. 5)Do misc wiki janitorial work. That's basically it. Vandals are under control, and there aren't any overblown drama on the wiki right now either...In essence the regular users are doing just fine keeping things together which does not require admin intervention.

Also just because we have people who seem qualified and level headed doesn't mean we should give them sysop tools. There were problems in the past in GW1W, guildwiki, and other game wikis where a plethora of seemingly trustworthy mature users becoming admins ended up causing a lot of drama, with ban hammers being thrown all over the place, even between admins, and blaming each other for personal attacks when there was none, etc etc. If we start giving sysop tools to even 1/4 of people who appear qualified, we'll end up with the same problems when the game comes out as wiki population explodes in number. Right now the stress level on this wiki is very low, but everything will start changing near release date.--Lania 18:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

As far as considering how the wiki will change when we're closer to release, it would be better to get new sysops now, while the wiki is still slow and so the future sysops will have time to learn the new technical features they will have access to, than wait until we have the urgent need for more people who would have zero experience on the tools at their disposal. If the very few sysops who actually are part of this community can handle most things for now, having two or three new sysops, while removing the inactive ones from other wikis, would hardly be detrimental. Erasculio 00:12, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I was going to post this on AFK's talk page, but on second consideration, I think both of these clarifications are important enough to be included in the main discussion.

To clarify one point, much of that WoT, and especially the part quoted about "Are you level-headed?" etc, was specifically in response to Aqua's comment "why do I have to be active in various important discussions to "earn sysophood" while others, who haven't done anything for this wiki, just receive it for actions elsewhere 5 years ago" which I felt was an enormous misunderstanding of the results of his previous RFA and what sysophood means.

Other point I believe I glossed over a bit too much in the WoT: As long as an attempt is made to contact currently inactive sysops for a statement of intent regarding future activity, I have no objection to reconfirmations being held right now, and I expect there will be some demotions coming out of them. - Tanetris 22:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Then I guess we only disagree on if them stating they plan to return should make an ounce of difference.

I don't trust them with the wiki, as the majority have failed to demonstrate any kind of investment in it.

I suppose what riles me is I honestly don't believe that half the list should necessitate any level of discussion at all. Why the fuck is Misery an Administrator here, to pick the most glaringly obvious example?

It's things like Misery remaining on the list that feels like the GWW boys are looking after the GWW boys, which is pretty damn alienating. It's frustrating to those of us who lurk here and contribute as much as our limited knowledge of the game allows us to do so. I feel like an outsider here because I'm not active elsewhere - and that's just plain ridiculous.

A F K When Needed 09:22, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

For the Misery case, this will be of interest. I chose the status quo because it was your decision (by which I mean the collective community's) whether or not to remove him based on his grandfathering from GWW, not one I should take on my own and take inconsistently. pling

10:29, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

That was a month before this happened.

A F K When Needed 10:59, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

One more clarification: I do not believe that an inactive admin that states that they are going to be returning should automatically retain their status. I simply believe it is information the community should have before making a decision about them one way or another (and if they explicitly don't plan to return, we can probably just skip the formal reconfirmation and demote straight-off). I acknowledge that that information makes no difference to you, and I think that's a perfectly fair standpoint, but I also think it's fair to accomodate others who might want to know.

As for Misery... Yeah, that probably doesn't need a reconfirmation at all. - Tanetris 17:09, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I feel as if I'm missing something in the discussion above, although it's probably already there (and I've failed to (care to) find it); the separation of arguments.

On one side, we have very competent admins in place who are —although they are inactive here and thus not doing anything here— very capable of being in the position they are now, side-stories about account sharing and douchebaggery aside.
On the other, we have hardly any (if any at all, though I doubt that) admins on the GW2W that are the result of this community's (un)spoken consent and support.

Now, whilst the discussions revolving this topic are mainly point 1 versus point 2, I don't feel that one can't coexist alongside the other. In fact, due to the high density, low quantity community here I would not be surprised to see this community on its own failing to fill an equally long list of administrators with equally competent candidates. That said, should this discourage us completely in terms of putting forward new administrators from within this community to be listed amongst the grandfathered admins from other communities?
In my opinion; no. If we're going to redesign this wiki as a whole, we might as well redesign the set-up of the administrators list. Requests for reconfirmations are in order. Some claim later on, some claim yesterday. I believe we can start them today. Whilst it is true that you can argue that this community is in beta, like the game is, that dooesn't mean the support of the core mass of this community is going to shift in time. I'm fairly sure we have a big enough, active, and involved userbase here to poll support for adminship for currently seated administrators.
We can keep dancing around the flames of fortunetelling to figure out when it is the right time, but it will only lead to pointless time spent going back and forth between the same arguments and objections (remember the main page discussion? The fact that we have a temporary new main page in place itself is considered a miracle by many) that in the end only make us postpone decisions even more. There is no right time to start this process; in a few weeks time the BWE have started, bringing in new users (probably). After that the release is pending (probably). After that there will be even more users (likely). We can keep arguing that we need a specific userbase to do the reconfirmations and RfAs, but there will never be a specific userbase; like the wiki keeps changing, the userbase will too.
Therefore it is truly in our collective best interest to put the new foundation for administration in place before the userbase changes massively. Whilst we can keep changing later on, we only now have the window of opportunity to go about this slightly casual and leniently.
So in my opinion, I'd start reconfirming the current list now whilst nominating new users for sysophood from within this community (not necessarily in that order). They might as well be learning the position early on, rather than later in the chaos of early post-release. - Infinite - talk 12:25, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I did have a specific timetable in mind when I wrote my above posts, however, looking at threads here and there, that timetable might not suffice. I believe the earliest prediction is late April. Regardless of whether that is true or not, I'd rather get past the issue of reconfirmations and initial RfAs before that date is upon us. My proposal is that logically, the bcrats would go first. Second, all admins can be up for reconfirmation at the same time, just separate pages. Once that dust has settled and the sysop core is stabilized, new RfAs could be done last.

@Pling: You commented on a section of mine and I wanted to clarify. Also, I disagree with something Gares said, that 'admins aren't needed so there's no need for elections' (paraphrased); if they're capable of being admins, then why not make them admins? One of my concerns is that under that logic used with how sysops have been selected on GWW, there could be an overabundance of those with admin rights. I maybe coming off as elitist with that last statement, but 10 great admins are better than 100 average ones. With the vetting process possibly taking a different route with the decision makers thread, the outcome might resolve that concern. Hopefully that helps to clarify that stance. — Gares 23:25, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Administrators Part 2

Personally, I've expected that at some point in the life of this wiki I'll have to be reconfirmed. It's the basic assumption for grandfathered admins. Now when is the important question. Do we want to overturn all the admins at once (now) and re-establish the admin team? I'd definitely advise against that. Would we want to clean up the inactives first (either hide or do full reconfirmation), then have maybe a 2-3 round pass over the ones left? Possibly. It would prevent a little bit of the turnover and keep things stable while still ensuring that we have admins for GW2W.

As to the claim that "the admins are strictly GW1W admins", I'd like to disagree. Yes most of the admins have done most of their work over there, but it doesn't mean that they can't adapt to a new community. Some of our grandfathered admins will actually be from Guildwiki, or be a hybrid of the two wikis. And I'll bet they will also tell you that conflict resolution is pretty similar on any wiki you'll be on. --JonTheMon 21:59, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I think it's as likely that an admin from other wiki will adapt to the role of a sysop here than that an active, useful member of this community will adapt to the role of a sysop here. If we demand a confirmation process for the latter, after a period of observation, there is no point in not doing the same to the former. This wiki is very different from GW1W or GuildWiki - the lack of policies is only one example of such differences. More importantly, I don't trust people who are not part of this community to try conflict resolution here, and that means most of our current sysops are not fit for a sysop role in my point of view. Erasculio 00:08, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

2 points. First, how is the first part of your statement different from my statement? Second, your lack of trust is purely on the basis of them not being as active a member of this community as you expect? So there's no room for outside, less-biased perspective or experience? Do conflict resolution skills magically disappear when a person goes to a new community? --JonTheMon 00:32, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Erasc; the same people that you mistrust to sysop this wiki were the ones who opted to go for a policy-less wiki approach specifically because of their experiences with said policies on GWW. The GWW community saw pros and cons of the set-in-stone policy system and decided that a fluid "community consensus" would work better because it's harder for dipshits and trolls to wikilawyer with. The biggest difference between the wikis is one created by the editors of both - I'm not sure how that makes grandfathered sysops automagically worse at conflict resolution. On the contrary, I'd trust ones with years of experience more than brand new ones - and certainly not less than.

On the other topic, all old sysops should be reconfirmed (at some point, probably closer to release). If they aren't around for the reconfirmation, it's an automatic fail (obviously after attempts to contact them are fruitless). New sysops should be passed through some kind of RfA process, and if it succeeds, they don't need reconfirmations any time soon (if they fuck up, it's the bureaucrats' job to help them out and make sure they don't cause problems in the future - more like the gwiki bcrat system than the GWW one). -Auron 01:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I think, after reviewing the above discussions, that there is some amount of resentment among the GW2W "regulars" that the admin team is made up entirely of established individuals from GWW and GuildWiki with zero representation of users that came from neither. I can understand the sentiment, and I'd also like to remind old hands that our view of sysop status as extra responsibility without extra privilege isn't necessarily shared by everyone.

01:50, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to weigh in slightly. I would support hiding all the inactive sysops for the time being. Reason is that there isn't a reason to display their status at the present time. I'm not saying that no one cares if they are there, I'm saying we shouldn't create the illusion that there are that many sysops. Perhaps move them to a reconfirmation list elsewhere. When/If they return to this wiki they can be confirmed then. Having a mass exodus, IMO, is not the greatest method. That being said, we should go over the current active ones (all 7) and go through whatever reconfirmation there needs to be prior to adding new ones. Venom20

02:14, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

As pre-order approaches and as Guild Wars 2 advertising increases, and when the game finally goes live with worldwide participation, there will be a greater and greater interest in THIS wiki. It therefore will become excessively more active... both for immature gamers and for vandalism and an alternative location for posting bots, kooks, advertisers, and other undesirables as popularity and net traffic increases... After April 10, 2012 as the open access beta's become available you will also see an increase of good people with little experience (like myself) interested in attempting to contribute and update information between those beta's, (and some of them are going to make a serious mess even if their intentions are good [apologies]). Without sufficient "Active Staff" I am afraid of what kind of mess things will eventually turn into... Instead of discussing inactive admins I would hope you would instead do your best to recruit responsible and trustable assistant staff and new monitors and admins, and train them to take the load that is about to explode here. Please it would be best if a link was provided on the main page to help well-meaning contributors to at least do things "Mostly Right" a "How to Contribute" Tutorial... including minor edits to more advanced skills like creating tables and how to interlink contributions properly including syntax, Etiquette, and layout templates, “How to report bad pages” and vandalism, image resolution / size limits and everything that makes this Wiki so attractive and invaluable to the Guild Wars Community. oh and please a "Report this page" link or button... Rudhraighe 03:24, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I have no confidence in the current Bureaucrats.

brb, saying the same the same thing on GWW so that they might give a shit.

A F K When Needed 09:03, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) When it comes to gaming communities (GW, LoL, Steam, etc.), "easy reporting" quickly becomes but a plaything of trolls and vandals, unless it's managed 24/7. There's already plenty of links to handful of guides about editing and purpose of wiki in general, as well as the admin noticeboard, by the left-hand navi. Other than that, promoting importance of fair and polite community should go a long way as a precaution against the flood of trolling and malicious users at game release. I'm not sure if having more than enough admins will do much good to achieve that. In worst scenario, it may just end up creating more drama about "admins abusing their power over regular users." Mediggo 09:09, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Mediggo has it right. Too many admins almost invariably causes a "Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen" Scenario, and yes there were several instances where there was drama about admins abusing their power in previous wikis and other major game wikis. Additionally admins/sysops are not community leaders for a wiki. This especially applies to bureaucrats who are supposed to stay neutral in case of a need to resolve conflicts between admins. Wikis don't have community leaders. Each editor can help each other out and I can name at least a dozen regular users that people should go to with questions about editing over the admins. You wouldn't ask a cop or a janitor to edit your novel right? But when someone threatens you, you're not going to call a novelist to intervene, you would call a cop right? A couple of admins are also great editors too, or at least has a decent sense of design and taste, and at the same time many editors are good at conflict resolution. So, on a wiki user jobs/niches aren't set in stone like my example, but you get the idea.

@Rudhraighe, as we approach closer to the release date, there won't be an "explosion" of vandals. We have filters and bots for that, and whatever gets through it's a simple process of banning and cleaning it up. Historically, drama, trolling, and user conflicts gradually becomes bad... except in the case when PvX wiki users started trolling GWW enmasse. So we do have time. And Just as Mediggo said, having a lot of editors with conflict resolution ability goes a long way to help control the drama and trolling. Yes we'll need more active admins as we approach the release date, but we don't need that many... Even a dozen highly active admins would be excessive. Either way we'll have to reconfirm the current admins anyway.--Lania 14:40, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I said above that temporary sysops should only be admin'd in emergency situations. Grandfathered admins are, essentially, temporary admins that are used until a 'solid' community is present, a mainspace established, and policies (in the general sense of the word) figured out. I think the first is more-or-less satisfied - there are the same people day in day out, there are core users that people know to see when they have problems, there are enough people to document what's coming out. Which brings me onto the second, which is also fine because not only do we have content on pages, we have common formatting, infoboxes, templates, even colours. The third... well, our policy is that we have a lack of policy and adapt our peepees as the consensus adapts.

Because of this, it probably is feasible that we could start reconfirmations now. There's a nagging doubt in my mind, though, that will I be accused of trying to get my reconfirmation out of the way (assuming it passes) by doing it before the "proper", post-release community suddenly appears? Even some people who are here right now consider the real starting point of the wiki to be the open beta or, at latest, release.

I'd like to see reconfirmations done admin-by-admin, so there isn't a kind of bulk removal/acceptance based on general reasons but instead we consider that particular admin's merits, just like in any RfA. That would also refine the RfA process as we could identify faults as we go along. It makes sense to reconfirm the bureaucrats first; bureaucrats will play some kind of role in promoting/demoting sysops. That brings us onto a whole 'nother issue... What role would that be? pling

01:19, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We might as well start now since the whole process might take some times. So, who gets to go first? >:) --Lania

02:45, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I volunteer myself as the first candidate for reconfirmation.

02:51, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I have a mind to reopen Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Requests for adminship as an actual page if we're starting this now. - Infinite - talk 11:55, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Might as well, it's one of the things that's always worked. Might start a new convo on the talk page for things to tweak, or just kick recons into gear and let problems solve themselves. -Auron 12:00, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Basic set-up sorted. Discuss away! - Infinite - talk 12:43, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Given the setup on the page, it seems we'll be doing the standard support/oppose voting as a general thing? I had been under the impression that we were going to have admins decide among themselves, and while it makes sense to have voting for a situation where the admins' elections are all in question, I don't think we should expand it to the general case. (I haven't read the entire discussion above, admittedly, so I apologize if I've missed something.) --ஸ Kyoshi

14:56, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not voting per se, it's just a way to organize input.

15:01, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) To me the conflict seems to stem from the fact that none of the current admins were vetted by the GW2W community and/or differing opinions on whether or not people who aren't already invested in this wiki should remain sysops (/can they make good ones if they're not). In either case, it would make sense for the GW2W community (and not just the admins, who may or may not currently be detached from that) to be heard. Or maybe I just don't understand what you're trying to say. – Emmett 15:09, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

There's always the chance that everyone is talking about different problems entirely. :P

You certainly seem to have grasped what I was talking about.

A F K When Needed 15:14, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Interviews

This page hasn't been updated since October 2011. Are we going to try to keep it updated or should we just move it all to the News page somehow? Or has nobody seen interviews that contained new information? --ஸ Kyoshi 16:52, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I think people have been to lazy to update it because I know there have been new interviews there was one today: ~~[1]~~ never mind that is not a interview lol (didn't read all the way thew before i posted.) but I still think that what I said still stands that people have just been lazy about documenting them.-

Zesbeer 16:50, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah I think that's the case that its just not getting updated anymore. This one from march 15th, a video interview [2], and another one [3]. Though not wholly new information, there are some tidbits of things that are new. We can try to keep it updated if someone wants to tackle that project... though I doubt there will be any takers lol. --Lania

21:54, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Unlikely. I only happened to note it because an IP posted on the talk page wondering the same thing. --ஸ Kyoshi

14:46, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Badly Singing Minstrel

Can this guy be turned off? Makes me not want to visit the site. 97.118.221.85

Top right. Aqua (T|C) 00:34, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Concept art file names

Per Category:ArenaNet concept art's content. The names for the concept art is very chaotic. In the past, Erasculio changed a lot into a naming system (e.g., File:Charr 01 concept art (white).jpg) but not all were changed and since he stopped changing them, the files have been uploaded based on the uploaders whims (usually based on the file name they were found as). This has made them very chaotic, and even Erasculio's naming system was confusing (made sense, but not very practical in the long run obviously). As such, I'm proposing to change to how GWW names concept art: names of art we know being like gw1:File:"Ascalon City" concept art.jpg and those we don't have the name of being like gw1:File:Asura concept art.jpg. I suggest using this format because:

It's practical
It's easy to enforce
It shows when images are officially or unofficially named
And it works.

If agreed upon - or at least not disagreed with - I will be happy to do the moving (and I shall dig for images that were missed as well), as I did such for the GWW's concept art images. Konig/talk 03:24, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Where would you place numerals in the imminent event where multiple unofficially named files of the same category (I.E. "Asura") exist? Other than that this system is clear and has my support. - Infinite - talk 03:27, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

The GWW puts them at the end (example: gw1:File: Asura concept art 2.jpg) but usually lacks any numeral for the first of them (this was created mid-movement of the images over there so there are some that are numbered based on the official name or also have a 1 at the end). I think that'd be a lot easier for searching as well, compared to the current system of # concept art. Konig/talk 03:33, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I feel it's realistic to state that concept art pieces that have no official name will not/never exceed 99. Therefore I'd go for a double digit numeral system, starting with 01 and ending with 99. Any number above that is just something we shouldn't reasonably expect to occur. Maybe a bot run for these moves—as well as the altering of old links—is essential? - Infinite - talk 03:38, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

The reason why GWW doesn't have a number for the first is what if there's only one? Do you still add it (wouldn't doubt Erasculio did)? What if there's only one, and latter on another with the same name or subject with lack of name is found - do you move the old one? If so, that's no long-lasting just as the current form isn't. Whatever numbering process there is, imo, it should start with 2 (or 02). And yes, none will ever exceed 99, unless we get all concept art ever and they all lack names (and that's just a possibly exceed), but I fail to see why adding a 0 adds anything to the system. Konig/talk 04:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm worrying about the display order in the category. A computer wouldn't order the single digits correctly because it doesn't understand, right? - Infinite - talk 10:17, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Edit:When combined with double digits in the same ordering system, that is. - Infinite - talk 10:18, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

It'll be rare for images to reach 20. Unnumbered images go to the end (due to the lack of a space), and 10-19 would go before 2, but I don't see how big of an issue that really is. It'd be bothersome to have to move unnumbered to "01" names, imo. Konig/talk 19:37, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

We have a bot that can quickly and effortlessly move those for us, though. Armor concept art alone surpasses 20 already, which is why I've my concerns. I'd rather have the computer sort numerals as we would, without having to add a 0 up front. - Infinite - talk 19:54, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

You mean like this list that I started a year ago, after the art image discussions. Nothing was ever done with it, even after I ask for a bot to do it. So every now and again I get around to doing a few images when I remember. But yes, I agree that a bot would be better at doing such a task; however, if someone would want it done sooner, it's apparent that a person must get to it. Venom20

19:59, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Infinite, I don't think you grasp what I'm trying to do here. A good number of those armor concept art images have official names, so won't be named "Armor concept art" - for instance, File:Armor 05 concept art (Shining Blade female).jpg would be renamed to File:"Shining Blade female" concept art.jpg. On top of that, "Armor concept art" is overly generic and, in some cases, can be made more specific - for example, File:Armor 21 concept art.jpg can be renamed to File:Heavy armor concept art.jpg and File:Armor 23 concept art.jpg can be renamed to File:Plant armor concept art.jpg or File:Sylvari armor concept art.jpg. I am not saying to further Erasculio's naming convention, but to remove it. So there won't be 26 "Armor concept art" images, but 14 at most (this is if we were to be unable to find official names and keep the general name at simply "Armor").
As an addendum, I'd also change the various GDC images so that they're named to what we know they are (we learned a lot since the GDC slideshows). Konig/talk 20:40, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I see now. Yes, you're right, that is more efficient. Supported. - Infinite - talk 20:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I found the previous image naming to be annoying to maintain. Especially when something as simple as using different case in the templates messed with the image order anyway. I see that you're use the quotes to show you know the real name, but I have to say that I'm not much of a fan. -- aspectacle

15:24, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Well then, how would you show when the actual image name is known? Konig/talk 17:25, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry that was unhelpful of me. My feeling is that for many of the concept art images for a game they're not so much named as labelled with what or where they are. That we've collected that name doesn't feel especially relevant to me. Or at least not to the point where something which bugs me (like using quotes in a file name) is necessary. Perhaps including it on the image's page perhaps, along with other things which might be helpful to record - we're using categories for authors, but maybe date or more information about how it relates to what is in game? -- aspectacle

21:03, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

That sounds like major over-categorizing to me. Denoting what it is as a comment on the file name wouldn't be harmful, but still - how would you find the actual name apart from a fan-given name? And I would disagree that they don't have titles so much as descriptive titles - some, sure, but certainly not all (and of course, often they are one and the same). Konig/talk 21:18, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting further categories, just the addition of text to the image's page. And while I see your point about telling fan vs official name apart at the file name level (and I see that adding a note to each of the pages where we do know a name will be a pain) does it really matter whether we can tell that at a glance? Anyways, while I don't like the quotes in the file name, I'm not that worried about it either. Carry on. :) -- aspectacle

22:54, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I would argue yes, telling the difference between player and official names is important. It gives us insight to original plans or internal names (for instance, kurzick and luxon concept art from Factions are all dubbed "Goth" and "Nomad" which were internal names for each - similarly we got internally used names for various NF locations thanks to such). And for one major example, among the Prophecies concept art you can find gw1:File:"City of Gods" concept art.jpg, which we would never have known was of Arah without the official name, and if we couldn't see that it was an official name without digging, I can bet it would have been tagged for renaming under "false descriptive name" or some such. Konig/talk 01:32, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Just for clarity's sake, is there any disagreement with altering the concept art system into what I proposed? Seems everyone became convinced/came to agreement on what I originally posted. If no complaints by Friday, I'll go ahead and start moving them around. Konig/talk 05:14, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I got the feeling you know what you're doing so go ahead with it. :P Filenames are chaotic and it'd be nice if the names were more descriptive. Mediggo 06:41, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Let's talk semantics

This discussion has been archived to Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Semantic MediaWiki

I am beginning to draft the semantic data model for this wiki at [[User:Dr ishmael/SMW]]. Feel free to contribute with any ideas you may have. Currently, the only aspects of the game I really feel familiar with are skills, traits, and crafting - that leaves weapons, armor, all other items, locations, NPCs, and lots of other stuff that I don't know much about, so I'll need everyone's input on what properties should be set up for those types of articles. —Dr Ishmael 01:51, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

This section is currently buried in a fearsome wall-o'-text in many topics--might I suggest to the audience at large a new header or some other methods of cleaning/archival to facilitate easier feedback? Redshift 02:32, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Done! —Dr Ishmael

03:02, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Newbie design questions

Since I'm new here and don't know all the discussions that have been held about these issues, or even whether they'be been discussed at all, I'm going to be frank and give my opinion on a couple things.

First, I think the current design for both trait and skill lists with the giant row headers is horrible. It honestly took me about 5 minutes to figure out what was going on there. Splitting up huge lists like that with section headers makes it much easier to parse the data.

Also, why is all the color formatting done at the element level and derived from templates? I know that's how GWiki/GWW did it, and it's more flexible if the colors are going to be changing often, but the color schemes here are pretty well established, which makes it more efficient to use classes and set the style rules in Common.css. It also makes it easy for users to customize specific colors in their own Common.css if, for example, someone thinks the default Engineer colors are too dark.

If either of those have been discussed, please link me to it so I can understand the reasoning behind the decisions. —Dr Ishmael 16:54, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Stubbing articles

I think we should forgo the use of {{stub}} until after the game is released:

Technically, all articles are currently stubs: the game hasn't been released, so they cannot possibly be "complete."
- In some cases, we haven't even decided how to format/layout articles.
- Designating some articles as stubs gives the impression that other articles are complete. Since this cannot be true, it's misleading.
Stubbing now means there's a good chance that we won't know when to remove the stub tag later.
- GWW still has articles that were stubbed since the day they were created.
- This tends to affect secondary articles (since people tend to notice stub notes on heavily trafficked pages).

Instead, I propose that we reserve the {{stub}} designation for when we can point to specific data/information missing from the article. For example, {{stub|Missing cost data}} for an item or {{stub|missing recipe(s)}} for a crafted material. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:39, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I tend to agree, stub tags are often uninformative, unnecessary, and overstay their welcome. People become wary of removing them when there's no reason given. Manifold

05:25, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

The point of a stub is to denote whether or not the article has all known information. As such, it is possible for an article to not be a stub simply because all known information has been recorded. With the BWE, however, most articles have become stubs, but there are still "complete until further notice" kinds of articles. Konig/talk 07:22, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I think the reason should be compulsory. I've no objection to using the stub tag as long as the person adding it identifies what is missing. That way when someone works on an article they can feel comfortable that they have addressed the stub status and remove it, or the reason for the stub can be discussed. Perhaps then stub tags could be held to the same standards delete tags are held to? -- aspectacle

16:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I tend to delete stub tags when I see a page of sufficient length or content. The point about stub pages on GWW is a sore point. It was irritating that nobody would remove it even though most of the sections are there already. I'd support not using it unless there's formatting/layout article that can be used to explain what's missing. -- ab.er.rant

07:00, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps we could replace the stub tag with a collapsible box on the side of the article with a list of stuff needed. (I'll make a mock up in my sandbox in a second.) But yeah, stub tags are generally useless at this point. Aqua (T|C) 02:21, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

A better future of stubs. Would something like that work better? Aqua (T|C) 02:29, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

"The point of a stub is to denote whether or not the article has all known information."

I think that's too loose a criterion. There are entire ideas that we cannot (yet) document b/c we have no more data on them than ANet's has let slip through in interviews (and b/c we haven't see how it works in a public beta). I don't think we should be saying that the Golem Banker (from the deluxe edition) is non-stub, even though we can't really say anything about how it works, while we still might be considering stubs for meatier articles.

On GWW, the day a new feature would come out, someone would create an article as stubbed and then there would be 47 immediate edits, eliminating the need for the tag ... but this wasn't obvious until weeks or months later. In practice, {{stub}} became a useless tag for determining what articles needed help. So while I might agree with the concept that stub=missing-known-data, I don't think it's helpful to the community.

Which is why I am proposing that (a) we don't use the tag at all until the game has been released and (b) we remove any {{stub}} tags unless they indicate a reason. That way, as folks browse the wiki, they can tag articles as stubs when they see a gap (and don't have the time or data to address it). The end result will be category:article stubs and/or category:articles with stubbed sections that we can use to address those gaps. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:31, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

I think a complex stub box as Aqua suggested is overkill. However, if we use one, the one in the mock up is excellent. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:32, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

The stub infobox is definitely too much. I see the stub tag working similar to the delete/move tags, where you can specify a reason that will display as part of the message (except it should somehow enforce a message, i.e. displaying "No stub criteria specified; please specify the reasons in the stub tag" or something if nothing is supplied). If that much detail is necessary, then the stubber can post the details on the talk page. —Dr Ishmael

03:05, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

I've always liked specific section stubs, myself. That shows specifically what information is missing while also suggesting where on the page it could be added.

04:49, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Summary of comments about stubbing

So far, I think there's general agreement that {{stub}} should be used sparingly (exactly how infrequently might require more discussion). So, for the purposes of guidelines/practices, I think we have agreed that:

Don't use a stub on a new article or if it's generally obvious that the article is incomplete.
Only consider using a stub when the article looks substantially complete, but isn't.
- And include (as an unnamed/unused parameter) the things that are missing from the article.
- That means we can generally err on the side of removing {{stub}} unless there's a compelling reason to keep it.

Is that a fair summary? – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:10, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

I can agree to that. As for how sparingly to use it, I think that's probably best determined on a case-by-case basis and a as-we-go-along thingy. -- ab.er.rant

10:06, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Suggestions for new standards for city pages.

Hey - I thought it would be great if we had a section in the infobox with Races in the city, and languages spoken in the city. I would also like it to be a standard to have a section of Notable Characters in each city page. What do you think? TheFrageN 23:41, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

as I said on the main page (u should have used a {{move}} tag) From the last bwe I don't remember anyone speaking in another language that wasn't English.-

Zesbeer 23:56, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Any race can be in any city - Lion's Arch has probably 10 different races in it (I've seen things from centaurs and quaggan to kodan and ogres), and the racial home cities also have at least one of every other race in it. Therefore denoting that is pointless. All races use the same language, except in rare story-based points (if then). How do you define notable characters? Most of the plot-driven ones are in instances, not the persistent cities themselves. Short of that, you pretty much have community-made notable ones like Dougal Keane which becomes... so few and pointless. And if you go lower then you have every named NPC which is way too many and would be better off listing them in their individual "section areas."

tl;dr No. Konig/talk 00:03, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd go with adding one more item: the race the city primarily belongs to, or runs by, or some other more appropriate term. NPC sections would be better off being in the pages on the zones/sub-areas instead, IMO. -- ab.er.rant

10:11, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Location terminology

So we got City, Region, Dungeon, and Point of Interest... but what shall we officially unofficially call areas such as Plains of Ashford and Godslost Swamp? The terms used to refer to them are fairly chaotic. I personally have been using "explorable zone" or "zone" for the former, but haven't really seen a consistency for either. Konig/talk 23:44, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Explorable Area or Zone would be the only choices in my honest opinion. TheFrageN 23:52, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

plains of ashford, is the name of a map and should be labeled explorable map, and godslost swamp is a zone in a explorable map so should be called a explorable zone. -

Zesbeer 00:01, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Do you mean any place with its own set of map unlocks (PoI/Waypoints) and potential overflow shards? In effect, they are a subsection of Region, parallel to Cities, so any of the following could work:

Generic terms: Area, Section, Sub-region, Zone
Evocative terms: Explorable, Wilderness
Adjective+generic: Explorable area, Wilderness area, External area (or substitute "zone" or "section" for "area").

If I were designing the game, I'd choose "Wilderness Area" or "Sub-region" (as most obviously comparable to City), but those don't have any solid foundation within the game, so I'm willing to go along with any of the above. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 00:02, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

here and here seem to be the only uses of the word "zone" on the official site, the first especially sounds like it refers to places like Plains of Ashford, (although the second uses "zone" in the same sentence as "explorable area" somewhat vaguely) so I'm for calling the 25 explorable areas "zones". Assuming there's no real official term for the smaller areas, I think the name we use should make it clear that it's smaller than a zone right in the name, such as "sub-". Manifold

00:15, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Explorer uses both "zone" and "area" (the descriptions use "area," the introduction uses "zone") – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 00:23, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Given the use of zone in the first of Manifold's links, I'd say we go with explorable zone (zone for short) for Plains of Ashford level stuff (btw, there's 24 not 25). I'm against using zone to indicate the smaller areas within (e.g., Godslost Swamp) because "zone" indicates that between them you're going to zone - or "zoning" as many MMOs, including GW1, use to refer to that action (which is why I was using explorable zone in the first place, in fact). Of the names suggested, "Section" sounds best for Godslost Swamp-leveled areas, but doesn't really sound... good. Edit: Based on the explorer titles, I'm guessing the tiers are counting the Godslost Swamp-leveled areas, I think calling those "areas" or "section" would be best, while Plains of Ashford-leveled be "zones." Konig/talk 00:27, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

"Zone" has always sounded too generic and game-mechanics-ish, I wish they would've used a better word than that. But, oh well. Similarly, "section" sounds too mechanical, and "area" is way too generic - there's no obvious connotation that "area" denotes a part of a zone.

I would suggest "region" - its primary definition is as a part of a larger entity, so the relationship between region and zone is more readily apparent. —Dr Ishmael

01:20, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Region already refers to areas like Kryta, Shiverpeak Mountains and so forth, when not used in the generic form which is pretty much just as ambiguous as "section" or "area." Konig/talk 01:27, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Bleh. In that case, I give up. —Dr Ishmael

01:42, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

...precinct? I dunno. :( --Xu Davella 02:30, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

A comprehensive proposal

It's best to keep them similar to the terms used in GW1, rather try to re-define the same words to mean something else, so I've been thinking of them like so:

Region - As it right now; referring to a large logical domain that encompasses one or more cities and explorable areas.
City - A variation/special type of explorable area.
Dungeon - A variation/special type of explorable area.
Explorable area - The domain shown by the area map.
Explorable zone - A sub-area within an explorable zone. In GW1, there wasn't any special term for this; it just sort of folded into "landmark", regardless of size (e.g. the Ascalon Settlement).
Point of interest - Essentially what's termed a "landmark" in GW1, except now there are official markers on the map.

Zone by definition is a division of something, so having zones subdividing an area fits nicely. So Continent -> Region -> Explorable area -> Explorable zone -> Point of interest. -- ab.er.rant

10:17, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I think explorable area = zone. More like in GW1, right? Mediggo 10:44, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Ayup, hashing this out was never going to be elegant. Regions indeed had already been used for the largest domain, and I agree that 'zone' and 'area' have been used pretty interchangeably on the next level. I also agree that if we were to try to make one smaller than the other, zone would be the larger of the two--'zone' has a more encompassing connotation as already put forth above per Konig, and 'area' is more flexible. I don't know if any other options will really surpass the generic utility of 'area,' but 'locale' and 'setting' are the ones I'll toss in the mix (provided they're not already used for something else :P). Redshift 12:55, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm good with Ab.er.rant's proposal. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:17, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Has the word "explorable" been used in any official way? It would be simpler if we could stick to one-word identifiers (point of interest being an obvious exception, since that's an in-game term). —Dr Ishmael

16:53, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd rather not use "explorable" since that term is used for the explorable mode/explorable versions of dungeons. Manifold

18:00, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I feel zone should be bigger than area as well. 'Zoning' often used when going through a portal and getting a load screen. My braincells are not what they use to be, but as I recall in BWE, when first coming to a place like.. Godslost Swamp, don't you get the message, "You have discovered a new area" in-game. Kenrid 01:54, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok, let's swap area and zone; good point Kenrid, I believe I recall that notification message too. @Ishmael, I actually do prefer to drop the "explorable" too (shorter name ftw), but I was just thinking about walkthroughs, when people usually use the word "area" to refer to a specific spot on the map, e.g. "Clear out the area and then...", that sort of wordings. Or maybe I'm just too caught up with the terminology used in GW1. -- ab.er.rant

10:59, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Ok, so let's rank the definitions of areas from largest to smallest...

Region, which can contain all the following...
- City - each region typically has one?
  - Area - each city has x number of subareas, like Rurikton or Hero's Canton
    - Points of Interest and waypoints
- Zone - Each region has multiple zones (
  - Area - zones contain subareas like Beetletun or Svanir's Dome
    - Points of Interest and waypoints
  - Dungeon - AFAIK, there are no dungeon entrances in cities, so technically they are part of zones?

Something like that? Mediggo 12:56, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

That sounds right to me. Dungeons I would refer to as an Instance. Like Home Instance, a few small areas in cities are instance as well (Throne room, Eir's home, etc.), and Storyline quests. Kenrid 15:40, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

One thing though, why would a city not be also be a zone? It certainly acts like one. You go through a loading screen to get to it. I still think a city is better off as a type of zone. Do we know of any significant differences between cities and zones (aside from the presence of hostile foes of course)? -- ab.er.rant

15:58, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Cities do act like instanced zones just big ones and they do take you off of your home server since you need to queue to get back to your home server Rudhraighe 16:11, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Cities are parallel to the wilderness zone (yeah, I'm using a different term, since we haven't agreed on the terminology yet), but I think they are worth distinguishing: no foes, waypoint-travel is free, they have banks, access to the home instance, and, as noted, no foes. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:26, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Hierarchically, though, cities and zones are the same. They have distinguishing features, obviously, but in practical terms a city is simply a special type of zone. —Dr Ishmael

16:47, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Hierarchically? Sure. Practical terms? Only in a programming sense. All the differences I mentioned above are notable differences from a player's perspective. Gaming in the wilderness means being alert and not having access to certain game features (or not as readily); being in a city means not having to worry about getting ambushed by centaurs.

Consequently, I think it's more intuitive for players if we distinguish cities from zones. However, if that's the only sticking point in implementing the most recent suggestion, I'll drop any objection — I think it's more important that we have a sustainable set of terms we can start using now. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:02, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there's any objection to distinguish cities from normal zones. It was about how to define cities. Do we say "A city is a special kind of zone where ..." or do we say "A city is a type of location within a region where ...". Or something like that. Similar to how you'd distinguish dungeon instances from personal story instances. They're just different kinds of the same type (if that makes sense).

Let's just get the terms fixed first. Zone? Wilderness zone? Explorable zone? Obviously, if we use "wilderness zone", we can't say "a city is a special type of zone". But wilderness sounds "less correct" compared to "explorable" though, you'd hardly label Queensdale as "wilderness"... countryside, yes, but wilderness? -- ab.er.rant

09:40, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Wilderness won't do it. Explorable area sounds nice to my ear, but explorable zone not so much (too much GW1? I dunno). Also, since dungeons can be "explorable," as said above, it'd be good idea to leave it out entirely. When it comes to cities, however... I'd prefer them being "independent" parts of region instead of "monster-restricted zones." Mediggo 09:56, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm for simply using zone for the non-city, um, class...(darnit) level... (ugh) whatever zones. An additional note for 'wilderness' (and city, I suppose) is that it won't necessarily always be the case that things are such, especially if there's a return to using city settings a la Factions. Redshift 11:47, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

In regards to dungeons: Caudecus's Manor and Ascalonian Catacombs, at the very least, are also points of interest, but in terms of hierarchy, instances can be either on par to areas or PoI (using Mediggo's listing which I agree upon). In regards to cities: other than the noted differences, they are also for all levels, have no events, but also have mini-games as well as currently being the only known case of having access to non-dungeon instances (including, as mentioned, home instances). If pressed, we can define them as "City zones" versus "Explorable zones" (I prefer the term explorable as it's familiar to GW players). Konig/talk 12:06, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

"cities ... the only known case of having access to non-dungeon instances" Not exactly - plenty of storyline instances are accessed outside of cities, e.g. Chasing the Culprits and The Informant. —Dr Ishmael

12:10, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I do not consider personal story instances to be locations, which is what I was referring to. Another way to put it would be "non-dungeon permanent instances" - e.g., things like Seraph Headquarters. Konig/talk 12:12, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of "countryside" vs "cities" — it might be an invention of the wiki, but it makes intuitive sense (and sort of parallels the concept of "provincial" vs "parisien"). The default terms would work fine ("explorable" or "explorable zone" or "explorable area"). Unfortunately, those terms are unevocative and, well, dull, i.e. unworthy of the game. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 15:29, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Countryside? I think that could only apply to Kryta. None of the other regions can even be thought as "countries" or "nations" since they're so befuddled with conflict and wildlife. Mediggo 15:39, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

TEF, your vehemency to create a new term to prelude the true term just does not work. Wilderness, countryside, provincial, etc. do not work for all areas. Queensdale is very much countryside, as is Diessa Plataeu, and probably Gendarran Fields, but the rest? No, not really. And for "wilderness" the only ones we can say are wilderness that we've been to is... well, no where. Maybe the third area of the Maguuma Jungle, but not even Kessex Hills because wilderness=devoid of major settlements, and every area we know of is such. Just go with explorable - it's accurate, it's been used, its familiar to long-standing GW community folks, and its already used. Konig/talk 22:08, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Suggestion: Town instances

Region - everything that is in Kryta IS in Kryta.
- City - One per region, Rata Sum in Maguuma Jungle, Lion's Arch in Sea of Sorrows (it's practically their domain)?
  - Area - each city has x number of subareas, like Rurikton or
    - "Town instances" - home instances and any permanent instance within a city such as Seraph Headquarters (not single step of unique personal story). This would also contain city dungeons, should there be any.
    - Points of Interest, waypoints
- Explorable zone - for example, Queensdale
  - Area - subareas of a single explorable zone (Township of Claypool, Old Duke's Estate...)
    - Dungeons and other instances, if any
    - Points of Interest, waypoints

Mediggo 07:03, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Mechanically speaking, I think there's only 3 kinds of instances: dungeons, personal story steps, and plain old instances. Home instances are simply a large form of the last and will supposedly change as you go through the personal story. Dungeons are an even larger form which contains dynamic events and the like. Personal story steps are unique unto themselves, being devoid of events and being one-time only. I do not consider personal story steps to be a location, and as such I don't think there's a need to say something is a "town instance" as opposed to a simple instance (similarly, dungeons are unique enough that they can be categorized by themselves rather than as an instance). Furthermore, personal stories don't use the {{Location infobox}} whereas the rest either do or, imo, should. Konig/talk 07:46, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

That's just as fine. Instances (and dungeons), then, without prefixes. And no personal story single-shot instances, either... Did I present that unclearly? Mediggo 07:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Sort of. The way you wrote it above seems like you're differentiating between "town instances and dungeons and other instances". I'm with Konig here in the sense that we can just call them "Instanced areas" or something and we're good to go on the terminology. -- ab.er.rant

02:35, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm... new question. Is the Mists a region? Or does it sit on the same level as "continent"? If it's a region... I'm having trouble deciding how to classify the locations within the Mists. -- ab.er.rant

09:13, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd argue continent, because it's not in Tyria or another continent. But that term isn't exactly accurate, as it isn't a continent or region - it's another world, more or less. I would say that it sits at the same level as continent but lacks any region (in-game that is; "The Rift" could arguably act as region-level from a lore perspective, but we haven't seen the Rift in GW2 yet). Konig/talk 09:36, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Mobile accessibilty

I'm not sure if this is the proper place for suggestions, sorry if it's not.

I was thinking with GW2 coming out during the age of Mobile devices It would be nice to have a mobile interface for the wiki to make it more accessible to users. I'm not sure what extension wikipedia uses for it's mobile interface, but something similar to that here would be very nice indeed for users.

Possibly something as simple as this extension: Extension:MobileFrontend

Wynterarwynrose 04:34, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be nice but when ever I run into mobile interfaces I turn them off because they are so different from the original site.-

Zesbeer 11:03, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

It really depends on whether you want to just view and read the wiki or edit it. I find editing on mobile, especially on touch screen, quite difficult. If a simple solution to enable more mobile device-friendly interface and layout for wiki is available, then it could be put to good use. I've seen a bunch of people explaining in summary notes how editing by mobile is tedious. Mediggo 11:09, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm running a private project to support mobile access if the extension is not going to be installed. I hope this project ends up being superfluous, though. - Infinite - talk 12:03, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Definitely a good idea. It looks like it will require a bit of work to get it configured properly, though, so it probably won't be a quick fix. —Dr Ishmael

13:32, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Skill and Effect VERBATIM Descriptions

Based on my experience with GW1 wiki's, skill descriptions have always been the verbatim, in-game descriptions (even including typos).
In the GW2 skill tooltips, the description of any effects are separate. I believe they should ALSO be verbatim (and in the same order), as per the in-game descriptions.
QUESTION: Has there been a consensus, in the Community, that descriptions of effects WILL or WILL NOT be in-game verbatim??? If there has NOT been a discussion about this issue can we start/resolve one? To me it seems arbitrary to have verbatim for one, but not the other. I'm aware the game is still in beta... but since I can't play, I can at least update skills, as I see them in BWE/Stress test videos ;-)
A perfect example is Shield of Absorption. I have updated the skill to the in-game description of, "Create a dome around you that Pushes foes back and Absorbs projectiles." The problem is that the in-game effect description says, "Knockback distance: 100". It does NOT say, "Push: 100". I don't care if the Dev's will change the effect to say "Push distance: 100". I don't care if they use "Push" in the skill and "Knockback" for the effect. I just need to know the (hopefully logical) consensus of the Communtiy, so I can make my edits, as things 'currently' appear in the game.
If we WILL be adding verbatim skill effect descriptions... then I need some help/info about coding. Is there a way to modify

{Skill fact|push|100}

Knockback: 100

to have the Push icon/linking, but display the ACTUAL in-game description of "Knockback distance: 100"? I know how to do [LINK|displayed link name], but that's it.

ADDITIONALLY: What will be the procedure if there is an in-game discrepancy between the skill tooltip and the in-game skills page? Which should take precedence? In my mind it should be the tooltip, as that is the one players will interact with the majority of the time. Thanks, in advance, for any feedback/help. Frostty1 14:06, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

:: Assuming that we will be doing verbatim... This is the best I can come up with. I know next to nothing about HTML... or whatever. I am literally learning all this today. If NOTHING ELSE... my attempt will give someone who knows the proper... way a good laugh. BUT, I expect some consideration for trying to work my way through it :-P

Frostty1 14:32, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you Dr Ishmael for providing the answer on HOW to do it here http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Shield_of_Absorption Frostty1 14:44, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Non-English wiki support?

A question/suggestion was posted on my talk page regarding non-English wiki support on the official GW2W. Now I know there are a couple issues here;

We only offer (American) English documentation, and no plans have been drawn out to change this in the direct and nearby future.
We are the official wiki; collaboration with unofficial wikis may not be in our hands.
We can't control the unofficial wiki's documentation, so supporting them may be a liability on our side.
We don't know if ArenaNet has plans to extend the official wiki to include multiple languages yet.
Other notes I may be overlooking, mainly revolving around licensing and technical limitations.

That said, the idea sketched by this wiki is that we could possibly have a link to the non-English wikis' articles of the same name in the navigation. This allows for inter-wiki translations of the same information, much like wikipedia does by itself.

Needless to say, it would be extremely useful for readers to use the in-game wiki integration to have a special shortcut to the wiki of their native language (via ours). However, I am not the only member of this community to make this call so I've listed a couple of issues above, as well as given a minor introduction to the suggested change.

The rest is up to the community (and ArenaNet). - Infinite - talk 21:45, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Pretty sure we can't do anything unless Anet does something, as I doubt we can link to an unofficial wiki from here until the non-english wiki is rebuilt into official capacity and hosted on Anet's servers. The whole reason for the official wiki is to basically allow linking between the game and the wiki (like the in game help), and guildwiki's licensing agreement wasn't compatible with that goal. I'm sure it's something that the Anet localization team has to consider, but I think it'll be an idea that Anet should seriously consider, and allow ingame help to go to the appropriate language wiki. Edit: as far as the brazilian GW2W goes it's under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license which as far as I know is not compatible with GFDL, mainly the non-commercial aspect of the creative commons license they used. --Lania

22:23, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

do not most browsers include a translator these days like IE and Bing as well as Chrome and Google and others?

i am not opposed to providing a link page to "Native Language Wiki's" like the Fansite or the individual Guild Pages but not direct links from within articles or main pages.

we should try to use punctuation and language that translates readily into any "Official GW2 Language"

as for allowing direct linking and copying of articles or images.. see below -v

we should never ever do anything that risks the ire of the creator. Rudhraighe 22:31, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Whatever legal issues may be aside, the idea is a very good one.

Also, about "browsers includ[ing] a translator": speaking from person experience, translators are incredibly crude and rarely follow correct grammatical structure. They also lack any kind of flow; when someone takes the time to write a translation out, they can both convey the information while presenting it in a clear, flowing way. Aqua (T|C) 22:35, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

There are also cultural nuances in language too, something that the automatic translator always misses. If Anet is on-board with it this will be a great idea. But like I said im sure there are some legal hurdles that the Anet's legal team has to sort out first. Also Each non-english wiki will have to be self-sufficient with its own set of policies, sysops, etc, but I'm sure some of us multi-lingual users will be able to help out on the other nonenglish wikis. --Lania

22:45, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Every other issue here aside: If they're doing their wiki as a direct translation of ours, they need to be GFDL, else they're breaking our copyrights. - Tanetris 22:50, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

From a technical standpoint, MW supports this inherently, so it's easy to setup. The only backend change we need is to define an interwiki link for 'pt-br' that points to http://guildwars2brasil.com.br/wiki/$1. Then, anyone can place an interwiki link in the form [[pt-br:Página principal]] on any page, and MW will put that link in an "Other languages" box at the bottom of the sidebar. You can see this pretty much anywhere on Wikipedia, and most pages on GuildWiki have a link to GuildWiki.de.

Legal issues aside, the biggest job will be adding those links to every page. If someone compiled a correspondence list of en<->pt-br page names, that could be handled by a bot. —Dr Ishmael

23:28, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

If the link is part of the navigation (so not the actual article), could it not be in the format [[<prefixed inter-wiki link format>:{{FULLNAMEPAGE}}]] to avoid having to actually put effort into this? Or is that technically impossible? - Infinite - talk 23:34, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

It has to point to the page on the foreign wiki, i.e. [[<language code>:<foreign wiki pagename>]]. {{(FULL)PAGENAME}} is the local pagename, which only works if the pagename is a direct cognate in the other language. —Dr Ishmael

23:42, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) The magnitude of the facepalm I just executed is currently being defined by a seismograph. - Infinite - talk 23:44, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what Anet will say, but if we cannot link to other fansites via inter-wiki linking, I definitely think we should include a "Wikis in other languages" article which is prominently linked. Such an article could easily contain disclaimers so Anet wouldn't have to worry about official status or no, and the legal stuff. (At least I hope so.) - anja

06:58, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

If the best we can do on our end is to make sure the foreign wikis (that want to translate this wiki) run on GFDL, then I think Anja's idea is a good supplement. --Xu Davella 07:11, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Though it may or may not have been explicitly stated in the discussion for the List of fansites page, I do think it fair to say that there was support (in that many of the comments tried to make it clear that they were not in the scope of contested listing) for visibility for other-language versions of the Wiki. Redshift 14:03, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi GW2W, this is Valento (who suggested the idea to Infinite). First, thanks Infinite for bringing this to the community, and thanks everyone for discussing about this. As I said in Infinite's talk page efforts are being made to keep everything in order, this includes changing the licensing and contacting ArenaNet ourselves, I hope to have everything all set very soon (the administrator Qoff has been contacting ArenaNet since yesterday).
As for the {{FULLPAGENAME}} it indeed works now, since we don't get much help in our wiki I had to create a standard for page names and what I firstly came up with is: Every article's *name* will be in English since the brazilian community will be playing the English version it seems better to index the pages in such a way they can search and come up with the correct article ('Profissão' doesn't bring anything, but 'Profession' brings the exact article). Also, listings like this and categories, which gather information or categorizes stuff will be translated as it seems more intuitive to our readers. What has been said by Aqua is true, Chrome translator or ANY translator don't do the job right, I can tell you the translation is weird, incorrect, sometimes the order of things gets all messed up misleading readers, and it becomes totally unnatural. - 201.24.9.137 14:31, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Hm, I hadn't thought of that - since the game does not include a Portuguese translation, players in Brazil would have to "default" to one of the provided languages, e.g. English. Thus it makes sense for you to keep the article titles in English. That would indeed allow us to use MW's magic words for interlanguage links to GW2BRWiki.

However, that won't be the case if we ever add interlanguage links to French, German, and Spanish wikis, because the game does have (or will have) official translations for those languages, and thus they won't need to use the English names for the page titles. —Dr Ishmael

16:40, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes I know, because of this it's somehow simpler, we don't know when (if ever) ArenaNet will localize the game into pt-br, but sincerely it's not too urgent or even necessary, it's just that it is easier for people to understand the mechanics if they're well explained in their native languages (as well as the beautiful amazing lore).

Even I will have problems to adequate the wiki because since very long the GW2BR wiki has been using a Translation template to state that every article is a translation from the original English article, I still need to learn how to use BOTs heheh. :) - 201.24.9.137 16:50, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Back to the original point of this discussion, I think we should include/allow interlanguage links wherever feasible - especially to wikis in the other supported languages:

GuildWiki2.de is an independent project (GFDL 1.3).
GuildWars2-wiki.es is a translation project, like the Brazilian one (GFDL 1.2).
Can't find an active French wiki - there was one on Wikia, but it's dead.

There can't be any legal issues with simply providing links to foreign-language wikis, can there? —Dr Ishmael 21:17, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

As long as the other wiki uses the same or compatible license agreement as GFDL 1.2 and there is a clear warning that the link takes you to a non-official site with some liability waiver statement etc, then I think it is okay. But I think someone with more knowledge in wiki legal matters should comment. :P --Lania

21:23, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Anyone with half a brain should notice that they're not on the guildwars2.com domain anymore, thus it's a different site not owned by Anet. But legal technicalities always trump common sense, right? Ugh. >.> —Dr Ishmael

21:30, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Well scratch that above comment. I think linking to external wikis can fall under the umbrella of "external links". If there is a place that is appropriate for those links, I think we can provide them... but I can't think of a single page where they might belong to. Maybe the localization section of the FAQ? --Lania

21:37, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

See above for my explanation of how interlanguage links work - it's not something we can place on a "single page" since the links are unique to each article. —Dr Ishmael

22:05, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh yeah right, totally forgot about the above discussion... haha I'm tired ~_~ . While in that case it won't fall under the umbrella of external links, I think Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:General_disclaimer will still take care of anything that might go awry. --Lania

22:17, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I think we should make the link to List of non-English wikis (or List of fansites, which transcludes the wiki list) more prominent, e.g. in the support navigation links or toolbox nav.

It's a lot of effort with a relatively-low reward to create foreign language links on every article. Double this each time a non-English wiki becomes substantial enough to link.
If the main navbar includes a link to the list of wikis (or individual links to each), then anyone can get to the non-English wiki article quickly.
The ultimate goal would be for ANet to support non-English wikis more directly, so that pressing F10 would take you to a .de site if your language preferences are set to Deutsch.

Is there any reason to delay linking to the list of non-English wikis? – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 00:28, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

As a page of links, it's fine. As a interwiki link visible on every page? I think we should clarify things with ArenaNet first. Despite it seemingly obvious that you're leaving the guildwars2.com domain, you can't entirely rule out the possibility that someone will think that these are also "official" wikis". I support TEF's idea of just putting the list of other wikis on the navigation panel. -- ab.er.rant

02:31, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

As far as the amount of work goes, I think most of it can be done by a bot. A full on implementation of interwiki linking can cause a lot of confusions but I like the implementation on guilwiki. It totally makes sense since it is a non-official wiki, interlinking with other non-official wikis. Since I can't find any examples of official wikis interlinking with non official ones, I would feel more comfortable if Anet has some input into this or if their plans to host non-english wikis has changed or not. --Lania

19:43, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

You're right Lania, I actually didn't think about interwiking this way (official wikis linking to unofficial ones); if ArenaNet likes the idea it'll be cool, if not it'll be OK too, I just thought this would be relevant for discussing. We'll be still linking every page from our wiki (GW2BR) to the official for purposes of validating the informations (Valento). - 201.24.9.137 05:11, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Other-language linking

(Reset indent)I had a chat with various people at the studio about this topic and we agreed that a general page listing existing unofficial GW2 wikis (as is currently done) is fine. However we feel that having permanent links in the NavBar or using interwiki to link deeper to articles is not a good idea. The reasoning behind this is that we support four languages in the game and are in close contact with the corresponding communities thanks to dedicated community managers. So we have a close relationship with the official wikis and are responsible for many technical aspects. This relationship is completely different for the other wikis where the language barrier makes things a lot more difficult for us. As always, please let me know your thoughts. Thanks.--Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:16, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

We have already added interwiki links with the official non english GW2 wikis since that just seems natural to link official wikis together. I think the community was still ambivalent about non official wikis but I guess your response makes things clear. No interwiki linking with non official wikis then :). Also having official non-english wikis kinda lessens the need for the non-official alternatives. --Lania

19:33, 07 June 2012 (UTC)

We actually worked on the German and French GW2 wikis with interwiki in mind, so it's by design because we want to have a "family" of official wikis. It's good that everyone is embracing this. I wanted to be clear with the message above, in case there's more discussion by the communities on this topic, and in particular for all the unofficial wikis. I should add that ArenaNet trully values the work that these wiki do and would like to thank them.--Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:37, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I completely understand, although the br fan-base is mostly adult people and most of them can read/write/understand (at least at basic level) English, there are some who do not know the language or prefer to read the information in portuguese for taste purposes; I enjoy editting our wiki and I'm sure other unofficial wiki communities think the same, as long as you guys allow us to continue, we'll be glad to spread the word about Guild Wars 2. :) - Valento 19:56, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify, is it ok to have that "Other languages" sidebar link, which has a list of unofficial wikis? I'm not sure if by "permanent links in the NavBar" you mean specific links to individual unofficial wikis, or a general link to a list of unofficial wikis (as it is right now). pling

21:06, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm reading it as "having permanent links in the NavBar or using interwiki to link deeper to articles," meaning direct links to the other wikis. My concern is that having a link to "Other languages" in addition to a section for "Other languages" could be confusing. —Dr Ishmael

21:08, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

May I suggest to change this link to "List of unofficial wikis", it seems to make more sense as there may be English wikis that are not official around there. - Valento 22:41, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm a bit divided about this "Other language" link, so I'll share my thoughts about this topic.

I think a link to the German and French (later Spanish) wikis would reinforce the relationship between all wikis (and make it more accessible for people from these 2/3 communities). At the same time I imagine that it makes the NavBar a little bit longer. Aren't there plans for the English GW2 Wiki to install interwiki links like the German and French GW2 wikis are currently doing? If there are, then this link may be changed once the interwiki links kick in (to be confirmed).

I'm also worried that if many unofficial wikis pop up, the "Other Wikis" page is going to become confusing to the respective communities (e.g., which wiki shall I use?), although I'm not sure how likely this is. Another point to consider: a link on the NavBar (even if it's called "unofficial wikis") could lead players to believe that these wikis have a certain level of "official-ity" and, despite the fact that we appreciate the work of players are doing (after all German and French wikis started there), we don't want to give the wrong impression. Guild Wars 2 is not supported in these languages and it may be misleading people to have a wiki linked from the official wikis.

Last but not the least, I'm wondering what should be in the red text above the list of unofficial wikis. Shall we make clear what the difference between official and unofficial clearer is, for example by highlighting ArenaNet's role and impact on the wiki?

Let me know what you think.--Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:59, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

We already have the interwiki links, and they are working - but only on Main Page and the profession articles right now, because they have to be added to each article individually. That's what is under the "Other languages" heading in the sidebar - inter-language interwiki links. They're like categories in that they don't produce an in-line link unless you prefix them with a colon, like [[:de:Hauptseite]] → de:Hauptseite.

Getting those links on every page is something that can be handled by a bot, and further down on this page, User:Till034 said that a bot is ready for at least one of the other wikis. —Dr Ishmael

23:27, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I was aware of Till's proposal since it's something that's already been used on the French and German wikis, but wasn't aware that this interwiki-fication has already started (manually that is). So this sort of confirms that it's been worked on. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 23:31, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I've sectioned this discussion off into its own sub; hope y'all don't mind. With regard to the linking concerns, I don't think that it would be overly long to have French/German/Spanish links on the side (at least not for non-mobile views, anyways). I do find it a little redundant to have 'Support' essentially re-link to an other-language wiki page when these individual links will eventually exist. I would also suggest (even though it might be completely contrary to what I just said) that individual links be added to the 'Wiki Community' panel, simply because their omission from that panel otherwise comes off a bit odd, and yes, it is good practice to reinforce that relationship. As for non-official other-language wikis, my suggestion would be to simply continue to feature them on the first section of the List of fansites page (as they are) and couple that with some more explanatory text as Stephane has suggested. Thoughts? Redshift 01:58, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, assuming that we do eventually get the article-specific interlanguage links on every article (so that every page in mainspace has Deutsch/Español/François links under "Other languages"), would we really need generic links elsewhere in the sidebar that just go to the main page of the other wikis? I think that would be a bit redundant and would use too much space in the sidebar. [edit] Then I re-read your post, and found that you basically agree with what I said. Hehe, oops. —Dr Ishmael

02:06, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Copyright text

Shouldn't the MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning text be updated somehow? I suggest to change it to something like "Guild Wars franchise" or "Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2" to make it more clear. Or does it legally cover both Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 in that form already? - anja 20:40, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

As it is stated, it covers both already. While it doesn't explicitly say GW2, just by having that notice on a GW2W links that statement to GW2. I think if it is not clear enough, we can ask if Anet want's to change it since the page has only been edited by Anet staff members, and regular users can't touch it. --Lania

21:13, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

This was brought up on Emily's talk page a couple of years ago but with no response. Best to let Stephane know imo. pling

21:21, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Stephane is notified :) - anja

20:23, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent)I had the chance to review the text with our legal expert and we will proceed to make some changes. This text will also be consistent between all our four wikis. For your information, it will be based on the one we use for the Guild Wars Wiki, with an additional link to the Copyright page and the mention of "Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2" on all sites. Thanks to all of you for notifying me of this! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:06, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

icon size

Question: in {{Skill infobox}}, {{Item infobox}}, and other item-type infoboxes, why are the icons shown at a reduced size? Why don't we show them at the native game size of 64x64? —Dr Ishmael 16:37, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Pretty sure it's just a relic of a time long ago, when icons came from whatever we could rip out of demo videos. We needed some sort of uniform size, and 40x40 wouldn't weirdly stretch the smaller ones. Don't know of any particular reason not to change now. - Tanetris 01:10, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

The icon class needs to be fixed. Also, I'm not entirely sure that increasing the icon size by 50% is really a good idea; it looks kind of weird. Aqua (talk) 01:54, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Changing to 64px would require the infobox headers and size to be tweaked since it doesn't fit... also like aqua said, going from 40px to 64px does make it look weird and unbalanced, but if the infoboxes are redesigned to accommodate native icon size it'll prolly work. --Lania

04:49, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Bigger is better for me too. Considering how we're not going to be repeating the information within the infobox on the page itself, making the infobox more prominent is a good thing. -- ab.er.rant

05:27, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Rhoot posted a 'zip' file with a lot of icons in it. They are all the same size(?), but that archive file is a bit difficult to search. I'm uploading them with a gallery here. --Max 2 23:03, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I think the dimensions being discussed regard the icon in the infoboxes, rather than the actual icons. It would look weird if we simply make the icons in the infoboxes bigger, as they take up a lot of space that way.

Unless we scale the whole infobox up by the same degree? - Infinite - talk 23:45, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

For something like a skill that won't have any other image in the infobox, including crafting materials and other non-equipable items, I don't see why we can't display the icon at full size as the primary image like in GuildWiki's infoboxes. —Dr Ishmael

03:37, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Race Color template

I don't know where to find any color template on the wiki so I am asking my question here. Is it possible to add race color to the template color for table and such like profession do? Curently table color for racial are done (for the charr) with #960018, #E34234, #F08080. Could we get a template for the Race something like every profession does? ex:

{{E-color|light}}

for each race it would be something like this:

Asura {{Asura-color|light}} or {{A-color|light}} 
Charr {{Charr-color|light}} or {{C-color|light}}
Human {{Human-color|light}} or {{H-color|light}}
Norn {{Norn-color|light}} or {{No-color|light}}
Sylvari {{Sylvari-color|light}} or {{S-color|light}}

light is used as an exemple only there would be a dark, medium, light, lighter variation for each. Also, the first version is mostly in case of future profession in GW2 and the second one is meant to a be simplified version.Tech Wolf-Talk 22:44, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Whenever we get the site redesign implemented, that will mostly be handled by CSS classes - check them out at User:Alfa-R/monobook.css (search for /**COLORS CLASSES**/). There shouldn't be any need to explicitly specify a color code anymore after that. —Dr Ishmael

22:50, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

oh ok cool, then I'm just wondering when it will happen but I guess ill just wait and see when Alfa is done with the feedback from other user. Start Kneeling, Oh almighty Alfa, your CSS answer my question for a second time(throw money at screen). Thou you are too good. Tech Wolf-Talk 23:12, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

If I may add my several cents, the race color templates should be three characters (Asr, Chr, Hmn, Nrn, Syl) to prevent any potential conflict with profession color templates. Aqua (talk) 23:29, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, the names aren't that long anyway, except sylvari, so why not just use the full word, as opposed to some arbitrary short form? -- ab.er.rant

09:08, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Official French and German wikis

What the hell. http://wiki-de.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hauptseite http://wiki-fr.guildwars2.com/wiki/Accueil 17:14, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Pretty sure it was a special project behind the scenes; poke is an admin on the German wiki, whereas Chris and Till are admins on the French one. I am foreseeing additional links to be implemented. - Infinite - talk 17:19, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

GuildWiki2.de is announcing it, definitely looks like srs biznuss. —Dr Ishmael

17:37, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

They've officially announced both wikis, and the upcoming Spanish wiki via blog now. - Infinite - talk 17:38, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

That's awesome. It shows they're really serious about supporting the other major game languages. I was wondering where chriskang went. :) -- aspectacle

17:39, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Eeyup - blog —Dr Ishmael

17:43, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

And this would explain why they haven't had the resources to work on our MW upgrade. —Dr Ishmael

17:45, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

You may be right about that. On other news, it seems we are not user-linked with these new wikis.

***EAGLEMUT*** TALK 17:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Wow that just blew my mind... I thought that Anet said that they are only officially hosting the English language wiki. It's pretty nice for them to actually do an official wiki for the other languages tho :P. --Lania

18:00, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Real nice. And after this blogpost, i foresee an influx of new contributions, and plenty of fun for the admins to clean up ;-). Oh! Their homepages look better than our current one. Can we please push on a decision instead of this endless back-and-forth? --Ee 18:13, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I can imagine that we should have an "OTHER LANGUAGES" section in the navigation now. French, German, Other languages. - Infinite - talk 18:15, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah! Plus this will also mean that we can do the same guildwiki style of interwiki linking w/o any legal issues or troubles. :) --Lania

18:16, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Interwiki linking bot is ready, will post a request tomorrow ;) --Till034 18:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

First we have to get both wikis added to our interwiki table so that the links work - currently, [[de:Hauptseite]] and [[fr:Accueil]] generate inline redlinks, instead of going to an "Other languages" sidebar box, because our wiki doesn't recognize the interwiki prefixes 'de' and 'fr'. —Dr Ishmael

18:32, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Most interesting... I guess this answers the question posted above about the br wiki. Also I am jelly of the German main page lay out its interesting... (though I think alfa-r's newest one will be better)-

Zesbeer 19:38, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

There's been no official Portuguese wiki announced.

19:50, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

true but we at least now know that anet is thinking about that sort of thing. -

Zesbeer 19:54, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the blog post says the Spanish one will be the last one coming.

19:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

i don't know why French is taking precedence over Portuguese as Portuguese is more widely spoken/used than French. And French is a dead/stagnant language and only used/promoted by the french (and Parisians are hostile to Americans). Rudhraighe 20:15, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) It's because French, German, and Spanish are officially supported in the game client. —Dr Ishmael

20:16, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

~~(Edit conflict) Spanish is spoken by more than 500 million people in the world, whereas Portugese is only about 200 million. Spanish is a "world language," Portugese isn't.~~ - Infinite - talk 20:19, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

At least they have announced it. More than what we had before. The subdomain is with at 403 http status (Forbidden for some). http://wiki-es.guildwars2.com/wiki/.--Desaroll 20:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, how will the info be shared between both wiki? Are they going to use this wiki info and translate or they going to recreate every page 1 at a time base on what they choose? oh by the way those German skill box are sexy as hell. Tech Wolf-Talk 20:32, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

well based on the french version it seem's they translated most of the important english page in a bunch, like dump everything in a big blender, press #3 and then there goes your new page. Tech Wolf-Talk 20:36, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

They function as individual wikis, so translating will become less and less the desired course of action. They start out with some translations, but it's up to those communities to document how they please. - Infinite - talk 20:39, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I just realized... both of them are already using SMW. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-- —Dr Ishmael

20:42, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

About SMW: The best are left for last, or is it the other way around? (well technically were not last yet since the spasnish wiki is not up yet) Anyway I hope it is their next step in the 'to do list'. Tech Wolf-Talk 21:11, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Anyone knows if ArenaNet has published (Or if they are know) their politics for translating Guild Wars 2 to Spanish? (Personal Names, Places, etc... How will they be translated?). I really hate the way that some companies translate their games... --Desaroll 21:20, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

If it's done like in the german or frensh translation, all places will get their own names. --Tera 21:26, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

ArenaNet is doing a great work to spread the word about Guild Wars 2 and I really like it; about the languages, it's more than normal that ArenaNet offers support for the official languages in the game (English, German and French), and the most spoken one (Spanish), I see no reason to argue about it. However I'm curious about the way the new wikis are presenting data (the German skill infobox is very beautiful), I thought they would follow the same style as this wiki's. - Valento 01:19, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

To clarify: they are not supporting Spanish because it is the "most spoken," but because it is also an official game language alongside en/de/fr. It simply hasn't been available in any of the beta builds so far. —Dr Ishmael

01:34, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, it makes even more sense to me. - Valento 01:37, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Skill lists

I've developed an alternative presentation of skill lists in my userspace - [[User:Dr ishmael/List of guardian skills]] (use the prof icons at the top to access the rest). Basically I'm converting all the rowspanned "headers" inside the tables into actual section headers, which creates a useful ToC and, IMO, makes the page much easier to navigate overall. On the backend, I templated the table rows, which makes the page so much simpler to edit in the case of skill renames and such.

The feedback on my talkpage was fairly positive, so I'd like to get some wider feedback on this. —Dr Ishmael 15:41, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

hum, my only problem atm is that weapon skill are set in alphabetical number insteas of the usual, 2 handed weapon/main hand/off hand. Also, do we really needed to have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 before each weapon skill? I like the simplicity of it but after re-looking threw it again, I feel that there is to many table. Tech Wolf-Talk 15:59, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

The slot numbers are a replacement for the rowspanned main/off/two-hand designations - it does assume some basic knowledge on the reader's part, namely, the handedness of each weapon, and the mechanics of how the slots link to a main/off/two-hand weapon. The weapons are alphabetical because to use any other order would require an extra level of headers to define that order, and I didn't want to go any deeper than 2 levels.

I'm not against modifying this, but you haven't suggested any ways to improve the design to address your concerns. —Dr Ishmael

16:20, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Well the only way I would improve it is by reordering weapon based upon verbatim. I dont really understand why you would need a second header since we never mention why this weapon was above the other on the main page. The way that it is done I see it as your trying to show the first 5 skill (weapon) and the 5 last skill(healing, utility, elite) that could fit on your skillbar(profession mechanic excluded). My problem with that is that alphabetical order brake that idea(in someway) if I take the guardian page gaved earlier, we face right of the bat with a problem. Focus(the earliest one due to alphabetical order) gave us the skill 4 and 5 which brake the idea of looking for the skill 1 first. This is why I feel 2 handed weapon first is the best solution since it guarantees you that the first skill shown in the weapon header will be the first skill on yours skillbar. That is why I feel that it is currently confusing. If I can make an other exemple, it is like if we find elite skill before healing because, they are both part of the utility section of the skill bar, and are set base on the alphabetical order. It just feel wrong to find the usual last skill on your bar at the place where you would find your 6 skill.

This might sound as a rant,(I hope not since I'm not angry or anything like that) it is just...I'm not that good at expressing sugestion. Anyway I know you can do it :D . Tech Wolf-Talk 17:11, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

I personally like it in alpha order because there are so many weapon choices, it takes longer to find the weapon you are looking for with the current ordering convention. Plus the skill numbering makes it absolutely obvious where the skills will be on the hotbar compared to how it is now. Also anything that gets rid of row spanned headers is a big plus. --Lania

19:57, 03 June 2012 (UTC)

For the records, I too have made an alternative layout, as seen here, here and here. I'll keep it in my userspace, for those who want another option to the mainspace design. Erasculio 20:39, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Those skill icons are so massive you'll end up creating a black hole before CERN. :p Mediggo 07:54, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

With the introduction of skill tiers, I've been thinking about how to add that to the utility and elite tables. I've mocked up a couple examples here.

Add it as a new column, as I did in the first example.
Don't add it at all - assuming that all skills in a tier will have the same skill point cost, it would be unnecessary and redundant information - we could just add a note that tier 1 utility skills are 1 sp, tier 2 are 3, etc.
- To make the tiers more obvious in either of these cases, the default sort could be changed from type -> name to tier -> type -> name. (In example 1, simply click on the "Tier" sort button to see how this would look.)
Split the utility table into 3 tiered tables - in this case we could remove the skill point column for the same reason (and with the same note). However, it wouldn't make sense to split the elite table (only 1 skill per table), introducing an inconsistency.
"Split" the utility table by inserting colspanned headers to delineate each tier, as I did in my second example. Doing so allows us to also transfer the skill point cost into this header (still assuming that it's a shared value for all skills in a tier), returning some table width to the description. However, there is a small drawback when it comes to sorting - there's no way to restore the default sort order short of refreshing the page.

What does anyone think? —Dr Ishmael 15:46, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I think that either mentioning a note correlating cost=tier or option 1 would be best--JonTheMon 16:09, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I feel the skill name columns, the skill types columns, and the skill recharge columns on User:Dr_ishmael/List_of_elementalist_skills/tiers should all be of equal width, with the sceond table's description column spanning the remainer of the table width to match that of the first column. That is what I mean with fixed width and it would look a whole lot better than what I see over at [[User:Dr_ishmael/List_of_guardian_skills]] (which looks chaotic, unorganised, and plain terrible). At the very least line up recharges. - Infinite - talk 16:28, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

EDIT: The above is viewing it in FF12. - Infinite - talk 16:55, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is a CSS issue since the table in the examples are dependant on the CSS table element rules. I think with firefox there is some issue with the Display:inline-block; or Display:Block; rules or something. On chrome, all the tables are the same width and it looks clean. --Lania

17:49, 06 June 2012 (UTC)

yes, that's because of the CSS, unfortunately. Tables used to have width:100%, but Pling had hound that it broke on small tables, so it was removed. It should just be added to tables manually to make it work. Display:inline-block is the only way to make tables respect both width, and min-width, unfortunately. Alfa-R

18:02, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

It's because .table.skills is supposed to have "width: 100%" but it didn't make it to Common.css for some reason. I think that's what Alfa posted on my talkpage about. But yes, that does look horrible in FF - I don't know why it still works in Chrome. —Dr Ishmael

18:02, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

P.S. How could you think I meant to do that intentionally, Infinite? Ugh. —Dr Ishmael

18:11, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I didn't, so I checked it in Chrome and noticed it was a Firefox thing! :D - Infinite - talk 18:25, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Yah I'm not sure how it still works fine on chrome, IE, and safari. I was wondering why it wasn't working for me on firefox since I already have width:100% but I forgot that I had max-width:800px instead of 1000px... I wish the browsers handle CSS the same, but that'll never happen ^_^;. Also it's looking a bit funny on Opera as well but it's subtle. Looks like firefox is the only one that shows very different table widths on the default css settings. --Lania

18:27, 06 June 2012 (UTC) 18:27, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Looks like Alfa/Tanetris restored the class, so they should appear as intended in FF again. —Dr Ishmael

01:16, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, noticed it earlier today. Works on Firefox 12 w/o any problems now. --Lania

03:34, 07 June 2012 (UTC)

Just wanted to cheer for all the hard work on this. Really, really appreciate it all. --Ee

05:17, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to restart this discussion in order to hopefully get to a consensus soon — mostly because I added a lot of sequential skills to the wiki from BWE2, but I skipped adding them to the existing skill lists because of how messy they are to edit.

Now that the site CSS is stable, my lists should have all tables at the same width for everyone, regardless of browser. I modified the [[User:Dr ishmael/List of guardian skills|guardian list]] to follow Infinite's idea of aligning the Recharge column between all tables. What does everyone else think of that layout?

Other issues from above:

Skill tiers - won't be much of an issue after all, since there is a direct relationship between tier and SP cost for utility skills (I still haven't gotten a direct confirmation of SP costs for elites, unfortunately; it's entirely possible that they don't have a direct relationship). We can add a note to the Utility section about this if people feel it is necessary, but since that is external to the skill lists themselves, it can be added at any time.
Weapon order - discussion can continue but doesn't need to hold back implementation.

Is there anything else to discuss? —Dr Ishmael 21:12, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Intermittent Wiki errors

Thus far today, I've received the following error about 4 times when loading a page, usually for edit:

Guild Wars 2 Wiki error

Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.

-Torrenal 00:23, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

A few people have reported this on GW2W:BUG. I'll add a sitenotice to let people know. (Three sitenotices might be a bit much, but they're all necessary imo, it's just unfortunate that they're all needed at the same time :P.) pling

00:28, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Documenting Renown Hearts - no articles for them?

What is done now:

Hearts can only be found on lists of them per region.
Pages for the individual heart tasks are redlinks.

I am strongly against the current system of documenting Renown Hearts only by lists and no page for each of them. I do not share the opinion they are redundant and it is surely expected that many people will search them. Yet they will be faced with a redlink to an in-game quest. This is rather unfriendly to inexperienced users, especially if the wiki will be linked from the game like in GW1.

I have browsed some previous discussions and the usual argument is the redundancy. I can see quite a few things those pages could help us with - useful notes, anomalies, bugs, tips, maps, dynamic events affecting the heart, reward letters can go here, overall more space for a cleaner look, better accessibility - random visitors will expect this... I think that's tons more than enough.

I ask the community to rethink our stance on this. ***EAGLEMUT*** TALK 13:29, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you and had some vague plans for just starting to implement them, but there's sooooo much to do still on this wiki that you know what - just go ahead and do it! By the way: red links means that pages should be made ;-). --Ee

13:33, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

The problem could also be fixed by having adequate search term redirects for all the hearts. Mediggo 13:41, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

@Ee I did want to help out some heart articles. However, they are getting speedily deleted - see Assist Bloodsaw Mill Workers.

@Mediggo I was thinking about that too, but it would still not be as easy to navigate and we would still lose all of the other things.

From linked article before delete: Although unmentioned in objectives, you can also cheer up workers to contribute.

That seems like a useful note and we will lose all such notes, there's no way it can fit to the already big table.

***EAGLEMUT*** TALK 13:51, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

The lists should be updated to include a column for the Heart NPC - some of them mention this in the task name, but not all. I also think we should have a page for each task. —Dr Ishmael

13:57, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

For a bit of historical understanding, these lists were begun long before we had shiny table interfaces and before we knew more of what was tied to each heart in terms of progress and completion (and certainly before there was any idea that we'd get a nice follow-up letter with some more cash afterwards). I do agree that at this point that each heart has more than enough information to warrant its own individual page, but similar to how the lists don't make such a move redundant, I would also maintain that these consequent individual pages would not replace the utility of the current lists (and thus would not, namely, result in list deletion). Redshift 15:27, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think anyone has suggested deleting the lists. Lists are (almost) always useful, but they (almost) never can function on their own. Keep the lists, make the individual articles, is the current consensus, I think. —Dr Ishmael

15:38, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Let's just say that I wanted to nip that branch in the bud. Or something like that :). Redshift 15:40, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Alright, so it seems we will have articles, could the deleted hearts be restored then? We could restore Assist Bloodsaw Mill Workers and Help Ayomichi slow the spread of undead corruption. I have also found Help Costi Atl tame the wilderness, but I have not experienced this event nor I see it in any list of hearts. ***EAGLEMUT*** TALK 17:10, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Done by Tanetris, thanks.

***EAGLEMUT*** TALK 17:52, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I started documenting some renown hearts (the ones from Memories from the Past) but the reward table template from the dynamic events isn't suitable for the hearts (no gold/silver/bronze in heart completion), maybe we need a seperate one. --Ee

20:52, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Map Completion

Reaching 100% completion of a map. You receive 4 random items: 2 weapons or armor, random third item, then 40 of a material. You also receive some gold and experience.--Relyk 22:32, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

I can confirm this for Queensdale, though it is incorrect for the cities, where you only receive experience for 100%. - Infinite - talk 23:18, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Correct - cities are XP only, other zones are as Relyk described. —Dr Ishmael

23:37, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

I have completed three zones and got 3 Transmutation Stones every time, did anyone not get them?

***EAGLEMUT*** TALK 01:52, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I forgot to mention that before - 3 stones for each map I've completed. —Dr Ishmael

03:56, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Don't think I got any stones, just got plenty of single cooking ingredient, mystic key and some gear for Queensdale. Mediggo 06:16, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I think it might be Transmutation Stones or a Mystic Key - my wife got one as well for one map. —Dr Ishmael

07:04, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

They are both gem store items so it makes sense in a way. Mediggo 18:57, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Branded Skill Documentation

Haven't been on this wiki in awhile, so I figured this would be the best place to put this, feel free to move this to its proper place. Do we have plans to document the Branded skills during the end of the BWE? The only info I can provide is that each race had different skills, and underwater you became a shark (at least as a human you did) with only two skills, one of which was Bite. - 07:36, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Became a shark? Mediggo 08:00, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I screenshotted the human land skills - didn't even think about checking underwater. Also didn't check my stats, so have no clue if they scaled in any way, or if being branded gave everyone fixed stats, or what. In any case, if we could compile all of them somehow (I'm sure more than a few people recorded videos of the finale), that would be great. —Dr Ishmael

08:13, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, when entering water your model switched to that of a shark and your skillbar became nothing but two weapon skills and the same healing skill (the signet) I saw as a human. I only got four of the human skills, and I forgot to look at the signet. I was informed that Charr had Ride the Lightning in the second slot and Meteor Shower in the fifth though. -

08:16, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I sure did record and can supply all charr warrior land skills, my fifth skill was Crystal Shard though - no meteors at all.

***EAGLEMUT*** TALK 08:35, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps they were describing the effects. Did the first skill cause the Charr to sit in one place and shoot a ball, the second teleport towards the enemy, third criple and bleed, fourth cause AoE knockback, and the fifth a large AoE damaging skill? -

08:45, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Correct.

***EAGLEMUT*** TALK 16:57, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

GW2W for mobile

Revisiting the discussion regarding a mobile version of GW2W, it was deemed worthwhile to discuss the extent of a mobile version of the wiki.

Do you feel it is a desired addition to GW2W?
Would you use it?
What features should it support? (Read-only? Reading and editting? Other features you'd want to see?)
If it would be added, does its success depend on the way of its implementation. If so, which aspects could make it a failed project?

This discussion is started because of the aforementioned meeting. Please provide detailed insight to help sketch where this project stands. - Infinite - talk 21:43, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I am fine with it as long as you can in settings oped out of always viewing the mobile version.-

Zesbeer 21:45, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I browse wiki on my phone when I feel like it and I would appreciate any improvements to editing, simplified/consice viewing of logs like recent changes, reducing of page load size (especially images and main page and overall site style simplification for easy mobile use), easier navigation of navi tables and link lists - basically anything which makes viewing and editing faster and simpler and easier for touch screen use. Ideally, mobile version of the site could be disabled or enabled by not only via phone/browser settings but also by user settings on the wiki side. So yes, I'd definitely use the mobile version if it does not hamper any other kind of use of the wiki and if it's not too difficult to implement technically. Unfortunately I'm of little to no help on the latter, but can still provide feedback when required. Mediggo 22:09, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I will note that there has been some discussion of this topic at GW2WT:TECH#Mobile accessibilty - Tanetris 02:53, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I would use it. I think it's a critical feature for the wiki (especially given the possibility of a mobile GW2 chat application. There are already several smart phone apps available that can render Wikipedia (my favorite is Wikipanion) and other wikis (Wapedia works on lots of wikis).

I don't think editing is important on a mobile version of the wiki — while it's possible to reply on chat pages, a phone screen is too small for most people to be able to view the consequences of their edits on major articles.

If it is to succeed, then as editors, we need to stop specifying column widths on tables except when it's absolutely essentially. Let's modify {{STDT}} to make sure there's sufficient white space and continue to prevent linebreaks, but we have to allow people to be able to display the site at whatever resolution makes sense for them. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:04, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

That's the first time I see someone claiming that editing is not important in a wiki (writen, for the records, from my phone). Erasculio 10:42, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

1. Yes, in times as this I think it's important for the wiki to be accessible, and smartphones/tablets are very common. The current design isn't that phone friendly, although some phones treat it better than others. 2. Yes, I would while traveling and such. 3. I think the first step should be read-only. Making a (usable) mobile frontend with editing capabilities might prove difficult, and I feel it's more important to get viewing right and usable first. It should be easy to switch between the mobile and standard interfaces, and it should save your preference somehow. 4. Yes, a mobile version of the wiki could be a meaningless project if we don't do it right. I think the usability and flexibility of read-only mode is one factor, many of the Wikipedia mobile apps that exist now sucks, honestly. They are hard to navigate and not well designed (whitespace in odd places, huge infoboxes taking up 1/3 of the article length, making you scroll for ages before reaching content etc). I would much prefer to work on this for a longer period of time than to implement something half-baked and not really useful. - anja

12:23, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Since you can not play GW2 on a mobile phone, I don't see a mobile wiki version as high priority.
Probably not.
Read&edit. The reason being: Reading is mostly related to looking something up while you play, so will mostly happen from a PC. Whereas motivated editors might make use of spare time to edit from mobile devices if enabled. So, if there is a mobile version, I see the possibility to edit as crucial.
Obviously, if the implementation makes the non-mobile use worse, it would be a non-starter. --Xeeron 14:01, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes.
Probably not, but that's because I don't surf the web hardly at all on my phone.
Accessibility should be a much higher priority than any kind of advanced features like editing. If people can't even read the wiki because it takes too long to load or is difficult to navigate (regardless of what any of our power-users may think on these issues, the full version is difficult to work with for our non-power-user readers), then they won't use it at all.
It will fail if it does not make the wiki easy to use for non-editors. Active editors are the minority on pretty much any wiki, and if we take too long to build an overly complex solution that caters to us, then we will potentially lose readers.

This is why I think the MobileFrontend extension is an acceptable interim solution to provide basic accessibility until we decide on whether or not to pursue a more complicated solution. —Dr Ishmael

15:28, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I updated my line above to clarify that I don't think editing is a critical function for the mobile version of the phone — most visitors of this site are not contributors (registered or not, frequent or not). But there are lots of situations when people want to read the wiki on a phone, e.g. when they are away from the game, researching ideas or during gameplay, to avoid having to alt-tab. Both the apps I mention above (Wapedia and Wikipanion) make viewing a breeze without allowing editing.

I don't know anything about MobileFrontend, but if Ish think it's a good interim step, I think we should install it and re-evaluate 2-3 months later whether we need anything more. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:12, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Well with wikipedia's estimates of the ratio between editors and users, it is about 1:5000. That means there are about 5000 times more visitors and readers than active editors. I'm not sure how relevant that is to the GW2W, but considering the view counts of content pages, I think it's a pretty decent estimate for us as well. So, yeah the 99.98% of unique visitors are not active editors. So please take that into consideration when thinking how much of a minority editors are, and how important wiki reading and readability is for the vast majority of visitors. The primary goal for the wiki is readability and that shouldn't change for the desktop version or the mobile version. Content creation is a secondary goal, albeit a very important goal, and the desktop version is as good as it should be for editing, so people shouldn't be hung up on the usability of the editing function for the mobile implementation. --Lania

19:08, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

As creator of the discussion, I haven't given my own opinion on the matter.

Definitely. Tablets also tend to switch to a mobile version of websites, and have similar limitations with loading speed and processing speed. A mobile version would lift a lot of stress off the devices and encourage the use of a second screen; something ArenaNet has stated is something they'd like to promote via the Extended Experience. If this plan is still in the process of development, we can use that vision to tie ourselves in. Who knows, it might allow ArenaNet in turn to integrate the wiki in the Extended Experience easier.
As an avid smartphone editor, it should speak for itself: yes.
This ties in with the previous point. The mobile version of GW2W should be read-only in the basics. The need to edit spawns from a key feature, which is the setting to swap to desktop view on mobiles. If that can't be done, reading and editting are the absolute standard in my opinion (carefully implementing ways to edit content on mobile view is crucial as it should never distract from the content). If switching to desktop version is possible, read-only is the way to go.
Absolutely. Though base necessities are mobile versions of key templates (or no templates altogether, but this is a design issue we can discuss later on). It isn't a simple matter because a mobile-ified display of our current content will likely be riddled with display issues. I don't know what would be directly possible with a mobile version of this wiki, but we should aspire a most basic aesthetic to make it successful.

In general I would like to press that a major part of my edits are made via phone, so a way to access editting is an absolute standard for me (I have no problems doing this via the desktop version on my smartphone). As long as it's not implemented as a forced replacement of viewing the wiki in desktop mode, I'm fine with any way we go about this. - Infinite - talk 19:45, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Gem and Jewel disambiguation

There needs to be a edict passed to disambiguate the issue of Gems as in Gem Store Gems as a currency and Jewels as in used in Jeweler crafting item/s. I propose that a Note be placed on the Gem and/or gem store pages to link users to Jewel or Jeweler page if that was their intention. And that all references and use of the word "Gem"s on all pages regrding Crafting Jewels be replaced with the word "Jewel"s as needed, and a statement on the Accessories, Jewel, Jeweler, and Jewelry pages note this Definition. Rudhraighe 14:34, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Isn't the word "gemstone" used in reference to the crafting/upgrade materials like Garnet Pebble? I know they don't have "gemstone" as an item type, but I thought I remembered the name of the new bank collection as "Gemstones and Jewels". —Dr Ishmael

14:48, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

the issue with the use of the word "gem stone" will encourage contributors to use the word "Gem" and we need to provide as much separation between the use of gem and jewel as possible because of the potential confusion between currency and crafting material Rudhraighe 15:00, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, yes. But anyone can add {{otheruses}} to a page, so I don't see why this needs to be an administrative issue. —Dr Ishmael

15:14, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

And sysops have no final say on content issues regardless - bring it up on the talk pages of the articles in question, or if it's a big enough issue, put it on the community portal talk. Consensus via discussion is how wikis run. -Auron 15:43, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Apologies Article moved once i discovered i had placed it in the wrong location Rudhraighe 18:25, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Honestly, if you can think up a good term for 'gemstone' that includes coins like doobloons, we may have our solution there. Any takers? ;) Torrenal 00:00, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

A call for a Community Referendum on the documenting of crafted items and their Recipes

Moved to Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Crafting formatting#A call for a Community Referendum on the documenting of crafted items and their Recipes

Item Icon Tweak

I've tweaked Template:Item icon to strip any trailing spaces from the item name. If any icons go missing, try checking for icons with spaces at the end of their name, eg: "Foo.png" not found. Was saved as "Foo .png". Looked like it had the intent of perofrming that trim, but it was occurring on the file name as a whole, not the bits before the period.

If you find any, just move the image over to a proper name. Torrenal 00:03, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

The reason it was on the entire thing was cause the 3rd parameter (the icon override) also contains the extension. The way it was, the trim didn't work for the 1st parameter. The way it is now however, the trim doesn't work for the 3rd parameter instead. — Rhoot

00:05, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

humm... Bugger. Double the trim, and hope we din't go bald? Torrenal 05:57, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Don't leave any whitespace in your template calls? Where did you actually see any issues with this, anyway? —Dr Ishmael

12:36, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I (now) know better about whitspace, but many program styles call for white-space between parameters and at the end of function blocks. I had {{item icon | Crude Salvage Kit }}, which was failing because of the space just before the }} I know better, but that's a standard template that will be used by inexperienced wiki users. I'd rather not have it choke on a single innocent(?) space, thus the fix. At the moment, Rhoot, I'm unable to recreate problems with parameter 3. My test-space is on my sandbox page here - the end of the page uses a dummy template (same as item icon, but no trim invocation at all) invoked with both my scenario, and what I understand your scenario to be. If you can show me a problem with how that template parses parameter 3, I'll be happy to fix it. Torrenal 01:12, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. Turns out you can put a space before the filename (such as [[File: Crude Salvage Kit.png]]) and it'll still render properly. So there's no problem leaving the trim as is. — Rhoot

01:38, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

And we each learned something. Cool. ;) Torrenal 01:22, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Release and the wiki

So now that we actually have a release date what projects do we need to start nailing down, and what info should we grab from the game during the next beta event? - Zesbeer 20:03, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Info isn't a priority; a lot of templates don't exist yet, and the category tree is still a mess. Also the formatting for items, crafting, and recipes is chaotic and unintelligent. Let alone intuitive. - Infinite - talk 20:09, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

so maybe we should get a list going of top priority before release so come release we can add info smoothly maybe have release be a artificial deadline to get formatting ect figured out?-

Zesbeer 22:47, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I think that that is a very good idea. - Infinite - talk 23:10, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

[[User:Dr ishmael/SMW]] - I need some input on how to use SMW for things other than skills. Traits and trait lines will be fairly easy (trait line properties: is for profession, increases attribute (x2); trait properties: is in trait line, has trait type, has trait tier), I just haven't added them to the page yet. Items are going to be horrendously complex, and I haven't really thought about what to do for anything else yet, like NPCs or locations. —Dr Ishmael

23:15, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

@Infinite I don't know what needs to be done so if someone wants to come up with said list that would be helpful for me.-

Zesbeer 23:29, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

PvP and Level Adjusting

I've been trying to figure this out all day, but all roads lead back to the same point. Why on earth have you made it so that when involved in PvP everyones' levels/items are the same? This is ridiculous. This isn't a game for 3 year olds and a major element of MMORPGs is aiming to be the strongest on server. Why go through such long and arduous training in the main game, collecting items and building your character, only to be brought to your knees and be the same as everyone else when it really matters? MMORPG's are supposed to be about tactical play individually and as a team, with different guild members building themselves in different ways to make the most of whatever team tactics they use. Be leveling everyone out it becomes nothing but luck or unfair play. If people gang up on you, you die. When your player is built the way you choose, a smart player can be ganged up on and still emerge victorious - it all depends on how much thought they put into the character they've built. In what otherwise looks like such a great game, this is a MAJOR flaw and an even bigger letdown. You should really consider changing this before officially releasing the game, because ultimately no possible logic of the system as-is makes any sort of sense other than to give n00bs a chance of survival. If they wanna hang with the big boys they need to go work for it. If all you wanna do is prevent in-game bullying, just impose penalties on players everyone they attack a player outside of a PvP event or free PvP area. Think about it.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by ReauxRS (talk • contribs).

NOPE, skill is determined by game play decisions, like the skills you choose, positioning, and timing. not by how much you grind out for gear. nice try though. also sign your comments. with 4 tildes like this ~~~~ thanks-

Zesbeer 03:08, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

This wiki is not the place to direct feedback to ArenaNet. You can do so on the official forums when they re-open for the next BWE, or you can post in the Feedback space on the Guild Wars Wiki (it covers both games). —Dr Ishmael

03:10, 3 July 2012 (UTC)