Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 6

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Skill lists take 2

A month ago I proposed a simpler design for our skill list pages. I attempted to restart that discussion a couple weeks ago, but no one responded, so I'm hoping that starting a new section here will catch more interest.

The only outstanding complaint with the new design was the ordering of subsections for the Weapons tables. Since that has nothing to do with the redesign of the tables themselves and can be changed at any time, I'm going to plan on implementing the new table structures on Monday. That leaves a full weekend for people to bring up any other issues with the redesign. —Dr Ishmael 18:34, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I feel the new the new tables work except for thief. For example I think that the dagger should have the main-hand option (Stealth skill and first two skills). Then it should be followed by "With off-hand 'X'" and the dual skill for that weapon along with the offhand skills. It would mean repetition among the page, but I feel it would be easier for users to understand. Teva 22:16, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Adding profession/race to Template:Skill table row would help with skill type pages, such as Signet. •••Mora 16:17, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

See List of downed skills for my idea about those. Specifically for signet, though, the row template won't work because that table splits up the description. —Dr Ishmael

16:37, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Examples. I really think the sort option can be helpful, and that's not possible with the professions in colspan. •••Mora 18:15, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I find the TOC a bit disturbing... there are some cases in which long TOCs are OK, but for skill lists a shorter (and preferably left-aligned as default) looks better. – Valento ^msg 13:40, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Other users have disagreed below - the original version D did not have the weapon names as actual section headers, and they felt the TOC lost its usefulness because of that. In any case, the TOC can be hidden with a single click, and this setting persists across the wiki, so I usually don't pay much attention to "the TOC disrupts the layout" arguments. I made it right-aligned so that on wider resolutions, it doesn't affect the skill tables at all. —Dr Ishmael

15:56, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

So, did the community agree with option D? No discussion for 4 days. – Valento ^msg 04:21, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I've been busy with a lot of other stuff this week, so I haven't had time to make these updates myself. I'll try to get them in tonight. —Dr Ishmael

19:40, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I've implemented the update for weapon order/grouping. Unfortunately, I've lost track on where other suggestions stand, so start a new subsection if there's anything left that anyone really wants to see changed. —Dr Ishmael 03:56, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Weapon order

To address the weapon-order issue (also mentioned here), which I'm starting to agree with, I've made a few mockups of the warrior list with different ideas. All of them group the weapons by two-hand / main-hand-only / dual-wield / off-hand-only / aquatic (except you can't see the main-only because the warrior doesn't have any of those).

User:Dr ishmael/List of warrior skills a - Only weapon order is changed.
User:Dr ishmael/List of warrior skills b - Injects an additional header level to identify the handedness groupings.
User:Dr ishmael/List of warrior skills c - Same as above but it removes the top-level "Weapon skills" header and promotes everything that was under it.
User:Dr ishmael/List of warrior skills d - Merge weapons into a single table per handedness, converting the weapon headers to colspan table headers.
User:Dr ishmael/List of warrior skills e will be the working version as I implement changes, so that people can still refer to the others in their original states.

My personal preference id D, mostly because it reduces page clutter by eliminating the individual weapon headers while maintaining a simple design (unlike rowspans, the effect of a colspan is contained within a single row, so it also keeps the code simple).

Thoughts? Other alternatives? —Dr Ishmael 16:12, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I will trust your judgment in this situation.

16:43, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the option D to prevent cluttering the page with too many headers, but once again ele's attunements are making its implementation rather difficult. Perhaps a lighter colour shade for those colspanned table rows, or having small attunement icons displayed before the skill slot numbers...

Anyway, I have another small suggestion for the dual-wield weapons, we should separate the skills from the different hands by a grey line to better indicate that those 5+ skills don't necessarily come together (or entirely split them along with other 1H weapons into main-hand and off-hand categories).

16:49, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Oooh, great idea about separating the main/off skills. I actually already used the same idea for the pet skill list, but hadn't considered using it on the profession lists.

Yeah, elementalist is going to be a problem. It had previously been suggested (at the "mentioned here" link above) that the attunement identifier wasn't even necessary, since the skill icons are basically color-coded already. What do you think of that? —Dr Ishmael

17:34, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I can't believe you soften up for the re-ordering weapon, hurray! On the subject, option A seems better then b and c(because I dont see any use of that new header or the removal of "Weapon skills") but the page has still to much cluster on it. I like D more then the rest because it remove cluster and tie- in everything related to it. While on it, would it connect downed and drowned skill since both share the same condition? Also I was gonna suggest exactly what Noxx was suggesting about adding a line do divide dual weilding weapon, so I support his idea. Also while were on it, Thief skill page need a change for stealth skill, either move them down with the other cross weapon skill(for skill 3) or add a wording before it. I dont find the use of the tool belt icon appropriate for it, because every skill that use the tool belt icon are shown always(unless tranformed) on your skill bar while stealth skill is actually hidden(in a way). Maybe we could fix this by having a new icon. Tech Wolf-Talk 17:54, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind new icons for stealth and burst skills, I only used the toolbelt icon because it was all we had and it seemed generic enough. —Dr Ishmael

19:02, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I feel the new the new tables work except for thief. For example I think that the dagger should have the main-hand option (Stealth skill and first two skills). Then it should be followed by "With off-hand 'X'" and the dual skill for that weapon along with the offhand skills. It would mean repetition among the page, but I feel it would be easier for users to understand. Teva 14:56, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to agree with Option D. It looks the least cluttered and has less empty space. :) As far as separating the off hand completely, I think the grey line was enough of a help for me at least. The Elementalist attunement I lean both ways, for me they are color coded enough for me to see the difference at a glance, I could see where other people want the text. ~Ao Allusir 19:00, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Is is possible to cut the "two-handed", "one-handed" and "off-hand" etc. headings in option D, and just put it all together, or is it necessary with the content links? Symphy 19:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I think the split is necessary, yes. Part of my reason for this redesign was to get away from the "monolithic" tables of the previous design, and while option D backtracks a bit on that, I think it's a good compromise between "one table to rule them all" and "every weapon for himself." —Dr Ishmael

20:17, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that relying entirely on the icon colours to distinguish the attunements would be enough, even if only for the colour-blind. I guess we could just design the attunements' headers the same way as those for thief's dual skills: white, smaller, with lines separating them from the rest.

21:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I feel that the weapon names in option d should be aligned left, right above the skills names. I also wonder if the Auxiliary skillbars for elites couldn't simply have their skills lists added directly bellow each elite on the elite bar, and if the downed and drowned tables grouped together into a single table. 217.129.59.88 01:17, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

While that might work for elite auxiliaries, and only because the elite table is so small, it would not work for non-elites, like the En kits or the E conjures, and we would have a break in consistency. —Dr Ishmael

02:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that putting all of the additional skill bars directly below the respective skills would be a step too far considering the goal this redesign is trying to achieve, but perhaps, for the sake of consistency, we could combine those skill bars into one table the same way the weapons are in D. I also suggest having a link at these skills to jump to their skill bars and vice versa.

09:49, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I think these are a nice step in the right direction, though I'm honestly least keen on option d. It saves space but I don't feel that it confers any sizable benefit in comparison to the others in functionality or look. With regards to functionality, the condensed version removes an easy reference of weapons available and weapon-handedness for a visitor to the page. With regard to the look, it might help if the spacing/emphasis/sizing was adjusted. The subheadings are a bit too 'soft,' and the center alignment of the weapon comes off at odds with the column headings to me. In other words, I'm personally finding a little more need for (my personal, of course) balance between order/utility and density/look. Redshift 10:33, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I will agree that the center alignment of the weapon names seemed a little off. It wasn't something my eyes caught right away because I'm usually looking just in the first column of a table until I want more information about one item, then I move along the row. I'm not sure what you mean about them being soft. If you mean brightness of color, that they need something to make them stick out more, or size / font / etc? With functionality there is still space between groups of weapon-handedness with headers, so I'm not sure how it would be hard to know what hand a weapon went in. There's also numbers near each skill 1-5 which help a person know what hand the weapon is in. ~Ao Allusir 18:04, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I've created version E (link added to list above) to implement changes to D. The in-table headers I have changed to be actual page headers - this makes them appear in the ToC ("an easy reference of weapons available and weapon-handedness") and gives them a larger font size ("The subheadings are a bit too 'soft,'"). Associated with this change are a couple CSS rules:

.table.skills > tbody > tr:first-child ~ tr th[colspan] { text-align: left; }

.table.skills > tbody > tr:first-child ~ tr th[colspan] span.editsection { display: none; }

The first makes the in-table headers left-aligned ("the center alignment of the weapon comes off at odds with the column headings"), and the second hides the section-edit links for these headers (generally people don't like editing a section of a table, since you only get gibberish when you preview).

As for elementalist, I just realized that they get exactly 1 weapon in each group.

Two-handed: Staff
Main-only: Scepter
Dual-wield: Dagger
Off-only: Focus
Aquatic: Trident

So there really isn't a need to move the weapon headers into the tables, and we can leave the attunements as they are. However, this does make elementalist inconsistent with all other professions. I'm not certain how to reconcile this, so if you have any ideas, speak up. —Dr Ishmael

18:57, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Ishy. I think that nicely moves it more into balance and appreciate your taking the time to address those concerns. Redshift 10:59, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

What about centering the attunement like the weapons in the warrior. In place of "Two Handed Weapons" is staff (like it is now) and in place of weapons under the two handed category (such as longbow / greatsword) have the attunments (also like it is now) but centered using the same font size, etc. as with the warrior. It's still different, but the look would be the same. The engineer would also be different since it only has 1 two-handed 1 dual and 1 off hand. Maybe for that add the skill tables for device and weapon kits up top since those do alter skills 1-5 and are a main part of the weapon setup for engineers? Would this work? ~Ao Allusir 20:21, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

So I was playing aroud your E version and I made a bad mock-up on some possible change. Altough since it is so bad, because I'm having a hard time to learn on how to alter this template, I will write what are some change that I was gonna make.

1- Added a new burst icon based on the tool belt skill icon.

also made one for thief stealth skill and for tool belt link. While on it, we could also add one for every profression in case of and also an underwater version for some skill variation (underwater Death Shroud and Whirlpool

2- Flipped the size (or possibily the colour/color) of table header with the weapon header in the table. Ex: If you look at downed one, Drowned header size make it look out of place. I find them slightly to large while D version were to small.

Tech Wolf-Talk 01:23, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Hm, I don't really like having the color match the profession, it feels like it would just fade into the table framework. What's really wrong with using the same icon, though? Yeah, it means slightly different things for different professions, but the usage is clearly explained on each page. In general, it identifies skills that aren't standard skillbar skills.

2 - are you saying you made this change, or you'd like to see this change? I can't tell that anything's different on your downed table. [edit] Actually, for the headers, try this CSS rule:

.table.skills > tbody > tr:first-child ~ tr th[colspan] > h4 { margin-top: 0.5em; }

Since we've kept them acting like section headers, I think they should keep the same size as section headers. However, existing CSS rules made the spacing around them take up too much height, which may have contributed to what you didn't like about them. —Dr Ishmael

02:10, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

E updated: added a thief weapon table with the dual skills grouped together. —Dr Ishmael

18:20, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

What about putting the skill without an off hand in the first 3 slot (the one without a label) and putting the with off hand dagger skill with the rest? Since the without offhand skill is part of the base weapon. ~Ao Allusir 20:09, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Like this? —Dr Ishmael

20:47, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I approve of the merge (d); however, I'm not truly a fan of the offhand placement for the dual skills for the thief. Also the placement is slightly confusing (three 3 slot skills, but only two identifiers (with offhand x)). Does the user look up to see the requirement for the slot-3 skill, or look down? In other words, is it a header, or a footer to the skill line. Sadly though, presently I do not have a better alternative in mind. I may get back to you on that. Venom20

21:19, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Is it possible to put the "with offhand dagger" text in the same (but now probably wider) row. So it's all the same color? So "with offhand dagger" and Death Blossom would both be white, and "with offhand pistol" and Shadow Shot would both be... I'll call it thief color. Or would that look too silly? ~ Allusir

23:00, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I suggest having the identifiers as headers for all 3 cases, separated from the previous skill by a grey line on top of those headers (edit: or perhaps above the first header only).

09:15, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

That was one of the options I was considering. How does it look?

@Allusir: That was another option I'd thought of design-wise, but I have no clue how to implement it. The background colors are handled by CSS rules that do an "every-other-row" progression, and there's no way to overrule that to make a specific row not switch from the row above it. —Dr Ishmael

12:49, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

No worries, I tried it out in the guild permissions table in my sandbox to put headers in that, I don't think it looked good at all. If you ever need something like this though I did it by put it in the same row. Example:

Edit
Edit Ranks||

||

You can't see the color when I just put that one part here, but it was all in the same row/color. It just looked funny. It did also center the text of the other rows between these. I guess you could put another 'br' in those, but I didn't get that far. ~ Allusir

14:04, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

That is a possibility, but it would have required adding more non-generic code to the row template for a mere 9 skills. The alignment can be fixed with style="vertical-align:bottom;" on the row, if you wanted to try that on your guild permissions. —Dr Ishmael

14:55, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm now using the CSS code that you provided me to reduce the weapon header height and I find the result of it to be perfect. I believe it should be implemented in the overall result. Since not alot of people have gaved feedback for thief skill, I find the order and the amount of subdivision for third skill to be perfect. About the above discussion what about using grey line between each version of skill 3? here (note, I do not know why initiative, description and other aint working when I just copied yours and added class=line) Also, the only change I could see would be a change in icon for stealth skill, even if the arrow is explain before for it. Tech Wolf-Talk 00:50, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorting

The sort function works horribly for the lists that have sequence skills. •••Mora 18:42, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Do you think the sort function is even useful? I only put it on my mockups to show how sorting was a possibility when you didn't have rowspans, and since I started with G and W the chain skills weren't much of an issue. After that, it just kinda propagated across my sandbox pages, then yesterday into the mainspace. It's not a feature I'm really for or against, so if it's more rubbish than useful, it can go. —Dr Ishmael

19:01, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The option to sort into types or into skill tiers could be quite useful. Not sure what was done differently for the engineer's, but the sequence and tool belt skills manage to stick with the slotted skill when sorted by Skill. •••Mora 19:46, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The template does include a bit of hidden text in the skill cell when chain is set, which is the skill's parent value plus "chain" (e.g. "Rifle Turret chain" for Automatic Fire). Hidden text like this is still considered when a column is sorted, which is why sorting on Skill keeps them grouped together. Unfortunately there's no logical way to do anything similar for the other columns - if we did it for recharge, so that it only sorted the primary skills and kept the secondary ones "stickied" to their parent, then in cases like for engineer where most of the secondaries do have recharge, the sort would be confusing. —Dr Ishmael

20:32, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I've updated the other professions so that they'll sort on Skill like engineer does. —Dr Ishmael

20:44, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

How do you use the sort function? It does sound useful, but I have no idea what you're talking about. ~Ao Allusir 03:42, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

If I'm not confused by your question, you can see the sort function in action in the slot skills utility table of the demo tables above (note how the column headers have tiny 'arrows in squares' icons next to the names). Redshift 10:40, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I never noticed the little arrows before.~Ao Allusir 13:32, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Underwater

I added parameters for this to the infobox template, so this piece of data can now be recorded on the skills and pulled in to skill list pages. Where in the row should we display ? Should we add another column for it or stick it in one of the existing columns? —Dr Ishmael 15:37, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I would change the table headers to only show the icons for skill points and recharge times instead of the text (like in GWW) and only write the respective numbers below, and then add another column before those two headed by this icon, in which land-only skills would show the icon once again (the way exhaustion used to be listed in GWW before the update, IIRC). Should we prefer to leave it this way, I probably wouldn't add yet another (rather wide) column for usability underwater but just right-float them in the Skill or Type column.

16:41, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

To the right of the text in the Type column I'd say, whether or not the able has headers (Noxx is right that the tables would do fine without headers, or just keeping the sort buttons). Btw, whirlpool on the list of ele skills could use something better than the chain icon, like a water droplet or the text "(underwater)" in front of it. Adrian R 05:13, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Between type and skill points. Gnarf 16:30, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Woot, I think I made something beautiful. Check out my sandbox pages ([[User:Dr ishmael/List of guardian skills]] and use the icons at the top to navigate from there).

In the time since initially implementing the new skill list tables, I had decided that there needed to be some reswizzling of the table row templates. Since all the weapon and auxiliary skill tables are basically identical, and all the slot skill tables are identical, I made specialized row and header row templates for them. This reduces the amount of conditional template code that has to be executed, and eliminates most of the parameters from the template calls - they always output {type|recharge|description} cells for weapon tables (and always show the slot-number column), and {type|underwater|skillpoint|recharge|description} for slot tables (and never show the slot-number column). The base row template is still used for the profession mechanic tables, since those are usually somewhat unusual.

The only somewhat "odd" change this introduces is that all weapon tables show the Type column now, even when none of the profession's weapon skills have a type. Of course, this is only visible by the word "Type" in the header row, since our current table styles don't show any vertical borders between cells, so I don't expect anyone to complain about it.

Anyway, getting to the actual changes I made to the tables:

Added an underwater column on slot tables. This displays the icon for skills that have the uw-replaced-by parameter set in their infobox, to indicate skills that are not usable underwater.
- As for a different "chain" icon for the UW-replacement skills, I've asked User:Alfa-R if he could create tango icons, one with the X and one without - I think we could use the non-X'ed version for this.
(per Noxx's suggestion above) Modified the skillpoint and recharge/initiative columns to show the icon in the header row and not show it in the individual skill rows. This balanced out the addition of the UW column precisely, so that the Description is exactly the same width as before.

Alrighty then, I'll open up the floor. Questions, comments, cries of anguish? —Dr Ishmael 04:35, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The row space is somewhat distorted now. Nevertheless it looks good to me. — Gnarf ~ El Psy Congroo ~ 07:11, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I noticed that the icons don't line up with the teardrop in the row header, which I think is what Gnarf is saying. This also happens with the skill point and recharge columns and is pretty jarring with the small cells. I would strongly suggest that at least these three columns get center aligned as it really looks a bit ridiculous at the moment. I would actually favour consistent alignment across the entire table (all left or all center), but the description and skill columns don't feel like a slap in the face. The type column is borderline in my opinion. Misery 07:57, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Fixed the UW-icon alignment issue - the column was 1px too wide. My intention was for it to be exactly the width of the icon so that alignment doesn't matter.

Skill point and recharge are integers, and integers are supposed to be right-aligned in order to line up the digits; center-aligned numbers look weird when they have different numbers of digits. If the columns were narrower, you wouldn't notice this as much, but because we're making the utility table sortable, they have to be this wide to accommodate the sort button. We can always remove the sortability, of course - in the discussions above, only 1 person commented that they found it useful. —Dr Ishmael

12:39, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I understand the reasoning, I still find it jarring. Right aligned integers are typically used with left aligned text, not center aligned. It's down to aesthetic and people are free to disagree with me, but I still feel a twang whenever I see the headers in relation to the data. Misery 12:43, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

To be fair, then, I find center-aligned anything to be jarring unless everything is exactly the same width, because then you have uneven edges on both sides of the column, instead of just one side. —Dr Ishmael

12:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

So is there a reason why we are using center aligned headers? Is it a lot of effort to change? It may not help with the numbers as I usually envisage right aligned integers in a table such as:

Header
Data title 1	1
Data title 2	2
Data title 3	3

And that is obviously not applicable here. Maybe narrower columns would help with the numbers, but we could strike trouble if we ever encountered larger numbers, such as a skill with 1000 second recharge or something. It would help with the text based columns however. Misery 13:08, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Center-aligned headers is the default for MediaWiki, it's not something we came up with. —Dr Ishmael

14:17, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

That is only a partial answer and it amounts to "historical inertia", which is usually not a very good reason unless the difficulty answer is "more difficult than it is worth". Misery 14:33, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I think it looks good. Even though I suggested sorting the underwater skills, I don't think it is needed. Actually, I think it may look nicer with just the not useable underwater icon. It is pretty easy to see which have the X water drop and adding normal waterdrops may make it more confusing. BioMasterZap 14:43, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Okay, I'm putting this in. Skill tables may look a tiny bit funky for a few minutes, but since I'm not making any major changes to the base skill table row/skill table cell templates, that should be limited a lack of skillpoint/recharge icons, until the lists get updated with the new header row templates. —Dr Ishmael 02:30, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

unidentified item icons (File:#####.ateu.png) and file ids

I'm a little hesitant to start this discussion, since I was personally involved with the arguments that happened, but let's just do this.

After BWE1, and again after BWE2, User:Rhoot made a zip file available containing all the item icons extracted from the dat file. About a month ago, user User:Mtew started uploading them to the wiki with their file_id-based filenames, e.g. [[:File:60981.ateu.png]], and setting up galleries of them in his userspace. In response to a query about his intended usage for these icons/galleries, he explained that he thought it would make it easier for other users to identify the icons if they were visible on the wiki, and the work of uploading the file would already be done for them - they could simply move the file to the correct filename once identified.

If the number of files involved had been small, say, less than 30, this would have been fine; however, there were more than 3,000 icons in Rhoot's archives. User:Auron (a sysop) objected that this would burden the sysops with the need to delete over 3,000 redirects once the icons had been identified, and User:JonTheMon and I (also sysops) both supported this point. (I mention the sysop status only to indicate that these users are familiar with the work required to delete pages.) User:Infinite also mentioned that some icons are used for multiple items, thus simply moving the 1 icon to the name of 1 item would be insufficient, and additional uploads would be required anyway. Finally, Rhoot himself created a website (linked from his userpage) where all the icons could be easily viewed by anyone interested in finding item icons, intending for this to negate the need for uploading them all to the wiki with unidentified filenames.

Regardless, Mtew continued to upload icons for another week, until he had uploaded ~500 of them. Hardly any of them have been "identified" and moved since then.

Shortly after that, Mtew began including the file_id as a parameter to {{ArenaNet image}} on icons he uploaded, a practice he later extended to editing existing icons to add the parameter. I noticed this, but I was content to let him be since the presence of an unused parameter didn't actually harm anything, assuming that he had a plan in mind to eventually make use of it. Then, he edited the template documentation to list this unused parameter, which I saw as incorrect under the idea that documentation should be accurate with regards to how the template actually works. Unused parameters make no difference to how the template works, thus they shouldn't be listed, and I reverted him. He objected, so I asked him to explain how he intended to use this parameter. He thought that these file_ids were what Guild Wars had used to link to the wiki from within the game (referring to the game integration system), i.e. that they uniquely identified an item and could be used for the same purpose in Guild Wars 2. Although it was explained to him that this was incorrect - items do have an item_id, but it is completely different from the file_id of their icon - and that documenting a nonexistent parameter was wrong, he refused to give in. A long and heated discussion followed; in short, he is now banned from the wiki, and these projects of his are abandoned.

tl;dr: In my self-perceived role of wiki janitor, I would like to delete Mtew's unidentified icons and remove the unused id parameter that he added to other icons. I know that they are not harming anything with their presence, but they likewise provide no benefit. A year from now they will be meaningless wiki clutter that someone may eventually notice and remove, and I think we should take care of that sooner rather than later.

I am starting this discussion here, and allowing time for community input, in hopes that this will not be seen as a unilateral action on my part (thanks for the advice, Tanetris!). If anyone objects to this deletion/reversion, please speak up; otherwise I will commence with the cleanup in approximately 1 week. —Dr Ishmael 01:49, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

If the files all have a similar name, you could probably request a bot project to tag or just flat-out delete the image files. Reverting the template tinkering is fine as well. -Auron 04:56, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

He's probably considering running the bot himself (poke vs ish, round 1, fight!). But that's just implementation. As for the idea itself, i'm for it obviously, but there would be extra traction for it after this beta weekend if anything changes. --JonTheMon 12:48, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

While I could run it easily, I don't have a bot account like poke does. I'd be whitewashing RC if I ran 500+ deletions and then some unknown number of edits afterwards. (You can edit the URL to show up to 1,000 changes, but not everyone knows that.) Unless the bcrats feel like granting me a bot account of my own, I would prefer for poke to run this through WikiChu. —Dr Ishmael

00:39, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I've built the lists to be deleted/edited at ~~User:Dr ishmael/file id cleanup~~. The list for edits is shorter than I expected, so I'll go ahead and take care of that. In the absence of any objection, I will ask poke to do a bot run on the deletions tomorrow. —Dr Ishmael

15:14, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Task is complete, 431 files deleted. —Dr Ishmael

18:58, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Weapon skins

Do you want any images of weapon skins? I noticed there are none on this wiki ATM. I could take some, since I opened a lot of Rabbit Reward Chests. I don't know how to format or set that up though... I can just data dump if you want and then get it sorted out later. Don't want to waste wiki time when I can be playing. Previously Unsigned 00:06, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we definitely want those, we just haven't had anyone supply them yet. I think the plan is to set up /Gallery subpages for it, though - User:Infinite would be the one to ask about that. Definitely keep taking screenshots, but don't worry too much about uploading to the wiki right now - it would be best to get the framework in place first, rather than have a bunch of images uploaded that we'll have to rename later. —Dr Ishmael

01:44, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Gallery subpages sounds perfect. I would recommend going for a triple angle approach. One from the direct side, one from the front (and/or back), and one for the detail (like an inscription on the handle, or a sparkling effect, or flames, etc.). Also, if animated we should attempt to uniformally capture animations, that would be cool. :) For now, data dump sounds great! We can always start an extensive project for the full galleries later on. - Infinite - talk 13:11, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I would rather we get the gallery frameworks set up now so that we don't have a hundred people uploading images in a hundred different angles/formats/naming schemes and have to standardize the whole mess afterward. I did that for armor galleries on GuildWiki... it was not fun, and I don't want for us to have to do that here. Please, let's get the gallery templates set up now. —Dr Ishmael

13:27, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Right, that can be done, too. I'm busy these days, though! Lots of summer going on out there! - Infinite - talk 14:05, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

GW2 Master Fail?

← moved to User talk:Valento

Nothing about the Hunger Games?

I didn't collect data for it. Thought somebody else would have. But nothing here yet. Previously Unsigned 17:13, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I've got screenshots of the skills, just need to find time to create the pages. —Dr Ishmael

00:40, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Templates

Where do I find templates and infoboxes? Like even a generic Item one? I created the templates redirect but it doesn't even show all of them. This is a problem I encounter with all wikis - where to find things that are not articles are hard and unobvious. Can we update the template or make a page for infoboxes? I can't find anything. I found them, but I hate how categories are designed, with all those 0's that make it look lke there are NOTHING in it's subcategories. I tried cleaning it up, but being like this by default still annoys me. Previously Unsigned 01:50, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

All templates should be listed in the Templates category or its subcategories such as this one for infoboxes. The numbers in the parentheses show the number of subcategories and not pages, which does seem very confusing at first but you can just as well ignore those numbers and simply follow the hierarchy. Another way to quickly find the template you're looking for, which is the one I'm using, is to click on the edit button on any page or section that uses that template and find it in the list of used templates below the editing area.

15:08, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Instead of going to the edit form, you can also use the "Transclusion list" link in the toolbox on the sidebar. This also lists all image files on the page. —Dr Ishmael

15:38, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Skills with special conditions

I recently updated the lists of skills causing control-based and miscellaneous effects, such as push or quickness, to be more consistent with the pages on boons and conditions, and the further I got the more I wondered what is the Skills with special conditions category actually good for. While all the other categories tell you about the skill-slotting requirements, for instance that Time Warp for quickness will cost you an elite slot, you often find out next to nothing about the "skills with special conditions", especially if they are part of a transform, tome or kit; this needlessly obscures the facts as you don't immediately see that bringing Zealot's Fervor for quickness will cost you an elite slot as well or that Glyph of Elemental Harmony used for might is still a healing skill. So, the question that comes up to my mind is: am I missing something?

If there's no important reason why this separate category could be useful, I suggest moving these skills to the other categories based on the slot they require on your basic skill bar (child skills to Healing, Utility and Elite skills to be consistent with sequences and chains, pet skills, stolen skills, tool belt skills and virtues to Profession mechanics, banner skills to Environmental weapon skills, etc.). 16:03, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Since it appears that no one is against this change, I will apply it tomorrow.

10:55, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I would think that "special conditions" means the skill doesn't always apply the effect, that other "conditions" aka criteria are necessary for the effect to be applied. E.g. Tactical Strike normally applies blind, but if you hit from behind, it applies dazed instead. —Dr Ishmael

14:49, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

That might have been the original idea, but if I'm not mistaken this only applies to a handful of skills (4 glyphs and 4 skills with bonuses while flanking, and maybe 4 more stealth skills); instead, it is used as a dump for many transform skills, tome skills, kit skills, pet skills, downed or drowning skills, environmental weapon skills, sequence skills, tool belt skills, stolen skills, a shatter and a virtue which are otherwise guaranteed to apply the effect in question, while those that have some kind of a condition are lost among them. There are also some mesmer and engineer skills that have a random chance for any one effect, but even those are categorized according to their slot with "(randomly)" added next to them, and I don't think that confuses anyone more than having them in the "Special" category would.

While I'm not convinced that we should prioritise categorisation according to the certainty to cause the effect over slotting information and consistency in the categories, I think that at the very least those skills that have a guaranteed effect with no additional criteria should be placed into a more logical category.

16:06, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreeing with Noxx. Edit: I think we should categorize it as follows: Class mechanic, Weapon skills, Healing skills, Utility skills, Elite skills, Other (environmental weapon, etc.) Gnarf 16:09, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Possibly make a "secondary skills" section to contain all environmental, transform, kit, stolen, etc. skills. Anything that isn't a primary weapon or slot skill or a chain/sequence of a primary skill. —Dr Ishmael

16:41, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I was thinking about that at first as well, but I didn't like that because: 1/ it would be similarly unwieldy, since very few skills would be removed compared to the current Special section; and 2/ it wouldn't distinguish between skills that require a healing slot (Drop Stimulant), a utility slot (Fumigate), an elite slot (Oakheart Swipe) or a profession mechanic slot (Doom), which is pretty much the whole point of the current categorisation. This basically comes down to whether you consider skills like Zealot's Fervor to have an elite status or not (which I personally do). Nevertheless, if there will be more people supporting this idea, I won't be trying to prevent it.

17:01, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

edit: I also feel like there's very little difference between chain/sequence skills and form/tome/kit skills, and I'm not a big fan of the idea to categorise them differently.

17:04, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

@Ishmael: That's the status quo. I don't like the idea to dump nearly every skill into a trash-can category. Kit skills could be listed in the weapon skills category, with a little note in brackets. Like "Box of Nails (with Tool Kit)". Since they are technically weapon skills while equipped with the appropriate kit. They could be listed in Utility skills instead... guess that's a matter of taste. Stolen skills in the class mechanic category, Transforms (and their appropriate skills)in Elite skills. My opinion. Gnarf 17:06, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't see how that makes any more sense. Box of Nails is not itself a weapon skill or even a utility skill. Yes, it goes in slot 2 which is nominally a weapon skill slot, but you don't get the skill because you equipped a weapon. You get the skill because you activated a utility (or elite) skill that replaces your weapon skills with an auxiliary skillbar. That is why I feel very strongly that kit/transform/tome skills should be in their own section instead of being treated like primary skills. —Dr Ishmael

17:43, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I can live with that. But it has to be highly differentiated, not just a single "dump category" like it's at the moment. Maybe kits get their own category. Edit: Regarding ranger pet skills, they'll move to class mechanic. Gnarf 17:48, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Other than the lack of recharge and the utility/elite status of the parent skill, what difference is there between kits and tomes/transforms? I don't see a need to split them up when they function so similarly. —Dr Ishmael

19:11, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Transformations lock your right skill bar, kits don't. Also, kits can be toggled without triggering a high cooldown. As I said, we need more differentiation, not less. To put it simple, kits are kits and elites are elites. Gnarf 19:15, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I suppose it could be tested whether kits are environmental weapons or not by the use of Rune of the Engineer or another similiar mechanics. Tomes lock your slot skills, correct? That makes them transforms or at least not environmental weapons. I think we need to keep slot designation (Healing, Utility, Elite, Weapon) separate from other skill types. For instance, Tome of Wrath's proper skill type/classification should be Elite skill/Transform/Tome (from highest priority classification to lowest). Mediggo 20:34, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Personally, I would handle chains, sequences, kits, tomes and transforms all the same way (perhaps except for some flavour text), because differences among them are all fairly negligible and over-categorisation can actually make the page more confusing; otherwise, we might as well recognize counters (such as this one) as a different type of sequence skills, since they behave more like chains (they are quick and you can't use other skills in between, if I'm not mistaken).

Even though there would be in my opinion a pointless information loss, I also wouldn't really mind splitting the Special section into Profession mechanics and Secondary skills, but not any further; the process of using a kit ability is almost identical to using a tome skill or an environmental weapon skill, the main differences are simply numerical (duration, recharge) and definitely have nothing to do with skill slot requirements, which is the overarching method of categorisation here.

20:37, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

edit: Don't forget that the main point of those pages is to quickly find out what kind of access a profession has to a condition/boon/effect, not to learn about details in skill mechanics.

20:42, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Attempt #2

It's been a while now and the release is getting closer still, while the lists are still a mess; it would be great to have them tidied up before the headstart, although that would probably be quite hard to achieve here.
Anyway, I made a mockup of the various options we have so that it includes all the types of skills I could think of.

V3 is the way they are most commonly listed now, with only the most basic skills categorised and all other dumped into a single category.
V1 lists all skills based on the skill slot they take up in the primary skill bar with notes on the various conditions next to them.
V2 is a compromise between the two, splitting profession mechanics off from the dump section.

As I mentioned before, I personally like V1 the most; feel free to express your opinion on the matter or suggest other improvements. 16:54, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I generally like V1, although I would add one more list for skills from kits/transforms. Chain/sequence skills occupy the same slot as their parent skill, so it makes sense to have them under the weapon/utility/etc. lists; kit/form skills don't, so I feel they should have their own heading. —Dr Ishmael

18:46, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I added this option as V1b; I'm not a big fan of the fact that it no longer tells you where you'll have to dedicate a slot for the skill, but I guess it doesn't matter that much, since tomes and kits are fairly easy to identify and everything else is elite, and tool belt skills didn't have this distinction anyway. My question now is what to do with Death Shroud skills, as they're both secondary skills and profession mechanics (I'd say they're more of the latter though).

20:04, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Stress Test TOMORROW.

Yo, since Anet's doing a crappy job of getting the word out, some of you need to step up so we get more bodies in the game for this. Bonus points if ya pass the word around here too --ilr 20:22, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

That link looks suspicious. Don't click on it, could be a keylogger. If there would be a stress test, Anet would have said so. Gnarf 20:32, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

They said so, but yeah, little point using shortened URLs on the wiki. Mediggo 20:35, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm running noscript, so I bravely clicked the link for all of you. It linked directly to a wall post for the officail GW2 facebook page and was rather long, hence being shortened, I guess the poster didn't know that he could post the link like this. The post was from this account. Although he even did that. Now I'm confused, but anyway... Seems to be legit. Enjoy. Misery 20:40, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Ilr grabbed the link off GW2's Twitter, which automatically shortens URLs to t.co. You can see it's the exact same link found on https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/status/230745879810826240 - Tanetris 20:58, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I'm extremely cautious of what I click on and such links look strange to me. At which time does the stress test begin? Gnarf 21:08, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

The stress test starts at these times (teehee). --Gentlecow 21:57, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Anyone concerned about shortened URLs can use http://longurl.org/ to decode them first. —Dr Ishmael

22:00, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Spoilsport. --Gentlecow 22:03, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

So I'll upload a bunch of images with the wrong name, and we can move them later, ok?

There are many places where we can see screenshots from many of the armor sets in GW2. While we have some of the names of the dungeon armors, there are multiple other armor sets in the game that have been documented eleswhere. For example, here and here. It would be interesting to upload those images to the wiki, so we have a full gallery of all armor sets currently seen in the game. However, we don't know the name of most of those armors. Considering how uploading them with generic names (such as "heavy armor 03") and suggesting to move them later to the proper name appears to not be the most popular idea ever, what is the proper way to document this? Erasculio 23:43, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

The existing galleries you linked to work just fine, why do we need to transfer them to the wiki? —Dr Ishmael

15:36, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

It is rarely okay to hotlink external images into wiki articles. --Gentlecow 15:46, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

And why would we do that, either? Just provide a link to the gallery like Erasculio did above. —Dr Ishmael

15:51, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

You don't believe each article for each armor set should have appropriate artwork, in the relevant article? --Gentlecow 23:44, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Once the names are known, articles can then be created using the images provided in the external source. @Gentlecow, how does one create articles without knowing the name of said article? For instance, Medium human is not a name of a peice of armor, it is a mere light description. Venom20

00:00, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

That's a good point. It will make it a bit tougher to complete at this stage. Although I still think the images should be transferred to the wiki. I mean, what's the guarantee they will remain available wherever they are now? And they'll need to be added at some point regardless, so why not do the work now (while there is little else to do) and have less to do later? --Gentlecow 00:25, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Of course we should have an article for each armor set and galleries for each race/gender appearance of the armor. Until we know the names, it will be difficult to arrange them properly. Once we do know the names, we're going to want higher-quality images than from the equipment preview anyway. So those are multiple reasons for not transferring those images to wiki at this time. —Dr Ishmael

00:58, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Did you see this? Item information OVERLOAD that we can use

ORIGINAL SOURCE: http://redd.it/xky33

CLEANED UP AND SORTED: http://redd.it/xmt0o

Previously Unsigned 16:24, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Based on the section above, you will probably be told to add those links to an article... Erasculio 16:48, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Am I detecting sarcasm in your typing? Because I think that is kinda fail... people mine the .dat files, but then can't link directly, even though the stuff comes from the game itself. Those aren't even screenshots, they are icon extracts and descriptions. Could easily use them to populate tons of pages. Previously Unsigned 17:02, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Not hotlinks, just links to galleries or threads. Mediggo 17:08, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems like a lot of the info there is outdated, specifically the "3 team minigame" pills - they're from the Feb. press beta and were necessary in order to set up WvW matches because there was only 1 server. There's no way to verify whether any of this (except the Top Hat, because we saw that in BWEs) are actually in the game anymore. Remember, when something is removed from live usage, it usually is NOT removed from the .dat file. —Dr Ishmael

18:11, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Yet another stress test

Another stress test has been announced, for tomorrow. See official Facebook page. "We will be conducting a stress test on Thursday, August 9 from 12:00 Noon PACIFIC Time to 4:00 PM PACIFIC Time" --Gentlecow 20:15, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

As per my usual MO, here's a world clock reference. --Gentlecow 20:17, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Just this morning, my wife said, "I hope we get another stress test." I told her it was unlikely, she replied, "I can still hope T_T" Then this happens. I'd say my horn has been sufficiently swaggled, so I'll go hide in my room now. —Dr Ishmael

20:20, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Fun fact: I just updated one of the old pages to say it was very unlikely there would be any more stress tests. Color me wrong. --Gentlecow 20:23, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

GW2 Question

Now, I have been asking In-game, and noone seems to be able to answer this question. I Pre-ordered GW2 from Amazon Here. I know Pre-order = 1 day headstart, but this says 3 days. Can anyone let me know which I will get?, Also, I have already paid In full for the game. The previous unsigned comment was written by Thon Ghul on 09:28, August 12, 2012.

Pre-order is 3 days headstart for everyone apparently :) The description on Amazon says so too, so hopefully they'll deliver everything in time for the 25th so you can play :) - anja

13:31, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I hope so. (: -- Thon Ghul •

16:56, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I've seen this discussed on @GuildWars2 before, and it seems like Amazon just isn't using the right terminology - it is a full pre-purchase because you pay the full amount and get the full 3-day headstart, but for some reason they call it a pre-order. —Dr Ishmael

17:18, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, that explains the whole problem so clearly, the very single answer I was looking for. Thanks a ton Ishmael, Your such a great sysop (: -- Thon Ghul •

17:29, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Victims of our own success? (Recommendation: add a disclaimer.)

I believe GW2W is a victim of the success of GWW and that we need to set our readers' expectations for what they will find here.

The GW1 Wiki has had several years to become the most comprehensive and accurate of any gaming resource out there: virtually anything one wants to know about Guild Wars 1 is available at GWW, with high levels of accuracy (despite hundreds of game updates and evolutions of strategy/tactics) and the quality of writing is largely very good or better.

In contrast, GW2 Wiki has exactly 0 days of time to get up to speed: virtually everything that is true about Guild Wars 2 has changed in some way/shape/form since the original articles were written. Our sources are either snippets of tea leaves left by ANet employees hither or yon or hurried experiments done during BETA events (when we know that ANet is still tweaking details).

So it's very common to find an article here that was accurate e.g. last week, but is no longer accurate today. But many (if not most) of our readers our used to GWW, where the opposite was true (those articles are sometimes accurate even before an update).

Consequently, I'd like to see a site notice for GW2W that says something like:

"The Guild Wars 2 Wiki is still a work in progress. Many articles were written based on experimentation during beta testing and often many (if not all) details have changed.
Please be patient while we confirm and adjust articles to fit the about-to-be/newly-released game. If you would like to help in this effort, we encourage you to update articles and/or type a note on the talk page to point out inaccurate or misleading information. Thank you."

I've already seen complaints from guildies, who haven't stopped to think about why GW2W might be less up-to-date than GWW. I think we should make it easier for visitors to realize that it will take time for this wiki to reach the level of accuracy and quality they have gotten used to. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 21:53, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I am all for this disclaimer, and I confirm the public eye judges us harshly from a perspective of not thinking things through. I'd argue and contest the success of GWW, personally, but in terms of information it covers almost everything (so that part is left unscathed). +1 on the disclaimer text. - Infinite - talk 22:22, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

In conjunction with this, let's get the GW2W:FAQ updated as well. We can keep the disclaimer simple and link to the FAQ for in-depth explanations of most things, like Q: "what's with the damage numbers on skills?" → A: Baseline stats at level 80. —Dr Ishmael

22:37, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I would have to also agree. This wiki is still very much a work in progress and will be for quite some time. - Endeavor

22:53, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

The proposed sitenotice needs to push harder the point that the wiki should be updated by the very people who think it needs updating. In other words, instead of saying "hold tight, we're doing our best", we should say "get stuck in, or else the wiki can't improve".

Perhaps something like "The wiki is a perpetual work-in-progress that needs and welcomes your direct involvement to improve. As we approach release, join in with the effort: correct inaccurate info, update content taken from alpha/beta, and create new content based on recent events! See <faq, help:editing, whatever>." pling

23:34, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed with Pling, site notice should invite people to get involved, the wiki as a whole needs help to move on or the process will take more and more time. – Valento ^msg 23:41, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

agreed with Pling. Telling people to leave a note on talk pages is just annoying if they see something that needs to be fixed then they should just fix it. and if its wrong then we can revert. I mean we are going to get a flood of new information come release so I am guessing it will be a few weeks before we have most of it on the wiki. and then a few more weeks to confirm all the things.-

Zesbeer 00:16, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. In the same vein, might we take a closer look at our help documents, too, and see if and how we can make the process of getting involved clearer and more straightforward? The GW2W FAQ could also be fleshed out and split into several sub-groupings, like for 'GWW and GW2W' and 'GW2W and GW2' and then some of the more frequent editing questions–support for that? Redshift 11:20, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Don't overestimate the effort people will put in. A disclaimer/site notice might be ok. 50% of the people might read it instead of just posting snarky comments, but none of these people area going to dive into the help section or the FAQ. If they know wikis well enough to start checking that sort of information, they will already know that they can update things themselves and will probably realise why things are not up to date. Adding it as a FAQ makes sense. I don't know that the help documents need to be changed to reflect the status of the wiki. Misery 12:00, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

And why is that a problem? GW2W is a wiki of an unreleased game. Of course it can't be as accurate as the wiki of a game which is older than dirt. People who critize this should calm down and face reality. — Gnarf ~ El Psy Congroo ~ 14:18, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

This is true too, people shouldn't expect everything updated, the game changes even over ST's. – Valento ^msg 21:21, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) There seems to be general agreement about including some type of site notice. Can we add something now and continue tweaking it later?

And I would like to reiterate how important I think this is and why it's worthwhile to encourage the use of talk pages.

Why

People already have unreasonable expectations about this site, even people who should know better.
At least some of those would see the disclaimer message and change their expectations.
Not everyone realizes that they can contribute anonymously (even though it's obvious to some of us.

What

Make it easy for people to understand why GW2W isn't at the same level as GWW (yes, it should be obvious, but ...apparently it's not).
It should encourage people to contribute directly.
It should encourage people to contribute indirectly, specifically via the talk page — not everyone wants to see their "writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed" and not everyone feels comfortable editing something that will be seen by millions of others. Sometimes, it's better for if people publish a note, especially if they aren't good at phrasing things or aren't sure about the details. Better that we offer the alternative and increase the number of contributors.
As Ish says, many of the details can be placed on the Wiki FAQ.

– Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 21:52, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of that "If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it." bullet, perhaps we can rephrase it to not scare off users who are relatively new to editing. The tone is rather harsh and brutal. - Infinite - talk 22:29, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Vegetarians won't visit a butcher, because they can't expect him to sell vegetarian cuisine. The same applies to this case here. If you expect the wiki of an unreleased game to be completely accurate, you have the wrong expectations to begin with. That's why I still don't support this idea. To make a proposal, regarding the editability, the FAQ and Help center could get a more prominent space on the main page. — Gnarf ~ El Psy Congroo ~ 07:54, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Vegetarians won't visit a butcher because most vegetarians made an active choice and as such, know that there are limitations. Most people eat meat and if *they* would walk into a restaurant they would expect them to serve meat, more or less. Unless the name of the restaurant och a sign outside tells them this is an all vegetarian restaurant, and the situation is the same here. We have a wiki, people know wikis from Wikipedia and possibly GWW. Those are not a fair comparison yet, but how would they know? A wiki has information, a restaurant has meat. It is not right for you to expect every restaurant to cater to your every need, but you might still get irritated. If we can avoid that with a notice that also might get people involved in editing, I say win-win. - anja

18:36, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

As per TEF, I've added the sitenotice (with something about discussion too) - suggest changes if you don't like it.

(Also, I'm kinda hungry now.) pling

01:49, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Another Question

Does anyone know if you can play GW2 with subminimum req?, or if arenanet won't allow you? -- Thon Ghul • 20:27, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind, found my answer. -- Thon Ghul •

20:44, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Uh... could you share the answer, in case other people with the same question come looking? It could be added to the FAQ. —Dr Ishmael

20:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure, This is what I found, "We've Detected that your computer does not meet the minimum System Requirements. Continuing to play may result in side effects, such as: Reduced Client Performance, Visual Artifacts, and Crashes." Which translates into, Yes, you can play with Sub-minimum Req. but the game won't operate as smoothly as it would with minimum or higher Req. (: -- Thon Ghul •

21:32, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Added, Also, when do you think we shall archive another chunk or this page?, it seems very long to me >_> -- Thon Ghul •

21:37, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Armor cats

It's late, but out of curiosity... Category: Armor and Category: Cultural armor or Category: Armors and Category: Cultural armors? Redshift 08:00, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

"Armor" is used by both GuildWiki and GW1W, so there's precedent. This is one of those words with ambiguous plurals, but I don't have a problem with keeping "armor". —Dr Ishmael

12:56, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

The plural of armor is armors. However, when we use Category:Armor, we use it to categorize armor types and armor classes(excluding the overview armor article). As long as there are no pieces of armor directly in Category:Armor, the use of armor is accurate because in this scenario there is no plural. - Infinite - talk 17:20, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

To get a plural form you have to use a phrase like "suits of armor" or "pieces of armor". The word "armors" is only a valid plural when referring to armored vehicles. —Dr Ishmael

17:33, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

User and userbox cats

With the potential influx of new users particularly, it might be good just to retread on this topic: Is there, if any, a preference on categories with userboxes and, by extension, users themselves? I just edited to remove an autocategorization in this userbox and I'd like to leave a note to the creator explaining the move in that based on previous efforts there was a conscious direction of paring down the actual creation of a hundred extraneous categories for users. However, I did want to make sure that this was still the direction and to provide a more recent, un-archived discussion should this pop up again in the near future. Redshift 11:09, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I personally believe there can be any amount of userboxes out there, no matter how ridiculous they get ("This user is a fan of soda, but only sodas that are tinted blue-ish, with lots of fizz. Blue bubbles!"). The only problem that users tend to create when making these fancy userboxes is the category they think they must add to it to make it more amazing. I strongly oppose a lax practise towards these unwanted categories.

The amount of user categories should be just as efficient as the amount of regular categories (scaled, of course). We don't have a category for "slot 4 off-hand dagger skills" and we should never want that sort of category. In the same light we shouldn't have categories for "users who missed an opportunity to join the circus."

I am not above the community. If the rest of the community decides that these categories are a good idea/harmless user flair/not a problem/fun/whatever, then I have no other option but to resign my opposition. Having said *that* I must add that the community would then be losing a lot of respect;

We are the official wiki, something I stress every time. It is our responsibility to represent the game and the community in a way that does not cause people to belittle us (see the discussion about adding a disclaimer to explain our lack of 100% accuracy and completion). Having mindless, pointless, and utterly useless categories that user can abuse is the exact opposite of such practise. It'll imply we care more about structuring "users who spend the majority of their time online attempting jumping challenges" and "users who like bacon" than we care about "elite skills" and "trait lines." The wiki casuals may want these categories, but the wiki as a whole shouldn't want them.

We can revisit this topic somewhere after we've hit GWW's level of documented information, but for now I must stress that the limited user categories that exist can work perfectly as the actual auto-cats for most of the userboxes on this wiki. Any userbox that can't use any of them shouldn't be using a category at all. - Infinite - talk 14:22, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

User:Oboros just created their userpage with a lot of boxes and a lot of categories, and it raised a specific question. Do we really need categories for the individual GW1 campaigns? I don't see that as being very relevant to GW2 - simply the one category of users who played GW1 should be all we care about here. —Dr Ishmael

15:22, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I could live with that merge. Remember the user categories were sorted well before Guild Wars 2 even had an assumed release date. I support a merge of individual original Guild Wars user categories. - Infinite - talk 17:56, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

How to log-in after getting server error during the 3-days head start period

I suspect many wiki-ers are having difficulties to log-in. I attempted twice and in the second time, I clicked the "return" bottom of the internet browser...and the page loaded me already logged. Try that and if it works I call forth a maintenance notice at the very Main Page. Yoshida Keiji (talk) 14:21, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Off-topics archiving

I expect all talk pages will get bloating amounts of "off-topics", I wandered if we should archive them "out" somewhere to keep it clean. Yoshida Keiji (talk) 14:36, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

As per current practise, off-topic chatter is to be moved to the user talk page of the person who opened the off-topic discussion. Move to/from templates will be applied on both pages. - Infinite - talk 12:02, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

to add to that now that there are official forums we should point them to them.-

Zesbeer 01:38, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Does that mean we create a talk page for every off-topicing IP just to move it there too? --zeeZ

(talk) 10:10, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

If it's one comment we could revert it. If it's a "thread" we can move it to the first user's talk page with a note explaining the move. If they don't want it there, well.. - Infinite - talk 19:14, 10 September 2012 (UTC)