Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 7

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Archive

This page is an archive. The contents have been moved from another page for reference purposes only, and should be preserved in their current form. Discussion or voting on this page is not current. Any additions you make will probably not be read.
The current version of this page can be found at Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Community portal.

Random YouTube and other external links

I've seen a bunch of random "How to"s and "Walkthrough" videos pop up in notes or see also parts of pages. Do we keep those and other links to maps and whatnot that are not directly referenced by the page content itself? This is essentially free advertising. --zeeZUser ZeeZ Sig.png (talk) 10:10, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I would say a jumping puzzle solution is something that is done best in a video, and youtube is a good platform to host these things. Other stuff like what is the view of a vista or how does a cutscene play. I see why you want to look that up, I just don't know it the wiki ia a good place for that. The cutscene transcription and the way how to reach the vista is enough imo.
I don't think that videos with other content have a place in the wiki. If you link to youtube, there is a youtube link template which I think is a good thing to use. Just putting things in the notes is indead bit strange. Well, that are my two cents. - Yandere Talk to me... 10:44, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
See: GW1:Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Formatting/Missions#Videos. User Yoshida Keiji Signature.jpg Yoshida Keiji (talk) 10:45, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Not even for jumping puzzles I'd say. A wiki is just not suitable for videos. If a person wants to look at a video, it's almost second nature for that person to go and look it up on youtube, with or without a link. Currently, lots of content is getting filled in so there's much contest on videos right now. I'd imagine later on, we're going to come against two problems - the first is where everyone wants to add a link to their own video - how many links is enough? The other problem is when someone thinks another link is "better" and proceeds to edit war. Or it could be that I'm just over thinking it. In either case, we can leave them for now, and come back to it when it's becoming a problem. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 15:01, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I've been removing video links, except for the jumping puzzles, since it seemed like there was specific consensus for that (I may be wrong). We could certainly have a series of pictures and better-written instructions to guide people through them. Manifold User Manifold Neptune.jpg 16:05, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Actually, having videos on wiki might be a good idea 'if it's done properly. Take a look at official Team Fortess 2 wiki and item presentation to see what I'm talking about. Would be a good idea to start a project and designate few people to do the recording.
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 19:57, 8 September 2012 (UTC).
I agree that we should not retain video links, unless (as Faalagorn suggests) we have a person/people dedicated to a project that upload to a GW2W-specific account. Otherwise, providing a video link implies that the wiki endorses that user's video over all other videos - even if we don't explicitly say anything of the sort, that's the implication that other readers will infer. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 12:45, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I should have looked here rather than starting a new issue at GW2W:NOTICE#YouTube - thanks Pling. I'm glad to see that I thought of the exact issues that others here have :) — snogratUser Snograt signature.png 21:38, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Non Point of Interest places of interest

Okay, so something I've noticed is that there are some landmark-esque places on the maps that do not have PoI (sometimes just waypoints, sometimes neither) that I think could easily be documented. The one that brought this to mind for asking this question is Seraph's Landing in Harathi Hinterlands - it's the "main base of Seraph operations" in the zone, but has no PoI and is not an area, it merely has a waypoint and about three dozen references to it throughout the zone (at least). Another situation folks may be more likely to know about would be Temperous Point in Plains of Ashford (a Blood Legion camp with a heart and a waypoint), Snowdrift Haven in Snowden Drifts, Ireko Tradecamp in Kessex Hills and a few others. These examples I've given all have a waypoint (I needed some point of reference for names when looking these up), but there's also places like Wizard's Tower as well.
So what I'm wanting to ask is... how would we go about documenting these? IMO, the best way to do so would be to reinstate GWW's landmark system (at least in regards to locational organization) for non-marked places of interest. Right off the bat, outside those listed above, I also see Shaemoor Graveyard, Lake Doric, and Applenook Village (if I remember the name correctly). Thoughts? Konig/talk 03:56, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The GWW landmark works for this. Or we could just add "Landmarks" section inside each area's page, such level 3 or 4 headings containing an image and a short description of that particular landmark. Not sure if each landmark warrants a page of its own. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 06:09, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
I think doing that would be as cluttering as the current vista walkthrough added to each zone page. Seraph's Landing has a bit of lore to it, just as a few others do. From what I have gathered, PoI are mostly focused around event-based locations whereas these places I'm denoting are more tied to personal story, hearts, and waypoints. Konig/talk 03:39, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
I went ahead and created landmark due to the lack of complaint or comment. If it's disagreed upon in the future, it can be further discussed. Primarily created it for Font of Rhand and Wizard's Tower for the time being (the Font of Rhand PoI was removed since the BWEs). Konig/talk 05:38, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Item icons

→ moved from Talk:Main Page#Not satisfied

Am I the only one not satisfied by the item icons? we should have In Game screen shots of these weapons just like gw1 wiki OurDelusions 02:51, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

All of our Category:Infobox templates always prepare a "gallery" or "image" parameters for users to specify additional images. You can refer to each individual infobox, look for the appropriate parameter, edit the page, and then upload your screenshots. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 03:31, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
Nice. I'll be working on that OurDelusions 10:42, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

List of X in [the] Y

Looking at Category:Lists of hearts by zone (these existed first, before the lists of vistas and skill challenges), why do some of the articles have a "the" and others don't? It sort of makes sense for some, like "the Wayfarer Foothills," but for others it doesn't, like "the Sparkfly Fen." Could we just get rid of the "the" on all of them in the interests of standardization? —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 00:57, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I support this. Could be a task for a bot, we need some more votes on this first though I think?
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 21:03, 9 September 2012 (UTC).
Wikis work by consensus, not votes (unless you're Wikipedia). Nonetheless, we should probably wait on more input, yes. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:38, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
In the absence of any further comments, I have implemented this. I think I got everything, but I may have missed a page or two.
I did skip pages for "...in the Maguuma Jungle" and "...in the Shiverpeak Mountains" deliberately, since those are regions and unquestionably need an article. (As opposed to "...in Krtya/Ascalon/Orr" which unquestionably do not need one.) —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:45, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I think page should be totaly updated

I know it's not the main page, and only wiki editors take a look in here, but there's really much of useful links and stuff not in this page. Not to mention the page is a bit outdated. For example, there is no dates near each entry so it's hard to tell which things are here from months before the release and went outdated, and which ones are the current projects / recent wiki news. There is also no direct place to discussion nowhere - no IRC channel, no links to most important stuff on wiki (some are on the sidebar, like How to help, Report a wiki bug etc) but there's still a lot missing. There is a link to current projects, not so visible though and the projects page seems to have some projects that were here from early betas and aren't much needed/updated now. I wanted to discuss few things, for example how to deal with some remnants from when there was no public beta yet (useless references for things that can be easily seen in-game, outdated discussions mixed with current ones, etc), but I'm kinda lost on whole wiki. It's really big, and really hard to navigate if you're not looking for a particular page.

What I'd love to see, would be a proper overview with up to date policies, news, projects and discussions about wiki, as well a proper way of direct communications (admin noticeboard is already a good stuff), preferabbly with dates in projects and news sections, so I won't have to judge it from history pages if the project/news is outdated or not. If anyone have a plan, go on, I'd love to see the community portal to be the proper way to start when beginning editing wiki :).
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 01:53, 6 September 2012 (UTC).

We only put dates on the wiki news. "Hot discussions" are "hot". If they're not, they're removed by the users involved in those discussions - hence no dates (but if you've already checked the dates, feel free to add them to the page). Active projects are on the projects page, which incidentally shows which projects are currently inactive. This is managed by the people actually involved in those projects, as uninvolved users usually don't check a project for activity.
IRC channel is not official, hence you'll have to contact the relevant users. All discussions related to wiki content should be made on talk pages so that it's visible to all. If you're having a hard time deciding where to discuss things, just put them here. Someone will move it if they think another page is more appropriate. This page is like the village pump - just bring up any topic and let's see how it goes.
Please suggest what you think are the "most important stuff" to link to. Please feel free to just put them in. Also feel free to improve the layout/navigation of this page if you're so inclined.
Given that most wiki users are busy with the game and documenting the game, this page is going to be neglected for a bit lot longer until things settle down a bit. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 03:29, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
also if you do have a page that you know were the discussion should go but is a non high traffic page post it on the request for comment page.- User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 05:00, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Okay. So I did a bit of research looking through wiki-related pages mentioned in Communtity portal, sidebar and links in there.
Currently, there are two main templates covering this, but there is quite mess with them: Template:GW2W navbar header and Template:Help navbar header.
As from what I understand, one is for "Guild Wars 2 Wiki" namespace, which should cover the policies, discussions, projects etc and the second one is for "Help" namespace which sould be help with formatting, issues etc, but there is quite a mess with some links from GW2W namespace in Help navbar and bunch of useful links in Help navbar are from GW2W namespace. Also, "Practices and Processes" is listed in both of them. This leads (at least it lead me) to abit confusion, when trying to find all the info about policies I wanted to know about. So, am I right with the Help and GW2W namespaces and should everything from each namespace be moved to the appropriate template?
Oh, I also found a bunch of pages not linked in any template that would be useful to have there for easier navigate, here's the list:
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 20:17, 9 September 2012 (UTC).
request for tech and wiki bugs are two very different things one is for when the wiki code screws up and the other is to request that anet installs new wiki code.- User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 20:24, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
In other words, Tech Admin is when someone have to physically access the server and wiki bugs are things that wiki admins, bureaucrats and/or experienced users can do? Thatt'd make sense.
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 21:01, 9 September 2012 (UTC).
Bug reports is, in practice, more for telling people "that's not a bug, you're not doing it right" because most of the complaints are, indeed, stupid mistakes. IF it turns out to actually be a bug, we still have to pass it on to Anet staff to fix.
The difference between bug reports and technical requests is the same as between the "Game Bugs" and "Suggestions" boards on the official forums. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:41, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Update notes have been posted.

How do we want to handle update notes? there have already been some that have gone out seen here:https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Update-Notes-September-8th-2012/first#post32760 I think we should add a link to the top of the main page just like gw1w but maybe there is a better solution.- User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 22:49, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Related discussion: Talk:Game status updates#Undocumented updates. Should probably continue there. pling User Pling sig.png 23:28, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
I thought about it as well. I was even temted to do a screenshot of each build version, but decided against it, especially since I'd have to keep each patch's DAT file as well. Anyway, I really like how it's done on Team Fortress 2 wiki - look here - especially at Revision changes section - could we do something similar in here? There is at least one working dat explorer that can list files inside of DAT file.
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 00:28, 9 September 2012 (UTC).
EDIT: Ah nvm, I'm an awful reader. Just realized the part about where to continue discussion. I repied at Talk:Game status updates as well.
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 00:37, 9 September 2012 (UTC).

so there is this...

http://www.ign.com/wikis/guild-wars-2/Contributor_Challenge?utm_campaign=twposts&utm_source=twitter any thoughts? - User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 21:29, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Not an NPC...What is it?

I have been working on some pages for the creatures out there that we players are killing... What is the generally accepted term for these? I looked at the NPC page, which gives four ideas "foes, enemies, mobs or monsters." So... which is more correct? And then, the main reason I ask is that I've been using the NPC infobox template for these (like Jungle Boar and River Drake). I don't know anything about making templates, but it seems like it would be good to have a template specific for these monsters (or whatever else you decide to call them). Jauranna 03:24, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

NPC = anything that isn't a player character (and not an object). That is the umbrella term we use for all creatures in the game.
NPCs can be split up into allies and foes (or enemies) based on whether they are (potentially) hostile or not; sometimes the same NPC can be an ally in one location and a foe in a different location, e.g. the skritt in Skrittsburgh Center are allies, but the skritt in Queen's Forest are foes.
Mob is a term I loathe, and monster doesn't make sense when you include members of the sentient races. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 04:06, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Yea, NPC is the official term to refer to just about anything you can target you can kill except objects. When it comes to walkthroughs or descriptions, using foe, enemy, monster, or creature is fine - as long as it's understandable, it's fine. Of course, the NPC formatting or location formatting might decide to use a particular for the section headers, but that hasn't really been nailed down yet I guess. I don't mind mob though, I have used it on occasion in the GW1 wiki to refer to a group of monsters (it's shorter than saying "group of monsters" :D ) -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 05:29, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
What you state there is the correct usage of "mob", and I'm fine with that. Using it to refer to a single creature or using the plural to refer to a group is when I cringe. (Yes, I know the etymology behind it, but it still sounds so wrong.) —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 12:37, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Okay, so the NPC infobox is the correct thing to use for enemies? Jauranna 16:06, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Eeeeyup. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 16:08, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Batch image upload?

Has this been implemented yet? Can't find a link anywhere. Previously Unsigned 12:09, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Was such a request made? I don't see it, so maybe you need to bring it up for discussion. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 02:17, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
It's not a simple matter of changing a configuration option, it requires an extension. An extension which, incidentally, is incompatible with MW 1.19 that we'll be upgrading to "soon". —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 02:50, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Armor infobox color

I've noticed we are using two different color schemes for armor, red infobox and peach navboxes. I'm not sure where the appropriate place would be to talk about this, especially since Alfa-R seems to be inactive atm. Could someone with css skills and css access change this color mismatch? I would prefer peach all over, but then again me and Bex came up with that color scheme on GWW so I'm biased :P - anja talk 05:03, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

{{Armor infobox}} and {{accessory infobox}} are both... um, red, I guess. Those should be getting used for all armor and trinkets/accessories. Where are you seeing the other color? —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 12:20, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
[[Magus Garment]] for example. The navboxes still use the peach color scheme. - anja talk 17:46, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
I think that is because it is out of date, and didn't really get much attention, when we went through all the armor pages. - Yandere Talk to me... 20:19, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
Oh, are you referring to the navbox? The infobox is the one in the top right, the navbox is the one at the bottom. Never mind, that was a reading comprehension fail for me. You are referring to the difference between infobox and navbox. That's really a question for Alfa or the other people who worked on the new info/navbox styles, because there is no nav armor class defined. If you post on Alfa's talk page, he usually responds pretty quickly. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 20:45, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
Like I said, Alfa-R seems inactive amd haven't responded on his talk page for a while. We need a backup CSS manager :P - anja talk 21:06, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
I can manage the CSS just fine, but I'm no graphic designer. One thing I noticed about the infobox classes vs the navbox classes is that the navboxes are always lighter than the infoboxes. I don't know why he did them that way, but I know he always had good reasons for everything, so I don't want to mess about with the colors on my own. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:46, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

CSS change to infobox width

I've increased the width of infoboxes by 20px, from 230px to 250px. This is to allow the map icons on Template:Area infobox to all display on a single line. If anyone objects to this change, please leave a comment. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:55, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Looking better like this \o no objection! – Trolloli "I wasn't born, I spawned" 21:48, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

(New) "Research needed" and "Confirmation needed" templates

Sometimes when I'm doing an edit, I find myself not sure about something - either because I believe it is this way but haven't tested it, something is not happening with 100% chance, I forgot to write something down, or something needs research (like drop rates). Without template I usually just mark the part I'm not sure with "?" sign, which is quite a crude way to do so.

There is already Category:Research needed and as for confirmation needed we could add category at the similar fashion. The problem with categories is however, that one - they are barely visible and two - you have no idea which part of page needs research/confirmation.

As for representation, I'd follow Wikpedia's {{w:Template:Citation needed}} template.
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 12:25, 13 September 2012 (UTC).

We have {{verify}}, I think that covers what you're asking for. I don't see a need to split the way you're suggesting. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 13:11, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
Oh, I totaly missed it. Probably because I was only using search to look for the words "Research" and "Confirmation" ^^. That's fine then, but one more thing that still bothers me is categories - it seems that this page doesn't add any, and the Category:Research needed needs to be added manually, which is really not convenient. Normally category disappears when the template is removed after research is done and template is removed. With the current situation you need to navigate to the bottomo of page, many of which won't notice - and which is not even possible when editing a section (what I often do). Any idea how to deal with it?
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 15:38, 13 September 2012 (UTC).
Hm, it looks like that template is supposed to be applying "Category:Pages with disputed claims", but it's not working because it's not inside the onlyinclude tags (which are pointless on that template anyway). However, that doesn't seem like a very good category name in any case, so I'd suggest we replace it the Research category. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 15:48, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
Doesn't sounds bad, but wouldn't "research" be a thing that you need to perform tests like this and this while verification is just a simple matter of checking it once and confirming?
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 16:36, 13 September 2012 (UTC).
I think it's better to have two templates. "Verify" is for things that can be checked pretty easily, whereas "research" might be something that could do with linking to a talk page or some user space keeping track of research progress. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 17:12, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
Or /Research subpage, just like in GW1W. And yup, that's basically the same idea I had from the beginning, with Verify template replacing my Confirmation template :)
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 17:16, 13 September 2012 (UTC).

Skill or trait - not immediately clear

Compare Zealot's Fervor and Zealot's Speed - it's hard to tell with a glance which is a skill and which is a trait. I think there should be something simple like "skill" and "trait" at the top of each page to make it clear. (I'm not sure that it should go in the infobox since I'm noticing that too much is going in them, even though the infobox is almost the last thing I view on the page because of its position on the very right. But that's probably another matter and it's more of a problem on, say, weapon pages.) pling User Pling sig.png 16:12, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Not using the same colour for those two infoboxes seems like the simplest solution. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 18:06, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Skills and traits are both profession-linked (except for the skills that aren't). If we get rid of the profession-colored header cell, we'd need some other way to make profession obvious - the tiny profession icon really isn't enough. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 18:33, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
It's not immediately clear? Where one says "skill" on the page 4 times, and the other says "trait" twice? Where one has a skill icon and the other has a trait icon? Where one has a duration, a recharge, a slot, and the other does not? None of this makes it obvious at a glance which is which? I don't know how to help you. - Tanetris 19:17, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
I'd like one place where my eyes can jump to upon reaching the skill or trait page and immediately identify whether it's a skill or trait, not rely on second-hand bits of info that aren't always on all pages at the same, reliable place. And I'm not sure why you include categories (or small text) in your count. I'm also not familiar with all the icons or mechanics. Sometimes I'm not even there to see what the skill is, only that it is a skill (e.g. when to use {{skill icon}} on a game update). pling User Pling sig.png 19:51, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Well, skill icons are squares and trait icons are hexagons. I'm really not sure any arbitrary color-coding system is going to be clearer than that. And while I'll grant you eliminating tiny print, why in heaven's name would you not count categories? They're always in the same place at the bottom of the page, easily identifiable, and they will always say "skill" on skill pages or "trait" on trait pages at least once if not more. If you're looking for something reliable and clear, I can't imagine anything being more so. - Tanetris 22:17, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Ok, it doesn't seem like this is a problem for anyone else, so I'll get used to it. (Btw I wasn't suggesting a colour change; as Ish says, they're linked to professions and I like it like that.) It's just that what I gathered from past formatting guides and stuff was that articles should have some introductory body text that summarises the page content, and that categories are for categorisation, not for portraying information. Our NPC articles do this nicely, even if it does mean repeating some info from the infobox; e.g. Carly. I thought we could do with some of that on skill/trait pages. pling User Pling sig.png 12:12, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
The difference between an NPC page and a skill/trait page is that skills/traits have in-game descriptions at the top of the page, NPCs don't. I would think that adding an intro line on either side of that description would look really odd, and I don't really have any ideas on how else to do that. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:34, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
I could tell which was a skill and which was a trait just by skimming the effect text (which was the first thing my eyes were drawn to). Skills are active; traits are passive. Still, even granting that some skills and traits break that mold, I would argue that that's what the infoboxes are for. -- Armond WarbladeUser Armond sig image.png 22:52, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
Doesn't anyone else think that the infobox colours for skills and traits are inconsistent with every other infobox? NPCs are green, items are orange, crafting stuff is brown, effects is grey, events and hearts are light orange... but skills and traits have 9 possible colours - 8 professions plus grey (for no profession). It just feels inconsistent. Having a label stating "Profession" and an icon and a category makes it pretty clear it's profession-specific (the exact same argument for not visually differentiating skills and traits). But meh, it's a minor issue anyway. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 06:07, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I'd resolve this issue by adding a one line sentence summary right below the main heading. "Zealot's Fervor is an Elite Skill of the Guardian profession." People consume information in different ways and presenting the same information in multiple formats is something they drill into your head as a teacher. While some people's eyes will immediately be drawn to the infobox, other people first scan for text clues and I agree with the OP that it wasn't immediately obvious to me which was a skill and which was a trait (and I'm a Guardian!). A simple text summary at the top would help eliminate any confusion. Fleep 13:50, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Zone tables

← moved to Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Location formatting#Zone tables

Skill type vs skill by type

Anyone else think either Category:Skill types or Category:Skills by type need to be renamed? -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 04:47, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Wow, those need some work.
Skills by type is currently used incorrectly, the subcategories there are actually better described as Skills by slot or Skills by context, "context" being something that I've wanted to introduce to the skill infobox but was waiting for SMW before moving on it.
The current subcats of Skill types are what I would expect to see under Skills by type, with the exception of some like Channeled skills and Charge skills which should be under a separate category e.g. Skills by activation modifier. What I would expect to see under Skill types are the skill type articles', but instead those only appear within the category for their skill type, which is a "feature" of the categorization system here that I have never understood - all skill types should appear together under Skill types, shouldn't they? —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 12:25, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Scholar Wikki and Wikki's Official Guide to Tyria

In case you haven't seen them yet. pling User Pling sig.png 23:49, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I love that official guide to Tyria book. this is why. Konig/talk 00:33, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Could Not Open Socket

← moved to Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Reporting wiki bugs#Could Not Open Socket

Suggestion for cleaner entries for Packages

Some packages open up to more than one item. Sometimes it's a range of numbers.

Usually, the lists are in alphabetical order (a good idea). However, when there are numbers in front of the main entry's wording, the left justification can be all over the place.

  • Item A
  • 2 Item Bs
  • 3-4 Item Cs
  • 1 Item D
  • Item E

It makes it visually difficult to find an item. Editing a list is even worse.

How about if we listed them all like this (same data as above):

  • Item A (x1)
  • Item B (x2)
  • Item C (x3-4)
  • Item D (x1)
  • Item E (x1)

Options:

It would be fine to leave off the string " (x1)" when there is only one of an item to list. Then it would look thusly:

  • Item A
  • Item B (x2)
  • Item C (x3-4)
  • Item D
  • Item E

The x isn't really needed, but whether we do or not should be noted in the standards page, I think.

  • Item A
  • Item B (2)
  • Item C (3-4)
  • Item D
  • Item E

Another option for the x is "put a space after it".

  • Item A
  • Item B (x 2)
  • Item C (x 3-4)
  • Item D
  • Item E

Comments? Daddicus 16:00, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd support "Item name (item quantity > 1 or item quantity range)", so it's the second-last option. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 03:22, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm also not a fan of x's. However, we could also modify {{item icon}} to accept a quantity parameter, then display it in a right-aligned block element of fixed width. That would solve the alignment issue while avoiding parentheses, which I'm also not a fan of. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 04:43, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
That would work for me. The important point I was addressing is the alignment, so if it can be fixed, that would be great. Could it default to 1? (Or, just blank?)
While we're at it, is there a standard on lists: Do we put a space between the asterisk and the first character of whatever text is present? Most people do, and I've been "correcting" the ones that aren't, but I'm questioning whether I should or not. Daddicus 00:12, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Bestiary naming and formatting

Do we have a guideline for these articles? There isn't clear consensus on enemy titles in regards to Monster rank.--Relyk 15:13, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Are you referring to NPC articles or species articles? With the latter, there's an unspoken consensus - best example for format would probably be Hylek off the top of my head. In regards to NPC articles - for showing rank in the article name itself, no I don't think so. My personal opinion is to go with the in-game model (some show the rank in name, others don't - what's worse is that they never show the rank in name for cinematic dialogue - I think there's at least two NPCs which changes rank too, one between missions the other during). But overall, no actual guideline article (I don't think we have such for any page, actually, except your generic formatting standards). Konig/talk 17:05, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

External resources

We had this youtube discussion and as far as I got it we setteled on: No youtube links except for Jumping Puzzle solutions.
But what about other external recources, because I just found this: {{Template:Guildhead}}. And I have to say I am not a big fan on these things. Imo is that the wiki should be more or less self-containing and shouldn't rely on external resources. Is there wiki consensus on this. Or does this need discussion or re-discussion? - Yandere Talk to me... 12:41, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

What's the purpose of that template? It gives no explanation but by the looks of it, it's just a means to link to that site? Which, I'd say, is completely unhelpful. It looks like a fan-made database source. In other words, a fan-based non-wiki version of this very website. So I'd delete that template. As to external resource on whole - I'd only use such if it's an official Anet site (e.g., HoM calculator). Konig/talk 12:46, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
The purpuse of this templates to create an external recource link to this site. And yeah, I think it is useless, too. It is just what made me wonder if we have wiki consensus about exteranl recources or not. - Yandere Talk to me... 13:02, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
Well, there is another one: {{Template:Gw2db}} - Yandere Talk to me... 13:09, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
This is pretty common in other wikis for other games. It's not harmful and it's pretty useful and neutral. You have your opinion and I have mine. I respect yours, please respect mine. See for example: Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker at Wowpedia. It's also very common in other wikis, such as Wikipedia, to link to external sites. Your "settlement" or "consensus" regarding YouTube videos is absurd, and is not a rule imposed by ArenaNet, nor is the matter being discussed here. This is a wiki, not parliament, nor some sort of United Nations club for you guys to play politics, democracy, or public debate. This is a wiki, be bold, and if you don't like an edit either revert it, remove it, change it, or contribute to it. Construct and build rather than destroy. These type of links help preserve the wiki's independence but also provide an alternative for customers to get information from other sites not controlled by ArenaNet. I will continue to add them and use them in my edits, unless ArenaNet itself prohibits it. I'm sorry but these silly childish games are pretty absurd and a waste of time. I'm a paying customer, stop bothering me about them. --Preedee 13:26, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
It doen't matter if it is common for other wikis, the only thing that matters if it is commen for this wiki. It also doesn't have something to do with not respecting your opinion. If I wouldn't respect opinion, I wouldn't discuss this topic with you, I would just get in an edit war with you and hope you would be faster annoyed than I am and just leave. You are basiclly right with everything you said, but wikis are also about consenus, and you reach consenus by discussion. You are right, wikis are no parlament, they do not democratic structure. Consensus is reached when everybody who wants to contribute to a topic can agree on a standard. I have my opinion, you have yours, prepare to discuss.
To get on topic: We are not ArenaNet, we can do what we want (more or less). The question is how we as community want to deal with external recources. We have a List of Fansites, and we could settle that is always ok to link to those sites, we could settle on we never want to link outside, and we can settle on it is always ok. I personal would like to be more on the save side, since we can't control the external page, it would be better to do not link there, especially if all relevent information can already be would on the wiki. - Yandere Talk to me... 13:40, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
We are not "other wikis for other games," we are the Guild Wars 2 Wiki for Guild Wars 2. We are also not Wikipedia, we are very different from Wikipedia, so arguing that we should do something because Wikipedia does it is a pretty shallow argument. "Everyone else does it" is likewise a shallow argument, there should be a logical and reasoned community consensus behind any major change we make.
In general, we don't like linking to external sites unless it is to reference an information source; of course, now that the game has been released, even that isn't as necessary anymore, since the game itself serves as the source for most information. As Yandere said, we can't control the content of external sites. Also, any link we provide (other than a simple reference) gives the impression that we endorse that particular site or video
In this specific case, providing links to database sites like that would be self-cannibalization because we are in direct competition with those sites. Both GW2DB and Guildhead are hosted by for-profit networks who will do whatever they can to draw visitors and run up their advertising revenue. In contrast, GW2W is hosted by ArenaNet, the game's developer, for free with absolutely no advertising. Thus, providing links to those sites helps them (by increasing their ad impressions) and hurts us (by redirecting potential contributors away from the wiki). If they were community-built sites (like the wiki) rather than having been created by paid employees of those companies, that would be a different situation. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 15:29, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
^This. External resources should only be listed when they provide something of additional value to the reader. I'm against using a template to link external resources on every item article or every map article or anything without context.
On Trading Post, it makes sense to link to sites like GW2 Spidy under External Links because Spidy provides a service that this website does not: make it easy to find historical market data. That makes it repetitive and redundant to list a Spidy link on ever item page: people who want to use that resource can find the link and use the tool; for everyone else, it's just clutter. The same goes for GuildHead (ru4.com network) and GW2DB (Curse network): I don't mind seeing them linked from list of fansites, but I don't think it's worth the screen real estate (little as it is) to link them on every article. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:01, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
I would like to point out that a major reason why wowwiki provided links to so many other fansites was because, outside of the lore department, that wiki was very incomplete. We aim for full documentation, as we achieved on the Guild Wars Wiki and GuildWiki. -- Armond WarbladeUser Armond sig image.png 23:03, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
Rather ironic that you would spout wikipedia policies and pretty little statements like "Construct and build rather than destroy", yet proceed to being insulting and antagonistic with "silly childish games" and "stop bothering me about them" and then running off to ArenaNet and hoping they'll interfere and side with you instead allowing a wiki's community to run itself. You seriously need to understand more about how a wiki works and how ArenaNet has always allowed their wikis to operate.
Unless an external resource provides something that our wiki cannot or should not provide, I don't see a point to linking. We are contributing to your idea - by telling you that it's not a good idea. Once you start these templates, what's stopping every other fansite to turn all our pages into hubs for external links? -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 05:31, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
The only external resources should be visual (or audible) solutions to scenarios the wiki can't simply put into words (though it works well in plain written text already) and links to the official site or forums (if they ever use it to promote information (videos, music, whatever) which the wiki can't document via words). However, I strongly oppose linking to third-party websites and sources (unless they are viable references (databases are not references)) that are not the aforementioned, simply because linking to unofficial locations turns the wiki into a portal for other popular media, which all have more specific designations and purposes (which all draw attention away from the wiki itself). Templates as Guildhead are detrimental towards the GW2W and should not be used here. - Infinite - talk 14:43, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
I think the consensus here is pretty obvious, so I'm going to delete the templates in question. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 01:15, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Expandable/collapsible tables -- consensus?

Some people love collapsed tables, some people hate them. Can we have a vote or something to achieve consensus in order to maintain page consistency? -- Nighty 05:41, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

What kind of tables are you talking about? It all depends on context, as far as I'm concerned. How large is the table, how is it going to be collapsable, are there other tables as well... In short, I don't think there can be a consistency to that question. Konig/talk 05:48, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
Jeweler for example has a number of collapsed tables on it (the tables are configured as expandable). Personally I disagree that context makes any difference. -- Nighty 06:29, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
I think the Jeweler example is a pretty well done. You have the crafting tier so I you want to look up something, you search for the tier you are interested in, expand it and you are done. Since Jeweler other than Cocking has this very clear tier structure, I think this is pretty much the pay to go. There might be other bad examples but I don't think the Jeweler thing belongs there.
The main idea behind this mechainic is that the article becomes smaller and you can search precicely for the information you need and do not have to scroll through all information you don't need. After and article with loots of long lables reach a certain length I think it is just best to collapse these things. So yeah I am on the I like collapsables side.
I fear that is will be hard to reach a general consensus for the whole wiki about this topic. And I think it is bast to discuss the neccesaty of the things on case to case basis. - Yandere Talk to me... 08:03, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
Listing all the possible recipes for a discipline on the discipline page seems silly tbh. Each category should be broken into subpages so you don't get giant pages that need collapsible tables. I don't need to know what amulets I can make or materials I need for refinement if I'm looking at craftable jewels. The goes for the other pages where they have tables for crafting armor and bags on the same page.--Relyk 08:28, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
Yandere: A major flaw with collapsed tables is that you cannot use ctrl-f to search the entire page, a problem if you do not know which tier you need. As for scrolling through unwanted tables, that's what the TOC is for. I don't suppose a "show all tables" button is possible? Relyk: I'm sure many people find it convenient to have all the recipes on one page. -- Nighty 08:46, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't suppose a "show all tables" button is possible? <- This functionallity would be awesoem
On the ctrl-f part... When you need this to find something on a page, that tha page design isn't really that good, and should be improved. And yeah there are some cases where the TOC helps with scrolling, but on things like the cocking page, there isn't much help there regardless of what you are doing, the page is more or less horrible, and I have no idea how to fix it. - Yandere Talk to me... 08:53, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Konig/talk that context matters. In the case of a profession like Jeweler with different tiers of crafting, it is unlikely that a user would need or want to see multiple tiers at once, so collapsed by default makes sense and keeps the page tidy for both wiki contributors and end users. However, in the case of the Chef page, I think collapsed by default made it more difficult to use the page for both wiki contributors and end users. As a wiki contributor, when the tables were all collapsed by default, I wanted to kill myself with all the scrolling and opening every time I needed to refresh the page to see if my edits were showing up properly. It was very frustrating and discouraged me from adding new recipes to the page. And as an end user who was there to consume information instead of contributing to it, I also found it aggravating since my primary purpose was to use my browser search to find all the recipes that use a particular ingredient, and I had to go through and open all the tables before I could perform the search. If people feel very strongly that all tables should be collapsed by default, then I suppose a compromise might be all closed tables on the main page with a link to a full non-collapsed page so people could make a choice. The "Show All" button is the best idea of course, but I don't know if that could be implemented. If neither of those options are feasible, then I'm pretty strongly in the "open by default" camp because our purpose is to provide information, not bury the lead in table headings that makes it that many more clicks for people to find what they're looking for. Fleep 14:07, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
The question is does this need to be constistent in the whole wiki. As I said the Jewler page just profit imo from this functionallity. The I follow your argumentation with the Chef profession, and would in case alweays go for readabilty for the wiki user not the wiki editor. So there a non-collapsed table is good, when though not the best solution imo.
And yeah I wanted the chef reciepe collapsed at first but the arguement that is is better for the user got me convinced it is better to leave thos things open in this case. Which actually would bring me again to the point that imo it is best not to settle on a wiki standrad at all, and do this on a case to case basis. - Yandere Talk to me... 14:18, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
I agree that expandable/collapsible tables do not need a wiki-wide consistency. But I think the crafting pages could do with some consistency. Since the tables are split by type, obviously, it means we're going the route of helping people find the item type and tier they want to craft. As such, collapsed by default is more appropriate. It reduces visual clutter upon the page loading up. Personally I find having a table where everything is sorted by level is more useful to users who are looking to level up quickly. I wonder if this is similar to Nighty's concern about being a pain to use ctrl-f on collapsed tables. I think what we need are List of <discipline> recipes pages, where each will have a huge combined table that can sorted by name, level, and type, and possibly even ingredients. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 14:46, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't know how hard it would be to implement, but maybe there could be a user pref setting to decide open/closed default? (If it's not obvious by now, I really dislike closed tables in any context.) I agree with ab.er.RANT's point about a single (sortable) table being most convenient when leveling crafting. Perhaps a DPL page could be used? This would avoid manually-duplicated data. -- Nighty 01:13, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
I seem to remember there's a way to force all tables to "expanded" in your personal monobook.js file. I'll try to remember to look that up tomorrow. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 04:04, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
So far, there is neither a way to have them expanded by default (in user-js), nor to expand everything on the page. The latter was simply never done, because it wouldn’t really be clear where to put such a link. The expand/collapse link is always next to the header cell of the section it collapses, while a global link would need to get a separate place. Wouldn’t mind adding that if we come up with a good placement though.
As for the usage of collapsible tables, I prefer to see them only in navigation boxes where we use them already very regularly. The fact that we hide content by default on content pages somehow tells me that the content simply does not belong there by default. I can understand that it might seem like a good idea to put all recipes of a crafting discipline on the discipline's page, so you have everything quickly accessible, however it makes the page load utterly slow (the reason for that is actually the amount of icons used) and unnecessarily long. It’s unlikely that a normal visitor wants to read about all the recipe details when looking at a discipline; just as he wouldn’t want all skills listed on a profession page. Instead just give a general overview, and refer to pages that were explicitely made to list [[List of events in Metrica Province|everything]] in a concise way. And on such pages, collapsing some content is no longer required and we can easily live without it for content.
Not to mention that we will probably be able to generate many lists automatically later (either with DPL or SematicMW) and placing a caching burden on standard articles is always a bad idea. poke | talk 16:47, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Dungeon disambig

Created the {{Dungeon}} template for the little hatnote on Ascalonian Catacombs. I'd prefer that Ascalonian Catacombs bring players information for the story mode version and Ascalonian Catacombs (explorable) bring players information for the explorable version. Players will always look at story mode before they do explorable, so excise the process.--Relyk 20:13, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

That template's unnecessary given {{otheruses}}. As for page format, I'd prefer Ascalonian Catacombs to be a general location article, with Ascalonian Catacombs (story) being about the one-time-necessary story mode and Ascalonian Catacombs (explorable) being the more frequently searched (most likely, in the long run) and more visited-dungeon-version exploration. The root article holding the locational lore, as well as a list of locations, perhaps a "getting there" section, and then of course being a disambiguation. Konig/talk 20:43, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
I am with Konig on this one. Location/story/explorable seems like a really good separtion the location article would obviously become the root article. - Yandere Talk to me... 21:14, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
I went and reformatted the three Ascalonian Catacombs pages to go with what I said, replaced {{dungeon}} with {{otheruses}} and tagged the dungeon template for deletion (as said prior, unnecessary). Does this work for you, Relyk? Konig/talk 07:52, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
I went and updated the dungeon nav and dded it to the page. The new split makes it really easy to have a good navigation. - Yandere Talk to me... 08:40, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
Exactly what i wanted konig <3--Relyk 21:01, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Fixing Text errors?

I'm just getting started here, and was looking at all the Category:Text_errors. Should we fix those, or wait for them to be fixed in the game first? --Syzgyn 01:41, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

No, we do not "fix" them because we present in-game text (dialogue, skills/item descriptions, etc.) verbatim, that's the entire point of the {{sic}} template. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 02:38, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
No problem, thanks for the clarification. --Syzgyn 02:56, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Given that Anet doesn't look at that category in GW1, I suspect they won't look at it here either. As such, I've started resorting to reporting every single textual errors in-game (yes, they really annoy me that much) while still adding the sic. -- ab.er.rant User Ab.er.rant Sig.png 05:56, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Guild pages

I just read this and I'm wondering if we can already create guild pages on the gw2wiki? (and some fancy templates are more than welcome if some already exist ;) ) Sjeng talk 10:01, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Although that discussion was discontinued, you are free to create your guild's article within your user space, with almost complete freedom. It could be located on User:Sjeng/Guild, per example. There are no templates for these pages yet, though some users may have personal templates you can use. - Infinite - talk 12:05, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
There's Template:Guild infobox, that's all I know of. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 13:53, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Couldn't we just ask to get a Guild Namespace? That would make is much easier to keep the main space clean, since you can just move Guild related things in the guild namespace. Now you have to write every random IP that creates a Guild page, that they need to register and because their guild stuff belongs somewhere in the user space. - Yandere Talk to me... 14:09, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
I agree, that's exactly why I asked ;) Sjeng talk 14:41, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
A guild namespace would be part of everyone’s shared "main space", so that would just add a burden to everyone and we would have to start with things like guidelines, what to allow and what not again. I’m against that; there’s nothing wrong with putting your personal guild information in your personal user space, and I haven’t heard of IPs creating guild pages anyway. It would probably happen if there was a real guild namespace, basically begging everyone to put something up there, but I don’t think having IPs creating pages would be something we would like to see anyway (given that we wouldn’t have anyone responsible to contact then). So if you are not a wiki user already, chances are that you don’t have a pressing desire to put some personal guild information on the wiki (there is no link to your guild page as it was for GW1 in-game too); and if you are, you can just do that in your user space. For everyone else, there are probably better solutions than the wiki anyway, like GW2Guilds. poke | talk 14:44, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
"I haven’t heard of IPs creating guild pages anyway." It's happened at least 3 times in the past month, including one earlier today. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:51, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
It happens often enough to be annoying. What I simple move could solve becomes a "sorry, no guild in main space please create an acount so thatI can move your page there and this page has to be delete anyway... etc." It isn't a big problem. But it is something that an extra namespace could solve. We basiclly allow people do almost everything in their user spaces and I don't see why we can't have a the guild space to be cluttered up by everyone. I would keep the main space clean. - Yandere Talk to me... 15:10, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Creating a guild space might solve that particular problem (i.e. somewhere easy to dump incorrectly created guild pages), but it introduces a host of other problems, particularly regarding maintenance, that people on GWW just got fed up with. pling User Pling sig.png 15:20, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
I still haven't been able to understand why a Guild namespace has to be maintained any more rigorously than the User namespace. And that seems to be the only argument against it. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 15:23, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
The simplest answer is that ownership is a hassle to determine. What happens if someone makes a change to the page? Who verifies it? What if there's a dispute about the page? User spaces don't have that issue since ownership is established. --JonTheMon 15:32, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
How about some blue-sky thinking (whatever the hell that actually means.) Guild pages must be started by someone willing to take responsibility, preferably but not necessarily the guild leader. The only people allowed to edit that page must be registered users who must also be guild members, and I would suggest that they're identified by categorization; category:Members of (guild name). P.s. - I'm totally opposed to guild space again, it's a pain in the arse. But if we must... — snogratUser Snograt signature.png 16:14, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
We could introduce a new class of user privileges, the Guild Lord, who can only use admin tools within the Guild namespace. Existing admins would get this of course (if they wanted), but then we could promote people just to maintain the Guild space and the rest of the admin team could forget about it if they wanted. I get the feeling that a lot of people are for the Guild namespace...they just don't want to volunteer to clean up after it. Vili 点 User talk:Vili 16:33, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
We definitely don't "must." The guild space on GWW was almost manageable, but racked up thousands of deletions, arguments, debates and required several editors to go through personal websites and forums to try to ascertain if the guild remained "active" in order to tag it for deletion or not. When those editors lost interest, the number of inactive guild pages skyrocketed, and the section never recovered. Luckily for GWW, the game also died, so the guild section being useless for finding guilds didn't matter much.
The alternative to that is a system where nobody does any work, and the guild namespace becomes entirely useless as a result. I've said this before, but the wowpedia guild listings for each server are completely unusable - they're from 2005-2006 era, when everyone who wanted to added their guild to the list, but when the guild disbanded or merged with another guild or went inactive, nobody removed the guild from the list. The same thing will happen on this wiki - if we're even pretending to offer some kind of a guild search feature (based on timezone, language, playstyles preferred, etc) it will require pruning guilds in a timely fashion to prevent the list becoming a joke on wheels by 2015. I suppose we could avoid that by not trying to organize them in any real fashion, but at that point, why not just keep them in user space? :/ -Auron 18:01, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Another slightly more recent discussion on the topic can be found at Talk:Frequently Asked Questions#Guild pages on the Wiki. My opinion on the matter is already well-documented. - Tanetris 18:30, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Nodes

Each server has unique locations for nodes. This primarily refers to orihalcum vein nodes, ancient log nodes, and omnomberries, but also includes mithril veins at least. Nodes have a fixed number to appear in zones, as noted on Orichalcum Vein. There is typically one node per area, but it's possible to have multiple nodes. I've observed 3 omnomberries near each other in a single area but veins and trees are likely treated differently. So what this all means is that there are a set of areas in each zone where a node can possibly be located and the position of any node in an area isn't very static. So we can't really say much beyond which areas can possibly contain which nodes within a zone, this isn't really helpful to players. Servers have various methods for relaying the positions of the nodes; Gunnar's Hold being my favorite for being dynamically updated. So is a project or similar appropriate for listing specific locations, as in literally linking to a map for each server? The google drawing method seems the best as long as its moderated appropriately to avoid vandalism. Or do we leave it to the worlds to manage themselves and avoid external resources?--Relyk 04:01, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Template documentation

I think it'd be useful to include a link in all infoboxes to that infobox's template documentation page for obvious reasons: so both novice and experienced editors can see what the article's code actually does, and which parameter names to add when they've got something to contribute. (For example, it's not clear where to add weapon screenshots on The Bifrost. You could add a gallery section (if you were bold enough), but you could also add new gallery parameters in the infobox (if only you knew what the code was or that it was even possible).)

What form would this link take? Maybe a little "[help]" to the left of the infobox name (so icon is to right, doc link is to left). pling User Pling sig.png 16:17, 26 October 2012 (PDT)

That's a good idea, but I don't really have any ideas on implementation. Your suggestion wouldn't really work very well for things with long names, like Glyph of Elemental Harmony (at least, if I'm imagining it correctly). —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 16:50, 26 October 2012 (PDT)
Would it work to put some comment text in that explains the usage? That wouldn't affect anything visible, but might come close to the desired outcome. Daddicus 06:51, 27 October 2012 (PDT)
Maybe we could actually show such information on the editor side. After all, a visitor who doesn’t edit the page is most probably not interested in what that template does, and stuff that leads to such explanations would only clutter the page. Only if he actually wants to edit the page, this could be useful. So maybe we could have something that looks up what templates are used when editing a page and lists links to their help page then? poke | talk 06:06, 28 October 2012 (PDT)
That's essentially what the transclusion list below the edit box is for. Of course, it has some problems: it's not very visible down there; it doesn't show up (immediately) if you click a section edit link; its purpose isn't explained very well. Maybe we can modify the mw:Templatesused/mw:Templatesusedpreview/mw:Templatesusedsection system messages? —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 07:28, 28 October 2012 (PDT)

Environmental weapons skill tables

They are an unregulated mess, but I propose using {{STDT|mech2}} on EW skill tables (as found on the individual EW's articles). It was instated for "Other game mechanics: skills, traits, effects," so it only feels natural this is the design they should be using. Thoughts? - Infinite - talk 20:58, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

You mean for the color? Sure, I got no problem with that.
As for structure, they should be using {{weapon skill table header}}/{{weapon skill table row}}, since they are weapons. Slot, activation, and recharge are all relevant for them, although maybe having a way to hide Type would be good. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:02, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I am going to agree with you. The only thought that crossed my mind in regards to that is that the tables usually only display a couple of skills (averaging around 2, approximately). This might discourage users when making tables for EW articles. Personally I think it is worth the few extra characters in the code. - Infinite - talk 21:05, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
As soon as I have time I'm going to semanticize the skill infobox. Then the skill table row templates can be switched to #ask queries, instead of relying on #vars set by a #dpl query, and we'll just have a simple table syntax: table start (with STDT etc.), header template, multiple row templates, table end. That should look nice and clean and wouldn't discourage people at all. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 02:57, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

SMW and namespaces

There are a couple configuration options that we could modify to make it simpler to write semantic queries without worrying about namespaces.

$smwgNamespacesWithSemanticLinks
Defines which namespaces are parsed by SMW. Default is (main), User, Project (aka GW2W), File, Help, and Category. I don't know that we'd really have much use for SMW outside of mainspace, so we could disable all the other namespaces. This would be useful, for example, if someone used semantic infoboxes on their userpages, they wouldn't affect any queries we had in place.
$smwgQDefaultNamespaces
If we decide to leave SMW enabled on non-main namespaces, then we should definitely set this to NS_MAIN so that we don't have to specify it in every query. Any queries that do want to include results outside of main would have to specify their namespaces.

So does anyone think we should leave semantics enabled outside of mainspace? —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 17:50, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Could you list what potential downsides there are to enabling these? I think you are the resident expert when it comes to smw, Dr.Ishmael.- User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 18:47, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
The obvious downside to disabling SMW on other namespaces is that we can't do anything semantic with those namespaces. I can't think of much that we would use it for in namespaces like User or Project (thus why I'm suggesting we disable it), but maybe we could use it to replace the "fluff" user categories. Instead of all the subcategories of Category:Users by faith, we'd have a single property to document them all, e.g. [User favors::Grenth] or something like that.
The downside to setting NS_MAIN as the only default namespace is that, if anyone ever wanted to set up properties for users or anything else and then query them, they would have to specify the namespace in every single one of their queries. Since I can't think of too many uses outside of mainspace, this doesn't seem like it would be very troublesome. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:04, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Overuse of icons

Why are icons being included in descriptions (Vitality.png Vitality instead of just Vitality, example: Rune of the Necromancer)? The icons do not appear in-game so I don't see a reason for each being shown on the page. •••Mora 19:18, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't mind their use as the icons aren't too disruptive, but I would discourage their use in prose if given the choice.--Relyk 19:28, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I honestly just liked the look of it and saw other pages doing it. It would've made sense if GW2 stuck by the original names for some stats (Malice for cond. damage, Concentration for buff duration) but since they're pretty obvious, thats out the window. That being said, I've no problem with the icons as long as its being used properly and not 50 times in a row when just once works.--Vaught 19:54, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I really like these icons. I see a white heart => Vitality (because white/gray are always attributs), a yellow heart => reknown heart, a green puzzle piece => jumping puzzle. Iconshelp to get information fast. The text becomes easier to read because, you know from the icons that a certain part is interesting or uninteresting for you because of the icons you can see. But to be clear I can see that you can overuse these, so yeah stop me when I am guilty of this and point these instance out case by case. - Yandere Talk to me... 11:59, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I think when we are presenting information taken from the game, like in item descriptions, we should follow what the game does and not use icons. On an item page, you already know that this bit is interesting because it's set off with the quotation thingie, and personally I don't find the grayscale attribute icons to be very informative. Also {{Magic Find}} does not have an icon, so that template is wrong to begin with. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:36, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Nodes

Node pages are a mess. We have plural pages like Ghost Peppers and Omnomberries for the node, even though those nodes aren't called that. If the node shares the name with an ingredient, let's call it "Ghost Pepper (node)". Some places where nodes are mentioned link to the ingredient page instead, Onions is an actual name of a node, but the page doesn't exist. We should use the in-game names of all gathering nodes.

We have pages for each Rich mining vein, except for mithril. I think pages like Rich Gold Vein should redirect to Gold Ore (node), and we can include all those maps and directions to rich nodes there. Seems a bit redundant to have two pages, since the differences are the graphic and how many times you can use it. Pages like Copper Node, Iron Nodes, Platinum Vein, etc, in the game are called "Copper Ore", so let's move them to "Copper Ore (node)". We can use {{otheruses}} on node and item pages.

Perhaps we could do with a format page for nodes as well. Manifold User Manifold Neptune.jpg 22:07, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

That all sounds great to me. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 22:09, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I'll start moving and redirecting tomorrow, and here's a [[Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Node formatting|formatting idea]], feedback welcome. Manifold User Manifold Neptune.jpg 05:54, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I redirected Rich Orichalcum Vein to Orichalcum Vein awhile ago for that reason; I've just been too lazy to do the same with all the other nodes. And Omnomberries is the correct name for the node. I prefer <Ore> Vein but <Ore> (node) would be correct :3 Ore vein would be appropriate language in prose because the rich veins are named such.--Relyk 06:31, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure we should merge the rich and regular vein nodes, personally. This is personal preference mostly, though, formed out of the fact that Rich veins are more rare and unique than regular ones - it'd be like merging Veteran Aatxe and Aatxe due to shared model, base name, and (most) abilities, and it was agreed upon not to do that due to the change in specialized locations and occasions of new special abilities that veterans and champions have compared to the regular mobs. Though there's fewer differences, I think most folks searching for the Rich veins would be wanting for the most part to find the locations of them. There isn't a big hinderance to merging, but there isn't a big benefit to it either so I suppose it doesn't matter for merging those or not. Konig/talk 18:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
That's a very valid point. Some rich veins randomly replace regular nodes, though, so there's that redundancy too. Some seem to always spawn in the same location...some I guess are either "regular" or rich, randomly, and I'm not sure if some are either rich or not present, randomly. I hope some of these conundrums can be clarified with a clearer locations format, and people adding their data to it. It should be easier to separate them if needed, once they are more consistent, so I'm going to work on that. Manifold User Manifold Neptune.jpg 02:37, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
We should create separate articles for the objects. I support grouping them together because people are looking to acquire the ore itself, not the vein. The information is the same for both normal and rich as far as mining the vein for ore, which will be left on the Ore page. A "See Rich <ore> Vein for locations of <ore> ore" note on the ore page will provide enough navigation to rich veins if they aren't grouped together with the normal vein.--Relyk 21:25, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Skill challenge documentation

This was discussed here previously, though there the focus was primarily how to document the matter on explorable zone articles. I want a wider variety of opinions rather than those who frequent that project alone. Basically the matter is this: Should we remove the wiki-made "events" for skill challenges, such as Examine Temple of the Ages, in favor of using one single article for both the related objects and obtaining the skill challenge (with the prior example, all information would be on Temple of the Ages (object) rather than split between that and aforementioned Examine link).
The reason why I want a wider variety of opinions is because this is something that's already fairly imbedded into the wiki's format, but it is something that's unnecessary, inconsistent in some places, and provides a false view on how the skill challenge system works.
That is to say, there are four kinds of skill challenges (fight 1 foe, fight a horde, commune with an object, consume an item), and only two have events tied to them but we're making event articles for all four kinds.
It was agreed in the previous discussion to simply link to the related object or item when there's no event, and I personally prefer such (cleaner, simpler, more precise and accurate of the actual situation), but still wanted to know what more think before acting on it. Konig/talk 07:10, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Just for the sake of completeness, there is also hit something with a siege weapon and take a quiz without error. These are extremly seldom though. - Yandere Talk to me... 11:08, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
As far as I know, those are unique, so we shouldn't worry about them as a "type" of challenge. As for the distinction between 1 foe and 3 foes, that seems unnecessary, as I stated at the previous discussion.
To the core of the issue, though, I agree that we need to get rid of the made-up events for communing and consuming challenges. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 13:54, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Had forgotten about the siege and quiz ones - though there's only 1 or 2 of the former and 3 of the latter (that I know of at least); the latter can easily link to the NPC who gives said quiz, though the siege one would be harder to figure out, but I'd say the NPC nearby too which has the skill challenge marker overhead iirc. Konig/talk 16:33, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Screenshot naming

For a while, there has been a bit of a conflict between myself and User:Santax on how to name screenshots from the game. Santax has been using a system that includes "screenshot" in the actual image name - e.g., File:Plaza of Lyssa screenshot.jpg - because {{Location infobox}} originally (and thanks to Santax reverting my attempt to use the more common place naming system, still does) automatically had {{#ifexist: File:{{{screenshot|{{PAGENAME}} screenshot.jpg}}}. This set up was done when the {{PAGENAME}}.jpg files were to be maps, set up way back when in May 2012 (screenshot added in June).
I wanted to remove the, in my opinion redundant, "screenshot" word from these images, but Santax disagreed and there has been a stalemate. So I'm bringing this up to get some fresh blood into it. Which should be the standard? {{PAGENAME}}.jpg or {{PAGENAME}} screenshot.jpg? Konig/talk 07:10, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I also think its redundant the only other types of images that are going to be found on the wiki are fan art (which is only allowed in user spaces) concept art and screen shots (also random icons) so my opinion is remove it.- User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 07:51, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
I prefer not having " screenshot"--Relyk 08:03, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Same. Screenshot is the most common type of image and there's no need to make the name formatting any more complex than it has to be (lots of people would forget/not know about adding the "screenshot", which leads to more image moves, talk pages notices, etc... it's unnecessary). pling User Pling sig.png 10:26, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
A file that shares its name with an article will, logically, depict the thing the article is describing. Suffixing it with "screenshot" is redundant. tl;dr: what they said. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 13:55, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

holiday skin changes + main page

Is this something people want to do still? I tried to get people interested in changing the skin for Halloween but no one responded. So I am wondering if it is worth the effort to try and change it for winters day.- User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 02:15, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I think it's definitely worth the effort, I just don't have anything to contribute to such a project besides vague comments along the lines of, "That looks good," or, "That looks like crap." —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 02:49, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Feel free to steal some code like I did from you guys for this. I'm not sure if you have enough festive files with transparencies yet though. :/ --Chieftain Alex 20:17, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
eh not enough interest to put in the effort.- User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 03:15, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Sigils in articles about weapons (uslot)

I have a problem with making the correct sigil appear on the page for the exotic trident Steamfire which always comes with a Superior Sigil of Serpent Slaying in it. Even though I had entered "| uslot = Superior Sigil of Serpent Slaying", it kept showing up as "Unused Upgrade Slot" in the article for the trident. I figured the reason for that must be that nobody had created the page for the Sigil of Serpent Slaying in general yet, no matter the size of the sigil, so I created it, using the code from another sigil page as example. It still wouldn't work and the Steamfire page kept showing "Unused Upgrade Slot" until I created a new redirect page from "Superior Sigil of Serpent Slaying" to "Sigil of Serpent Slaying". Now the correct name for the sigil does show up in the article about the trident, but even though I uploaded the icon for the superior sigil, no icon for it shows up in the article about the trident. It's probably because wiki expects an icon without a sigil size in its name, but how do I manage it to have the icon of the superior sigil in specific be shown here? Taking the page for the Glyphic Ward as example, the correct sigil size (major) for the shield's respective sigil does show up there. What am I doing wrong? User Sabsi Verdant Focus.jpg Sabsi talk 04:30, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

It was a simple cache issue. You uploaded the file after you created the Steamfire page, so the cached version of the page didn't use the file. I just clicked the "refresh" tab at the top, and now it works. Cached pages always expire after 24 hours, so it would have automatically updated by this time tomorrow. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 03:30, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Oh, haha, thanks. That was a really simple solution. User Sabsi Verdant Focus.jpg Sabsi talk 04:30, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Special archiving protocol for certain discussions?

Okay, so first off, I want to preface this by saying that I know that all discussion materials and consensuses therefrom are ultimately to be reworked and put into the appropriate, non-talk namespace (usually, I'm seeing, the Guild Wars 2 Wiki namespace). But that aside, there seem to be many discussions going on in different places, and when each one reaches a consensus, that conversation has the likelihood of being forgotten. Obviously all discussion materials will remain on the wiki, but would this be something that, as we write the namespace articles, we might want to have a section at the bottom for links pointing to the (archived) discussions that lead to these consensus(es)? Or perhaps, if they occurred on a User's talk page, a copy of the discussion into a subpage? I don't imagine that the average user would need them on a daily basis, but if there were a time when someone asked "why exactly" or wanted to know the reasons for why something is this way, it'd be easier to find them.

Also, long post is long, but I know that Wikipedia has additional links at the top of discussion pages for an article. If we didn't want to have these archives on the page themselves, but still wanted to do something like what I've said above, we could look into posting the links to the current (and past) consensus discussions on the discussion page, where they'd be more... useful? —Jyavoc 18:35, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

You're thinking of policies, which GW2W doesn't have. The discussions are usually happening in locations people can easily link you to from the community portal, and others are written up as guidelines. Consensus constantly changes, which means we can't write down the exact consensus for every situation (though we should write down the global consensuses). It would have more revisions to it that to the actual articles affected by it. - Infinite - talk 19:09, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Because I'm a bit new to the scene, I think it might help me (personally) if you, or someone, would be willing to clarify the difference between "policy" and "practices." I mean, I'm gathering that practices are more fluid than policies, and are more welcoming to change, but exactly how it plays out on GW2W, I'm still a bit confused on. But pertaining to what you responded with, is that saying that we aren't looking to document the consensuses that we reach on formatting, practices, and the like? (none of these were sarcastic comments/questions, by the way). —Jyavoc 19:13, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
The Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Practices and processes serves as documentation. Most of the previous consensus has worked its way on the formatting guidelines. People have used "previous consensus" without appropriate linking and even then the consensus may not be applicable to current discussion. If discussion needs to be revisited, it's best to start a new section.--Relyk 19:34, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) I agree it's a tad vague. In short, policies are set-in-stone rules and guides directly reflecting established means and methods to document and interact on the wiki. The P&P we have, however, uses something much less stagnant. The P&P is based on the ever-changing consensuses that discussions will create ad infinitum. Most usually, a consensus is a very basic mold, with tweaked details (such as formatting, coding, spacing, alignment, and the likes). Those things can be written down on guidelines, and on the P&P article. They are recurring fundamentals that will hardly ever see radical changes.
If we would be using policies (the explicit details of a consensus are included in these), every potential consensus would need to be weighed up against the already-present policy, and the community would then decide whether or not this new consensus can stay. It's redundant, in a way, to write down every detail about a consensus, and then use that example to ban/obstruct new consensus. GW2W doesn't believe that to have a positive effect on the community, or the wiki itself.
Therefore, we encourage writing down basic fundamentals on the P&P, but we generally attempt to avoid writing actual policies. This should avoid stagnation, and improve communication (and thus improve the wiki as a whole).
An expert on the P&P is bureaucrat Pling, though. He can explain the finer details of this ideology. - Infinite - talk 19:36, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm familiar with the P&P for GWW, or at least what they had there in terms of formatting. Our our guidelines, or fundamentals, that we're putting on P&P in that same vein, or have we branched in a different direction from them? I think that if I can connect or sever the mental ideas, I'll be able to figure out exactly what belongs and what doesn't. I feel so bad asking such a beginner question so late in the game. —Jyavoc 20:26, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
To the original topic, you could always start a section on the community talk where you summarize and link the original discussion. --JonTheMon 21:41, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Whatever is done on GWW is not affecting GW2W and vice versa, though overlap will exist. The policies on GWW do not affect the P&P on GW2W, and vice versa, though similar mindsets are present. In essence, there's similar things on both wikis, but they are still two individual wikis, with individual rules and guidelines. Not so much different altogether, but more so different in the finer details. Most notably we just write down the basics, and none of them are supposed to be followed exactly. The P&P here on GW2W isn't some sort of wiki law book, where the policies on GWW are much stricter (and by most frequenting users seen as wiki laws). Hope that clarified any remaining confusion. - Infinite - talk 13:07, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
@Infinite: I'm sorry, I worded that vaguely. I meant more like: GWW has formatting guidelines for the content put on GWW. For these GWW guidelines, are they P&P for GWW, or are they policies for GWW? I know that the GW2W P&P don't apply to GWW and vice versa. But what I mean to ask, would be: "where the policies on GWW are much stricter". In terms of the terminology used here, is, say, gww:Guild Wars Wiki:Formatting/General a policy for GWW, or P&P for GWW? Regardless of how long they might have been consensus/accepted practice, are the guidelines there inherently policies or procedures/practices? I hope that clarifies the question. Jesus, I feel like I've been nothing but a noob today; I hope to God this doesn't apply to my exams as well. —Jyavoc 13:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Well, the example GWW guideline you linked to is considered a policy. Not in the definition of the word, but in practise: articles must follow that formatting, or rectified accordingly. On GW2W, formatting guidelines are just that, guidelines. Not following them isn't bad, per say. The guidelines were established by the then-current consensus, encompassing the known information at that time. If, per example, ArenaNet introduces a whole new portion to map completion, any way to document this on articles is accepted, even after the community decides on a universally working format. Consistency is simply an accepted Practise, so naturally the articles will see that, too. But just because it's a guideline, doesn't make it law.
GWW's formatting guidelines are policies, but GW2W's formatting guidelines are just guidelines. It avoids the hostile "you must read the policies and guidelines first before editing" environment often seen on GWW (and to an extent, bigger wikis, such as wikipedia). GW2W believes focussing on the constantly evolving and ever-changing consensus, in combination with communication and a helpful approach, will benefit the wiki more than any set of rules could ever accomplish.
As a side-note, GWW doesn't actually have a P&P, because almost everything is written down in policies. The freedom is the biggest difference. Surely we frown on abuse of the freedom, but we don't feel reprimanding users over pre-established consensus (that sometimes is simply outdated and requires immediate revision) is the way to go. :) - Infinite - talk 14:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying that. I think that was my biggest problem in terms of my thought processes for working here, is that each time I would be having a discussion/trying to flesh something out with people, I'd be operating under the assumption that this would be similar to how it was done on GWW. The level of freedom here, then, is both exhilarating/encouraging, and absolutely terrifying. The rigorously order-y side of my personality which I've made all-too-well-known here is terrified by the prospect of acceptable "do what you will," even though I think that's probably the way to go :P Thank you very much for explaining that. I will definitely keep this in mind going forward.
I guess, though, that—especially given the allowable volatility of consensus—having available links to the conversations that led up to this point all in one location would be helpful. Naturally, that raises the problem of "where is home base for this issue," and "if we know where home base is, why isn't the discussion there, and not here?" But supposing for the sake of the argument that these aren't problems, I feel like it would be helpful to have just a simple (and growing) list of the current and past discussions on X particular topic, that way arguments don't need to be (fully) rehashed, and it's more available without needing to ask someone for their knowledge of the past discussions, and either receiving no links, or an incomplete list. Contrary to how I feel I've made myself present on the wiki, I really don't like the idea of throwing a wrench into the whole machine (especially because, as I've just demonstrated, I'm still learning the machine intricacies myself). But the discussion pertaining to the zone navigation boxes took place on my talk page, and going to any of the zone navigation template pages has no link to a hub page with any information there. This being just one example.
tl;dr: Thank you Infinite, that was really helpful! But given that this is the case, wouldn't we want to have a practice of keeping all discussion links in one common area per topic? —Jyavoc 16:22, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


Items that are not bound

I'm currently creating pages for the new Wintersday tonics and I was thinking it would be good to add the information that they are not bound at all, neither to account, nor to character. I am not sure what the correct code to indicate this is, though. I tried | bound = unbound and | bound = none, but both only resulted in the text "Binding Unknown". Which is the correct code to use here to show that the tonics are not bound? User Sabsi Verdant Focus.jpg Sabsi talk 03:08, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Try bound = no or just omit it --JonTheMon 03:12, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, "no" worked. User Sabsi Verdant Focus.jpg Sabsi talk 03:20, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
There's really no point in specifying "not bound", simply omitting it is better. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 18:33, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
But thank you for your boundless enthusiasm. — snogratUser Snograt signature.png 19:16, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Legendary weapons

So am I the only one that doesn't like people putting a full, complete list of materials to make a legendary weapon like on The Bifrost? This list is already on the Legendary weapon page and we have the recipe for each individual piece. I despise the [[Legendary/Base Materials]] page.--Relyk 09:09, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree completely. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:45, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
You want to force people to go to another article and then look again for the weapon they want? Isn't it easier on the reader if the information about what it takes to make Bitfrost is on the Bitfrost page? With proper clean-up of the articles mentioned in the OP, the wiki could transclude the base materials to each legendary article, so it displays neatly. If desired, that long list could also be hidden by default. 75.37.20.28 02:34, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
The "another article" is the Legendary weapon article. The fact that we are transcluding a subpage of the legendary weapon raises flags. Maybe we can provide a list of materials for individual legendary weapons somewhere, but not the weapon article, not this way.--Relyk ~ talk > 16:42, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
I dont know if you can do this in a wiki, but can you not make Item named Drop down menus to see what is needed to make it when you click on it? I.e. you only see Dusk/Gift of Twilight/Gift of Fortune/Gift of Mastery on the Twilight page. But you can drop down each Gift to see what it takes to make it. If it takes another reciepe to make an ingredient you have another drop down menu inside. If it is an ingredient, like Globs of Ectoplasm, you get a link to click on so you can see where you can get it. That way you dont have a cluttered weapon page but still do not need to click through all the items to see what you need to make (as it was in the beginning, that was horrible, tbh). I would make a test page like that but im not really that experienced in editing to do so myself ._. Magistrella 20:39, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Tooltips on hover?

Some websites use a javascript that shows a tooltip on hover for particular things such as class skills, conditions, etc. Is there any chance this wiki will implement a method for using that? User Freshberrysmoothie Blueberry Icon.jpg Fresh Berry Smoothie 17:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

This has been discussed quite a few times before, but the majority feels the tooltip is not as valuable on the wiki (although everyone knows how convenient it can be elsewhere). If anyone feels like discussing it currently, though, it might lead to a new consensus. - Infinite - talk 15:08, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
I would favor it, but make it more simple: HTML/CSS includes a hover tag (class?) with simple text. Wouldn't need javascript. I'm sure the gurus here would know about it, but I can look it up if they don't. Daddicus 03:30, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Jumping puzzle videos

I finally took the initiative this morning and created {{youtube search}} that I then splattered all over the jumping puzzle pages. This was discussed months ago in multiple places, but I'm pretty sure the consensus was that we don't want constant edit-wars about whose video is best and should be linked from the wiki. And no one bothered to do anything until now. So thanks for making me late for work, ye lazy codswollops. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:13, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Beats the tied-in old consensus on maintaining an objectively "best video link" by a mile. - Infinite - talk 15:06, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Just wanted to say I fully support this. Even though http://lmgtfy.com/ would have been the funnier solution ^^
I guess that means that we can remove all direct links to youtube videos with the exception of the offical arenanet account? - Yandere Talk to me... 01:26, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Template for mini trait icons?

I was wondering if we could include mini trait icons whenever we list a whole bunch of traits in a bulleted list. Sort of like how mini icons are used for skills and professions on pages like the one for Swiftness. They would be the same size as the ones in the trait tables (ex. Dueling). Can we get a template for this? Dr Ishmael gave me an example of what was done before on this page: game_updates/2012-12-14#Elementalist using  Skill.png Skill template, but the icons don't look as nice. I would mainly use this for the related traits sections of skill pages so that users can visualize how deep all the related traits are in each trait line at a glance without having to click through (though you wouldn't be able to differentiate minor traits, I think it's the major ones that are most affecting anyways). What are your thoughts on this? (Requinox 01:18, 16 January 2013 (UTC))

The trait images use the same general SMW image property, so you can actually display them using {{skill icon}} even though they aren't skills. We can make a {{trait icon}} template that will resize and display them properly and how we want.--Relyk ~ talk > 01:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Line height

I'd like to address the issue with the map icons and their usage. As seen on Stronghold of Ebonhawke (per example), the icons for skill points, vistas, hearts, and so on, are all scaled to 19x19, instead of their original 20x20. Now, at first sight, and to many GWW users, this seems common practise.
However, on GW2W, the custom skin has altered line break to allow image height of 20px per line (unless I missed something and it was reverted, though I doubt this). The current practise of scaling these icons to 19x19 is therefore a very bad practise, reducing the visual quality of these icons.
Hence, I'd like to request a grand scale (bot) editing spree to revert this bad practise to its more recently conceived state where 20x20 is possible. It's a shame these icons are not used to their full potential due to established practises on a wiki independent of ours. - Infinite - talk 18:28, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Uh, aren't those icons all placed on the page via templates, so only the templates would need to be changed? --JonTheMon 19:09, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
Changing the image to 20px does alter the line spacing. Open this and this in tabs and switch between them. The 20px version has noticeably more spacing between the lines. Chrome's inspector says that the version with 19px image computes a height of 21px for the dd element, and the version with 20px computes a height of 22px. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:22, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) According to Alfa, who wrote the original code for the skin, it should be impossible that this causes line break unless the code was altered. I was just relaying the message. So, that leaves the question: what changed since the introduction of the skin, and why has it changed. - Infinite - talk 19:29, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
Nothing has changed that I can see. The default line-height for standard text elements (including lists) is 1.5384615385em, which (according to [1]) converts to 20px for our font-size of 13px. However, both Chrome and Firefox are adding 2 pixels to any image in a line, possibly a top/bottom padding of 1px, that bumps the line-height to 22px with a 20px image. I have no clue where these 2 pixels are coming from; it doesn't appear to be anywhere in our CSS, though. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:53, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
I guess that is where the magical spacing is coming from, then. Can we undo those 2 pixels around images with css of our own, or is that beyond the wiki altogether? - Infinite - talk 21:29, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
I have no clue. It also doesn't seem to be a uniform 2px, either - with a 20px image, if I set the line-height to 22px, the height is 23px, and if I set it to 18px, the height is 21px. >= 24px it scales directly, and <= 17px it's constant at 20px.
We can fix icon templates directly, fortunately. {{dialogue icon}}, {{event icon}}, {{gathering icon}}, and {{map icon}} already wrap the image in a span with bottom:2px to correct the vertical alignment. If we change this to a div with position:relative; bottom:2px; float:left; overflow:visible; height:20px; margin-right:3px;, the line has a height of 20px and the icon/text look the same. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:57, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
Can you give us a visual comparison of that change, for it might help deciding on it. I know that sounds silly, as it's simply going to be 1px in height that's changed, but still. - Infinite - talk 14:10, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
[2] —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 15:05, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
I found this a bit odd. [3]. It's not exactly what I expected. Respective columns on your diff. - Infinite - talk 17:04, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
That's expected. Currently, the 19px icons push the line height to 21px. Under the new solution, the 20px icons do not affect the line height at all, thus the line height can shrink to the CSS-defined 20px (1.538....em). The "Plain icons" at 20px push the line height further to 22px. I removed the "Plain icons" column here so it's just current vs. proposed. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 17:27, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Oh, right, yes, my bad. >.< - Infinite - talk 17:33, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

If I had to guess the problem, see the line border-image-width 1 1 1 1;, third from the bottom. Dunno why its set to "border: medium none" at the top, when its explicitly been typed on the css page as "border: none" wait thats not supported in any of the major browsers we're reporting the trouble in. Chieftain AlexUser Chieftain Alex sig.png 21:58, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Infinite, it's not a GWW-users-are-ignorant-of-GW2W thing. GW2W had the same default MediaWiki skins (Monobook and Vector) and thus the same formatting (i.e. 19px). You could take GWW out of the equation and the confusion still would have happened. pling User Pling sig.png 22:18, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
No, it's not that I feel GWW users refuse to see the difference in protocols, but rather that line height is just about the last thing that will be questioned, especially when it was policy on GWW to avoid line breaks. Alfa altered the line spacing with the custom skin, but as stated above, it looks like the browsers null that change. - Infinite - talk 01:45, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Okay, you've been using the term "linebreak" here. But the height of the image isn't going to cause any linebreaks, it just adjusts the height of the line. Is that what you mean, or are you concerned about a different issue? —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 04:54, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
The main problem I have with the 19px vs 20px thing is that some icon templates scale the stuff to 19px and others don't. That creates a inconsitancy which bothers me. The map icon is scales to 19, the gathering icons are scaled to 20, and the vendor icons are scaled to 18 (god knows why). Also some templates use the bottom:2px others don't. I would love to see the whole icon formating centralized so the the current inconcistancies vanish. - Yandere Talk to me... 05:23, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Changed it to line height, to avoid confusion. I use linebreak to refer to the event where an image or something else causes the original, default height of a line to be ignored, literally breaking through the vertical borders of a line. - Infinite - talk 08:57, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
I also agree with that statement. - Infinite - talk 08:57, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
That sounds better, in my work "linebreak" is specifically the LF character (or if you're using dumb Windows formatting, CR+LF characters) that signify the end of a line in a text file. Anyway, no one has commented on my proposed solution yet. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 13:34, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
I was actually thinking about a solution like the one Doc proposed. Icon were originally 18x18, but some just didn't fit into that resolution, so I updated them to 20x20. Some I probably missed, and they were left 18x18. Alfa-R User Alfa-R sig.png 20:55, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
FYI Dr. Ishmael, CR and LF can stand alone. It's not common, but it can be useful in certain circumstances. For example, if you want to overtype all the text on a line, use CR but not LF.
So, Windows isn't using "dumb" formatting, but rather standards-based formatting. However, I will readily admit it's OLD formatting. :) Daddicus 00:15, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
Hey, some of us are old enough to remember when carriage return and line feed physically did exactly that. — snogratUser Snograt signature.png 16:38, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Well, some IP went and implemented my proposed change on template:map icon. I've modified it by encapsulating the style in a new CSS class .inline-icon that we can easily apply to other icon templates. I also discovered a small issue that popped up when it was used within a table (cf. location tables in zone pages) - tables have a reduced font size of 12px, reducing the line-height to ~18.5px, so the fixed height of 20px on this floating span flowed into the next line and pushed that line's icon to the right. I fixed this by changing the height definition to use em instead of px, so it adapts to the surrounding font size. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:36, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Merchant Inventories

I don't have much interest in the wiki aspect of these NPCs but I have noticed that several vendor NPCs which use inventory|standard merchant 1 to show their wares are inaccurate,and I think that there's a deeper problem than a mis-written list. As a typical example, Morriga is said to list copper collecting tools but when I interact with her using a level 24 character, I am offered iron and steel collecting tools, not copper, multiple similar characters exhibit the same behaviour. OTOH, other NPCs do offer copper tools only. So, some NPCs are fixed and others offer a character level variable inventory. I have no idea how one would sort this out but I bring it to the attention of those who are interested in such things. Thanks. Claret 07:20, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Alfa's new tangos

So we've already introduced the new laurel tango Alfa-R has made (amazing work on such short notice), but he also uploaded one for asura gates and another for jumping puzzles. Especially the latter requires replacement (the current one is horrible) in my opinion. I was wondering if the community would like to implement both new tangos to replace the old icons, or object to either, or both.

Arguments for introducing the new jumping puzzle icon:

  • The current one looks rather pixelated.
  • The new icon is smoother on the eyes.

Arguments against introducing the new jumping puzzle icon:

  • The new icon isn't immediately clear in what it depicts (it is a jumping asura).
  • The old icon immediately implies a puzzle.

Arguments for introducing the new asura gate icon:

  • It's a tango, contrary to the map icon we currently use.

Arguments against introducing the new asura gate icon:

  • The current icon is almost as clean as a tango, and it is immediately clear what it represents.

I'd say personal preference also plays a big part in this discussion. Personally I'd use the new jumping puzzle icon, but stick to the old asura gate icon. - Infinite - talk 13:30, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

This is a bit of a digression from the original question, but should we be using tangos at all? GW2's art style is quite different and is a significant aspect of the UI. We've already adopted some of that style elsewhere (like the wiki background header). It would be more consistent (and recognisable) to use the in-game icons, where possible. Take skills, for example; it looks a bit odd to see the "painterly" skill icon next to tango profession, recharge, activation icons. pling User Pling sig.png 15:49, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I think I agree with Pling. While the tango specification provides for a clean, uniform style, the drawback is that not everyone has the graphics skills to create them, meaning we have to rely on one or two people to create them for us, which leaves us in a lurch whenever new icons are introduced and said users aren't available to tango-fy them.
The only real drawback to using the in-game icons is that they only come in 32px or 64px sizes, and the wiki would have to generate the 20px size we use for inline icons. Given the painterly style, this may not produce as much of a visible effect as when resizing tango icons, but it is a potential issue. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 16:14, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
The puzzle piece we are currently using is a tango icon by itself, the jumping man is in the archivement laurel, but it took a while to relize that this should be actually a jumping man. I am a real fan of the puzzle piece, because it implies jumping puzzle. So I think it is the better icon.
The azura gate icon is ok either way. I have not really a stron opionion if this should be a tangofied... By the way something that occoured to me a while back is the inclusion of the zone gates. These things that look like blue asura gates and connect adjecent zones.
On the tango versus non tango discussion. I think tango icons are amazing. They are clean, they are crisp, it is simply put a pretty good icon standard. Problem is that you have to know what you are doing when you create these things, and I am definitly not one of these persons. To get the icons you need out of the dat file is much more simpler and the GW2 icons aren't bad icons. - Yandere Talk to me... 16:34, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
On the tango vs in-game icons. Latter are larger size than 20x20, as Doc has already pointed out, but more inportant, they are made to be used on dark background (all of in-game interfaces are dark), which makes lots of in-game icons look bad on white wiki pages (take Game bug.png e.g., a lot of visual noise). That's why tangos were introduced in the 1st place, I believe. ALso, compare Jumping Puzzles.png Karma Vendor.png Master Armorsmith.png to User Alfa-R Jumping Puzzle.png Karma.png Armorsmith tango icon 20px.png. As for Asura gate, i've made it a while ago, actually, but thought the original icon looked better. But I've decided to upload it in my personal namespace nevertheless, just in case you guys like it better. Alfa-R User Alfa-R sig.png 17:31, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Firstly, regarding the jumping puzzle icons - the one currently in place was decided out of currently available icons at the time and was preferred using such over the explorer achievement (note: at the time, jp's were still under explorer). Since the category change, I've been wanting to change that either for the in-game icon or to a tango version of the in-game icon minus the laurel (which would be alfa's tango). So in regards to that, the argument is in-game version versus Alfa's tango for it. The puzzle piece icon was and always has been a mere placeholder choice.
This said, generally, I prefer using the in-game icon. It represents the game more accurately and I think the style of them is better than not. But given their size, making them 20px really damages their quality resulting in it being cleaner to use tango icons. The best solution would be able to take the in-game icons and remove the noise around them (e.g., that armorsmith icon alfa linked - removing that black dash). But that would be less feasible than tango icons, I believe. Konig/talk 21:36, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
One thing I just wanted to add. The explorer icon as well as the jumping puzzle icon have a dominant green color. It is basiclly the first thing I recongnize. So I would vote for a green icon in both cases. - Yandere Talk to me... 22:08, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) The karma/armorsmith icons Alfa used there are the large 64px or 128px textures that float over NPC's heads (crafting icons have been cropped on the wiki), so of course they don't look good when shrunk to 20px. There are smaller 32px textures for most of these icons, including a bug icon, and a "treasure map" icon we could use for explorer achievements instead of Map icon.png.
Jumping puzzles are a special case because the only in-game icon for them is the one for the achievement category, which is a 64px texture. Maybe someone can crop out the asura from there and clean it up? —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 22:19, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Item preview codes

Are we going to add the chat code things to item pages (e.g. armour, weapons, dyes)? This is pretty useful stuff. While screenshots quickly show you how items look and often include more effects, the codes allow you to preview the item on your own character. A lot of the time, I'm looking up an item on the wiki, then going to GW2db to get the codes.

Infoboxes would be a good place to put this stuff. I'm thinking it shouldn't be a problem to simply copy codes we don't already know from other sites. pling User Pling sig.png 01:27, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree. 75.37.20.148 01:29, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
I am already working on a MW extension that allows us to parse chat links that come in from the game and show the respective pages. As a backend I was hoping that SMW could provide the necessary id lookup (which should work fine). I’m not perfectly sure how well the SMW integration is progressing but from what I have seen in the last few days, it seems to work fine. So what I would like to have done over the next few weeks is adding the ids (skill ids, location ids, item ids, ...) to the respective articles/infoboxes, so that we can build up this backend. From there on, the addition of chat code decoding and encoding is just the next step. poke | talk 13:00, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
IDs can be added to infoboxes at anytime. Parameter would just be id and the associated property would be e.g. Has skill id. I assume you have some sort of data file(s) prepared that can be used to drive a bot for this? And what locations do you have ids for besides waypoints? (which we currently don't maintain pages for, but I've been reconsidering that stance for a while... especially if we get Semantic Maps anytime soon.) [EDIT] My wife just informed me that you can link PoIs into chat. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:24, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Heh, hoped you would reply here ^^ And yeah, locations are both waypoints and points of interest; and at least for the latter we do have pages. Not sure if we will ever create pages for waypoints, but then maybe we could make the waypoints go to the area or zone article instead. And yeah, I have a huge list with ids ready, so I could start adding ids.
The parameter would be created by just creating a page in the parameter namespace for it with [[Has type::Number]] right? Or is there anything else needed? poke | talk 15:12, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
If we create pages for waypoints, they can't be redirects - SMW does not record any data for redirect pages, and the reason I'd want them now is to give them coordinates so we can display them on a Semantic Map.
But on-topic, you mean "property", and they would be Property:Has item id etc. Technically the page doesn't have to exist to start using a property, but because the default type is page, that wouldn't be ideal for these properties. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 15:42, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Uhh, right, properties, sorry ^^ And about the waypoints; didn’t mean redirects but rather putting multiple "location ids" on a single area article. But we can do that later, skills and items will come first ;) poke | talk 16:03, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
This discussion has gone way over my head, so I'll leave this to you to deal with :P. Do we have a timeframe for when the extension will be complete? pling User Pling sig.png 16:12, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
"make the waypoints go to" sounded like redirecting to me. :P Anyway, I wouldn't mind seeing these data files you've got, if you could share them through Google Drive or something. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 16:13, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Creating pages for waypoints so they can have an infobox is the simple solution. It'll probably irk people to call it a location, but the page serves as a placeholder for the infobox. And I can think of uses for having waypoint pages.--Relyk ~ talk > 16:35, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Personally, if all the page serves is to hold an infobox, I’m not too fond of it having a full article. Would you have any other content we could put on it? poke | talk 22:01, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Approx. half of the waypoints are named after a landmark that doesn't have a PoI - Caledon Haven Waypoint in Trader's Green - we could merge the landmark with the waypoint. The other half are named after the area - Artergon Waypoint in Artergon Woods - I don't know what we'd do for those. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 22:34, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
(Reset indent) I don't know what Poke has planned for the extension beyond decoding chat links coming from the game, but I've written some Javascript to encode game IDs on the wiki into a chat link. It requires that the ID be wrapped like <span class="itemId">42</span> where itemId can also be any of skillId|mapId|traitId|recipeId. For items, I've only got it working for simple IDs - complex IDs, which include dyes and (I think) anything with an upgrade in it, will take me some time to work out. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 17:39, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
PS The code is on my JS page (search for "Game ID encoding") if you want to copy it to your own JS and play with it. I have User:Dr ishmael/test set up as a demo. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:09, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
In infoboxes, I'd prefer we use the term "chat link" or something similar instead of "Item ID", as it is now. The latter seems abstract and not-actually-something-useful. pling User Pling sig.png 18:25, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree, game chat codes (A code I type in the game chat??) sounds much more obvious than item ID (What do I do with this item ID?). Also, why can't we just have the wps forward to the main map? For example wps in kessex hills goes to Kessex Hills. Then Dr. Ish can also work on the interactive map there ;) User Freshberrysmoothie Blueberry Icon.jpg Fresh Berry Smoothie 19:09, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
My JS isn't site-wide yet, and it's not complete enough to implement yet, anyway. For now, we can only display the game ID, thus it doesn't make sense to call it "Chat link." Once we decide to implement my JS or something like it to encode the game IDs into chat links, we can easily modify the infobox label to say "Chat link." —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:16, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

On a different, but related topic, how does the Wiki internalize the forwarded link? Is it possible to "highlight" the WP on the article or for instance, as the game "centers" on the WP linked in chat, is it possible to give focus to these WPs when /wiki'd? User Freshberrysmoothie Blueberry Icon.jpg Fresh Berry Smoothie 19:13, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Since TP preview is going live in the Feb patch (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/february-2013/), does it make sense to pursue the item code project? I'm just asking because I wanted to update some of the dye codes, but that in particular seems now unnecessary. BelleroPhone 12:14, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Unless they're going to make additional refinements to the TP at the same time, the wiki will still be a lot easier to navigate than the TP is. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:43, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree, the TP is very difficult to browse if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for. Especially for dyes, it’s really hard to browse through all the pages just to find a possible dye you’d want to preview.
Regarding my extension, my main idea is to hook into the search, so any in-game /wiki command is examined for chat links. If it’s a single one, I just redirect to the article it is about. If there are more than one, or a single more complex code (think item + upgrades and transmutation), I show a special page instead that lists each component—maybe with additional data from the infoboxes.
While doing this, it might be worth to add a simple parser function that allows encoding the codes, like {{#chatlink:item|23040}}, so we don’t have to do that using JavaScript. That way we could also “hide” the ids completely because people would usually not care about that.
Obviously such an extension, especially with that special page thing, will be a bit more complicated and might go through multiple iterations. I’ll set up a test wiki soon, and also hope that we can add the extension here soon and update it in an iterative way (i.e. many updates if ANet is willing to do that..). poke | talk 15:16, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Functionally, there's no need for a stand-alone parser function. My JS can be abstracted into widgets once we get that extension, and we replace the span with a #widget: call {{#widget:itemlink|23040}} (or we abstract it one level further and put the widget in a template, {{itemlink|23040}}). The only difference would be server-side (parser function) vs client-side (widget) processing. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 16:31, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Did poke get run over or did this get forgotten about? -Chieftain AlexUser Chieftain Alex sig.png 22:41, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

No worries, I’m still on it. It’s just that I have been super slammed with uni related stuff lately and as such won’t have any time until the end of next week. After that I’ll let you know more. I already have an early working prototype on my test wiki. poke | talk 12:50, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
For people following along here - I promoted my to the wiki's Common.js for generating game links based on game IDs. Currently it's only implemented within Template:Area infobox, and eventually it will be added to Template:Skill infobox, Template:Trait infobox, and Template:Item infobox and derivatives. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Auto-select/copy codes

Pie in the sky idea from me, and bear in mind this is coming from someone who is still a major beginner at anything related to wiki coding, but how possible would it be to create a function where anytime there's an chat code it creates an icon next to it you could click to automatically copy it to your clipboard? For instance, on Dr ishmael's example page you'd see an icon to the right of each game chat code would also have an icon immediately to the right so players could either click it (or right-click -> copy) and would get the entire chat code on their clipboard. This would make it easier to grab the codes (especially if you have multiple of them) instead of highlighting it all (even double-clicking on it won't get everything easily, it stops at the & and = signs, etc). I bring it up because another wiki I used to frequent does something like this for their location coordinates in-game. Right-clicking and copying from the icon gives you the necessary text to paste into the game and get a location. I thought maybe we could do the same here for the chat codes, if it was possible. (Example of what I'm talking about: eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Loc) Vahkris 18:33, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

That's something I'd thought of doing, just didn't have the time to look into it yesterday. I don't have much time today either, but I'll try to remember it tomorrow. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:24, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
I think the web has made it impossible to left-click copy to clipboard. However, it is still possible to click something that would HIGHLIGHT the text, which is pretty cool too! :) Double/Triple clicking can also be done effectively, IF the html is formatted properly. And the right-clicking is new to me, but I really, really like that one too ^_^ Great idea, Vahkris! User Freshberrysmoothie Blueberry Icon.jpg Fresh Berry Smoothie 19:42, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
Done! It works just like GW2DB/GW2Spidy, in that when you click on the link, it selects the full link code, then you Ctrl+C. Smoothie is correct, you can't interact with the clipboard using JavaScript; Flash can do it, but I think using writing a Flash widget just for this would be overkill. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 01:25, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Another reason to double Dr ishmael's wiki salary. This is awesome. Thanks for making it happen. 75.36.178.170 04:34, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Good work, Dr! I have an example for those that would like a hands-on approach. I have noticed that a lot of waypoints don't have their own page however. How's that going to work out? And do we still have a method of redirecting members that type /wiki [&GameCodeID] to the relevant articles? I love this so far. It looks so clean and simple. And then when you try to double click it to highlight it--BOOM! Excellent work and great implementation ^_^ Do you think that members will need a temporary icon or notice to direct their attention to this new and amazing feature? I think they'll figure it out but who knows User Freshberrysmoothie Blueberry Icon.jpg Fresh Berry Smoothie 04:44, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Have some hover text say "Click to select code".--Relyk ~ talk > 05:09, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I had to revert your example: Grand Piazza is an area, not a PoI or Waypoint, so it doesn't have a game ID; for map locations, only PoIs and Waypoints have IDs (other things probably have IDs, but we don't know them or how to find them). However, I've already added game IDs to all of the PoIs in Metrica Province and Caledon Forest.
  • Waypoints: I don't know. From pre-release, the logic was that there's nothing to put on waypoint pages since the waypoints themselves are all identical, so there's no reason to have pages for waypoints; in cases where the waypoint was named for a landmark, there was also a point of interest for the landmark. In late beta, however, Anet got rid of the redundant PoIs, leaving only waypoints to identify said landmarks (e.g. the Lionguard havens), so making pages for those waypoints would let us describe the landmark without having to "make up" a page for them. Unfortunately, that still leaves the other half of the landmarks, which are named after the area they're in. That's all that's holding me back from changing my stance on the matter, so if anyone can propose a good solution for it or if people will allow that it's okay for this group of articles to have very little content, that would be great.
  • Game → wiki: AFAIK, Poke is still "working on it."
  • Advertising the feature: A tooltip would be good, yes, but anyone who goes to select the code is going to discover the feature anyway. I'm not sure that advertising it is necessary.
—Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 05:28, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Hey, remove those quotes! I am working on it. Regarding waypoint articles, I’m not too sure either. If it makes sense to have a full article about it, sure, make one; if not, the “parent” (i.e. the map article) will be linked with the ID. You will probably not have a simple way to copy/paste to the game then though. poke | talk 09:58, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Now this is pretty neat, glad we could do it. Vahkris 15:41, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Waypoints: No need to have their own page with tid-bits on them, they could simply be "forwarding" pages that go to the map they're in, or to the relevant section in the map article where they list the waypoints.
  • Waypoints Alt Code Use: Inside a wiki article where you are trying to tell people where to go. For instance how to get to the start of a JP? You could put that waypoint there, with the code that we already know for that waypoint as the click on it inline with the rest of the article. Like a template that goes {{Link|Title|id}} or something. Instead of clicking these waypoints to go to the overall map we could isntead embed the game code on it as the link instead like with an icon on the side? Some sort of combination of the two?
  • My bad on the piazza thing! I thought I did that right orz :( I was supposed to do it for Lion's Court. But again another idea can be linking codes that get you closest to a zone. Maybe we could on the Piazza page "contain's Lion's Court Poi" or perhaps "Lion's Court" poi is the center of this zone, and have that be an IGC that someone could use?
Just a bunch of ideas I'm throwing out there as sometimes it can help new players find an area by pasting in chat and clicking on it. User Freshberrysmoothie Blueberry Icon.jpg Fresh Berry Smoothie 18:32, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Wiki extension

Just fyi, I started documenting the extension here. While I’m still working out some details, the document will give a good idea about how everything works etc. I’ll probably upload some screenshots later, so you can see how it’s working. If you have further suggestions (for example on the special page topic), I’ll be happy to hear them. poke | talk 17:08, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

reddit

Stephane's said ANet is thinking of ways to promote the wiki more, but there's stuff we could be doing too. One of those is getting reddit's input - it's popular with GW2 fans, but the wiki often doesn't get enough attention there. Sometimes it even gets negative; it's not the majority opinion, but it's still worse than what we should be content with.

We could start with something simple, like asking them what they find good about the wiki and how we can improve - feedback, essentially. Maybe we could answer questions to dispel wrong impressions and encourage tentative, potential editors. Perhaps we should "promote" wiki achievements there, like "look, this gallery of greatswords is complete" or "hey, we've now got item codes"; or we could make explicit requests for contributions, like "we need more greatsword images!".

Although we could simply leave it to ANet to do the PR for us, taking some of that into our own hands would illustrate what the wiki is about - players writing stuff about the game for other players. pling User Pling sig.png 01:57, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I've never been on reddit, my vague perception of it is that it's 4chan but Obama posts on it. Felix Omni Signature.png 02:27, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
There are a few threads about the wiki, but they tend to devolve into complaints about reversions; feels like pvxwiki. I didn't realize that the weapon gallery issue was based on an initiative. It's unfortunate Souldonkey made the page and posted an entire reddit thread before discussing it on the wiki. Some threads do provide feedback, particularly about the need for a editing tutorial and help with talk pages and reversions. A feedback thread would work as reddit is pretty friendly [4] (when they aren't complaining about reversions and admin overlords). A wiki milestone/achievement page would work better on the wiki itself as it provides feedback for contributors as well as encourage others to jump on board. We have something of the sort on Cartographer but it's pretty obscure.--Relyk ~ talk > 04:55, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Reddit is often used as a site to post updates on various topics. Would not mind getting a representation of the wiki out there since we can only really function with a lot of collaborators. If we can get a positive image out there and give tips on how to do various edits (like submitting images or basic formatting rules etc) we can easily call up people to help out. It might help take away the image that the wiki isn't so useful or is too strict. PR for the wiki has to come from us.. Once such a project is set up we might get a tweet or shoutout from ANet. --User Karasu sig.png Karasu (talk) 11:33, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Huh, I didn't know about that gallery thread you linked... I've just seen some of Dulfy's posts about her site's galleries/walkthroughs being complete, and yesterday I was using wiki/Dulfy galleries to find a new greatsword for myself, so I used that as an example.
It's nice to see people responding well to that thread (but then it's not nice seeing something like "The wiki is full of ego-inflated, self-important bureaucrats. It's volunteer bureaucracy!" being upvoted :P) pling User Pling sig.png 16:19, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Well reddit is a mob. They'll change directions every day on a whim. But even if the majority is wishy washy, there are still redditors that may be on the fence about helping on the wiki. I know the number one thing that stopped me was the "edit" button. I'd hit it and be like... wtf are all these symbols? They don't use a "rich" editor? This is too hardcore. Personally, I like this idea of getting those on the fence to switch over. There will definitely be one or two that will say something opinionated, somewhat logically founded, that will get upvoted to the top. But there are ways of avoiding that. We could start out by doing an AMA kind of thread with the moderators of Wiki on there. You could help resolve the internal issues that have caused some redditor-edits to have caused strife on there. No one knows how to follow these things, and the people who are strong contributors here probably know each other's "styles" and would probably be able to clear up those things. The other thing you could do is simply ask "What is the main reason you don't edit the wiki?" Or something along the lines of asking what is the "tiny nudge" that they're waiting for or what it is that holds them away, etc. User Freshberrysmoothie Blueberry Icon.jpg Fresh Berry Smoothie 19:04, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
#redditGW2 is a fairly active IRC channel (...as far as IRC channels ago) on the gamesurge IRC network - if any redditors are idling in there, they can feel free to hop into #gww or #gw2w channels if they have any questions on procedure or... anything, really. AMA thread wouldn't be a bad idea either. -Auron 14:06, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
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