RANTS and OtheR wORDs[edit]
I must learn to like being wrong. I must learn to like being wrong. I must learn to like being wrong.[edit]
Maybe if I say it enough it will happen? Apparently being wrong here is a good thing. As a matter of fact it is demanded and enforced with an iron delete key. There is no need to record actual game data. Precision and fact are irrelevant here. Interpretation is the way to go. Remember, we are here to learn proper punctuation and grammar not record what you actually see in the game. — Malacon on Blackgate 05:37, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
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The difference between Artificer, artificer and artificers[edit]
An NPC has the EXACT title of Master Artificer in game. This category is for inclusion of these NPCs into the proper title category. For the sake of accuracy the title is not artificer or artificers and should not be represented as such in an official wiki. — Malacon . Blackgate 18:28, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
- Category names are supposed to be plural. You don't see e.g. "Category:Sword", you see Category:Swords. As for the capitalization, that's how we do it here on the official wiki. For specific item/skill/NPC/location names, we will use title case as shown in-game, but for types of items/skills/NPCs/locations, we use all lowercase. In this case, it's analogous to the real-world custom of capitalizing a profession title when using it with a person's name, e.g. "Doctor John Smith," but not capitalizing it otherwise, e.g. "I went to the doctor today."
- Cf. subcategories of Category:Trainers; two-word skill types Category:Spirit weapon skills, [[:Category:Device kit skills]], [[:Category:Weapon kit skills]], etc.
- There have been massive debates about this in the past, you're welcome to read the most recent one if you have a few hours. —Dr Ishmael
 20:52, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
- "thats how we do it" does not make it right. What is the title given by the devs to the NPC? master Artificer? NO. artificers? Nuh uh. Master artificers? Close but NO. The true factual title as seen IN GAME and coded by the devs is Master Artificer. Done. Easy evidence of the facts as produced by the devs. That is how they want it. That is how any wiki proposed to contain factual game data should display it. Display in any other form is simply documenting someones personal interpretation of how it should be not how it truly is in game.
- An official wiki should be more concerned with verbatim documentation of game content inclusive of punctuation and capitalization rather than how that data fits into real world applications. Wikipedia and personal conventions should not override actual game data.
- Thanks for the link. I will read it. — Malacon . Blackgate 00:25, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
- The plural is unquestionable and is not unique to this wiki - categories like this are plural, period. Personally, I don't care a whit what we do with capitalization, except that I will enforce any existing consensus. I don't really understand why you're so buggered about this exceptionally minor point, anyway. —Dr Ishmael 01:01, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
- :) Maybe it's my OCD. Or my sense of fact vs fiction. A is not the same as a. I'm here to record game data as it is in the actual game. If I choose to interpret something it becomes a guide or review. When something is called Ball of Dooom in game I should not come here and call it ball of doom or any form thereof. It is just simply not the correct name.
- Plural categories I can concede or at least ignore for now. It is a personal preference really. The rest is about in game usage and bringing it out to this wiki. Recording of precise information according to how the devs write, design and present it. It is not about proper grammar, wikipedia rules or other sites.
- I saw the General formatting page links to an article by an ArenaNet writer. Within he espouses the need to be accurate with titles, punctuation etc. "We deserve better" or something. This IMO supports my contention that the data be transcribed verbatim. ArenaNet is already combing over everything. We don't have to. We just have to take it out of the game as they wrote it and type it here.
- I also read the page you referred me to. Mostly an argument between two people but plenty of people for verbatim transcription. Somehow someone decided verbatim was not the consensus. That article did not have a final result. If someone is going to just pick one or the other I cannot fathom how they would choose inaccurate interpretation over factual data but that's just me I guess. Or it's not just me as several others have expressed the same concern and view. :) —Malacon . Blackgate 01:35, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
- I disagree with you stating that "Master Artificer" is a title. I don't think it is. It's just a description of a service. I wouldn't say "Merchant" is a title either. It's just a service or a role. Much like professions. It's warrior, thief, engineer, etc... so it's vendor, merchant, artificer, chef, etc. You read the House of Style article, so you've seen this example “Come here, Warrior, so that I might give you this Long Sword. Of…Swiftly Cutting Things. Verily!” given as "hurting the brain".
- In the articles describing the service itself, we have factually stated that such NPCs are suffixed with so-and-so label, for example Merchant - has "[Merchant]" suffix in the name. I haven't gotten around to create separate pages for each of the crafting NPC service (it's on my TO-DO), but when I do, I'm going to say master artificer NPCs have "[Master Artificer]" in their names. I will not say its "[Artificer]", "(master Artificer)", or "{MaStEr ArTiFiCeR]". That's where it counts - the actual content. Categories are just a mechanism with which a wiki organise its content. It's not the actual content. When a user searches for "Master Artificer", he'll end up in the artificer page. A typical user won't be typing "Category:Master Artificer" into the URL - forcing the categories to be singular or a particular case for the sole reason of being the same as in-game serves no useful purpose, but instead breaks consistency and convention. -- ab.er.rant
 13:42, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
- Even if you don't think it is a title it is still a label given in a game. Either way works because when it is transcribed the outcome should be the same. The label is displayed in a precise manner. A manner chosen by professional writers who themselves have already painstakingly gone over the grammar issues of what they are putting into the game. I don't need to interpret their work. I just need to write it down here as is. Convention takes a back seat to exact transcription here. This is just a game wiki. Basically a port of game data into a searchable format.
- Within the game are several NPCs given the title/label of Master Artificer. Spelled and capitalized exactly so. Since there are several of these they IMO qualify for a category in a wiki. This category would not be needed if it did not exist in our game. Therefore when I create said category I will and should use the precise form displayed in the game if at all possible. Why? Because that how it is in game. Why should I not interpret it into conventional grammar? Because that is not how it is in game.
- Does good grammar and English convention play a part in a game wiki? Of course. All over the place. If it didn't articles would be all in ebonics and the full spelling of you would be forbidden. But when adding precise data from in game these conventions do not apply. This is not a grammar wiki. It is not Wikipedia with it's thousands of convoluted rules. We should record everything as it is in game. Exactly as it is in game. If there are several forms of Battle Rabbit then we create a category called Battle Rabbit. Not Battle rabbit or battle rabbit. The same goes for a group (aka category) of npcs called Master Tailor or anything else. (Sorry for TL:DR. I'm old and apparently long winded. lol) — Malacon on Blackgate 16:33, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
- "professional writers who themselves have already painstakingly gone over the grammar issues of what they are putting into the game" You seriously believe that? Please look at how many pages have to use Template:Sic because of typos and grammatical errors in the game. —Dr Ishmael 17:07, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
- (INDENT RESET) I said that since it is implied by the dev who wrote the article (IMO). The same article that is used to justify the deletion of legitimate category names and refusal to record verbatim game data. The same article that is quoted here by others. They may not get everything right but Steins intent to do so seemed clear to me.
- I was going to suggest that Bobby Stein get this report on a daily basis. Then I looked through some of the articles. There are problems with this sic tag. A big one is that there needs to be a sic just for spelling errors. Of the 20 or so articles I looked at I would wager over half were simple typos. Another portion were word omission or misplacement. Another sic needed for those. Splitting out the type of sic could go a long way to helping devs clean things up. New sic project aside (a useful project for another discussion perhaps), the real point is that that tag and category includes way more than just capitalization and grammar issues which was the original topic here I think.
- LOL I'm getting a little fuzzy here. I just wanted to catalog a group of npcs under their actual label. I think it has been proven that this is not just an "exceptionally minor point" and it is apparently worth getting "buggered" over. If it were an "exceptionally minor point" my category would not have been deleted in the first place. I really would like my game accurate category back and the ability to make others like it without them getting deleted. I have enjoyed the intelligent debate though. — Malacon on Blackgate 02:25, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
- If you want to re-open the capitalization debate on the formatting talk page, feel free (you'll get a much larger audience), but for now the existing consensus will stand. —Dr Ishmael 03:23, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
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Wrong is Wrong[edit]
<RANT>
START capitalizing items, titles and names as they are IN GAME.
Why are you NOT capitalizing second parts of titles and items? How is it displayed IN GAME? That was a Master Artificer you bought from not master artificer.
A bad trend I am noticing in this wiki is the inaccurate coding of item names, titles and basic data. This should be an ACCURATE and hopefully VERBATIM record of in game data not a whimsical interpretation. Leave whimsical to the bloggers, fan sites and wikipedia.
— Malacon, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
</RANT>
