User:Stephane Lo Presti/News/January-December 2013

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Wiki (minor) update on Thursday November 7 at 10 AM Pacific Time - November 4, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

We're going to push an (minor but important) upgrade to the backend software on Thursday November 7 at 10 AM Pacific Time. We'll be installing a new extension (called RecentChangesLogFilter and created by bureaucrat poke) that will add a new option to Special:RecentChanges to hide the account creation log (on by default).

There should not be any downtime, apart possibly from a few intermittent errors (usually returning 502 or 503 errors). If you experience any problem with the wikis, please let us know via Twitter, Facebook or the Guild Wars 2 forums.

Thanks.

Wiki update on Thursday October 24 at 10 AM Pacific Time - October 21, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

We're going to push an upgrade to the MediaWiki software on Thursday October 24 at 10 AM Pacific Time. We'll also change the Captch system to QuestyCaptcha, update a few extensions (Semantic MediaWiki, AbuseFilter) and some software configuration (user groups, other general settings to make them consistent across all 4 GW2 wikis).

There should not be any downtime, apart possibly from a few intermittent errors (usually returning 502 or 503 errors). If you experience any problem with the wikis, please let us know via Twitter, Facebook or the Guild Wars 2 forums.

Thanks.

Additional statistic - October 3, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

In addition to this week's and month's statistics (see this page of my wiki journal), I'd like to share another statistics that could be of interest to you (I'm not planning to update this as this seems like a number that you don't want to see changing too often):

screen resolution (over the last month, percentage relative to the total number)

  1. 1920x1080 35.5
  2. 1366x768 11.6
  3. 1680x1050 8.7
  4. 1600x900 7.2
  5. 1280x1024 6
  6. 1440x900 5.3
  7. 1920x1200 3.4
  8. 1280x800 2
  9. 1360x768 1.7
  10. 320x480 1.7

Upcoming Preview Play Day - September 23, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

We've got a Preview Play Day coming up later this week. If a representative of the wiki was selected, could he or she get in touch with either me (via the wiki email) or any of the wiki admins (I know that Felix has been on top of this project for the wiki). I'd appreciate a reply by Wednesday at the very latest, if possible.

Thank you! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:09, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Wiki technical questions and WvW guide - September 4, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

I've got two important sets of questions to share with the wiki community today. Please hop on my talkpage to share your thoughts and answers!

Wiki technical questions[edit]

We're currently working on an upcoming to the wiki software (upgrade to version 1.20.7), together with using QuestyCaptcha. We've cleaned a few things on the wiki backend, including configuration files, and want to make sure that we're not changing something incorrectly. So here are a few things, including questions that need to be asnwered by the wiki community:

It's also the time to ask us for any subsequent configuration change! We need the answer to these questions as soon as possible, so that we can then test the changes and push these updates to the live wikis. Thanks for your help!

WvW guide[edit]

We're interested in providing GW2 players with more WvW guides and the World_versus_World article is not currently the best page for that. I'd like to work with the wiki community and other players to try to change this and provide the GW2 community with some sort of article or link hub so that people can get a really good start in WvW. If we can pull something together fairly quickly (e.g., 2 weeks, which is probably super quick in wikiTime (TM)), we'd like to promote it to the larger GW2 community, in time for the WvW seasons!

If you have links, ideas, a passion for WvW or just want to help, hit me on my talkpage so that we can discuss it! Thanks.

Wiki slowdowns and adding a "Buy GW2" link on the wiki - August 13, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

One quick update and a question for the wiki community today.

Wiki slowdowns[edit]

You probably noticed that every time we've got an in-game update or patchnotes are released, the wiki slows down and throws errors (502, 503, missing pictures, etc.). It happened again today and we were trying to look at our servers to the possible causes. We have strong reasons to believe that the likely cause of these slowdowns is Game_updates. We can't exactly say what's exactly causing the spikes on that page, but we clearly see some statistics going up 5 to 100 times. Could some knowledgeable editors look into how the page is structured and see if anything can be done to reorganize and/or simplify it? Thank you!

Adding a "Buy GW2" link on the wiki[edit]

We've been discussing within the Community Team the possibility of adding a "buy" button/link on the wiki. This could take various forms but I'm currently thinking of simply adding a (colored?) text link on the left navbar so that it's not very intrusive. I'd like to ask the wiki community's opinion about this, if possible by the end of this week. Join me on my talkpagefor a discussion about this!

EDIT: this link could also be a "Try GW2" whenever we'll be running Free trials, as this may be more inline with nature of wikis.

Weekly popular pages, German wiki's interactive map and Kristen Perry's art category - August 5, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone, I've got a few udpdates for the wiki community today.

Weekly popular pages[edit]

I'm going to try to make this a regular post to keep you updated about the top8 articles viewed on the wiki last week (please note that I'm actually removing 2 links for the top10, these 2 are 2 standard use of the wiki search feature and they're always in the top10):

  1. Main page
  2. List_of_armor_sets
  3. Legendary_weapon
  4. Game updates
  5. PvP reward
  6. Jumping_puzzle
  7. Cutthroat Politics
  8. Armor

A cool project from the German wiki[edit]

I thought I'd highlight this really cool tool that editor Smiley created on the German wiki. It's an interactive map that use the Guild Wars 2 API.

About Kristen Perry[edit]

Kristen Perry (Character Development Specialist at the studio, well-known for being in charge of the Sylvari redesign) got in touch with me a while ago to discuss her art categorization. She used to have her own category on the Guild Wars wiki and asked whether this was also created on the GW2 wiki. It looks like it's not so we started discussing how she could share that information with the wiki and after various discussions we concluded that Kristen should put all the relevant art on her blog (after updating it). So if you want to create that category, here's the link: http://www.merekatcreations.com/gallery/ Kristen would like to thank the wiki community for its work!

Wiki reddit thread (redux) and popular pages - July 22, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

Wiki reddit thread (redux)[edit]

I was re-reading the discussion about the reddit thread about the wiki and, as a Community Manager, thought that there are a few things I'd mention: - if you accept the premisse that this thread is created to gather feedback, learn from a certain audience and then build solutions to potential issues, you have to change your point of view; - I liked one of Pling's first big reply where he mentions "Be bold", "assume good faith", and "you are valuable" are probably the three most important concepts on any wiki because it's a great example of someone wanting to learn from that feedback and attempt to discuss a way to move forward (I wouldn't call any of that feedback an issue, apart from one I'll discuss below); this is echoed by poke's firest reply too; - the discussion takes a first turn after 195.240.63.18's first intervention and the replies are moving the thread away from the topic; I know that debate is important to the life of a wiki (and the approach of many editors) but sometimes you need to be flexible or in our case inclusive; opinions are important but the fact is that people still feel the way they explained on the reddit thread and that's pushing some of them away from this great community; we collectively rely on a certain mass of editors for the wiki to progress and not become stale

Something obvious but that has not been mentioned so far: wiki editors are not one group of people but several. I have the impression that some of the key factors are: knows more or less about wiki code; knows more or less about how wiki works (consensus, discussion, etc.); knows more or less about GW2; knows a specific aspect of GW2 really well; is personnally attached to the wiki community and content. This overall makes for a lot of different kinds of editors (all here for different reasons). This means that "you" (the most active and engaged editors, also most knowledgeable) are in a pretty small group of people that are key to this wiki but the mass of "nameless editors" is as critical as you are.

My thought on all of this is: there needs to be a group of people in between these two, something similar to Wikipedia's Teahouse, a group of knowledgeable editors edicated to helping other editors. I also think that "inclusive" principles need to be reminded to everyone because each and every editor representes the whole community and a non-inclusive attitude can very quickly turn to what we've read on the reddit thread. As opposed to other GW2 information site, unity is going to be a key factor in how we're perceived and in turn how long people are going to keep editing.

The wiki portal is also pretty static and I'm wondering if Relyk's newsletter couldn't be turned into a more active version for the portal, to try to get the community together (see Wikipedia's page for example). On the tech side, the VisualEditor will probably be ready at some point this year and, although it looks limited, it's not something we should discard.

Popular pages[edit]

It's something that's been requested for a while and I haven't yet found the time to make that work. One thing we're pretty sure is that the Special:PopularPages is not doing the job, as the numbers are incorrect (due to the caching mechanisms render them useless) compared to the Google Analytics numbers. I've compared the numbers a few times and the differences can be pretty big. While I'm still working on a way to bring this back to the wiki community, I'd like to share some information about the top8 most accessed pages (that I'm tracking weekly). They end up overall in 3 categories:

  • pages that always show up: Main page (always number one), List of armor sets, Legendary weapon, Game updates
  • pages that showed up quite a few times lately: Achievement, Jumping puzzle
  • last are pages relative to each release (Bazaar of the Four Winds/Zephyr Sanctum Supply Box/Charged Quartz Crystal, Sky_Pirates_of_Tyria/Caching_Out/Not_So_Secret)

Wiki representative for the next playday - June 28, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

We're going to organize our next GW2 playday (see previous entry on this wiki journal for more details) next week and the wiki community is invited! If the wiki community already has a member selected for this, please have him get in touch with me as soon as possible (ideally at the very beginning of next week) so that we can then discuss the next steps.

You can let me know your comments or questions on my talkpage. Thanks a lot for your help!

Opportunity for the wiki - June 18, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

I’d like to share with the English wiki community an invitation to join an ArenaNet exclusive fansite “preview play day” to get into Guild Wars 2 and play upcoming, unreleased content. Our target is to start this straight away at the end of this week (this is not a physical meeting). So if the wiki community can organize itself quickly enough, we can add you to the list. If not, that opportunity may be extended to a future “preview play day”.

This is an opportunity that would require the wiki community to mobilize and organize itself so that one named member of the wiki community is “elected” to represent the community. This responsibility cannot be shared for a particular “preview play day”, but I imagine that we’ll be able to change the representative for future “preview play days”. That person should be trusted to act for the good of the wiki community and make sure that the information contained in this preview ends up in wiki articles that are available when (and not before) the release webpage is published. I’ll be in touch with the elected editor to make sure they are aware of the timing and knows and understands the guidelines to which they will have to strictly adhere to.

Now the ball is in the wiki community’s court and I’d like to hear from you as soon as possible. Please this topic on my talkpage to discuss the topic and ask me questions. Thanks a lot for your help and I hope that we can have a wiki editor onboard the “preview play day” program!

Maintenance of all the wikis on Wednesday May 8th - April 26, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

We're close to final tests completion regarding the upgrading of the wikis to MediaWiki version 1.20.4. This upgrade is planned for Wednesday May 8 from 9 AM (Pacific Time, GMT -7) until 5 PM. The English wikis (GW and GW2) will not be available from 9AM till 10AM and they'll be in read-only mode for the whole duration of the maintenance. The non-English GW2 wikis (German, French, Spanish) will be in read-only mode for the whole duration of the maintenance.

I'd also like to explain why the schedule slipped several times: first, I was just too busy with other Community Management tasks; then, once our plan was set in action, we hit a few technical issues that delayed us (this is when I posted my last update about the upgrade); and then we discovered that MediaWiki was going to release version 1.20.4, which happened on Monday April 15th. I'd also like to add that this whole process that we've gone through behind the scenes includes setting up new processes and technical elements, with the goal of allowing us to better manage future upgrades.

If you have any question or comment, feel free to jump on my talkpage.

Thanks.

Backend work on Thursday 11th April - April 9, 2013[edit]

Hi,

We're going to perform some work on the server backend of the wikis this Thursday April 11, between 9AM (Pacific Time) and 6PM. If you notice any unusual behavior, please let us know either on my talkpage or via the Guild Wars 2 Twitter. This work is done to help us prepare for the upgrade of the wiki software to the latest version and I'll be giving more information about this once we've finalized our plans.

Thanks.

Information about Flame and Frost: the Destruction - March 26, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

We just published a guide to the new Living World content that will very probably help the wiki community create page stubs and go through the content. Warning: it's full of spoilers ;) https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/flameandfrost/Guide-Flame-and-Frost-The-Razing

Enjoy!

Further update on the News, information & questions and a question - March 25, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

I don't have much to add to my last update apart from announcing that we will not make it the initial estimate of March for the upgrade to MediaWiki version 1.20. We're trying to be more careful than usual with this build (in addition to setting new processes on our end on how to handle things like upgrades) and testing is taking more time. The upgrade is currently planned for mid-April but this date may change depending on test results and further adjustments. We're currently planning for a day of maintenance as this is a massive operation (similarly to what we did in October 2012) but I'll share more details once we've locked the full details of the operation.

I'd also like to ask this wiki community a question: currently the English Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 wikis shared the same user table. This means that accounts are shared between these two wikis. However, from a community and technical perspective, this seems like an unnecessary link at this point during the lives of these 2 wikis. What does the community of this wiki think about separating the user table in two? (so current accounts would not be changed but new accounts would be specific to a wiki; this could also mean that some aspects of wiki preferences would not be shared too, I'm not sure).

If you want to answer this question or have other questions, please let me know on my talk page (or the relevant discussion page based on my previous updates). Thanks!

Update on the News, information and questions - March 11, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to provide a quick update on the big post I wrote a month ago:

  • Update of the wikis to MediaWiki 1.20: We’re in the final stages of testing this. If we don’t find any major issue, we think we’ll be able to deploy this in the coming weeks. I’ll provide a more detailed update as soon as I know the date and details.
  • Quality of articles: I’ve seen very little comment about this. Please let me know what you think about it. This is an important topic and it’ll be open for as long as necessary.
  • Attract (and retain) editors: there’s only been a brief exchange. Similarly to the previous point, t his is an important topic and it’ll be open for as long as necessary.
  • Masthead redesign: the offer still stands. Note: the Spanish wiki is trying a new cool version of their page using the GW2 website masthead, which you can see implemented in the Vector skin. You can take a look at it here.
  • Youtube and the wikis: from the look at the current discussion, I don’t think that there’s a clear consensus. I was curious if this would attract positive comments but it has not, so I’m pretty much closing the topic to focus on the other topics.
  • Fansite list: no traction here but it’s not a priority.
  • New wiki for the pictures: no traction on this, apart from an editor on the German wiki expressing concerns over various issues. Not a priority.
  • Page counters: I haven’t had the time to work on this yet and will write an update about it whenever I’m done with it.
  • Default skin: I only got 2 pieces of feedback from the German wiki in favor of this. Would people be opposed to changing the default skin?
  • Global changelog page: I’m proposing that we (ArenaNet) use the Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:Changelog page. Let me know my talk page if you have comments or suggestions.
  • WikiChat: no traction, so I won’t be having one at least until next month.

As usual, let me know if you have questions or comments my talk page (or the relevant discussion page).

Very brief downtime at 4PM (Pacific Time) - February 22, 2013[edit]

A quick note that we're going to restart the wiki servers this afternoon at 4PM (Pacific Time; that's 12AM GMT and 1AM CET). This is to fix a small configuration issue on the servers and should only make the wikis unavailable for a few minutes (hopefully less than one as it's a quick fix). The expected impact is minimal as pages may be unavailable and edits may not be saved during that brief window.

I'm also opening the floor (i.e., my talk page) for suggestions about the best way to relay these update informations. Once the Global changelog page, this could be an option. Another one would be to modify the wiki's site notice, but I'm not sure if the community feels it's impinging on its space or if it's too disruptive? Let me know your thoughts, opinions and ideas!

Android mobile app for the Guild Wars 2 Wiki - February 12, 2013[edit]

A few editors of this wiki created a lightweight, read-only browser for conveniently reading the content of the Guild Wars 2 Wiki. They're still in a test phase and would like to hear your feedback! (please post your feedback on the page GW2W:APP).

It's available in English, German, French, and Spanish here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.felixware.gw2w

Thanks to them and to those that will be helping them ^^

News, information and questions – February 8, 2013[edit]

Hi everyone,

It’s been a long time and I’m sorry that I couldn’t get this update to the wiki community before today, due to a very busy month of January. It even feels late to wish all of you a happy new year ;) Brace yourselves for a very long update and let me know what you think! This is probably something worthy of a site notice announcement but I’ll let the sysops and bureaucrats decide.

Update of the wikis to MediaWiki 1.20[edit]

After weeks of technical discussions, we’ve agreed on a plan to update the MediaWiki software that powers all our wikis. We’re going to start this month to update MediaWiki to the latest version (1.20) and should be done at some point in March. This is going to take some time, due to the fact that our 5 wikis have different versions (English GW and GW2 on 1.16, while German, French and Spanish are on 1.17) and we’re going to update extensions (which will require some careful testing). At the end of this update process, we’ll deploy the Semantic MediaWiki bundle extension and fix the couple of existing bugs. (note that some of the topics I discuss in the remainder of this post would also happen much later down the road)

If the community feels that some technical elements should get a higher priority and be deployed faster (e.g., a particular bug fix, an extension), please get in touch with me via this new subpage created for the topic. It’s important that you explain why and back this with some relevant information. I’ll also keep everyone updated about the update on this page.

We also need some testers to help us with this update plan. To be a tester, you need to be an active editor and have a good knowledge of MediaWiki. You’ll also need to sign an NDA. You can submit an application for this on this new subpage created for the topic. Please indicate: what kind of editor experience you have on the wiki (including if you have specialized knowledge, e.g. use of particular extensions); if you have general testing experience; if you speak German, French or Spanish; if you have specific knowledge about wikis (templates, management, etc.) and any other relevant information. It is imperative that your message be concise.

Note: the German wiki is currently experiencing issues with, it appears, the DPL and Semantic MediaWiki extensions (see) and we’d like to know if editors from the other wikis have experienced something similar. Here are the symptoms to look for: you edit a page with DPL or SMW code and it takes a long time to display the result, ultimately generating an error page with code 502 or 503.

Quality of articles[edit]

After a little event we noticed last year (and a few others after that), I started wondering what the “quality” of our wikis are. Putting aside the subjective nature of the term and the fact that this wiki is powered by volunteers, this is something really important to wikis in the long term because of Featured Pages (a set of pages that is promoted in the main wiki page because of their quality). This could also allow us to more generally promote the wiki articles to the global GW2 community. For your information, the Community Team already has a “wiki box” defined on the new, redesigned Community section of our website and this will definitely help!

There are many ways this is can be tackled and here are a few coming from a more technical perspective:

  • Use the MediaWiki extension FlaggedRevs; this extension requires that a team accepts edits before they become visible; this is obviously a very big and significant change for this wiki that will require a careful discussion and a clear consensus to be reached (in addition to a new team of volunteers needed to accept the edits);
  • Use the MediaWiki extension Article Feedback; this extension allows readers to rate articles and provide quick feedback to the editors; the MediaWiki foundation explained that this extension is provenly increasing the quality of their articles (see [1]);
  • Focus on the Data aspect of the information posted on wikis: Wikipedia created a new wiki project called WikiData to gather all technical data in one place so that it can be conveniently used by all wikis; this could solve the issue of data being updated in the game and these changes not being reflected on the wiki; I’ve seen this issue happen once with gem price of some item for example (although I’m not sure if gem price should be on the wiki);

I’ll also mention that I’m already discussing ways we (ArenaNet) could help with that effort, although this may take a while to put together. Note that following a discussion with various editors and sysops, we clarified the fact that ArenaNet employees can edit the wiki to correct information. I’m advising our developers that edit the wiki (and hopefully we’ll get more) put a comment starting with “[ArenaNet edit]” in order to make clear that this is an “official” update and the information is accurate (at this point in time)

You may remember that in November we started sharing information about our Lost Shores update directly with the wiki, so as to “seed” the article for our new content (article that ended up being on the web page for the event). This went very well and we want to thank the wiki community for its work on this. We haven’t reiterated this effort because of the amount of effort required on our side, but it could happen again. I’ll keep everyone updated about this as soon as I’ve got something concrete I can share.

I’d like to hear what the community thinks about this. Feel free to drop ideas or comments on the this new subpage created for the topic. Bear in mind that it’s an important effort for our wikis which could directly benefit them.

Attract (and retain) editors[edit]

Another top topic for me this year will be to focus on attracting and retaining editors for our wikis. It’s a crucial aspect of any wiki. While a few very active editors can do (and have done) wonders, the wiki is a collective tool and its power is dependent on its subcommunity of editors. The stronger and bigger that subcommunity is, the better the wiki is and the more we can do. Keep in mind that specific numbers are not important, as the number of editors is something that constantly changes due to a variety of reasons (all editors have a life… and play Guild Wars 2!), but we have at one point to think about this.

Here are a few ideas to help us grow and better serve this subcommunity:

  • The MediaWiki extension Article Feedback mentioned above; it could feed valuable information to editors and make readers take a more editor-like behavior (MediaWiki confirmed this is even turning readers into editors on Wikipedia: [2]);
  • The WikiMedia foundation (the organization taking care of the MediaWiki software and Wikipedia) is well underway with a project of a WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) editor; this could make the life of many editors so much easier, in particular casual ones, and some readers may even want to try it;
  • A redesign of the FAQ/Help center/How to help pages/ links in the left navbar is something we should be doing anyway, but if we focus on new and potential editors, we may make these tools more effective; the current community of editors probably don’t need it so much
  • The needs of this community: that one is on me; while we’re getting a pretty good handle of what’s needed on the technical side, it’s difficult to say what editors need in the absolute; this process happens organically on the wiki, from editors to sysops/bureaucrats and then to us, but this chaotic process may mean that some needs are lost and we may want to create a formal process for this;
  • Promotion of the wikis: this is a topic that we (ArenaNet and the Community Team in particular) already started discussing and we’re hoping to progressively increase our efforts in that direction; this topic is directly related to the previous section on “Quality of articles” as top articles will be easy for us to promote; this in turn will attract readers and some editors will be born (hopefully) out of these readers.

Let me know your thoughts, opinions, questions and ideas on this new subpage created for the topic.

Masthead redesign[edit]

The current visual design of the GW2 wiki is very close to the one of the GW2 websites. This reflects perfectly its official nature while still keeping this design original (thanks to Alfa-R and those who participated in the redesign). As you’ve probably seen, we have a link to the wiki at the top-left corner of our website and forums. But when players click these links, they end up on the wiki without an “integrated way back”, meaning that it breaks the “natural” navigation through websites. We think that the user experience may be improved if the wiki adopted our masthead (the navigation bar at the top of our webpages) and would like to gather the community’s opinion about this.

Note that we’re aware that this may be something difficult to achieve technically, due to designs inherently different between our websites and the wiki. But at least I hope we can investigate whether it’s possible. The web team provided me with the masthead file if someone wants to investigate (please contact me on my talk page).

Youtube and the wikis[edit]

I noticed that some (if not all) of the links to youtube videos have been deleted from articles. While this is non-standard content that has its own set of associated issues (longer to review the content that can’t be edited, external content, potential for abuse, can’t be edited, etc.), I’d like to discuss with the wiki community whether something can be done so that wiki articles can be enriched by video content. I do think that there can be a great value to videos complementing certain articles (jumping puzzles, legendaries, vistas, etc.). What do you think about, for example, using an extension that would only display videos from a particular youtube channel that would be managed by wiki people? Feel free to express your views on on my talk page.

List of other topics[edit]

I’ll list here more specific topics that are overall less important.

Fansite list

Thanks to TEF, the Fansites page was modified to lay the ground for more GW2 fansites to be listed. This is something that the GW2 Community Team would like to use at some point, so that we can point players to an extensive (even if incomplete) list of fansites to existing and new players. I’d like to spend some time on it at some point, but wanted to mention it here so that the project gets more traction. If you have some free editing time, we’d be grateful if you can lend a hand to the project.

New wiki for the pictures

This is an idea that spawned from the Wikimedia commons project. This particular wiki is a global repository of pictures that the other WikiMedia wikis can use. Since we currently have 4 GW2 wikis, we thought that such a project could be of great help. It may help us on the backend to sort out the multiple file repositories and could allow editors to benefit from the work of all 4 wikis. Let me know what you think about this idea on my talk page!

Page counters

We re-enabled a few weeks ago the page counters that MediaWiki uses to count the number of access to various articles. For the background, this is a feature that is disabled on Wikipedia due to its inaccuracy (Wikipedia uses others means to look at access statistics) and we also disabled it because we thought that our caching mechanisms would render the counter values so inaccurate that it would be bad to display them.

We currently have some data to analyze and will compare these counters to the number of views obtained from Google Analytics software. An initial and quick examination of these numbers seemed to indicate that the difference between the two may not be as big as we thought, but it needs to be confirmed as this is not a reliable conclusion. We’ll do at some point a full examination of these numbers and will let the community know the result.

If these page counters are not accurate, we’ll consider alternatives (such as exporting some Google Analytics regularly). Let us know what your needs are.

GW2W twitter bot

The Guild Wars wiki had a twitter account (@GuildWarsWiki) that displayed regular updates about the new top-level information added to the wiki. Its creator ( poke) told me that he’ll be working at some point on an equivalent for the GW2 wiki. I’ll keep everyone updated about this, as I think it could be a very useful tool for everyone.

Default skin

Currently the GW2 wiki’s default skin is the old and classic Monobook. Vector is a much more modern and elegant skin. What do people think of changing the default skin to Vector? Are there any design reasons not to, or pages that would be broken by this?

Global changelog page

We (ArenaNet) have done updates to the wiki, some of them undocumented. We’d like to create a page to document all the changes we’re making and keep the community updated about technical modifications. We’re open to suggestions on where to put this page.

WikiChat

I organized a while ago a WikiChat on IRC and it was a useful tool for discussing live issues and hot topics of the wiki. Given the length of this update, I’ve decided not to host one until we’ve progressed on the topics raised here. I’m open to the idea of holding several WikiChats on specific topics if the community feels it’s more convenient or the appropriate approach

GW2 wiki mobile application

A few GW2 wiki editors started a while ago a project to develop a mobile application for browsing the GW2 wiki. They’re very close to releasing their first version and I’ll promote their work. Keep an eye on this for future updates.

Last but not the least[edit]

My last word is that ArenaNet would like to thank the editors of the wiki for the incredibly valuable work that you’re doing to document our game and keep this site organized, up-to-date and generally a fun place! Every single day, tons of players frequent these wikis and find valuable information that you created. The wikis continue to grow at a great rate. We will continue to support this site and its community, and are looking forward to work with you. ^_^

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