User talk:Dr ishmael/Archive 2

Screenshots - oh my...

Would you be interested in my stack of screenshots from BWE3? I can bundle them up relatively small, and they include a couple passes through the marketplace trolling for items and icons of a couple specific sets of items, as well as a shot of virtually every armor and weapon I got my hands on for determining how gear stats work. A meager 1085 images (not counting the ones taken by the game engine) for the weekend. —Torrenal 04:00, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Sure, all I've got screenshots for is skills and traits. —Dr Ishmael

16:45, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Bot account

If you'd like one, I don't think it'd be a problem to flag it appropriately. Standard caveats: don't use it for unapproved tasks or things that should be done manually, make sure tasks are transparent and clearly defined, etc etc. It'd be useful to have a second bot for the wiki, as Poke gets rather busy sometimes (still waiting on a number of bot runs from last year). - Tanetris 16:14, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Alright, thanks! Is there a process/page for bot requests here? GuildWiki had a Bot tasks project page; I searched here but didn't find one. —Dr Ishmael

16:36, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Here's the bot account. Bot ishmael 16:58, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Confirming that I own that account. —Dr Ishmael

16:59, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

We had something similar on GWW, but I don't think we've set up anything formal on GW2W yet. Mostly we just yell at Poke on IRC, then post a little note on his talk page to make it "official", which is really a terrible process. If you wanna set up some sort of proper page in the GW2W namespace, that'd be handy. Also I'm going to give it till tonight or tomorrow just to ensure no sudden cries of "You can't give Ish a bot account because X!" - Tanetris 18:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Heh, that's fine - I wasn't going to run that delete until tomorrow, regardless. I'll work on getting a bot project page set up over the weekend. —Dr Ishmael

18:47, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

thank you

hey, i just want to thank you for all the work you put in the wiki :) good work :D —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lextoc (talk • contribs) at 21:05, 26 July 2012 (UTC).

I always feel awkward responding to praise - what do I say to be grateful without sounding boastful - so I'll just say, you're welcome. :)

Oh, and remember to sign your comments. :P —Dr Ishmael

02:24, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

woops :p Lextoc 20:32, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Text color in a table

Is it possible to change the color of text within a table such as STDT|crafting, or not? I was thinking that it'd save a lot of space if I could write Ravaging Student Circlet in the same color as DMasterwork instead of Ravaging Student Circlet (Master) in all these item tables. It'd save repetition, and the distinction between CFine and DMasterwork is made above each of the tables already. Wombatt 23:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

You can already do that with {{rarity}} - just look at the examples. —Dr Ishmael

00:14, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

You da man, thanks! Wombatt 01:42, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Borrowing your userpage code

Hey, I like the way your characters are laid out. Hope you don't mind me borrowing and modding a bit of that into my user page. Also, did you take your name Takk from the Sigur Rós album of that name? If so, good taste in music, although we might be fighting over in game names :/ Windtalker 22:19, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I copied the basic table design from User:Chadarian, so you should look at his original as well. No, my main character in GW1 was Takushi Kimura, nickname Tak, so I figured Takk would make a good asura name. While I haven't listened to a whole lot of Sigur Ros, I remember liking what I have heard. Maybe I should check them out more.

Quick note about your signature: if you want to use the elementalist icon, please re-upload it to a different filename, like "File:User Windtalker sig.png" or something like that. This is to prevent any dependencies between user sigs and high-profile images. —Dr Ishmael

22:30, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Cool thanks. I'll switch up my signature. Playing around with the tables and I got an individual character layout that looks pretty OK that you're free to use/improve if you'd like. [[User:Windtalker/Characters/Template]]

Windtalker 08:35, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Just took the icon out for now. Windtalker 08:39, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Comment on this

I suggested something simple for the Skill infobox template, mind giving your opinion? – Valento ^msg 21:40, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

What gets stubbed?

I'm not sure what to stub out and what not to right now. For instance, before launch and with the relative unavailability of Cotton and the higher-tier crafting materials, we're really only inferring for tiers 4-6 on most crafting disciplines. Do we need to stub or section stub every crafting discipline, or is something like [[User:Wombatt/Sandbox/Tailor#Helms|this table]] okay, since it shows that something is missing? Juicy thinks we should remove any info that we can't verify (the ??s etc), I could go either way, I like the placeholder just for the purpose of illustrating what's missing. So I guess that's two questions: how much should we stub, and should we leave the placeholders or get rid of them? I'm hesitant to get stub-happy, since the game hasn't launched and information is obviously not set in stone yet, but I want to make sure everything complies with the formatting of the rest of the wiki. Wombatt 15:43, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

There's a general understanding that 90% of the wiki either will be incomplete until after launch or will require verification after launch, especially crafting, so don't worry too much about putting stub templates everywhere. I'd say go ahead and infer what you can, with a generic note (once per page) that information for tiers X and above is extrapolated. —Dr Ishmael

15:47, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that there are almost no stubs until a month or so after launch. Every article will have to be verified at launch (since we can see that ANet is tweaking small things like costs and large things like interfaces). Every article will be missing information, with precious few exceptions. Adding {{stub}} just creates more work for us later (deciding when to remove the tag) and actually makes it harder to identify articles that need more attention.

In the rare situation that any of us think it's important to single out an article as a stub, I hope the tagger remembers to list the reasons for the tag, e.g. {{stub|missing the names of the nearest waypoints}} vs just {{stub}}. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:09, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Template help

Right now Template:Crafting/Item forces you to put in a value for Variation, or else it puts in unknown. That's extremely cumbersome and silly for items that ONLY have one variation, like crafting materials, upgrade components, bags, etc. Can you make it so Variation only shows up (and forces a column) if there's a value? Right now a lot of tables on Leatherworker and other pages that have an extra column in them where every value is 1, just because it HAS to be. Wombatt 16:26, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Done. —Dr Ishmael

16:39, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Awesomeness. Wombatt 16:48, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

How about a Race Required for Template:Armor infobox next? Cultural Armorsmiths like Frinna and Clott will only sell to Asura. Wombatt 02:01, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Have fun! —Dr Ishmael

02:24, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Okay, next, all cultural gear is soulbound, can you make it do that in the armor and weapon infobox so I don't have to change it on 270 pages? Wombatt 23:40, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Post it on the GW2W:BOTS page and I'll get to it when I can. Or do you mean just edit the template so that if race is given, it assumes soulbound? —Dr Ishmael

00:00, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Defining race for weapons or armor (which only occurs on cultural weapons) will now make the template display Soulbound: Yes. You may still want to bot it so the data in the articles is correct. — Rari

00:30, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Excellent, that's what I was looking for. Wombatt 00:55, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, FYI, cultural weapons are not race-specific anymore. I tested it out during today's stress test. I noticed the other day that the popup box didn't list a required race. Wombatt 01:36, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Skills' category

I know that you will be reorganizing the categories in the future, but I have a question, what are the fundamental differences between Skills by type and Skill types? – Valento ^msg 20:37, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Skills by type seems to be misnamed, because those subcategories are not skill types. I would call it Skills by context under the skill data scheme I'm working on. —Dr Ishmael

20:54, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Confusion about Crafting infobox

I'm just curious why the {{crafting infobox}} isn't integrated into {{item infobox}}? — Rari 02:44, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

For the same reason {{armor infobox}} and {{weapon infobox}} aren't - they require specialized parameters that aren't necessary for generic items. It's much easier to deal with them when they use a specialized template. —Dr Ishmael

02:45, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I can see your point, though I can also see some confusion. For instance, none of the items in Category:Ingredients use this template. Should they? Should all items currently listing 'crafting material' as a type be using to this template? — Rari

03:07, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, they should. I only created the crafting box about a month ago, and no one's taken on the task of converting everything yet. I would do it myself, but I don't really know much about the crafting system yet, so I'm afraid I'd misinterpret some of the data during the conversion. —Dr Ishmael

03:30, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Haha, not pressuring you to edit all fo the crafting materials. I'd actually be likely to do it, given the time to analyze the data we have. The reason I was looking at the various Item infobox-esqe templates to begin with was I was trying to get a feel for what a standardized format for item pages might look like, and trying to assess the strengths of having so many sub-templates (since if there were any instances of items that had multiple types, it could complicate things obviously.) I have a more specific interest in crafting materials, but a standardized page layout for all items, with crafting materials, weapons, armor, etc as specialized subsets would make more sense. I hadn't seen anything in Projects concerning items, and I've seen half a dozen variations at least in headers, and several variants of infobox, so it was becoming a point of concern for me. — Rari

03:39, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Working on this thing, as you've no doubt noticed. Any notion what to do with Mystic Forge-related crafting materials? — Rari

05:41, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

No clue. I went into LA and looked at the forge once (ooooh, shiny), and that's all the involvement I've had with it so far. —Dr Ishmael

14:32, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Unwelcome surprise

So, I'm doing the pages for Frinna and Clott and Slokk, and I've made an unwelcome discovery. The items share names but have almost entirely different icons between the three levels. This is what I came up with in an attempt to avoid having to make three pages for each item. Will that fly, or no? Wombatt 04:04, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Call them "tier (1/2/3)" instead of the required level. I thought the levels were 40/60/80, anyway. —Dr Ishmael

12:42, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

The video I took says 35. I'd think the levels should be on the page somewhere. Put them back in the infobox? In a perfect world the armor and weapon infobox would have an option like lvl-1, value-1, defense-1 where it could arrange the info in the box better than I can do with just commas. Wombatt 15:29, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

If you find yourself trying to stuff a list of stats into an infobox, that's probably a sign that you need to split the page. —Dr Ishmael

15:32, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Here's an even more unwelcome surprise: after I get all the info up for the shared names with different skins...wait for it...THEY CHANGED ALL THE NAMES. Guess that solves the question of split/don't split. What would you think about having a page titled Protean armor that lists all the pieces, too? Or just make a page for each piece? Wombatt 23:28, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

On both GW1 wikis, there is only one page for each armor set. So far, we've been making one page for each armor piece. I don't know which approach is going to end up working the best here. But even if we do keep pages for individual pieces, I think we should have overview pages for each set. —Dr Ishmael

23:31, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

A very noticeable difference between GW1 and GW2 armors, though, is that in GW2 different armor pieces have different Defense values. In GW1 everything was the same: a max helm had the same AL as a max chest armor. I came up with this as a mockup. The infobox would be nice if a no value entry in Slot or Defense wasn't shown, but I can see how it may not be best over all to do that. Is there a way to hide it in a single instance? Wombatt 02:56, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

We probably need a different, simpler infobox for armor sets. Also, check the edit I just made to your mockup. —Dr Ishmael

03:31, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks good to me! Wombatt 03:46, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) You can delete [[Frinna (Cultural Armorsmith Tier 1)|Frinna]] and [[Clott (Cultural Armorsmith Tier 2)|Clott]] and [[Slokk (Cultural Armorsmith Tier 3)|Slokk]], I looked more closely and realized that those weren't parentheses in the game, they were brackets like for [Repairs] or [Merchant] and so don't belong in the name. I moved them and fixed everything that links to them, but I can't make a delete tag on a redirected page, apparently. Wombatt 00:47, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes you can. Is it because you keep getting redirected to the target page? There's a notation under the page title that you were "(Redirected from X)", if you click on X you'll be taken back to the redirect page, then you can edit it. —Dr Ishmael

01:01, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Got them deleted anyway. —Dr Ishmael

01:27, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to bug you...

But I just noticed you edit and you have been helpful in the past. I've been trying to upload a jpeg and every time I do I just get the error message:
File extension does not match MIME type.

The image in question is originally downloaded off this wiki to begin with and I have even tried editing it and resaving it to no avail. Is this a wikibug, temporary problem or am I doing something horribly horribly wrong? Misery 15:42, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Could you link to the original image in question? It sounds like you're trying to upload a JPG file to an incorrect extension or something like that. —Dr Ishmael

15:44, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

[[:File:Charr_15_concept_art.jpg|This]] is the file in question. I also just attempted taking a screen shot of the image, saving it as a .jpg and uploading it again. Also didn't work. Misery 15:46, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh god, found the problem. Burn the evidence, I am an idiot. Misery 15:47, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Hehe, happens to everyone. —Dr Ishmael

15:52, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Huge thanks!

I'd like to thank you and all the other editors who have been working on the skill infobox template, thanks to the template's structure my friends and I are developing a build calc for gw2brasil, the parsing has been heavily done by formatting the output values come from the wiki based on that template. What we have so far can be seen here, of course it's not finished but it's a long way already, I would be blind if there wasn't any organized structure for both skill infobox and the effects, so thank you all! :D – Valento ^msg 18:43, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Tooltip is very close to finishing, and there's a live demo here (just input the skill's name, since we are still updating the only professions that are guaranteed to work are elementalist, necromancer, and thief). – Valento ^msg 06:11, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Need to make it so that hitting "Enter" after typing the skill name will submit the form. Otherwise, that looks pretty nice! —Dr Ishmael

12:34, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, actually that's pretty much a work-in-progress for the tooltip. Until now we've been gathering info from the wiki through its API using Javascript and jsonp format, but it seems the final build calc will become better if we parse the template in XML using PHP, so that whole parsing will be helpless now (*sigh* waste of time), but in the other hand parsing the XML will be much easier and error-free. To ilustrate what I'm talking about check this example, 'rvgeneratexml=1' generates the XML schema for us. – Valento ^msg 20:14, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

By error-free, I mean those unnamed parameters ({{{1}}} and {{{2}}}), those two screws everything up and requires heavy parsing, my regexs go crazy because of this hahah, it will become much better now. – Valento ^msg 20:15, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

That's pretty spiffy. I've worked with the API for writing bot scripts and stuff, but I didn't know it could pre-parse templates like that. —Dr Ishmael

20:22, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

When you install SMW, what setups will you make? You said we can make "intelligent" questions for the wiki and get more meaningful data or something. It's because the programmer leader who's designing the build calc is working with PHP/CakePHP and he'd like to make use of MVC design pattern, but using the wiki API is just not enough to get data in a consistent way to design the datasources, and it seems SMW adds an "ask" action to the API and makes use of normal #ask's used in wikitext.

This is mostly because we'd like the template informations (parameters) to be passed in a way that could be arranged in datasources (tables), so that CakePHP could make more interesting queries in the models. Thoughts? – Valento ^msg 05:21, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems one could even structure templates to answer questions and use the answers to respond to inline queries, wow! – Valento ^msg 06:05, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

So, I've tried running a query with ask in the mirror wiki and the output is getting interesting (check here), if SMW so allows us to build this interesting queries, wikis could really become a fantastic source of data and one could use work on this data instead of creating db's from the ground up, and since wikis are most likely to be updated by the community, tools for gw2 would avoid to update their db to mantain everything up-to-date, which is awesome.

Right now, I just need to figure out how to get the template's information in a more organized way. – Valento ^msg 17:57, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Easier than I thought. (params are really well-structured, great job!) – Valento ^msg 18:12, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Awesome! Now we just need to keep poking Stephane so he'll keep poking the web team to get our SMW before launch. —Dr Ishmael

18:17, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah a poking fest lol, I'll poke him now! :P – Valento ^msg 18:25, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Why

So why do you keep telling people to stop posting on this wiki? Last time I checked this is the whole purpose of main pages. Please do something good for this wiki, maybe create a page or two. But all you do lately is telling people not to post anything. Please stop.--DIVA 09:11, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

The purpose of the mainspace talk pages is to talk about the article, how a skill exactly works, bugs, testing, etc. Not discussing the actual content. Content-related discussions belong to the forums. Gnarf 09:20, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, the Doc is one of the most active contributers here and be assured he has the best of this wiki in mind. By the way he helps out a lot, the last time he helped me was the Template:Sic.

A wiki is a collaborative work, and this means that it is ok to have diffrent opions on things. Consensus is what we all try to archive and that means telling each other what we think is ok and not ok. This goes for every edit in this wiki and this is imo the main reason for talk pages. It is ok to have a disagreement. This is part of finding a consensus, but please do not try to agrue ad hominem this seldem will create a consensus. - Yandere

09:55, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Please read GW2W:PP#Talk page conduct. This is not an arbitrary policy I came up with just to antagonize you, it's a practice the wiki community reached consensus on a long time ago (before I was even around). —Dr Ishmael

13:53, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Bot mode

I'll go "bot mode" after all. No worries. - Endeavor 20:28, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

...and done! - Endeavor

20:51, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Is it possible

To create the project main space yet or is it too soon? Twenty days left until release - Endeavor 21:34, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Nar? What is this "project main space"? You mean like Project:Bots? "Project:" is just the default name that we have customized to "Guild Wars 2 Wiki:". —Dr Ishmael

21:37, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Haha, I was thinking along the lines of this - Endeavor

21:47, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Well did you think to look for this? —Dr Ishmael

21:56, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually, that totally slipped my mind. Thanks - Endeavor

22:34, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

CSS 1 x 0 Valento

Hey, do you know how to solve this issue? – Valento ^msg 02:48, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

You would do basically what I did here, except you'd apply it to p elements instead of h4 elements. —Dr Ishmael

03:25, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

It worked! Thanks, man! – Valento ^msg 04:01, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

What do you do...

When there's an item (or series of items) that you KNOW is misspelled and will be fixed? Do you put it as-is, or can I go ahead and put it in the right way? It was spelled right for BWE3 but was messed up in the stress test.

Also, I'm thinking that the page should be Peacemaker's Greatsword instead of "Peacemaker's Greatsword of Restoration" since the "of Restoration" is applied by the sigil (which is apparently now hidden so it can't be replaced or removed, I'm assuming) Wombatt 03:16, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that affected every item that had a suffix - no space before "of". Just ignore it. For the second, that's what I would do. The "hidden" sigil is probably just another bug. —Dr Ishmael

03:23, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Along these same lines, why are all the jeweler items listed as "Garnet Copper Ring of Might" etc instead of leaving off the suffix? Updating jeweler is one of my next big projects (everything has new pics as of bwe3) and I'd like to leave off all the suffixes. I don't remember seeing the naming of jeweler items addressed on that subject, and it's the only discipline that's different in the page names. Wombatt 15:10, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

It was discussed [[Talk:Garnet Stud of Might|here]] and on IRC (the one day I was on there, during the wiki-chats hosted by Stephane). I would agree with your stance that the suffix should not be in the page title. —Dr Ishmael

15:15, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok, based on that info I'll start moving things before I re-organize the page. Wombatt 20:42, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

What do you think:too many collapsible tables? Without them I'm afraid it'll be positively massive and lllooooonng. Wombatt 04:50, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

There aren't going to be all that many recipe sheets, compared to discovery. Just use one table (per item type if you want to keep that, or consolidate in one section like Armorsmith) instead of splitting by tier and don't collapse it. —Dr Ishmael

12:33, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Profession colours

As the colours are defined within a CSS page, I'm not really sure where I should look, so are you able to give me a list of the hex codes for the colours being used for profession tables on this wiki or point me in the right direction so that I can grab them myself? Also, while I am bugging you are you able to explain to me why all the text here is bold and how I can stop it from doing that? Thanks in advance! Misery 13:29, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

A) MediaWiki:Common.css.

B) They're bold because you used ! to make them header cells. —Dr Ishmael

15:48, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks muchly! Misery 07:58, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Auto populate

As I'm going through and putting all this stuff up, I'm not filling in the corresponding "Items requiring this item" etc pages. I'm hoping (really, REALLY hoping) that those sections can be automatically populated one way or another. Is that accurate? Wombatt 15:51, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm just a broken record these days: it'll be super-easy with SMW. I don't have a whole lot of crafting-related pages on the mirror wiki, but check out Green Wood Log which uses Template:Recipe list. No parameters required, just include the template and it generates a list of all recipes that use the current page as an ingredient. —Dr Ishmael

16:08, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Underwater variants

Could it be better if there was some other kind of icon for underwater replacement of a skill in Elite skill and other skill lists instead of sequence arrow? Mediggo 14:09, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure, but I suck at making icons. I already asked Alfa if he'd do it, but he's out of town until the weekend. —Dr Ishmael

14:19, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The underworld replacement (red cross over water drop, whatever its name is?) icon could work too, imo, though it might a bit misleading. Mediggo 17:12, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Exactly, that's why I'd rather we had a non-X water drop for this. —Dr Ishmael

17:29, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Move remnants

Would you prefer if I tagged them for deletion? I have been avoiding it as I tend to think such redirects are more useful than harmful, but if it is accepted practice to delete them I can try to make that job easier. Would your answer apply to image redirects too? Misery 14:59, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I can find them from the move log, no need to tag them. In general, redirects from page moves can be useful in case someone searches for the original term. For these moves, however, it's unlikely that anyone is going to search for e.g. "Stab (mesmer)" so there's no point in keeping the redirect once all mainspace links have been updated. Keeping unnecessary redirects like that also requires that they be updated if the page ever moves again, so it reduces future maintenance to delete them now.

On the off chance that someone does make it to a deleted move remnant like Protective Spirit (trait), MW will show them all log entries for the page, including move logs, so they can still find where it got moved to. (Admittedly that's not a good example since the move target has also been deleted, but you get the idea.) —Dr Ishmael

15:07, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Racial tool belts

I think my addition is useful, because a) this addition could have been meant to buff racial skills via extra utility, b) the actual label of tool belt kit might have been a placeholder until they can copy the mechanic and make it independent, c) I, for one, am not what you call a valid statistic sample, but i got confused for a little while, and there could be a handful readers more that get confused. Doesn't that warrant an extra sentence?--Xhosant 19:40, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The very first sentence of the article says that the tool belt is exclusive to the engineer. How is that not clear? —Dr Ishmael

19:42, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Potential Pre-addition leftover? It happens. Just seems a redundant sentence is less a problem than a slim chance for a missing sentence.--Xhosant 19:44, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Bah, fine. —Dr Ishmael

19:49, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

:) --Xhosant 19:51, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Weapon skill table row?

I guess I missed it, what is this template and what is the new schema you're using for designing the skill lists tables? – Valento ^msg 04:18, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I explained it somewhat over here, but I just took the two most common types of skill tables - weapon skills and slot skills - and gave them specialized row and header templates.

The header templates make it easy to keep the header row consistent across all weapon/slot skill tables, while the row templates eliminate the need to specify all of the "extra" fields on every single skill. Non-weapon and non-slot tables can still be built with an inline header and the base Template:Skill table row template, like on List of pet skills and for all the profession mechanic tables.

Additional changes that happened to occur at the same: I moved the skill point and recharge/initiative icons from each individual row into the header, per someone's suggestion, and I added the underwater-availability column (the original issue of the discussion I linked to). —Dr Ishmael

04:35, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Fine, I understood, the underwater column is great (now I see why you want a water droplet without the red cross), however the recharge column looks a little weird as those numbers look somehow scattered within the table. – Valento ^msg 05:15, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, quick note, ListTransclusions extension that shows templates/images from a page isn't working in mw1.19. We've upgraded just now, I'll ask Alfa-R to help me with skin issues. – Valento ^msg 06:26, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Scattered? They're right-aligned, the standard format for a number column. They're not directly under the icon because header cells are center-aligned, also a standard, and the header has to be wide enough for the sorting button on the utility tables. I'd be fine with dropping the sortability and shrinking the columns, but it seems other people want to keep it.

Poke said he was "looking into this" back in June, don't know if he's made any progress. —Dr Ishmael

12:30, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I guess I used the wrong word for this, I meant they look like meaningless even with the recharge icon above, but maybe I need to get used to it (like other people had for the new skin). Oh well. – Valento ^msg 18:04, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I can see how it would look odd if you're unfamiliar with it, but it's a fairly common technique to reduce non-textual "clutter" within tables. If we had vertical internal borders on tables, maybe that would "connect" the icon with the numbers better, I don't know. —Dr Ishmael

18:24, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

TOC right

Is there some reason the List of xyz skills pages using a right-float TOC instead of just putting it above the first header to emulate the way it appears on normal pages? As it is, its creating a huge gap between the first header and the associated content. I had only fixed it on the pet skills page because I had been working with them - it honestly hadn't occurred to me someone would have done this on multiple pages. I'd be glad to find all of the pages with this problem and fix them, if the revert was just a matter of having them consistent. — Rari 12:52, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

It's going to push the content down that far on narrow resolutions (<~1400px) no matter which side of the screen it's on. The benefit to right-floated is that on wider resolutions, it doesn't create a gap because there's enough space to the right of the tables.

—Dr Ishmael

13:07, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I understand if its your personal preference, but I wouldn't consider my resolution (1920x1080) lower than average, so it is going to be hard to read visually for a lot of people. I would consider what you're showing with the left align as normal - its not creating any gap between the first header and the content beneath that header. — Rari

13:27, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Eh? At 1920, you shouldn't be seeing that - the image you posted was much less than 1920 wide. Regardless, my point is that the gap will be there no matter which side of the screen the TOC is on. Why does it matter to you that it's on the left? —Dr Ishmael

14:11, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, that is my resolution I just have to keep my text size large, but that's not the point. I don't know how I can better explain the issue. The right TOC creates a gap between the first H2 and the content below it. On the screenshot without the floated TOC there is no gap. The gaps are much worse on some pages, like the elementalist skills. — Rari

14:20, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I think what you're trying to say is that when it's left-aligned, it doesn't "feel" like a gap because there is a continuous flow of "stuff" along the left side. I still consider this a gap because the TOC is not content, and the real content gets pushed down on the page regardless of which side the TOC is on, unless the resolution is wide enough to allow a right-floated TOC to exist beyond the tables.

Bleh, this whole TOC right/left thing has been debated to Kaineng and back in the past, and I don't think a consensus has ever been reached. Some say the default left-aligned should never be messed with for any reason; others say it should always right-float, so that it doesn't waste vertical space by allowing the content to flow around it; most agree that it depends on the situation, but they can't agree on what to do in specific situations. So I don't know how to resolve this. —Dr Ishmael

14:34, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

The right float on the downed skills page looks fine to me, and I'm on an iPhone. Might it make a difference if you use a table style and __TOC__ or {{TOCright}}? Personally I like the right float, as it makes the page shorter like ish said. Wombatt 14:41, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

On very narrow resolutions, the header text on that page is compressed to where it takes up nearly the same vertical space as the TOC, so yes, right-floated looks good there. On profession lists, it still creates a somewhat large "content gap", but having it right-floated makes the "content gap" much smaller than if it were left-aligned. —Dr Ishmael

14:47, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

What I'm saying there shouldn't be a gap between a header and the content below it. I do understand what you're saying ish, so let me put it like this - with the left align, the "gap" (the TOC) is between the introduction text and the first header - this reads easily as an introduction and a list of contents before getting into content. With the right-float toc the "gap" is between the first header and the tabular content that header describes and that is what I have a problem with. With List of elementalist skills the first header and the text below it remain intact, but the related content is shoved farther down the page (I have to scroll down - its not even visible with the text). It works well enough here Confusion because it doesn't break up any page elements. I don't care if TOCright is used when it doesn't make it harder to read the page. To what Wombatt said, drowned skills looks fine on my android as well but only because it's so short. If I rotate my phone sideways, it starts pushing putting a gap between the header and the content again (a small one, but it is there.) — Rari

14:55, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I know this isn't a real solution, but you do know you can hide the TOC? —Dr Ishmael

14:57, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Does this edit solve your issue? Misery 15:00, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

No, unfortunately, because it completely negates the benefit of right-floating for wide resolutions - there is ALWAYS a content gap if you clear after the floated TOC. —Dr Ishmael

15:01, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'm on a low resolution monitor at the moment, so I only saw that half of the equation, but I should have realised it would push it down on higher resolutions too. Misery 15:03, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

To ish, yes of course I'm aware of how to hide the TOC, and I know its just as easy to hide it when its in it's normal position as when its floated right. Misery's clear does fix the issue I'm raising, but it eliminates the "cool" space-saving of the right-float - it literally just makes the TOC on the right instead of the left. What I'm saying is we shouldn't be adding a right float on pages where it creates huge ugly gaps between headers and their content. — Rari

15:13, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm too dense to figure out how to do it, but couldn't we add a fixed width empty table above the title to act as a fixed width clear? It seems like a bit of a dirty hack, but it should drop the title to just above the table without monkeying with the current table of contents behaviour.

{| class="white skills table"
|-
! style="width:10px" |
! style="width:200px" | 
! style="width:166px" | 
! style="width:43px" | 
! style="width:53.3%" | 
|}

This is close, but obviously we would want to get rid of the border, which I can't figure out how to do while maintaining the fixed width nature, but I imagine you lot could do that. Any other class I tried lost the effect. Misery 15:57, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Don't use the classes, just use the relevant style elements.

{| style="display:inline-block; width:100%; max-width:1000px;"
|
|}

I had pondered doing something like this, but the way I tried to do it didn't work very well. Your method could work, although it would be introducing a bit of wikicode that seemingly does nothing. However... another thing I've been pondering is making a template out of the DPL call on skill lists. If we include this in that template, that would be better. Let me see if I can make the DPL template work. —Dr Ishmael 16:12, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately I didn't know the relevant style elements and have been frantically Googling things. I was getting close to trying the old transparent .png stretched to fit hack. I don't really like adding incomprehensible code to pages and was considering also suggesting we comment it, but in my experience inexperienced wiki editors seldom read those comments anyway. If you can drop that into the DPL template it would be peachy. If you can't get it to work, maybe a cleaner hack would be to dump your proposed code into a template called something like {{Template:Skill table header spacer}}. I suspect people wouldn't just remove that at random from pages and no one would be confused. Misery 16:20, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Very nice fix. I replaced the inline html that was floating the TOC on those with the TOCright template (since it was serving the same function), placing it in each case above the first header, so alternatively we could try including it in that template (turned off by default obv) if including it in the DPL template doesn't work out. — Rari

16:29, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Check out List of guardian skills and see if that works for you. —Dr Ishmael

16:43, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Totally solves the problem. Thank you both, and thanks moreover for your patience. — Rari

16:46, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

It does leave a bit of space between the TOC and the first header, but that's due to the margins on <h2> elements, and I don't think that can be corrected easily for these specific cases. In any case, it works for both of us. Glad we could resolve it. :) —Dr Ishmael

16:51, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

TL;DR: That is the biggest reason I didn't like the TOCright abd didn't apply it to our wiki, it was creating an unnecessary big space (my screen is 1360x768, 32). – Valento ^msg 18:26, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Formatting of the skill table

Just noticed you applied a skill template to the elite skills article, which makes good sense. However, there's something wonky with the formatting of that template, at least when shown in Chrome. Two of the columns appear misaligned with their headers. See this image for a better explanation that I can give in text alone: http://imgur.com/I7Ggz --Gentlecow 17:45, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

It's because the columns are wider than the icon, and while the headers are center-aligned, the cells are right-aligned. This comes from the {{slot skill table header}} which the table shares with the Utility tables on profession lists, which are sortable, so they have to be wide enough to accommodate the sort button. —Dr Ishmael

18:22, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Hey, Doc. I haven't been active recently, and have totally missed new skill tables implementation. Great job on those, but I have some suggestions/nitpicking:

Underwater column should mark underwater-exclusive skills like ele's whirlpool with a drop icon. Icon at the beginning is thus redundant, I'll try to make new chain/burst/toolbelt/stealth/underwater icons to place there, for now empty space of width equal to chain icon's one should suffice.

Underwater column should be the same width as other icon-labeled columns (43px instead of 20px), as now spacing between the three is awful, and nobody will miss those 23px in description column anyway. You'd want to replace width:43px with min-width:43px probably, so that they don't scale down when window is small. Last column width will be 51%.

Why not making an underwater column sortable, btw?

What Gentlecow said. Icon-headed columns should look properly aligned. This can be achieved by adding a padding-right of 29px to text in them (like you have added text-align:right), so that they just ignore the sort icon. Headers for those columns will need left text-align, so that icons are positioned in the same place regardless of sorting arrows.

Could you please do it (if you agree, of course), as there are quite a few templates for those table, and they look double Dutch to me, but I was able to test these changes with Chrome's developer console, everything seemed fine. Alfa-R

20:33, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this! I've already fixed the icon-alignment issue. (Although I'd still prefer just getting rid of the sortability altogether.) The only thing I don't like is how there's now a wider gap between recharge and description, but it's not horrible.

I made the UW column unsortable because I didn't see what the point would be in sorting on it - it would just group the non-UW skills together, which doesn't seem all that useful. Besides, as I discovered just now, there's nothing to sort on because it's only an image. I guess I could add some hidden text to make it work, but I still don't see what the usage would be.

I'll have to think about how to make that work for Whirlpool, since it'll involve the interaction of two variables where every other case in that template only cares about one variable. —Dr Ishmael

21:14, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks for this. BTW, I actually like that wider gap between recharge and description, as it segregates columns better, we don't have vertical borders after all. Sorting by underwater column will allow exactly what you have pointed out - grouping skills that are not usible underwater (and potentially underwater-exclusive skills like whirlpool) - which is useful sometimes. Alfa-R

21:35, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Playing GW2.

I have some questions so I can prepare some future pages in my sandbox if you'd be so kind as to answer them that'll be greatly appreciated.

Are there cinematics?
- If so, would they be easy enough to document?
- Could there be a link to youtube for an Guild Wars 2 Cinematics project page? An account in which everyone in the project has access to?
How is the user interface compared to the original?
How is the underwater exploration?

Thanks! - Endeavor 20:46, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, there are two types of "cinematics" - the full-motion artistic ones when you start a new character, and the "2-NPCs talk at each other" ones. The latter are already being documented on the personal storyline articles, and I don't think there's any need to link videos of them. The full-motion ones might be nice to have videos for, but given how they get customized based on your biography choices, it might be difficult.

The interface seems fine to me, but I don't really like the underwater mode. I've never been able to get real comfortable with full 3D motion in a video game, though, so it's probably just me; my wife says it's wonderful. —Dr Ishmael

22:56, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Doc for answering my questions! Much appreciated. - Endeavor

23:56, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd just like to add a couple of types of "cinematics" that I have also observed. Transport cinematics such as when you take the elevator in The Grove and death cinematics. I can't recall the specific example, but I remember losing camera control to watch something die once. I don't know if these are long enough to fall under what you were hoping to document, but they exist. Misery 13:29, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

If you want to count that, there's also vistas. But they don't have any dialogue, so there's nothing to document (other than capturing the video). —Dr Ishmael

13:44, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

What I've witnessed in terms of cinematic;

Concept art-oriented cinematic, seen before the tutorial (and possibly later on as well).
1-on-1 "cinematic" where dialogue occurs "off-screen" (as in, the map no longer visible).
Camera shift cinematic, where an event occurs and the camera revolves around it to give you a sense of bird's eye.
Vista cinematic, where the camera goes Assassin's Creed style on the surroundings.

If I find more, I'll list them in the nearby future. - Infinite - talk 14:09, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh right, I forgot about the little bits before/after the tutorial bosses, what you call "camera shift". They do have dialogue. Your first 2 are what I called "full-motion artistic" and "2 NPCs talk at each other". —Dr Ishmael

14:11, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok good, I just have to wait till the 27th. Now, perhaps we could capture video but that'll be interesting. - Endeavor 18:34, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

New icons?

Have you pulled the icons out of the new dat file? There are lots of new icons (especially for cultural armors...grrr) that aren't in the BWE3 pack. Wombatt 23:46, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll try to get them later tonight. The dat browser takes a while to index the dat, and I just kicked it off. —Dr Ishmael

01:28, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Quicker than I expected: ST4 all item icons —Dr Ishmael

02:09, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

How about doing it again? I noticed a number of crafting material icons (namely dust) had changed today. Wombatt 02:17, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

How about I was already doing it? My wife noticed that the icon for glittering dust had changed, so I went and got the extract started a couple hours ago. —Dr Ishmael

02:25, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I thought you might be but figured I'd bother you anyways! Wombatt 03:45, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Beat you this time! Bwahaha! —Dr Ishmael

13:44, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Something tells me I'll be uploading a lot of new icons for cultural armor and weapon sets later today... Wombatt 15:20, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes I hate being right. (Not really) Wombatt 00:36, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Is there any ideal method to actually finding a specific item's icon among all the icons? — Burfo

00:23, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

No, unfortunately. I have heard that there are data structures elsewhere in the dat file defining all the items (and skills/traits/recipes/etc.), but apparently they're encrypted and the keys change with every build. And that's waaaaay out of my league as far as game hacking goes. —Dr Ishmael

00:30, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I made subfolders in the folder where I unzipped to, labeled "jeweler", "crafting mats", "chef", "armor components", "sigils etc" and so forth, and then I sorted into those as much as I could be certain of. That left me with a lot of weapon and armor icons, and a bunch of random things, but at least it cuts the number I have to look through every time about in half. Then, when I find an icon, I name it and move it to another folder entirely, so I'm only sorting through what I haven't found a name for yet. It's not perfect (I found the icon for Dolyak Jerky in crafting mats today) but it's a whole lot easier than sifting through almost 5000 icons looking for

(that one took me over 20 times through to find. Arrgh.) Wombatt 00:35, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I added a link to the current icon file to my userpage. I'll keep that one updated from now on so people don't have to search all through my talk page for it. If anyone wants any other icons extracted from the dat file, I can always make more archives. —Dr Ishmael

00:47, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Infobox change

Can you make it so the Armor Infobox will accept values under "variables" so the Template:item stat is usable in it? PhoenixAvenger is doing a lot of the Cultural armor sets, too, and I'd like to suggest that he do them thataway. I also would like to know if there are any guidelines for armor nav boxes (or nav boxes in general). His nav box is based on armor type while mine is [[Template:Norn cultural armor 1 nav|based on tier.]] I was wondering if one was right or wrong and don't know where to look. Wombatt 04:48, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

User:Yandere beat me to it. I don't see a clear advantage to either method of nav box - maybe they should just be combined into a single navbox per race. —Dr Ishmael

12:28, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh sorry I beat you to something... O_o

I updated the armor infobox that it would follow the same layout as the weapon and accassory infobox.

A single nav box per race would be pretty gigantic. I prefer the tier variant, since you are stuck with one type of armor. So you have everything you can use in one box. - Yandere

13:17, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

How about making the Armor infobox's "description" be optional, so it doesn't display "No description available" in all the cultural armor pieces that have no description? Wombatt 15:30, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I also prefer the type nav over the tiered type, for the same reason Yandere mentioned. {{Norn cultural armor nav}} is the only remaining example though, and its a candidate for deletion now. — Rari

18:23, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

It depends on your definition of "gigantic", but I don't think it's too bad. I can see the benefit to a class-based (light/med/heavy) nav, while the tier-based one accurately reflects how they're grouped at the vendor in-game. I'm open to changing them around if that's the consensus that is reached. I don't really want to go undo everything, but oh well! :D Wombatt 20:30, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

That seems pretty big to me. I can at least offer up completed class-based navs if we do go that way. And I did the thing with the infobox you asked about. — Rari

20:47, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I have no opposition to making the change to tier-based. Human heavy armor sets have (set) on the end for the links on the left of the nav, so there's no confusion between the chest pieces (Commander's Armor, Avenger's Armor, and Protector's Armor) and full sets (Commander's armor (set), Avenger's armor (set), and Protector's armor (set).) That'll take care of a couple red links. I'll knock out the rest of the full pages missing if you want to make the nav box changes on Asura, Human, Charr, and tier 1 Sylvari? Wombatt 21:12, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I can swap the templates. No problem. Sounds like a plan. — Rari

21:28, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Endeavor#Opinion.

I need your opinion. Thanks - Endeavor 18:59, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Deletes

So, basically everything here needs to be deleted (everything with Black Citadel in the title). Moving and fixing would be a lot more work than just doing them from scratch. Can you do that, or do I have to go through and flag every page? Wombatt 05:12, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Nah, not if it's everything in a specific category, although I won't be able to do it tonight - I need to get off the wiki and go to bed. I'll be out of town tomorrow and most of Sunday, so unless another admin sees this, they'll probably have to stick around until then (unless I can find some time with a laptop or something). I assume that won't cause any problems? —Dr Ishmael

05:24, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

No, no problems. They're not hurting anything, they're just not right, and the effort to make them so would be more than starting from scratch, like I said. Thanks! Wombatt 05:43, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Alright, I'm finally home and unpacked and everything, time to bot-delete all of that. —Dr Ishmael

22:55, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

And done. —Dr Ishmael

22:59, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Skill infobox/effects - misc

So, about the icon parameter, is there a case in that the effect icon is different from the skill's? If not, maybe we could simplify by accepting image=y as the input and it would automatically use the skill's icon for the respective effect. – Valento ^msg 09:25, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd rather set that up as a separate option in the template, say {{skill infobox/effects|self|<duration>|<text>}} or something like that. Let misc remain the fully-customizable option. —Dr Ishmael

12:44, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks nice, of course many of these kinds of effect use pre, suf, and alt, so that you'll need to add them as well, actually self would be identical to misc, except for the auto-iconizing (does this word exist? lol) – Valento ^msg 13:05, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

User talk:X08

I have moved all the greatsword files to appropriate naming scheme. They were originally like; "Flame GS" --> "Flame Greatsword". I may have spammed the hell out of recent changes. - Endeavor 18:19, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Extension:ImageMap

Check here
What do you think about using it to point locations for various infoboxes that have maps? Very long ago I tried something like this manually (yep, craziness), but with a specialized extension this would be fairly easy. – Valento ^msg 22:11, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm hoping to use mw:Extension:Semantic Maps for that. Image maps are good for arbitrarily-shaped regions, but we would mostly use points. —Dr Ishmael

12:48, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

That's very robust, SMW offers a very large variety of useful extensions, I'm overwhelmed. – Valento ^msg 13:01, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

E-Z icon upload?

So I discovered this a couple stress tests ago: the master crafters now sell recipe sheets for a third variation of every inscription and insignia from Soft/Wool on up. The good news is that this shows us exactly the progression of metals used for weaponmakers. The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news, though, is that every one of these will need a recipe sheet info page (right?), and therefore its own copy of Recipe Sheet.png (right?). SO, is there an easy way to upload the same file for 35 different insignia recipe pages and 35 different inscription pages? I was able to buy a few of them and so far it looks like the recipe for an imbued inscription is 2 plated dowels and 15 (!!!) fine mats. No idea what the final bonus numbers are (categories are the same), since they don't show up in the crafting panel, according to Juicy. Wombatt 04:25, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Huh, I thought I'd responded to this. If we had mw:Extension:MultiUpload the task would be easier, but still tedious. I suppose this is a case where we could, at least temporarily, utilize the icon parameter of the infobox to share one file between all of them. I'm not sure how easily that will translate into the vendor tables - although I can say that if we had SMW, it would be trivial to query the item's icon and use it in {{item icon}} (I don't want to do that with DPL for performance reasons). —Dr Ishmael

03:09, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

At least this revelation will make 100% sure every recipe will have its separate article. :P - Infinite - talk 17:28, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Yuck and double yuck Wombatt 04:08, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Color change

Is it possible to make [[template:Inventory/Table Header]] green like an NPC table so the NPC tables generated with it look the same as the others generated with STDT|npc ? Wombatt 03:01, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Well you could either make a direct change to the template so that it always uses "sortable npc" instead of the current "sortable white". Or you could parameterize STDT's parameter: {{STDT|sortable {{{class|npc}}}}} so you can use a different class on specific pages. I think you're going to want the first option, though, because I don't think that header template is used anywhere outside of vendor pages. —Dr Ishmael

03:17, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Word. Done, thanks! Wombatt 04:27, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Comment here?

Here. I've given a suggestion to improve the code and parameter icon for traits, I've already implemented this change in our wiki and it works perfect. – Valento ^msg 20:45, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I saw that this morning but didn't have time to respond, then I forgot. Thanks for poking me. :) —Dr Ishmael

21:06, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Map completion

Do you think it's worthwhile to document the rewards for completely exploring a map? I'm not sure if the rewards vary by what level you are. Wombatt 22:49, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Simplify, simplify

So, since all the Armorsmith vendors sell the same armor with the same skins and same stats, I was thinking it'd be easiest (or at least BEST) to make a template that makes dropping in an "Items offered" list fast, and super easy to change if the name of an armor piece changes (which it looks like it has already in the past couple months.) I haven't been able to teach myself how to write a template yet, the best I could do is [[Template:Armorsmith vendor|this]], which is basically me messing around and trying to change this guy right here enough to fit my own purpose, but it doesn't stop with one chart, it shows everything and like I said, idk how to make it better. If you could take a look at it and maybe point me towards a "Template code for dummies" I'd appreciate it. If you make it work like I have in mind, I will send you some cookies. Or, since I don't have your address, I will post a picture of a cookie. Which is nice, too. Wombatt 02:26, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Instead of making a template like that (which would be all kinds of messy since you can't use bare pipes within #switch results, you have to use {{!}}), I'd suggest placing all those tables on the Armorsmith (vendor) article, with a page header for each one. We can use DPL to selectively include a specific table onto each individual armorsmith's article. —Dr Ishmael

02:30, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Okay, that seems way easier and less likely to make my brain hurt. Wombatt 02:34, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I haven't paid any attention to vendors, so I need to understand how this works. Does the same vendor always sell items of the same level regardless of character? Or does a vendor's stock change based on your character level? —Dr Ishmael

02:59, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

The vendor always sells the same thing. It depends on which area (map) they're in. Metrica Province armorsmiths, for example, sell lvl 5 or lvl 5 and 10, higher level areas have higher level armor available. Wombatt 03:10, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) So check this out if you would. It's not great, it could probably be refined a bit, but that's the general idea behind purchased armor: for the same level armor, it has the same stats no matter who you buy it from. I think that the comparison to the crafted armor is good, and should be put on all of the crafting pages too, once I have enough info to really get it figured out. Somehow I managed to get exactly 0 videos of an armorsmith selling level 15-20 items. I'll try to fix that during tomorrow's stress test. Wombatt 03:52, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

This changed today. Now the armorsmith/weaponsmith sells items of whatever level you can use, and the next higher group. This will kinda make it easier, now all armosmith vendors and weaponsmith vendors can just be linked to those respective pages. Now I just have to figure out which ones I need to go back and change... Wombatt 03:39, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Bots, a little help

Hey Dr Ishmael, I'm wondering if you know some place to learn better about wiki-bots, I'm struggling everytime I try to learn it through MW's documentation. – Valento ^msg 04:58, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Check out w:Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser, it's what I use for most bot tasks. —Dr Ishmael

12:30, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, got it working. :) – Valento ^msg 19:23, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

User images

I totally don't mind you correcting me, that's np np. But re-read the last line of the User images section of the image formatting page. There was a whole discussion on that page's talk about keeping user images out of the sub-sections of Areanet images. — Rari 17:37, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that bit before, but I find the argument of "we need to keep the subcategories free from user-image clutter" to be rather weak. The point of having subcategories of Category:ArenaNet images is to organize them by type, not by usage - user images should still be categorized accurately. But whatever, file categorization isn't an issue I care all that much about. —Dr Ishmael

17:48, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

We are actually in agreement on that point, but consistency is important.— Rari

18:17, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I would argue that it's both type and usage. Those categories should serve as an in-game reference. I.e., if you want to view images of asura, you look at the asura category. Because the span of user images may range from asura screenshots to Photoshopped asura artwork, etc., I think it's best to categorize user images no further than as user images. I like 'em separate.-- shew|make 18:27, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

We have DPL for making category disjunctions like that: {{#dpl:category=Screenshots|notcategory=User images}}. —Dr Ishmael

18:52, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

The average user isn't going to use DPL to sort through images, though.-- shew|make 19:24, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Could your bot handle this?

I wanted to standardize the item infobox templates as well as their dokumentation, and realized that the Template:Weapon infobox uses the term condition instead of rarity (which is used by te 4 other infoboxes). Could your bot change condition to rarity on all pages the infobox is used? - Yandere 11:04, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure, just make this same request at GW2W:BOTS and I'll get it later today. —Dr Ishmael

12:42, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if it's possible or not, so I'll put it here first: On pages with both an NPC infobox and STDT|sortable white, can you change it to sortable npc? Is that a bot-able task? Wombatt 06:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Certainly. Generate the list based on what uses the NPC infobox, then do a find/replace. Put that on the bot page. —Dr Ishmael

13:41, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

How do you want them listed? wiki links/plain text? I count 165 just by searching for /NPC sortable white Wombatt 17:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I was describing what I would do with the bot. Just post the request over there, don't worry about generating the page list yourself. —Dr Ishmael

18:01, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

ST 7 Chef Recipes

As of last night's stresstest, various recipes can produce different quantities. For example, if I craft a Bowl of Vegetable Stock I get one bowl of veg stock. Great. But if I craft a Grape Pie with the filling and a ball of dough, it now produces 3 pies. How are we to put this info in? Also, some of the recipes have got new icons, but (for example)the Strawberry Pie icon I have has a little 2 in the corner, as the recipe now makes 2. Do we use the picture with the 2, or use an image without it from the .dat? Sorry for reposting here as well as my talk, need to get this answered before I make all the changes. Thanks. Simooshy 16:56, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I responded here. —Dr Ishmael

16:59, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much. So I assume pics wise it'll be the .dat ones. Simooshy 17:01, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Right, the number is just an overlay that you get on any item stack. —Dr Ishmael

17:02, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, last question. Do I put in the amount if it is just one, or only if the recipe produces multiples? Simooshy 17:11, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Only if > 1. —Dr Ishmael

17:36, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Merchant/purchased armor

Not sure if you can use this info, but you might know someone who could, or one of the many people who watch your talk page could. I've compiled the stats for purchased armor up to level 30. I don't know how to best present it on the pages for the armor pieces, like this ugly table clearly illustrates. Maybe someone could devise a better look with the info. Wombatt 02:53, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Quotes are evil

So, I'd like to tell you that maybe it's not a good idea to have page names with quotes "", categorizing shouts is something that is not working in mw1.19, maybe we've configured the version incorrectly but it does give a terrible (and I mean it) headache. File names that has quotes in them sometimes are annoying too, I'll check with you if everything is fine once you get mw1.19 installed here but consider this as a potential issue in the future. – Valento ^msg 08:46, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I fixed it. The problem was that MW 1.19 internally converts the double-quote character to its HTML entity ", so that #replace wasn't finding any raw double-quotes " to replace. I think this was actually introduced in 1.18, because I remember something similar happening at GuildWiki when we upgraded last year. —Dr Ishmael

12:28, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

You're awesome, thanks! Shout skills are sorting properly, just had to put the ":" back, guess you missed it heheh. – Valento ^msg 12:37, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, mind looking here and here? – Valento ^msg 12:39, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Miniature & blur-effect

Sorry for bothering you once more, but there's something intriguing that has been happening since mw1.17 for us. Compare the miniatures generated here and here. In our wiki it's getting blurry, do you know what might be causing this? (the actual uploaded images are identical, only miniatures differ) – Valento ^msg 13:29, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any difference, the thumbnails both look identical to me. I even ran a diff on them, and the only difference was in the metadata at the end of the file. Can you screenshot what you're seeing? —Dr Ishmael

15:10, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Look closely, the first one (br wiki) is blurry, whereas the second one (this wiki) is OK, maybe it's because of ImageMagick or something like that? – Valento ^msg 17:38, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Gah, I was looking at the skill icon - I see it now. Unfortunately, I can't really help, since I have no clue how this wiki is configured for thumbnail creation. Stephane might be able to find that out. —Dr Ishmael

17:49, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Warrior Dual Shot

Is the skill dmg per arrow or both. I see skills listed like this and some Im pretty sure is all dmg done by skill during its animation like whirlwinds or channeled attacks like unload. just wondering how these simpler skills are listed if you knew. Justice 05:20, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Most of the skills that have converted to that format display the total damage, you're right, but I couldn't say anything for certain about a specific skill. I barely have enough time to screencap all the skills during the 4-hour stress tests, there's no way I can actually test them all. —Dr Ishmael

13:48, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

ty for skill data updates on the wiki; awesome undertaking. Also ty for the abrasive answer, wasnt suggesting you wernt doing enough. Justice 19:17, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

o_O Uh... that wasn't being abrasive. At least, not intentionally. —Dr Ishmael

20:15, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Wacky weeds

I had this happen to me in a couple of different places during the last stress test. [1]The grass/flowers were waving back and forth very quickly. Moving around didn't stop it. I'm hoping it's a game bug and not my video card crapping out on me. Wombatt 23:18, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Same thing happened to me, pretty sure it was a game glitch, not hardware. —Dr Ishmael

23:20, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Merchant weapons

So, just like armorsmith vendors sell armor, there are weaponsmith vendors who sell weapons. They are called Axe, Longbow, Greatsword, etc, with nothing to differentiate them from the general category of weapon they share a name with. For the purpose of disambiguation, I'm going to name them Axe (bought) or something like that unless you or others can suggest something more accurate or acceptable. Wombatt 03:19, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

maybe merchant or base or standard or generic or plain or something. Justice 13:15, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Past participles like "bought" are generally bad choices for disambiguations. I'd just use "weapon" myself, because it says this is about the weapon as opposed to the page about the weapon type. —Dr Ishmael

13:51, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Guild in Mainspace

Have you seen [[Guild:KIE|this]]? I stumbled across it just now. In the context of the discussion and the suspended policy, I'm going to go ahead and tag it for deletion. I'm not sure about the wiki's current stance on this, so I recommended that the ip instead create the page in a userspace (or a subpage of a userspace). -Crazy Rabid Squirrel 21:46, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Please notify the IP on their talk page, he may not even realize that you've edited the page he created. —Dr Ishmael

22:37, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Done. It hadn't even crossed my mind. So I was okay to tag it and recommend it be created in userspace? -Crazy Rabid Squirrel 22:58, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, although you might want to note in the delete reason that sysops should wait a few days to see if the user does create an account. If they do, then we can just move the page instead of making them recreate it from scratch. If they haven't created an account after 3-4 days, then we'll delete. —Dr Ishmael

23:08, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

To split or not to split

That is the question Is thee any sort of guidance for this? Wombatt 22:15, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Underwater replacer skills

As I locked through the wiki I have seen Tornado and Whirlpool in a table. I knew that Whirlpool is the underwater replacer for tornado, but the sequence arrowas used and I thought this is a bit odd. So I made an extra arrow for underwater replacer skills, there will probably be a few so it might come in handy: [[File:Underwater Replacer Skill.png|25px]] - Yandere 17:36, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

User:Alfa-R said he's working on new icons for chains/sequences/etc., he's pretty good at this stuff. The concern I'd have about yours is that, at the reduced size used in the skill tables (I edited your comment to show this), the droplet is almost too small to tell what it is. —Dr Ishmael

18:45, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I just had the sudden urge to make this and through it out there. Feel free to do anything that you want with this icon. ^^ - Yandere

18:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Trait tables

Aww, they're no longer in one master table... I kinda liked that... Anyhow, if they aren't in a master table anymore, why not just migrate the subtable into the main template and just call that 5 times for each profession (and get rid of the subtable)? --JonTheMon 21:46, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I realized that after I started working on those changes, but then I decided that I shouldn't do too much at once. I still want to change up the table to something like these so we can also eliminate the minor/major rowspans. I need to update those to account for the new numeral parm, though. —Dr Ishmael

21:51, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Nav boxes

Is there any reason that Tier 1 crafted weapons and armor shouldn't have their own nav box? Wombatt 23:08, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't know, is there? :P —Dr Ishmael

23:35, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, I was thinking it'd be a good idea (in my mind) to tie them all together, but then I remembered that we changed the cultural armors from tier-based navs to type-based navs. I think it's a good idea, I was compiling a bunch of statistical info (see my analysis on Weaponsmith (vendor) to see what I mean) and I had to navigate through the crafting disciplines to get from crude longbow to bronze pistol to bronze axe etc etc. I thought "hey, if there was a nav box on these like there is on a lot of other sets (I consider tier 1 to be a "set" since there's only 1 entry for each category), that'd be nice." I just don't know if it'd be beneficial to anyone else but me... Wombatt 23:43, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Individual weapon/armor recipes

Sorry if you already posted this 9 other places, but a while back we were talking about how every item needed to have a recipe somewhere. I was wondering, does the recipe have to be displayed on the page, or if we put it in the code but hide it with either <-- --> or something similar? IF SO, we could put a template:recipe for every variant on the page for each armor, etc. Otherwise, please take a look at Bronze Dagger and see if what I did there might work. Wombatt 00:56, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

No, using  will completely comment out the code, that's the whole point. However, I think you've got something here - we could make a "no-output" alternate template that still sets all the semantic properties, just doesn't display them in any way. I'll play around with that on the Referata mirror tomorrow. —Dr Ishmael

01:28, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Take a look at this when you have time later (uses templateA and templateB). Instead of making it no-output, I decided to try combining the skill table design with your variant tables. It doesn't have data on the output item, but that could be added. What do you think? —Dr Ishmael

19:56, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Would that be in addition to what's already on the page? Wombatt 01:18, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Category sortkey

Renown Heart (Undo revision 321801 by Burfo (Talk) we use * here)

Is there any documentation on this? I'm fine with using an asterisk, but when I looked into this yesterday the only thing even remotely close that I found was a suggestion at the top of Guild_Wars_2_Wiki_talk:Practices_and_processes where User:Lon-ami suggests using the space key with Items. Perhaps my course of action should've been look at a bunch of categories and I would've eventually figured it out. :-/ Thanks! — Burfo 02:25, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

No, we don't document a lot of things here (I don't particularly agree with that stance, but it's part of the "practices and processes" paradigm that the community came up with long before I showed up a few months ago). —Dr Ishmael

02:42, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Cultural weapons naming

So, some of the cultural weapons have in their names words like "Carrion" and "Shaman's" and "Ravaging", which are of course the same as you in crafting when you use an insignia or inscription. I'm using the entire name for the weapon (including those words) and page names. That's out of the ordinary, but I think it's a valid practice, for the following reasons:

there are no variations, what you see is what you get. You can add a different sigil, but that doesn't alter the prefix.
not all races use them, nor all tiers within any given race. Humans have "Penetrating", "Traveler's", and "Seraph", for example.
More sets (8) don't use those terms than do (7, and as of ST8 asura and sylvari are 100% identical, leading me to believe that one will be changed)

SO, let me know if this is sound reasoning. There will have to be lots and lots of disambig (some items will have the same names as those that drop in the wild, at least as of right now) but I really think that this is the best course here. Wombatt 04:21, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

If changing the upgrade doesn't change the name, then yes, we should use the full name for it. —Dr Ishmael

04:56, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Guild

I understand that you'll be playing in a guild on the Tarnished Coast server. I will be too! I'm curious to know...you'll be in which guild? — Burfo 04:35, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Wind Riders [WIND], it's my wife's RP guild. —Dr Ishmael

04:55, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Nice. I'll be in Destiny’s Hammer [HAMR]. Not my Wife's guild, nor does she play. :p — Burfo

05:11, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Could you delete these?

I'm not entirely sure if there is some special way to mark a page for deletion or if we just type on a pages talk, but basically 6 items names were changed. They are no longer "cotton", but "steel splint". I think pretty much anyone will understand that and likely won't type cotton, so if we can delete the cotton pages that would be greatly appreciated (since when I move it just makes them redirects instead. Which is frustrating to me.) pages for deletion:

Greatly appreciated. Juicearific ~talk 05:29, 24 August 2012 (UTC)