User talk:Dr ishmael/Archive 3

Archives

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1. May – July 2012
2. July – August 2012
3. September – October 2012
4. November 2012 – January 2013
5. January – April 2013
6. April – July 2013
7. July – November 2013
8. Dec 2013 – May 2014
9. June – Sept 2014
10. Sept 2014 – Aug 2015
11. Aug 2015 – inactivity

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This page: 96,257 bytes

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

 

Did you miss me?

I missed you.--Łô√ë Çåŕð ├┤ëŕô 17:34, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

You may change your name, but you'll always be Giga to me. —Dr Ishmael 18:24, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Gigs! Welcome to GW2 and GW2W!. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:59, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't know this wiki at all so I'm going to ask you. Has anyone figured out an efficient way to take pictures of npcs yet? Terrible camera angles are terrible.--Łô√ë Çåŕð ├┤ëŕô 20:53, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

No clue. —Dr Ishmael 01:59, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

U rock!

Thank you good sir :)) ||-- OurDelusions 16:54, 3 September 2012

Icons

Thanks for the heads up about the icon zip file! This will actually save me a lot of time in photoshop, screen capping etc. I'll try and re-upload most of the PvP items I did today. Greyf0x 20:28, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad it's helpful! A lot of people get scared away by the sheer volume of files. —Dr Ishmael 20:29, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Strange icon

I have seen this thing a couple of time on my map instead of the normal dungeon icon, but I don't know what this is. I am pretty sure we don't have this thing explained in the wiki. So what to do? - Yandere 22:17, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Uh, I don't know either, because I haven't seen it. I assume it's what you named it, a contested dungeon entry that's comparable to a contested waypoint, and you can't enter the dungeon until the event is complete. —Dr Ishmael

I have no experience how to get these item out of the dat file. Do you have a good place where tis is explained? - Yandere 08:01, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Just because I noticed and have encountered this, it occurs on high level dungeons. The dungeons are behind a mass amount of enemies, and an event (Assuming it is contested) chain will start up about every 3 minutes that you've failed. The chain takes about 10-15 to get to the dungeon assault, at which point you spend (Depending the dungeon) about 10-25 minutes assaulting to capture the area. When it is accomplished, the waypoint beside the dungeon, as well as the dungeon, become uncontested. You'll notice it for Arah, Mount Maelstrom's dungeon, and Citadel of Fire (for sure, maybe more.). There is also an event that starts like 15-20 minutes after it ends, for you to keep the area. It consists of defending a VERY large area from a VERY large amount of mobs, including veteran and champion enemies, for about 7 minutes. Hope that clears it up a lil. Juicearific ~talk 19:10, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah cool, I am not such a big dungeon runner so, I never really encountered these events. ^^ Is a contested dungeon locked or can you still enter? - Yandere 17:42, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

jumping puzzles

Hello Dr Ishmael, thank you for your vigilance in this wiki :-) I just noticed that you removed a link to a jumping puzzle, just mere minutes after I had created it. You were quite correct that the page I created for it was a duplicate. I should have used Goebbs ...
But may I respectfully inform you that I disagree with your firm stance that it should not be shown in the skill Challenge column. I have asked a question concerning this on the Cartography project page. I'd like a wider view of opinions and ideas on this matter. I most heartly welcome you to give your views on this subject. Again many appreciations for your work !! Kind regards Jackybah 20:26, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

If it ain't a skill challenge, it don't go in the skill challenge column. Simple as that. —Dr Ishmael 20:32, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Template:Sic

Hey, your last change to {{sic}} basically changed the tooltip to "wikipedia:sic" regardless of the value sent to the parameter. -- ab.er.rant 09:08, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh... the tooltip gets broken if you use double quotes (") as part of the value sent to it. For example, {{sic|Should have been "Ert's"}}. -- ab.er.rant 09:10, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Fixed by replacing " with " in the value. —Dr Ishmael 12:41, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Removing walktroughs

Hey there, is there any particular reason that you are removing walktroughs for vistas?
The wiki is to help the people, so linking a walktrough for Vistas or POIs is definetly helping people, or is it not? oO Autositz 13:08, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

See here, I'm just following consensus. —Dr Ishmael 13:10, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

I can't really seem to find a consensus on either yes or no to videos. But that could be because english isn't my native language. I will observe what the future will bring towards posting Walktroughs. I have read on other areas here in the wiki that people want such information. Autositz 13:28, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

The consensus at the moment is that youtube links are not ok, exept for jumping puzzles. There are some voices that would like to include youtube links for more stuff, but there aren't any good suggestions, and there are some voice which do not like youtube links alltogether. So we stay at the spot: No youtube links, except for jumping puzzles. So if your vista isn't one of the 3 which is also a jumping puzzle it is consensus to remove the link. - Yandere 10:20, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

A Few Questions

Hey Dr. Ishy, I've finally come back from the depths of GW2. Anyways, I've maxed 3 crafts (Almost a 4th, halfway done with 5 and 1/4 done with 6). Point is, I have crafting intel that goes the entire way up the crafting pole... but I'm noticing some things I need answered.

1. There is imbued/intricate inscriptions/insignia. This is basically a 3rd set within each tier (fine, masterwork, rare). They have different names, significantly better stats, require you to buy a recipe first, and a different icon, but they are still in the same tier. At the moment, we are displaying one per tier (see huntsman), should I stretch that to be two per tier (I.E. one for the rare, different name, different pic, and one for the iron/steel/etc.), or should I leave it as is and change it to something like "tier 2 pistol" etc.
2. Tier 3's prefix in huntsman is well.. no prefix. Instead of "simple" or "crude", there is nothing there. Which leaves a bit of an awkward standing, in that the name for the item is "(prefix) Longbow". I obviously can't make a page for "longbow", given the importance of the current page called that... So should I make pages like "Longbow (crafting)", "Longbow (huntsman)", or something along those lines?
3. GW2 players don't understand economy. No question, just saying. (a HUGE complaint of mine btw)
4. Tier 6 is a vast oddball. Every tier has 2 sets of unlocked CFine, one set of DMasterwork, one set of bought recipes for ERare... tier 6 has nothing but one set of FExotic, with a few I haven't discovered yet. It also means all the tier 6 weapons have weird names (again, see huntsman). Basically my question is, since this is endgame material, should it be displayed seperately, or with the rest?

I think that's it for now. I'll probably have more later, once I dive a bit deeper into here. Juicearific ~talk 19:06, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

1. Hm, I don't know. I'm actually thinking that we need to simplify (again!) the layout of the discipline pages. Instead of having a table for each weapon/armor piece listing the 6 tiers, we could make 2 tables: table A compiling all the generic weapon/armor components (i.e. Harpoon + Rifle Stock = Harpoon | Longbow Stave + Bowstring = Longbow | etc.) and table B that lists the weapon/armor names by tier.
2. "<Weapon> (crafted weapon)". We already have "<Weapon> (weapon)", but those should probably be moved to "<Weapon> (vendor weapon)".
3. Eeeeeyup.
4. If we reswizzle the discipline pages like I'm thinking above, this would be a special note after table A.

—Dr Ishmael 20:12, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

I tried what you said and I sorta like it... I'm not sure if it's any simpler though. here is the link, tell me what you think. I left imbued empty since I haven't taken the time to make all of them yet, and I don't have the information in my excel, I'd have to login to see it. Juicearific ~talk 17:26, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I took your page, grabbed the names of imbued weapons from gw2db, and rearranged it to make [[User:Dr ishmael/Huntsman|this]]. My vision is to make discipline pages explain how the different classes of recipes work and fit together, rather than overloading the reader with too many specifics. The details should be reserved for the recipes-by-tier subpages and the individual weapon/armor pages.

One additional thing I think we should change is to rename the by-tier subpages to use tier numbers instead of being named for a specific material type. It's not really wrong the way it is, but it feels odd to call e.g. Rawhide String a "Green Wood" recipe when it uses leather, not wood. —Dr Ishmael 18:55, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I like it. Thanks for looking up the names, saves me having to make ALLLL those items (for now anyways, prolly have to do it to confirm stats later anyways). Though, I do think it looks a little weird with the exotic table being just one row. Could we combine it with the other imbued recipes, and just make a note that tier 6 is exotic? It would look a little better, imo. And of course, instead of "rare weapons" or "tier 6 weapons", it would just be "imbued weapons", or something like that. I believe that clears up my Huntsman questions.

But unfortunately, it also raises a few for the Armorsmithing. I've made myself the rare set of armor at each interval, and i noticed they are all called "noble (piece name)". Tier 2, 3, 4, & 5 rare armor all have the same name. Should they all be on the same page? should we find a way to divide them up so they each have their own page? It also makes me wonder, is it better to display the armor as a set (all 6 pieces on one page as a set), or as each individual piece? Or as each individual piece, labeling each of the 4 tiers it comes in...?

On an unrelated note, do you know how to get weird recipes? I've seen recipes like "satchel of beserker's emblazoned armor", or something like that. Basically, it's the entire set of emblazoned (lv80 exotic medium) armor, as compared to pieces. But I've no idea how to get interesting recipes like that... I've also seen "Trays" for cooking stuff, that presumably makes them in bulk. Now I haven't finished map completion yet... but at 64% I would think I would've seen some of these recipes (there is literally a satchel for I think every armor set, or atleast all the tier 5 ones, and all the intricate insignia ones). So I assume they're mystic forge or something, but I'm seriously stumped. If you hear anything, let me know please. (sidenote, if you want master's salvage kits in bulk, it's better for you to buy a msters, journeymen, fine, and 250 gems (with which you buy 5 mystic forge stones), then put them all in the forge. 250 mystic kits -> half the price of 250 master's kits, and they do the same thing. Juicearific ~talk 05:57, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) It's been awhile, so just re-asking those few questions I have. I'm going to incorporate the new design into Huntsman soon, if I don't do it today. Juicearific ~talk 19:23, 1 October 2012 (UTC) edit: I'm ready to put this in, if you think it looks good. I need to get the names of the destroyer weapons, but that page is prepped to be put in.

Okay, let me re-read everything so I know what we're talking about here... hmm... yes... alright, ready!

Sure, one table for all the imbued weapons would be fine.

Armor is really gonna be a pain. I can come up with logical arguments for all sides: one page per armor set, separate pages per tier, and individual pages per distinct armor piece. However, I do have some good news: I've been reading up more on SMW's methods for storing "sets" of data within a page, and I'm pretty sure I know how we can make pages like Iron Pistol work without subpages or anything like that. I need to find time to set that up on Referata so I can verify it, though.

Armor satchels and food trays are all learned from recipe sheets you get from the Mystic Forge. To get the recipe sheet requires a bunch of mystic items and either the chest piece of the armor or a small stack of the food. Satchel recipes currently require more materials than crafting the armor normally, but apparently this will be fixed soon. Food tray recipes require 10 of the food item and give you a deployable item similar to a guild banner that anyone can use to get the food's Nourishment buff.

Your page looks good, let's go! —Dr Ishmael 20:02, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Page is incorporated now. I made one bulk awhile ago to find out that it took 8 insignia and the same resources otherwise... a bit depressing really. Thanks for the food tray info though, I wasn't sure how much it took. Not entirely sure what SMW's methods are (like, at all. completely lost) - but I think if you give me an example (when you find the time ofc) I'll get what you're talking about. I've also reconsidered the table for imbued... because of the destroyer weapons (a bajillion (20-30) lodestones on top of the normal weapon), and the likelihood more variations get added with future patches, it makes more sense to me to leave them seperate. Plus it isn't alone anymore, so it doesn't look as strange. There are a few things I'm still working on figuring out in the craft, but pretty much all I need now is to run through and gather all the data. (or leech most of it from the TP... whatever ;P) Juicearific ~talk 05:06, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Finally

The long wait is over! I have built my new computer -mostly. Running off of NVIDIA 8800GT Alpha Dog and my 430W PU... bought a 650W PU and a AMD 2G video card. Should come in next week. - Endeavor 05:59, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Pet attributes

Hey Ish, I was just wondering how you gathered the information for pet attributes at LV80. Some of the numbers seem weird to me- some pets have better stats than others in the same family for no apparent reason, and bears appear to have over 40,000 health. 14:58, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Same as I gathered all the other stats - Heart of the Mists, no equipment, no traits. (I don't think player equipment affects pet attributes, but my ranger was already naked anyway from recording her skill stats. Probably Beastmastery is the only thing that affects pet attributes.) Those are the default values shown in the pet management window. I've been too busy playing the game since release to do any validation of skills/traits/pets, but I could at least go through the pets tonight. —Dr Ishmael 15:04, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Just wanted to let you know my own research matches all the pet data you have. It seems kind of silly that bears have 40,000 health, but that's how it is. 23:56, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Geh, I completely forgot about this. Oh well, thanks for verifying it all. The HoM pets having different stats should definitely be reported as a bug, though. —Dr Ishmael 03:04, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I had just recently spent some time making the pet reference table on my userpage since I wanted to determine which pets were the best to use on my Ranger. My conclusion is that, except for the HoM pets which are probably bugged, when pets have varying stats there is generally some compromise that justifies it. For example, if you look at the Hyena it has the lowest Power of any pet - close to 50% under standard. However, the Hyena special skill is to summon anoter Hyena with identical stats and skills, which kind of sort of "doubles" its power. Obviously this is more useful on paper than in practice, but it offers some explanation for why there are differences.

I didn't have the time (okay, the patience) to test and verify that every pet's stats are exactly as reported, but I can definitely tell you that the listed damage for many of the pet skills is deceptive at best, and that is worth noting somewhere. For example, check out the River Drake. Its special skill on land supposedly does less damage than the basic attack, whereas in the water it does more. But actual usage shows that it does a quite small and insignificant amount of damage underwater, whereas (if it has targets to bounce to) the terrestrial skill does tons and tons of damage. There's definitely a lot of room for improvement in the clarity department when it comes to pets. Vili 点 05:02, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of pet tables, it would be nice to have one that compares the stats of all pets. 14:56, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Ta-da! Should we put that directly on the pet article? —Dr Ishmael 15:14, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Lethal combination - I like it. Maybe it would be useful to highlight the (maybe) bugged HoM pets as well? And/or pets within the same family that have different stats? Vili 点 22:15, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

There's no way to do that highlighting with DPL, we'd have to convert it to a static table. Which wouldn't really be a problem, these stats shouldn't ever change anymore (unless they fix the bugs) anyway. —Dr Ishmael 22:18, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Hey, I've been IP blocked.

A little help?

Your IP address has been automatically blocked because it was used by another user, who was blocked by JonTheMon. The reason given is this:

Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by "DennanfvtskwyanLundholm".

The reason given for DennanfvtskwyanLundholm's block is: "vandal bot"

Start of block: 23:03, 12 September 2012

Expiry of block: 21:36, 13 September 2012

Intended blockee: 192.168.104.83

You may contact JonTheMon or one of the other administrators to discuss the block.

Note that you may not use the "e-mail this user" feature unless you have a valid e-mail address registered in your user preferences and you have not been blocked from using it.

Your current IP address is 192.168.104.83, and the block ID is #3583. Please include all above details in any queries you make.

-- ab.er.rant 15:07, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh, the fact that I can post, means it's fine now :D Actually... I still can't upload. Didn't realise blocks can allow talk page editing but disallow uploads... -- ab.er.rant 15:10, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorry for spamming. -- ab.er.rant 15:12, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Had the same thing happen to me for a bit, said I had that same IP address (I don't.) Something odd there, this wiki seems to think most people are under 192.168.104.xxx ? --Sepp 15:19, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

It's due to this bug, and Stephane is aware of it. —Dr Ishmael 15:20, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Y'know, I'm wondering now why you contacted me about this, when the message obviously says it was Jon's fault. :P —Dr Ishmael 15:29, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I was headed here to write the same, so probably because we figured you'd be on right now ;) --Sepp 15:35, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I looked at RC and saw your name, so obviously you're it :) -- ab.er.rant 03:36, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Blast, I'll have to start editing on my bot account so people don't see me and bug me with silly things like this! :P —Dr Ishmael 15:03, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Removal of "World vs World (achievement)" page

You may also want to delete this page World vs World (achievement) in the same mannter as Hero (achievement) :).
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 14:50, 13 September 2012 (UTC).

Done. In the future, just slap the delete tag on it and someone will whack it eventually. It might seem like I look at every single thing that happens on the wiki, but really I only look at individual edits if they seem anomalous or if they're on pages I'm personally interested in. —Dr Ishmael 15:01, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

No pages for worlds?

It seems to me that creating pages for the different worlds would be helpful in allowing players of those servers to identify 3rd party resources that exist for those servers. The very nature of WvW is based on "World Identity", as in that I am not just a random GW2 player but I am a player of this particular world. I contribute to my world. If the premise of "World Identity" is correct then it should imho be supported by a wiki page for that world. I will agree that such a page would mostly be populated by external links to notable players as well as fan-site resources, but I see value rather than harm by having such a reference page. Full disclosure: I run a fan-site for the Ehmry Bay server. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Thuley (talk • contribs) at 02:53, 14 September 2012 (UTC).

This decision was reached here. If you object, feel free to start a new discussion on that talk page. —Dr Ishmael 03:13, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Gray

It was gray because it's gray in-game. But seeing as how the rest of the infoboxes don't bother emulating the in-game colour, I guess it's not needed. -- ab.er.rant 07:25, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

So it is, I never paid any attention to that before. Normally I would agree that we should try to match the game, but in this case it seems unnecessary - the important information about a food is what bonuses it gives, so we really shouldn't be de-emphasizing that info by coloring it gray. —Dr Ishmael 13:10, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Hello I'm Archeer

Hey, I see you saw my edit on the Template:User NA page. I'm new to GW2W, but not to MediaWiki as a whole. I worked with Wiki and UESP (Unofficial Elder Scrolls Page - a wiki dedicated to games like Skyrim and Oblivion if you care to know) for around 2 years. I have quite a bit of experience with editing and formatting. If there is anything you need help with, I will be more than glad to lend a hand.

Just another quick question: let's say I want to see the list of all the articles that contains a certain template, how do I do that? For example, I want to see how pages that contains the Template:Spoilers, how do I get GW2W to display that to me? --Archeer 15:13, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Go to the template page, then in the "Toolbox" section of the sidebar, click "What links here". If you only want to see pages that use the template as opposed to simply linking to it, you'll want to click the options to "Hide links" and possibly "Hide redirects". —Dr Ishmael 15:20, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! --Archeer 15:21, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Lingering Elements

Thought I'd let you know - the section you removed was a section specifying effects that Lingering Elements does NOT affect, in order to help prevent confusion. I figured it was information worth including. -- DrakeWurrum 17:55, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I left an edit summary explaining why I removed those. They only trigger on attunement, instead of being passive effects, so there's no way they could "linger". —Dr Ishmael 18:56, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Again

Hi, it's me again. I have an idea to overhaul all the traits pages. Right now we have a separate article for each one of the traits. Take the ranger trait lines for example, we have a separate page for Skirmishing, Wilderness Survival, and etc etc, when they all should belong to sub-articles under List of ranger traits. To see what I meant by that, go to Opening Strike. It's the only article I've changed so far, and as you can see, I put Opening Strike under List of ranger traits/Marksmanship. I find this way of organization to be more reasonable, and it puts all the traits under their appropriate headings. Tell me whether you think what I proposed to change is good or bad. I can revert what I did with Marksman and Opening Strike if you don't find them to be appropriate. --Archeer 19:01, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

No, that's not how we do things here, because it makes it very difficult to find anything. That sort of organization is what categories are for. —Dr Ishmael 19:03, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

help

So I created this simple template, {{Dye gallery}}, so when I add new dyes, I don't have to do any typing or copy and paste. Plus if anybody wants to make changes or update it with medium or heavy armor, they can affect all the pages at once by editing the template.

But here's what I need help on: since I basically don't know any wiki code (I just monkey see, monkey do, and hope it works), that template is really basic. How do you make it look like other templates, where they provide an example at the top, and then an explanation at the bottom? If I edit the page as it is now, I will be affecting the actual template because I have no idea what I'm doing. There's really no parameters that need to be effected but I am wondering. Took a look at other templates but am LOST so I can't easily copy from those and find something that works. Also, I have no idea what category to place it under. Data templates? Image templates? I'll let you decide. Previously Unsigned 12:07, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Ok, well I understand the include tags now, so fixed that part up at the top. I guess I am just wondering if you can "beautify" it or if there is anything that even needs to be done. Is it ok that I made that a template too? I know sometimes I can just start doing things without really asking anybody so was wondering if that template and such was ok. If it is ok, can I go back and use it for all the previous dyes I've done too? Would be nice if a bot could do that for me, but it would probably be more work setting the bot up than doing it myself manually. Previously Unsigned 12:20, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

The only thing I'd change as far as "beautifying" it is to make it use the <gallery> format, or a custom table format like GuildWiki/GW1W's armor galleries (which we desperately need to make our own template for, Infinite said he was going to do it but hasn't yet).

I'm not sure about doing images by armor class, because the differentiation is more about the material, not the armor class. Yes, light armors mostly feature cloth and heavy armors feature metal, but some of them can be very odd, like Dolyak armor [1] that has as much non-metal as it does metal. How about this: name the images by material, then find an armor set that features that material prominently. Instead of coloring everything on the armor with the same dye, only color the parts of that material, leaving the other materials with a neutral brown/gray color (obviously do the opposite if this dye is a neutral color). I'd think that would show off the dye better than applying to the entire armor. What do you think? —Dr Ishmael 15:35, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Earlier we were on separate wavelengths and again I think we are! I only put the (light armor) in there to give a general overview of what material it is. Yes, there are exceptions, but it's a guideline that follows through a lot, so it's reasonable IMO. And I chose that armor because it looks the same as caster starter armor and is composed of almost all cloth (with a couple leather sections). Familiar to players and easy to obtain. I like dying the entire set the full color because it reduces distractions. The dye is aleady sitting on a dark red background, so I don't want to introduce any more distracting colors. For the most part, yeah, you cant' tell the difference between the cloth and leather in that set, but it is there, just most dyes aren't drastically different. But some are, like Strawberry Breeze Dye for example. You can easily tell cloth vs leather there. And if you can't really tell, then there isn't much of a difference for the most part. Really, the reason why I chose that armor goes back to being familiar, cheap, starter armor that everybody has had experience dying. That weighted out being slightly leather. I think there are only 2-3 leather sections anyways, so it's basically all cloth. Don't know what else to say, like I said, I think we disagree about a lot. Previously Unsigned 16:52, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

"I like dying the entire set the full color because it reduces distractions." That's why I said to use a neutral color on the other parts, neutral = not distracting. I agree with using a basic/starter armor.

I think probably you didn't communicate your intent completely, and I assumed that including "(light armor)" in the filename, combined with "update it with medium or heavy armor", implied that you wanted to show the differences on different armor classes a.k.a. materials. If that's not your intent, and if you don't think that's necessary, then the filename should just be "<Dye name> example.jpg" or something that doesn't reference materials or armor classes. (Regardless, there's no need for parentheses in the filename.) —Dr Ishmael 17:35, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I meant any extra color is distracting to me. I think a huge block of color means no distractions at all. I guess we could open this for further comment if you want since we see differently. Yeah, I did want to use (light armor) to differentiate a little bit between the armor classes, I thought somebody would eventually notice and add medium or heavy armor or other examples. I only put it in parenthesis so it looks better, like if others uploaded dyes on other things it would still be "<dye name> (info)", not just one chunk of text you have to read to know. You're probably right about the naming though, but not sure what else to clasify the Apprentice Armor as. Just call it cloth + leather? Apprentice? I just called it light since it was the quickest thing and I thought most would know what constitues light. I could change template text though, but leave the filename maybe light or something as a general separator. You know in time all my work will probably be undone anyways. I'm only trying to provide raw images, even if quick and dirty or not that well organized first, so people can use them or preview the colors without being in game. Previously Unsigned 18:18, 16 September 2012 (UTC) Previously Unsigned 18:15, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Stuff

Hey Ish. I noticed your stuff after you posted to my talk page and did not know if you had been to Ebonhawke yet. That image, iirc, is on Separatist propaganda posters that characters have to rip down for renown contribution. — Gares 18:28, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I've seen it, just haven't bothered to update my page. —Dr Ishmael 22:55, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

expandable tables

Well, I tryed to set an expandable table to be expanded by default like discribed here: [2]. id=1 doesn't work. So is this not implemented or done diffrently in this wiki? - Yandere 21:35, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

expandable generally works fine here, where are you implementing it? Generally it's easier to use expandable/collapsible to the best of my knowledge. Venom20 21:42, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

We don't use that extension here, we have a custom implementation based on what Wikipedia used a few years ago (which has since been rolled into the MW base code). See MediaWiki talk:CollapsibleTables.js. (For the list of installed extensions, see Special:Version.) —Dr Ishmael 21:46, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

You son of a hen

Gwynhwyvar was one of the names I tried on my warrior before I settled for Fionna Bhair. 23:01, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Crazy. :D —Dr Ishmael 23:14, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, do you have an Android phone or tablet? 21:42, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Nope, iPhone 3GS. A friend gave it to me when he upgraded to an iPhone 4, otherwise I'd probably still have a simple old RAZR. —Dr Ishmael 21:54, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Well that sucks. 21:57, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Random Thoughts

Not sure where to put this in the wiki (but since your name pops up everywhere I figured you would be the person to tell it too...).... I think the level of your own character is tied into more things than we (the wiki) know of.... specifically having to do with salvaging and gathering.... First character I started was an Asuran and of course not knowing the game I spent the majority of my time (up to level 20 over the course of a week) gathering and salvaging in the start area using only copper gathering tools and minor salvage kits.... From what I gathered and salvaged I never once got anything other than copper, jute and green wood logs up until level 15-20ish.... I did get the occasional double log or copper but I never got cinnamon sticks, walnuts, gems, or wool.... At about that point (level 15ish) having close to 3 full stacks of copper and green wood logs in inventory I noticed I started to get those secondary items (amber, walnuts and cinnamon with green wood logs; gems with copper).... but I did not do anything different other than gathering/salvaging at a higher character level (and 2 game updates)..... I think the level of the character somehow dictates access to higher quality drops and salvages (like an internal unlocking of sorts)..... The reason I'm thinking of this is because I noticed a nice correlation between between my character level and the required level of items dropped (regardless of what level the area is): I'm now a level 48 Character and I'm doing map completion in Gendarran Hills (a level 25-35 area) but I'm getting items dropping with a required level of 41-44.... Coincidence? I don't think so..... I've noticed I've never gotten drops more than 1 or 2 levels higher than my own (and that was when I was closer to the level of the area).... usual drops were closer to my level or lower by a few.... In retrospect this might be a waste of your time but I think it might be something to concider because of all the other obvious ties to character level (experience from kills, map completion rewards, gathering exp., instance exp. rewards, et cetera)..... maybe more is tied into your own character than we previously thought (ANet's way of making it a balanced game no matter where you are? Stop the idea of farming runs maybe?) 165.154.50.79 13:32, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, drops are partially scaled to your level. The majority of drops will still match the area level, but there is a chance (my very rough guess is that it seems to be around 25%) to receive character-appropriate drops instead; Magic Find probably increases this chance. And yes, this is Anet's way of keeping the world open for high-level characters and making gameplay rewarding at all levels in all places.

Cinnamon/walnuts/etc. were only implemented as additional logging drops on Sept 8, so that's probably why you started seeing them. I think the same update also extended the low-level limit on gemstones from mining; I know that prior to that, I only got gemstones from copper ore in the 15-25 zones.

Salvage results are dependent on the tier of the salvage item and the quality of salvage kit you use: each salvage kit has a chance for "rarer materials," i.e. the output is bumped up by 1 tier from the base tier of the salvage item, and this chance increases with the quality of the kit. (Level-scaled equipment maps to the tiers by level ranges.) I bet you started buying the better salvage kits, and that's why you started seeing tier 2 materials from salvaging. —Dr Ishmael 14:25, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

The updates I'd go with are bang on, I think the timing of those coincide perfectly (that explains the drops of extras); however the salvaging doesn't.... I actually never bothered to go beyond a basic salvage tool (10% rare chance).... the reason I never did was because I ended up crafting and salvaging the crafted to exhaustion (took a while but got most crafting rates up into the mid 80s in a flash).... so cash was very depleted and I always made sure it was a basic salvage only (plus most drops I get don't have insignias anyways for me; why waste the money?).... all salvages prior to level 20 made only jute, copper and green wood logs; above 20 got some wool, iron, and soft wood logs, and now in the mid-40s I'm able to get some cotton.... however in the mid-40s I seem to get a mix of all three (common being wool).... again I'm not saying this is a guarantee (only salvaging about ~300 every ten levels: not quite an accurate testing method); but something that might be considered for dropping/salvaging rates 165.154.50.79 17:38, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

It's the level/tier of the item, not of your character; there is an apparent correlation because, as pointed out above, the level of loot partially scales to your character. Equipment (weapons/armor) up to around level 15 will only salvage into tier 1 materials. Starting at level 15, items can salvage into tier 2 materials, and around 30 (I think) they can salvage into tier 3 materials. Salvage items are tiered along the same lines: Bit of Metal Scrap is a tier 1 metal salvage item, it only salvages into copper; Pile of Metal Scrap is the tier 2 version, it can salvage into copper or iron/silver; Jagged Metal Scrap is tier 3 and can salvage into iron/silver or gold; etc. —Dr Ishmael 18:09, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Wow do I feel stupid now.... it all makes sense (going with how crafting materials tier upwards).... I think the reason I missed it was because the majority of the items I salvage were actually weapons and armour, which I didn't pay much attention to the exact names of (white text dagger is still a white text dagger mentality)... looking back into the current pages for that information (salvaging) I would never have made that correlation between; I assume the wording is going to change (in the future) when we have a better grasp of the game, but considering the vast number of items, the vast number of tiers.... it might take a while to see the full list of salvage percents (lol) 165.154.50.79 19:34, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

(RESET) Random thought 2..... (I can see you regretting talking to me already....) I had a little trouble navigating the crafting tables. In the game I usually save up a bunch of materials and then of course go on a binge-style crafting spree until I run out of materials starting with the discovery screen. For the most part I can figure out the (obvious) patterns but I hit a road block and I'll use it as an example.... Bolt of Jute in discovery for Tailor. There is several undiscovered recipes for me and when trying to figure it out by looking at the Wiki entry for Bolt of Jute.... well there's about 40 different recipes, 20ish for the Tailor and most of them are pre-taught. (Turns out it was Rune of Life and Runes of specific professions). My THOUGHT was: another column (yes kick me now). What I mean is a column for all recipes that point out if this is a pre-learned recipe, karma bought recipe, or a discovery panel recipe. Yes I understand the number of tables that would require edits, but I think it would be benefical for most players. (I'll get a wiki account and help if neccessary, assuming your response isn't an immediate facepalm reply). Thoughts? 165.154.50.79 20:14, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is something I think we need, and I suggested it to Wombatt/Juicearific a while back, but the idea never went anywhere. The problem is that you can't look back at your list of recipes and see how you learned them, so you'd have to take another character and grind them through the whole discipline again (or find another player who will agree to do that and document it for the wiki). I imagine for some people that may not be too difficult, but I'm barely gathering enough materials for my main character to keep his armorsmith level in sync with with his character level. —Dr Ishmael 20:31, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Template:Item instead of Template:Armor infobox

Need help with your bot changing all armor items from Template:Armor infobox to Template:Item. Need help developing the template as well to be able to manage all kind of items (not only armor items). --Preedee 18:22, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Uh, we're not going to suddenly switch over just because you want to. Please discuss this on the community portal first. —Dr Ishmael 21:43, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

This is a wiki, not parliament. Get your priorities straight. There's no need to discuss anything, I will just do it myself and if people don't like it they can revert it. --User:Preedee 23:42, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

With relatively small-scale changes, you're pretty much right, but with large-scale changes (like changing infoboxes), discussion is preferred so that others can have their say. It's harder to revert these things, so getting a consensus first helps. pling 00:03, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Re: Pet lists

I built it this way as a building block to make this: Comparison of pet stats, which would break if you merge back. I weighed building them in the template namespace but templates for single use seemed kinda stretching the notion of templates.

I'm very keen on retaining the comparison table, that one has the real value. Alastair.4612 15:41, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Check out #Pet attributes, I've already made that table with DPL, just never exported it anywhere. I'm actually going to make the individual tables with DPL as well. Give me a few minutes to finish up one page and I'll let you expand it to all the others. —Dr Ishmael 15:44, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah yes, that works - and saves me from typing the last few families :) Alastair.4612 15:47, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Alright, I'm finished with bear and bird. I left off the Amphibious column since that isn't necessary for the family pages. I also added the aquatic skill column for bears. All you should need to change is the category for each family.

I also updated my overall table with the aquatic skill. Unfortunately, I don't know how to identify amphibious pets on that table, because we don't store terrestrial/amphibious/aquatic in a template anymore, and not all amphibious pets have a different aquatic skill. —Dr Ishmael 15:57, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

That does it nicely, thanks - if you were to move your pet attributes subpage to mainspace, it has the functionality I wanted covered there. For the aquatic + amphibious piece, I'm not too attached to it myself. I'm unfortunately not familiar with DPL so I can't really think of much more. Unless you can filter the list by pet families - in that case you could create a separate table simply by only including aquatic and amphibious families in there, and keep it sortable. Alastair.4612 16:16, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Split my page by terrain. The problem is the Lynx, which is terrestrial unlike all other felines, which are amphibious. I can omit it from the amphibious table, but to include it in the terrestrial table would be difficult (I'd basically have to explicitly include every individual pet instead of using categories). Unless you don't mind combining terrestrial and amphibious in one table? —Dr Ishmael 16:22, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't mind at all, what I had in mind was an at-a-glance view of what kind of pet has what stats separated by ground and water activities so the challenge is more excluding the Lynx from amphibious + aquatic. A simple workaround would be to simply make a note at the bottom that the Lynx is actually not amphibious - or add the four felines manually in the water section. Alastair.4612 16:30, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Aha! I think I got it now, one table for terrestrial and one for aquatic, showing the appropriate skill for the amphibious pets in each. Look good now? —Dr Ishmael 16:34, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Spot on :) Thanks a bunch. In the meantime I've propagated the DPL lists to all other pet family pages, except shark and armor fish. Do you want to move your subpage or should I simply copy it over to the Comparison page I made earlier? Alastair.4612 16:39, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Looks like you already copied it, that's fine. I'll take care of deleting all the leftovers in a little while. —Dr Ishmael 16:57, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

(outdent) yeah, I went ahead with it all, hope you don't mind. I've marked the leftovers for deletion, I think that's pretty much all to clean up my own mess. Sorry for the extra workload. Alastair.4612 16:59, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Not a problem, I enjoy finding things like this that I can make simpler for people. :) —Dr Ishmael 17:33, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

recipe templates

Template:Recipe/Requires can't be used for mystic recipes. Would including mystic recipes on the template be trivial? On another note, the mystic recipe template should be merged with the normal template, it's literally just putting mystic as the discipline parameter.--Relyk 19:38, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Nope, that's impossible due to how DPL works when it calls a surrogate template. You'll want to create mystic-specific versions of both {{Recipe/Requires}} and {{Recipe DPL}}.

Merging mystic with normal: it's not impossible, but it's not that simple, either. a) All mystic recipes require 4 input items, and the mystic template reflects that by showing unknown entries if less than 4 ingredients are given; many non-mystic recipes only have 3 or even 2 inputs, so the normal template never shows an unknown. b) The mystic template allows for "generic" input parameters that don't generate an icon or a link to make it easy to document a set of related recipes. c) "Mystic" is not a discipline (you don't actually "learn" recipes for it) and there are no level requirements (that I know of) for using the Mystic Forge. —Dr Ishmael 20:00, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I see, merging it wouldn't be pretty at all. I suppose that does mean there will be a separate table for mystic items if an item is used for both, which is only Mystic weapons and promotion off the top of my head.--Relyk 20:28, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I think that would make a logical split in any case - the mystic forge is distinct enough from standard crafting that mystic recipes should be listed on their own, instead of in the same table as standard recipes. —Dr Ishmael 20:31, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

That's what I meant by, splitting it makes it look pretty :P--Relyk 20:52, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Ip blocked ?

Sorry to contact you like this :s Writing to you from my phone because it looks like my home ip address is blocked. Couldn't find an email address for support... How should I proceed to get this fixed ? My ip address is 24.200.15x.xxx I should specify I'm not a registered contributor to the site. My access is totally blocked: the home page doesn't load. This only happens on the above ip address. All other addresses work.

Blocks only prevent editing, not browsing, so it's probably not an issue on the wiki end. —Dr Ishmael 00:38, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Talk:The Sound of Psi-Lance

Bollocksed. "The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Talk:The Sound of Psi-Lance" .

This is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted.

If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to Dr Ishmael, making note of the URL."— snograt 23:46, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Offending code seems to be: <b>Teisei [[User:Teisei|「ページ」]] [[User_Talk:Teisei|「会話」</b>]] where the bold tag is closed improperly. Are non-english characters even allowed in signatures (or anywhere on the wiki)?--Relyk 23:52, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure non-English characters are fine in sigs - I took the liberty of changing Teisei's bold tags to wiki-style which seems to have done the trick. See if his sig breaks anything else, maybe? — snograt 00:08, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Well I missed seeing the error - looking at the old revision, it loads fine. So I don't really know what caused that. Improperly-nested tags don't usually bork up the wiki like that. —Dr Ishmael 00:33, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it was very odd - that user's sig hasn't caused problems elsewhere. Maybe I should have tried just a null edit... — snograt 05:17, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

I got that same error a few days ago, but regrettably I don't remember the circumstances. 05:43, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Out of curiousity

The "discussion" on Talk:Chef#expandable_vs._collapsible has left me wondering if the wiki supports (or rather, could support) an "expand all/collapse all" option. If the possibility is there, we could implement it on any article with a high density of tables, without overriding wiki-efficiency, nor catering to one side exclusively. For browsing reasons having expandable as a default is more convenient, whereas for editing reasons collapsible is more convenient. At the same time it irks me to only have one of the options readily available, so I was looking for a way to provide what both parties prefer. Any ideas? - Infinite - talk 10:35, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Halp! Regular expressions

I think you know about the wiki app I'm building from Stephane's talk page. I have a couple of things I'd like to do to modify the html I receive from the API before I display it to the user, and since the html is stored as a string regex seems like the way to do it (html parsers like JSoup would be overkill for what I need). Except I suck at regular expressions and you don't, so I'm asking you. Both of the things are related to the app not supporting any sort of editing mode.

First, the html I receive from the service has red links formatted like so (example source):

<a href="/index.php?title=Red_link&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Red link (Seite nicht vorhanden)">red link</a>

Because the app doesn't support editing, there's no reason to display a red link showing that a page doesn't exist since there's no way the user can interact with it anyway. So in those instances I'd like to replace the entire substring with just its linking text ("red link" in the example). I'm guessing the easiest way to identify these would be by the redlink=1 parameter but I have no idea what the pattern would be.

The second thing is edit section links, which I'd like to remove entirely since they'd serve no purpose:

<span class="editsection">[<a href="/index.php?title=Benutzer:Felix_Omni&action=edit&section=1" title="Abschnitt bearbeiten: Section">Bearbeiten</a>]</span>

This one might be easier since the entire thing is enclosed in its own span class. I think I know how to grab the substring limited by those tags but I don't know how to include the tags as well.

So those are my problems. Any idea how to solve them? 14:55, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

What language are you using? There are easy ways to do both of those in JavaScript without using regexes. —Dr Ishmael 15:23, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Android development is all java. I know even less about javascript than I do about css. My web dev skills are null. 15:50, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Bleh, Java is probably my least favorite mainstream programming language. I don't really know how regex functions work in Java, but here's how I'd do them in Perl:

#!perl -w

use strict;

my $text = "<p><a href=\"\/index.php?title=Red_link&action=edit&redlink=1\" class=\"new\" title=\"Red link (Seite nicht vorhanden)\">red link<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"editsection\">[<a href=\"\/index.php?title=Benutzer:Felix_Omni&action=edit&section=1\" title=\"Abschnitt bearbeiten: Section\">Bearbeiten<\/a>]<\/span> <span class=\"mw-headline\" id=\"Section\">Section<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Test purposes.\n<\/p>\n<!-- Saved in parser cache with key de_wikidb_gw2:pcache:idhash:14741-0!*!0!!de!* and timestamp 20120926144151 -->\n";

$text =~ s/<a href=".+?" class="new" title=".+?">(.+?)<\/a>/$1/g;

$text =~ s/<span class="editsection">.+?<\/span>//g;

print "$text\n";

exit;

Output:

<p>red link
</p>
<h2></h2>
<p>Test purposes.
</p>
<!-- Saved in parser cache with key de_wikidb_gw2:pcache:idhash:14741-0!*!0!!de!* and timestamp 20120926144151 -->

Since I don't know how you'll have to rewrite these to make them work in Java, I'll explain the important bits to make sure they don't get lost. In the first one, note the parentheses - these "capture" a portion of the matched string into a numbered variable, $1 (if you had multiple sets of parentheses, you'd have $2, $3, etc.). Thus we match the full HTML for the anchor element while capturing the innerHTML text, then replace it with only the innerHTML.

In both of them, we have the /g flag to make them find all possible matches within the text, instead of only finding the first match. Also, we have to use the ? modifier on the wildcards to indicate non-greedy matching - regex is by default "greedy," meaning it will match the longest string possible. Example: "<p>x</p><p>z</p>" =~ s/<p>(.*)<\/p>/$1/g produces x</p><p>z, not xz.

Got that? —Dr Ishmael 16:23, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Awesome, I think I can work with that. Thanks so much. Although wouldn't the first function kill all links and not just ones with the redlink=1 parameter? 16:55, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

class="new" is applied to all redlinks, that's how they get colored red. —Dr Ishmael 17:30, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Oho! Also, just because. 17:33, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Look what I found

Fwehehe 16:56, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

It's working! :D 17:16, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Awesome! &‐Dr Ishmael 17:32, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

And according to people on stackoverflow it's actually faster than java's built-in regex, so I'm being efficient, not lazy. 18:52, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Not to mention it's PCRE compliant, so you don't have to worry about the meaning of \b or whether (?<= ) will work at all. (Not that these simple regex\/p>\nes use those at all, but I've actually run into issues with those specific structures in the past when some language had to use home-baked regex instead of PCRE.) —Dr Ishmael 19:11, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Don't you two know that English is the required language on this wiki? — snograt 06:28, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

¿Que? 06:36, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

なに？日本語はずっとすごいです～～～～～～！ —Dr Ishmael 12:34, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

AWB

I saw you editing a page for rewards and you said as per AWB. Can you link me to what this is about?

AutoWikiBrowser is a semi-automated wiki editing tool. —Dr Ishmael 21:14, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you Diseraph 21:16, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry but are we as users meant to use them? I just can't see any templates with it and can't say whether the information is accurate (sorry just a lowly contributer here) Diseraph 21:21, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

We don't encourage people to use AWB, no, due to the potential for causing widespread havoc (even without the full automation granted to bot accounts, it's very easy to edit a lot of pages quickly).

The information in the new template {{Event rewards}} is as accurate as we can make it short of manually gathering data on every possible outcome of every single event. I believe a majority of the gold reward numbers were indeed verified by in-game data, but the silver and bronze numbers are calculated from the gold numbers, and there may be an error in our formulas. If you think any number might be wrong, just post on the template's talk page. —Dr Ishmael 21:26, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Does not match MIME

Hi, I was wondering if you could offer me some help, I am currently updating the Godslayer weapons set and have all the correct information up to date but I am unable to upload any new images to them, I continually get the "file does not match MIME extension" is there any way I could email you all the screenshots to you to relieve my headache? :)Turial 13:29, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

That typically happens if you have a JPG image that you renamed with or are uploading to a PNG extension, or something like that. The file extension has to match the image's format that you saved it in. —Dr Ishmael 13:39, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Pirate problem

The pirate spear is named "Pirate Speargun" and the pirate harpoon gun is named "Pirate Harpoon." The pages have to be moved and redirects fixed (if I just move them around they will take the place of each others redirects), which is why I'm turning to you, you know how to fix this kind of stuff. Can you? Chad 18:08, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

So the two current pages need to be swapped? I've seen spears named "harpoon" and harpoon guns named "speargun," but not this way around, so I just want to make sure we've got it straight before doing anything. —Dr Ishmael 18:24, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Swapping, without ruining the redirects to those pages. Yes, the naming is odd, and the only actual proof I have are two uncropped screenshots (which I can't seem to upload at the moment) where you can see the appearance, icon and name but not the actual weapon data. Chad 18:49, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Alright, they've been swapped. I didn't do anything besides move those two pages; I'll let you handle any redirects or links from other pages. —Dr Ishmael 18:55, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Template Doc pages

Not sure where to put this, so I hope here is ok! I recommend moving template documentation to sub-pages to improve performance and allow more security options. I'm not sure how much improvement it would make, but this wiki is generally quite slow (for me at least) so even a small improvement should be noticeable. I'm happy to explain further should you be unfamiliar with this technique. -- Nighty 10:43, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I know the technique, yes, we used it at GuildWiki. When they started this wiki (long, long before me - I've only been here 5 months), they decided against using split documentation to keep things simpler. I don't think it makes any difference at all to performance, honestly. —Dr Ishmael 13:12, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Icon upload issues?

Hey! I saw your icon compilation (yay!) and, looking through it, found higher quality icons for some of the Mystic forge/Other Weapons that I've been keeping an eye on; unfortunately, sometimes while uploading new versions of icons I run into some form of error as I can see on Phoenix Talon where a thumbnail for recipe pages/info boxes doesn't appear, instead giving the error "Error creating thumbnail: /home/httpd/guildwars2/gw2/bin/ulimit4.sh: line 4: /usr/bin/convert: No such file or directory". Am I doing something wrong? (I'm new-ish to wiki editing so I hope I'm not messing something up!) Yugi 21:07, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

That's a known bug that probably won't be fixed directly, because Anet's tech team is currently testing an upgrade to the MediaWiki software. The upgrade should take care of it, but we don't know how long that will take. —Dr Ishmael 21:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! I'll just continue then. Yugi 21:14, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

GW2 Logo

I still see a spam paragraph on the page: File:GW2Logo_new.png - Yandere 00:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

I... don't? o_O That's odd, my edit shows in the history, and I see the license template on the page, but you still see the spam? Is it possible you still have it cached locally? —Dr Ishmael 00:36, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, I emptied out my cache before I wrote this to you, to make sure it wouldn't be tis kind of issue... But now it is gone and I can see your edit. That was a weird delay. O_o - Yandere 03:38, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

map completition table

Yeah this was a bit unlucky in the wording. Infact I moved the table to a subpage and the article links to the subpage: Map_completion/table.

I did this because there was already a pretty good discription on the page, but some people probably prefer a table and so I put a link to the tale on the map completion page. Sorry for the confusion. - Yandere 15:33, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I missed that. Yeah, I'd prefer it on a main article instead of a subpage - I don't think that would cause any problems, certainly. —Dr Ishmael 15:37, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

I am fine either way. I just thought that this table is more something about map completion and not so much about explorable zones. - Yandere 16:03, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

That's fine. You just said "now available at map completion" and I didn't see it there, so I was confused. —Dr Ishmael 19:22, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Poke poke

You said you wanted a reminder regarding the main page on monday - Yandere 13:19, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! —Dr Ishmael 14:06, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Specific (crafted) Item Pages

Alright, I need another opinion. I've wanted to make a page for each individual item, but I'm not sure how necessary it is. for example, Bronze Pistol, is actually 13 weapons. I'm talking a page for each specific one, like specifically "Vital Bronze Pistol". Necessary? No? We could put a picture up, though they probably all share looks. I mean, they all share price, attack stats (or some share that), probably looks, I'm not sure there is a reason to make any.

Course, that brings me to my next question. Carrion Orichalcum Imbued Inscription links to items that currently don't exist. And, assuming that we don't make them their own page, will just link to the page of each weapon. Now, keep in mind the fact that there is 8 weapons in weaponsmith, 7 in huntsman, and 4 in artificer (totaling 19) to list, then of course there are also destroyer weapons, making it 38 weapons to list. OR, we could link to Huntsman/Ancient Wood recipes, and the like for weaponsmith and artificer. 3 links, still holds all the information. And it's actually slightly easier to read, since we have the information displayed prominently there, and on the weapon page it's sort of just a footnote. Basically, what do we want to do with listing recipes on inscription item pages? Do we even want this page, for the same argument as above? It shares practically everything in common with other orichalcum inscriptions, we could just move value, recipes used in (once again, if we just link to the tier 6 set this is easy), and that's all the information that's even on that page. Just wanna know your thoughts on it. Juicearific ~talk 16:06, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we'll need separate pages for the different prefix-variations of an item, whether that be weapons, armors, or insignia/inscriptions. We'll may still want separate pages for insignia/inscriptions, though, since they have different icons (I don't know how we would present the different icons on a combined page) . I still haven't done my testing of the SMW #subobject method yet, but I'm pretty confident that it will work the way we need.

I plan to convert the "Requires" section into a semantic query template to generate a table listing all of the specific recipes that use the material/component (another reason we'll probably want separate insignia/inscription pages). The output will be similar to that currently produced by [[Template:Recipe/Requires]]. Yes, that will generate some very long tables for some components, but at least they won't be manually maintained (we already have some pages like that anyway, e.g. Bag of Sugar has 42 recipes listed). —Dr Ishmael 20:48, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Oooh, fancy. So basically, SMW will make my life significantly easier and remove my need to even wonder about this. nice, lol. I agree then, should probably leave it as is (inscriptions/insignia have specifics, weapons & armor dont). Cheers. Juicearific ~talk 03:47, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Halp again

After I managed to enable English content in my wiki app, I discovered the the English wiki is set to reject certain api requests that don't have a valid user agent with a 403 Forbidden- this is, I guess, standard for Wikimedia sites (See here) but it's not enabled on the non-English wikis. The specific API call that triggers this is querying a file name to get its URL so I can display non-thumbnail versions of images in a pop-up dialog- the format is like

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/api.php?action=query&prop=imageinfo&iiprop=url&format=json&titles=File:Norn_01_concept_art_(white).jpg

This always returns the correct data when made in a browser because browsers supply a user agent in the header automatically. AndroidHttpClient, however, does not. So I created the custom user agent

GW2WApp/1.0 (https://github.com/Felixomni/gw2wiki-android; felixomni@gmail.com)

The problem is that it only worked about twice then started returning 403s again. I guess the server decided it was a malicious script and blacklisted the user agent. So since you're experienced with running wiki bots and automated tasks, do you know how I can create a user agent that will be considered valid? 17:06, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't really know anything about that - AWB and the MediaWiki::API perl module both handle that low-level stuff in the background. However, I might have an alternative solution: you already have the URL of the thumbnail as part of the <img> tag within the page, right? You can derive the URL of the original image by removing 2 parts:

Thumbnail

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/5/5a/Biography_Conqueror%27s_Pauldrons.png/30px-Biography_Conqueror%27s_Pauldrons.png

Original

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/5/5a/Biography_Conqueror%27s_Pauldrons.png

Unless there's something preventing you from doing this, you don't need the extra API query at all. —Dr Ishmael 17:33, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

You are my best friend. 17:34, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Snogblocked

Hi Doc. The ip block you did at around 2am utc seems to have caught me too. With all the previous buggy block issues I don't know where the problem may lie. I'm at work, using an iPad over 3G, my ip is related to the 82.132.0.0/16 that you blocked. I'm clueless about ip allocation, but I'd guess that range is used by O2 uk for their mobile data services? Might not be just me that's been nobbled. Snograt (via proxy) 78.110.167.236 10:44, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and it hurts editing without useful tools like edit buttons and tabs. The proxy thingy I'm using doesn't display such things so it's a bit of a chore for a confusewit like me. 78.110.167.236 11:02, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh, oh - "the block ID is #4256." 78.110.167.236 11:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I've modified the block to be for anonymous users only. So as long as you stay signed in (I think you usually do), you shouldn't have any more trouble with this. —Dr Ishmael 12:24, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Still blocked - that was #4260 you unblocked rather than #4256. Not that I have a clue what that means. Ah well, I will be back home and on a proper IP in an hour :) 78.110.167.236 12:30, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

#4256 isn't listed explicitly in the IP block log, which I think means that's the ID of the original block. (While looking at the log I saw that Auron had left the IP-autoblock option turned on for a couple blocks so I corrected those, that's what #4260 was.) I modified the original 82.132.0.0/16 range block by turning on the "Only anonymous users" option. I'm not sure what else to do short of completely unblocking that range, although I suppose that might not be a problem - the vandal has probably already lost interest. —Dr Ishmael 12:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm curious now: How big a range is ..../16? My current IP is apparently 82.132.242.93 (78.110.167.236 12:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC))

I don't fully understand IP ranges, but I'm fairly certain 82.132.0.0/16 equates to 82.132.x.x. —Dr Ishmael 12:51, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Ah, a nice, round 65,536 potential blockees, then :) Back home now - see how I get on tomorrow. — snograt 13:19, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Nope, all works fine at home on the wifi but as soon as I get to work and the iPad switches to 3G, it's back to persona non grata again :( 91.197.129.74 08:24, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Addendum: GW2W has allowed me to log on via the awful proxy I'm having to use. All previous attempts have failed due to suspected session hijack. — snograt 08:33, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

*sigh* Your persistent nagging has convinced me to remove the range block. Happy editing. :P —Dr Ishmael 14:16, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Hehehe - thanks, Doc ^_^ — snograt 15:50, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

DPL help

Howdy. I've been fiddling with DPL a little, and somehow have made an empty column. Would you mind casting an eye over my DPL query? Thanks, Nighty 08:09, 14 October 2012 (UTC).

The problem is that you're not using [[Template:Recipe DPL]] in the way it was designed. Of course, that's not easy for you to figure out when there's no documentation... Anyway, see this page for how it was designed - basically instead of making DPL generate the table, you wrap the DPL with a table header and footer. —Dr Ishmael 14:22, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Ah ok. That's what I was doing before, but when I tried to display the DPL cache message it ended up in one of the table column headings. Thanks for that, I just assumed it was something wrong with my DPL. (BTW, how do you link to an specific revision a page? I've forgotten.) --Nighty 02:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

You could just include {{DPL Cache Warning}} exactly where you want it to be, instead of letting DPL place it. —Dr Ishmael 02:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Excellent idea. On another DPL topic, I seem to be quite good at breaking/hitting some limit in the server: If I edit User:Nighty/Sandbox5 and change the image size to 50x50px I get an error: "Error 503 Service Unavailable\n Guru Meditation:\n XID: 1479161260\n Varnish cache server" (Also this doesn't work properly lol.) -- Nighty 05:11, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Blocking filters

Should we just make sure it doesn't block internal IP addresses but still let it block? --JonTheMon 18:51, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

That would be the better solution, yes. I just don't have time this afternoon to figure out how to do that. —Dr Ishmael 19:18, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Since you're here, could you help me with Pika Fan? Apparently I don't speak his language well enough to get my point across without spoonfeeding him. Or something, it's hard to tell what his problem is. —Dr Ishmael 19:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, we kinda don't want those edits to get through, even if it's an internal IP. So, the current situation might be the best :-/ --JonTheMon 19:40, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Right, because if we put that exception ($IP !~ ^192\.168\. (a la Perl)) in the existing rule, it would skip it for all internal IPs. We'd have to create a duplicate rule specific to internal IPs that would only prevent the edit without blocking. And that would probably be too much work for too little benefit. —Dr Ishmael 19:45, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Skill lists

Hey Doc, I was fixing one of the profession skill lists, and soon after that realised you were editing the templates (and were probably anticipating some breaking things). It wasn't broken beyond the colspan count, but the meta columns seem to have vanished (admittedly, I haven't looked at these lists in a while). Anyway, just passing that on because it seems you are working on things as I type this. :) - Infinite - talk 18:32, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Yep, colspans will be borked until updated (weapon tables have 6 columns now, haven't changed the slot table templates yet). What meta columns? —Dr Ishmael 18:34, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh, meta as in parallel between tables, right. All done now. —Dr Ishmael 19:28, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

random icons

I want my costume brawl effect icons, where are they? D:--Relyk 14:59, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Doh, I saw them when getting the new Stability icon - they're 32x32, same as all the other "skill fact" icons. I'll get that archive posted when I get home tonight. —Dr Ishmael 15:01, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of icons, I had a question. Do you find it's a general rule that items with the same appearance will have the same icon? That would help a lot in my hunt for identical skins. Vili 点 15:07, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to skins, honestly. I know the reverse is not true: a lot of items share the same icon but have different skins. That's mostly when the icon is one of the basic versions, with a flat black background and no shiny effects. I would expect that among higher-tier, higher-quality items, this relationship is more uniform (icon and skin are 1-to-1), but I can't back that up with any evidence. —Dr Ishmael 15:36, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Cool story, Scan Etheric Field is looking for his (500228.png?) icon, his buddies already have theirs :P--Relyk 15:48, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

It's a pre-existing icon, 103891. Uploaded. —Dr Ishmael 16:14, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

That's the skill used in the ruins event in Mount Maelstrom isn't it. I figured it was pre-existing.--Relyk 16:17, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

32x32 icon archive uploaded. —Dr Ishmael 22:42, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

SMW

Gogogo? Like, what would be a good first thing to integrate into SMW? Skills? Crafting? NPCs? --JonTheMon 06:33, 26 October 2012 (PDT)

Since I've already got plans for skills and traits, I'm going to start on those first. Unfortunately, we only got the core SMW this time, we didn't get Semantic Forms, so we don't have the #arraymap function. Which we REALLY need for most of our infoboxes, and I thought they were going to include that and Widgets in the initial install. Graagh. —Dr Ishmael 07:59, 26 October 2012 (PDT)

"not sure how you did that, Snog"

Me either. Actually, I didn't see the end result, just that I managed to get an edit conflict with myself, and one of those geeky guru meditation errors. Apparently the cache server needs varnishing again. I love geeks. Oh, and totally my fault for sticking humour where it had no right to be :D — snograt 15:12, 26 October 2012 (PDT)

...and it just happened again. I just added a comment to Talk:Halloween 2012 which the page history shows as 650 bytes, yet rc shows it as -30. Another guru meditation happened. Amigas were awesome. — snograt 15:05, 27 October 2012 (PDT)

Can you...

please restore the Underworld if possible (considering you're able to delete articles, I think you can restore them too). Per the talk page, it was deleted long ago when it was uncertain what role the Underworld would play in GW2 (with suspicions of "none") with the intent to restore/remake it if we found out it had a bigger role - which it does (though we don't visit it, we have a lot of "this comes from the Underworld" and "this is about the Underworld" so folks *will* search it). Thanks. Konig/talk 14:54, 27 October 2012 (PDT)

Enjoy. - Tanetris 15:12, 27 October 2012 (PDT)

I particularly enjoyed the way the deletion template was restored along with the page ^_^ — snograt 15:20, 27 October 2012 (PDT)

Thanks. On another topic, can either of you semi-protect Elder Dragon for a time? An IP repeatedly alters the text under the false belief of there being only five Elder Dragons (despite other parts of the article stating there are six Elder Dragons known). Konig/talk 16:08, 27 October 2012 (PDT)

category parsing

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

    (SQL query hidden)

from within function "". Database returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 's_Rumble_skills' where page_namespace='14'' at line 1 (10.28.41.32:3307)".

It's catching the apostrophe in "Reaper's Rumble skills" :/--Relyk 19:51, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

What page were you on and what were you doing when you saw this? I need context! —Dr Ishmael 20:18, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

That wasn't very helpful was it lol.

{{skill list dpl|Reaper's Rumble}}
{| {{STDT}}
!
! [[Skill]]
! [[File:Tango-recharge-darker.png]]
! Description
{{skill table row|slot=y|Chop (Reaper's Rumble)|recharge|description}}
{{skill table row|slot=y|chain=chain|Chop (Reaper's Rumble chain)|recharge|description}}
{{skill table row|slot=y|chain=chain|Shoot (Reaper's Rumble chain)|recharge|description}}
{{skill table row|slot=y|Leap (Reaper's Rumble)|recharge|description}}
{{skill table row|slot=y|Axe Spin (Reaper's Rumble)|recharge|description}}
{{skill table row|slot=y|Shoot (Reaper's Rumble)|recharge|description}}
{{skill table row|slot=y|Aimed Shot (Reaper's Rumble)|recharge|description}}
{{skill table row|slot=y|Raw Candy Corn (Reaper's Rumble)|recharge|description}}
|}

dpl-generated skill list on Reaper's Rumble--Relyk 20:22, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Something about using the * prefix on the category (which means "also look in subcategories of this category," necessary for profession lists) sends the category name through a different SQL query where it doesn't properly escape the variables (i.e. change it to 'Reaper\'s Rumble'). All we can do is make the DPL call directly, instead of using the template, so we can get rid of the *. —Dr Ishmael 20:51, 29 October 2012 (UTC)