User talk:Santax/Archive 5

This page is an archive. The contents have been moved from another page for reference purposes only, and should be preserved in their current form. Discussion or voting on this page is not current. Any additions you make will probably not be read.
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Archive
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Why...?

Why did you create a qualified version of a page when the non-qualified version didn't exist? And then create it as a redirect to the qualified version? —Dr Ishmael 16:51, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The colossus in the Cliffside Fractal is a generic unnamed colossus, and its species is 'colossus'. Also, 'colossus' could refer to The Colossus, Icebrood Colossus, Jade Colossus, Colossus Rumblus or the creature from whence the Colossus Fang came, so the page at Colossus should really be reserved for disambiguation, but in the meantime I redirected it to the Cliffside Fractal NPC because that's probably the most likely search term. --Santax (talk · contribs) 16:54, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

"its species is 'colossus'" Source? We don't know what its species is, as far as I've ever seen. On an aside, Colossus Fang is named after/comes from Colossus Rumblus (a lot of the dungeon trinkets are named after/come from the bosses of the dungeon). Konig 17:42, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Then why didn't you create a disambiguation page? That would've made sense to me, instead of making it a redirect. —Dr Ishmael

18:21, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Turned it into a disambig page. Konig 18:29, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Cliffside Fractal objectives text, "Free the captured colossus". The, as in, one of many, and the lowercase 'c' shows that it's given the same treatment that species names are given (if it were the name of the NPC then it would be given a capital c, as it is a proper noun, like Archdiviner). Additionally, I think there was some other text elsewhere that refers to "this colossus" or "a colossus", but I can't find it. Maybe it's in Dessa's dialogue for that Fractal? --Santax (talk · contribs) 19:22, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Thinking about it, it could be here. Is there a transcript anywhere? --Santax (talk · contribs) 19:31, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I would also argue against that “colossus” race. A single entity does not really justify a race, and given that the article the race-link links to isn’t about the race, I don’t see any use of it. Just leave it empty.

The disambig page is good though. poke | talk 19:39, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

An apology

It's... weird. I came into this expecting to drop a banhammer on both participants in this never-ending drama war, but the more I looked into it and the deeper I read, the fewer reasons I found to ban you. It started when I looked up your edits on GWW; thousands of them, spanning back to 2007. Years of edits... completely under my radar. That pretty much means you weren't involved in any wikidrama. Glancing through your talk page archives, you've got a long history of explaining your actions and a willingness to compromise when met with differing viewpoints. The fact that you feel unappreciated for that saddens me, since drama-free and civil editors are the best kind, and should always feel welcome and appreciated. Unfortunately, I pretty much only pay attention to someone when they fuck up or say enough stupid things to get on my radar. My ignorance of your wiki history, in general and regarding Konig, is a glaring oversight, and I'm sorry for painting you with the same brush.
Your harsh critique of my inactivity regarding this case is... well, accurate. I maintain that I did weigh the pros and cons of my decisions, and I realized even then that the wiki was paying a price for Konig's continued presence, but my lack of punishment for Konig's anti-community behavior taught him (or at least reinforced the notion) that it was okay to act that way. After years of getting his way in nearly every situation, he took it as the norm. When it all snowballed into a massive shitstorm, you were simply the user caught up in it at that given time; another in a line of victims, more or less, who "dared" to show interest in editing the lore section and disagreeing occasionally with Konig. When called upon to defend yourself, you were roped into an escalating situation with no real way to get out of it - no real way aside from simply throwing in the towel and walking away, which you deigned not to do. That's... brave? Noble? A bunch of other words I could put in here, but on the whole, it's pretty neat that you didn't back down. It certainly incited drama, a normally banworthy amount (well, you did get banned for it, actually >.>) but the reasons for not giving up were definitely justified, and I respect you for it. I'm sorry for my inaction allowing this situation to escalate, and again sorry for slandering your character with inaccurate comments.
It's the job of a sysop to protect the wiki and its users, not just from vandals but also from troublemakers. Obvious trolls are easy to pick out and chase away, but a more insidious threat are the ones with good intentions. It's easy to turn a blind eye toward bad behavior if they're doing a "fair amount of good" to offset it, but too many blind eyes turned toward too many editors and you can get a really nasty situation. I think our collective inactivity on this case is shameful, and mine in particular (after receiving complaints) is just... shitty. We definitely need to re-dedicate ourselves to being more vigilant for threats and less quick to assume everything is A-OK.
Anyway, enough of the sappy shit. I'm not going to ban you, and honestly if I could I'd go back in time and unban you, but lacking that ability, we can only look forward and deal with what comes next. On the noticeboard I mention not stooping to his level; for a long time (since this conflict started on GWW) you played nice, but after having to deal with it for ages, you started doing more or less the same shit he was doing. That's why, at a cursory glance, the sysops who did look into the case figured it was a problem of two users equally at fault, bitching at each other over <content dispute>. Not that it justifies the bans you received, but that is largely the reason they were applied. You were under a fair amount of duress, but you lashing out at Konig showed onlookers that the fight was a two-way street, and that opened you up for punishment. As I mentioned earlier (and as you mentioned in your post), you were stuck between a rock and a hard place; and while your decision to stick up for yourself eventually got you banned, it was definitely the harder decision over simply giving up, and showed quite some strength of character.
When Konig comes back, just do what you do best; ignore him. Utilize talk pages as much as you can to avoid edit wars, and keep your interactions as civil as you usually keep them, and you'll be fine. I'm sorry this chapter in wiki history was so messy, but hopefully we'll all be able to get through it without too much more pain. -Auron 16:57, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I...honestly don't really know how I should respond to such a lovely message. I guess I'll start with thanks. For what it's worth, I hold absolutely zero ill will to you or anyone else within the wiki's administration, I was just frustrated that myself and Konig were both being given the same treatment when...well, it's dealt with now, so no need to worry about the details. But thank you. Mediating all this can't have been easy, with each separate silly argument generating its own separate wall of text (seriously, must be in triple figures by now), it's easy to see why others were unwilling or unable to get involved. And the fact that you've gone back and looked through, as you say, thousands of edits show that you do have a commitment to fairness.

Despite my disagreements with Konig, I'm sad that things had to end this way. He knows more about GW2 lore than anyone else I've spoken to, and the wiki will feel his absence. That is a void that I will try to fill, and hopefully there are others interested in the lore who will join me—now might be a good time for a recruitment drive on the official lore forums, although I don't think it'd be appropriate if I did it. When Konig is directing his energy toward documenting the game rather than other users, he is very good contributor, and still can be after his block expires.

As for me, I'll going to try to suck less in the future. I acknowledge that my edits aren't always made with enough care, and now that there is one less person with the requisite knowledge to challenge any mistakes I make, I'm going to do my best to take Psycho Robot's advice on board. Both Psycho Robot and Chieftain Alex already seem to have been keeping an eye on my lore edits, and that is something that's really encouraging. I'm also going to try and add more references to articles, particularly when something is quite obscure—the lore in this game isn't always well-communicated, and it can be intimidating to try and edit lore articles when it's not obvious where any of the information is coming from. Konig is a walking lore encyclopaedia, but if we're going to keep the game well-documented, the articles need to be more lore-accessible. Maybe by the time he returns, we'll have a community.

But yeah, thank you. No hard feelings at all from me, and hopefully I haven't upset any of you guys too much either. I think we're gonna be okay. --Santax (talk · contribs) 21:16, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Group hug?

21:21, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

My poor missing NPCs.

Heyhey, I saw you linked Voppa and Izzitt as NPCs in the game, but I gave up on doing since nothing links to them nor have they been mentioned anywhere. Do you know something more or is it a matter of principle to tag 'em? --Ventriloquist (talk) 19:13, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

I definitely don't know anything more! I "guild+wars+2"+izzit googled "guild+wars+2"+voppa them and nothing comes up, so I think they're probably generic citizens that had names that were just never revealed (like the "By Ogden's Hammer!" guy). I figured they should have pages, cause things like Desmina or Wren in GW1 went unlinked and undocumented for a very long time, only to show up in GW2, since ANet has a lot of lore that it doesn't reveal to players. But at the same time, these are just a couple of (probably) unimportant asura, so if you feel strongly about it then I won't stop you unlinking them :) --Santax (talk · contribs) 19:43, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh hey, nonono, I'm perfectly fine with it, I just hate red links, lol. I guess a simple two sentence page could be made about the NPCs, we defintiely do need more of Scarlet's victims on the wiki, is that what you had in mind or? --Ventriloquist (talk) 20:12, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Pretty much, yeah. I just try to keep everything linked because Special:Whatlinkshere is such a useful tool for tying together lore articles. --Santax (talk · contribs) 20:20, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

This might be a good time to make the Unseen NPCs category, because oh lawd, we need it.--Ventriloquist (talk) 20:26, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

The Legions of the Charr

I made your edit to the page. If i've looked at the filter correctly, you can now edit it yourself. --JonTheMon (talk) 20:44, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Filter edits

For Yomm, I think mentioning his shop and his relative would be good, since they tie into the present day game. For Pride, that's a lot of stuff we don't need to know and is too... well, verbatim for what we should probably document. Same for Harbinger, which I omitted the main description. --JonTheMon (talk) 07:27, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I get what you mean, I figured short paragraphs were okay? I wanted to get it all done in one sitting, but I've been straight reading/editing (maybe that's the problem) for 18 hours now and still not at the end :P most of the Pride stuff can be left out, I think, although it'd be a shame given how large a part it played the story, and how much relative detail everything else is covered in. The Harbinger stuff should be kept though, if in some reworded form, because more or less all of it doesn't fit with the rest of the Orrians we see either in-game or in the book, suggesting that they aren't from Tyria, or if they are, they are very ancient. That could be something that's explored in future storylines so it's definitely worth documenting, but I don't know how I'd word it without it sounding like that was my interpretation. --—Santax (talk · contribs) 07:37, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, Harbinger should be editable by you now. If you were keeping the description, i'd leave out the last line about Cobiah never seeing it before. --JonTheMon (talk) 15:31, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Emperor Usoku: I don't like the direct copy from the Movement of the World, since that's about Cantha, and this is about the Emperor. Also, you're making it sound like Cantha intentionally isolates itself, rather than being cut off by the rising of Orr. Finally, even if he follows the Ministry of Purity's thoughts, I don't think he was a part of it (unless that's actually in the guide). --JonTheMon (talk) 14:37, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I think I only included the parts from the first paragraph of the Cantha section in the Movement of the World, since that's about Usoku and his reign. Both the Movement and the BradyGames guide do say that Cantha had already adopted a policy of near-isolationism ("As a result, Cantha became extremely isolationist. Once Orr rose from the ocean, those tendencies were reinforced by an inability to safely sail the western seas") and that the Rising of Orr was just the icing on the cake, if you like. As for the categorisation, I will admit I wasn't sure myself if the intention would be clear - I just wanted the "Cantha NPC's" to be grouped together without having to create a new category. Usoku is associated with the Ministry of Purity, but there's nothing to say he's a member. –Santax (talk · contribs) 16:20, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Make sure every last bit of lore from the novels is documented

Good job, lore-man. Sleep well ^_^ — snograt 11:51, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

reminds me of Erasculio's comment on Category talk:Ghosts of Ascalon characters :D -Chieftain Alex

12:16, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I remember that comment as well, actually! It was the one where he suggested we not have pages on Caledon Forest and Bloodtide Coast :P

For real though, I did actually try to bear that comment in mind; I tried to have "rules of thumb" on what to document and not document, mainly based on the quite loose criteria of "what I think is relevant to GW2". I created a page without saving for pretty much every character in the books, and every time a "non-notable" character died their names were "lost to history" (I closed the tab). If they were "notable" and died before the game (so they're characters that people would still remember today, e.g. Kalla Scorchrazor, members of the first Captain's Council, officers of famous ships), they got a page. If they survived until the end of the novel, they got a page, since it means that they could be in-game (like Crusader Naugatl), or could pop up again in the future. Sea of Sorrows was exempt from this, since even if a character made it to the end of that novel they still died a long time ago, so tough luck if you hadn't got famous by then. So officers aboard famous ships like the Indomitable would be worth documenting (especially since most of them were documented war heroes, so it's perfectly possible that ANet have short stories or whatever stashed up their sleeves for them on that mysterious internal wiki of theirs, oh and one of them turned out to be a frickin dragon champion), but your average crewmember, like Sethus or Tosh, would not be. Even if they have large roles, if they don't do anything "notable" then they are, essentially, flavour. I tried to make the articles as much as possible "this happened" or "this looked like this", rather than "this is how Cobiah felt"—if I did that for everything, there wouldn't be much point in people buying the novel, which would be a shame since it's probs the strongest one so far. You can never be too careful, mind. I was hitting around the sixteen-hour mark when I got to Captain Tarb, and I closed this page I'd written on Gamina because she was a quiet, mousey first mate of a relatively obscure Captain's Council member, and I just assumed she would have a very small role in the novel and probably no impact on the wider lore world. Anyway, turns out she was the Order of Whispers agent who set the precedent for agents like Riel Darkwater having the Commodore's ear. The whole thing about her being completely unimportant was actually an act put on by that character!

Pretty much every location mentioned in the novels made it onto the wiki. Most of them ended up either in-game or as cool alternate names for in-game places that give a particular culture's point of view, but those that weren't were worth documenting as well since offhand "flavour" mentions like that were how Cantha and Elona were hinted at originally, which a lot of people missed for quite a while. Similarly, if cool-sounding stuff gets mentioned in weird places and nobody ever documents it anywhere, then nobody talks about it on forums and ANet could well end up forgetting about it themselves or assuming that players aren't interested. Most recent example I can think of is Lord Rodrigo of Cormoch. Lord Rodrigo is one of the leaders of the Vigil, but only one NPC ever mentions that. He's probably one of the "unlikely allies" Almorra Soulkeeper found after Almorra's Massacre that helped her found the Vigil (and there's definitely a story yet to be told there), who are only ever given one mention, in Ghosts of Ascalon. Cormoch is...somewhere that we've never heard of before, never been mentioned in GW1 or GW2. And his name, 'Rodrigo', is Hispanic, meaning his family are probably not from any of the known human kingdoms—only Doern Velazquez, off the top of my head, has a name like that, and he drops some pretty heavy hints that he's from a human kingdom we've never visited before (my guess? The setting of Utopia, since that was Aztec-inspired). But that would qualify as a hint that we'll be visiting (or at least hearing more about) the Utopia setting in the future (not that surprising, one of the reasons ANet didn't just spill the beans on Utopia after it got canned was because there was a good chance they would reuse the ideas). What I'm saying is that it's difficult to gauge how "important" something is gonna be in the future, so it's best just to include everything except the stuff that almost definitely isn't :P --—Santax (talk · contribs) 15:54, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

File:Shadow of the Dragon concept art.jpg

Hi. Could you help me understand why that image is redundant with a completely different one? ^^ did one get replaced ingame or something? (should keep both either way) -Chieftain Alex 14:29, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I do not think "redundant" is the proper word, but it's difficult to tell what the picture is of. The one linked as a replacement is much more obvious. (As far as I know, neither of these actually show up in the game anywhere.) Vili 点

19:11, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Since the two images are used on different articles I see no reason to delete either one.

23:12, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

The concept art is from the sylvari intro cinematic. The one tagged for deletion just looks like a recoloured screencap from a video (I can't remember where I found it, but it wasn't an ArenaNet artist's blog or anything like that), whereas the other one seems to be the "full" original. Once the original had been found, there was no reason to keep the other version. Sorry, that should have been stated clearer in the tag. –Santax (talk · contribs) 11:49, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

ugh

Move those images or I'm going to delete them. That's pretty childish. —Dr Ishmael 12:31, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

don't be a nub with file upload names. I've moved them since you don't have extended editors privileges and I cba deleting the redirects.

-Chieftain Alex

13:05, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Hey now, at least I was trying to be civil by just calling it "childish". And I would have deleted the redirects, since I asked for the moves. (Sadly, you stole my moves. :( Now I'm just another white boy who can't dance.) —Dr Ishmael

13:42, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

crude reference to his file naming scheme :p -Chieftain Alex

14:33, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Durr, I completely missed that. Still, a bit too crude, methinks - thanks for fixing it. —Dr Ishmael

14:44, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

"*The Quaggan was designed by ArenaNet's Concept Art Team Leader Kekai Kotaki, and originally "called it a Poobag because that's all it was good for.""

Isn't it just a canonical file naming scheme? Vili 点

15:18, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

:/ hrm the files were actually called that? the site I was pointed to the other day (http://kekai-k.tumblr.com) didn't appear to have specific names for the files. oh well >.< -Chieftain Alex

16:27, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

^ what everyone said. "Poobag" is Kekai Kotaki's original name for the quaggans; some of the files on his tumblr were titled that way (in the specific post, not the filename), others (fewer) used "quaggan", and most didn't refer to quaggans or poobags. –Santax (talk · contribs) 15:43, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

if its cool with you I'm going to leave them with those titles.

Also, in unrelated news I've turned off the annoying konig vs santax filter. Enough time has passed that I'm sure most of your impulse edits are over :P -Chieftain Alex

16:15, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

"a location somewhere in Tyria"

What value do those pages have? —Dr Ishmael 17:19, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

They exist in the Guild Wars universe, so they are within the scope of the Guild Wars Wikis? –Santax (talk · contribs) 17:24, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

But the only reference we have to them is from a world name that was dropped before release. That's hardly enough information for an article. And saying it's "a location somewhere in Tyria" pretty much makes my point that there's no value to it. —Dr Ishmael

20:36, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

If they are only referenced as prior world names in beta, that could just be trivia on the World (Server?) article. Not that I think there's any particular harm in having a stub article; it's not like anyone is going to be searching for those terms or anything. Probably. Vili 点

21:00, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Just because we don't have a lot of information on them doesn't mean they don't warrant documenting. If anything, it means we should be more diligent in making sure that they get documented, since that kind of information is easily missed. There has long been a precedent for this sort of thing, see also GWW's landmarks category, a huge chunk of which is based entirely on gw.dat information that has never been confirmed in-game in any version of the game. I don't understand why it's suddenly become a problem now. –Santax (talk · contribs) 21:45, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

The cases are completely different. The only thing we have for these locations is a name. We have absolutely no information beyond that. So making an article for each and every name is completely pointless. —Dr Ishmael

22:10, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm generally against adding articles that don't do anything except show a name. Maybe we could compromise by redirecting these location articles to a collective article documenting all the locations for which we know bupkus. Perhaps, "List of named but inaccessible locations" or "List of locations in lore" or "List of data-mined locations," with appropriate top-notes. That way, the name is searchable and we aren't "cluttering" the wiki with a lot of empty articles (which imply we have something beyond a name). – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:29, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

With, for example, gw1:The Spider's Heart, we document exactly what we know, which is the quote from the .dat (with the notice disclaimer that it is only .dat information and is not necessarily reliable), with a notes section that explains what we interpret. With the world names, especially the ones that were only around for beta weekends, even saying that those names are also locations in Tyria is speculation. They may be locations that we will eventually encounter/hear about, or they may be locations that were once planned but have since been scrapped or renamed, or they may just be names that sounded good to whoever was naming the worlds without any particular plans to make it a specific place in the world despite the prevailing pattern. Also with Sanctum of Rall, if we ever do find a specific location by that name, it could just as easily be in the Mists rather than Tyria.

A simple note on World listing the no longer used world names would appropriately document everything we know about them. - Tanetris (talk) 02:36, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

More come, yes?

Hey there, could your lore-wizardry help me out with the Miasma page? I got sick of seeing a red link so I created it, but it's lacking in some concrete information about it, such as how it was created from the tower and...stuff. Just some lore things that I'd like you to help me with. Don't make a quaggan sad. --Ventriloquist (talk) 11:35, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Will do! Will have to wait until later though, super busy day today. –Santax (talk · contribs) 11:53, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh hey, no problem, just edit it when you can, Scarlet thanks you. --Ventriloquist (talk) 12:20, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I've added a bit of info, but I'm still not sure what categories it should go in. I'm still not clear on how exactly it was created, it's something that never made much sense to me, but since that forum post was written we have explicit confirmation that the miasma did, in fact, come from the ToN. –Santax (talk · contribs) 13:18, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Great, thanks for adding in all the info. I believe that's all we know about it; I'm not sure if more will be uncovered once S2 hits, but I'm doubtful. As for the category, I guess we could invent a new one called Scarlet's Inventions or something? Since Scarlet's holograms are currently located in her "Alliance" (which, to be honest, doesn't quite make sense), but I'll let you be the judge of that. Thanks again! --Ventriloquist (talk) 07:43, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Rox and Rytlock relation

Hey, I thought I'd ask you directly since someone keeps re-adding it to the NPC pages: where is the source for Rox and Rytlock being half-siblings? Vili 点 21:16, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

They're not in any relation to each other, it was never even mentioned, outside of fanfiction, I suppose. I removed similar statements before, seems like they resurfaced. --Ventriloquist (talk) 21:21, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm asking Santax because this relation is noted in the Living World season 2 background, and Santax wrote almost all of that himself. He doesn't strike me as someone who'd mistake fanfiction for canon. Vili 点

21:32, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Apparently, a leaked comment from a dev 4 months ago confirmed it, but it was deleted. Now was the person that mentioned the deleted comment trolling or not remains a mystery, though it seems odd that they wouldn't at least give us hints at their relationship for 4 months now. I guess we'll wait for Santax's confirmation! --Ventriloquist (talk) 21:42, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, this totally got past me. I thought I remembered it being mentioned in The Origins of Madness: A Moment's Peace or something, but apparently not. Rox and Rytlock being half-siblings is information gleaned from the datamined Season 1 ending, much of which was later changed (including the removal of any mention of that info). It was obviously planned at one stage, then, and all of Rox and Rytlock's interactions were probably written with it in mind, but since it never appears in-game we should only consider it "semi-canon", that is, canon until it gets contradicted (which it easily could be, since there's nothing obligating it to remain part of ANet's plans). So any mention of it on the wiki should come with a disclaimer, maybe in a footnote or something. –Santax (talk · contribs) 23:12, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

User talk:Santax/Archive 5

Contents

Why...?

An apology

My poor missing NPCs.

The Legions of the Charr

Filter edits

Make sure every last bit of lore from the novels is documented

File:Shadow of the Dragon concept art.jpg

ugh

"a location somewhere in Tyria"

More come, yes?

Rox and Rytlock relation

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