User talk:Stephane Lo Presti/January-December 2013

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Wiki app, final (hopefully) update

Hey Stephane, I just wanted to let you know that I intend to publish the wiki app on Google Play by the end of January. There were a few bottlenecks with translations and I had to put the project on hold while I looked for a new job (found one), but I think Poke and I have gotten it in a good place and I'm pretty confident that we'll be able to get it out. I'll probably run the Play description past you once I've written it just to be sure there are no legal whatevers. Felix Omni Signature.png 17:34, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Felix, thanks for the update and congrats on the new job ^_^ Keep me informed and I'd also be interested to test it whenever it's in a stable state (I don't own an Android phone but I guess I can ask someone here who has one to show me). I'll also make sure that it's promoted accross our communication channels once the app is in a good state (released and initial bugs fixed, etc.). Let me know how we can help any further (regarding upgrading MW, I'll talk about that as soon as I can finish writing a big article I want to post on my wiki journal). Thanks to you, poke and everyone else involved with this work! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 17:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

That thing I was meaning to bring to your attention

.. but didn't at the time, because of the holidays. Well, I figured now would be a proper time to bring it up (because Monday morning, woohoo).
During the holidays (and often before them), I have found myself stumbling across 3 pages that are outdated, even though they would have my immediate attention if I was a part of ArenaNet (because frankly, I have a mild obsession in keeping things orderly, but not severe enough :

I was wondering why these pages have been left untouched by ArenaNet officials, even though they appear to be beyond the unsupported abilities of regular contributors here (including admins). A quick glance points out the following matters:

  • Privacy policy
    • The content is concise, but the link now yields a 404 error. I can update the link to the current privacy policy if that is indeed the policy that should be linked there.
  • About
    • Written originally by Emily Diehl, back in 2007, it has been left mostly unchanged ever since. Should the wiki organise this page by themselves, or does ArenaNet have plans for the page?
  • General disclaimer
    • Possibly the least community-influenced page of the three. This content is fairly outdated, including NDA notices and pre-release chronology. I currently can't see the community changing this article to be accurate and up-to-date once more. As such, it's likely an in-office matter prior to any edits made to it.

Since these 3 pages are linked from any page on the wiki, I don't feel they should be in their current state. However, I do not want to boldly edit them without discussing them first. Hence, I wanted to bring them to your attention. - Infinite - talk 13:01, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Infinite, thanks for your feedback. I think these are all excellent points and I'll be working on them (or rather: add it to the list of things I'm working on). I've been super busy in January and, starting this week, I should be able to go back to my todo list for the wikis and that'll be part of it. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 18:35, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Well shoot

Since today is the last day of January and all, I figured I should let you know that Poke and I discovered a last-minute bug that makes the app look rather crappy on phones and tablets running Android 4.0.3 or higher (nearly 40% of active devices) so we're delaying a Google Play release until we can work that out. However, we're going to make the app available for download as an .apk so that people who want to test it and provide feedback can start doing so (unless their carrier is AT&T, which doesn't allow non-Play apps to be installed). It just won't look very good on newer phones. I'll post a link to the download here once I've put it up. Felix Omni Signature.png 04:39, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey there, great news! We'll relay the link as soon as you send it. MAke sure you have aa beta tag on your app ;) I'll be posting a big update to the wiki next week and I'll include this news if it's available. Thanks. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 17:27, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Well, Poke did his German efficiency thing and fixed the bug in very short order. So it is with great pride that I present to you GW2Wiki. Now I believe Poke mentioned that we'd like to keep this fairly low profile and gather user feedback for a week or two. So it would be great if you could pass it around the office and mention it in your Big Wiki Post (TM) this week, but we'd definitely want to hold off on any tweets or facebookings until we're certain there are no huge flaws we overlooked, popular devices it won't work on, and things like that. Felix Omni Signature.png 03:42, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Should we make the navs app-ready, Felix? Currently causes horizontal scrolling on any page that has them (on a device with 800px-width screen). - Infinite - talk 10:25, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
It would be nice but by no means necessary. Felix Omni Signature.png 15:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Hey Felix, seems like I missed this update so I'm going to create a new entry in my journal and publish it around. Let me know how things are going on your end. Thanks for your work guys! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:43, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
So far things are going pretty well. Don't worry about missing the update- we've already gotten 130 downloads just from putting up User:Felix Omni/App and a little word of mouth, and the user feedback has been really helpful. There are a few bugs to fix and small features to consider, but I don't think it will be too long before the app is nicely polished and ready for the big time. Felix Omni Signature.png 00:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Youtube videos

moved to User talk:Stephane Lo Presti/youtube videos

identified spambots

Hi Stephane, I'd like to bring a situation to your attention. As you know, the wiki gets attacked by spambots on a regular basis, but since we can set up AbuseFilter rules to combat their tactics, it usually isn't a serious issue. However, I have been able to identify one range of IP addresses, registered to a single ISP company in Canada, from which we consistently see nothing but spambot activity. I also discovered that this same spammer has been attacking other video game wikis, not just us.

I was wondering if ArenaNet would be able to do anything in regards to this ISP, with the goal of making them take action against the spammer. The ISP's Terms of Service specifically prohibit using their service for any "spam"-like activity. I thought about contacting them myself, but I doubt they'd respond very seriously to "a volunteer administrator of a video game wiki." Since ArenaNet owns the guildwars2.com domain, I figure they probably have a good legal standing to file a complaint with this ISP, and their legal department can make it a lot more "formal" than I could.

If you could inquire about this with the pertinent people, we'd appreciate it. I posted the details (with external links) over on JonTheMon's talk page, if you need to include any of that. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 18:52, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey Dr Ishmael, please send me an email with all the details (ISP name, IP rangers, names of a few spam accounts on the wiki) and I can definitely follow up with some people here. Thanks! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Sent! Thanks. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:06, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Re: Maintenance messages

Given that server maintenance can affect all users, not just regular contributors, I think a sitenotice is wholly appropriate when it happens. Just add the maintenance notice above or below whatever the current sitenotice content is. Felix Omni Signature.png 20:53, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

While I can't speak for everyone, I can't see any objection to having you or other Anet employees edit the site notice. Especially if it's something important, like "the wiki will be inaccessible" on only a few hours notice, it would be better for you to do this directly so that readers can see it immediately. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 20:54, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

As per Felix and Ish, that's what the sitenotice is for - Tanetris 20:55, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
For the sake of clarity: no issues with me modifying it? Thanks for the fast feedback! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:56, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
User:Stephane Lo Presti has permission to modify MediaWiki:Sitenotice (and MediaWiki:Sitenotice id) as necessary to inform the wiki community of upcoming server maintenance or issues. Clear enough? Or too pompous? ;) —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:40, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that I don't ask the community the next time I want to do something like this? ;P (I do want to let the community tell me the best way to do this, some people may find the red of the site notice a tad too violent ;) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
If it's a matter related to wiki downtime, yeah, feel free to go right ahead and do it. It's exactly what we're going to do anyway, as established by all precedent ever. - Tanetris 22:01, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
That may have been something established previously but I wasn't sure, and it's clear now for everybody. Matter's closed, thanks!--Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:02, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Technical request for both wikis

Hi, I'd like to check if you'd seen either of these: GWWT:TECH#Captcha_settings_.26_bot_creations / GW2WT:TECH#Captcha_settings_.26_bot_creations. (I suspect you don't have either of those pages on a watchlist :) )-Chieftain AlexUser Chieftain Alex sig.png 15:38, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I do for the first but not hte second, thanks ^^ --Stephane.Test 01:12, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Wrong account :P --Stephane Lo Presti talk 01:13, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Promoting GW2W:APP

We've had a pretty substantial number of installations since we put the app on the Play store (524 as of writing, which is frankly amazing), and I'm confident that we've fixed all the bugs that users have reported so I think we're ready to take the app public. The specifics of that are up to you and the CR team of course; the only request I have is that you link directly to the google play page (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.felixware.gw2w), so that mobile users can download it immediately rather than having to go through the wiki page on their browser, which is the very reason we made the app. Meanwhile, poke and I will be considering new features and improvements, and I have to design an iOS layout, so there is still much to do. Felix Omni Signature.png 23:13, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok I'll see what we can do to promote it. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 01:13, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Masthead on the spanish wiki

(thoughts: Looks nice, very unobtrusive.) I think it would be a good idea to link to a preview of the spanish wiki with the vector skin in your news post, e.g. to [1] -Chieftain AlexUser Chieftain Alex sig.png 19:30, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Great idea, I just added it. Thanks! ^^ --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:40, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
yep it looks good, and could see it working well here.- User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 19:43, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
It does however push all of the page tabs downwards quite a bit, but I guess its a decent implementation of the gw2 tabs + that we could play with the css to fix that. -Chieftain AlexUser Chieftain Alex sig.png 19:47, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I've implemented it in my personal CSS/JS, and I think it looks good. I modified it from the ES version by leaving the wiki logo in place and placing the masthead to the right of it, instead of placing the masthead at 0,0 and moving the logo down. I also moved the #content and #p-cactions divs down by 1em to make space for it. This positioning is up for debate, of course, since I'm not that great of a layout artist.
Anyone who wants to check it out can use the following:
function addMasthead()
{
  a=document.createElement('div');
  a.id='upperBar';
  a.innerHTML='<ul><li><a href="https://www.guildwars2.com/" target="_blank">GuildWars2.com</a></li>'
             +'<li><a href="http://forum.guildwars2.com/" target="_blank">Forums</a></li>'
             +'<li><a href="https://support.guildwars2.com/" target="_blank">Support</a></li></ul>'

  document.getElementById('column-one').appendChild(a);
}
addOnloadHood(addMasthead);
/* New CSS for masthead */
#upperBar { position:absolute; top:0; left:156px; height:30px; width:700px; z-index: 4; }
#upperBar ul { padding:0px; margin:0px; list-style:none; }
#upperBar ul li { margin:0; padding:0px; display:inline-block; font-family: "EasonPro","Times New Roman","serif"; }
#upperBar ul li:first-child { background:url(https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/themes/guildwars2.com-live/img/nav-external.2181915747.png) no-repeat 0 0; padding-left:121px; }
#upperBar ul li:last-child { background:url(https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/themes/guildwars2.com-live/img/nav-external.2181915747.png) no-repeat 100% 0; padding-right:229px; }
#upperBar ul li a { color:#FFC8AD; text-transform:uppercase; letter-spacing:normal; word-spacing:normal; font-size:12px; padding: 8px 10px; line-height:2.6; background:url(https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/themes/guildwars2.com-live/img/nav-external.2181915747.png) no-repeat 0 -30px; }
#upperBar ul li:first-child a { background-position:-121px -30px; }
#upperBar ul li:first-child+li a { background-position:-206px -30px; }
#upperBar ul li:first-child+li+li a { background-position:-274px -30px; }
#upperBar ul li a:hover { text-decoration:none; text-transform:uppercase; letter-spacing:normal; word-spacing:normal; font-size:12px; line-height:2.6; background:0; }

/* Modified CSS to accommodate masthead */
#content { margin-top: 4.54em; }
#p-cactions { top: 3em; }
#p-personal { right: 0px; width: auto; }
Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 23:11, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Alternatively we could glue the buttons below the personal-portlet on the right (i.e. document.getElementById('p-personal').appendChild(a); + apply something like:
/* New CSS for masthead */
#upperBar               { top:1.75em; right:0; width:auto; height:auto;
                          box-shadow: 0px 0px 10px rgba(50, 50, 50, 0.4); background-image: url(/images/0/00/Skin_header.png);
                          max-width:35%; margin:0px; padding:0px; position:absolute; }
#upperBar ul li         { margin:0px; padding:0px; padding-left:15px; padding-right:15px; background-color: rgba(100,100,100,0.3); display:inline-block; 
                          list-decoration:none; color:#FFC8AD; font-family: "EasonPro","Times New Roman","serif"; }
#upperBar ul            { padding:0px; margin:0px; list-style:none; }
#upperBar ul a li       { text-transform:uppercase; letter-spacing:normal; word-spacing:normal; font-size:12px; line-height:2; background-color: rgba(50,50,50,0.3); }
#upperBar ul a li:hover { text-transform:uppercase; letter-spacing:normal; word-spacing:normal; font-size:12px; line-height:2; background-color: rgba(50,50,50,0.1); }
(this way the page stays in the same place) I've also adjusted the shadow - it was enormous. -Chieftain AlexUser Chieftain Alex sig.png 12:19, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi all. I'm the one that mainly did the style in the Spanish Wiki. This was my first (really used) style, so if you see any mayor issue (I didn't have idea about processing times or those kind of things), please contact me so I can fix them :-). (And, by the way, styles had never been my strong point. I'm more programmer than stylish, so any changes are welcome xD)
The upper bar's shadows is big in purpose, because I thought that either way it ended to abruptly and it didn't looked (At least for me), nice (Or like the GW2 main page). The shadow is intended to do a drop off effect between the bar and the background to the right, without using additional images. --Desaroll 13:24, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
@Alex, shoving it off to the right makes it inconsistent with the other sites that it's linking to, which have it at the left of the content, layered over the red paint swatch. (Admittedly their content has huge side margins so it's closer to center, but it's definitely not to the right.) —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:34, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I've modified the JS and CSS slightly: 1) to use proper tag nesting (ul > li > a) and 2) to make use of the full gradient background from GW2.com. An issue here is that the masthead is now pushed 121px to the right to accommodate the left-hand gradient, since it would look weird to overlay this on the wiki logo. We also can't push the wiki logo down, because of how Alfa designed the paint swatch to exactly fit the log where it is. This positioning doesn't mesh with the Monobook tabs as well, but I do like having the gradients. So... murgh. Feedback requested. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 16:30, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Edit conflict x2 Mk, well if the spanish wiki used a finely tuned css it would look like [[:File:User Chieftain Alex spanish wiki with decent css.png]]. None of the gw2 sites - apart from the ES wiki - actually use a left aligned set of links when you view the page wide enough, so i don't think it would be too bad to put them anywhere at the top of the page. -Chieftain AlexUser Chieftain Alex sig.png 16:32, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Changing default skin

(re: User:Stephane Lo Presti/News/2013-03-12)

In terms of appearance, monobook and vector are roughly the same, thanks to the redesigns by Alfa. Probably the biggest differences are tab style/location/grouping, and search box location - everything else is similar. So, in terms of function... monobook is probably more newb-friendly, because of the tabs. Either way, it might not be a big deal which skin we use, but the status quo is probably a little better (even though I, personally, prefer vector for my own usage). That said, Tanetris would be very unhappy if we changed from monobook, so maybe that's reason enough to do it. pling User Pling sig.png 23:47, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

My stance remains the same as the last time we discussed Vector (that probably wasn't even the last time, but it's the one I found most easily). We're not dropping support for Monobook either way, as many users (myself included) would resent being forced to switch, so the only things it would change would be who has to go into preferences to change their skin, and what anons see. I have yet to see any evidence that a statistically significant number of GW2W's anons, let alone a majority, would prefer Vector. - Tanetris 00:41, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. I see opinions here and in the linked discussion (which I, quite frankly, forgot): has this even been discussed in a larger group? Is this worth polling the wiki community? Don't get me wrong, I'm not on an agenda to change X to Y, I'm seeing opinions both ways and I certainly respect the opinion of admins. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:46, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
what I don't understand is if you are always signed in you can pick the old skin in your preferences it would only effect you if you are not logged in. so I dont see how changing it is a huge issue.- User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 01:00, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
The issue shouldn't be "who prefers what skin," it should be "which skin is best suited for anonymous users?" The major difference is the multiple page-action tabs in Monobook versus 2 tabs and a drop-down menu in Vector. In my opinion, it would actually be better for anonymous users (who are almost entirely readers, not editors) for them to use the Vector skin, as it presents a cleaner page layout, where Monobook presents them with a lot of stuff at the top that they'll likely never need or want to use. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 02:00, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Dr Ishmael for expressing my thoughts better than I did. What do people think about polling the readers of this wiki? --Stephane Lo Presti talk 16:28, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not a fan of polls; and how many voters would have used both skins long enough to have an informed opinion? Probably not many.
"anonymous users (who are almost entirely readers, not editors)" - give them a clearer picture of how to edit and we might see more readers becoming editors. Vector pushes "edit" and "history" to the right of the screen, away from "page" and "discussion", as if they're secondary, less-important buttons. They definitely aren't. pling User Pling sig.png 17:53, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
About your first point: I'm not sure what an "informed opinion" is when it comes ultimately to "taste"?
About the second one: I've never seen this that way, I'm wondering what other people think? If it's a widespread view, I think it's a solid point to actually move away from Vector (functionality rather than aesthetic). --Stephane Lo Presti talk 18:08, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Until pling said something I never thought of it that way but that also seems like its reaching imho.- User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 01:42, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Splitting the user database

(This is more an informational post for those who were not really aware of the user database link, or what that meant for the wikis) When GW2W was created, the wiki was set up to share all user accounts with GWW. This probably made a lot sense back then to have the already established community just continue over to GW2W as well. However it added some minor things that have to be considered since: Given that the whole user database is shared, this also means that all preferences are shared. So if you were to change the preferences on one wiki, that change will take over to the other wiki too. Thanks to caching or whatever, the change is usually not immediate; this behaviour caused quite a bit confusion in the past. Another thing this means is that you cannot set up different skins for each wiki. So for example, you cannot keep GWW on Monobook but change to Vector here; one will always take the preferences from the other wiki, and you’ll end up with either Monobook or Vector.

Splitting the database now will mean that both wikis get an independent snapshot of the current state of the shared database. As such, no data is lost on either wiki. If you had an account on GWW before the split, then GW2W will (still) have that account too, and vice-versa. It’s just that from the moment the split is made, everything is separated again; so all further changes, including preferences updates, skin changes or new accounts, are limited to a single wiki again.

I personally would welcome a split as per above issues with the shared database. By now, we don’t get many benefits from the setup any more. People who register on GW2W are unlikely to contribute to GWW and I don’t see many people register on GWW for non-vandalism reasons anyway. And I really want to make the switch to Vector here but can’t really, as I see GWW as a wiki designed for Monobook. So I’m definitely for a split.

So if that gets done, I would like to take the discussion in a different direction; As of now, we have five wikis in our little “family”: GWW, GW2W, GW2W.DE, GW2W.FR, GW2W.ES. While the language-specific wikis are somewhat isolated for obvious reasons (hint: the language), there are still active contributors on multiple wikis. Maybe to combine the wiki communities in some way, I would like to propose global account mechanism, like CentralAuth which is used on the WikiMedia farms. This would still mean that every wiki is a separate entity (so above issues with the shared database do not apply), but in addition there is a central (independent) user database which is used to collect one’s accounts from multiple wikis. Then this could be used to link GWW and GW2W accounts again, but obviously also accounts on the other language wikis. So one would have a central identity and a central authentication mechanism. poke | talk 21:46, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The idea of CentralAuth seems actually pretty good in theory, as we want to encourage wiki contributors to participate to as many wikis as possible (and there's a certain number of German/French/Spanish editors on the English wikis). We'd have to examine the technical requirements and how this factors into our maintenance operations. The reason why we mentioned it first during our current upgrade plan is that the GW and GW2 wiki databases are linked and thus require us to upgrade the 2 before we can test them. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:56, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Agreed with what poke said, just comparing the two wiki's now they are so different in style and guidelines/Practices and processes and users that it would make a lot of sense to split them now. - User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 22:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
If there are other languages that use different user tables, then yeah, centralauth is probably your best bet since it makes things easiest for the users. It's a hacky solution, though, to the very messy problem of bringing together accounts from multiple wikis where there are username/id conflicts, and if such conflicts aren't a concern then you really probably just want to continue using a shared user table - and just make the preferences tables separate per-wiki. I dunno if there's a built-in or already implemented way to do that, but it'd be a pretty simple extension to make if it came to it. -— Apheori 20:57, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your input; I actually thought that CentralAuth would allow to add literally any account (regardless of id and username) to the global account. If that’s not the case then it might not be a good solution for our small farm. But we can always look into details later; this was more a suggestion to look at after the split happened, so let’s do that first. :) poke | talk 11:55, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
At this point, I think it's important we discuss the idea rather than it's implementation. Poke's idea is still relevant if CentralAuth doesn't work, we can look for a different extension (if there's any). However if the 2 wiki communities (GW and GW2 English wikis) do not like the idea (which I don't think is the case), we'll have to work with this constraint on our backend systems. I personally like this idea as it could bring the 5 wikis closer together (I've seen a few times work from one wiki benefiting the other wikis, e.g. the Spanish wiki's new skin). Finally, and for the sake of clarity, this is not something we're looking to do right away, unless a technical aspect of our operation is greatly eased by this. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 16:55, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't personally have an opinion either way - since I edit on this wiki only, the shared preferences don't affect me. But if it helps other people, let's do it. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 13:11, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
I have an account over on GWW, but I don't ever use it. I kinda agree with poke's sentiment that the two wiki communities are rather separate at this point. The only concern I would raise is for those users that do have accounts on both wikis if they change their password here and don't realize it's separate over on GWW. However, as long as that's informed on the login page and there's a way to recover the password, I think that's a minor issue. I'm all for it. Vahkris 18:39, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki update

Current progress on the update?--Relyk ~ talk > 21:36, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I will assume poking you correlates to faster news updates. I dun stats on this!--Relyk ~ talk > 00:46, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Don't assume anything, I spend most of my time behind the scenes doing lots of stuff (wiki is only one of my tasks). I try my best to reply but I sometimes do not have the time. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:49, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
But in your heart, you have all the time in the world for me to spam your talk page for no reason.--Relyk ~ talk > 00:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
This is just Relyk's way of saying he loves you. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 01:18, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

AbuseFilter bug

We've got a bug where AbuseFilter isn't displaying warning messages. For example, the Section removal rule is supposed to display the warning MediaWiki:Abusefilter-section-warning when an edit triggers it. However, the user only sees a blank page. Could you have the tech team take a look at this? —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 17:47, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

We'll look into it as soon as we can. Can you give me a little bit more context by telling me how it's affecting people? E.g. are a lot of people blocked by AbuseFilter and not getting warning messages, etc. Thanks. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 18:13, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Tested it for myself by logging out, then editing my userpage to add "<br><br>" (Special:AbuseFilter/13). The server returns HTTP error 500, which usually signifies a code malfunction (syntax error, uncaught exception, etc.). Contrary to what I stated above, this happens whenever an AbuseFilter rule is tripped, not just if it displays a custom warning. Fortunately, it still blocks the edit; but where it should be reporting back to the user that they've triggered AbuseFilter, it's returning a 500 error instead. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:45, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Seriously?

I know a lot of people will groan at that, but as for me, bring on the steampunk!

P.S. MS Word probably isn't the best software to use for writing wiki articles. ;) —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:51, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, I posted to the wrong site and I'd appreciate if you could wipe your memory of this :( --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:54, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Yay for official leaks! Ha50.87.144.106 22:07, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Feedback on the name? I feel like I'm missing something here. Vahkris (talk) 22:15, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I see.Vahkris (talk) 22:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Doh! Sorry. ^^; —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 22:30, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
No worries, thanks for bringing this to my attention and being understanding --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:32, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Opportunity for the wiki

Please post your feedback here ^^ --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:13, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I really like the idea. It would make things easier if we could prep various articles for release and then have at least a basic structure of the release for when users try to find something. I have a few questions, though. Would this be similar to how various gaming news sites sometimes get to come in and see content, talk to the developers, etc, so they can write articles? What timeframe are we talking about for the preview play day? During PDT business hours, during the weekend (relevant as I know some members are in different timezones)? Would the information collected be able to be shared outside of the one elected member (to help create the pages) prior to release...say with Admins? Vahkris (talk) 22:31, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
I won't give details right away (apart from saying that none of the information can be shared by the representative with anyone else before the right time) as I want the wiki community to discuss the idea and decide what's its position is. If you feel strongly about it, I'd suggest talking to other people, including admins, and trying to get a consensus. Once this is done, I'm happy to get this any further. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:40, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
That is really interesting and cool. I like it very much. I am not sure if this might be a bit to much for one person to document all the stuff. I am also not sure who guild content will be previewed. You need pretty much a guild to experience this, but that is probably of no concern for the next 'preview play day'. - Yandere Talk to me... 22:47, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Okay, scratch everything I said except the first two sentences as my vote, although I don't know if many would say no to the opportunity to get early info and provide it to players upon release. My opinion, at least. I don't really think it'd be too much for one person, especially if they end up having several days to process it.Vahkris (talk) 02:10, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
+1 From me.-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 04:42, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Of course turning down such an opportunity would be stupid, especially as we want to compete with other fansites, and the best way to do that is to put out content as it is available. So the actual question would be who would have to do it. I’d suggest that we start a list of editors who would personally think they would have enough time this weekend to play and document stuff, and also think they would be able to create useful content from what they gather. Ideally, that person should have some records of willingness to document stuff when content gets released. Note that the content does not only include overall release data, but should preferably contain NPC dialogue, maybe walkthroughs etc. – Regardless of that, I would like to nominate Tanetris because of how he did the last time there was such an opportunity (fanday *cough*). poke | talk 09:40, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
I would prefer to choose a non-admin - not because admins would be any worse at it, but because admins are seen as the epitome of The Regulars and choosing one would come across as too exclusive. And yeah, there are many users who do more than most admins when it comes to putting up content. No one likes Tane more than me (not even YOU, poke), but the mainspace isn't his focus.
Special:NewPages might be a good indication (or starting point) of who we should choose. pling User Pling sig.png 11:25, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
I was going to excuse myself anyway since A) I have family visiting this weekend, and B) I'm better at standardizing existing content than adding new content. But now I can add C) I'm an admin.
I think I'd have to nominate User:Vahkris, he's been putting in a ton of work on the Living Story stuff already, and I feel he could make the most of this opportunity. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 12:36, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Form the Editors I worked with ‎User:Relyk and User:Chieftain Alex immediately spring to mind. But I think Alex still doesn't own the game. ^^
User:Dagger also looks like a dedicated contributer. Just some names I wanted to mention.
I hadn't much contact with User:Vahkris, but from the work he puts into the Living story stuff. He might be the right guy for the job. - Yandere Talk to me... 12:45, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
I already work on Living Story, especially helping create and fill out the release pages and new content. By lucky chance I do have this weekend completely free (except Friday due to work, hence my questions earlier on timeframe) with the family out of town, so I'd definitely be able to do it. I think ‎User:Relyk would also be good since I've worked with him on the Living Story stuff also. Vahkris (talk) 13:49, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
I was going to put Relyk's name forward as well, and I'm pleased to see other people have beaten me to it. As per Pling, I don't believe anyone currently serving as an administrator would be best suited to this role. Felix Omni Signature.png 14:13, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
I’m going to add Claret and Yoe Dude then. poke | talk 15:42, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm currently visiting family and likely won't be available. User:Vahkris is my first choice because he has done a lot of the Dragon Bash content and familiar with how to organize the the release. It's a lot of work to organize the information for a release by yourself. Claret and Yoe Dude would also be up for the task.--Relyk ~ talk < 19:04, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Looks like Vahkris is ready, willing, and available. Felix Omni Signature.png 19:06, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the nomination, Poke. From you, it's gratifying. I think Yoe Dude would be better than I, he's more organised. Not at all saying others would not be fine, but since we were nominated by the same person... Also, my chaotic life would make my availability moot. --Claret (talk) 19:19, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
As a suggestion, list three names in order of your opinion of suitability bearing in mind their willingness. --Claret (talk) 19:19, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
I don't care if the person is an admin or not, as long as the designee is someone who works well with others. Several of the names above are good candidates, but others are not. Vahkris, Yo Dude, and Claret seem open to discussion. 75.37.23.127 19:55, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
While I would certainly be willing and able to do it, I somewhat agree with Pling's point that we don't want to perpetuate any notions that the admins have exclusive/higher authority over content. There are certainly plenty of users who contribute more than me in terms of content production. Vahkris seems like a good choice. Relyk'd be alright. I'm not currently familiar with Yoe Dude, and while I've seen Claret around, I'm not sufficiently familiar with their content contributions.
If something goes terribly terribly wrong and there's no one else to do it (or if there's a sudden outcry that The People want me to), I'd be happy to step in, but otherwise I'm comfortable leaving it to one of our outstanding nonadmin editors. - Tanetris (talk) 20:48, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Hi everyone. Jumping in in the discussion to say a word (I hope it's not seen as preempting the wiki community). I see 4 possible routes at this points:

  1. pick the name that's been suggested most so far (Vahkris) and loop him in so that he'll be able to play at the end of this week; we/the community can always revisit that decision in a few weeks for the next playday
  2. do a quick vote on the most popular suggested names (Vahkris, Chieftain Alex, Claret, Yoe Dude; Relyk and Claret already said they can't) and pick one for playing at the end of this week;
  3. do a not-so-quick vote on the most popular suggested names (Vahkris, Chieftain Alex, Yoe Dude) and pick one for playing in a future session;
  4. continue the discussion

I don't have an opinion about which one the wiki community should choose, but I obviously would like this to happen as quickly as possible, so I'm trying to facilitate that discussion.

Stephane, thanks but I have to decline as I can have to go to work at almost any time and may be there for prolonged periods. Also, being honest, the others on your short list would be better. --Claret (talk) 21:34, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Everyone seems to think Vahkris is the best choice for this, but I think Dr Ishmael would be a good choice too. User Kirbman signature.png talk 21:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Claret, I've modified the list. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:51, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
See above: not good at generating new content. I'd spend too much time playing and not enough time documenting. But thanks for the mention. :) —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:48, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm all for moving forward (#1) so we don't miss the opportunity, but I'm biased there as you can no doubt tell. I was waiting to see if Yoe Dude or Chieftain Alex would come in with their possible availability. Vahkris (talk) 22:03, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Note that it's a responsibility that we can rotate between playdays, so we can always rectify this next time (and explain this to them). --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:10, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Make it Vahkris this time round, and maybe offer it up for another the next time. Then we can make a judgement on who is "best". There, I have spoken  :) --Claret (talk) 22:14, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Alex doesn't own the game. Consensus is better than a simple vote of course, the user will be preparing articles, a suitable featured article, and so on beyond "Weeeee preview yay!" I won't lie, I like the idea of selling a "preview play to new and upcoming contributors to the wiki as chosen by their peers" to people.--Relyk ~ talk < 22:18, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Go for it Vahkris, and do your best to show the people out there that we can produce high quality content on launch too :) poke | talk 22:22, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
I think the idea of promoting this to "new" (people who have a solid history of good edits) editors is really cool. Just my .001 cents --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:23, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) I say we let Vahkris do it this time and see how they do. but also do something a little more formal (like the request for admin) so that we can have someone that a lot of the community wants instead of someone we picked for this quick turn around.-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 22:23, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Having several people rotating for that may be a good option too, because people have lives and may not be able to cover this all the time. (doing this would require more communication with us but I'm all for it if it makes things easier for the wiki community) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:26, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Looks like we're pretty settled on Vahkris, at least for this time. Vahkris, don't let us down. Or else. - Tanetris (talk) 22:37, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
maybe we should set up a sub page of the community portal to select like 5 people so if someone cant do it this time they can do it next time ect? and be more formal about it?-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 22:41, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
We can set up a Project page for this topic. And yeah rotation, sound like a good plan.
By the way, good luck with your work, Vahkris ^^ - Yandere Talk to me... 22:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Good job everyone on the speedy response, I'll be taking things from here. Vahkris: can you send me an email via the wiki? Or else come to the IRC wiki channel? Thanks! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 23:00, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Sent, I think. Figures, it's decided while I'm driving home. :P Vahkris (talk) 23:33, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Have fun downloading the stage client. Bring back something good! 50.87.144.106 23:39, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for giving me this opportunity. I'm rather humbled, I must say. If all goes well, I'll have articles like release page with new features and overview, featured page, achievements, items, activities, dungeon, guild content, hunts (I'm just listing some various things that generally appear in all releases, I haven't looked at anything yet), screenshots as necessary for pages, as well as hopefully guides where necessary, uploaded at the appropriate time, of course. Once it's out, everyone can make adjustments as necessary if I screwed up some layout or info, just like everyone normally does to the release content on patch days. :P Cycling it would be a good idea, I'm in a situation this time where I can be available...not sure that'd be the case next time. ..."or else?" Crap. Vahkris (talk) 00:24, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Also...Alex doesn't own the game? 0_0 Vahkris (talk) 00:24, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I started this page Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Projects/Wiki News Ambassador so we can get the ball rolling on people to rotate.-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 00:46, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the consideration, I found this too late as per my habit. I am a content type editor and I am quite happy with the contributions I can make with my limited wiki skills, but I have so many red links I'm trying to fill that I haven't had the time to see any new areas since perhaps halloween. I let the folks that like being the first to do something make those types of pages, giving me early access would be a waste. Yoe Dude (talk) 03:08, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Vahkris is a great choice - enjoy the new content as well as the content-documenting :). pling User Pling sig.png 14:11, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Must...avoid...updating...new...release...page. All...edits...under...additional...scrutiny...gah! :P Vahkris (talk) 19:49, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Oh, you visited the william shatner acting school? ^^ - Yandere Talk to me... 20:07, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Best $1.85 I ever spent. Vahkris (talk) 20:12, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
$1.85?? You were robbed. --Claret (talk) 21:50, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
Talking bad about Bill???? Best celebirty EVER to have share your b-day, folks either love him (like me) or hate him , but always a great conversation starter! Yoe Dude (talk) 02:26, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

No offense intended to any of the nominees, but I strongly disagree with the idea of giving early access to select players. This not only lends to creating a "privileged class" of players and editors (which is anathema to a wiki community if Anet had bothered to do any research on how successful wikis are run), it also directly gives the privileged players an economic advantage by allowing them to see upcoming changes to things like recipes and material demand before the rest of the community does. If you want players to be able to preview content then this needs to be implemented as an open, public test server or nothing at all. I am not interested in playing a game where the developers and their buddies are given an advantage over everyone else. CCP (Eve Online) tried this and it unsurprisingly resulted in a conflict of interest and multiple scandals. This is just a bad idea, proven to not work, and if Anet proceeds with it then I hope for the game's sake they can handle the inevitable PR disaster waiting to happen. 66.214.50.87 05:54, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I understand your concerns, but you should know that this kind of thing happens all the time to fansites, news sites and stuff. That’s why sites can publish previews of new features on patch days etc. As the wiki couldn’t take part in such offers before, simply because there is no “representative” of the wiki community, we constantly have a disadvantage compared to other sites reporting about new releases. Yes, we are a wiki where everybody can contribute, but yes, we also face competition by other sites. This opportunity is now a way to allow us to catch up, and provide content on time when people are interested in it. I think this is a very important thing and can only help the wiki to become better. After all, if we can promote the wiki further with good content, we will also get more editors adding more and better content. And that’s our single goal. poke | talk 13:04, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
I really don't think anyone the wiki community chooses to represent us is going to use this opportunity to amass in-game wealth. Felix Omni Signature.png 14:11, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Also, this doesn't seem like a gw1:Test Krewe-type thing, but a press preview to build hype for new releases. Like poke says, this is already happening - the only difference is we're now being invited to it. pling User Pling sig.png 15:20, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
FYI we'll be paying attention to whatever happens with the information gathered a playdays and have guidelines in place asking everyone involved in a playday to not do the things you mentioned. If they do, we'll take actions. What poke, Felix and Pling said above is at the core of why we chose to offer this opportunity to the wiki. Our wikis are not only places of knowledge where our passionate players create and update articles. They're also communities and to a certain extent fansites, and we wanted to recognize this. We offered this opportunity to the wiki community and I was expecting a debate. The very short notice means that this debate may not have fully happened, but I think there's still room for a debate. I personally do not think that this is creating "privileged editors", especially if there's a rotation between different people and if this opportunity is also used with newer editors. (can you provide specific examples and webpages talking about the CCP PR disaster you mentioned? If this is related to the CSM, then I must say that you're comparing apple and oranges, as Pling explained) Thanks for your feedback --Stephane Lo Presti talk 16:28, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to close this discussion on my talkpage and ask people to continue it on Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Projects/Wiki News Ambassador. I'm following the page but feel free to poke me here if my attention is needed. Thank you! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 16:41, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

error on official SPoT guide

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-guide-to-sky-pirates-of-tyria/

Under "New Achievements," it links to the article "Sky Pirates" which doesn't (and shouldn't?) exist. The achievements are at Sky Pirates of Tyria (achievements). —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 14:03, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Not an error, the achievement category is named "Sky Pirates" in game. I've moved the wiki page accordingly. - Tanetris (talk) 17:34, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Aha, then it was our ambassador's fault. No more free previews for you, Vahkris! —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 17:54, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
All my fault. I created the release page template before I even got in game, and never updated the link name for the achievements entry, so it used that when I created the page. Vahkris (talk) 17:56, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for being on top of that everyone ^^ --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:02, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Using content from the Bradygames strategy guide.

I've noticed the Bradygames Guild Wars 2 Strategy Guide contains several well-written guides and some detailed maps. If ANet has any ownership of the contents of this guide, and possibly source images, we would be able to extend the wiki with these. --User Karasu sig.png Karasu (talk) 17:21, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:Copyrights Stuff in the Brady Guide is covered under their copyright; stuff on the wiki is covered under GNU Free Documentation, unless it was written/published by ANet directly, in which case it's also all-rights reserved and we print it verbatim, aside from formatting.
Brady Games would have to give permission and I can't see how it's helpful for them to see their guides available anywhere online. You can always read those guides and interpret the advice for the wiki. Copying verbatim from the guide would be out. Good faith would also avoid substantial paraphrasing, e.g. "four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth" to "87 years ago, our ancestors gave..." is fine if it's just the one sentence; it wouldn't be ok to paraphrase the entire Gettysburg Address like that without attribution and probably not without permission.
tl;dr it's ok to read the guides and update wiki articles with original writing based on what you learned. It's not ok to copy or do a line-for-line rewrite. 75.37.19.152 18:44, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, tha'ts kind of what I expected. I was mostly referring to the use of their maps. It's basically the same as the maps we have right now but with the names of the areas written on top of it. Being able to copy instead of recreating the exact same thing. --User Karasu sig.png Karasu (talk) 19:12, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
I tried to find the previous case where questions about the Brady guide showed up on the wiki but was unable to find it. If memory serves, complete content from the lore part of the guide was posted here (maybe it was Konig?) and I had to delete it, because copying content goes against copyright rules as 75.37.19.152 explained. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:52, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Living Story/Living World

These terms are being thrown around and since Dragon Bash, I'm under the impression "Living Story" is being phased out for "Living World". This is somewhat confirmed with the "Living Story" category during the preview being changed to "Living World" at release (unless I'm going crazy). What do you think is proper terminology for releases considered part of the Living World? Most articles are using "the Living Story <release>" and I think we are headed towards a "Living World release that tells a Living Story". I personally dislike every release being labeled Living Story or Living World because it's such a broad term you can call any release a Living Story release and it becomes redundant. An example would be Living Story Summary, where we want to summarize event related to the Living World. I feel like we want to phase out "Living Story" altogether and just call "Living Story releases" releases part of a Living World.--Relyk ~ talk < 03:52, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Your impression is correct, we now only use "Living World" and stopped using "Living Story" a while ago. As for releases, they're simply called releases! We have no other terminology for that (at least not in a consistent way that should be referred to). I agree with you that the wiki should stop using "Living Story" and move to "Living World" so that it's consistent with our public communications (website, forums, social medias) and does not confuse players. Let me know if you have further questions. Thanks! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 16:25, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
I've got a question, hopefully I'm asking it correctly. Do you know or can you find out if the Living World teams are treating each month as one release/story arc broken into two pieces (and as such we could technically treat the set of two releases as Act I and Act II of the same arc) or do they treat each 2-week release as its own arc that just happens to fit together? We know they've been overlapping (first release for full month, second release just for the remaining two weeks) but it would make our job much easier if they are intentionally meant to be a two-part act or if it's not but that's just how they've been working out so far. Vahkris (talk) 13:30, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
Hey Vahkris. Our teams do not work on this particular 2-part structure, but it sometimes happens to be that way, for various different reasons. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:42, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

WikiFauna

Are you familiar with WikiFauna? - Tanetris (talk) 03:59, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Nope, but that sounds like an interesting direction to develop that "variety of wiki editors" (I forgot to mention the anons btw). Shall we develop a GW2WikiFauna? I'm claiming the WikiSkritt to represent the wiki community ;) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 16:21, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Quick Courtesy Note

Hi there, I've uploaded File:User_Stephane_Lo_Presti.jpg for you using the exact same image as from the Guild Wars 1 Wiki, and it now shows up on your General page in your userspace, rather than a stub link. -- My Talk Lacky 09:51, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Lacky, many thanks for that! ^_^ --Stephane Lo Presti talk 16:08, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
Not a worry. Just in case you're interested, there's a little discussion going on here about the image. -- My Talk Lacky 04:16, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

weekly statistics

I would suggest omitting Main Page from the top 10 lists because it's the page everyone lands on when they visit wiki.guildwars2.com - it's always going to be #1. In fact, you might want to omit all of the current top 4: as you noted here, "they always show up," so it's not interesting to anyone to keep seeing them in the list. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:29, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

While you're right on the #1 spot, I'd like to make it as complete as possible (people will ignore #1 after a while :). Regarding the next 4 articles, it's not exactly true that they stay the same. There's a certain amount of rotation (I could provide the data if I had time) and certain pages disappear from the top8 regularly (then come back). I think you can have a better feeling about this when you'll 4 to 6 weeks of data. Thanks for the feedback ^^ --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:35, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
The German wiki has this page in the "Guild Wars 2 Wiki" namespace, rather than my personal page. Shall I move it too for the English wiki? --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:40, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
If you promise to maintain it, go ahead :P poke | talk 19:42, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
That's what I thought :P --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:48, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) I can see your point, but I'd argue that keeping "stale" information in there (esp. Main Page) is limiting the amount of "interesting" information you could show. You're already limiting yourself to a top 10 list (which is perfectly reasonable), and by keeping the Main Page in there, you're effectively reducing that to a top 9. This isn't a hugely important issue, though, so I won't waste both of our time arguing about it. :) —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:44, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
Feel free to move it to GW2W:STATS or something. If there is other trivial but interesting information you could provide, that would be nice too. Felix Omni Signature.png 19:46, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
I can extend this list to actually have 10 useful articles if that makes more sense/is more useful? What other information would be useful? --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:48, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
Most common search terms? Top 10 countries of visitors? Browser/OS used by visitors? Pretty much any webstat type stuff would be interesting. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 19:53, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
Most common search terms: can do. Top 10 countries of visitors, Browser/OS used by visitors: can only do as relative percentage (I don't want to reveal any absolute number) and I imagine that it'd have limited interest? Given that the last 2 would not vary too much, it's perfectly feasible. The first one may add a tiny bit to my workload but I can see a good use for the wiki community so I'll probably include it. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:59, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't even expecting percentages, just a list, but that would be a nice bonus. Search terms would definitely be useful for us, as it would show us what people are looking for on the wiki (not just what they're reading, as the top 10 pages list does) and indicate areas we should focus on. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 20:09, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) So I went ahead and tried a new version: User:Stephane_Lo_Presti/Wiki_Weekly_Statistics#Week_July_26_to_August_1st I won't be able to do that very week I think, except for popular pages and search terms. I'll have to investigate how to get the search term top10 from the actual in-wiki search tool (FYI [2] is always #2 and [3] is generally #4 or #5) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:43, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

WikiMaps Project

Hey, thanks for mentionig my WikiMaps project over here. I've started a clean repo of it in the hope that the community will help to create cool maps: https://github.com/codemasher/Guild-Wars-2-WikiMaps --Smiley™ de: user | talk 13:56, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

My pleasure Smiley, I'm glad that I can help the global wiki community to get together and share their work accross all languages! As you may also have noticed, the API documents (documentation, list of API apps, etc.) are now coming to this wiki so you should feel free to participate (and we can add you to the API editor group for sure). Thanks again for your work :) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 16:12, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
We originally wanted to use SemanticMaps for this, but the current extension removed the ability to use custom maps within OpenLayers before we got it in, so we weren't able to do it. Vahkris (talk) 16:57, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Hey, don't try to steal me off the german wiki! :D Like i've already suggested in the forums, i'd be eager to translate the documentation into german if you'd create that special API namespace there. I've turned the german API article already into a documentation, but a single page simply explodes with so much information... Oh and today i've added the first "official" interactive map to an article (we had just a few test maps in the project namespace before) - it's not yet perfect but a way to go, see: de:Heißluftballon :) --Smiley™ de: user | talk 17:19, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
@Vahkris: let me know if Smiley's project can be used for that or if there's anything we can do to help on the tech side.
@Smiley: I'm not trying to! ;P We actually decided to only do the API in English and not in any other language so that developers (most of whom speak English) can focus on the English API Development subforum and interact with Cliff. This is a "design" choice but we're not against players relaying these information in other languages of course (thanks for doing it :). We'd rather though that the community of API application developers focus its efforts in one language, since it's much more efficient that way (it's after all a rather small community at the moment, albeit an active, engaged and knowledgeable one). I'm going to relay the information about the first "official" use of your interactive maps so it can be promoted (or you can tweet yourself at @guildwars2_fr also). I hope this helps! Thanks
--Stephane Lo Presti talk 17:27, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
To further explain the API namespace: The namespace will replace the forums as the official documentation for the API, so that will be the only official place to read the specifications. So to protect the integrity behind it, the pages need to be locked against public edits, and the simplest way to do that is simply a separate namespace.
Of course you are more than welcome to have a translated documentation on the German wiki, and you are just as welcome to participate in improving the official wiki in the API namespace as well :) poke | talk 18:30, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
<edit conflict> Dang, i somehow completely overlooked Vahkris' post :o I've also seen the SemanticMaps extension - it's cool, but i believe we can do better with just SMW and a bit more javascript (since we're pulling a lot of data from the API anway) - i still have a lot of ideas ;) I can fully understand the effort to pull all the developers to a central platform, i just thought it would be worth to translate the documentation since there's a huge german community out there which would profit from that. (@poke, i see your point) Anyway, feel free to add me as editor then :D Btw. i've already tweeted a lot @GuildWars and @GuildWars2 from my public account @chillerlan but never got any retweets or mentions so that i felt a bit "unheard" q.q --Smiley™ de: user | talk 18:41, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Please use the @guildwars2_de account, that's the one that we use for the German community. Thanks --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:06, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Well, i tweet in english most of the time but i'll give it a try, hoping that Martin or Ramon will "hear" me :D --Smiley™ de: user | talk 19:16, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Better developers than me would need to look at this widget to determine how useful it would be, although that's honestly a pretty low bar. Dr Ishmael also was very interested in it. My dream was that we could have a dynamic map of each zone (or just a single page for each world with the whole world map) where we could show what events were active (similar to poke's implementation allowing you to see which world an event is currently active on), utilizing the API. Vahkris (talk) 19:43, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

<reset indent> Thats also my goal, but i find the API not yet useful for it since you have to pull a lot of data at the same time - it's no problem when you have a database driven website with a cronjob running to get permanently updates from the API, but on the wiki you're kinda limited to do that on the fly - and pulling like 500k of data on the fly just to use 1k of it is far from effective. --Smiley™ de: user | talk 19:57, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Would this situation improve if it was coded as a wiki extension? Meaning that our wiki servers would be doing all the work and they have more resources. I guess it'd be a very significant project and I'm not saying that we'd be able to allow it (security would be an obstacle as we've never really have custom code of such a size in our wikis), but I wanted to mention the idea. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:22, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Thats actually an idea i was about to mention, but thought "umm, no?" because i'm unsure about the connection of the wiki and API servers. It would be indeed great if you could do the "cron job" on your sytems in a way so that we could pull all nessecary data witout effort - but it would still need some API optimizations i believe. --Smiley™ de: user | talk 21:04, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that how close the wiki and API servers are is important (but it would probably help). It's more the fact that servers are doing the work, rather than your computer (or any small server you're using). --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:12, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I have been wanting to write such an extension for a while, but too busy. Ideally, it would have a in-wiki database where the results would be cached. poke | talk 21:15, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I know you are and I'm hoping that by opening more communication links within the wiki community, we can get people like you (and there are more that are not on this discussion) to collaborate and share projects. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:17, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
On a second thougt, i believe it's not nessecary to do that much work on your systems - i think a tool, an API like a geocoder would be enough to do all the work. It's not the problem to do multiple requests to the API, the only problem ist the current size of the API responses. If we'd just receive the data we need and not all data thats available we'd have fast and reliable maps. (according to a Google research people waste ~100 man years a year just on waiting for uncompressed HTTP requests - i wonder how many man years are wasted because of unnessecary overhead data ^.^) --Smiley™ de: user | talk 21:34, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
So basically, our work would be a lot easier, if the maps API had some more filter parameters like the events API to restrict the resulting data sets so we don't have to do that on client PCs (which is a lot, lot slower). smiley already linked some of his suggestions on the API forums above. :) --Tera (talk) 14:46, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, i didn't link any suggestions regarding the API here yet (the above link was just about the docs), but i believe you refer to this post of mine ;) --Smiley™ de: user | talk 15:03, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Tzk. Yeah, I was so sure this had been posted before. --Tera (talk) 07:26, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

On a related note, Ishmael made a [[Widget:Zone map|similar widget]] for this wiki awhile back.--Relyk ~ talk < 11:26, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

See how it went that way: User talk:Dr ishmael/Archive 6#MAPS --Smiley™ de: user | talk 17:45, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Buy link

So, let me be honest about this from the very beginning: I’m not a fan of that idea. As a somewhat independent community I don’t really like the idea of us promoting to buy the game on your site. Also, first and foremost, we are a resource for players, not pontential buyers. As such, a permanently visible link in the side bar or elsewhere essentially removes valuable navigation space in favor of something most of our visitors will not be interested anyway. So if we were to add the link somwhere then maybe on the main page, but not in the wiki navigation. Also, the buy link is always two clicks away via the masthead. poke | talk 23:54, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Note that I edited my post indicate that "buy" could in fact be "try". Would this change your viewpoint? Thanks --Stephane Lo Presti talk 23:56, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
I'd still agree with poke; the wiki is a game resource, visitors aren't interested with such on the wiki itself. I don't see a problem with using the masthead to link.--Relyk ~ talk < 00:13, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
You two opened up a part of the wiki design that I didn't think about (to be honest I wanted to focus on the very idea of adding this to the wiki, not what shape it'd take). If we left the left navbar untouched but modified the masthead, would it be more acceptable? --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:17, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
I have no problem with you guys(anet) promoting the game that this wiki is for on the wiki.-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 01:07, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
I'm not (quite) saying no, but whether sidebar or masthead, I think a store page link on every page of a wiki designed for players of the game is most likely to feel.... In poor taste, at best. Do I want to see a "Buy Now" link when I'm looking up Arah explorable strategies? No, no I do not. As Poke said, the masthead does link to guildwars2.com, which has a shopping link right there. Could we fit something on the main page? Maybe. I do think our Running the game page (which is the first page linked under Game Basics on the main page) wouldn't suffer from a "Where to buy" section, all things considered.
Regarding free trial periods, I believe those always make it into the news announcements, so that's pretty well covered already. - Tanetris (talk) 06:33, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
A section on Running the game about buying the game, free trials, downloading the client, etc. sounds acceptable. I don't mind having the link in the masthead because it represents official site resources, but I understand what Tanetris means by "poor taste" if it's not a useful resource of players and two clicks away anyways.--Relyk ~ talk < 07:03, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
Would it be in poor taste whatever creative shape it takes? I think that the idea that "a buy button is 2 clicks away anyway" is completely irrelevant to any discussion (so many things are 2 clicks away) and adding the information on where to buy the game is also not what we're discussing (you're talking in terms of players who already know the game or who know wikis really well). I wouldn't consider the news of a free trial as covering this free trial for people who stumble on our wiki, however the idea of using the mainpage only (and no other page) is quite interesting. I understand the general reluctance to these sort of things and I can ensure you that this is not an attempt to turn our wiki into an advertising website (I was told on the German GW2 wiki that the wiki is one in essence, but that's not true). That being said, I want this discussion to happen and we will definitely respect our wikis and their communities. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 18:18, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
I find it very unlikely that anyone who doesn't own the game but wants to will come to the wiki before going to Amazon, Gamestop, or the main website. I can understand that you might want a Buy link to be visible from every page in case someone ends up on the wiki by accident, reads an amazingly well-written article, and decides to impulse-buy the game, but that strikes me as an extreme edge case. However, Tanetris's suggestion of including it in Running the game is reasonable. We should have that information available somewhere, just not everywhere. Felix Omni Signature.png 19:11, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Just wanted to update that topic. Given how discussion are going at the moment on the 4 wikis, I think that a "Buy" link wouldn't be received very well (and that's fine) but a "Try" link could be acceptable. I haven't seen yet wiki players strongly opposing this feature (although no one replied to my first reply about this above) but there's still time to do this. We could even implement it for the free trial that's happening, starting this week. I'd also like to be clear: we do not want to for the wiki community into a weird situation where people disagree or feel forced to agree. Please do not hesitate to share any concern or your honest opinion here. Thanks --Stephane Lo Presti talk 23:41, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Tanetris mentioned it, we already put free trials in the news announcement and link to the official page. What is the purpose of a "try" link if free trials are only available for a limited time? Would we remove the link once people can't register for the it anymore? That seems equivalent to covering it in the news (although the news links to the news instead of registry page).--Relyk ~ talk < 01:34, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
The goal is "visibility". I can see how many people click the news link and it's not a lot at all (granted that it may not be better if it's in the top navbar but who knows?) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 16:53, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
I dont have an issue with a link to the store, but I do have an issue with the proposed position, if you do it, imo only one place is appropiate and thats the top nav bar (currently saying guildwars2.com, forums and support). It is very obvious that all links there are not part of the wiki and there is room there (alternativly, you can change the guildwars2.com link to the store). As for the trial weekends. I would suggest that announcements of a trial goes into the news section of the frontpage and stay there atleast till the weekend starts. In the end having more people playing benefits the wiki as well and it is news. This way the wiki's neaturality would be safe and we still serve the best game developer in the world ;) Ranique (talk) 22:11, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Release rename

Couldn't have given some of us a warning that the release name was going to change to Clockwork Chaos? :P Vahkris (talk) 17:08, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Nope :P You'll understand --Stephane Lo Presti talk 17:11, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
Okay, I'll make the release name changes. It's a nice fake out, though. :DVahkris (talk) 17:16, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Technical stuff

Those values for $wgShowIPinHeader and $wgCaptchaTriggers['create'] are the default values, so I’d suggest not including them explicitely in the configuration file. Apart from that, those values seem fine. It makes me wonder about the other unmentioned configuration changes we did in all this time though; you still keep track of those, right? :P Also, will that upgrade include the database split for GWW and GW2W? poke | talk 20:53, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand why you're turning off captcha for page creation. The majority of spam we receive is page-creation, so, frankly, it seems dumb to turn that off. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 20:56, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
It’s disabled for both editing and page creating by default. If we were to ask anonymous users for a CAPTCHA with every created page, we would have a lot less articles… poke | talk 21:02, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Oh, related question: Can we get an update of the AbuseFilter extension? poke | talk 21:13, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
There's also a new release of SMW, 1.8.0.5, with a few bugfixes. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:37, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Batch answers: @poke: I didn't explain it but we were not setting the variables, we wanted to make sure the values are correct. What unmentioned config changes are you talking about? (email me if necessary) No database split for the moment. We'll add the AbuseFilter update. @Dr Ishmael: let us know if we need to change the captcha setting (looks like we don't given poke's answer). We'll add the SMW update to the lot. Thanks! The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stephane Lo Presti (talkcontribs) at 21:47, 4 September 2013‎ (UTC).

Well, I’m mostly referring to things like namespace configurations, subpage configurations, permissions, rate limits etc. Not sure about everything we did so far, I did not take track of all that (I hope you did, and it’s still in the config :P). poke | talk 21:54, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Are you talking about changes before we created Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:Changelog? If that's what you're talking about, we only have limited traces of that and I'm not sure if we'll ever have the time to put them there. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:24, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Yes, long before that; but no, I don’t care about filling the changelog. As long as you still have those changes active in the configuration (from carrying it over and not resetting it to default), I’m completely fine with that :P poke | talk 23:49, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
For pretty much the last 18 months (and very probably more than that but it was before I was the Wiki Liaison), we've been operating on the basis of carrying over all changes (which is also why we have legacy stuff like the ArenaNet Contrib group, etc.) so all is good! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 23:56, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

WvW Guides

Well, WvW is my favored part of the game. So I was wondering what kind of guides do you had in mind?

Supply, Structures, WXP are pretty easy to understand concepts. AOE limits and therefor commander stacking are probably not so obvious at first. - Yandere Talk to me... 19:22, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

We're thinking of a page a little bit like Extended Online Manual but for WvW. The WvW article has a lot of information but doesn't work as a tool to easily get players into WvW, by taking their hand and telling them where to go, what the key objectives are, etc.
Do you know if there are some good WvW guides out there, a list of them in addition to a very good introduction could do the job maybe?
I'm hoping we can put something together fairly quickly (next week?) and depending on the need for editors/resources, to publish a few tweets.
LEt me know what you think and thanks a lot for offering to help! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:28, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Hey Stephane, sorry I can't help you with the WvW guides. I just don't play it often enough to be of any assistance. I have however been looking over the WvW-section and some pages. Maybe don't make guides but improve the current set up. At the moment there are not alway dedicated pages for keeps, mills, camps, etc. many do have names cause of simular names as PoI's or regions, but it is all very much organised as PvE. PvE has however events and hearts with descriptions and tactics how to do them. WvW, has events but are currently always the same setup (take the camp, defend the camp, amount of supplies). Maybe start by making dedicated pages for each capture point. Besides the service provided when you have that point it is also good to explain what the tasks are to capture it (is there one gate or more? how many enemy npc's? any usefull tactics like high nearby hills you can use?). So write these pages more from the perspective of the attacker. hope this helps a bit. Ranique (talk) 19:35, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
WvW is something I just good hocked with. So I started playing and with the time I got everything down. That's why I never bothered to look at guides. But I think, I could write something like the Extended Online Manual for WvW. Probably not tonight but I will pitch a draft in the next days.
@Ranique: Yeah the WvW section could be a bit more complete, but I think this is not what Stephane ment. When I look at the WvW page getting there is a helpful information, and the roles section. But what are all these pie diagramms do? Can a Golem punch down a wall? Where should I spend my WXP on? These are questions you are probably having when you start WvW and the current main article adresses these questions poorly. - Yandere Talk to me... 19:56, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Yandere, if you can think about it and create an outline (no details, just the big lines and structure) it'd be a good start. On my side, I'm trying to ask the WvW team if they have information and guides to share with the community and that we may be able to add to this guide.
@Ranique: thanks for the feedback. I think it'd be a good thing independently from this guide anyway, and maybe we can do it while we're working on the guide. It'd be super interesting however to have the opinion of a WvW novice, so that this guide ends up being effective. So feel free to share your opinion and ask more people to join the project. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:11, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
I would also be willing to help out on this matter. I think a guide on what to do would be helpful. A lot of servers have their own server community hosted VOIP solution. I think it would be important to at least mention that. When somone throws up a draft give us a link so that we can give feedback. Anzenketh (talk) 20:13, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Great, more people means it should be a bit easier. Thanks for offering to help Anzenketh! Now, don't forget that it's not supposed to be an extensive guide and that it's targeted at existing GW2 players that know very little about WvW. This kind of players may not be super interested in TeamSpeak servers (at least at first, this is something that the players more invested in WvW would use) so I think it'd be considered "advanced" content in a way. We can discuss what would constitute or not a good guide, but keep in mind the general idea of "keep it simple" (which also means that it'll be easier to write!)--Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:18, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Also, an idea given to me by a coworker: use | Hugh Norfolk’s livestream recording about introduction to WvW. It should provide a good outline for such a "WvW for dummies" guide and I'm even thinking that the video should be at the top of the guide. People generally prefer to watch videos :) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:33, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Another resource I found: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/The-Basics-of-WvW-guide-and-more/ --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:19, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
I have written down the things which seemed most important to me: User:Yandere/wvwguide. I am not sure how my spelling is. I am extremly tired right now cause of some personal issues. I hope this is helpful and I hope it goes in the right direction. - Yandere Talk to me... 13:10, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for getting this started. I hope you don't mind the edits I plan on doing. 17:16, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
I have made a few edits (hope you dont mind) but will make more when I have read the entire document.-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 22:01, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
ok I made some heavy edits to your page Yandere-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 22:50, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Can we rewrite the World vs World page to act better as a guide. I often find that the difference between a Technical Manual and a Guide is a guide has a bit more instructional information and is organized differently. I was working on the guide and I realized I was duplicating a lot of the information. So I put together the following page here on how I would rewrite the World vs World page as a guide. The advantage of this is we don't have to change things in two locations. As if we write a guide we will. Anzenketh (talk) 22:07, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I will take a look at your changes and kind of agree that a rewrite of that page would be better because some major things are only linked to instead of being prominently displayed.-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 22:50, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
I am just going to give this a bump I havent had the time to look into this yet but seeing as the new season starts in exactly a week we should think about this some more.-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 22:44, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikis vs guide sub discussion

Except for me! :D I honestly prefer written guides, they are much easier to parse and scan through when you need to refer to something that was said earlier or when you're just looking for something specific. And you can read at your own pace, instead of being limited/rushed by the video presenter's cadence. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:07, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
You're obviously not our intended audience :P Plus if you prefer the written content, you can just ignore the video (but if you don't like it, then you have the option) I know very well that the "G-word" (guide) is not super popular on the wiki and that there are intrinsic tensions between documenting (wiki) and guiding, but it turns out that the first one can be sometimes be transformed into the 2nd one. What I like about the Extended Online Manual is that it does what a basic guide does but has in addition all the good stuff from the wiki by linking to articles. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:32, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm actually in favor of guides on the wiki. It's a much better repository for things like that than reddit or random blogs. —Dr Ishmael User Dr ishmael Diablo the chicken.png 21:36, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm with you but: 1) I'm not sure everyone is onboard with this position (documenting vs. guide); and 2) guides usually carry a much heavier notion of "property" where its author assumes she'll be recognized for her work (through her name), and this notion is a bit in tension with the collective ownsership of knowledge on wikis. That being said, I remember that "ownership" was one of the key feedback of the reddit wiki discussion (initiated by Pling).
We can provide a written overview in some form or another. Written guides that pertain to specific tactics, builds, or strategies won't work on a wiki. A page that only lists resources for WvW would also be pretty lackluster, as you remove the power of wikilink to articles on the wiki. I'm pretty sure an overview that contains basic information on aspects of WvW would go over well. Wikis aren't the best place for PvP guides though, there will be consternation in any form a WvW guide takes and such pages tend to not receive enough attention to maintain or improve them.--Relyk ~ talk < 23:20, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
The problem with Builds is Meta Changes so fast. However specific information in regards to what type of skill that are needed in PvE are a little more stable. I definitely think that Guides are needed for some of the harder content link Guild missions or even the Revamped World events like what is coming on the 17th of this month. The main problem with walkthough that include builds is that too much opinion is put into it at times. Anzenketh (talk) 16:14, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
We used to have guides, usually referred to as walkthroughs, all over GWW before. it’s just for GW2W, that people stopped bothering writing these things and instead rather plot down facts… I prefer having actual texts myself. poke | talk 08:21, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
Valid point Poke, but maybe not the right place to discuss this?? Maybe bring this up in the community talk page? I do think that people visiting the page of the shadow behemoth has limited interest in what skills he is using, but it might be helping them alot to tell them that his hitbox is funny and a bit hard to hit with melee weapons. with ranged weapons it is easier to hit him and deal damage (just an example).Ranique (talk) 15:41, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Weird Room possibly testing area or exploit

I found this last night while doing a dungeon. This room was far off the Caudecus's Manor explorable path, we got there making some jump to outside the map, then walked quite a way. There were 3 rooms that the walls spun opening to some dead ends, but after we did this a few times, we were rewarded with extra might and became invulnerable for 10 minutes. Needless to say this made the dungeon a cake walk. I thought this may be an exploit, or if not it's something I'd like to document but I thought I'd ask first. Here is a screenshot of the [[:File:User Yoe Dude Wierd Room.jpg|Room]]. Yoe Dude (talk) 20:02, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like an intentional easter egg.--Relyk ~ talk < 22:15, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
An extremly creapy easter egg I might add. o_o - Yandere Talk to me... 22:22, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
People have known about it for awhile, Josh commented on the video.--Relyk ~ talk < 01:20, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Yep that's it, guess my questions are answered. Yoe Dude (talk) 03:40, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Whenever you see something that might look like an exploit, please send an email with all the details to exploits@arena.net. We don't discuss exploits in public (I'm not saying that this is one or it isn't) and think that it's generally not a good idea. Thanks. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:01, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Noted, and I have the good sense not to comment.Yoe Dude (talk) 09:40, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

wiki vs forums for updates

Do you have statistics for the number of people visiting the official patch notes versus the number of people looking on the wiki for game updates?--Relyk ~ talk < 23:17, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I do have access to them, why? --Stephane Lo Presti talk 18:19, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Can you... share?--Relyk ~ talk < 18:49, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
No I can't because they are confidential numbers. I may be able to help you if you're looking for specific information? --Stephane Lo Presti talk 18:50, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Is it more or less? lol--Relyk ~ talk < 19:02, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Why are you asking? :) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:03, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) as an outsider watching this conversation unfold it would be nice to know if our wikifiying of the patch notes is useful to people.-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 19:11, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

You're asking a difficult question, because the numbers I have cannot help quantify an asnwer to your question. I believe, based on numbers, things I read and general traffic shape, that this work is helping a subset of players because they keep reading the notes on the wiki. It'd require an in-depth study to actually get the answer to your question. Are you asking out of interest or because the community is wondering whether they should stop doing it? --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:17, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Most likely out of 'should we bother to continue' sort of curiosity. With things like the forums and dulfy's blog putting down such information, it'd be interesting to see if the wiki is making any difference or helping people or if its just taking up space. Just my sentiment. --Vaught (talk) 19:41, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Wondering if the difference with the wiki's approach to the game updates and the forums, along with providing wikilinks and notes, pulls a significant number of people from checking the forums for updates or if it's the normal traffic for the site. I always used the wiki to check for updates instead of the official site in guildwars 1 because of it. Don't think you have to go in-depth to say whether you think it's significant. You kind of answered the question already. :)--Relyk ~ talk < 19:50, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
I can't make the difference with the numbers I have, I'd have to do a lot of research. So I haven't answered the question, unless I misunderstood :) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

User:Stephane Lo Presti/Wiki Weekly Statistics

{{#dpl:
| namespace = User
| titlematch = Stephane Lo Presti/Wiki Weekly Statistics/%
| include = *
| format = ,¶,,
| ordermethod = title
| order = descending
}}

User:Relyk/sandbox/steph, even less work if you use Y-M-d in page name to generate the section header automatically. Unless you like the extra edits, I don't judge.--Relyk ~ talk < 04:58, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

That'll work great until the next year, whereupon it will mix up the 2013+2014 entries. -Chieftain AlexUser Chieftain Alex sig.png 08:42, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
which is why stephane should be using the iso date format!--Relyk ~ talk < 08:48, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
To be honest, I like that he needs to edit that page. Otherwise I wouldn’t be remembered by my watchlist and would totally forget about this. poke | talk 11:01, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
My watchlist forgets about me too.--Relyk ~ talk < 07:58, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

edge of the mists

I think this would be a good opportunity to involve the wiki I would suggest inviting someone from the wiki community to the edge of the mists test so they can document it on the wiki.-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 23:46, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm already there. I will do it in the next test period ^^--W.Wolf (talk) 00:07, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
We'd be happy to give access to the map to more wiki editors (for the sake of not opening this door to non-editors, they'd have to be long term contributors to the wiki). If you or anyone else wants to gather editor names and give them back to me here, I can set this up. Thanks for bringing this up! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:10, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Based on more than 100 actions done in the last 30 days, here are the active users: Chieftain Alex, Poke, Relyk, Dr ishmael, Ventriloquist, Vaught, Somohexual, Sol Solus, Rakuin, Psycho Robot, Musha, Lon-ami, Konig Des Todes, JonTheMon, Claret, Zesbeer, W.Wolf and Malgalad--W.Wolf (talk) 02:18, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Excluding Alex.--Relyk ~ talk < 02:28, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I assure you, I would be a disappointment to all and make the whole of the wiki look like a lose association of uncoordinated, illiterate boobs. Especially Dr. Ishmael. Psycho Robot (talk) 04:31, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I am active user :o
Got and invite for my guild normal way too, will document as much as I can the next test period (I hope). MalGalad 06:04, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) A few questions at this point: is this really needed if editors such as MalGalad are already playing? If it's needed (because editors such as MalGalad may want to play more than document for example), will these editors actually do any documentation work? If they do, is the list provided above by W.Wolf the actual list that Zesbeer was thinking about? If it is, can you ask these people to email us at community@arena.net with the following information:

Editor's name on the wiki; Player's Alias (IGN); Player's Account Name (Example: Anet.1234); Email Address; Country of Residence; Does this player agree to abide by our code of conduct during testing? (Y/N)

Thanks. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 18:38, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

If I were to stand on my podium, more contributors are always wanted to participate in wiki events and it doesn't matter if they want to do documentation work or have a certain number of contributions.
This doesn't have the restrictions of PPD, so we can have more than one person I assume. We need as many active users as possible to develop content faster, as they are the ones that can discuss and edit articles quickly. Any relatively active user will understand they should document when possible (100 edits is a very high threshold, all those users are experienced). Allowing any user on an active user list who wants to participate would be reasonable, the current list is more than acceptable considering not all the people will want to participate.--Relyk ~ talk < 20:25, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I was specifically referring to people who don't edit the wiki (or have only done it to chat with other people, or other fringe cases) creating accounts just for the sake of being in this test, not editors. We have no problem allowing a big group of wiki editors to access it. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:31, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Since there isn't a process to verify wiki users as being wiki users, I am happy with doing it that way :)
In the future, would there be an easy way verify users, like having an admin send a list of users and their information so Anet can simply verify email address and leave the rest of the work to the wiki for allowing contributors to partipicate?--Relyk ~ talk < 20:57, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Isn't it possible to check that people are "wiki editors" simply by taking a quick look at their list of edits? I mean, a editor will have done quite a few of edits and a good part of that is positive contribution to some articles? Let me know if I'm confused and you're thinking about something else. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:24, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
you are correct imho-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 22:34, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Because someone at ArenaNet would have to check. Otherwise, the wiki can go around and notify active users they can request to participate in the event.--Relyk ~ talk < 22:59, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm not following you: the wiki is requesting just that on this very discussion. It looks like you're thinking about something else? --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:11, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
I guess I was confused that you didn't question whether 100 edits should be a requirement or not, not reading your first statement carefully, and taking this far too seriously.--Relyk ~ talk < 06:33, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) well it sounds like a few people are already in the test and if they are comfortable documenting the map then I am fine with that.-User Zesbeer sig.png Zesbeer 11:19, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Let me know if any other wiki editor wants to get into the test. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 01:44, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm waiting for the email with the credential since last week to start editing content ^^ Since I'm joining as sub-leader from a guild that was accepted, I think it was better to sent it with the Guild Roster than to send it as a wiki editor. But if you want to accelerate the process for me, I don't mind!--W.Wolf (talk) 02:45, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I can speed up the process by a little (now rather than the end of the week) if you send me an email at community@arena.net, thanks! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 18:08, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Received an email saying the rooster was delivered at 16 December 2013 but didn't received the credentials to log in. Thanks anyway Stephane.--W.Wolf (talk) 00:05, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
I'll follow up with our coordinator right away. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:21, 4 January 2014 (UTC)