ArenaNet talk:Portal/A1

There we are!

Ok, let's discuss! What contents do we want to have here? I think the obvious talk pages from Gaile's subpages (suggestions etc) can be moved to this namespace, same with Izzy's skill discussions.. What about things like Game updates and GuildWars.com news? poke | talk 13:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Also Developer updates, localization issues and bug reports. They are scattered all over the place now, so it would be nice to have them collected here. But it's up to Anet also, we could just link them from here. - anja 13:15, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the best would be to ask the page-owners to take part in this discussion. poke | talk 13:19, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

In genral I think it would be good if we tried to keep the naming simple, and not build trees. So you'd find things where you'd expect them. Example, the feedback page for GW2 would be at ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 Backsword 13:41, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

BTW, this talk namespace has a cap T. Backsword 13:42, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

A link to this page will be put into the main page, won't it? —ZerphaThe Improver 14:15, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I added a link to the edit copy in what looks to be the best location seeing as it's an ArenaNet page. --Kakarot 14:21, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Pages

I disagree with Backsword on this one because I think the pages need some organisation -- it's easiest to do that by having them as subpages for a main "Suggestions" or "Bug report" page. It would also mean that you could easily navigate your way -- if you wanted to give some suggestions, you would go to ArenaNet:Suggestions, and oh look, I can give Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2 suggestions whereas I thought only Guild Wars suggestions were available, so I'll give stuff for both. Yay.

Here's a list of some of the existing ArenaNet pages, assuming the respective users agree to them being moved.

Feedback from players ArenaNet:Suggestions /Guild Wars /Guild Wars 2 /Website ArenaNet:Bug reports /Art /Text /Quest /AI /Miscellaneous ArenaNet:Skills /<Profession> /<Skill> ArenaNet:Bug reports/Localization /Japanese /French /German /Italian /Russian /Spanish /Korean /Simplified Chinese /Traditional Chinese

ArenaNet content ArenaNet:Developer updates /<The relevant update's date> ArenaNet:Gaile and Frog Talk /<The relevant Talk's date> ArenaNet:The Scribe /<The relevant Scribe issue>

Of course, we wouldn't display the links like that on the Portal page. I might be missing some pages, so feel free to add them in. -- Brains12 \ Talk 14:55, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

This looks good. I like the organization of things in this table. --People of Antioch 15:20, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually I would rather prefer a title, to say what the pages are about.. So:

• ArenaNet:Skill balancing & subpages as it is currently in the Izzy namespace
• ArenaNet:Localization bugs/<language> for Jason Yu
• ArenaNet:Text bugs - User:Bobby Stein/Text bugs
• ArenaNet:Art bugs - User:Mike Zadorojny/Guild Wars Art issues
• ArenaNet:Quest bugs - User:Mike Zadorojny/Guild Wars Quest issues
• ArenaNet:AI bugs - User:Mike Zadorojny/Guild Wars AI issues
• ArenaNet:Miscellaneous bugs - User:Mike Zadorojny/Guild Wars Miscellaneous Bugs
• ArenaNet:Guild Wars suggestions - User:Gaile Gray/Guild Wars suggestions
• ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions - User:Gaile Gray/Guild Wars 2 suggestions
• ArenaNet:Website suggestions - User:Gaile Gray/Website suggestions
• ArenaNet:Game updates - Game updates, including subpages
• ArenaNet:Developer updates - Developer Updates, including subpages
• ArenaNet:News - News
• ArenaNet:Website news - GuildWars.com news
• ArenaNet:Login screen announcements - Login screen announcements
• ArenaNet:Developer talk - Gaile/Frog Talk, including subpages
• ArenaNet:The Scribe

That would be my idea. poke | talk 15:53, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I prefer the Brains12's suggestion. I like sub-pages as a way of organizing things, since many of these pages are related. ~Scion~ (talk | contribs) 17:06, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

But please keep in mind that we have a complete namespace open, so there is no need to cascade all pages.. And also note that we still have the ability to keep pages in categories, otherwise we could also use Profession/Elementalist instead of Elementalist as an article name etc. poke | talk 17:09, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

The reason I put them cascaded is because people may not look for specific pages for each category (in the sense of ArenaNet:Bug reports or something, not wiki categories). Someone looking for suggestions might not go straight towards the specific suggestions page, but just to see what suggestions there are -- by going to the home ArenaNet:Suggestions page, one could find lots of subjects to suggest - Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 or the Website. That's why the localisation pages are all cascaded, because it organises them through their subject. Also, for subpages, you have the link at the top that can let you go back a subpage -- if I'm looking at Guild Wars 2 suggestions, I could go straight back to the Suggestions homepage with a simple click of a link that stays in the same place for every subpage, instead of having to back a few pages into the portal. The namespace was created for ease of use and organisation of ArenaNet content and feedback, and I think this is the best and easiest way to do that. -- Brains12 \ Talk 17:24, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

As for the pages like ArenaNet:Suggestions we can always use that as some kind of main site to lik to the pages.. But I think ArenaNet:Text bugs for example is easier to recognize than ArenaNet:Bug reports/Text; or ArenaNet:Localization bugs/German is easier than ArenaNet:Bug reports/Localization/German. And apart from that it fits more in the style we name our pages currently. poke | talk 17:29, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I 'd prefer to see a bit of both, while I do like Brains suggestion a bit more, Poke does have a point with having an ArenaNet:Localization bugs section rather than ArenaNet:Bug reports/Localization. --Kakarot 17:34, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed as per Kakarot. --People of Antioch 17:46, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Both versions have their merits, and I wouldn't oppose any of them. I would prefer "logical" names as in Localization bugs (even German localization bugs?) and Guild Wars suggestions with a nav or backlink to the Bug report/Suggestions main page. This looks nicer and I also think it's easier to use than the backlinks created when we use subpages.
I think the skill subpage should be named Skill feedback, we are not listing the actual skill details in this namespace (which I thought was the original suggestion until I edited the page and saw the link :P). This is a place where I think subpages makes sense, there is simpl so many pages that "logical" names would be unwieldy. - anja 17:47, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I seriously do not see how multiple portals will make things easier. Multiple secgtions on this one requires a slight eye movement, so I don't see the advanatage. Backsword 18:02, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

We don't need a namespace when we only have 3 "main" pages which contain all pages as subpages.. Then we also can forget about this.

I fully agree with Anja, and I think navbars on bug report issues, or generally on those pages which Pling wanted to put into one tree, is fine. poke | talk 18:32, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I would be willing to compromise with that. -- Brains12 \ Talk 18:37, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Journal Pages

Hopefully this is now the correct place for this. Anyway, I noticed that quite a few devs are keeping journals on the GWW, but they are in their User pages. Could there be a link on the front page to a Journals page, with links to the Journals? I find that there is good news in the Journals, and it is probably as beneficial as Gaile Talk and stuff was. Thanks for considering. --Ravious 18:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I think we should provide those links here on the Arenanet Portal page; also once we get the content sorted out I think we should but this in the navbar as well. --Shadowphoenix 18:44, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, links on the ArenaNet:Portal page would make sense. One thing that needs to be decided; something that maybe only those ArenaNet staff that have one of these should decide; is whether or not those should still be kept in the respective users userspace or whether they should also be moved into the ArenaNet namespace, maybe in a new section like ArenaNet:Developer journals/<Name>. --Kakarot 19:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Well I've seen no comments from the users you seemed to be addressing, so either they have "no comment" or aren't paying any attention to this page (probably). Either way, I don't think it is appropriate to link to a User's subpage. Also, although I haven't been following this ArenaNet portal discussion for long, what I have understood so far is that a major point of it was to stop linking to individual user pages for many things that currently link there. In other words (all be it...my words), when this portal is set up this will be for ArenaNet directed and related things that have previously often been on individual user pages for want of a better place, and the individual user pages can become just that...user pages. Oh, and I'm sure if they want to create a page on here that is a journal, they can; and unlike most other users, theirs' will be read by many. -- Inspired to ____ 04:21, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Journals belong in User space unless the person in question decides (of their own will) to make them "official" (and would most likely need to consult with others beyond themselves in ArenaNet before doing so). Not something that should be on this portal page. The entire point of this namespace is to let dev's user pages be just that - user pages. The namespace is for the "official" stuff. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 05:02, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how more "official" you could get than an ArenaNet employee talking about ArenaNet happenings on an ArenaNet owned webspace meant for public consumption. Regardless, I think such a page should exist somewhere. I am just not sure where... IMHO, I would prefer it be with other GW news for simplicity sake. --Ravious 16:33, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

A journal is a personal thing. Sure, it may include information related to ArenaNet happenings, but they are simply user logs maintained by the respective users. As Aiiane says, their own user pages should be kept to their own userspace. -- Brains12 \ Talk 16:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

"Official" is "we will release ______ on ______". Journals are more like "I was working on _____, and it might be ready by ______, but that's just my personal guess." There is a huge difference between what is company-approved for release, and what are personal insights. Typically, it's the difference between a company standing behind "promises", and an individual. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 17:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[reset indent] I agree the journal is a personal thing, but they say many relelvant and interesting things directly pertinent to the game. They usually don't use it for "I ate strawberries today." Also, please explain the difference between this and Gaile Chats? Because I see plenty of similarities between the content of Gaile Chats and the content in the GWW dev journals. Well you guys decide, but I think you are trying to make the personal pages a little too black and white, when clearly devs use it for "official" business. --Ravious 18:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Gaile was an official community rep, and the things she said during her visits were understood to be coming from the company as a whole. No one is saying a dev couldn't ask for their journal page to be added here, but at the same time we shouldn't assume that it should be. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 20:22, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm hesitant about this idea of putting ArenaNet user pages in the ArenaNet name space. I think that if wiki visitors are interested in finding out more about an ArenaNet staff member, they can do a search, find the wiki article about them, and click through to the user page. Yes, it does take more effort, but as Aiiane noted, not all ArenaNet staff use their Journals as platforms for official announcements. I've been using mine to solicit specific suggestions and feedback on an informal basis, rather than as an information channel. Other ArenaNet staff seem to use theirs to give updates on what they are working on. So I don't see that their Journals would necessarily be useful to be put in an ArenaNet namespace/portal here on the wiki. --Regina Buenaobra 21:28, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Navigation

Could we get this placed on the navigation box to the left below Community portal? — ク Eloc 貢 21:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

When we have content to show, maybe. poke | talk 21:31, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Gah, not another link to move the Recent Changes link down! -- Brains12 \ Talk 23:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the portal could be an adaptation of the current GW news page - shorter summaries, fewer inclusions and more linkage to other Anet content. Perhaps it could then replace that linky on the Nav bar? --Aspectacle 23:44, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind that, although I don't think the Portal should have any inclusions, unless they can be put in without being too crammed or distracting. It's probably better to just link it. -- Brains12 \ Talk 14:54, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The inclusions are a pain to format, you are right. Especially as the news page can get very big if there are big updates (like at the moment). I think the only way you could include a large update tidily on this portal page is to perhaps do some editorializing and have summaries of the content of the update notes. However, when it comes to updates I'm not sure that having an opinion in such a prominent place is a great idea. I do like the news summary page (despite its size) and, inclusions or not, wonder if this portal overrides its function a little. --Aspectacle 09:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

...Suggestions

Maybe this is not the best place for this, but the best time to discuss this is with move, and there is no other place.
What can we do to better manage the suggestion pages?

While I realize that the most significant reason to even have them is so people have a place to rant, or to present their ideas for things that have long been decided or over which they have no control, I do believe they are important. Unfortunately, they quickly evolve into an unmanageable mess. They also often become too large and parts just end up getting shoved into archives and effectively lost. Which would be okay given my above on their reason, except then someone just suggests something similar and the process is repeated. Also, the current situation doesn't do much to allow for evolution of suggestions over time and consensus if possible on those suggestions.

So, first, does anyone else think this should be addressed and that now is a good time? And if so, does anyone have any ideas on how to go about this?

Thanks for you thoughts. -- Inspired to ____ 23:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

One of the reasons this namespace was created was so that pages like the game suggestions or skill update suggestions could be kept in their own section rather than in the current respective users userspace, I say current since there is no way to guarantee that that person will always be the best person to go to; this has recently happened regarding Gaile and game suggestions. In the above "Pages" section there has already been two possible suggestions on how to organize the ArenaNet Portal including a section or subpage just for GW/GW2 suggestions. --Kakarot 23:51, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

There have been a few ideas to split each suggestions page into categorised subpages - i.e. armour suggestions, weapons suggestions, etc. It would probably be best if we do something like that now that we have a large move on our hands. However, I'm not too sure about whether we should just start it from a certain point and leave the archives as they are, or reorganise the whole of the mess.-- Brains12 \ Talk 23:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm very much for putting down a framework of categorised suggestion pages, allowing things to start from scratch and then if someone is compelled transferring the existing suggestions from the archives. I think that any transfer may need editing of suggestions because some of the existing suggestions have several pretty unrelated ideas together. So there is a suggestion for pets alongside one for weapons with another for gameplay or hairstyles. Also as Inspired suggests, the same idea has been made several times over - which version from the archive is the best? I have ideas for format too ^_^ - mostly similar in structure to Izzy's skill feedback pages. --Aspectacle 09:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

That was the only thing I've been able to come up with except something a lot more formal that seems rather scary. Unfortunately, the skill pages haven't been in that format for all that long, and some of them seem to be already heading toward becoming unmanageable. And it looks even worse when one considers that those have a defined set of titles that exit in the skills, I'm having difficulty seeing how it would work if every user was assigned the task of choosing an already existing category for a page or creating a new one. Just compare it to how this works with headings on talk pages...the average user cannot even stay within an existing heading for a simple goodbye or welcome wish (referring to Gaile's and Regina's recent pages). -- Inspired to ____ 03:56, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

So, I've added a few pages and such around my idea for layout for the suggestion section. See here: ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions. I haven't spent much time thinking about the categories - perhaps these categories should be more limited in number and evolve as more categories become evident with the types of suggestions arising. I've added a few pages to give an idea for the subpage layout with suggestions I know have been made. I'd pull something out of the current GW2 Suggestions but I can't get to it because it's too big. :) Ideally the lead page for the suggestion would be like a typical wiki page where anyone could jump in and flesh out the idea or to add variations or more positives or negatives that sort of thing. Feel free to edit - 'tis a wiki after all. --Aspectacle 03:32, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I like where you're going with this. Somehow, it will have to be easy for noneditors to add new pages like on the current skill suggestions. I wonder if a detailed template for each suggestion would work good or if that would just encourage people to make a new page. Anyway, on the Tengu, I don't see lack of gender differentiation as a negative since even in GW it makes no functional difference anyway . The negitive I see is that they don't fly, but ANet could work on that (maybe they evolve flight in the next 200 years). Oops, wrong place for this, but I didn't want to add a talk page yet. Anyway, I already have a character name: "Inspired To Fly". -- Inspired to ____ 04:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, looking at the code for the createbox which is used for the skill suggestions I think that it could be used here. The main disadvantage of that box is that I don't think it adds the idea to the list of ideas on the subpage however I'm not sure that is something which is easy to do, or even possible (or they'd have done it on the skill createbox right?) I might prod a few people who've shown interest in trying to get Gaile to pioneer a new filing system for her suggestions and a few who seem to be around the suggestions pages a bit and see if they've got any ideas around this layout or another. After that I'll think about adding niceties. Tengu; I was making stuff up for those pages. I don't have any particular opinion about Tengu gender - but I do agree that flying would be awesome. :) --Aspectacle 09:26, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed category's i think would be the best way to go about the suggestion pages, i say just archive everything now and then put up the new pages. what should the category's be, i think is the issue that is stopping this from happening. 75.165.113.67 02:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi All, I was one of those [people that discussed the idea of organizing the GW2 suggestion page with Gaile a while back, and Aspectacle was nice enough to invite me to this discussion which I think is really awesome and I'm really excited about it. I don't have a lot of time right now because I'm on vacation in Paris, so I'll stick to the bare essentials and maybe I cab get in more depth on this in a week or so.

Anyway, from the outset I think what we really need with the suggestion pages is indeed some way of categorizing them. However, I noticed, if I'm reading this right, from the current thinking that the idea is to create a page for an idea and let editors evolve the idea by contributing conllaberatively. That sounds wonderful, but to be honest (and perhaps a little cynical), everyone thinks their idea is original, and the majority of people probably will not navigate through what will eventually become a mountain of ideas to make sure they are, in fact, not thinking of something new. I see people just creating a new idea almost no matter what. Therefore, I think if we can narrow the categories as much as bareable, and then adding links for discussions of frequently suggested ideas, this will better allow people to rant and rave as they please and go one believing they are the very first to suggest anything like this.

I don't have the time to code in a good looking suggestion right now, but I guess what I'm thinking is make the categories you have now a bit more like the existing suggestion pages, where people just plug in their ideas with a subtitle and sign it. And then maybe add som pages for frequent suggestions, in the case of GW2, I'm thinking of at least these:

• Hairstylist
• auction house
• mounts
• player houses
• flying

And a few others I'm sure I'll think of at 3 AM tonight. That's it for now, I'll try check in from time to time keep up with the conversation, and hopefully will be able to contribute more when I get back on May 14th. (Satanael 18:43, 1 May 2008 (UTC)) p.s., also, are these portals going to be incorporated into the into the GW2 wiki as well? That might save some future hassle, at least for the GW2 suggestion page, and I imagine some others like skills and such...

i hope this organization is applied to gw1 suggestions as well....75.165.111.218 22:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Please enjoy your holiday in France first, Satanael! Suggestions can definitely wait for that. :)

I can surely see that a collaborative scheme could result in all sorts of madness - not least that people simply wouldn't follow it or would go ahead and completely rewrite an idea as it suits them. In this regard I agree that maintaining a scratch pad for ideas where anyone can come and have a say, feel like they have a bit of ownership and have some discussion about the idea has definite advantages.

I do think, however, there is a definite need for a strong structure and consolidation of ideas underlying any ranting or raving which goes on. This is more than just archiving - it is about access to ideas and readily identifying the new and interesting ideas. Part of what is failing about the current scheme is that it is difficult for ArenaNet to access the ideas because of repetition, different ideas mashed in together and the tonne of comments (some constructive, some not). And the lack of archiving. :P There is never a point where an idea is concisely stated and easy to access for them. I guess I'm hoping that the layout I've suggested supports that.

I think that the frequently requested can be pulled from this background structure. So they might normal live in pve/mounts or pve/player_trading but would be pulled out for special mention. I think that pointing out these very requested things would be handy if only to stop these particular ideas from coming up time and again. Because I am so sure that ArenaNet already knows that half the population wants GW to be like everyone other MMORPG out there. ;)

In closing; I think that the opening/lead in suggestions page could look a lot like the current suggestions pages where anyone can leave an idea. The common ideas can have a call out here. But behind that we need a tight structure and good organization. Titles reworded for clarity, unique ideas made into pages, the ranting and raving archived into the talk pages of these pages. Yes, this is work and requires editorialization, either a simple archive scheme or my idealistic collaborative scheme would be less work here, but these pages are only good if ArenaNet can actually use them to get ideas from or else everyone is just wasting their time. :(

Other things; They've created an ArenaNet space in GW2W so something similar could be implemented there. But nothing is going to happen there for a while I don't think. Also I don't see why this wouldn't be applied to the GW1 suggestions - it's just seems there are more suggestions for gw2 hence my focus. </endwalloftext> --Aspectacle 09:10, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

i think that this:ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions looks awsome and i hope it will be implented right away. i dont see anything that should stop it, i think we should archive everything in the current gw2 and gw1 pages and switch to that style asap, i only suggest archiving everything so we can start fresh and maybe go back and place some of the stuff into category's.. like i said on one of the pages the skill section for gw1 should be linked to Izzy's skill page which should be one like the one on the anet portal page, which is excellently organized. i also agree the main problem with how it is right now is the lack of organization. part of the problem with the gw1 suggestions is that most people know that the gernaric response is gw2 > gw1 right now, and a reminder that suggestions for gw1 should be rather simple and stuff that wouldn't require lots of game changes, would be more likely to be thought about and maybe implmented...75.165.97.72 09:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) How exactly are we going to be moving all this, since just the suggestions pages; GW and GW2; are a huge undertaking on their own there is the chance that in the middle of it people will still be adding stuff to the various sections or creating new suggestions which could cause problems. One solution would be for ArenaNet to have a bit of downtime and let the respective people do the actual moving and then once it is back up we can go in and if need be organize it to the way that has been discussed. Having ArenaNet do the bulk of it while the wiki is temporarily offline would mean there is no chance of what I mentioned above happening. Also we should have a site notice to let people know the new location, change links to point to the new location and for the first little while have the old location set up as a redirect to the new location. Just a few thoughts I had. --Kakarot 12:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) i dont think there should be that much of a problem. if all of the pages are ready before had and then everything is archived at the same time it should go rather smoothly i think. the pages in question dont get changed that much for this to be a consurn i don't think, but i dont know. also i dont think many people know that they exist in the first place because they dont have a link on the main page.75.165.97.72 20:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Heya Kakarot. I'm not sure that we need much downtime, but a bit of time might be nice to get the version here to exactly equivalent (no loss of comments) to Gaile's version. Otherwise I'm not sure that much advertisement is needed - people seem to come into the page from Regina's or Gaile's pages. *shrugs* --Aspectacle 03:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah the site notice was a bit of an over kill so to speak, just a redirect from the old pages as well as changing the two links that appear on the Main Page would be more than sufficient. --Kakarot 13:51, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

This sounds great so far, maybe somebody who's not working on a friend's laptop in a Norman hotel (*bashfully blushes*) could help to give us a mock-up of what this new suggestions page might look like now? That way we can start in with more direct and constructive discussions. Thanks in advance to whoever does the leg work, normally I'm not a sit back and let others do the work kind of guy, so I feel a little weird making the request, but c'est la vie... (Satanael 21:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC))

Please actually mock out a page, it doesn't have to be "official"

Since there isn't an existing portal page for this namespace, please mock something out as opposed to just linking it here on the talk page (we don't need to worry about an editcopy a la the main page yet), and let's try tweaking it a bit so we can actually get something working rather than talking in theoreticals. Just put a notice at the top that it's under construction, and let's get going. :) (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 03:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Subpages

I'm just reviewing what I can and can't do for doing some automation around new suggestions pages. There was some discussion in the Pages section above about having and using subpages here. I don't think that subpages are turned on for the ArenaNet namespace. {{SUBPAGENAME}} on ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Character returns "Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Character" rather than "Character" which it would if subpages were available. So...if no-one tells me that I've got it wrong or decides that we can do without subpages I'll ask Emily to turn subpages on for the ArenaNet namespace. --Aspectacle 11:52, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

A page is only recognized as a subpage if the parent page, in this case ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions, exist. poke | talk 11:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions. So as I was saying... it seems there are no subpages. :) I'll stick in the request. --Aspectacle 22:44, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I like the scratch pad idea, although when I read the description of how it will work I think I had a slight misunderstanding that may have turned into an idea. Anyway, what I was thinking was that the article page side of the scratch pad would be a place for people to plug in the description of an idea, and then people would actually discuss the idea on the discussion page. That way, we could have the benefit of the idea being collaboratively developed by the community while still preserving a full conversation of it in the discussion page. To help facilitate this, is there anyway that we could code it so that when someone posts a new idea on the scratch pad, it could automatically create a section on the discussion page for it? That may complicate archiving, but it could be a pretty cool way to organize it if we can do it. (Satanael 07:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC))

Had another idea, maybe for the sub-page categories (characters, etc.) it might be helpful to have some sort of description somewhere for each one, maybe like an introduction on each page or something. That way people are more clear as to what exactly should be put into each one. (Satanael 07:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC))

Are you back from holidays, Satanael? :)

My (limited) experience with wikis is that editing one page will not allow you to permanently automatically add different content to another - basically its one page at a time. The skills feedback pages use a link to a talk page section under each idea for a skill which seems to work well enough. But as you say I haven't seen this archived and in the case of suggestions where there is bound to be plenty of duplication easy archiving could be an important thing. However, I'm not entirely sure that I entirely follow your idea. Is it something you can modify the current layout to give an example?

The category descriptions are definitely a good idea. At the moment the best place for that is on the first subpage (character, items...) itself. Having a scratch pad on each of the sub categories instead of on the main page might free up room on the main page for category descriptions.

Lots of ideas... we just need to make it happen. :) --Aspectacle 12:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I got back from holiday a couple days ago. As for my first idea, I think it was a bit of wishful thinking anyway, and I wouldn't even know how to begin to code it even if it was possible or doable. As for my second idea, good point, I'll start going into each page and adding my two cents on what should be included in each, feel free to edit as you feel necessary, as I'm not always the clearest of writers and I may not get all the lingo correct. (Satanael 10:59, 17 May 2008 (UTC))

You never know - sometimes wishful thinking isn't so hard to grant after all. :) Your lead paragraphs are looking good so far, I'll see if I can add a few. Take a look at Character and Armor I've added in a box which creates a page and uses categories to add it to the dynamic list on the page. The information which is preloaded into the page when you hit "create" is copied and pasted between each page type (armor, character, weapons) just to automate adding the categories. I'd like some feedback on the layout of that page before duplicating it everywhere, because it'd be more work to change then. :) --Aspectacle 00:30, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks good Aspectacle, one suggestion though (this is based on what we presently have for the skill suggestion pages) maybe add the code {{subst:TALKPAGENAME}}|Discussion]] below the Idea or even replace that line with something like
'''Idea''' ([[{{subst:TALKPAGENAME}}|Discussion]]) could work. --Kakarot 02:53, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I tried out Kakarot's second suggestion above, see the latest addition to Armor. Seems to work pretty well, not sure how to add it to the template though (I suck at coding, if you'll pardon my French). I like the box's you've added, Aspectacle, the only thing I'd say is it would be nice if we could make the suggestion form just a little more user friendly. I was able to figure it out without much trouble, but I feel like some first-time users might be a little intimidated at first. I don't know, I'm not super concerned about it because just using it once or twice and it becomes easy, but I recall that Wikipedia has what actually looks like a form that you fill out on screen to request a peer review of an article, rather than putting it together in the edit secreen with the code all around it. I have no idea how to do that, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears. (Satanael 10:21, 20 May 2008 (UTC))

I just thought that I'm not entirely sure if the subst would work with a template so I checked up on the skill version of this since I had actually manually coded that without looking (more fun that way) and it will have to use the following code instead of my second suggestion to get it to work on a template: [[<includeonly>{{subst:</includeonly>TALKPAGENAME<includeonly>}}</includeonly>|Discussion]] --Kakarot 13:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I've implemented that change into the pages which are there. Satanael, I don't know how to do full web forms for a wiki, I think I'd need extra code extensions - possibly specially written. I don't know how to make it more friendly. If you want mess around with wording of the pages which make up those pages; ArenaNet:Create suggestion (the text in the create box), ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/subpage editintro (the text under the header, but before the edit box on the page creation page), ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/subpage preload character (the stuff loaded into the edit box of the page to be created, change 'character' to [armor|communication|pve|...] to get others only armor and character exist atm) --Aspectacle 10:57, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, my eyes getting bigger than my stomach again. No worries, I think this can work fine.

To be honest, when I made the last comment about the user-friendliness, I hadn't even noticed the edit intro (whoops), which makes a huge difference. I might play with the wording just a little bit to maybe make it a little more visible and "pretty", but other than that I think this thing is ready to go.

Also, Poke pointed out that adding all these pages and everything might add to the work when we start moving things over to make it "live", so we should try to keep our additions of new pages to a minimum for now. Maybe we just work with Armor and Character until we're ready to implement everything? I'll also start putting some of the "under construction" templates into existing pages to avoid confusion. (Satanael 07:52, 22 May 2008 (UTC))

Time to ask the people involved

Is it time to actually ask the involved Arenanet people if they would be interested in moving their pages into this namespace? (Or have we already and I have missed it?) If they want to move them here, we would also need to know if they want to moderate and archive the pages themselves, or want to leave some or all of it up to the community. - anja 12:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Hm. I would like to hear opinions from them how the whole ArenaNet namespace should work. poke | talk 15:11, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I responded on my user talk page but might as well post something here. I asked a few folks around the office who all agreed that it's a good idea to consolidate things like bug report pages and news into a more centralized place on the wiki. It might also be cool to link to the different ANet user pages so that folks who want to post feedback and questions on specific topics could approach us more easily. Bobby Stein 20:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Bobby. I will send a follow-up email today on questions I asked about this topic, since... well... "my" pages are sort of the 600-pound gorilla, methinks. :) I love the consolidation idea, but I want to make sure that if I shift over pages, I'm following the preferences of ArenaNet as far as where such pages are placed. When I first created a spot for Suggestions, et al, I did so off my User Page with the specific advice of folks at ArenaNet. So I want to make sure that the new name space is used as the company would prefer it, just as I would want to ask about such use if it were a "personal" user space.

I hope that makes sense to you, and I apologize if it's take a bit of time to decide on this. I'll share whatever info I have on this when I get it, and I'm sure other ArenaNet folks will do so, as well. I'm not "driving" this, but I'm a willing participant any time. :) Thanks. -- Gaile 20:45, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Sure, take your time. It's better to think about it before rushing into it and making wrong decisions :) poke | talk 20:48, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

That is so true Poke *cough Feb 14* xD

On a serious note though, there is another question that you could check up on Gaile, would it be best to archive pages like the GW/GW2 suggestions before moving them over considering the overall size of them including the present archives. --Kakarot 20:56, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Just reiterating what Bobby said... I have no problem with the consolidation if the community is behind it. The bug report pages being hosted off my talk page was a legacy evolution from Gaile when it became clear my team was going to be more involved. So I'm deferring to the smarter people of the wikiverse who post here. --Mike Zadorojny 18:39, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I am fine with hosting the localization bug report pages here as well. I agree it's easier to have a central location for everything. --Jason Yu 22:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

We can also leave behind redirects (at least temporarily) in the respective user spaces so that people who are used to their original location won't be lost and can adapt over time to the new centralized namespace. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:28, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with Mike, Jason, and Bobby. There's also general support for this around the office as Bobby noted. Whatever enables wiki visitors to find content more easily from a central location is a positive thing. --Regina Buenaobra 21:23, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know we're just waiting on a final decision from the "other" Mike. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 21:25, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

O'Brien? He supports this move and the community's effort to consolidate these pages to make it easier for wiki users to find information. --Regina Buenaobra 21:29, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Alright, that's what we needed to know. I know Gaile had been trying to get in touch with him but it must have gotten lost in the shuffle. :) In that case, we should be able to move ahead with this. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 21:46, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I think what happened was that he may have missed it in his inbox the first time around. I got a ping from him today about it, so yes. --Regina Buenaobra 21:51, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I got an email today as well, with Mike letting me know that he's on board for the move. As you guys know, I didn't want to make a suggestion about the placement of Suggestions until I was sure what Mike's thoughts were on the matter. Now we all know, it's "go go go!" on the moving project. :) -- Gaile 21:53, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, ok :) Then it's time to decide if we want to split those (large) pages into smaller ones, maybe sorted by topics.. poke | talk 22:05, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

News items

Since the above discussion seems at a halt for now, i would like to just discuss these items. Since they are already linked here and are also directly related to Anet or the official information they release, should the articles in the News section be moved to the Anet namespace?.--Fighterdoken 19:17, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I would say no, as they are not wiki-centric but rather merely mirroring/documenting information released elsewhere. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 20:16, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I would prefer to have that here as well, as the namespace would otherwise only be used as a "submit your comments"-namespace. And when I remember it correctly, the whole idea about the namespace startet on the Dev updates talk page. poke | talk 20:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

To avoid confussion, i am talking about: Game updates, Developer Updates, GuildWars.com news, Login screen announcements and The Scribe. Not really sure on Developer talk actually. And about moving such topics or not, i will just repeat that old GWW saying: "what poke said" :).--Fighterdoken 21:36, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I still think that at the very least, Game updates should stay in mainspace, as they pertain directly to the "physical" game. The others are debatable. (Also, poke, I think that I would have a very good idea where the namespace idea started.) (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 21:50, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Even if you had the original idea, the issue was raised in another place, for related reasons, but with a different application in mind.--Fighterdoken 22:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is - and the only difference I see is Lemming stating that maybe we could put Game Updates in it as well. I happen to disagree with that. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:03, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

(IC) IMO, Developer Updates and The Scribe should be moved to the new portal (The Scribe has been discontinued anyway), everything else kept as it is. The Game updates not only are about the "physical" game, like Aiiane said, but they're also filled with Wiki comments (not the ones in the talk pages, rather the Wiki notes). I think the "official" things inside the Arena Net portal should not be touched by common users (unless it's to wikify it, of course). Erasculio 22:04, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflicts...) Ah, I just saw that your page was linked there, didn't notice that the last time I checked. But why do you disagree? I see the ArenaNet namespace as an information portal from the developer side and I think Game updates belong to that as well. poke | talk 22:05, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

"the "official" things" - the main usage for the namespace will be to get user-input. poke | talk 22:07, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Because the game updates are actual, physical modifications to the game, and not merely discussion about the game. It's liked comparing the changelog of a piece of software to the developer mailing list - one is shipped with the software as documentation, the other isn't. Essentially, I see the ArenaNet namespace as effectively being the "mailing list" or "forum"-esque portion of ArenaNet interaction, while the mainspace is the documentation portion, and game updates falls much more into the latter category. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:10, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

(EC) Exactly. The few "official things" inside the namespace (such as the Developer Updates) should be kept untouched, IMO. The game updates, in other hand, are improved by the wiki notes. I see the Developer Updates as messages from Arena Net to the community (and everything userbased as messages from the community to Arena Net), and the game updates don't really feel like that kind of thing. Erasculio 22:12, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict x2) I think precisely that is a good reason for moving game updates also. After all, the game updates section is one of the articles that brings the most discussion, problem reports and game-related feedback to the wiki. Even if short lived most of the time, the "forum-like" view is still there, so maybe moving it could allow Anet to give also a little of feedback in there.--Fighterdoken 22:16, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Discussion itself is not specific to the ArenaNet space - any talk page involves discussion. However, most of the pages considered for here (Suggestions pages, skill balance pages, etc) are devoted solely to discussion - none of them are documenting actual game elements or changes. That's the key point to my belief here: Game updates pages are primarily documenting updates, and have discussion on the talk page as a secondary role, while suggestions, developer updates, skill balance discussion, et cetera all have dialogue as their primary purpose. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:20, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Or both places. (Aren't they are actually duplicated already?) One to document and one as a place for them to be debated, commented on, etc. that users like to do when presented with new information. -- Inspired to ____ 22:23, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

No, they're not currently duplicated. I'd prefer to avoid redundancy, since that means twice as many places to update, and it's really not necessary. Talk pages already provide a place to discuss, there's no reason to have the equivalent of a talk page elsewhere; we don't need to be draconian with our separations. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:25, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Oh, i understand your point now, sorry. In that case none of the "news" sections would be fit to be moved.
When i first saw this namespace being proposed, i thought it was intended for all the "anet-specific topics that are better here than left alone in the wild". I actually missed most of the discussion being carried, so i am not sure what was the actual "use" of this namespace going to be (but surely never thought it was going to be a "forum-like only" namespace).--Fighterdoken 22:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I could see a case for Developer updates being located here, since they're essentially the dialogue companions to game updates - they'd fit in well with the other potential namespace content. News probably best belongs in mainspace, since it's typically also "documentation"-like, even if not always concerning the workings of the game specifically, but rather significant events. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought of this namespace as a "gatherer of info from Arenanet, not the game directly".. - anja 22:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I think my original proposal for the namespace sums up my thinking best: "to house any and all pages intended for purposes related to communication with ArenaNet as an entity" (my boldings). Communication implies a dialogue, which implies a flow of conversation between both parties. Game updates aren't a conversation, they're statements. News isn't a conversation, it's statements. Dev updates, on the other hand, are a part of a conversation with the player base as a whole, just responding in general terms rather than to specific speakers. Likewise, suggestions and bug reports are part of a dialogue with ArenaNet, even if not always directly answered. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:36, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Then we can also move the talk pages of the ANet people to this namespace... Sorry, but I agree with Anja. poke | talk 22:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I have no problem understanding your point Aiiane. I don't agree with it though. I do think we could as well have content that does not primarly focus on communication here. My focus is information not communication. Communication is part of it, but information was my first idea. - anja 22:51, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

To poke: Um, we already are moving (significant portions) of the ANet people's talk pages to this namespace, I'm not sure what you're getting at.

To Anja: Why would we document the game itself in anything other than mainspace? That's the entire purpose of mainspace, because it's the core purpose of the wiki. Furthermore, I've only seen two people on both the initial namespace proposal page, and this talk page, even mentioning possible putting Game updates here - you and poke. Everyone else seems to leave them out when discussing things; see the proposed categories above for an example. I think that leaving News and Updates in mainspace is more natural to people who are simply looking for information. Most of what is going in here isn't information, it's communication. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:12, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I meant the normal talk pages, not the subpages.

So you think the mainspace is the only namespace that is acceptable for documenting the game? So all our Guild articles are no documentation but communication/discussion? Then why bothering about what they have on their pages? And the Image namespace is not used for documentation as well? So then we can simply delete all images. - Of course, that is stupid, but wiki namespaces are not to distinguish between the purposes of the wiki. The only purpose of this wiki is documentating the game. Everything else is just helping to achieve that; the Help namespace is to help people who are new to the wiki, the Guild Wars Wiki namespace is used to control about what is done etc. But you cannot say the main space is documentation and namespace XY is communication. The only communication namespaces are XY talk (you can also see that by looking at the tabs, there it says "discussion"). Saying that the contents that we want to move from the ArenaNet people's talk, to create a central position for all those things, are only communication is false. We are documentating what users suggesting about GW/GW2, we are documentating what skills could be changed to make the game eventually more balanced, and we are documentating what is wrong in the game and if that will be changed and why.

What I want to say is that we cannot simply say this namespace is for communication with ANet, as we also would have to have to move things like Guild Wars Wiki:Report a wiki bug (which is communication with ANet), GWW:TECH and also all talk pages of all ArenaNet members that are registered here. It would be better to stick to a definition as Anja said: Game information we get directly from ANet instead of the game. Or something similar.

And just because nobody mentioned the Game updates yet, it doesn't mean that it should not be here. Apart from Fighterdoken, who accepted to that above, I think many of them didn't think about that. And actually I don't see a harm in moving things, we get directly from ANet to an own namespace; they will still be reachable then.

Finally it would probably better to wait for some official statement (see section above) on how they want to have us use this namespace. poke | talk 23:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Poke, you know just as well as I do that I'm not suggesting deleting the image and guild namespaces. Strawman arguments are not useful here. We're not forced to move anything here. You're acting too much like this has to be governed by absolute rules, but it doesn't. The guild namespace documents guilds, not the game itself. The image namespace is a support namespace used to provide images to all of the other namespaces.

I have to disagree with your statement that making suggestions is game documentation, however. Documentation is not subjective, it is objective. Suggestions are, by their very nature, subjective. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 00:14, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions and subjective do not correlate. Suggestions can be either subjective or objective, just as documentation can be either. Many of us try to keep our suggestions, whether about what should be included in this namespace or how a skill should be changed, objective, although we often fail. And, regardless of the level of either, I would see attempting to move toward something that can actually be objectified as the point of encouraging discussion over any issue. And if it is entirely a subjective matter over whether the game updates should go in this space or not, whose opinion should govern. ANet? Even, if that was so, that only works if we can get an opinion from them, and I don't see why it would be their call.

I don't understand how these things that have been on the mocked up portal page for a few weeks now suddenly become an issue. What was the point of creating a mock up of the page supposed to be if not to determine what would be included in the namespace and thus on it? -- Inspired to ____ 00:49, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd point out that only two people have edited that mock up, myself and poke. And my versions did not include Game updates. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 00:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) To Aiiane: The problem is that I don't see the game update notes as documenting the game. I see them as something in between, they are official notes from ArenaNet on what will change, but the actual documentation of the game is presented in the relevant articles. I guess that's where our disagreement stems from :) - anja 07:48, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The thing is that it's not what will change, it's what has changed. They're definitive and reference material, whereas suggestions, bug reports, explanations of past or future changes (dev updates), and the like aren't pure reference, but rather (sorry about repeating this over and over, but it's what best fits) a dialogue between players and ArenaNet. Essentially, my line of thought is "what is relevant to a player who doesn't care about discussing the game at all, but only about what they'll encounter as an individual player as they play" -- in my mind, things that answer that question belong in mainspace. Game updates are definitely something a completely isolated player encounters when they play the game: they log in and things are different. That same player, however, could go forever without caring why a skill was changed, or what player #416 thinks should be tweaked about DoA, et cetera. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 07:57, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Dev updates are definitive in the same way as Game updates; they are information ANet gives us about changes. While the Game updates describe changes, the Dev updates often explains those changes. There is no discussion, it's pure information with the ability - which is everywhere - to leave comments about that on the talk page. That people from ANet answer there doesn't matter as they are - of course - also allowed to add comments on every other talk page or do you want to limit that to the ANet and the User talk namespace? Also most of the skill balancing, GW1/2 suggestions and bug reports are not discussion with ANet. Either ANet only reads it and posts rarely a comment, or they stop the discussion with a simple "will be fixed", "was fixed", "is not a problem" etc. (this is done on the bug reports pages even with icons only).

Also I don't see a big line between the main namespace and the ANet namespace. It is not that is completely different, it is just a word more which will be displayed in the front; and this word is - to me - telling me that that what I'm reading is directly involved with ANet, either as information we got from them or as a place to give my input to them.

And sorry Aiiane, but as long as you are only picking out the parts of what I say you like to, instead of reading it all, I don't see a need to continue this discussion with you. poke | talk 10:51, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the issue but in any case, the talk pages for both the dev updates/game updates sometimes overlap with each other as well as with opinions and discussions on Izzy's (and others) current pages. If the objective of the Areanet namespace is consolidation (aka one stop shop type of deal), then I really think we should be worrying less about the namespace location and more with creating a better user environment for interaction with Anet (which Poke was getting at I think.) In short, if it's necessary, I'd suggest keeping the game updates on it's current namespace and having the talk page at the very least redirect to the appropriate discussion/feedback page for that update. In light of this, I think the discussion pages about individual skills/dev updates should follow Anet's example and have a seperate section for both. Major updates can cause alot of feedback though it may be easier to follow with the PvE/PvP split if PvE is going to remain static. As I said, I might be misunderstanding the intent of all of this in the first place. PlacidBlueAlien 17:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

What is the ArenaNet namespace for?

Since this was raised as an issue in other the above section of this talk page, i have to ask: What is the main purpose of the ArenaNet namespace? Using it as a place for gathering feedback from the community to Anet? A place for gathering feedback from Anet to the community? Both? None?. I feel certain incongruence between what was being discussed here first and what is being discussed 1 month later...--Fighterdoken 00:44, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

As I pointed out above, the "first" discussion was not the top section of this page. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 01:42, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

IMO, there's no incongruence. Since the beginning there were different opinions on what, exactly, would be in this namespace (take a look at Brains12's table of contents, and the following list poke made - it already had the "let's add update notes here/let's not" argument). Waiting for Arena Net's reply is, IMO, the best choice of action here, unless the community itself could reach a consensus before that. Erasculio 01:43, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

ArenaNet has already stated that they don't want to guide everything on the wiki. While ANet's input is certainly useful in this case, we shouldn't simply defer all discussion to ArenaNet. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 01:48, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Broadly, I think everyone agrees, and that includes ArenaNet from what I've seen, that things which are currently subpages of user pages basically because that's just where they were put should go here. That includes all the skill and game suggestions, bug reports, and things like these. Also, I don't think that anyone would suggest that any of the main space game articles would be better here. So that essentially leaves the items that currently listed in the news section. Right or wrong, and not even sure why, but my impression has been that this was being based on whether it was documenting the current facts of the game or something else. But, what should it be...clear and easy answer, if there is one, is that articles should be where they are the easiest for users of the wiki to find. Absent that making a difference and since for a lot of the debated articles, that is their only reason for even being here at all since they are just duplicates of things already on the Guild Wars site, it doesn't make any difference because they are just pages and the space they are in really just determines the name of the page. (Unless we're going to have a policy like the user or guild policies that only covers the ArenaNet space.) -- Inspired to ____ 02:34, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the bolded statement. Now, whether we can agree on what fulfills that is another matter. :)

If anything, I would suggest keeping Game updates in the mainspace simply so that typing "game updates" in the search box and hitting "Go" will bring up the page immediately, since it's one of the most common things people coming to the wiki will be looking for - and they'll associate it specifically with the game, not with ArenaNet. Dev updates, suggestions, et cetera are all specifically "I want to talk to ArenaNet" or "I want to hear from ArenaNet", but game updates are "what changed in the game?" (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 03:03, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Apart from the fact that your "first" discussion was imo only about if we should have the namespace or not, without really discussing what should be there apart from the obvious, a discussion about having things like game updates or not never happened (apart from the above). The discussion in the first sections on this page was only how to organize the pages, not if they should be there or not.

"This list contains all recent updates as published on the official Game update site." - this is the sentence from the Game updates page; imo that means "information from ANet" or to use your words "I want to hear from ArenaNet". "What changed in the game" doesn't matter, as all articles, which have a relation to a change, will be up to date. (See the section above for a comment about dev updates.) Also I don't think a permanent redirect on Game updates would be problematic, so you could just enter "Game updates" and get to the page, no matter where it is. poke | talk 10:51, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Another point in consideration that we could have is the "common-user editability" (is that a word?). In normal main articles, we let users to edit, reword, reformat, and pretty much include anything and everything they find relevant as long as it complies with our guidelines. This is not the case of pages like Game Updates, Dev Updates, etc, were the information is to be kept "as is" (with minor formatting only), and where even foot notes are heavily regulated. As such, those pages are given already special treatment, and thus could not be seen to fit in the normal main space either. Also, all these pages contain information directly released by ArenaNet in a official format (heck, even the April 1st information is "official" and not to be edited besides footnotes), so at least from my point of view is best suited to be placed on the respective namespace instead of the main namespace.--Fighterdoken 17:49, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

That's probably the most compelling reasoning I've seen so far, however, I'm concerned with how that might contrast with the suggestion and bug/localization pages. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 18:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

We could continues with bug/localization pages as they were at the beginning that the main page was originally only a manual on how to add new things and the talk pages were for the user discussion; but I think it would be a lot cleaner to have it not like that. poke | talk 18:29, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) So, if I'm understanding the above right, we can summarize as follows: There is a fundamental difference in some of the pages currently provided in the ArenaNet Portal. There are pages like Game Updates, The Scribe, Login Screen Announcements, etc. that are mainly official information flowing from ArenaNet to the GW Community (ANet -> GWC), these pages contain official info and editers are discouraged or even prohibited from making any substantial changes to these pages (wikify, don't change); and then there are the bug, localization, suggestions and skill feedback pages which mainly consist of the GW Community talking to ANet about the game(s) and the future of the game(s) (GWC -> ANet). These pages are open for editers new and old to add whatever they want so long as it is on topic.

It seems clear that the GWC -> ANet pages need to go in this portal because they are the pages that are mostly in username spaces right now and generally difficult for people to find or even know about. The question seems to be whether or not the ANet -> GWC pages should also go in this portal or not.

With a name like "ArenaNet Portal", it is logical that the exchange of information with ArenaNet, in both directions, should go under this portal. However, if that's the case, then this portal should probably have a bigger spot on the Main Page than the one it currently has. I might go so far as to say that it could replace the "Updates, news and events" box on the Main Page. Maybe a reshuffle of the Main Page is in order? Otherwise, we can just keep it to GWC -> ANet pages, and leave the Main Page as is. Comments or ideas? (Satanael 08:19, 22 May 2008 (UTC))

/Sigh..another spot for need-to-know or better-know information from ArenaNet? Veto? Anyone? -- Silverleaf 22:19, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Blogs

Okay...given that there appears to be openness to having a Developer Blog, I would suggest that it is in the communities best interest to set up what we can that both makes it easy and worthwhile for whomever at ArenaNet wants to add to a blog to do so. To me that means it exists on a main page that only ArenaNet users (we need to get them all signed up as wiki users) can add to and that the discussion that inevitably surrounds any such comments doesn't overwhelm the comments (hard to control). -- Inspired to ____ 01:38, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

ArenaNet talk/Talk

The namespace talk has gone back to the uppercase Talk... wasn't this fixed a few weeks ago? -- Brains12 \ talk 21:50, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

yeah :/ poke | talk 22:03, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Holding off on Skill Feedback move

Until subpaging is enabled again, I'm holding off on moving Izzy's skill pages, since they use templates that rely on subpaging for relative locations. (Also poke, once subpaging is enabled will it automatically move the sub-sub pages for each profession? Or are we going to have to hand/bot move the individual pages for each skill etc?) (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:38, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I think we have to do that on our own, but I can set a bot up for that, and then we can have it run one night :P

Btw. what should we do about the bug report pages? The translation ones are nearly all on the page itself and not on the talk page, but the other bug report pages are on the talk pages. What is better? I would prefer the main page, as it allows to have the talk page to "talk" about things ^^ poke | talk 22:42, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Main page is fine, as long as we remember to add the + button for adding sections, which shouldn't be an issue. I don't know if we want to do that move yet, though... let's try and get things moved over first before we start tweaking too much. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:44, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

It was just something that came to my mind :P Meh, Gaile/Frog talk subpages :| You change the names, and I move all pages from Gaile/Frog Talk/* to ArenaNet:Ingame Talk/* ? (btw. wouldn't "In-game talk" be better?) poke | talk 22:47, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I was just sticking with the previous format, which was Gaile/Frog Talk, hence Ingame Talk. I don't really have a preference in that regard, move it if you want. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:49, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Phew. All Gaile/Frog Talk subpages moved. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:15, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Starting bot move "Developer Updates/*" to "ArenaNet:Developer updates/*" poke | talk 23:16, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

done. :P I <3 Wikichu poke | talk 23:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

ArenaNet:GuildWars.com news needs its archives moved, preferably via bot. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:19, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

To add something else slightly unrelated - some navbars? -- Brains12 \ talk 23:24, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

If we do add them, I'd strong prefer separate ones. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:27, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Starting move, btw. someone needs to change the links later :P poke | talk 23:28, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I was leaning towards separate ones too. I do think that navbars are essential for quick browsing through each relevant page; so I don't really think it's a case of "if", but "when" and "how." As you can see above, I left the idea of using subpages if navbars were used instead. -- Brains12 \ talk 23:31, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Move done btw :P poke | talk 23:32, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Several archive boxes still need updating (I tried and failed to point them to the correct location). --Xeeron 11:29, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

The portal will probably end up linked in the left hand nav, right? Then we don't really need a nav bar on each page linking back to it. A nav linking to the relevant sections should be enough, like the "separate" one in your examples, Pling.
Any timeline on enabling subpages, have anyone even asked Anet yet? (I guess you have) - anja 06:13, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Already mentioned it to Emily. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 06:16, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Guild Wars 2 Suggestions

So, some people decided to start setting up a Guild Wars 2 suggestions page in this namespace a few weeks ago. That's great and all, but leaves us with an issue: there already was a page for it in Gaile's userspace. How do we want to go about merging those? By hand, or do we just want to move the page from Gaile's space to an "archive" of some sort and start with the new setup? Do we prefer the old setup? More input here would be great. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 06:19, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who has spent a lot of time on the GW2 Suggestions page, I think most people would be okay with archiving almost everything on Gaile's page as is, and starting fresh with a redirect to the new page. Part of the reason for this being that everyone on Gaile's suggestion page agrees that it gets way too big way too quick, and most things are totally disorganized, so people have known for a while that once your idea goes into archive, it's pretty much buried.

To minimize the pain of it, maybe we can move some of the most recent suggestions to the "scratchpad" on the new page, so people can continue active conversations, and archiving the rest. Maybe, as a rule of thumb for the move, any suggestion with the last comment being within the last 48 hours goes on the scratch pade, and the rest in archive? Maybe Gaile has an opinion, since it's her page and all... (Satanael 07:43, 30 May 2008 (UTC))

I agree with Satanael wrt the archive. I'd be happy to do some manual work moving suggestions around initially too. I just need an agreed final destination and structure.

About the old setup; most of the time I cannot get to the GW2 Suggestions page due to the length - and that is usually only half a month of suggestions. I think that reform is required to at least reduce page size but also reduce repetition and increase visibility of earlier suggestions. --Aspectacle 10:05, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I would prefer moving the page completely first and working then on a archive and a new front-page.. So we could keep the history and wouldn't break current discussions (48 hours are nothing in wiki discussions..) poke | talk 10:50, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Also especially as this is for suggestions there will be the same suggestions again and again, it would probably better to split into multiple pages and keep all the discussions unarchived, so that people can read that first and maybe even continue there. poke | talk 10:51, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

The GW2 suggestions page really needs a setup like Izzy's skill suggestions page. That is, a front page, where suggestions are listed (but not discussed), where each suggestion links to a subpage where the actual discussion takes place. That way it is much easier to keep track of which suggestions have been made before and that in turn reduces the amount of double and tripple suggestions. --Xeeron 11:25, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd also prefer to use the new version over the old since it's a lot cleaner looking and easier to use, although the old one also had separate sections more often than not stuff was usually suggested and discussed on the main page. As to how we should deal with the old suggestions pages, archiving would be the easiest but not necessarily the best way.

@Xeeron - That was discussed in the above Subpages section with one example already created here based on Izzy's skill suggestion pages. --Kakarot 13:28, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I guess we can't decide on how to archive the content if there isn't agreement on the layout of the new page itself. Poke, Xeeron, Aiiane as you've commented here perhaps you're also interested in commenting on the suggested layout of ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions and ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Armor. Poke, you mention multiple pages, you clearly have some ideas - could you elaborate on them? The suggested layout has a page per-idea and a listing per-category - is this similar to what you're visualizing or perhaps you mean a per-category page with content similar to the current layout?

I do think that the suggested layout is better (of course. ;) but if agreement on layout is going to be too slow then by necessity perhaps we should just copy the existing page over the top of the suggested main page; at least that way the community can start archiving (into the existing archive pages) and manage the content better in the meantime. --Aspectacle 04:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Aspectacle, I'm totally happy to have suggestions from everyone else about this, but I'm feeling pretty good about how it looks now, and at least happy with how it is just to start off, and we can play with it some more as needed.

@poke, definitely agree that 48 hours is like nothing for wiki conversations, but with the GW2 suggestion page, because so much is coming in so fast, 48 hours tends to end up being like 3 pages of text ago, and conversations end quick just 'cause people can't keep up. I'm hoping that will change when we make this move... (Satanael 06:43, 2 June 2008 (UTC))

i personally like the ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Armor better but maybe that cant really fit guildwars2 because there is so much stuff we dont know about it yet. so my idea is implement something like that for guildwars1 suggestion page. now that it is on the main page it has gotten a lot more traffic. and also needs organizing.75.165.102.213 08:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

The different categories used for the GW2 suggestion pages are all things we know will exist in GW2. We know this because Gaile was actually the person who created the categories when she put them on her original GW2 suggestion page, we've merely copied them here and given them a slightly different purpose than just organizing the archives. In any case, I think we can take it as semi-canon that these are the types of ideas that the devs are interested in hearing from us. (Satanael 03:27, 6 June 2008 (UTC))

P.S. I kind of always assumed that we would use the same or similar set up for both GW1 and GW2 suggestion pages, but if that was not a fair assumption, I certainly agree that we should, it'll just be easier that way. (Satanael 03:34, 6 June 2008 (UTC))

Anyways - because I'm not seeing any significant objections or movement on new ideas or layout I'm keen to go with the currently suggested suggestions layout and start working towards it. My idea for a plan of attack is;

a) fill out the empty structure the templates

b) make a few of the common suggestion pages

c) copy the current GW2 suggestions into the scratch pad (anyone got a better name for that?) but archive all with no comments in the past two weeks (comments after May 23rd) into the existing categorized Gaile talk archive

d) switch the links/do redirects

e) work through first the per-category archive and then possibly the flat archives moving ideas to page per idea structure.

f) on-going: trim down the scratch pad. Encourage use of page per idea stuff.

Any objections? I've got time this long weekend you see and the Gw2 suggestions page is only getting more ugly the longer we wait. --Aspectacle 05:09, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Those additions look awesome Aspectacle, thanks. If there are no real objections at this phase (no one seems to complain atm), I propose we go ahead with the move and archive as suggested by Aspectacle above. If there should be anyone present that should have cause to object to this union of suggestion pages, let them speak in the next 24 hours or forever hold their peace. (Satanael 09:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC))

Since no one has spoken up; beginning move now. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 16:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

The large main page of Gaile's area has been moved to ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Scratchpad, feel free to start breaking that up to topic pages. I'm not going to move the small topic pages Gaile already had in her space yet, since they should also be looked over and categorized/grouped as appropriate. Feel free to move them individually. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 17:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

as i suspected no change was made to gw175.165.110.13 09:15, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Arenanet portal rename?

i think the name of arenanet portal is kind of confusing with the other arenanet link. maybe rename it to feed back or contact.75.165.102.213 22:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

What is currently the portal isn't solely either a feedback or solely a contact page -- it's just a .. well, a portal. Similar to the Guild Wars Wiki:Community portal, it houses links and various titbits involved with whatever it's related to. If this is just an issue of the main page, the link can be shown as something else (although setting bad precedent), but still link to the "ArenaNet:Portal" page. Like The ArenaNet centre or whatever, as an example. -- Brains12 \ talk 22:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The name of this page is more "Portal" only; the rest comes from the namespace name and is appropriate for the content here. poke | talk 22:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming the confusion the anon refers to is on the main page link to here. I've changed the text of the link to the "ArenaNet" article to be more clear ("About ArenaNet") and differentiate itself from the portal link. That should resolve the issue. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:39, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

thats much better but i still feel people will have no idea why they should click on the areana net portal link.75.165.102.213 23:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

What are we waiting for?

Sorry, maybe I missed something in the discussion(s) somewhere, but is there something specific that is stalling the move to "live"? (Satanael 03:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC))

I think that they have gone "live" for the most part. There was some waiting for ArenaNet to say yes. And then Aiiane and Poke went nuts and did the most of it in 10 mintues or something. :) I think it is only GW2 Suggestions which isn't across yet because of the sandbox in the space they wanted to move the content to. --Aspectacle 05:09, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Correct. The only thing that hasn't moved yet is the Guild Wars 2 Suggestions section, because we still haven't come to a final decision on how we're moving that section. Everything else has moved. Game updates is, at least for now, staying in mainspace. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 08:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

agreed on the game updates staying where they are at its one thing that i think a lot of people who play look at. also i wish and have suggested this before but on the main long in screen have a additional link linking you to the wiki and the game update section every time there is a new one. so people know.75.165.102.213 09:21, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually that might be a good idea with the log on screen including a link to the latest update page. Have you suggested it elsewhere before although I'm not sure who would be the best person to suggest it to, probably place it on the Guild Wars suggestions page. --Kakarot 13:46, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Are we ready enough to put a link on the sidebar, as intended? -- Brains12 \ talk 17:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

We were always ready for that, even if pages are still located in other namespaces the Portal still links to them. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 17:08, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

So do we just add it in? Or is more discussion needed (thus we aren't ready)? -- Brains12 \ talk 17:13, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Let's be bold. We discuss everything for far too long anyway. :P And it doesn't hurt :) - anja 17:26, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Done, but it looks a little weird.. should it go under the Community portal link to sustain the "getting bigger, then getting smaller" theme we seem to have, or leave it above community portal to make it slightly more relevant? A better looking navbar with familiarity, or relevance? -- Brains12 \ talk 17:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Tweaked the wording, so there's no need to move it. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 18:12, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

<3 -- Brains12 \ talk 18:13, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Another link that moves the default location of RC.. :/ poke | talk 18:06, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

That's what bookmark bars are for poke. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 05:00, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Skill bugs

Misc bugs is a bit overcrowded. Thought this would be a logical thing to seperate out. Opinions? Backsword 05:16, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Apply Poison

← moved to Talk:Apply Poison

Suggestion for Another Portal Page

Some months ago, James Phinney, Lead Designer for Guild Wars, asked the community team to encourage folks to share their ideas about local or regional comments, jokes, songs, and so forth. We called the Wiki project the Cultural References Page, and thus far, it's been located off my user talk page, here. I am very sure that this is an on-going project and that the design team would like to continue to receive these ideas from Guild Wars players. I would like to know if it would be appropriate to move that page to the Portal? It seems that this would be a very good home for the page, and if the consensus is to move it, I'd love to see it happen. Thanks. -- Gaile 05:50, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, I have no issues with moving it here. Seems like if it is an "ArenaNet" page is should be in the ArenaNet namespace :) --Shadowphoenix 05:53, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I think this sounds like a very appropriate place for that.-- Wynthyst 06:09, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, why not? :) poke | talk 06:22, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Done. ArenaNet:International Cultural References. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 07:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Would changing Other helpful pages to just Other pages make sense on the portal and then add a link for the Cultural reference page there?-- Wynthyst 07:11, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Isn't ANet looking more for suggestions on that page? poke | talk 12:05, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

If you feel it belongs in suggestions that's fine, I wasn't sure but wanted to get it linked on the portal.-- Wynthyst 12:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

It's fine how it is, as it fills up that section :P poke | talk 12:24, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I moved it to suggestions, since it makes more sense together with other pages that need input, instead of the list of Anet people. - anja 16:16, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

ArenaNet:AI bugs

The talk page is massive, and you can't edit the sections individually. This needs to change. Wahoo, a 92KB page that I get to hunt through to find the section I want! Could Subst: in the templates, and give them edit sections... But yeah, thats annoying. ~~ frvwfr2 (talk · contributions) 23:14, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I manually added edit links underneath the title of each section, it's not exactly ideal but it does work. One solution would be to add separate pages for each section, but I'd prefer to wait before making such a change since QA has been reporting a lot of the issues posted there lately so we'll probably be able to archive more bug reports in the near future. --Draikin 09:42, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Subpages for Suggestions

You can say whatever you want but the idea of having subpages for each single suggestion was the worst possible idea. People are creating pages with stupid names, including too long, undescriptive and discussing (or not) stupid and unneeded or duplicate topics. This is not a forum, so creating subpages for each topic is really unneeded, especially when nobody looks for the existing pages or thinks twice about creating a new one. So please have maybe 10 topic-pages (like the navigation on the right side) which contains then all suggestions to that topic and is frequently archived. That enables much more flexibility and makes it so much easier to browse through the suggestions and look over them. poke | talk 14:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Please. The names with emoticons, typos, all caps, !!!!111, etc. is getting way out of hand. I like Poke's suggestion. gogogo. Calor 15:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah it has gotten out of control with the number of duplicate pages being created as well as the creation of typo page names which then need to be moved. I have no problem with Poke's suggestion. --Kakarot 19:37, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I guess I was too optimistic about the average intelligence of the people contributing here. I wanted to see whether it would work, but the fact that 'underwater' has come up on like 5 different pages, with nothing different to say in the space of a week I must concede defeat because I cannot, and do not want to, spend the time to clear all of the dross up. Your idea Poke is just a flat page of ideas and their talk, or can we split the ideas and the talk into different pages? --Aspectacle 22:09, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, this was always expected. :) I'm all for this idea. If we have topic-pages, then contributors can list their suggestions, and some of us can edit the titles and condense the information so that it's free from personal commentary, background information and repetative themes. That way should Anet just so happen to stumble and have a look, all of the suggestions will be summarised in the contents box and they can go straight to the suggestion that's on that one page. If we get repetative ideas, we'll remove any information that's new; move it to the existing suggestion and then delete the rest. If people want to discuss the idea, then I recommend we split it up by the suggestion in their discussions page. That way all of the clutter will be in the discussion pages and then the refined and tidy and nice looking suggestions page will be just that. :D (Terra Xin 03:45, 28 June 2008 (UTC))

Do whatever you like, everything with a fixed number of pages if fine for me, as long as it works :) poke | talk 06:35, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

New subpages for every idea also appeared nice to me at first, as you have a quick overview about all suggestions. Though if cleaning up duplicate topics and similar things become too stressful, i wouldn't mind if it became changed. —ZerphaThe Improver 07:12, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Poke's suggestion shouldn't change the display too much, but it will look a lot smoother. (Terra Xin 07:32, 28 June 2008 (UTC))

I've got a new sidebox here. The only problem is that it'll pretty much be the same as the /scratchpad but it's categorised. Meaning we'd lose out on the automated feature (like pre-formatting and separate discussion pages) that subpages give. If there's no objections should we make the changes? (Terra Xin 09:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC))

If you could add a section for Titles, that should cover the majority of categories needed. Fall 09:20, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

ok, I've added it under character (Terra Xin 09:26, 28 June 2008 (UTC))

While Poke is absolutly right about the pain it's become, the scratchpad was a mess. I'd strongly not prefer to return to that 'solution'.

As a first step, we should just take a stronger hand to this. One of the key points about the new namespace was so that the wiki community could manage it, rather than just one anet user as it was when it was on user talk. Simply delete tag anything duplicate. (well probably develop anet space speedy resons soon enough) Move badly named stuff. Don't treat this as a user talk page; those restriction do not apply. Delete pointless text, or move to talk. And so on. Backsword 09:26, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I've added a policy suggestion for the most obvious one. Backsword 09:59, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

No Backsword. The main problem I have is that it's very hard to browse through the suggestion pages and look for similar suggestions (one reason for that are the bad titles some people use). People tend to not fill out the form that is automatically loaded and just add a text, and people aren't really discussing the topics because it is hard to watch over new pages without looking through all 16 sections whereas you would only need to put the pages on your watchlist if we use one page for more than one topic. poke | talk 15:36, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

If people wanted a constantly pinged watchlist, they could just visit the page directly. Same effect. Backsword 03:19, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I like Blacksword's idea. This is our wiki to manage; we should take a stronger hand in doing so. I personally think that having individual pages makes things much neater, and easier to browse because of the DPL lists in the different categories. I understand how poor naming is a problem, so I think stricter rules on how to create a suggestion should be made - for example - if you don't fill out the form correctly it will be deleted. Use a sensible name, or it will be deleted. Duplicates will be merged/deleted - If people can't be bothered to follow the rules, they shouldn't be bothering to suggest things. One downside of this is people that don't have good English... we are an English wiki, but should have some (limited) support for people of other languages. -- Indochine talk 16:04, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to echo poke's thoughts. I don't check this namespace much so I'm just offering my 2 cents. It's not about the bad names or strong rules or how much leeway we get to move/change/delete them. The majority of anons who throw in a suggestion don't bother with what you do with it. So making it easy for them to create new pages makes it even easier for them to ignore existing suggestions. It creates avoidable and trivial work for users and admins (not to mention dozens of pointless new page entries in the database) that does not contribute to the usefulness of this wiki. Why so much effort into something that ha so far had no actual feedback from ArenaNet on how useful it's been? Do they want it organised? Heck, do they even look at it? I'm asking that because letting people throw in their suggestions about the game doesn't really document the game (unless you count features that people think this game should have). The previous consensus was to reject a formal gathering of suggestions. Are we moving away from that? -- ab.er.rant 17:25, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm happy to go either way. I was content on going either way, but I just went through a few different articles with one-line suggestions that couldn't be deleted because the suggestions do not relate to the other. re: Adrenaline, Guilds have more use in game. I would strongly suggest making them all /scratchpads but make each suggestion free from discussion (and redirect all discussion to their talk page). You could have it work so that with each suggestion that is posted, a separate talk page is issued for each one. We can then add a strict format policy and it will make it a LOT easier to modify and change without the need to request 'delete' or 'move' tags. The number of suggestions is expected to increase with the arrival of the game, so we need a system that wont take us so long to keep under control. Otherwise it will just end up like a scratchpad anyway, but with hundreds of links and redirects and delete and move tags. (Terra Xin 23:33, 29 June 2008 (UTC))

I didn't read Poke's suggestion as wanting to do away with suggestions. Perhaps you mean that would be the effect of his suggestion? I doubt people would stop posting until it got so their browser wouldn't let them. Backsword 03:17, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I didn't read poke's suggestion as wanting to do away with suggestions either. He (and I) disagreed with creating one subpage for each suggestion, especially since many of them are very short suggestions and many get misnamed. I was merely pointing out the fact that suggestions are secondary to the purpose of this site and that suggestions on a wiki are of doubtful benefit even to the developers. Any system that supports such should be as simple to manage as possible. It should require constant intervention and monitoring by regular users - such efforts are better spent watching and maintaining the main namespace. Even the guild namespace is better. -- ab.er.rant 07:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure. But anyway,here's an example of what I'm suggesting. You've got a bunch of ideas that vary slightly, but are all under the single artile. They also come with separate discussion pages, so the article itself will be free from discussion. It'll be like a scratchpad but less untidy. (Terra Xin 03:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC))

That's pretty much what's we've been doing thus far, with the exception of merging the idea for a new offhand into it. (Which I'll revert, me thinks). Backsword 03:57, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

We shouldn't be waiting for people to make mistakes before we fix them, though. The sidebox needs to be reworked so that the categories are more distinctive. For example; The World, PvE and Story are not distinctively different, and there are only a couple of articles under Items. (Terra Xin 04:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC))

We can certainly do that. You're not wrong about your examples, but I believe that they were intended to be seperate, eg. PvE was supposed to be game merchanics. Backsword 04:19, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I wont implement the sidebox i've written up unless they'll be treated like a /scratchpad minus the discussions. Or we can do what we're doing now, but the articles will continue to pile up. (Terra Xin 04:43, 30 June 2008 (UTC))

That they will, but the only way to stop the influx of material is to go with Aberrant and scratch the entire idea. Backsword 07:54, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think poke's suggestion is the best course of action. We had a simmilar suggestion system before, and i seriously doubt anyone took the time to read it since it was just a 150kb long page every week, mostly with rants, and with the same suggestion 4 times in the page and 30 more times in the archive.

When this namespace was suggested at first, i thought of it as a way to gather everything "anet related" while also giving us the tools to remove the excesive garbage that could become produced from time on time; sadly, this was not what happened, but still could if we want to understand at once that the wiki is not a forum, and that front page articles are not talk pages, and cannot be treated as such.

Personally, i think the current system is a lot more friendly for locating simmilar suggestions for users willing to (and a lot easier for Anet to follow if they want to), and is a lot easier to "clean" if we want to. What we should do is simply put a stop to the disorder, going and merging suggestions (like the bow page wich is a good example of how this should work), delete redundancy, and just remove at once anything that is not a GW2 suggestion, that is a rant, or that can't be salvaged as a suggestion due to lack of skill or will from the editor's part to write it properly.

Terra's idea for a navbar modification seems good also. As we get more suggestions we will see that some are common, so instead of having "yes to DP", "no to DP", "change DP", and "Lol DP", at that point suggestion would be merged into "DP", and the suggestion edited as to encompass every vision. Minor variantions or non-specific information can be moved to the talk-page, or just deleted at that point.

As it has been suggested also, if a user feels this doesn't satisfy their need for speaking his opinion out, he can always write an essay in his userspace and place a link in the suggestion.--Fighterdoken 08:18, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Contributors have already begun merging topics in relation to the example you've given. I'm gonna hold back on trying to suggest improvements and just monitor the progression of suggestions that are being made. We seem to be managing fairly reasonably for the moment. If things really start to pile up, we can always come back to it, and it wont take too long to make changes if necessary. (Terra Xin 09:00, 2 July 2008 (UTC))

just from an out siders perspective the page is kind of confusing. and being forced in to doing a format is not always easy seeing as most people don't know how to write wiki code. i think the scratch pad on the main page was a bad idea.... i think the ideal way to organize this would be like how the skill suggestions is now on the portal page. just my 2 cents. also can we please fix the guild wars 1 sug page as well its so hard to navigate. lastly a sort description might help the topics out as to what kind of suggestions should show up in each sub page (ie he World, PvE and Story...) Also i think my confusion is from where i should post my suggestions. do i post it on the scratchpad first and then let it get archived or do i just go to the topic i am thinking about like armor and then use the preset thing and then post it there?75.172.47.75 07:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Simple answer is to just read the front gw2 suggestions page. It says on the top that if you're confident in your idea then you can go and post it straight away. (Terra Xin 21:46, 9 July 2008 (UTC))

I would like a merging between Terra's idea and Backsword's idea. Change the sidebox so every possible solution fits within an already existing page (say, all suggestions about the level cap would be within the "Character" page, all suggestions about bows would be within the "Bows" subpage to the "Weapons" page, and etc), and don't allow users to create new pages. Then go with Backsword's idea of having a stronger hand, and delete everything that is a copy, or even just very similar, to a previous suggestion. Erasculio 21:55, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

GW1 sugestions page....

it is not organized at all and is getting rather long i kind of like how gw2 suggestions are setup but yet that's not perfect and its kind of confusing were to post. Ideally i think some thing like how the ArenaNet:Skill feedback pages are set up would be best.75.172.47.109 08:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I've seen a lot of people suggest that the suggestions for GW2 or GW1 should be more like the skill feedback sections. One thing I don't think people realize is that one of the reasons that the skill feedback section is better organized is because of the nature of the suggestions being left there. With skill feedback, people only make suggestions/comments about specific skills, so it's easy to organize, whatever skill they name is where it gets plugged into. With ideas about GW2 that's not really possible, because the ideas can be about anything. We've tried to come up with some categories for people to plug-in their ideas, and that seems to be working a heck of a lot better than the forum-style we had before, but in the end it will never be as organized as the skill feedback sections because the ideas are just too hard to classify. We can say, oh, pet ideas go here, and gameplay there, but when somebody just comes up with the suggestion "don't remake WoW" or "more cooler stuff with things hanging off them, and flaming ninjas exploding in the background", how do we classify that? In some ways, the very nature of suggestions for an entire game, coupled with the impatient nature of people who want to be heard and don't care if what they're saying has been said before, will be messy, and hard to work with, hard to search. It's just the nature of the beast.

In any case, back on point, I'm cool with implementing something similar for the GW1 suggestions as we have for the GW2 suggestions, althought I think the categories may have to be reworked, given that GW1 is an established game the suggestions are bound to be more specific and on point, and about different stuff. I'm not very familiar with what types of suggestions get pushed around on that page, so maybe IP 75 or anyone else who is more familiar with those suggestions can come up with some categories for the GW1 suggestions? (Satanael 10:19, 15 August 2008 (UTC))

Just archive it... People already have trouble using the GW2 suggestions system... (Terra Xin 13:26, 17 August 2008 (UTC))

if i knew how to archive i would. =(75.172.47.109 22:45, 18 August 2008 (UTC)