Guild Wars Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 18

Unofficially titled articles and their capitalization

I'm just going to be centralizing the discussions on various move-tagged articles which have this shared theme. -- Konig/talk 18:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Gwen's Garden

→ moved from Talk:Gwen's garden#Capitalization?

Secret Garden is a proper name, so that both Secret and Garden are capitalized. Since this article also uses a community-given proper name, shouldn't it be Gwen's Garden? (Alternatively, shouldn't we make garden lower case for the other article?)  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:44, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree, either both uppercase or both lowercase. → balistic ← 19:48, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not a proper term, as it isn't an official term - it's a description, not a name for a place, only "Gwen" is proper. Typically, fan named articles are lowercase - except when containing proper nouns. I don't know why "The Secret Garden" is. If anything, that should be moved to "The secret garden." -- Konig/talk 03:02, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Place names are proper nouns, regardless of whether they are official or not, regardless of whether they originated as descriptions. ANet never named these two landmarks, but these names are now in wider usage than many official terms. Outside of GW, in many college towns across the world, there is a coffee house so dark and dingy, it's known to generations of students as, "Cafe Depresso," and never, "cafe depresso." It's a name and a title, despite it being inventive and fictive.

That said, I agree with you that we should be consistent across the wiki: the articles should be either "The Secret Garden" and "Gwen's Garden" or "The secret garden" and "Gwen's garden" .  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:34, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

"Place names are proper nouns" True, but this isn't a name, it's a description used as an article heading. ^^ That was my point, it doesn't even have a name, official or not. -- Konig/talk 13:54, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

This is very much a name; it's what everyone uses to identify a specific location. (Or how else do "unofficial names" come into being, except through usage?)

That said, I don't think that anyone should prematurely change the article. At the moment, there's no consensus; opinions are strong and divided. There's no particular urgency to clarifying the article naming convention for unofficial proper nouns, so I hope that people will be patient.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:42, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

There's a difference betweeen an unofficial name and a common description. If I have a friend named Mike, I would almost certainly refer to his home as "Mike's house" (or "Mike's apartment" if it was an apartment, or possibly just "Mike's place"), and it is entirely likely that a shared circle of friends would also call it the same thing. That isn't the same as unofficially naming the place, say, "Mike Stadium" because that group of friends gathers there to watch sporting events together. The Secret Garden could probably go either way (I'd personally lean toward name, but I can see the argument otherwise), while I'd say Gwen's garden pretty clearly falls into common description (it's a garden which belongs to Gwen, she even refers to it as her garden in dialogue). - Tanetris 18:38, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

The Mike's apartment vs Mike's Stadium comparison is helpful; that clarifies (for me) the just a description argument. I still think that player usage has elevated GG to a name, but I can see why others disagree.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:51, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

This "Mike" must have very low standards, considering his apartment is a "stadium" to him.--Neil • 19:38, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

The Secret Garden

→ moved from Talk:The Secret Garden#Move

Opposed to the move, since Secret Garden is treated as a name just as much as Fort Ranik is. 69.182.147.69 08:32, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Difference is that the name Fort Ranik is in the game. The name "Secret Garden" is not. -- Konig/talk 08:35, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it should be kept. Or ask someone at A.NET and see their response. --'Mai Yi' talk 23:20, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

As I've suggested elsewhere, I think it's distracting to use a different naming convention for official vs unofficial proper nouns. (Particularly since The Secret Garden is a more noteworthy location than many officially named landmarks.) Since this is more about individual preferences than a strict rule (grammar or GWW style), I think we should establish a wiki consensus rather than discussing each article one-at-a-time.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I think we should keep consistency in style. If we use lower case to refer to unofficial names and upper case to refer to official names then I think this should be lower case. If you want all names, official or otherwise, to be in upper case that is a separate issue to be discussed elsewhere. We should maintain the same standard and style throughout the entire wiki, which I believe in this case means moving to the lower case title for this article. I don't believe in arguing for a percieved significance in whether or not this landmark or location is special compared to other landmarks, we should keep the definitions simple, does the landmark have an official name or is this a player name? If it's given a name by players the convention for unofficial names should apply. Grmatically, the lower case name is the correct one, we only give official names capitals because that's how it's done in game. That reality does not exist for player given names thus the default to proper grammar for unofficial names. Again, if your issue is with the convention, that is a different discussion to be had elsewhere. 110.32.0.67 05:09, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

As of this post, there are 169 articles tagged as unofficial terms. Of these, 12 use Upper Case, 62 use Lower case, 3 are mixed case, and 92 are single words or numbers (so the convention doesn't affect them). (I am ignoring small words, such as the and of.) So, at least 15 articles have to be fixed. If the only argument for using upper case is the effort involved in renaming 65 articles, then I am happy to volunteer to do it (and the redirect follow-ups).

As I've remarked, there is no grammatical or current wiki rule that says unofficial terms must use lower case; it's a convention and therefore a stylistic preference. GWW:NAMING suggests that "Names of...specific locations...are to be considered proper nouns for [article titles]..." and proper nouns are almost always capitalized. The lower case convention sets up some weird article names, imo: Away from keyboard (when the acronym is AFK, not Afk) and Guide to the Beacon's Perch to Droknar's Forge run (with run being the only lower case word).

I think we should decide what we want the convention to be before deciding whether we want to move 15 or 65 articles.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 06:08, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Like the Gwen's garden, which is already a good example IMO, this landmark can be renamed to "Secret garden" or "Regent Valley garden", as for me, the last is better. Redirection never was a problem in Wiki. --Slavic 13:16, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

It's a proper noun, thus it should be in upper case. I am also really against a complete rename as suggested by Slavic above. It is well known as The Secret Garden in game and always has been. The only other name I've seen it called (before the intro of Nick) was Melandru's Garden. Either way, proper nouns are upper case. EDIT: also if you look above to 2009 you will see this exact same thing was debated then. -- Salome 13:35, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

@TEF: For the two examples you gave which makes weird article names: Beacon's Perch and Droknar's Forge are meant to be uppercase as they're official terms used within the title, and Away from keyboard is right as it would technically be "away from keyboard" (the acronym doesn't care about upper or lowercase, in fact, no acronym except for company/copyrighted acronyms do), but the auto-capitalization of the first word ruins this. And yes, there is no rule on the wiki stating that they must be, but this is for consistency with things that were done long prior to this. And there are far more articles needing fixing than just your 62 linked articles (that category isn't complete, I just found and added two which currently use lowercasing) if we decide to go the other way around.

@Slavic: I like "Regent Valley garden" myself too, as it is more specific to what the garden is (the garden isn't an allusion to the movie, nor is it a really a secret... it's just bloody hard to find, so by the current name "Bloody Hard to Find Garden" is just as proper of a name).

@Salome: Actually, outside of this wiki page, I have never heard of any "widely used name" for the garden. Before this wiki page was called "The Secret Garden" it was "Melandru's Garden" (which I actually have seen used in game, The Secret Garden I haven't). But either way, imo, it is not a proper name. No more proper than Am Fah's guild hall, Xunlai headquarters, Gwen's garden, or any of the unofficial terms that TEF linked. And a majority of them are lowercased. -- Konig/talk 14:06, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and for reference, I have heard Melandru's Garden (either cap and lower) in game once, and secret garden never. In over 4.5 years of playing. And Salome, the discussion above isn't of any use because that's discussing what to call it, this discussion is more for whether to capitalize it or not. Though this discussion should probably be taken to some more generic page since it covers the whole of Category:Unofficial terms. -- Konig/talk 14:14, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry Konig, you must have read the wrong move article, i was referencing this. Also I personally have only ever heard it called The Secret Garden, in game. That however is just my experience. -- Salome 11:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

(1) Prior to Nick, everyone I met who knew about the area called it the Secret Garden. Upon Nick's introduction, people receiving directions and who said they hadn't heard the name before, said, oh! that hidden garden? or oh, you mean that secret garden. Since Nick's intro, I have heard Secret Garden a bit less and where Nick is more.

(2) @Konig (mostly): you missed my point about the Drok's run guide. It isn't whether it's correctly capitalized or not, it's the fact that it looks like a typo. Similarly Afk looks wrong for AFK, since acronyms are either always capitalized or all lower cased, never mixed case. It's not 10 Pm; it's 10 PM. It's not Snafu; it's SNAFU. (And, though we don't have to follow their rule, it's how Wikipedia handles acronyms.)

(3) After reviewing the list of unofficial terms, it turns out to be more complicated and not as easy to categorize; I'll run the metrics again when I have a chance (it's, as you can imagine a PITA, but not a Pita, to collate).

(4) And I cannot accept the argument that we follow the majority of articles because (a) I've volunteered to fix them if need be (eliminating the effort part of the argument) and (b) unofficial names can be and are proper nouns. For example, most of New York's neighborhoods are unofficial names without any more official status than Gwen's Garden: NoHo, West Village, TriBeCa, and Lower West Side.

(5) However, I agree strongly with Konig that we need to move this to a generic talk page, probably for GWW:GENFORM or something in that part of the wiki.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 11:55, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree this should be on a generic talk page and not here. On the subject, I think only the Wiki whores (or is that Wiki Whores?) among us really give a **** if it is upper, lower or somewhere-in-between case. The average GW player (and Wiki user) doesn't even have the faintest clue what is player established and what is game terms or what is canon or not. With that said ... I don't see any reason to distinguish player established terms and game terms by means of grammar. --Manassas 12:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Zinn's Laboratory

→ moved from Talk:Zinn's Laboratory#Move discussion

I disagree with moving to Zinn's laboratory. It's a proper name, official or unofficial; proper names should be capitalized.

I also think we should have the discussion generally somewhere else, because this issue applies to other unofficially named landmarks, e.g. Gwen's garden, The Secret Garden, and Rabbit hole. Real life examples include The West Coast, The Mall That Time Forgot, and, on numerous campuses miles from any bodies of water, [Placename] Beach (the default sunbathing location) — each of these locations are unofficial, proper names; they are capitalized in print.

In other words, let's reach consensus on how to name articles about unofficial places before we move/change any. (Of the list of four, currently there are two that follow each rule.)  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:02, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

If Zinn had camped in the area for any great length of time, I'd agree that the location would be known as "Zinn's Laboratory". A parallel would be using "Oola's Lab" had it not already been called such in game. But Zinn seems to have used the hideout for a short amount of time, and not long enough to warrant a proper noun for the place.

I think we should maintain the use of proper English, which to me says that The Secret Garden should lose it's capitals (I think the player-made reference to the book has led to the current capitalization). G R E E N E R 20:22, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the later half of what greener said. Also, I think that, whether or not it's "proper" (which I still disagree with it being proper as this name is a descriptive name), for ease of realizing whether a name is official or not, we use a different form of article naming. Easiest to do would be lowercasing all but the undeniably proper nouns (e.g., Zinn, Gwen, Tomb\Primeval Kings, etc.). Alternatively, we could put quotation marks around the said (such as how gw2:"Deep Sea dragon" is done). But imo, we should not name unofficial term articles the same as we name official term articles. As such, it would be easiest to merely go with lowercasing the article names as move unofficial term articles are either one word or already lowercase with the exception noted above in my post.

And if we start capitalizing some articles, then we'd have a lot of work... there's 170 articles in the unofficial term category, I for one am not going through them all and moving the articles and bypassing created redirects. -- Konig/talk 22:59, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I suspect that this really comes down to a community preference; there usually isn't any rational argument that can persuade people to change a preference. From my point of view, we already tag and cat articles as unofficial; I don't see why we need to further differentiate official from unofficial terms (whether through caps, italics, quotes, or something else). I find it distracting — Gwen's garden is a more important landmark than Kei Beach; why distinguish them at all? (It also sometimes creates odd titles, e.g. Guide to the Beacon's Perch to Droknar's Forge run, where only run is lower case (to/the not usually being subject to the rule).)

Incidentally, I don't think "having a lot of work" is a sufficient argument for deciding. If that's the only thing in the way, then I'm happy to move 170 articles for consistency. (I think it's going to turn out that we will need to adjust a bunch of articles either way...and add some to category:unofficial terms, too.)

I'm happy to concede to a community preference; I would like to see us have that discussion before deciding on individual articles.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 09:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Combined discussion

Please place new comments here so it's not messy.
My opinion has been stated above in each place, but for easy reference: I believe that, to differenciate between official and unofficial terms, the later (unofficial) should be lowercased with the exception of where the article utilizes official terms in it (see, currently, Ruins of the Tomb of the Primeval Kings, Am Fah's guild hall, and Xunlai headquarters and Guide to the Beacon's Perch to Droknar's Forge run). -- Konig/talk 18:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

In contrast, I believe we should, as our policy suggests, capitalize proper names, whether they are official or unofficial. In particular: Gwen's Garden is the name that (nearly) everyone uses to refer to a certain unofficial landmark, making it a proper name. I feel strongly enough about this that I am willing to rename and move any/all articles that need to be capitalized.

There are some metrics above which I think are misleading; I'll re-review the current list of unofficial names and publish an analysis of how many articles might need to be adjusted. In the meantime, the short story is that some articles will need to be moved regardless of the standard we choose, however would be far fewer moves required if we follow Konig's suggestion (unofficial names get lower case; official names get upper).  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I can only tell again that I'm against capitalisation of unofficial terms: while Gwen's garden is unofficial and everybody can understand this looking only at the lack of capitalisation, Gwen's Garden is looked like an official term and many people would mistakenly count it official. In other words, capitalisation has a semantic meaning in GW world. Why do we need to differentiate them? Because the official terms are "carved in stone", while unofficial can come and go... --Slavic 18:01, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, using "proper" English in any context, is preferable to not doing so.

Second, in parsing "Gwen's Garden" - "Gwen" is an ADJECTIVE describing the NOUN "Garden". Since Gwen is a proper name, it is appropriate to capitalize both "Gwen" and "Garden" in this context, since the phrase is defining a SPECIFIC, defined location, which is immovable. (Unlike "Mike's apartment" which could change daily, weekly, monthly or yearly.) (depending on his relationship with the landlord!)Undouble 16:13, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the difference is. The apartment which currently belongs to Mike is no different than the garden which currently belongs to Gwen; either one could change ownership, and either owner could choose (or be forced) to replace it with another in a different location. (Or either could be moved from its position by a well-placed and strong enough explosion.) The permanence of either is only as different from the other as your example, and even so I don't think proper rules of English say anything about permanence of a thing making it a proper noun. --ஸ Kyoshi 04:20, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Evaluation of current articles

I've reviewed the current list of articles that have been tagged as category:unofficial terms; the count is 103 at the time of this post. I've reviewed each term on the basis of whether they should be retitled based on the two main philosophies:

1. 12 (maybe 13) articles would be renamed if all unofficial terms are renamed to lower case.
2. 13 articles would be renamed if we use Title Case for Proper names (even those given by players).

In other words, it requires the same effort to update the wiki to consistently follow either philosophy. (It's possible that there are many unofficial terms that haven't been properly classified...in which case...we'll get those when we find 'em.)

Thus, it comes down to our preference, because (a) the unofficial=lower case is part of our community-driven style guide (so we can change it at will) and (b) this aspect of grammar (when does a noun get capitalized in a title) doesn't follow firm rules (see, e.g. Shakespeare).

I think the clearest example is Gwen's Garden vs Gwen's garden, since that is probably the closest thing we have to a universally recognized unofficial place name. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I counted 23 articles that are currently lowercased, would be require altering if capitalization is preferred, and deals with mechanics (rather than strategies or player-controlled things such as "Red Resign" or "power creep"), though only 12 locations (so maybe I'm missing one? - 53 total). Granted, at least one is a candidate for deletion. And only 7 to be moved (same situations) if we go with lower-casing (8 overall, I seem to be missing some). I don't see how it's possible for the numbers to be so drastically off if you counted "all unofficial terms". This of course includes those not tagged (to keep the list small or not considered but under the same situation). Konig/talk 04:51, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I can't count any unofficial terms unless they are tagged. How would I know what they are? Also, I've ignored tagged terms with only a single word (they wouldn't need to be changed) and the one that's tagged for deletion. Check the links above, which is where I've published the details (the first link shows the articles I reviewed, the last shows my evaluation — please change the last column, which shows whether the title would need to be changed to be all lower case).

I should add that under the all lower case convention, I consider that terms like 55 Monk should be changed to 55 monk (since technically, "Monk" is the second word).

Also: I only evaluated place names as Proper Nouns (it appears hard enough to convince people that Gwen's Garden is a proper noun; I don't see much hope for Red Resign Day, which was an unofficial name for a spontaneous player-created special event...although it probably should follow the same rules...). — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 05:02, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I just want to clarify what I meant when I said tagged - I meant in Category:Unofficial terms and Guild Wars Wiki:List of proposed moves, splits and merges. Likewise, under the lower case convention, 55 Monk should remain such, as Monk is capitalized by Anet during GW1, thus should remain capitalized - just as Guide to Drok's run should remain such; likewise, 1,000 Daggers guild hall and Am Fah guild hall would remain such as lower case, as 1,000 Daggers and Am Fah are a proper nouns. Konig/talk 05:11, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Consistency of Official Names vs unofficial names

(Reset indent) Just wanting to see if we can get a decision on this. As it is, I'm just wanting a bloody case of consistency. Konig/talk 00:45, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree that consistency (at this point) is more important than which system we choose. Consequently, I'm withdrawing my objections to using lower case for unofficial names, even if those names are (to me) obviously proper nouns. As I've argued elsewhere, capitalization involves a measure of preference; it's not simply a point of grammar with a clear outcome.

I do want us to continue to capitalize abbreviations, since that is the nearly universal standard for American English, but I doubt that's an issue for more than a few articles (the most notable might be NPC vs Npc). – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 21:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Skill acquisition: the constant (but unintended) edit wars

Every skill's acquisition section is the target of frequent, well-intentioned, but misleading changes: people add a skill trainer to the list after they have unlocked the skill (so other characters can acquire it at multiple trainers). This has been going on for years. I wonder if we can reduce the chance that it happens by re-labeling the subsection on skill trainers from Skill trainer to perhaps Skill trainers (that can unlock the skill) or something along those lines.

In addition to reducing the frequency of these changes, it also makes it easier for the well-intentioned contributor to understand the reason why their change gets reverted. (This is a good thing since these types of edits are the first edits by potential future contributors.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

This seems like a reasonable change. Perhaps we could also add a comment to the wiki source with a more extensive note that only trainers which can unlock the skill should be added, and that people should be careful to make sure that such is the case before editing? (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 17:43, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm against changing the header to include something in parentheses, but all for making it less ambiguous. poke | talk 17:47, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a note underneath the existing header. Or, perhaps adding a bullet under every Skill trainer subsection that says, e.g.

• After unlocking: any skill trainer in this campaign will offer this skill to your other characters.

Well, that's waaaaay to long, but the idea is to make it clear that there's a difference in availability for locked and unlocked skills. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:20, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Another option would be to add commented-out notices above and below the list of skill trainers in that section which states the above. Not everyone reads them, unfortunately, but it will limit the number of mis-edits without adding confusion directly to the article. G R E E N E R 19:14, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Hidden comments are useful. Still, I'd like to see the skill articles themselves comment on the difference between acquiring locked and unlocked skills; even veterans still get confused by this. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:36, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) How about this alternative suggestion:

• On all skill pages, rename Acquisition to NPCs that can unlock the skill (which better reflects what we record).
• Add a note in italics below, These NPCs will teach the skill to your current character, which will also unlock the skill for your entire account and allow characters to learn the skill at any trainer in the same campaign.

— Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:30, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Quests that offer the skill as a reward are also listed in the "Acquisition" section. The "Skill trainers" heading is what should be changed. --Silver Edge 07:16, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Ah, good point. (I knew I was forgetting something obvious.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 07:39, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Take 2 (skill acquisition)

How about if we add an intro to the Skill trainer section of acquisition, to read,

These trainers can unlock the skill for you (once unlocked, you can use a tome or purchase the skill from any trainer in the same campaign).

It's shorter than previous suggestions and (I believe) a bot could add it to the relevant pages. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:44, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Take 3

Since this just came up again, how about this:

• Change the acquisition section so that it includes a subsection for Unlocked by (this would be the most commonly used).
• Include a hidden comment beneath the acquisition header (per above).
• Underneath the new header, include the text, The following trainer(s) will unlock the skill for you (once unlocked, you can use a tome or purchase the skill from any trainer in the same campaign).

• So, if there are no skill quests, we'd have: Acquisition → Unlocked by... (note) → Campaign → Location/Trainer
• If there are quests, we'd have Acquisition → Skill quests (list) & Unlocked by... (etc)

– Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 21:18, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I take it its not possible to put protection on the section without actually substituting in the aquisition section by creating a sub page, e.g. Frenzy/Acquisition and then putting protection against IPs/non autoconfirmed users on that sub page?--File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.pngChieftain Alex 21:49, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of whether partial protection is worth doing/possible, it makes sense to change the text since, technically, you can acquire the skill from any trainer eventually. It's only the unlocking that is notable. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 22:11, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

protection and resubstitution would take a lot of work and maybe a bot and would make me sad, tef's solution is more thorough and overall better (also he's a cool guy) 24.130.140.36 22:45, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Alex, you're correct as far as I know; you can't protect sections of a page. And like TEF noted, that's not the best answer. I think a hidden note would solve most of the wiki editing problems associated with this, but it doesn't solve the issue all-together. Using TEF's text, I made User:Farlo/Sandbox 2, which has an example skill list, go ahead and edit it and let's get this thing figured out. ~FarloTalk 01:48, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I've made some minor changes and offered a sample hidden text. If we're bothering to edit all these articles, let's also clarify that Unlocking and Learning are distinct mechanics (confusion on that topic is the reason for almost every edit to those sections, including them most recent).

An alternative to the hidden text would be using a reference-link, pointing to the part of the style guide(s) that explains the formatting (and why the list is 99.9999% accurate). – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:09, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I think a link to a good explanation, wherever one may be, should be visible from the hidden link, although adding it to the visible list might make it look a bit too crowded. It'd probably be a good idea to explain the difference on the Skill trainer page (unless it is somewhere else and I'm forgetting it atm), or at least link to it from there. ~FarloTalk 04:05, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Let's discuss a few wikipage changes

You may have noticed that I posted a message about changing a few wikipages following the creation of the Guild Wars Support Forums: User:Stephane_Lo_Presti/News/2011-06-20

I'd like to take bearings and discuss the above points with the wiki community. So, in reference to my original post:

1. The Feedback rules page still needs to be changed: "Bug reports and Localization" should be renamed "Localization Bugs" . (1)
   
   
2. The Feedback portal was changed with a link to the Guild Wars Support Forums. However I noticed that there's been recent updates to three Bug Report pages: AI bugs, Skill bugs and Text bugs. Shall we add a mention that the Guild Wars Support Forums are where the bug reports should be written? (2) A similar notice may need to be added to the pages Bug reports and Bug reports and Localization. (3)
   
   
3. Game Suggestions and Localization bugs: no action needed here.
   
   
4. Support FAQ and Support issues: no action needed here.
   
   
5. Ask an account question and Game-content questions: what do people think on these two? (4)
   
   
6. GWW Bugs and GW2W Bugs: no action needed.
   
   
7. We currently think that it makes more sense for the bugs related to the Guild Wars Support Forums to be reported on these forums, so there's no need for these wikipages anymore.
   
   

Let me know what you think about these action points (1) to (4). I can modify these pages but would rather be clear about this with the community. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Stephane Lo Presti (talk).

I expect to attend to these soon; I think it's more appropriate to wait, since, for the wiki there are other issues than just updating the pages. I have posted a note proposing a change to the Bug Reports pages (basically: archive, repoint the subpages to the main one, and formally link the main bug page to Localization and the forums only). I was waiting to see if there were any substantive objections or alternatives before starting to do anything; as you can imagine, ensuring that we don't lose any current reports is time consuming and once started, the work is not easily undone.

I think it's important to ensure that we don't lose any of the previously reported issues until they have been added to the forums, noted by the QA team that they are ANet's list of bugs, or noted as being resolved through updates in the game. I have been hoping to hear back from ANet about which items the QA team has on their list, which would affect how items get archived.

It's time consuming drudgery to make these updates and the bug pages haven't been exceptional active for ages, so I haven't felt the need to rush things. I hope that's okay. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 21:47, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) on your first point i whent ahead and changed the header to the one you requested. i dont think there will be any issues there. as to your second point i think the best corse of action would be to lock the pages and add a notice at the top of the page that new bug reports should be posted on the support forums.- Zesbeer 21:48, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot TEF and Zesbeer. I talked to the QA team and they're fine with whatever we're going to do with the Bug Report pages. They also expressed the preference that the Guild Wars Support Forums be used, so a notice at the top of each page is probably a good idea, but they don't need bugs to be transferred from the wiki to the Forums. Oh and TEF, there's absolutely no problem with this taking time (and thanks for the time put into it), but I'd rather minimize the amount of work on the wiki community. So archiving (with added link to the Guild Wars Support Forums) seems like an optimal solution? Regarding locking, I4d take a softer approach if you agree, to let people who go direct to the bug pages the time to get used to the new system. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 23:06, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

FYI I'll start archiving/redirecting pages later this week. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:30, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Status report for bugs: Done!

For those interested, you can read the gory details, but the short story is: all the bug reports are archived, each of the main topic pages points to the main bug page, which tells people to visit the official forums.

Stephane might want to inform the QA team that there are only a limited number of archives they need to review, which are those marked: undetermined status (and under archived after ...the forum). I've separated out anything that was marked as reported, resolved, or determined to be a non-issue (either officially or reliably). (There's still a lot more junk than I'd like to see...but it's a lot easier to parse than it was before.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:47, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Ask an account question and Game-content questions

I'm not sure if you ever received a sufficient response on these two items:

1. Ask an account question
2. Ask a game question.

(1) Account questions. I've previously suggested that we no longer allow people to ask account questions on the wiki. I've previously posted metrics on this: at the time, roughly half the questions were answered in the FAQ and the rest were evenly divided between questions asked on the wrong page, those that could only be addressed by Support, and those in which there was any chance we could provide a bit of assistance.

I think we could simplify the FAQ to reduce the need to ask a question, but generally, I think Support is best equipped to help with account questions. (We cannot really do more than repeat what is in the FAQ.)

(2) Game questions. I think this is still a well-used and useful feature on the wiki. I think a player in need should be able to get help from as many sources as possible. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:14, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation notices when mish = VQ = explorable = outpost = dessert topping

Disambiguation notes are supposed to make navigation easier. The standard convention of {{otheruses}} makes sense most of the time, but {{Location disambiguation}} becomes horribly wordy for e.g. Arborstone:

This is a mission entry. For information on the explorable area, see Arborstone (explorable area). For information on the outpost, see Arborstone (outpost). For information on the Zaishen Mission, see Arborstone (Zaishen quest). For information on the Zaishen Vanquish, see Arborstone (Zaishen vanquish).

I propose we use a simpler convention that doesn't repeat the other-use→article-name practice above (something that, I believe, makes it hard to parse the text and pick out which of the double-links we want). For example, how about:

This is the Arborstone mission entry. The same name is also used for an explorable area, an outpost, a Zaishen mission, and a Zaishen vanquish.

Most of the time, most people want to quickly find their way to the relevant homonym article; this makes that navigation quicker. If they don't know what the terms mean, each of those articles has links back to the definition of each of the types (explorable, outpost, etc). — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:40, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Here's another "thought" of wording.

This is the Arborstone mission entry. The same name is also used for the explorable area, outpost, Zaishen mission, and Zaishen vanquish.

But I like the shorter deal. 72.148.31.114 16:50, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I like TEF's better but the general idea is sound. --ஸ Kyoshi 18:51, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Definitely support, those are horribly wordy. What about:

This is the Arborstone mission entry. This zone also has an explorable area, outpost, Zaishen mission, and Zaishen vanquish associated with it.

Any of these will work fine, just as long as it's changed. ~FarloTalk 20:35, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I like Farlo's wording best so far. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:37, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I, too, like Farlo's wording best. Konig/talk 22:39, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I like that the text is going to be changed but "This the Arborstone (explorable area) entry" sounds a bit odd imo, and imo there is nothing wrong with the first part of the current sentence.

This is a mission entry. This zone also has an explorable area, outpost, Zaishen mission, and Zaishen vanquish associated with it.

The name shouldn't be needed to be called anyway imo, it is right above this line in the biggest chocolate letters this wiki has to offer. Rumian 00:03, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Makes sense, I like Rumian's. ~FarloTalk 00:37, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Proof of concept

Thanks to Tub, we have now have a Proof of concept page. Please take a look (and comment) as to whether this is headed in the right direction. There are several remaining technical issues: needs to take into account WiK/WoC (when those follow a different naming convention), needs to default to assuming the name is a mission entry, and needs to respect a forced type (by use of e.g. location=Landmark). — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:36, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

The Zaishen mission line should be changed from "Zaishen quest" to "Zaishen mission" so that it doesn't confuse. Those who don't know the naming convention of the disambig may get confused when there's no vanquish stated. Konig/talk 17:13, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed (and updated, since even I can fix that). Thanks! — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

A few tiny notes:

• when you're giving "Arborstone" as the parameter, it will default to recognizing the Arborstone article as the mission article (unless overridden with mission=<MissionArticle>). It will not, however, recognize the article User:Tennessee_Ernie_Ford/Sandbox/Location_disambiguation as a mission and reverts to the default of saying "this is a location article". That's only an issue on the previews on your sandbox.
• I know you like to add a comma before the "and". According to google the comma is optional. IMHO it does look stupid when there's only two articles, "This name is also used for an outpost, and a Zaishen Vanquish". Adding the comma only when there's more than 2 items would add several more lines to the template, so I'd prefer leaving it out completely.
• Adding WiK/WoC is not a problem. I'll do the changes as soon as we have a full list of related article suffixes we wish to include and the order they should be presented in. Adding items or switching the item order requires lots of changes due to the way the template decides whether to use a "," or "and", so I'd prefer to add it in one go.
• Do you have any specific articles in mind where a forced type (as in "This is a cake article. This name is also used for..") is required? See my first point about autodetection, it should work fine on the real articles. And on the really complicated stuff like Unwaking Waters, we're using disambiguation pages anyway. Tub 17:35, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• I tested on a couple of mission articles using preview, but they weren't recognized as mission. (I did realize that pages in my user space would fail most of the criteria, i.e. my testing didn't rely on the examples on the proof-of-concept page.)
• The style on this wiki is comma-and. OTOH, I can see that it could take a lot of ugly code to recognize when there are two vs when there are three or more entries. Let's table resolving that for the moment, since that can be adjusted later.
• Agree with waiting to make more conditional changes until we have a full list.
• I don't have a specific article in mind when we want to force a definition, but (besides Unwaking Waters in all its glory), ANet keeps adding content. Perhaps we should use the suffix, (Beyond) instead of WoC or WiK or HotN, but for now, we're not sure what suffixes me might need...so allowing us to force the switch gives us flexibility. Perhaps it's a nice to have rather than a required feature.

And again, thanks for taking the time to code this. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:51, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• @1: If you give me specific article names, I can look into it. The logic is equal to the old disamb template, and all pages I tested were properly recognized.
• @4: it won't help much. If we need to add a page Gate of Pain (Kitten), just adding type=Kitten on that page isn't enough, because that wouldn't cause the kitten-link to appear on the other related pages. We could add lots of parameters like "additionalsuffix1=Kitten,additionaldescription1=Kittie mission,additionalsuffix2=..,additionaldescription2=..", but those would have to be repeated on every related page, defeating the purpose of autodetection. It'd also make the template more complicated for no immediate purpose. When new suffixes arrive, we can just add them to the template, should be easier than coding a catch-all-monster in advance. Tub 18:11, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll add some links to the talk page for the PoC (rather than clutter up this convo, which, in theory, is about whether this is headed in the right direction). — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:17, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I did some more testing: the issue is punctuation (e.g. Minster Cho's Estate, one needs to use &#39 instead of a quotemark). I'll do some more spot checking, but I'll also update the usage information. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:24, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

@"I know you like to add a comma before the "and" [...]" There shouldn't be a comma before and if there are two items, but when there are three or more, it is optional but it must be consistent (that's the only grammatical rule). Regarding the whole "new pages" thing - not much we can do for that so we'll just edit old articles as new ones appear, which I doubt will be many (Beyond-related ones only). Konig/talk 00:50, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

That template currently creates a link on mission articles to [[<Article name> (mission)]] which is usually a self-redirect. See the examples listed, specifically Arborstone, The Great Northern Wall, and Minister Cho's Estate. --Silver Edge 02:15, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

New approach

Tub's put together a new version of the template which uses a new approach to determining the format of the disambig message (where new approach means very cool and much more effective). That means it's time for comments and testing. Please...

• Take a look at the template and use-cases.
• Offer suggestions and/or new articles to test on the talk page.

I think there's a general consensus that we simply the current method of disambiguating location articles. The only question remains is: have we got it nailed down? – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 14:41, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Would be nice to get a space after the commas and an 'and' before the last entry. Other than that, no complaints to what I see. Konig/talk 20:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Natch (Tub...and I ... would like to test that everything else works before twiddling with the format). Thanks for the feedback. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:13, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I've added one example with all links at the bottom of the new version. Besides checking for bugs, what we need to agree on is a) the order of the listed items and b) the exact wording of each. I feel that "explorable area during Winds of Change" is still too verbose, but I'm not sure how to improve it. In any case, I'll re-add the logic for proper sentence structure (, vs. , and vs. and vs. .) when the order is finalized, not earlier. Tub 21:00, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I really like the way things are going and agreeon the space. I don't know zip bout templates, but considering the winds of change descrition and if possible in template..... When there is an WoC or WiK area, why not say "a standard explorable area, a Winds of change explorable area". Though the word "standard" could use some better wording. Best alternative would be default, but that doesn't cover it either. well, my 2 cents are to rename explorable area someway when there is a WoC or WiK version with any wording if that would be possible. on the other hand, I'm really happy the way things are going, if the spaces are added and everything is tested I would say go. (and hides my thoughts bout adding a table at top of the pages) Rumian 22:26, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Merge/split tags

I see a lot of old merge tags and split tags where discussion bout it is long gone or never really started. Cause the tag didn't result in a outcome, I'm planning to go through the list in a week time (if nobody objects). I will follow the following guideline, merge/split proposed was more then 6 months ago and the last talk bout it, was more then 3 months ago. For your convinience link to the list pages: Category:Pages to be merged and Category:Pages to be split. So please comment here if you disagree on this clean-up action, and if you disagree with removing tag from a specifick page, please give the discussion new impuls by adding to the appropiate talk page. Rumian 10:06, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

The problem with these tags is that some of them are just invitations for discussion - instead of always someone meaning "this page should be merged or split", it's often "hmm, maybe this would be better merged or split, let's see what others think, but I'm not really that bothered about it". It's unlike the deletion tag, which is generally only applied when someone is sure a page should be deleted. pling 15:55, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I think it's best to look at each page first, before making such changes. If you still feel the change needs to happen, my suggestion is to bring it up on the request for comments. Kaisha 17:06, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

If there's been no discussion at all? Sure remove the tag. If there's been any discussion, I agree with Pling: there's no rush. I also agree with Kaisha (that we should treat those requests separately): drop a note (on the talk page) asking if anyone is still interested → if there's no response for 3 months, then treat it as no discussion. If there's any response... well, we can revisit later. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:09, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh, the proposal is about removing the tags? I thought Rumian wanted to carry out each merge/split. Removing the tag would be better. pling 17:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Good question. if it's about executing the suggestion, then, no: please do not merge or split unless there's a current consensus of at least 4-5 contributors. Removing tags from abandoned requests? Sure, that doesn't need an individual discussion. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:26, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

My opinion is that of this: "I think it's best to look at each page first, before making such changes." And said changes being whether the tags should be removed, left alone, or carried out. I went through the lists a few times; those that are left are outside of my expertise or simply knowledge (just two examples I'd split once I knew the full situation). There are some which I believe should be enacted but am not sure how exactly. And some which require a consistency but what the consistency should be never reached consensus (that discussion is here). In the end, it falls to a case by case standard - the links I provided should (need to be in the last case, for consistency's sake) be split/moved, but haven't for various reasons, but will once those reasons are cleared. Konig/talk 18:54, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I was indeed talking bout removing the tag, the reason to do it in the described cases is that discussion stopped long ago, but nobody stepped in to draw a line underneath it by either removing the tag or executing the sugestion, so in the end (thinking of us as a community) nobody really cares bout it (atleast people currently active). This notice gives people change to restart the discussion (even by saying, hey I tried doing a merge, but maybe someone more skilled can do it). It isn't definite either, cause if you disagree, you can always restart discussion later. But I will look carefully at the discussion page.Rumian 10:59, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Should we ask for an updated ParserFunctions?

← moved to Guild Wars Wiki talk:Requests for technical administration#Should we ask for an updated ParserFunctions?

Texmod Database Protection

Following the recent revert-war on the Guide to modifying in-game graphics/Player made modifications/UI enhancements, I've protected the page from IPs and new users for 1 week (or whenever this gets settled). I hope the page protection in it's current (without mirrors) state doesn't make anyone think that I'm doing so to enforce my views on the issue or otherwise. Instead, I simply halted the changes in a state almost identical to that before the changes. Now that my sysop actions are hopefully explained well enough, here's my thoughts and views on the issue.

Starting with this edit, in which someone added supposed MegaUpload mirrors for some of the mods, it went back and forth, being reverted by myself, another IP, and Pyron Sy. First off, I want to say that I'm not trying to accuse the original IP of doing this with malicious intent or otherwise, at least not directly. My view is one shared by Pyron; that the mirrors and download links of the mods should remain in sole control of the mod authors. I'm not here to question this particular uploader's motives (in-fact, I applaud the effort and enthusiasm), but instead that the many problems which can arise from a "3rd-party" mirror don't arise at all. Outside of ArenaNet's legal ownership over all the content (Stop right there wiki-lawyers/criminal scum!), the author has the right to determine where and how their work is distributed, the power over new versions and other management for the files, and with that the responsibility to maintain their links. If all the mods are mirrored by one individual, then not only does any update require twice as much work to upload it and make sure everything is the same, but then a lot of responsibility falls on one person, in this case a random IP with no other contact methods, to talk with the authors and get things settled. ~FarloTalk 05:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I have two kind of thoughts bout this. The first is that your right bout the fact that it is the authors right but that a lot of mods will be missed. The second thought however is if we want mods like this on the wiki? I know you did a lot with that section and it is appreciated, but the reason for bringing it up is this. This is the official GuildWars wiki. A lot of visitors see us as part of ncsoft (and though that gives some troubles, is also something to be proud of). The mods are not officially supported, as indicated by the red warningbox. So why not leave this section to other more independant fansites? I'm not judging the content as negative, but just not something for the official wiki (as I would also say for e.g. the gw-estimator from argos, It's a very nice and sweet tool, but not something to be promoted by this wiki). Offcourse there is a huge difference between mods and that gw-estimator, but the main question is where to draw the line. Problems like you are describing are in my opinion proof that it would be better to transfer this section elsewhere. Last note, I'm out of town till saturday, so, guessing this might draw up some debate, I might not be able to react on it. Rumian 06:44, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

1. Authors must have full control of the links. If someone wants to offer alternatives, leave a note on the talk page (with the author or for the mod).
   • Mirrors don't always keep up-to-date with revisions.
   • Links outside the author's control can be hijacked.
2. This wiki documents the game based on the community's viewpoint, not ANet's. Documenting the game virtually requires us to add details about CME, farming/running routes, popular skin changes, and Argos-soft tools.
   • Listing it here is not the same as endorsing or promoting it.
   • There are all sorts of warnings about how these mods are non-sanctioned and use-at-own-risk.

– Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 07:11, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Yeah, I've thought about this issue a lot, and it is fairly touchie, but I think with all the huge warning boxes and stuff we put up it gives enough warning that it's not supported, and since ArenaNet employees have acknowledged and even referenced Texmod and it's presence on the wiki, I think it's safe to assume they're alright with it being here. Also, and I know this is a flawed argument, but in practical terms: this site has had the database for a long time now and it'd be really tough to start a brand new site about a small part of a dying game. IMO it provides the easiest place where these mods can be collected as well as some sense of security for the user. The idea that them being here provides a sense of "official-ness" does have a good side as well, and even if it is somewhat false, it provides some trust in the users and lets the modding community grow/share (mostly) without the uncertainty that 3rd-party sites have in terms of account safety, viruses/keyloggers, and all the "will this site get me banned???" stuff. Not to say that threat still isn't present here, but one would think it'd be a lot less, especially with people (at least me) checking any new links that appear.

Just adding this point for the sake of douchery: This site documents things quite a lot less relevant to the actual game (e.g. Penis sword, Jesus Beam, Kurdick/Suxon) and Texmod has a decent presence in the GW community, and since it's under the Guides category, it can be a lot less "official" (Guild Wars on CrossOver, Eee PC, & Wine). ~FarloTalk 07:15, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

can this conversation be moved some place where it isnt on a page that is super large? i think it should be on the admin notice board imho... or can we archive some of the topics?- Zesbeer 08:35, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I'm the one who was updating the wiki with mirrors to the downloads. If you guys don't want it done that badly fine I wont bother with it anymore. I had intended on having/maintaining links to all downloads so that we don't lose any good mods like we have in the past but whatever, when some of the great mods die because no one had perma-links just remember i have the entire lot and wont bother sharing now. I'm sorry i bothered helping. Avenger20 23:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I think it's noble to try to ensure longer-lasting links. You can do that in your user-space and we can note it from the talk pages for the mod articles. If it appears that lots of people are visiting your links, we can update the main article, too.

However, I hope you can see that there are reasons why authors need to control which links appear next to their name, why there are downsides for allowing anons to change or add links, and also, that links might not be permanent. (For example, the once stable music.download.com was unceremoniously taken down with only a few weeks notice. 1000s of uploaders lost access to music that they had posted.) – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 23:49, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

In my honest opinion having a bunch of archive links to other peoples work on my own page would be even worse than just having them as mirrors next to each of the authors download links. When i updated the page i left all the original users download links so i was in no way taking their work away from them, also MegaUpload rivals the likes of Rapidshare etc. so it wont be going anywhere any time soon. And since this is a wiki it should be edited for the bettering of the community not held back by people who think their way is the only way. But as i said earlier i give up on this i wont be re doing the links now you guys have fucked it for me and possibly others. And just so its known within the short time i had my few links listed i got around 40 downloads total. Avenger20 00:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that every time texmod is brought up on a fan forum, there's always one person claiming that the program or one of the mods gave them a virus or hijacked their account. I try to step in and defend it when I can, but when someone claims one of my mods was responsible for their account loss, I want to be able to say that I am absolutely sure that my links do not contain anything other than the mod. While I am not accusing anyone of being malicious, I can't be 100% certain that a mirror not maintained by me doesn't have something bad at the other end. That's why I have always been adamant about removing anyone else's links to my files. If other authors want to give up that piece of mind, and allow the community to maintain their links, then that needs to be their decision. If we end up losing a few mods because the authors are unable to keep the links updated, then so be it.-- Pyron Sy 02:14, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I understand your point Pyron Sy but as was said it should be up to each user to remove to mirror from their own project as there are users who don't maintain their work anymore and as for wanting to make sure they are virus free i could have easily added the MD5 and SHA1 checksums for the files. Avenger20 02:20, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

<Mission name> (mission) redirects

This is in regard to articles such as Dragon's Throat (mission) and Augury Rock (mission). I see little to no reason to keep such articles - and there are at least one per mission/challenge mission. Sometimes even more. To give one example, let's take The Eternal Grove - type that into your search bar, what do you get?

1. The Eternal Grove - mission article
2. The Eternal Grove (Explorable) - redirect
3. The Eternal Grove (Mission) - redirect
4. The Eternal Grove (Zaishen quest) - quest 1
5. The Eternal Grove (Zaishen vanquish) - quest 2
6. The Eternal Grove (cinematics) - mission cinematic article
7. The Eternal Grove (explorable area) - explorable article
8. The Eternal Grove (mission) - redirect
9. The Eternal Grove (outpost) - outpost article

Three rather unnecessary redirects for The Eternal Grove. Many other articles also appear to have both (mission) and (Mission) redirects, some also have other redirects - or thankfully fewer. Since not every mission even needs all these variants of redirects, I have to wonder if any do, and if they don't then can't we just delete them? Konig/talk 23:20, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad you brought this up. I think we should only have a separate article if:

• You talk to a mission/quest NPC who brings you to a zone notable for its completely different spawns.
• The differences between the normal zone and the new article are too big to cover in a single article.

Some of the redirects are used/useful for disamiguation templates (because it's easier for them to see an existing article). From your list above,

• These articles denote actual different points in GW space-time: 1, 7, 9
• These articles cover a unique idea (e.g. Quests with unique IDs or e.g. cinematic): 4, 5, 6,
• These articles are useful redirects for template parsing: 8
• These articles don't serve a clear purpose: 2, 3

It's worse in Factions areas, since we seem to be creating new locations for every possible WoC configuration. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 23:35, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Shared name NPCs - when to split, when to merge

• Note: I'd put this in a more accurate place, but that place seems to get few views and I'd rather not have another topic collect dust if avoidable...

In the past, the wiki was rather fervent about splitting pages on the slightest difference between them (even a minor name change). However, ever since the merge of Gwen, this has become less so. There are currently some pages set up for split, and many pages which could be merged or have been since; along with this, there are pages that are merged despite other like-minded pages being split. I'd like to discuss and create an agreed placement on when it becomes reasonable to split, and reasonable to move. In general, there seems to be two cases of NPCs in this regard:

• Specific NPCs: These are the NPCs which in lore are the same individual but may have different names, affiliation, creature type, and/or appearance. Currently, there appears to be no disagreement with merging these NPCs so that there's only one page per figure (and keeping redirects for the alternative names seen in the game). Example: Gwen
• Generic NPCs: These are generically named NPCs, all named the same, which differ from each other based on either appearance, skills, and/or location. Typically location is ignored unless the appearance or skills are difference. There is no agreement on how to treat them and are the focus of the discussion. Examples of merged: Bandit (Kryta), White Mantle Zealot, and Charr Scout; examples of split: Golem (dervish), Golem (warrior), Angchu Tengu (necromancer), Angchu Tengu (warrior).

My suggestion: Only split if they are different enough that combining can confuse people or become hard to manage. For instance, Charr Scout should remain merged (a warrior and ranger difference, easily notable in which is where and neither are highly important to gameplay, each having only one appearance), while the Angchu Tengu should remain split (they each hold two skill bars and thus would become tedious to differentiate and list 20 different skill bars).
Thoughts? Konig/talk 17:34, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I support Konig's suggestion.

I recommend we combine it with a specific guideline that allows us to frequently decide whether to merge/split without the usual debate. For example:

• Named NPCs: one article per figure. Create redirects for in-game nicknames and common player alternatives.
• Unnamed NPCs: one article per NPC, unless at least three (3) of the following conditions are met:
  1. Each plays a different and notable role in the storyline.
  2. Each appears in notably different venues.
  3. Each has a different primary profession and more than one possible skillbar.
  4. Each has a different appearance.
  5. Each has distinct/different drops.
  6. Each responds differently within game mechanics, e.g. fleshy/not, charmable/not.
  7. Using a single page results in several 800x600 screenfuls of data.

I believe this leaves Charr Scout as a merge (meets only 1-2 conditions) and Angchu Tengu as a split (meets conditions 3, 4, 5, and 7). (And maybe we should also create rules-of-thumb for named NPCs, so that it's clear why Gwen isn't split into hero/child/eotn/hotn while Langmar is split into pre/post incarnations.)

The cutoff point above is arbitrary and the specific rules-of-thumb can be tweaked or changed drastically (so feel free to amend the bits with the gray background). My goal is to reduce the number of times we have to question whether to split/not in the future, so we can focus on getting the details right. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:16, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with most of it but I think we should split Charr Scout. They have exclusively different classes, builds, appearances, levels, locations, and even campaigns, not to mention that the BMP ones don't have any drops, and don't reward experience when you kill them. Going by TEF's list (which I don't completely agree with) that gives them 1, 2, 4, 5, and half of 3.

I also think we should keep the Angchu Tengu pages apart, but rename them to match their names as they appear in Free Birds, where they appear as "Angchu Necromancer" etc. Those pages are not yet created so it wouldn't exactly be a merge, but it would be in a way. They are named by class instead of race, but appear to be otherwise identical.

Next up: Varesh. If there is no disagreement about merging all NPCs that are clearly the same individual, why is she split into Varesh Ossa, Prophet Varesh, and Commander Varesh?

-- Kirbman 01:11, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

PS If we used the list for Angchu Tengu it would determine to merge them all into one big mess. They all have the same appearance and none of them drop anything, so they really only meet 3 and 7. -- Kirbman 01:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Varesh has been a tricky one I've been considering - same with Khilbron/Undead Lich, Rurik/Undead Rurik, what was the case for Svanir, and Kormir/Goddess of Truth pages. Possibly more, tbh.

On the tengu pages, I haven't done their quests yet so Idk hoe they're named. I think those pages were made by Falconeye (he/she at least played a part in the disambiguation page), but them being named different make sense, as they don't match WoC's non-MoP naming sister (<group> <profession>). Konig/talk 03:55, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the list above is probably ...not quite right, but I'm not proposing those specifics. What I really want to see is that we have a clear guideline so that, 9x/10, we can decide without debate whether to split/not. I created the list because those are the elements behind most arguments about whether to split/merge, not because there's anything magical about the details. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:13, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

To actually comment on TEF's list, and in turn Kirbman's comment on Charr Scout: I disagree, partially, with that list. I don't think we can create a firm line. For instance, using the Charr Scout page as an example - both NPCs share the same name, but have different builds, skins, locations, and drops. However, the drops are not really all that important because only one has drops - a note can be added for that to show "the ranger version encountered in the BMP has no drops" or some such, likewise, the skin and location can be denoted as being the warrior version or the ranger version. Despite having so many differences, it's relatively easy to distinguish the two in a single article.

However, it's harder to distinguish the WoC Angchu Tengu (assuming they were the same name) because they have multiple builds which contain secondaries (when builds contain only primaries, it's easy to distinguish, but when builds contain secondaries as well, it becomes harder to tell which are primaries in those builds).

Models? Easy to distinguish (if there are too many, we have the <gallery> ability. Location? Even easier (we already denote different levels by location, we can do the same for profession, which is done in rare cases). Profession? Same (denote by location and level). Drops? Only when they both have distinctively different drops (e.g., one drops items A, B, and C whereas the other drops items X, Y, and Z - this is not the case for Charr Scout), though in the end we can use sub-sections if desired (e.g., that's the only difference).

On the list itself... since this is about generic NPCs, 1 is completely irrelevant imo. 2 is less irrelevant but still a minor contributor imo. 3 is only relevant when there's secondaries and/or multiple skill bars of the same primary. 4 is irrelevant, a slightly smaller contributor than #2. 5 is only relevant when it's distinctively different (@Kirbman :p). 6 is highly relevant, and I'd add in creature type and affiliation, but that's less so than what's currently there. 7 is... nitpicky.

Obviously I'm on the side that "most articles can be merged" - it's really the multiple skill bars that are hard to distinguish that I consider merit for splitting. Konig/talk 19:15, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Konig, the way you seem to be leaning for the Charr Scout is that they should stay merged because they're so different, which makes no sense to me. I think NPCs that are clearly different should be split rather than merged. It's not like we create four different pages for Peacekeeper Enforcer because they all look the same but run different builds with the same primary class. Instead we split the distinctly different ones like we do with Avatar of Destruction. -- Kirbman 04:34, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) You got it mixed up Kirby (mind if I call you Kirby? I'm calling you Kirby). It's not that the Charr Scout article should stay merged because they're so different but that despite being different, the differences are easily noted in each one to not merit a split (imo, of course). I don't see a point behind your bringing up Peacekeeper Enforcer, or rather I do but it seems disconnected to the rest of your post. (Modifying post before posting at this point - I had a nice comparison chart between Charr Scout and Avatar of Destruction written out only to realize I was mistook that situation for Reaper of Agony and Reaper of Destruction, dunno how that happened...). I'd be on the fence for merging Avatar of Destruction - they're two distinctively different NPCs and they're more necessary to split than Charr Scout because they're bosses (elite skill capture location confusion). Overall, I'm not too concerned about Charr Scout being split or not, it's just that I want a consistence split/merge line (e.g., what Teffeny wants), and I personally don't see much need to split Charr Scout, as I said there are differences but they are very easily notable on the page itself without needing a separate one - but if you still do and all other articles follow that line of splitting then I don't mind the split.
On a similar note, I'm wanting to (re-)merge the Vanguard foe NPCs, as they were split due to different affiliations but now that's no longer an issue as the NPC infobox was modified to include multiple affiliations/creature types for when a single article should denote such (e.g., Shiro Tagachi and Benton). Konig/talk 16:14, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Splitting pages really does little harm. Common sense would tell you if they have different appearances, locations and skillbars it is a different beast right. --File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.pngChieftain Alex 21:43, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I read your comment as "splitting does little harm, and common sense makes merged pages obvious what's what" - I disagree on the notion that common sense exists (sadly), and splitting does harm - first, it adds additional finds in the search box; second, it potentially increases the number of disambig pages, and third, it creates potentially unnecessary navigation. It's the third which I wish to determine where that "potentially" begins and ends with starting this discussion. Konig/talk 02:52, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Alex and don't understand what Konig is saying in the attempt to summarize Alex. Giving two clearly different foes two separate pages causes no harm, while mashing them into one page makes a mess and leads to confusion. -- Kirbman 05:10, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I believe in one-stop shopping, so I would prefer to see fewer, comprehensive articles rather than a greater number of specialized articles.

Adding new pages can easily cause harm — in the extreme case, imagine creating a new page for each Bandit with a different build. There's some line that we all draw between keeping a single article with too much content and splitting into multiple articles that force readers to keep clicking until they find the right piece of data/information.

For example, if someone is getting their rear kicked by trying to get to Verata/HM, I don't think they should have to figure out which Bandit article to visit. It's not their fault ANet couldn't figure out how to add in a few more names (Bandit Healer, Bandit Sin, ...), so let's not force them to figure out how we have divided the articles either. For them, a split is bad. In contrast, someone else might be familiar with ANet's unimaginative naming convention and know they want just the Bandit (Verata HM healer) and not want to be distracted by the other dozen or so bandits in the game. For them, a merge is bad.

I think we all have the same guiding principle: make things easier/easiest for most players (and, in the process, don't make it that hard for anyone else). I'd like to keep the discussion broad: rules of thumb rather than whether to merge A/A' but split B into B'/B". As we setup criteria, we can test them against the specific cases...and tweak to make sure that certain articles end up split and others end up merged. I've tried to start that conversation above...but I hope no one gets too concerned with my original details (those criteria probably aren't great and, heck, they probably aren't that good altogether — I can already see issues with them). But the point is: let's start by clarifying our principles; I think that will allow us to reduce the number of times we debate whether to split/merge. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 08:20, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I'll try another bullet list as the one above, but "at least 3 of the following" is kind of messy.

Named NPCs: One article except in special cases which can be defined later.

Unnamed NPCs: One article as long as:

1. The NPCs are named the same
2. The NPCs exist in two different regions (Kryta, Ascalon) BUT the skillbars are mostly the same and/or they exist with the same affiliation (White Mantle)
3. The NPCs exist in the same region and always with the same affiliation, even if the skillbars differ significantly
4. No difference in fleshy/charmable status between locations (except if 2 is true and it can be noted succinctly)
5. No difference in drops (except if 2 is true and it can be noted succinctly)
6. Each has the same appearance (unless 3 is true, in which case we can just use multiple images or something, but I know of no NPC that breaks both 3 and this)

Subject to change. --ஸ Kyoshi 15:50, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

A new look

In a moment of a brain fart shortly after looking at Guild Wars Wiki:List of proposed moves, splits and merges and seeing Justiciar Isaiah being listed there and remembering how he and Toriimo were already argued for a split for spoiler-to-WiK reasons, I thought "if we're having issues setting up a guideline for when to split and merge, why not look at past discussions for their reasons, and look at the reasons for currently known split/merged pages that folks think should be otherwise?" So I decided to do just that:

Old discussions

• Gwen - was merged because it's the same lore NPC and functionalities between the three forms (Proph, EN, Beyond) were not drastically different (two being quest NPCs, third being quest NPC+hero). See Talk:Gwen/draft
• Keiran Thackeray - (originally split between NPC and hero) was merged due to lack of functionality difference compared to other heroes. See Talk:Keiran Thackeray#Merge.
• Lieutenant Langmar/Captain Langmar and Nicholas Sandford/Nicholas the Traveler - both were kept split due to drastic functionality difference and merging would confuse readers. See Talk:Lieutenant_Langmar#Merge and Talk:Captain_Langmar#merg (Nick was never discussed to merge or split, always was split and never disputed).
• Justiciar Isaiah/Confessor Isaiah and Justiciar Toriimo/High Inquisitor Toriimo - both split because it created spoilers for both prophecies and War in Kryta (showed that Dorian dies when these two NPCs are Gates of Kryta/D'Alessio Seaboard respectively). See Talk:High Inquisitor Toriimo#Split

My opinion on current/possible discussions

• Charr Scout - While greatly different (model, profession, location, drops), these differences are easily noted.
• Canthan Peasant - While greatly different (WoC has multiple builds, specific locations, and specific models), these are easily noted and splitting would require three pages to be accurate based on splitting's arguments, and the third one (Minister Cho's Estate version) does not have enough to merit its own page imo.
• Varesh Ossa/Commander Varesh/Prophet Varesh - Varesh Ossa is already spoiler-worthy and mentions in a non-challantly method of the later two; all that's lacking in a merge is adding images, skills, and the second affiliation.
• Prince Rurik/Undead Prince Rurik, Vizier Khilbron/Undead Lich, Kormir/Goddess of Truth - Should remain split due to massive spoiler reasons.
• Ghostly Hero (PvE)/Turai Ossa - Uncertain, but leaning to a merge due to same NPC, lack of massive spoilers. However, it isn't 100% proven all Ghostly Hero instances in PvE is Turai (though it most likely is). Also partially against as it can prove confusing for players - atm is the least confusing method I can think of.
• Terick/Razakel and Fortune Teller/Demonic Fortune Teller - could be merged (not big spoilers and both pages already tell the information that'd be told when merged, just not as apparent as showing demon models in the infobox), but for Terick unsure which name would be best (most likely the first name established, Terick, which is in two quests compared to one).
• Golem (warrior)/Golem (elementalist)/Golem (dervish)/Golem (Oola's Lab) - Oola's Lab and elementalist is the same except one skill and location, the rest are just profession differences. For a generic NPC, it's so minor it's not worth splitting. Same as is the situation for Bandit (Kryta) and Traitorous Temple Guard.
• Etham/Etham the Artisan - while originally for splitting, thinking back I'm for merging; the change is reverted and he's such a minor character anyways. And the merge wouldn't be confusing at all.
• Kuunavang/Enraged Kuunavang - both articles are equal spoilers, and the primary difference is model (and minor difference being function - enemy vs. temp-skill-giving NPC).
• Lady Althea/Ghost of Althea - merge; minor spoilers and not a big difference in functionality.
• Aspect of Lazarus/Lazarus the Dire - this one I'm not entirely sure about; on one hand, they're different characters in lore, on another they're the same. I consider this borderline and is okay as either a merge or a split.

That's all of the situations I can think of atm. Basically, for me it comes down to two things:

1. Will the merged version be confusing to read? Note: This doesn't mean "too much information" but rather "too much clashing information (or, alternative wording, too many different sections needing division" - I argue that Charr Scout is on the edge and Canthan Peasant doesn't come close). Overall, I see 2 NPCs fitting this (Langmar and Nick) and 2 potential (Turai and Lazarus).
2. How spoiler-ific is it? If very, split; if not, merge. Thus far, I only see three NPCs fitting this category (six pages), all listed above. Konig/talk 06:39, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I was under the impression that the Ghostly Heroes in PvE were each of the soldier ghosts in the Augury Rock mission. Go figure.

In any case, I agree with pretty much all of your conclusions. Lazarus is indeed an odd case, but I would lean toward splitting because they serve different purposes in the lore, they have different skillbars, and they're technically not the same guy. But I wouldn't fight too hard over that. --ஸ Kyoshi 15:09, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I originally thought that about the Ghostly Hero too, but The Flameseeker Prophecies tell a different tale. "I found the Ghostly Hero, the spectral embodiment of Turai Ossa, and led him to the Throne of Pellentia." Konig/talk 17:44, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, I guess that's settled, then. --ஸ Kyoshi 18:59, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Can we get more comments on this section please? Konig/talk 18:15, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I recommend that you start a new section with a specific proposal. At this point, I'm not sure what is being suggested. Although I have my preferences about when to split/merge, my primary concern is still that we establish rules of thumb and document them to reduce the need to discuss this every time ANet reuses a generic NPC name (Am Fah etc) or adds to the lore/development of a prominent figure (Gwen, Althea). – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:01, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

A new look mark II

Since TEF wanted a new section "with a specific proposal" and was no longer sure what I was suggesting, I'll paraphrase myself on what I feel are the "requirements" for whether a page is split or merged:

1. Is the merged version be confusing to read? Note: This doesn't mean "too much information" but rather "too much clashing information (or too many different sections needing division)". Example of a split, a merge
2. How spoiler-y is the second piece? Example of a split, a merge

Konig/talk 08:05, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

How is that different from current practice? We already discuss each and every like-named article or dense-with-content article, we consider spoilers, clashing information, and how easy it is to read the article. The problem is that the community disagrees about what we mean by clashing, confusing, and unnecessary spoilers. Still, it would be useful to make an organized list of current candidates for merge/split so that we can at least be consistent across the wiki for at least a moment in time.

Another idea is to have three standards. The default is always don't split unless...

1. For specific figures (e.g. Gwen, Rurik) → Split for a significant spoiler (Rurik), another role meaty enough for its own article (the two Nicks), or the article is so dense with data it's hard to read.
2. Foes, foe-types/affiliations → Split only for important mechanical differences (vanguard charr vs other charr).
3. Other (e.g. terminology, BMP skills vs regular skills, ...) → Split only for important mechanical differences and if the wiki categories/templates are already adjusted to make not of them (e.g. don't split the BMP skill unless we update the skill infoboxes).

– Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

There is no "current practice" - see User:Konig_Des_Todes/Remake#Potential_split.2Fmerge_list for a relatively large list of currently split pages. There are many that by my points should be merged (which I have marked in said link) so what I posted definably isn't "current practice." What one could call current practice is literally "what those who care enough to comment want on a page by page basis." I just took the average of the recent "current practice" and put it into two points so that it can be done for a guideline. In the previous section - and now in the linked page too - I created a list of examples for what the community on the whole has settled for with "clashing" (which, btw, the previous argument wasn't for clashing but rather too much information).

Your second and third points still fall into the issue you claim to be plaguing this problem - opinion on what qualifies as a term ("important") from person to person. Furthermore, creature type and affiliations are no basis for splitting due to the infobox now supporting multiple of them (most less-obvious pages just haven't been updated to fit said infobox change yet), and "other" is just too general.

For a prime example (imo) of a non-wtf-cluttery article (like the Nicks or the Langmars), I propose using Terrorweb Dryder and Terrorweb Dryder (silver) as an example for what would be "too much clashing" - the former already has separated sections of drops based on location, and a merge would require everything (model, skills, location, and drops) to be altered with so many "only this or that"s where it'd become annoying to read. Most other pages don't have this. Konig/talk 20:38, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Quest-only locations

Referring to: Bukdek Byway (Cantha Courier Crisis), Dragon's Throat (explorable area), Tsumei Village (Winds of Change), The Marketplace (explorable area), Wajjun Bazaar (Winds of Change), The Battle for Lion's Arch (explorable area), The Underworld (Don't Fear the Reapers), The Underworld (Something Wicked This Way Comes), Olafstead (explorable area), Lion's Arch (Sunspears in Kryta), Kaineng Center (Sunspears in Cantha), Tahnnakai Temple (Winds of Change), and Temple of the Ages (explorable area) - perhaps more

Do we really need these pages? A vast majority of what's mentioned in these pages are already or could be on the quest pages - in fact, only the Underworld ones are different from what I can find. I realize the pages exist for the {{NPC location}} template, but couldn't they just be redirect (ala Beetletun (Rise))? Currently, they seem to merely be used to make the quest pages more concise by having a "See <explorable version of quest>" for the NPC listing.
I understand why they're made for quests like Annihilator, which has multiple unique locations, or having The Great Snowball Fight of the Gods, which is a shared unique location for two quests (albeit minorly different), but the rest, they just feel... redundant and unnecessary to me. And heck, some quests don't have that unique version. Konig/talk 17:48, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Seconded. I was thinking the same thing the other day when I was trying to figure out where NPC locations should be pointed to for Ministry NPCs in Family Matters and Violence in the Streets. -- Kirbman 17:07, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

See my comment above on a similar topic: it's only important to have a quest-specific location page when there's something that readers can gain by reading an additional article. Again, I propose that we establish a rule of thumb/guideline to make it easy to decide when we should split and when we shouldn't. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:57, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I fail to see anything that can be placed onto an explorable version of the article which cannot be done to the quest article itself. If it's truly necessary we have this thing called a "notes section" - NPCs are already listed in quests (typically), as is the location (map(s) of the quest), and other things in an explorable article version. Konig/talk 19:16, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Erm, we agree (I think). I'm saying, let's establish and publish criteria. I'm ok if that ends up reading as, never add an article for a quest without discussion, since such data is usually better left to the quest article. My point is that I think this keeps happening because we don't have a clear guideline for when we we need split articles (it's parallel to the split/merge question for NPCs and Beyond locations). – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:23, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I tend to ignore guidelines so I'll leave that to you, but my stance is made - never means never. :3 Konig/talk 19:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

ironic topic is ironic

for the love of guild wars can we please archive this page or move discussions that are still active to user spaces. this page is HUGE with HUGE WALLS OF TEXT. Zesbeer 22:11, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Konig Des Todes- Zesbeer 23:23, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

GWW Site Suggestion

← moved to Guild Wars Wiki talk:Requests for technical administration#GWW Site Suggestion

Autogenerated in-depth information - here's a tool, shall we use it?

I'm currently toying around with a little script that parses GWW pages and allows me to write queries against that data. So far, it has lead to several kinds of cleanups, but the goal is something different. Some examples can be found on User:Tub/Sandbox, currently being only two reports:

Generate some statistics on the foes encountered in a certain area

Currently, my sandbox is listing stats for Shards of Orr and The Underworld, but they're generated for every explorable and mission on the wiki at the click of a mouse button. It could be extended to generate stats about monster families, i.e. all Peacekeepers if needed.

Note that this is currently just a proof-of-concept. The percent-numbers need to go (replacing with 1-5 stars or something), the layout could use improving, and I haven't spent too much time considering which information is worth showing and which isn't.

A lot of stuff is approximate, too. For example, this wiki has no page or category for "Skills dealing lightning damage", thus I'm just using all skills linking to Lightning damage with target=foes, which includes Iron Mist, but not Destructive Was Glaive. It does not consider foes with weapons/wands that deal lightning damage, since the wiki does not document that in a consistent way, either. So yeah, very beta-ish.

List all foes using a certain skill.

I want this mainly for testing stuff, e.g. someone claims "You can use flash enchantments inside Well of the Profane" and I'm trying to find a monster that uses this skill. Though it's quite possible that others may find this information useful for entirely different reasons. Could possibly be of interest for skill capturing.

The question is: is this going to remain a pet project of mine, or is it something that might eventually benefit the wiki? The information is way too verbose for inclusion in the articles, but dumping it on Shards of Orr/Foe statistics or Energy Surge/Usedby and autolinking it from the respective infoboxes would be an option. Or dumping them to a separate namespace if that's preferred.

We'd need a wiki-bot that can grab a bunch of .txt files and insert them as articles, but that shouldn't be much of a problem. If these pages are going to be used on the wiki, I don't mind open sourcing the tool, so that others can continue to use and improve it should I stop caring about GW1/GWW. Technical and maintenance issues aside, the question is whether such pages are useful, or whether they should be considered outside the scope of this wiki.

I'm not proposing adding anything right now. But if there's interest in the tool, we'll need to have some discussion about the direction of the tool, about the information to generate, about proper presentation and similar issues - things I shouldn't decide alone. Only when all these issues are discussed and agreed upon, and I (we?) have found enough time to get the script to a state where it generates (mostly) correct information, would we add anything to the wiki.

Please leave opinions about possible inclusion in this wiki here. Comments or suggestions about the project itself are better placed on my sandbox's talk page (bug reports aren't useful at this point - I already know! ;)). Tub 19:00, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Hooo, interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing this added, as a link in the walkthrough or tips section(s). (BTW, I prefer percentages instead of stars). Less sure if the second one would be useful - would be good for double checking/fixing the "captured by" sections as I don't see it useful as a sub-page and don't think people would be interested in regular foes utilizing the skills. Konig/talk 19:10, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I would be very interested in including data like this. Although I think there are other techniques available, I'd rather that we move forward using any one of them (e.g. Tub's proposal) than spend too much time debating the relative merits. There's a lot of interesting data available on this wiki and I'd like to see more of it made more accessible; Tub's proposal offers a good start to that goal.

1. Some of this could be done by DPL if more data were consistently added to infoboxes and/or certain sections. e.g. would could autogenerate lists of unique weapons (name, boss(es) that drop(s), location(s), stats) and even autocreate replication notes (see User:Tennessee_Ernie_Ford/Sandbox_3). e.g. we could generate a list of foes that show which skills they use (broken example: User:Tennessee_Ernie_Ford/Sandbox_4 — fails b/c we don't use an infobox for skills). e.g. autogenerating the trainers unlocking a skill and the list of skills unlocked by trainer X (more useful for GW2 than GW1).
2. Doc Ishamel has done something similar at Guild Wiki using semantic media wiki with some interesting results. (some infoboxes are populated with data stored in text files iirc). You'd have to ask him for details.

PS to Tub: did you mean for points like (1)-(2) to be on the project page? I (or you) can move them. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:41, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Since you're questioning my technical choices, I've written down some further explanations about that; tl;dr: the way I'm doing it is the only way to get the results I want.

I don't know what GuildWiki has done, but both "semantic mediawiki" and "text files" sounds like it needs MediaWiki extensions, which we wouldn't have access to. But feel free to drop some links to interesting stuff on my talk page, and I'll take a look. If any of that is feasible on GWW, I'll take it into consideration.

I don't understand the question in your PS? Tub 01:13, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm convinced by Tub's argument about technical considerations that his plan is (besides being good) better than others avail (e.g. DPL and SMW). (Still, let's try to learn from this project so that we can prevent needing to do this type of clean-up in GW2W.) (PS to Tub: nvm about the other PS; in effect, you answered it.) – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:07, 3 December 2011 (UTC)