Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/Article names

Identifiers

The following discussion has been moved here from Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Formatting#General_formatting_conventions_first

Naming conventions. Should we go "Chahbek Village (Mission)" or "Chahbek Village (mission)"? Should we do "Outposts (Factions)" or "Factions outposts"? Do we want "Warrior skills" or "Skills (Warrior)"? And general guidelines on how to handle disambiguations are needed. --ab.er.rant 02:30, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Chahbek Village (mission), Factions outposts, Warrior skills (avoid brackets if possible, they are annoying) - BeXoR 08:31, 14 February 2007 (PST)

My vote goes for "Chahbek Village (Mission)", "Outposts (Factions)" and "Skills (Warrior)", with redirects in place for common alternatives ("Warrior skills" etc). --NieA7 13:45, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I also vote for "Mission" instead of "mission", "Outposts (Factions)" and "Skills (Warrior)" etc... --Erszebet 05:01, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Chahbek Village (Mission), although actually I'd prefer the identifier to be lowercase, but since Guildwiki uses mostly capitalized identifiers, copying over stuff from GuildWiki would cause a lot of broken links. It's a minor issue to me, and not worth the hassle, so let's stick to capitals. Only the first word should be capitalized though, unless the identifier is a proper noun.

As for campaign identifiers, I know it has been decided to add them in brackets at the end on GuildWiki at one point, but we didn't really stick to the system, and I never really got to like it. Identifiers in brackets should realy be used only in case of an ambigous title, otherwise it should be avoided. So it should be "Factions outposts" and "Warrior skills". That goes for lists, guides and category names. --Tetris L 06:43, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I don't think we should do something simply because it's easier. If we choose to have "english language rules" as a site policy for capitalization, then all names should follow it. There's no reason for the m to be capitalized. And it's not that difficult to paste something into notepad and run replace on Mission. We should strive for consistancy and accuracy from the beginning. - BeXoR 21:47, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I realise I am late to this discussion, but I strongly disagree with the identifier starting with an upper case letter. LordBiro 05:43, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Something (mission), Something (location), Something (Factions) is English sentence capitalization. But I'm iffy on Something (Warrior) - Warrior isn't a proper noun, but it's almost always capitalized. - BeXoR 12:21, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Capitalization

The following discussion has been moved here from Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Formatting#General_formatting_conventions_first

We shouldn't have the "use in-game capitalisation" rule. It's better to use English capitalisation rules. If it's a specifically named object, capital. Generic name, small letters. I really hate the capital "The" or "A" in the middle of sentences. --ab.er.rant 02:30, 14 February 2007 (PST)

If we switch to English language rules, allow redirects for in game capitalisation. - BeXoR 08:31, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I think we should use in game capatilisation for all the articles, but put in redirects for common variants (such as title case or lower case). --NieA7 13:46, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Personal preference: in-game capitalisation. --Erszebet 05:04, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Generally use the exact same capitalization as the game, especially for proper nouns. In case of common nouns and general terms, which often appear both capitalized (in labels) and lowercase (in dialogue text) ingame, use the label capitalization for the article name, but create a lowercase redirect and use lowercase in free article text.

Also, check the capitalization in ANet's game update notes. They seem to make an effort to use consistent capitalization in them lately. We should generall use the same as ANet. --Tetris L 06:51, 15 February 2007 (PST)

It's fine for certain terms and types. I'm against the names where there are articles ('a', 'an', 'the') in them. Seeing "The Kodash Bazaar" in the middle of sentences really irks me. The capitalization of the "The" part is totally unnecessary. The link still works. -- ab.er.rant -- 22:51, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I'm for english capitalization rules. --Rezyk 00:14, 23 February 2007 (EST)

The primary problem with in-game capitalization is that it's not a standard and forces every contributor to double check with how the game wrote it (easy enough with outpost names, but more annoying in text passages) in order to get it right. Instead, regular English capitalization relies on rules educated in school that many decent writers get right more or less without even thinking of it. -- Jonas N 05:04, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

I don't mind using either, as long as redirects exist from the English spelling to the in-game spelling or vice versa. LordBiro 05:19, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

Yes, it's already adopted. You're 2 months late ;) :P -- ab.er.rant 05:40, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

I don't know why I replied tbh :P You know sometimes you just act automatically? lol... LordBiro 06:08, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

I think that all identifying words such as Name (Identifier) should have capitilization. Simply because in the English language, yes, Warrior is not a proper Noun or Name, but according to Guild Wars it's the NAME of a profession. Same applies for the Outpost ( Campaign ) and Outpost ( Mission ) principle. Although the Mission isn't capitilized requirement because it's just a noun and not a pronoun. So I say Outpost(Campaign) Something(Warrior) but Outpost(mission) should not apply.

First, we don't name articles as "Outpost (Campaign)" or "Something (Warrior)". It should be just "Outpost" or "Campaign Outpost", and "Warrior something". Please read the section about disambiguation identifiers. Your examples don't apply because we are not supposed to be naming articles that way. Also, by your definition, you're one of the the use-in-game-capitalisation supporter. You might want to scroll to the last section and join in :) -- ab.er.rant 21:37, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Personally, I think the in-game capitalization should be followed, with an exception. Normal English rules of capitalization should be followed unless it differs from the in-game format, but only in those specific cases. Everything else should follow English rules, since this is supposed to be an English language wiki about the game. This wiki's main purpose is to document the game, and a part of that game is the in-game formatting. Other than that, normal rules should apply. 42 - talk 22:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Rant, besides if the game capitalized it or not, it is proper English to cap Warrior or Monk, things like that, when they are used as a proper noun. 42 - talk 22:08, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

They aren't proper nouns unless they are used as part of a name ... Necromancer Munne, etc. If it's just identifying the profession class, it's considered a common noun. Example List of warrior skills -- Wyn talk 23:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually Wyn, in that case, it is considered a proper noun, and proper nouns are capitalized. It is proper to capitalize Monk or Warrior, etc. when used in that way. See Wiki Capitalization. "Common nouns may be capitalized when used as names for the entire class of such things, e.g. what a piece of work is Man." As a part of a name, they are a title, but in the case of "List of Monk skills," it actually is proper English to capitalize Monk as it names "the entire class of things." 42 - talk 00:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, regardless of what YOUR definition of English is (wikipedia is NOT the end all and be all of what "proper English" is imo), on GWW they are not considered proper nouns when used that way. You MAY want to take note of the use of the word MAY in the quote you just used. That means it's an optional usage, one we have opted against. To change it now would mean mass overhaul of all of the profession pages (and every page that links to them). I don't see the benefit this would give us in relation to the amount of work it would create. I really wish you would stop trying to reinvent the wheel. -- Wyn talk 05:25, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Name priority

Does anyone have an opinion on name priority? I'd prefer it if broader terms get priority (the Wurm "species" gets name priority over the level 28 Ring of Fire Islands Wurms, the Corsair organisation gets priority over the level 0 Corsairs in the Chahbek Village mission, the non-unique Bludgeoners get priority over the unique Bludgeoners etc.). -- Gordon Ecker 04:39, 7 March 2007 (EST)

I'd rather have to the more commonly looked-up version getting the priority, but I don't really mind it either way, as long as I get a link to the version I'm looking for. -- ab.er.rant 20:20, 8 March 2007 (EST)

Going to tear my hair out

In game when you zone into an area it says "Challenge Mission", "Cooperative Mission", "Competitive Mission", etc. It also says "Explorable Area" but the article is called Explorable area. Now the proposal on the other page says to use English sentence capitalization, so the article would be called "Challenge Mission" but when in a navigation box or in the article it would be referred to as "challenge missions" or "Challenge missions". Am I correct? And that Explorable area article needs to be moved right? - BeXoR 18:18, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

I believe you can use any one of them. It all depends on the sentence you're using it in. The redirect policy covers this I think. -- ab.er.rant 00:00, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Well I decided on this: the article describes a Challenge Mission (proper noun in that context). When you talk about challenge missions they shouldn't have capitals, because they refer to a broad range of challenge missions, rather than a unique item. So I created redirects with the lower case pointing to the upper case ones, and hopefully when the articles get written that's where they should be. At least this is my interpretation of English sentence capitalization. I get confused at times. ;P - BeXoR 01:15, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

I think that's fine. Given the more relaxed redirect policy, this isn't such a problem now. Someone will just move it around if it needs to be changed. -- ab.er.rant 01:27, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

In a practical sense, as long as the redirect covers it, then it's not a big deal. I prefer lower case articles because if you type "You will find it in any of the [[explorable area]]s in the game" then, if the article exists at Explorable Area, you will have to rewrite your link to something ugly. This isn't an issue for people, skills or locations, since when you write about them you should use capitals, since they're proper nouns.

Anyway, that's my rant on the subject :) LordBiro 06:10, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

I created the redirects for that situation. Because it has in game precedence, and the guidelines here on article names don't seem to follow the sentence capitalization structure, it's a pretty good compromise. - BeXoR 06:13, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Article titles are titles and should be properly capatilised. linking to stuff in the text of a page is fair enough, but it's that that should be covered by a redirect in my opinion, not the other way around. --NieA7 07:33, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Well at the moment titles are supposed to be using sentence case capitalisation, which means only the first word and any proper nouns are capilatized. - BeXoR 07:53, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Is that actually agreed full-on policy yet, or just proposed (it was just proposed last time I looked)? There seems to be a lot of circularity in the various policy discussions, with one being decided on an unfinished version of another and so on ad infinitum. --NieA7 08:10, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Since the discussion ended with no more objections, and it is in the proposal and hasn't changed or been brought back into discussion for a couple of weeks. I think it's pretty safe to say that using English sentence capitalization is a pretty sure thing - most professional publications use it and it's very widespread, and even Wikipedia uses it, afaik. We can't just sit around doing nothing waiting for someone to say something else is official. People are already creating articles and if we don't strive for consistency and set rules now, it'll be more of a headache later. - BeXoR 08:29, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Wikipedia using a certain style sounds like an excellent reason not to use that style, the formatting there is horrific. Similarly saying articles are being created now is just an argument not to create articles. I'm not aware of any publications that use sentence capitalisation for major page/section headings, only subheadings. If everybody else says do it then we should do it, but it's a very ugly and confusing style to formalise on. --NieA7 09:40, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Purely subjective. There is no need to go against English capitalization rules for stylistic reasons, and especially in headings where there is no need to emphasise the text because it's done automatically. English sentence capitalization is simple enough. Use lower case except for proper nouns. I don't know what is behind your personal bias against wikipedia, but seeing as it is the #1 encylopedic source on the internet and almost in the top 10 visited websites online, then I'm not really sure why you'd be worried about following their example, especially given the other reasons for using that particular format. And as for formal publications, it depends on the type of book you are reading. And I am not arguing to not create articles. I am saying that we need to have these rules in place as soon as possible, because the longer we wait means more to fix later. - BeXoR 10:08, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Proper English is to use title case for titles and sentence case for sentences, hence the nomenclature. I'm suggesting following the rules, not breaking them. My personal bias is down to the fact that I think wikipedia presents its information very poorly, especially for an "encyclopaedia". Popularity has never equalled quality, unfortunately. --NieA7 11:10, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

"Challenge mission" is always a common noun and never a proper noun, in my understanding. --Rezyk 02:04, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Which now I see goes against "Use lowercase for general terms". If we are meant to use lower case for general terms, shouldn't the identifiers be lower case on missions and outposts? These rules don't make sense. - BeXoR 01:27, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

I'd think the terms "mission" and "outpost" should generally be lowercase everywhere. I'll also help you out with changing stuff when we figure out what it should be. --Rezyk 02:04, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

This policy needs to be reworked to have consistency though. I'm happy to make changes and enforce them, but the rules have to make sense first. :/ - BeXoR 02:11, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Same here. I'll try making this draft more consistent and thorough. (But keep in mind it's going to be my take on things at first and not necessarily consensus..) Also, minor terminology nitpick: this isn't "policy" nor going to be one, I think. --Rezyk 02:21, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Agreed. The formatting articles are general guidelines, not hard rules. -- Gordon Ecker 02:37, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

"Some common nouns are capitalized in-game when used in name labels. In these cases, a redirect from the capitalized term to the lowercase is advised."

I strongly agree with this addition. LordBiro 05:27, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Hmm, well, I didn't happen to read this talk page first, and now that I added the challenge mission article, I made it just that, and not a Challenge Mission article. I hope that's OK with you. The page has a redirect from the title capitalized article too. I just read the main article on this project page, and went by that guideline. I'm also seeing tons of articles around here with "title casing" for things that aren't titles, such as (something I just changed too) Kurzick Faction. Hopefully it's OK to correct any of these articles then? I'm really hoping for a minimum of exceptions here for the ease of editing efficiently. The Cooperative/Competitive Mission articles are still named like that though... -- Jonas N 15:02, 16 April 2007 (EDT)

It is easy to move pages to their correct filenames, so I wouldn't worry too much. - BeX 01:24, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Finalise

If there's not much discussion on this left, I will finalise it in another day or two and make it an accepted guidelines before the public announcement. -- ab.er.rant 22:07, 19 March 2007 (EDT)

Thumbs up from me. - BeXoR 22:10, 19 March 2007 (EDT)

Hmm... I just noticed an inconsistency between this and Guild Wars Wiki:Formatting/Categories#Sort keys section. Are we using "Merchants (Factions)" or "Factions merchants"? Currently, the former seems to be more prevalent in the wiki. I'd rather keep the guidelines for article names and category names the same to make it less confusing. I';m fine with either, just need some agreement and we can update this. -- ab.er.rant 22:16, 19 March 2007 (EDT)

I would prefer the category names set out in this article. At this point it's not too much work to change over systems and autocategorization has yet to be added to infoboxes as well. - BeXoR 22:51, 19 March 2007 (EDT)

There's also the issue of article name priority. I've drafted the section, but it still needs some work. -- Gordon Ecker 00:49, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

I agree with "Factions merchants" style. --Rezyk 03:59, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

I'm faintly concerned we've got "Ruins of Surmia (mission)" and "Skill (skill type)" as approved forms but "Elite skill list (Factions)" and "Category:Monk skills (Factions)" as disapproved forms - wouldn't it be better to consistently use one or the other? --NieA7 07:18, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

Those situations are different. Use of brackets is unwieldy and unintuitive. It should only be used in last case scenarios where the identifier cannot be included in the article name. - BeXoR 09:46, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

Figures - I like the use of brackets in names, makes them concise and easy to follow ;) If everybody else is happy with it then I don't mind, just wanted to flag up the potential inconsistency. --NieA7 09:54, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

Since there's a bunch of different ideas, let's start with these and see if we can all accept it:

• Same name, different type - use the type in parentheses as a suffix to the name. Examples: "Chahbek Village (Mission)" and "Chahbek Village (Location)".
• Same name, different scope - use the scope as a prefix. Examples: "Factions monk skills" and "Nightfall monk skills".

Another thing I'm not sure is why the disambiguation identifier needs to be uppercased? Since "mission" is not a proper noun, why "Chahbek Village (Mission)" and not "Chahbek Village (mission)"? -- ab.er.rant 11:42, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

Er, it's not capitalized in the project page. - BeXoR 01:06, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

Oh... :p I didn't notice it was changed. Lowercase then. -- ab.er.rant 01:50, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

;D - BeXoR 02:07, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

Uh oh, while cleaning up the article and making it ready, noticed a problem with the guidelines I laid out above. What's the disambiguation identifier for quests with the same name in different campaigns? "Mysterious Message (Prophecies)" and "Mysterious Message (Nightfall)"? That would break the "put campaign as prefix" rule. Rename them as "Prophecies Mysterious Message" and "Nightfall Mysterious Message"? Sounds weird... -- ab.er.rant 22:32, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

Ooo... or maybe this would sound good: "Mysterious Message (Prophecies quest)" and "Mysterious Message (Nightfall quest)". -- ab.er.rant 22:33, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

That...to me...seems the easily the most readable. VladTheEmailer 22:35, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

The type/scope differentiation sounds good at first, but I agree it's not what we want for stuff like "Mysterious Message". I suggest that what we really want is to just use the common name for the part outside parenthesis for topic articles (the basic articles), and try not using the parenthesis for disambiguation for non-topic articles (lists/guides/categories). I'll work something like this into draft for now. --Rezyk 21:17, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

Rant, while finalizing a format is a good idea, I think it is also a good idea to remember that we are human and can (and do, some more than others, me for example) make mistakes. I am not sure what the final decision (or if there has been one) is in regards to this, but I think that if a guideline goes against normal English standards (unless it goes against in-game formatting), then it should be allowed to change once that is found out to be the case. I cannot speak for anyone else, but if I spell something wrong and someone points it out to me, I am usually willing to correct the spelling. Proper capitalization should be the same way. 42 - talk 22:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation identifiers

I have got a question regarding Isle of the Dead (Guild hall). This is a disambig ident and therefor should preferably use lower case, but Guild Hall is written with 2 capitals ingame. What to do? Go for Isle of the Dead (guild hall), Isle of the Dead (Guild Hall) or Isle of the Dead (Guild hall)? I opted for the last version, but reading this article, I guess the first one should be the preferred one.

I would also like to see an example of the "but using capitals as appropriate for proper nouns"-part of this header. -- CoRrRan (CoRrRan / talk) 12:00, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

It says that some common nouns are capitalized in game. Guild hall is a common noun and should not have a capital. - BeXoR 01:05, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

Yep, if we accept my summary above, "guild hall" would be the type disambiguation identifier. -- ab.er.rant 01:51, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

I thought we were following in game capitalisation, falling back on proper nouns when the term doesn't appear in the game itself? I could be wrong, it's difficult to keep up with everything x.x --NieA7 06:21, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

Use of capitalization is usually decided by article names, so I would defer to this policy. It was my understanding we were going to use English sentence capitalization rules. Any proper nouns should always be capitalized, but not common nouns, as per normal English capitalization. :P - BeXoR 07:38, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

Alrighty, I've changed it to match the proper format. -- CoRrRan (CoRrRan / talk) 09:39, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

I was under the impression that we should use in-game format because that is more likely how people will be spelling something in the search box in the game. Then fall back on proper English formatting in the rest of the cases. And I also thought that the article names were supposed to be based on the game, not the other way around, and so, should follow game spelling, naming and capitalizing as used. One of the other things to consider is that there will be more people coming in and using the game and the wiki. This should also be taken into consideration, specifically, not setting in stone, from this point forwards, this is the only way to do things. 42 - talk 22:17, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Another disambiguation thingy

Here's another one. According to Talk:Ruins of Ascalon, Ascalon now refers to the pre-searing version, while Ruins of Ascalon is now the post-searing version. Ostensibly to prevent newbies from discovering about the Searing. Personally, I think if new players even browsed through the manual or the website, they would've stumbled across the searing anyway, and it's not such a huge spoiler. But anyway, my primary concern is what sort of disambiguation identifier can be used for Regent Valley and Fort Ranik. These appear in both pre and post, with Fort Ranik having an additional mission to it. How should their names be handled? Also, since Ascalon is pre-searing, I'm thinking Ascalon City should be pre-searing as well, and have "Ascalon City (town)" for post-searing. -- ab.er.rant 22:10, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

I think pre searing Ascalon should be (outpost) and post-searing not have an identifier. You spend more time on the map with Ascalon City (the town) than the one with the outpost version. Unless of course, you never leave pre. I don't think the name was chosen primarily to stop spoilers, but because the "official" region name according to the website is Ruins of Ascalon. - BeXoR 01:15, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

Aren't we following what's in the quest log rather than the website? The website has alot of inconsistencies and obsolete details. I'm not 100% sure, but I do think it says Ascalon quests rather than Ruins of Ascalon quests. I'm just thinking that if "Ascalon" goes to the pre-searing version, then all the articles with a pre-searing version should go to the pre-searing version by default as well. It's like navigating from Ascalon to Lakeside County to Regent Valley. Suddenly I'm looking at a blasted landscape screenshot instead of lush green fields. So I'm just wondering how to name the two shared articles. -- ab.er.rant 02:09, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

I'll check my presearing character to see what the quest info is grouped under, but I do see your point. Maybe we should switch back to Ascalon (pre-Searing) and Ascalon (post-Searing)? - BeXoR 02:57, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

Did you manage to check BeXoR? I might just get started on using the post-searing versions as the default then linking to the pre-searing versions instead. How many ppl do you know these days who just started GW Prophecies? -- ab.er.rant 07:02, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

My 5 minutes old Pre char says that his quests are listed under "Ascalon Quests" in the log. --Dirigible 09:49, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

The manual mentions the Searing, and pre-searing appears to be a flashback. -- Gordon Ecker 20:01, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

ArenaNet seems to mostly refer to Ascalon as "Ruins of Ascalon" or "Ascalon Ruins", and personally I think we should do the same. I just don't like calling it Ascalon (pre-searing) or Pre-Searing Ascalon. No NPC in game or official source has ever referred to it as pre-searing. At the very least, I think we should use a different disambiguation identifier, such as Ascalon (1070) and Ascalon (1072). --Santax (talk · contribs) 08:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I found the discussion on the naming :P I posted a reply on Talk:Ascalon saying I couldn't find this :P Anyway, even though no official source refers to it as "pre-Searing", I think a lot of players think about that way. Especially those that use (not just edit) both wikis. I seriously doubt whether anyone can actually recall when the Searing occured. As I said over there, those articles on the website are very old, and "Ruins" are used for effect. I still think that convenience and general understanding is more important than term-similarity with old official webpages. -- ab.er.rant 06:58, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

That's only because GuildWiki referred to them as pre-searing and post-searing - this is a new wiki, a new chance to take everything that was wrong with GuildWiki and not make those same mistakes again. I can see what the problem is here though. I'm looking at this from a lore sense - in the game universe, pre-searing and post-searing are both the same place in different time periods. You're looking at it from more of a design sense, as two seperate places rather than two seperate times. We really need to reach a consensus on this, so perhaps we should have a vote to see which the community favours? --Santax (talk · contribs) 07:25, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Does the description of the Defender of Ascalon title track say? -- Gordon Ecker 07:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Regarding voting, it's a general trend that we do not do voting to reach decisions, but instead reach decisions from discussions, persuasions, and arguments. -- ab.er.rant 07:54, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Yet another thing

⇒ Moved from Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting#Yet another thing

The issue above is not solved yet, but I've thought of something else. Since all the mission articles (e.g. Chahbek Village, Ruins of Surmia, etc. all redirect to a "(mission)" page, what's the point of having the "(mission)" suffix anyway? Why not just use the name as the mission page and add a disambguation link to the mission outpost. Which leads to the second issue, I think all the mission outposts need to be moved to one that ends in "(mission outpost)" instead of "(outpost)" or "(Outpost)" right? -- ab.er.rant 02:39, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

Do what you like, because what you say makes sense, but *you're* moving them this time! ;)

Mission outpost is still an outpost (they aren't all that different from any other outposts - particularly in Nightfall) you'll need to explain to me why it needs more words to disambiguate it from anything else (aside from the fact someone put it on the policy page). --Aspectacle 02:59, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

(mission outpost) is rather unwieldy, but yes, more accurate. If mission outpost isn't an actual in game term, why don't we have the location articles as the default instead? As for the mission suffix, it doesn't really seem necessary but maybe theres some background into why the decision was made to include it. - BeXoR 03:01, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

Accuracy isn't really required. Fort Aspenwood (competitive mission) is more accurate but completely unnecessary. I think mission suffix is here because I used the Missions (Nightfall) page to start my articles. As this was pretty much copied from GWiki by whomever where (Mission) is used throughout. Thus it migrated here - no thought required! I don't mind which gets the precedence. Just let me know what you decide and I'll help move stuff around. :) --Aspectacle 03:14, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

(edit conflict) Heh, thanks for the help moving things Aspectacle. Yea, I guess moving to "mission outpost" is rather trivial anyway, maybe I could just categorise mission outposts inside the outposts category. As for the mission suffix, well, don't know about that. The redirects were all there when I joined GuildWiki. But as it is, it doesn't seem useful. I think most ppl would rather have the mission articles as the default, given that you're more likely to look mission walkthrough than what's in an outpost. -- ab.er.rant 03:18, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

I'm in favor of using the shortest suffix necessary to distinguish one term from another. -- Gordon Ecker 04:58, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

I favor using the terms' fundamental types (often matching an ancestor of their "main" categories), and expanding from that as necessary. "Mysterious Message (Prophecies quest)" > "Mysterious Message (Prophecies)" --Rezyk 11:23, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

I don't like "Mysterious Message (Prophecies)" for the sole reason that there was an example where the campaign name is used as a prefix, and then here, it's used as a suffix. To me, it's either we scrap the campaign-name-prefix thing or we use some other form of disambiguation for these same-name quests. Otherwise, I just feel there's a consistency problem. -- ab.er.rant 02:37, 24 March 2007 (EDT)

Because I really think the word "quest" should be in any quest disambiguation, how about shortening it to, say "(PH quest)", and "(NF quest)"? Then we kinda like define the acronym in the wiki. -- ab.er.rant 07:02, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

What's wrong with just "Mysterious Message (Prophecies quest)"? I thought that's what everyone wanted. --Rezyk 21:26, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

Oh, I thought you disagreed with it at the "Finalise" section above and tried alternatives. Never mind then. -- ab.er.rant 23:21, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

(Reset indent) Might be too little too late again, but I feel I have something to contribute to this particular section. In regards to the multiple names of places in regards to them being a mission outpost or not. Personally, I don't see an issue with there being one central page with the location name, then, where applicable, have a section on that page covering the aspects that are different with it being a mission outpost or not. For example, some locations in the Nightfall campaign are a regular town or outpost, and then afterwards, become a mission spot. If anyone looks up the place name(mission), then for that link, have a redirect page to the one page for that town or outpost. 42 - talk 22:22, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

No redirects?

I'm not sure why incorrectly named disambiguation articles can't redirect to the correct article, as seems to be implied at Guild Wars Wiki:Formatting/Article names#Disambiguation identifiers.

Can anyone explain this to me? I couldn't see an explanation for it on this talk page. LordBiro 07:27, 24 March 2007 (EDT)

Hmm... good point, in that case, I'll just change it to discouraged. -- ab.er.rant 06:46, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

No, that doesn't help! Why even discouraged? I don't understand!!! :P We have no policies prohibiting redirects, why discourage redirecting a reader from an incorrectly named article to a correctly named article? LordBiro 14:18, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

To me "Discouraged (redirect acceptable)" reads as "Don't create articles with these titles, but feel free to create redirects from these incorrect names to the right ones. Which is fine. --Dirigible 14:21, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

I apologise, I had not viewed Aberrant's change, and presumed he meant he would change the title to "redirects discouraged". My mistake!!

I still feel as though we should be encouraging redirects rather than saying they are "acceptable". LordBiro 15:18, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

I'm not sure how to word it as the table header then. Maybe get rid of the table altogether and put in a link to the redirect policy? Ooops, I'll work on it later, have to go out now. -- ab.er.rant 19:32, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

Non-topic articles...

I can see why using one noun to directly describe another noun might not be ideal, as the implicit relationship between the two nouns might not be clear, and there might be a desire to put the "object" noun first, followed by the "describer" noun (and chained together by a proposition that explicitly states their relationship) for sorting purposes.

However, following that idea, I feel as if my Mesmer perfect weapons article should be renamed to Full stats comparison tables of weapons with perfect bonuses using attributes of mesmers. We hopefully all agree that would be a bad idea. Part of the problem is, calling it a "List of perfect mesmer weapons" (or "List of mesmer perfect weapons") would be no more accurate than the simple name "Mesmer perfect weapons", because it's not just a list of things, it's a collection of tables detailing the stats of the weapons, with the ability to sort by various criteria.

Overall, I disfavor wordiness in article naming. Unless there is another article that also deals with weapons having perfect bonuses and using the attribute of mesmers, so that there might be a case of disambiguation, I think a minimalist policy towards article naming should be better.

The plurality in the article name already encapsulates the idea that the article is a treatise over multiple things fitting the description. Additional fluff words such as "list of" don't contribute anything except making the article name look longer. -PanSola 10:53, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

I tend to disagree: It's a balance between being minimalist and being easy to understand, and I feel that dropping the "list of" is too far on one side of the ideal. For regular editors, the difference in connotation between plural and singular might be enough, but for new viewers, there just wouldn't be enough clue to the difference between location and locations until they click into them. There will even be some cases where the plural term is the singular term (like if we ever wanted to split off a list from warrior armor). It's less necessary for cases without a matching topic article, but consistency is important here to reduce confusion. Also, what's the incentive for shorter, minimalist names? Usually that's for easier typing/linking/finding, but with our open stance toward redirects, we should be able to have both "mesmer perfect weapons" and "perfect mesmer weapons" redirect to your article if it adopts a list name.

I agree that "list" isn't always the perfect term, but it fits more often than not..be sure to consider what "list" means to a layman (which can include many tables) rather than what it means to wikicoders or html editors. I'd be comfortable referring to your article as a bunch of sortable lists in that context. --Rezyk 18:54, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

Well, "consistency", IMHO, leads to Full stats comparison tables of weapons with perfect bonuses using attributes of mesmers, or at least List of weapons with perfect bonuses using attributes of mesmers (up to a difference of capitalization). What falls in the middle is quite gray and blurry, IMHO. -PanSola 02:49, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

To be honest if I saw a link to Mesmer perfect weapons I would expect it to redirect to Mesmer perfect weapon and explain what such a weapon is.

Even though I see your point, Pan, I do not think that using plural is enough. Whether or not List of mesmer perfect weapons or similar is accurate, it portrays the contents less confusingly than not using "list of". LordBiro 04:28, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

What about using summary in place of list? -- Gordon Ecker 04:56, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

I would support using something other than list, but I don't think summary quite hits the spot. - BeX 05:09, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Perfect Mesmer weapon comparison? LordBiro 05:21, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

"Reference guide for perfect mesmer weapons"? -- ab.er.rant 06:32, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

I like that. - BeX 08:46, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

How about Reference of mesmer perfect weapons? -User:PanSola (talk to the File:Follower of Lyssa.png) 10:15, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

That's fine too, although personally, I feel "for" is more suitable than "of". But... doesn't really matter. -- ab.er.rant 20:49, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Guide to perfect mesmer weapons? Would the article still go in Category:Mesmer-related lists? --Rezyk 20:56, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

I thought of "Guide" initially too, but I settled on "Reference" based on the contents of that page. A "Guide" attempts to teach the reader about something. Sort of like a tutorial or at least has explanations. That page is more a summary or a compilation of data regarding mesmer perfect weapons, like a cheat sheet, or (obviously) a quick reference. Hence, my decision to suggest "Reference". -- ab.er.rant 21:01, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, I know what you mean. How about Lists of perfect mesmer weapons? =P --Rezyk 21:17, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

• bites Rezyk* Do you not like Reference of mesmer perfect weapons? -User:PanSola (talk to the File:Follower of Lyssa.png) 22:58, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

"Can't Touch This!"
I could probably...live with it... =) To be blunt though, it has some ambiguity that partially defeats the purpose of differentiating-from-topic-articles-by-name (in that pretty much every topic article can be considered a "reference" too). How about you? I mean -- what's not to like about "Lists of perfect mesmer weapons"? (and if you say "they're not lists, but full stats comparison tables", I'm going to have to bite back...and point out that the article even identifies them as lists already) --Rezyk 23:44, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Reference list of mesmer perfect weapons. lol :( - BeX 00:22, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

Mesmers - Phat Lewt --Snograt 00:24, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

That's it!!! Perfect! LOL -- ab.er.rant 03:02, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

(reset ind)sigh - stalled, huh? Howabout Compilation of perfect Mesmer weapons? --Snograt 00:02, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

I'd think that we could consider there to be a consensus for "Reference of mesmer perfect weapons" so far, if anyone wanted to. The only person who appears to dislike it (myself) is also willing to accept it. --Rezyk 00:32, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

Might need more thought on this name though, as this will set a precedent for the articles to come. If we go with "Reference", it would kind of imply that every other list would be more appropriately named as a "Reference" as well. Are we agreed to use "Reference" as a prefix for all non-topic/non-definition articles and drop "List" altogether? Or are we using both and so define the scope of each? -- ab.er.rant 00:58, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

Could we atleast avoid that "mesmer perfect weapons" and say "perfect mesmer weapons". The first sounds very odd in my (Swedish?) ears. - Anja (talk) 01:15, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

I agree - it may (possibly) be syntactically correct (did I just invent a word there?) but mesmer perfect weapons just sounds wrong. So, emboldened, Reference of perfect Mesmer weapons. Let's not get bogged down in a morass of nomenclature arguments :P --Snograt 01:30, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

Blah, fine. Reference of perfect Mesmer weapons. -User:PanSola (talk to the File:Follower of Lyssa.png) 02:20, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

Shouldn't it be Reference of perfect mesmer weapons as mesmer is not a proper noun? At least that is what it says in this article under use lower case for common nouns. - BeX 22:17, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

I would have thought that the professions are proper nouns... That's certainly the way I've used them. LordBiro 07:09, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

Since you can say "some mesmers". It means that it is a common noun. Although I personally would like to use it on this wiki as a proper noun, since the professions are such an important aspect of the game. -- CoRrRan (CoRrRan / talk) 07:27, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

I'd rather not make exceptions to the rule - it just causes confusion. But when you talk about the Mesmer profession it is a proper noun. When you talk about mesmers, it's not. In the context of the article title, I'm confused myself. :P - BeX 09:45, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

Vote to strike any references to "common" and "proper" nouns to stop the confusing. :-D -- CoRrRan (CoRrRan / talk) 10:55, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

Or someone could figure out which is correct in this context, and then we'd have some reference to go from for future situations. I'd rather not scrap a formatting guideline just because of one article. - BeX 11:01, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

It was in jest, don't worry. (I guess smilies are less effective on wikis.) -- CoRrRan (CoRrRan / talk) 11:27, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

I'm just grumpy cause I'm hungry. :( - BeX 11:43, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

On GulidWiki there was an entire policy created just because of me. It's only fitting that we scrap a formatting guildline over here because of an article of mine. d-: -User:PanSola (talk to the File:Follower of Lyssa.png) 11:45, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

This is going onto the territories of ULC and use-in-game-capitalization. I'm for profession names as common nouns. They're just professions, like RPG classes. You say "a wizard", not a "a Wizard". Or like real-world professions, you say "a butcher", not "a Butcher" or "a Postman", or "a Soldier". Another point for lowercase is consistency. We're already appearing to move towards lowercase almost everything, like weapon names, creature names, so why not profession names? Or do we want to restart the argument about in-game capitalization somewhere? -- ab.er.rant 21:28, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

In some games, character classes, item names and many other game mechanics terms are treated as proper nouns, in other games, they aren't. I think we should take our cues from the game. -- Gordon Ecker 22:08, 24 April 2007 (EDT)

Meh, irrelevant point anyway. You can say "Some Englishmen, some Irishmen, some Scotsmen, some colonials (er, wait...) --Snograt 00:21, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

But Gordon we've already said that we aren't following in game rules for those, but using English capitalization rules so Challenge Mission is now challenge mission, because it honestly doesn't need to be capitalized when you're writing a paragraph about it. Following the Guild Wars capitalization would teach us bad grammar. :P If aberrant is sure about his reasoning, then I'm fine with that, it seems like sound reasoning to me. - BeX 01:07, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

It looked like it was still under discussion. Anyway, I don't really have a strong opinion on capitolisation within the article body. -- Gordon Ecker 01:46, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

Genform is an accepted formatting guideline. - BeX 01:49, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

We still couldn't agree on a name for these reference pages? -- ab.er.rant 23:43, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

I don't think we're ready to pick out the exact noun (list/reference/etc) to be used in general. I move that we do the following:

• Rename the article to Reference of perfect mesmer weapons for now. (I think the user who is most opposed to that name, barring capitalization issues, is myself)
• Have this guideline article indicate that some noun-for-the-article-type should be used, but not restrict it to a specific one. So it would contradict the name "Perfect mesmer weapons" but not "List of perfect mesmer weapons" nor "Reference of perfect mesmer weapons". (This would generally be no change to the current wording; maybe just add a "Reference of .." example?)
• Let non-topic articles be named "List of ..", "Reference of ..", "<some other noun> of ..", etc, without enforcing complete consistency. Maybe we'll stumble across a better noun to use, or get a better idea of the scope as we develop more of these articles. Eventually somebody might propose a detailed naming scheme (that also factors in guides/maps/otherStuffWeHaventThoughtOfYet?) or there will be some disagreement over a specific article name, and we'll generally continue this discussion then.

--Rezyk 13:48, 9 May 2007 (EDT)

One thing I've always asked myself while reading discussions on article naming is "Is this name searchable?". If it isn't, no one will find the article. If I would want to find mesmer weapons, I would search for "mesmer weapons". If I don't get an article or the proper article isn't one of the first in the search result list, I generally get irritated and leave. So, if "Mesmer weapons" is a too common name to be accepted, at least consider making it a summary page linking to all the different articles with very odd names. (Like, List of mesmer weapons with perfect stats :P). Just a thought. - anja (contribs) 09:05, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

The wordier "List/Gallery/Reference of X" title is pretty much better (if not equal in some cases) for searching compared to simply "X". Consider the 2 articles named List of warrior unique items and Mesmer perfect weapons. Searching for "warrior unique" or "mesmer weapons" finds those articles nicely. However, "warrior unique list" works out while "mesmer weapons list" does not. Being able to search page titles by that extra word helps narrow down the results whenever you have an idea of the kind of article you want -- for example, if "Gallery of" was added in front of armor gallery article titles, one could easily narrow down a search for a "warrior ascalon armor" gallery from 9 matches to 6 by searching for "warrior ascalon armor gallery" instead. --Rezyk 02:34, 13 May 2007 (EDT)

So that's your justification for preferring "List", seeing as it would be the most common term people would use to search for a summary-type page for a particular topic... hmm... -- ab.er.rant 23:27, 13 May 2007 (EDT)

I never use the search anymore. I just figure out a page I know should exist, like collector rewards or unique item and go from there. :P - BeX 23:30, 13 May 2007 (EDT)

Me too. I've learned that the search function never gives me what I want if I don't know the exact name of the article. Maybe it's just be who is bad at searching, but it still doesn't work for me. - anja (contribs) 02:05, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

So...

No changes to the page in over a month, no more people crying murder... Time to make this official? - BeX 21:11, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

Murder!!!!! -PanSola 01:44, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, I was going to point that out myself, honest. ;) If we're not ready for an agreement on that part ("list of.."), maybe we should consider leaving it out for now?

There's also some question about what capitalization this guideline would give for:

• creatures like bladed termites & brown bears
• non-unique items like wooden bucklers & tanned hide squares

I'd consider them common nouns..but then we have a lot of current articles that don't follow this guideline. --Rezyk 01:52, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

For what's it's worth, I've been switching them to lowercase and creating a redirect every time I come across these cases. But does it matter which way we redirect? Fur Square -> Fur square or Fur square -> Fur Square -- ab.er.rant 03:04, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

Well is Fur Square a proper or common noun? I dunno at this point, too tired to think. :P - BeX 04:29, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

I'd say Fur square, as in Fur shore. --Snograt 00:04, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

The thing about having "Fur Square" redirect to "Fur square" kinda implies that we need to a huge number of moves in total... cos it imples that all the creature articles should be moved too... like Corsair Berserker to "Corsair berserker", Skree Warbler to "Skree warbler", etc... -- ab.er.rant 00:17, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

Meh, I think of names of creatures as being proper nouns whereas we are talking about a lump of fur that is square-shaped. In an ideal (to me) world, I would have every page title initial capitalised and a case-insensitive search engine. Dream on... --Snograt 01:34, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

So... u think it should "vial of Ink", "Deldrimor Steel ingot", and "Elonian Leather square"? :P Doesn't really matter I guess, as long as redirects exist, any of them will do. -- ab.er.rant 00:25, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

I'd prefer to use the in-game capitolisation for the titles of item, skill, creature and game mechanic articles. I'm okay with treating nearly everything as a common noun within the body of an article, but that belongs in (and is already part of) the general article formatting guidelines. -- Gordon Ecker 01:56, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

← reset indent

"Bone Dragons" or "Bone dragons"? "Dragon Plants" or "Dragon plants"? "Maguuma Centaurs" or "Maguuma centaurs"? "Great Beasts" or "Great beasts" ? --Dirigible 02:05, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

I'd say bone dragons, dragon plants, Maguuma Centaurs (since it's the proper name of an NPC organisation / culture / civilization) and great beasts since they aren't article names. As for article names, I'd go with Bone Dragon, dragon plant (since it's an unoffician term), Maguuma Centaur and great beast (since it's not capitolised in-game). -- Gordon Ecker 02:13, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

It would be so much simpler for everyone if we just used title case. I know it's not a popular option, but at the moment it does kinda seem like we're actively trying to overcomplicate matters. --NieA7 04:02, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

I don't think anyone is actively trying to complicate things. I think people are just used to using many other styles and don't know the difference between nouns in different contexts. - BeX 05:45, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

"Maguuma centaurs". The "centaur" part is the species, the common noun. The "Maguuma" part can be taken as the clan name, or species, or just plain named after the jungle (since we have Shiverpeak centaurs). This should be treated the same as "Skree harpy". Which also implies, that it should be "Caromi tengu" and "Sensali tengu" as well. I don't think in-game capitalisation should take priority over proper capitalisation and consistency. If one species article uses title case, then it's consistent for all the rest to use title case. Ditto the creature articles. If I wasn't aware of this discussion, and I noticed that some creature articles uses title case, and others use lowercase, I'll be tempted to standardise them one way or the other. -- ab.er.rant 06:15, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

I didn't mean to say that somebody's giggling madly watching their pawns dash hither and thither trying to fulfil their insanely arcane rules, more that we've made life unnecessarily complicated for ourselves by not adopting a simple guideline (e.g. capitalise every word in a title except stuff like "and", "or", "of", "the" etc). It seems to happen fairly frequently that in the push towards getting something magnificent a policy is created that, in practice, is quite complex to apply. --NieA7 06:40, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

I feel as though I've been persuaded. I was always a fan of "ULC except when you use in game terms", but I think that a persuasive argument against this has been made; proper nouns should be capitalised (and I think the example above regarding creatures from certain locations is an excellent one) and common nouns should not. If a noun does not describe a unique entity (i.e. Shiro, Lyssa vs. monk, salvage kit) then it should not be capitalised. LordBiro 07:26, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

Wikipedia treats the singular common names of many species as proper nouns, although this is inconsistant. They also treat the scientific names of all taxa and the names of all cat and dog breeds as proper nounts. In my experience with sci-fi and fantasy, the names of intelligent species are also generally proper nouns. Could someone with an English or biology major offer an expert opinion on this? -- Gordon Ecker 16:51, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

That article states that capitalisation is something that has been decided by users of Wikipedia. I don't disagree with their decision, but neither do I think it is particularly persuasive. LordBiro 17:22, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

I think the fact that the guidelines have been under debate for nearly three years without a resolution is persuasive evidence that the common / proper noun status of fauna names is ambiguous. -- Gordon Ecker 17:43, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

So are we agreed that it's more intuitive for lowercase unless first word or proper noun? So we're moving on to discussion what should be considered "proper noun"? I'm find with either "Maguuma Centaur" or "Maguuma centaur". But I'd just prefer it to be consistent. So it would either "Bone Dragon" and "Dragon Plant" or "Bone dragon" and "Dragon plant". Not a mixture that would just be confusing. -- ab.er.rant 21:59, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

← reset indent

Any creature name is a proper noun but I think multiples of a singular creature type become common nouns. Species would be common nouns. In an article name a dragon plant would be Dragon plant, but whenever mentioned in text would be a dragon plant (that's a species right?). Maguuma is a place or organization so should be capitalized. See Demonym about those. The Bone Dragon creature is a proper noun, but if used as a species should be bone dragon. - BeX 22:46, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

Dragon plant, dragon turtle, jade fish, leviathan fish and rider are unofficial terms. Plant, great beast and demon are official terms, but they are uncapitalized in-game, and in the real word the common names of superspecific taxa (plant, bird, ungulate etc.) and non-taxonomic groupings (liana, herbivore etc.) are uncapitalised. -- Gordon Ecker 23:18, 25 April 2007 (EDT)

Ok. So it should be "Maguuma centaur" then. Unless... you don't think centaur falls into the above rules because it's neither a real world superspecific taxa nor a non-taxonomic grouping. -- ab.er.rant 00:46, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

* head falls off * LordBiro 04:12, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

Yes, Maguuma centaur. Like you'd say Indian elephant or something. :P - BeX 05:23, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

Wikipedia says Indian Elephant :D, although they aren't exactly known for their accuracy, and, as was mentioned earlier, they have been trying to resolve the issue of the capitalization of common name for real-world species for years. Although it's a bad source for a precedent, the American Kennel Club capitalizes the names of dog breeds, but doesn't capitalise dog. By the way, I just did some research on GuildWiki, Centaur, Charr, Dredge, Dwarf, Eternal, Forgotten, Grawl, Kirin, Naga, Tengu, Titan, Margonite, Mursaat, Shiro'ken, Terrorweb (but not dryder), Junundu, Outcast and Yeti are capitalized in dialogue, as are nearly all of the human NPC organization names, while afflicted, corsair, demon, dragon, drake, dryder, djinn, elemental, gaki, graven monolith, heket, juggernaut, mandragor, mantis, oni, plant, shadow army, skale, skree harpy, undead, warden and wurm are not capitalized. Mob names are generally capitalized in quest summaries but not in dialogue. Asura, Charr, Norn and Sylvari are capitalized in all Eye of the North and Guild Wars 2 articles I have read. It doesn't really seem right to use improper English, but it doesn't seem right to not use the official capitalization of an official term on the official wiki either, if this was, for example, a fan wiki based in Britain, I'd be fine with using British English for everything including article names. -- Gordon Ecker 05:35, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Well, I say ArenaNet doesn't even have an official way of capitalising things. You usually standardise only the spelling. How capitalisation is done depends on who are the people responsible for writing the text. Maybe it was just a convention or style that a small team of people adopted? Likely that would also be differing from one person to the next. If being similar to "official" is so preferable, then I say we don't need capitalisation rules, because officially, there's no absolute consistency in their capitalisation... -- ab.er.rant 21:17, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Hmm, maybe we should capitalize every single letter. You know, like how American comic books do things. Minimal confusion FTW! Then we create redirects for lower case, title case, and the case of first letter cap only, so that within the article, you can do whatever you want (depending on what you consider is proper noun, or if Anet happened to captailzed one way in one instance) and it'll still link right. d-: -User:PanSola (talk to the File:Follower of Lyssa.png) 16:50, 11 May 2007 (EDT)

Creature or monster?

Explosive Growth (creature) and Drake (creature) vs. Explosive Growth (Monster) and Shadow of Fear (monster). Choose or lose! --Dirigible 06:19, 11 May 2007 (EDT)

creature! Drake (creature) is my page ;-)... Shadow of Fear (monster) is in Category:Torment creatures, in my opinion it should be moved to Shadow of Fear (creature) - MSorglos 06:23, 11 May 2007 (EDT)

Monster is a sub of creature, according to Dictionary.com. I'd say creature. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 07:07, 11 May 2007 (EDT)

I'd say "NPC". See Guild Wars Wiki:Formatting/NPCs. -- ab.er.rant 08:46, 11 May 2007 (EDT)

Somehow "NPC" strikes me as odd, and even Wikipedia says this too:

The term non-player character is also used in computer role-playing games to describe entities not under the direct control of players. Nearly always the connotation is that an NPC is allied with, or at least neutral toward, the player, rather than being an enemy. Source: Wikipedia:NPC

--  (CoRrRan / talk) 07:12, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Yup, that's how I've always read it, CoRrRan. --Snograt 08:45, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

NPC. *shrugs* You might want to bring that up here. IIRC, one of the reasons for keeping it shared was to make it easier for NPCs that are both hostile and friendly. -- ab.er.rant 10:38, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Hmm, I think I understand the thought behind that, and I guess it's a way to go. It's just not my preferred option. But thinking of it more gives me headaches as it wouldn't be very easy to propose a system which indicates friendly, neutral, hostile and friendly/hostiles or hostile/friendlies. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 11:33, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Bump

What's happening with this? - BeX 03:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Appears to be 3 unresolved issues.

1. Non-topic articles. Are we fine with this section? See the similarly-named section above.
2. Capitalisation. Mostly on creature names. Is it "Bladed Termite" or "bladed termite". See the "So..." section above.
3. NPC vs. creature. Do we use "NPC" or "creature" when talking about an enemy? Can we say that NPC is ally + foe, while creature is foe? See above section.

-- ab.er.rant 03:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I think NPC = creature. Although I don't consider NPC type and creature type synonymous. I interpret creature type as "species" and NPC type as NPC role (such as hero, foe or merchant). -- Gordon Ecker 06:15, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I think they overlap to a certain extent, but if I were to say what is a NPC, I would pick humans or other NPCs you can interact with in the same way as other characters and creatures are more like monsters and animals. Of course, that doesn't help at all. In terms of this situation, I would say everything in the game is an NPC by definition, but creature is a sub-trait of it, and perhaps animal is a sub-trait of creature. I think it might work better if we look at NPC type like species - Emily says species is more like a trait, and they can overlap. - BeX 07:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I just remembered that creature is an official term. -- Gordon Ecker 08:55, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

And according to that article, NPC is a subset of creature... -- ab.er.rant 09:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I forgot about player characters. -- Gordon Ecker 10:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Pre-Searing

I created Pre-Searing Regent Valley and Pre-Searing Fort Ranik. I interpreted this as being similar to the disambiguation for campaign (which, according to guidelines as is, is a prefix). But they were moved to Regent Valley (Pre-Searing) and Fort Ranik (Pre-Searing) ala GuildWiki. I actually reverted that before noticing that alot of NPC articles and categories were changed to use the latter names. I'm fine with it (except I think it should be "Fort Ranik (pre-Searing)" instead). Having the "(Pre-Searing)" part helps with the {{NPC location}} usage as well, since it accepts disambiguation of that sort. I just would like to try to clarify the rules regarding what sort of disambiguation identifier to use. When do we do a prefix? When do we use parentheses? Right now, the guidelines doesn't make that clear. -- ab.er.rant 08:14, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

The "Pre" part came as part of the renaming process I did, personally the uppercase does not bother me, I have not edited GuildWiki in a while so I am unaware of any of renaming policy. What did bother me is the pre-fix as it would imply the place is called that, while it isn't. I can see where you are coming from with the lowercase "pre", it didn't look right to me personally that is why I went with uppercare "Pre". We can get a bot to run these changes but please lets just get rid of the prefix "Pre-Searing" locations as I have done already. --Jamie 09:12, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Right, I understand the problem of the name implication. Which just seems to me all the more necessary for clear guidelines on how to apply disambiguation identifiers. I assume you're also in favor of Ascalon (pre-Searing) instead of Pre-Searing Ascalon then. -- ab.er.rant 09:24, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I am in favor of correct names tagged with the appropriate suffix in parenthesis, pre-Searing does look weird to me, I'm not a fan of camelCasing but I guess that is the accepted standard among the wiki, so sure lets run with that. We'll need a bot to run the changes to the "(Pre-Searing)" links (I'm not going through all those pages to make the changes again lol). --Jamie 09:30, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone know if prefixes on proper nouns supposed to be capitalized? -- Gordon Ecker 09:40, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I've always gone with "pre-Searing" and "post-Searing" because the "pre-" and "post-" part are just time descriptors. To me, it's like saying "post-war". It's incorrect to say "the situation Post-war...". That's why I use lowercase, since only the "Searing" is a proper noun. And since I consider "Searing" a proper noun, I think "Pre-Searing Ascalon" is correctly capitalised, since you creating "pre-Searing Ascalon" makes no difference, and "Pre-searing Ascalon" is incorrect (unless Searing is a common noun).

But all this doesn't answer my question on how do we do disambiguation. I don't know how it came about that we have both the parentheses and the prefix disambiguations. -- ab.er.rant 09:52, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know the parenthesis element came from Wikipedia, it generally adds a parenthesis to articles with the same name but a different context. I see this are the correct way to do things as it keeps the in-game name in tact while giving the context of the article in parenthesis. This in my opinion is how we should be doing disambiguation in the future. --Jamie 09:59, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it also makes using pipes easier (i.e. [[Fort Ranik (pre-Searing)|]] is shorter than [[Pre-Searing Fort Ranik|Fort Ranik]]). And for the record it should be Fort Ranik (pre-Searing) with a small "p" and a capital "S". --Karlos 19:03, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Someone should buzz Rezyk. :P I agree that it should be a lower case p too. - BeX 02:37, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm..wonder what you mean by that. =) I agree that "Fort Ranik (pre-Searing)" is the right way to go. Regarding parenthesis versus prefixes: Topic articles should generally just have their common name outside of parenthesis. With non-topic articles, the prefix is often the better way to go if it can be treated as an adjective limiter -- "List of core warrior skills" instead of "List of skills (core warrior)". --Rezyk 03:35, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Wait! Why not have it as a Disambiguation? People who are looking for it but are new to GW would be looking for it & they wouldn't know to type in Pre-searing Regent Valley or something like that.--Eloc 03:53, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

If you're talking about a disambiguation link, if you'd go to Regent Valley (pre-Searing), you can see the disambiguation note at the top. -- ab.er.rant 23:19, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Since there seems to be an agreement regarding the use of parentheses, I can edit the article regarding it. But... I'm not sure how to explain why the category naming is different. Why do we use prefixes for category names instead of parentheses like the article names? -- ab.er.rant 23:38, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there consensus of using parentheses for disambiguating topic articles, and use prefixes for non-topic articles and categories? What about pages like Storyline (Prophecies)? Should it be Prophecies storyline instead? -- ab.er.rant 03:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I've expanded to explanations to incorporate some of the things mentioned here. Is Storyline (Prophecies) considered a topc article or a non-topic article? -- ab.er.rant 03:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd go with [[Storyline of Prophecies]] as a non-topic article, but it's enough of a gray area that I could see [[Prophecies storyline]] as a topic article (but that would mean it should also talk about the storyline rather than just give it). Using parenthesis here is ick, just like [[Armor (monk)]] would be. --Rezyk 04:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation priority

There has been some contention about naming priority. I know at gwiki they make a unique item the first in line, followed by the boss (maybe it's the other way around I've forgotten). Now we have weapons with so many different skins they're coming out our ears. On the weapon formatting talk page, I suggested rather than condensing them all into one huge article (some weapons have 4 skins, and with galleries, acquisition, dye, notes, etc it can be several scrolls long), we make the actual item name a disambig page, with a gallery beneath of the weapon. Soon we'll have information about the PvP reward names for many item skins and be able to use those as disambig identifiers, rather than making up our own names.

I think we should do the same thing with other disambiguation pages. We don't know what most people will be looking for, and it would save arguments about which gets priority and be more consistent. - BeX 02:58, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreed with both suggestions, both make sense to me. --Dirigible 00:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a problem consolidating them all in one page. Wouldn't this give a "at a glance" on all the weapon skins a particular weapon name has? Rather than having me click on a disambiguation link. Also, you mentioned having to make up names? Wouldn't disambiguation identifiers require us to make up some names for the skins as well? -- ab.er.rant 07:16, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Both of your questions are answered in my comment, and on the weapon formatting talk page. :P - BeX 07:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand... yet. But I'll go check the weapon formatting talk page. -- ab.er.rant 07:54, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Here's my idea for the weapon disambig page, for anyone wondering: User:BeXoR/Water Staff - BeX 13:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

That looks good to me! :) LordBiro 11:17, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

(Reset indent) So, is there any disagreement to removing this statement from the guideline, "and item articles always get name priority over creatures of the same name", thus letting the disambiguation page be created instead of picking either of them? --Dirigible 05:13, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks like it. -- Gordon Ecker 06:15, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Done. Any other possible problems with it before it becomes official? -- ab.er.rant 06:15, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so, but I'll run it by RFC. -- Gordon Ecker 06:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Finalizing

So is everyone okay with accepting this formatting guideline in its current state? -- Gordon Ecker 06:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

If there are any glaring problems, then the only way we're going to find out (after months of this sitting here) is to put it in place and see! :) Go for it. - BeX 06:57, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Just one thing:

"Stygian Underlord (dervish) and Stygian Underlord (ranger) with Stygian Underlord as the disambiguation page"

I think it should be:

"Stygian Underlord (Dervish) and Stygian Underlord (Ranger) with Stygian Underlord as the disambiguation page"

Or not? poke | talk 11:21, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Professions should be considered common nouns, and thus not capitalized. - BeX 11:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I thought the NPC formatting guidelines said that if the same creature has two different professions and skill sets, they should both be listed on the same page... --Santax (talk · contribs) 06:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The current NPC guidelines fail in a lot of ways. :P - BeX 07:25, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Are they the same creature though? I.e. do they look the same? - BeX 07:26, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually it says that for creatures with multiple skillsets, each skillset gets its own subsection, and for each individual skillset, skills should be sorted by profession first in standard profession order (in other words, common, NPC and monster skills first, then profession for the few creatures such as Jungle Trolls and Guild Lords with skills from more than one profession in a single skillset) and name second. It doesn't say anything about whether or not creatures with variants from two or more professions should be split, and it has been done both ways in different articles. -- Gordon Ecker 07:30, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I would say that if they are different professions they aren't the same creature at all and should be split. - BeX 07:49, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea in general, but that there should be exceptions, such as Captured Sunspears, Minions of Joko and Thralls. -- Gordon Ecker 07:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Since it's made official, can it be removed from GWW:RFC? Or is there still an open issue? --  (CoRrRan / talk) 17:44, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Removed. I forgot about removing from RFC when I changed this to official. Thanks. -- ab.er.rant 01:24, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Effects

Do effects as those catalogued under Disguises still get priority over npc articles? Or said otherwise, are effects catalogued as skills? (relative to Desert Wurm (disguise) and its soon-to-be-moved-over Desert Wurm).
It would be weird to give priority to a Mhenlo disguse over Mhenlo itself (unless there is a npc that actually casts the skill, not sure with the wurm one).--Fighterdoken 02:34, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Special events things are specificlly low priority, such as the costume brawl. Otherwise, skills are skills. But I'll leave it as is for now, see what people think. Backsword 02:38, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

So... any feedback on this? I think the policy was prior to the implementation of disguises in game, so may not have been intended to cover them, but still no info about if they proceed as skills or not. (by the way, i didn't saw stated special events as low priority... or with any priority at all).--Fighterdoken 22:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

As Backsword says, Special events always have lower priority, so the NPC have priority over the disguise. I'm not sure about that wurm. - anja 09:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I've added in the note about special event stuff being lower priority. As for the skills, I believe the the "skill" part was actually meant to only cover skills that a user can add to their skill bar, not for effects. -- ab.er.rant 10:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, it should only apply to player-usable skills. -- Gordon Ecker 11:26, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Capitalization (2)

→ moved from Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting

Archer (dwarf) and Footman (Dwarf). Which capitalization is correct? There are a bunch of other situations. I'm in favor of having a capital, but I don't care a whole lot either way. Calor 00:57, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation identifiers/name priorities would appear to favour lowercase (with no capital) for this sort of thing? --BramStoker (talk, contribs) 13:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Lowercase if it's a common noun, upper case if it's a proper noun. :P - BeX 13:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I tend to go with lowercase too. The only uppercase I use is "NPC" and disambiguations using the location or region name. -- ab.er.rant 14:24, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Alright. I'll make them lowercase. Calor 15:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

In this case, Dwarf should be capitalized. It is referencing a species. 42 - talk 05:08, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Polymock pieces

The articles about the pieces (and their images) use a minorcase "P", but i think those articles don't belong to 1.2 (thus being treated as common noun). Those items actually belong to 1.1 (being proper nouns), and should accordingly be written with a capital "P". (weapons are written with capital letters as well, e.g. the War Hammer) —ZerphaThe Improver 12:21, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

As that are pages about in-game items, we have to use the exact in-game spelling. I don't know if it is "pieces" or "Pieces" in-game, but I doubt that it is written in lower case. poke | talk 19:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Yup, caps ingame. Backsword 05:20, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Alright, i'll start moving these 18 articles (and accordant images) then. —ZerphaThe Improver 18:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

singular/plural term

normally, main articles should use a singular term, and the plural term serve as redirect. in the case of Sweets, the plural and singular term have two slightly diffrent meanings. Do you think Sweet should redirect to Sweets? And what should their icon name be? Category:Sweets icons or Category:Sweet icons?
And is Category:Dagger icons also ok then? In this case, "Daggers" and "Dagger" doesn't have two diffrent meanings, but the item type is normally known as "Daggers" —ZerphaThe Improver 14:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

"Sweet" is more appropriate for both. What are the slightly different meanings you were referring to?

"Dagger icons" is more consistent, and correct I suppose. -- ab.er.rant 03:26, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, that's good. I looked the words up in a dictionary, and the german singular term for "sweets" didn't have the entry "sweet" (only "sweetie"), hence i thought there would be a diffrence in meaning. :P —ZerphaThe Improver 11:27, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that in this frame of reference "sweet" refers to one kind or type of that particular thing; "sweets" refers to the group (more than one), and since there is more than one in game, I think "Sweets" would be more appropriate. 42 - talk 23:17, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Headers

I've noticed that people seem to be using the article naming conventions as header naming conventions, e.g., only capping the first word in most cases. I haven't found a policy for headers yet so I'm commenting here -- is this actually a guideline or policy or is it just what's been done?

Personally I find them to be kind of typographically ugly that way ("That's Not How Titles Work"), and don't see a point in doing it, as headers don't relate to what type of word you're naming like articles do, and article#header links are case insensitive as far as I can tell.

Thanks; --Star Weaver 18:57, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Could you give an example of what you mean? poke | talk 18:58, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Mission -- Accessing missions, Mission overviews, See also, rather than Accessing Missions, Mission Overviews, See Also. Most things in ==header 2 tags== that aren't proper nouns or acronyms. --Star Weaver 20:36, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

We already have a formatting guideline for section headers - GWW:GENFORM#Section headers. -- Brains12 \ talk 20:39, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Oooh, that's where it is. I'm not having a great time finding some kinds of information today ^_^. Thanks. If there's a guideline I'll follow it (even if I don't understand it and think it looks really ugly).--Star Weaver 20:56, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

The problem is Star, that some people actually DO use proper noun capitalization, and get told they are doing it wrong. Sometimes common nouns are used as proper nouns, or names. In those cases, you are supposed to capitalize them, and yet you have people claim that isn't the case. 42 - talk 06:22, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Using parenthisis and sub-pages.

DPL does not like parentheses is certain cases. It would be nice if none of the page names used parentheses. However something is needed to distinguish different things with basically the same name. Could sub-pages be used instead of parenthises? For example:

The Great Northern Wall (outpost) ⇒ The Great Norther Wall/outpost

--Max 2 22:43, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

It seems to work fine at list of PvE and PvP versions of skills. Could you provide an example of how it's problematic? There's probably some workaround. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 01:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

The place I had trouble was trying to parameterize the translation of places that included parentheses in there name to more normal names. In order to translate 'The Great Northern Wall (outpost)' to something readable, I needed a template that took 'The Great Northern Wall (outpost)' as the name of a parameter with the translation as it's value. The template itself could do this but DPL barfed. There are probably several ways this could be done, but I was looking at the overall picture and though that the sub-page syntax made more sense. It leads naturally to having disambiguation pages directly connected to the sub-page and makes it fairly easy to guess what a page name should be.

For example, 'The Great Norther Wall (mission)' doesn't exist and someone new to this wiki might not tumble to the fact that missions have priority over everything else when it comes to names. Implementing this would be fairly easy. Simply move the page to the new location and leave the automatic redirects in place. It would eliminate all the complicated decisions about which topic has priority for the name. Most every page would have a name of the form: 'in game name'/'kind of thing'. --Max 2 02:26, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

That would just replace complicated name priority decisions with equally complicated redirect target priority decisions. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:27, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Could you place a request at Help:Ask a wiki question or Guild Wars Wiki:Requests for comment asking for help with DPL? I don't have enough information to place a request myself or search for an answer. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:29, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

There's one more issue with such a change. Given that this wiki and GuildWiki both uses parentheses for disambiguation, I think it's safe to say that regular users have already gotten used to that scheme, and it would be pointless to try to fix something that isn't a problem in the first place - unless there's a specific and obvious benefit to changing the entire disambiguation convention (of which I can't see any atm).

There's also no "complicated decision" about which topic has priority - it's just which topic is more often used by users. The redirect is also only done if there are 2 articles of the same name - if there's more than 2, a disambiguation page is used instead. -- ab.er.rant 06:37, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Almost all wikis use it, since thatäs what the mediawiki software has support for. Backsword 12:21, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I feel this needs to be said

I have a proposal for clearing up the question about (or possible fixing a possible problem with existing) capitalization policy. Book titles, with few exceptions, have all the words capitalized, with the exception of words like "a", "the", and "of", unless it is the first word of the title. I have also seen that same standard used in article names in magazines on more occasions than not. I believe that in certain respects, these wiki pages are very much like magazine articles. I think that in that respect, unless in-game formatting is different, then that standard should be followed for the naming of the articles/pages, and in regards to the text within the pages themselves, normal English formatting (capitalization) should also be followed, unless made to follow in-game spelling and formatting for that instance only. Otherwise, proper English spelling, punctuation, and capitalization should be followed. If current "policy" is not this way, then I think that policy should be changed to follow English standards. I do feel that this change should happen even if the "standard" has been accepted to differ from proper English usage. 42 - talk 23:06, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Our capitalization guideline is pretty simple. Follow in-game capitalization if it applies if not, capitalize the first word and proper nouns (Names, Nationalities etc). We chose a long time ago not to use a Title Capitalization scheme, and changing it now would mean that thousands of our pages would need to be moved. It works fine the way it is, I don't see any reason to change it. -- Wyn talk 23:22, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Not quite as simple. There was a geroup of editor in the early days that felt strongely about this. Mostly inactive now. That led to a standard where it was decided that many proper nouns should be considered common nouns on the wiki. And that's what we've been followinge for years, so that's how all those articles are. If anyone wants to changee this, then I woul ask they explain how they will update all articles to comply? Backsword 07:30, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the arbitrary Capitalise Each Word in a Title format would be better than following the exact in-game capitalisation for proper nouns and lowercase for common nouns, as it would be in standard English. I prefer the latter. -- pling 13:57, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

By the way, Wikipedia's naming convention policy doesn't treat page titles as proper nouns. I'm guessing it's mainly to makes it easier to add wikilinks. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 03:26, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

While reading through the "accepted" guideline, I noticed an inconsistency (things like this are what cause so much confusion when someone actually DOES follow accepted guidelines, and gets told they are not).

Specifically;

The accepted naming format: "<article type> of/to <subject> [by <sort method>]"

Preferred	Discouraged (redirect acceptable)
Overview of Prophecies missions	Prophecies missions overview Overview of missions (Prophecies)

Prophecies, as used in the discouraged example, while not a "method," IS a sorting distinction (an adjective).

Also, as I have tried to point out before "Use lowercase for the type, subject, and method (unless it is a proper noun, acryonym that should be capitalized, etc).". When a common noun is being used to refer to an entire class (I happen to like the professions example), it is then considered (in accepted English language standards) a proper noun, and in that case, is supposed to be capitalized. The guidelines as worded can be argued against both sides of the same point.

If you want it clear, then state something along the lines of "In violation of accepted English language standard, proper nouns used in title pages are not capitalized unless done so in game." That way, there is no question when someone follows the guideline and gets figuratively raked over the coals for it. Unless you want someone to follow the stated guideline and enjoy telling them they aren't because the guideline is so confusing to someone who does follow English naming convention. 42 - talk 06:52, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, in further proof of the confusing "accepted" standards, it is argued for a certain way to name a category, and in the same example, argued the other side of that same point. Notice the plural Merchants is acceptable, but the plural bones is not. Categories should name what they contain, I agree. They contain many single examples of something.

Preferred	Discouraged (redirect acceptable)
Category:Merchants	Category:Merchant
Category:Contains bone	Category:Contain bones

42 - talk 07:15, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

"Bones" is gramatically correct when referring to bones as objects, "bone" is correct when referring to a substance. At some point, probably on GuildWiki before this wiki existed, it seems to have been decided that materials should be referred to as substances (wood, iron, bone, glittering dust, ectoplasm, parchment, ink etc.) unless we are referring to a specific quantity or quantity range (although it doesn't really work with tempered glass vials). Anyway I don't have a strong opinion about the material terminology. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 08:23, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm assuming you're quoting wikipedia when you say that common nouns should be capitalized when refering to a entire class, but in the text it has the word "may" so it's not right or wrong to leave it lower case. --JonTheMon 15:14, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

""Bones" is gramatically correct when referring to bones as objects," which the game does, as "bones" are stackable objects in the game. The example given is not a good one, at any rate.

It proves my point, that someone can actually follow the stated guidelines, and someone else doesn't like how they do that, they can pick somewhere else out of that guideline or another one and claim they aren't following it. 42 - talk 05:10, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) "'m not sure how the arbitrary Capitalise Each Word in a Title format would be better than following the exact in-game capitalisation for proper nouns and lowercase for common nouns, as it would be in standard English. I prefer the latter."

It is not arbitrary, it is how a large portion of books are done. The problem is that some words used as proper nouns, and in normal English language are capitalized, in use here are not properly capitalized. This was intended to be used when different from in-game, in-game should be followed first, always. 42 - talk 18:42, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Jon, been re-reading posts, and saw your comment. I am quoting the wikipedia, but it is accepted standard English to do that as well, it isn't just something the wiki pulled out of a hat somewhere.

I do not have the English language books they have available in college classes now, and the ones from when I was in school, but it is standard English to capitalize a usually common noun when it is used as a name, because you do normally capitalize proper nouns. 42 - talk 04:27, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

You keep going on about accepted standard English and you keep getting told that there is nothing standard about Title case anywhere but in books, and some magazines, though many have moved away from it. Language and language rules are constantly changing, so what may have been standard when you were in school may not be today. I know I run into that all the time (of course, I was in school during the Middle Ages when the use of Thee and Thou was standard). Our naming system is what was determined by the community when the wiki was opened. Quite simply, to go back and change it now after almost 3 years, is just a ridiculous notion. Please just drop this crusade you are on to reinvent GWW in your own preferred image, it's really not going to happen. There are over 18,000 articles currently, with innumerable links to each. It's just totally ridiculous to propose changing all of that due to your idea of what accepted standard English is. As for continually spouting what Wikipedia says/does "these are two different projects that have nothing in common (except for using the same software).". Just because something is done one way on Wikipedia does not mean it should be done that way here. -- Wyn talk 04:48, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Hiding something instead of making it clear

Ariyen, "If in any case the standardized formatting doesn't fit the purpose, you are free to modify it." Guess what, hiding what it is that people are supposedly not supposed to do, defeats the purpose of having it there at all. Thanks for making it harder to see the examples of what is supposedly not allowed. It is much clearer for people to read now. Why exactly do you not want people to easily see what is recommended and what isn't again? 42 - talk 04:43, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

You should fuss to the one that added the strike-out, of which I am for. To me, it is to show what we do not want. Why the need to see the actual wrong spellings or errors? People should focus more so on the right way of how things should be. -- riyen ♥ 05:07, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

How can people tell what you don't want when you hide it? It is understood it isn't wanted as the examples are clearly under the "discouraged" section. Once again, how is it a good example when people cannot see what is not wanted. Hiding the examples "doesn't fit the purpose." I am "fussing" to you because you put them back in. 42 - talk 05:39, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not hiding. The examples shown non-striked is what's approved. the one's striked isn't. Easier to determine that way. Whereas, like it is now, It's not really that 'easy' nor 'defined' to show what the Wiki is looking for and what it's not. Perhaps you should as if it should be taken away, before making such a big change to a guideline. -- riyen ♥ 08:41, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh 42. You forgot this part "You are always invited and encouraged to suggest improvements on the respective talk page." Not to mention of 'modifying' after a consensus, would be more Prudent. -- riyen ♥ 08:41, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Striked text is neither invisible nor unreadable. But it shows that the text is wrong. I seriously don't get why you make problems up where in the last years nobody ever had a problem with... poke | talk 11:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Didn't forget it. Every little thing that one person argues can be pointed out by someone else it isn't following this other thing.

It is not invisible, true. However, it is harder to read through strikeouts. I seriously don't get why you think there is not an issue just because you either can't or refuse to see it. You get involved in something for so long, it is harder to see problems with it sometimes. Try learning the difference between making up a problem and pointing one out. Especially before accusing someone of the first when they are actually doing the second. 42 - talk 05:06, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

here's something I'm going to point out. Let's say someone wants to make a category with Merchant.

Category:Merchants Category:Merchant

They see that, but they ready so fast, they misread what is Preferred and Discouraged. Because Merchant does not have a strike-out through it, they think it's okay to do Category:Merchant. See my point now? Having the strike-out defines more so of what is acceptable or preferred rather to what's not acceptable and discouraged. Now you see why the Strike-out what chosen? Do you want these mistakes made? -- riyen ♥ 08:45, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I do not think your point is a bad one, I don't happen to share it. If someone cannot see what is not allowed, sorry, "wanted," and they make a name that is discouraged anyway because they cannot tell it isn't, do you want them to make those mistakes? You can use both arguments, and that doesn't make either one wrong. It isn't clear with the strikeouts in. 42 - talk 04:04, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree with poke here, you are continually finding "problems" with things that have been standard GWW practice since the beginning. You comment on topics that are months if not YEARS old, and have been long resolved and spend hours of time creating solutions to things that aren't problems. While I appreciate your enthusiasm, I personally feel your time/energy/efforts would better serve the wiki by not creating this never ending drama over non-issues, and simply find areas that do need work, like your bosses lists... though those seem to be doomed to live in your userspace forever, while you nitpick long standing practices. -- Wyn talk 04:11, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

42, stop making Big edits to pages like this without consenses first. Your image you used (that we use as no on here) does not help the person understand, but become more confused. To me, it is clear with the strikeouts in, more so than that image you placed up as a confusion. Perhaps Sandbox this and show your changes there via linking it to here, before you make a lot of changes to this page or other main pages like this. This might help you out better. If people don't like it, don't do it. -- riyen ♥ 04:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Having text that people cannot see clearly is not any more helpful, and that is what can also make people more confused. Once again, just because people have been dealing with them, doesn't automatically mean that things cannot be improved. Many people get used to a certain way, and they cannot see the actual problems. Someone else points them out, and they get accused of "making up problems." If you don't see them doesn't mean they aren't there.

People refusing to see a problem because "it has been like this for years" is nothing but a copout, and trying to blame a person who is trying to make things better is not the solution. Accepting that there are ways to improve this wiki might help you out better. I don't have an issue with thinking I am always going to do things right, just because I have been doing them that way for a long time. 42 - talk 04:29, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh Ariyen, despite your edit comment, putting the <s> tags does not make more sense. That is one view of it. It isn't any better or worse (actually it is worse IMO) than actually being able to read the words. 42 - talk 04:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Red crossout circle isn't very nice. I suggest making the background of the correct version into a light green. Therefore, that's the "right" version, and the other version isn't wrong-wrong, just only acceptable as a redirect. --JonTheMon 04:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

You suggesting something like this?

Preferred	Discouraged (redirect acceptable)
"Go for the Eyes!"	Go for the Eyes! "Go for the eyes!" "Go For The Eyes!" "Go for the Eyes"
Yak's Bend	Yak's bend
Ssuns, Blessed of Dwayna	Ssuns Ssuns, blessed of Dwayna Suns - Blessed of Dwayna

-- riyen ♥ 05:09, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Probably more greenish and less blueish. --JonTheMon 05:18, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

To make this shorter. I'm taking out the bottom two. As I'm going to have two examples to show.

This color? (which is #9FC)

Preferred	Discouraged (redirect acceptable)
"Go for the Eyes!"	Go for the Eyes! "Go for the eyes!" "Go For The Eyes!" "Go for the Eyes"

Or this color? (which is #CFC)

Preferred	Discouraged (redirect acceptable)
"Go for the Eyes!"	Go for the Eyes! "Go for the eyes!" "Go For The Eyes!" "Go for the Eyes"

-- riyen ♥ 05:24, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

How about

Preferred	Discouraged (redirect acceptable)
"Go for the Eyes!"	Go for the Eyes! "Go for the eyes!" "Go For The Eyes!" "Go for the Eyes"

AFA? (Maybe BFB) --JonTheMon 05:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I think AFA would work. -- riyen ♥ 05:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I wonder what others think of this change to help show the preferred over the discouraged. -- riyen ♥ 06:51, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

How about, since it seems that people want to use colors, have the accepted be light green, and the discouraged be light red backgrounds?

Preferred	Discouraged (redirect acceptable)
"Go for the Eyes!"	Go for the Eyes! "Go for the eyes!" "Go For The Eyes!" "Go for the Eyes"
Yak's Bend	Yak's bend
Ssuns, Blessed of Dwayna	Ssuns Ssuns, blessed of Dwayna Suns - Blessed of Dwayna

42 - talk 18:25, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

No. Too much color, Too blinded by those colors too. Can't half read what's written either. So, I prefer what Jon and I agree on. 72.148.31.114 19:44, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

^ In addition, red implies "bad" whereas white is more ambiguous (hence, acceptable for a redirect). --JonTheMon 00:46, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) So make it a lot lighter, and take out the heading color, like this.

Preferred	Discouraged (redirect acceptable)
"Go for the Eyes!"	Go for the Eyes! "Go for the eyes!" "Go For The Eyes!" "Go for the Eyes"
Yak's Bend	Yak's bend
Ssuns, Blessed of Dwayna	Ssuns Ssuns, blessed of Dwayna Suns - Blessed of Dwayna

No... colored tables are just bad in general, for one thing, colors on this wiki represent very specific things, and it's difficult to find a color that is not already used elsewhere. The way they have been was just fine. -- Wyn talk 15:53, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Except for the words being less readable with the strikeouts through them, I agree. 42 - talk 02:38, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

dood chill-out do strike-out

get over it dood --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.73.16.58 (talk).

Whoever posted the above comment, please sign your posts (~~~~) so you can get credit for your contributions. Also, while you are at it, read the title of this section. The reason to NOT have the strikeouts is to make it readable for people. If they can read already, which presumably they can, they can read the "discouraged" header on the tables, and tell it isn't wanted already. 42 - talk 02:26, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

42, there's such thing as Unsigned too as well as history. Don't complain, just do the Subst thing. Not to mention, the person may not come back here to say that. Kinda of Moot Point or pointless. As far as the tables. I vote for the strike-out to stay since we're having wyn not liking any of the colors and we can't decide on a color. Leaving it as is, is confusing people. Not to mention people creating redirect categories that is so pointless. Strike-out isn't for hiding, it's for discouraging. -- riyen ♥ 03:06, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Was that comment directed at you Ariyen (actually, it might have been, can't tell who signed)? Was it a huge issue? No. It was a polite comment (or did you miss the word "please"?). I am not perfect and have forgotten to sign myself. It happens, and I don't have a huge fit over it.

Strike-outs may not be "for" hiding, but they do a very good job of it anyway. If you put the same exact words in two sections side by side, one side struck out, the other not, which side is easier to read? BTW, the column header having "discouraged" in it also happens to be for discouraging. Leaving strike outs in, makes it harder for people to read the examples, and once again shows the reason for the title of this section. 42 - talk 03:25, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Category redirects

Regarding these edits - the reason category redirects are not acceptable is that a page can be put into that redirect category, and the user who did so won't have any indication that it's the incorrect category - there'd be no red link, so fixing it becomes all the more harder. There's a fundamental difference between having redirects for articles and redirects for categories - category names must be exact all the time. -- pling 19:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Valid reason, and understood. 42 - talk 15:34, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

GWW:ULC

Recently, we established a stricter standard for when to use upper case by agreeing that unofficial terms would, going forward, use lower case (except in the case of the strict use of proper nouns). Unless there are objections, in a week, I plan to update this article and GWW:ULC with a similar statement (suggested below).

– Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:02, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Suggested text

Articles titles for unofficial terms should always be in lower case, except when they include terms that we otherwise capitalize. For example:

• Gwen's garden
• Permanent pre-Searing character
• Flavor of the month