Guild Wars Wiki talk:Guild pages/Archive 1

Have guild pages at all?

"This will address the problem of having nothing to link to when writing the article about their trophies." - Do we need something to link to? Is that really a problem? I don't disagree that copying from the gw website Guild of the Week articles is a good idea (double negative sorry, but agree isn't the right word) because there is something noteworthy to report (anet thought so). I also think similar articles should exist for the guilds that won the championships and got the trophies in town. But letting any guild create a page isn't something we should strive for. We should document the guilds that have achieved something, when that something has been recognized by Anet, yes? (Not specifically addressing anything you wrote in the article, just my thoughts on the matter). - BeXoR 21:38, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Start with these: ANet's own list of notable guilds. — 130.58 (talk) 21:39, 7 February 2007 (PST)

The pilot program essentially just allows popular or skilled guilds to brag publicly. We're not really a public forum. I think the names of guilds who are officially mentioned somewhere -- like on the trophies -- can very easily be mentioned in articles, but having an article for the guild itself isn't necessary at this step.

Since you're trying to change the de facto policy of the GuildWiki, why not start smaller? Just mention names in articles and we can gauge the vandalism potential from that. (EDIT: The use of "GuildWiki" here is not a typo. To clarify, I meant only that we are currently using de facto GuildWiki policy as our launching point for developing our own community here.)

Scope aside, I think the totally unwiki method in which you propose these articles be maintained is compelling evidence that perhaps they ought to be hosted elsewhere.

—Tanaric 21:40, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Tanaric, you know where I stand on the guilds issue. I am against it. However, we have to talk compromise or this will be a war with no end, and we have too many of those already. Remember that this is not GuildWiki (I note that you, perhaps unmindfully, called this place that). There the wikiness of it was the key factor, and I think you are quite ideologically welded to open processes. I am too, but over here I think the driving impetus is for the community to do Anet's work for them (to put it a bit bluntly), and wiki is merely a means to this end. We can see without going through the motions that full freedom to edit guild articles will quickly degenerate to a state where we would be nostalgic for the halcyon days of build vetting. But, I fear, we cannot hold on to the ascetic route forever. A change from guildwiki to Guild Wars Wiki is, I think a good time to reflect on dogma a bit. S 21:46, 7 February 2007 (PST)

I realize my use of the word "GuildWiki" above was suspect, so I have added a clarifying note.

I accept your opinion of what the Guild Wars Wiki is, but I respectfully disagree. We are not replacing the Guild Wars Fansite Program. Instead, we are providing documentation for a video game. This is exactly what our mission was over at the GuildWiki -- nothing has changed in this respect, besides the URL and the man behind the curtain. The GuildWiki administrators were asked to come aboard here because they trust the way we've run the GuildWiki. Additionally, Mike has stated in no uncertain terms that we should be gearing up for a multi-year effort here -- sustainability is one of our biggest goals. In that respect, trying to create individual guild articles at all is foolish, as very few guilds even last that long.

When I asked for somebody to come up with an alternative, I intended it to be within our wiki system, not without it. Now, I do realize I'm not the final word on this, and me simply saying "no" doesn't kill this off. However, there's absolutely no way this system can possibly garner consensus. This isn't a compromise -- you're essentially spilling out a requirements document for a fansite-within-a-fansite.

There is absolutely no problem with us linking to official Guild Wars fansites that provide guild hosting and advertisement forums, just like there is no problem with us linking to build websites out there. I think one of the biggest flaws of the GuildWiki was that we very rarely admitted any other fansites existed, and we very rarely worked with them to improve both of our offerings. Now, because we are freed from the onus of profitability and competition -- we're the official wiki and so we are the top dog -- there's no reason whatsoever we can't delegate tasks that we're simply unsuited for.

—Tanaric 21:56, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Why not simply allow all guilds? Why limit ourselves? Why not think BIG? Why not simply create a namespace for them and allow them to exist in there? WoWWiki has done that. They have 172 guilds listed at the moment. What kind of policy do they use? Read it here. Create a new namespace for them, throw the guilds on there. I can think of absolutely NO other place ANYWHERE that provides that for the GuildWars community, so saying "GWWiki is not the appropriate place for that" is not an answer you can give lightly. What do we have to lose? Absolutely nothing. Think BIG. This is no longer GuildWiki running on Gravewit's servers that choked during peak hours (still grateful we had them, thanks Gravewit!) If vandalism seems to be rampant, add some more sysops to deal with it, wikipedia style. And vandalism WILL be rampant, at least at first, while the novelty of it wears off. GuildWiki already has a bunch of vandalism constantly. Furthermore, all this new influx of members that will be playing around with the concept of what a wiki is and what it allows everyone to do is going to be another source of it. There'll be vandalisms on articles regardless of whether they document [Te] or whether they document ecto drop rates in the UW. We should be prepared to deal with vandals, yes, but we shouldn't be limiting this new wiki because of the possibility of it. --Dirigible 22:09, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Man, when did I become so backwards? You're absolutely right, that's a great idea. In fact, I think I used pretty much exactly the same argument the first time this topic came up.

Sorry for getting swept up by the rhetoric!

I would like to see this -- I can see it as a big draw for encouraging participation. I don't see much of a downside and I think as a utility to the community it would be helpful. --Blame the Monks 7 February 2007 (PST)

—Tanaric 22:13, 7 February 2007 (PST)

I think that listing the guild within articles about the ladders, trophies, etc, with links to their GotW entry should be permitted - it's factual content. As for articles about guilds, I can see potential value in making articles about noteworthy guilds (ie: those that have the trophies, etc). The question is where to set the threshold for noteworthiness, and how much content to include. For the content, to me, the facts from their GotW entry and a link to their GotW entry, and possibly a link to their home page would be about all the factual content we could reasonably document and still remain easy to validate. If that's enough content to make the articles worthwhile is the remaining question to me. --Barek 21:59, 7 February 2007 (PST)

I was thinking the same thing. If the only content in these articles is going to be copied from elsewhere, why can't we just link to the places it was going to be copied from? - BeXoR 22:02, 7 February 2007 (PST)

This is a pandora box. When open it would be very hard to stop. I think that the "noticable guild" already have guild of the week. So I don't see why we should have it here too. We should link to that and that is it. This is the same concerne we had at the old site. Where does it stop? It's really hard to mesure a guild success, some don't pvp so we can't use theire rank. I may be simplistic but no guild page allowed make a easy policy to write :) Everybody will have a idea of what a noticable guild is and it will become a real mess.Aratak 22:04, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Content from just one article wouldn't just be copied from elsewhere because there's multiple sources. What would you link to when you mention War Machine? Their homepage? Their ladder record? A write up about their performance in a tournament on guildwars.com? A GoTM feature? The wiki article on the Champ Trophies?

I certainly agree that only certain very select guilds should have articles in this wiki. At first, the simple criteria could be only guilds that have made a permanent mark on the actual public game space. At present, only Evil and WM qualify. Criteria could be expanded later if there's interesting/worthwhile things to say about a particular guild (or alliance for that matter.)--Drekmonger 22:11, 7 February 2007 (PST)

More questions: is that information, no matter the source reputable or relevant? What information would you expect to be getting from these sources? - BeXoR 22:16, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Personally, I don't think guilds should be documented at all. Sure, they can be named as winning a tournament, but beyond that, what really gives them a purpose of being on this wiki? They are not things in the game that are there for documentation. A guild is a collective body of players that strive for a common goal (most days). They are not an integrated part of the game. The guild structure, yes, the players/members of the community? No. The only way I could condone documenting guilds in this wiki is if you allow documentation of alliances, individual players, builds, etc. And I don't want any of that documented on this site as it holds no relevance to the game in any way, shape or form. You don't need to know the whole roster and alliance history of a championship guild to be able to play and understand the great game that is Guild Wars. And that is my point. A name-drop will suffice. — Jyro X 22:18, 7 February 2007 (PST)

EDIT: To be more clear, it sounds like all this is is a push for a recruitment forum and I can't condone that course of action. Just sounds like you want guilds who gain a certain status to recieve lime light in this wiki. And that isn't relevant to the content at all. — Jyro X 22:21, 7 February 2007 (PST)

There is plenty of objective, reputable information on prominent PvP guilds, just as there is objective information on professional sports team. Quick, dirty example: WM has a website. WM has a trophy in the Temple of Balthazar. WM won this, this, and this tournment. WM was featured in this GoTM article. WM's tactics in this particular match were explained on this guildwars.com article. WM's founding roster was this: WM's roster during X tournament was this:. Etc.

Any guild worth an article isn't going to be terribly concerned with recruitment. An unfounded fear, so long as the selection criteria is enforced. --Drekmonger 22:24, 7 February 2007 (PST)

In response to Tanaric: I quite enjoyed your description of this as a fansite-in-a-fansite. That is what having guild pages amounts to, doesn't it? Fan-created content about other fans. Should guild pages therefore, ipso facto, be taboo?

But I think this entire discussion from the Policy talk page got off on the wrong foot. Let us start from the basics. We are building a site to document a video game. This documentation presumably has a purpose beyond just the joy of creating it. Mike O'Brien has hinted that he would like to see this develop into a technology that can provide in-game help. So we may surmise that the purpose of this documentation is to help players.

Therefore, the debate on including guild pages should consider whether they help players or not. A point has been raised that it would help new players find guilds. Can we examine the merits of this claim? I don't think the best case has been made for it yet, and I am not the person to make it.

As to the nature of the suggestion and the reason for reflection and/or compromise, the prevailing mythology about guildwiki was that it was a hangout of the PvE dregs. (It was a wholly unfair myth.) Now that it is apparent that this place is run by the same folk, the PvP community is on the verge of deciding that this place is no better. The result will be yet more whining and gnashing of teeth. "Anet loves PvE so much, why, they gave those [expletive]s a whole new wiki!" Might one not wonder wonder whether it would just be less hassle to throw those who portray themselves as ambassadors of the PvP community a bone or two, all the time making sure that it doesn't cause any permanent or recurring harm to our activities or reputation?

(To be fully clear, I wouldn't support a policy such as this one myself. I doubt this sort of documentation was what Mike O'Brien had in mind.) S 22:24, 7 February 2007 (PST)

I've completely changed my position -- I'm all for guild pages. That said, I'll still delete them until a style and formatting guide is drafted, just to slow scope creep.

I'm reminded of the in-game tool in EQ2 that lets you browse all the guilds in the game. It's helpful for new players looking for a group. I think that WoWWiki's style guide enforces that helpfulness. Somebody draft up our own copy -- even it's just a straight yank from their site -- and we can give it a try. We really have no reason not to. And, if it really is a problem, I will personally go through and take care of the fallout.

Come to think of it, we never really gave guild pages a fair try over at the GuildWiki, either. Everybody was just so paranoid that it never happens. The whole point of a wiki is unfettered information. If we decide to restrict something based solely on fear, well, we're not really doing our jobs right.

—Tanaric 22:31, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Re: the documentation that Mike O'Brien had in mind.

Imagine. The WoW wiki's guild article creation policy, and in-client support for accessing the wiki. Clicking on help on a guild tag brings up a wiki page. That actually sounds fairly cool, assuming the vandalization problem can be overcome.--Drekmonger 22:35, 7 February 2007 (PST)

I remember the guild website system that eq2 had. I think something like that (hosted webspace with a main page and members only pages) would be much better suited to recruitment purposes, such as the clicking on the guild tag function. I still don't believe it belongs in a wiki. - BeXoR 22:37, 7 February 2007 (PST)

As long as we don't offer them webspace, we're okay. If we only offer a very limited informational page that must fit a certain style and formatting guide, we can probably manage. Guilds are significantly easier than builds in this respect, because they can be reduced to mere information. Builds always have a subjective quality element that must be considered.

I don't intend to budge on my no-builds stance, as there really are good fansites out there that do builds far better than we ever could, but guilds is pretty feasible. WoWWiki proves it.

—Tanaric 22:43, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Arbitrary section break

OK, so with consensus inching towards inclusion, let us get our hands dirty with policy. A good policy has to be

1. Easy to follow
2. Easy to police
3. Impossible to justify breaking

Which of the following features of WoWWiki policy are all three?

1. Basic format, such as {{guild}} and at least three English sentences
2. Link to website and persons in charge
3. Recruitment details
4. List of accomplishments
5. Deletion of junk such as stubby guild articles

Remember, an increase in permissiveness of a policy demands an increase in the workload of all wiki watchers, including admins. S 22:45, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Mmm did Anet said that the wiki was to be completely english? I know it would be hard to know if they arn't selling gold or something but can we really prevent a another language guild to have theire page in theire own langage? If the recruiting why a german guild would have to write it in english to get germain players? This is back up by Anet, so my concern is can official wiki for a game that Anet translated in multiple language can prevent prevent guild to post in theire own langage has long has it's not on the main space?Aratak 22:55, 7 February 2007 (PST)

For logistics reasons, allowing languages other than english would probably be a problem, at least in the immediate future. How can one police for policy infractions if the language is unreadable?

How does this involve logistics??? Anyway, the simplest answer to this is don't allow it. Harsh, yes. Racist, maybe. But since Anet decided to start with an English wiki, let's start with English pages first. Or to ocmpromise, allow guilds to use other languages, BUT only for a short description of the guild AND requiring an english translation. Still open to abuse though. Ab.er.rant 23:54, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Real proposal now

Feel free to edit and/or discuss. S 23:07, 7 February 2007 (PST)

If we are ever to accept the guild page there should be a guide line about guild cap as many userpage on guildwiki show them. So a guideline about the size of the picture and where to put it or maybe be more restrictive and only permit a description. Well I personally don't see why we shouldn't have a picture since bandwidth do not seems to be a problem.Aratak 23:37, 7 February 2007 (PST)

A guild which is ranked at 1000 or below on the ladder will not be verifiable by the criteria you state (one GvG match does not guarantee placement in the top 1000). Verification of existance of PvE guilds may have to rely on something else. (a website is the best I can think of ... :( ). Is it the intent of the policy to only have 'top 1000' guilds listed?

I think that a Mixed category for describing those which play both PvE and GvG/HA as a guild would be a good idea unless you change the wording from "intensive" to something less ... exclusive sounding. :) --Aspectacle 00:16, 8 February 2007 (PST)

A bunch of random questions. Don't mind me, I'm rambling. Maybe you won't think these are important, maybe you will. Here goes:

• Do we get to say negative things about a guild? What if those things are either verifiably true or are opinions shared by most of the community (assuming it could somehow be shown)? Let's say there's a hypothetical GvG guild that, well, isn't very good. They hang around ranked in the 300s. They only play builds they've seen top 10 guilds play. They're bad sports. Maybe all this combined has made them notorious. If you wanted to make a page for their guild, since they're achieved some infamy, what do you put on their page? Do you not list their most well known but unflattering traits? Do you say their "style of play" is to mimic other guilds? What happens if a guild member "fixes" their article?

• Do you just trust content that's supposed to be coming from guild members? Maybe someone writes their own GvG guild's article and says they "enjoy coming up with interesting and innovative builds." What if all you ever see of them are builds that aren't very interesting or original even if they're not just using builds from a top guild? What if a PvE guild in an alliance says they're "easy-going and like to have fun" but ex-members report they actually want members to farm large amounts of faction or face expulsion? Do you change the pages in those cases?

• Why are rules and recruitment info relevant? Is the wiki going to be used as a platform for recruitment or advertisement? Do you care what content is actually on the given link for a guild's site? Are you going to check them? What would need to be there for the link to be removed?

• "Sympathetic praise" and "abusive condemnation" are actually pretty vague. Can you say a GvG guild is "good" or "bad?" If they're always top 20, there probably won't be arguments against saying they're good, but what if they hover around 100 all the time? I'm sure some would say that's good and some wouldn't. How about a guild that plays tons of games but always ends up worse than 500th. Is that "bad?"

--Fyren 07:10, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I think that you're looking at it the wrong way - rather than worrying about saying positive/negative things, we really should be striving for as much neutrality in every page as possible. This isn't a place for opinions, it's a place for facts. Neutral Point of View policy and all that =\ I think we've already got something to that effect on the actual project page, though apparently it needs to be mentioned here as well.--Pepe 12:03, 8 February 2007 (PST)

More arguing in support of all guilds being allowed

Going to try picking all arguments from the top of the page to the bottom, hoping I'm not missing anything. If so, let me know. Lets try and keep a discussion going.

• "We should only document guilds that have achieved something" -- The issue with this is, as has been noted many many times in the past, what that something is, what is considered good enough. Are only PvP achievements good? What about PvEers? Aye, the GotW guilds are an idea, but then most of them have achieved much less than other guilds, (one example would be Karlos' "The Kaizen Order", which is far more active and capable than many other guilds as far as PvE goes). The "accept ALL guilds" solution simply makes this point moot.

• "Guilds don't last too long at all." -- Slap a "This guild is dead" tag on them, and/or add them to a "Defunct Guilds" category? Don't really see an issue here.

• "Guilds shouldn't be documented at all". -- I feel sorta strange about pointing this out, but the game is called Guild Wars, after all. Guilds are what PvP on this game revolves around. Guilds are what even a PvEer considers himself a part of when he logs on and lands in his guild hall. why shouldn't guilds be documented, as long as the information is not merely for their own sole benefit? Information about the guild background, about the type of activities they usually do, about what kind of players they accept in their guild, why shouldn't that be there? It is documenting a very important part of Guild Wars, if not the most important one of all. This is an online game, the social element is part of the game from the foundations up, it was never meant to be played as a single player game with the data simply residing on an ANet server. It was built from the ground up with the intention to have a game where people could socialize/compete/interact with each other. And just so it happens to be that the main form of these interactions is guilds. Why in the world wouldn't that be worth documenting?

• "What Mike O'Brien had in mind." -- First of all, what happened to "We're offering to provide free bandwidth and servers, but it is our hope that community members will run the wiki, just like community members run Guild Wars wikis today" (linky)? They're hosting us, simple as that. They're allowing the community (emphasizing this word) to build it according to their vision, just like the community has molded GuildWiki to what they saw most fit. This speculation about "Mike O'Brien wouldn't like this" or "Gaile Gray would probably rather have us do that" means effectively starting off with the wrong foot; we're basically already chaining ourselves without ANet needing to do it themselves. Face it, the fact that they are trying to attract the GuildWiki population, including the editors and admins, is not merely because they liked how things were run there, it's also a public relations move, to try and get as much credibility and support for this new site as possible (even though I do believe that there's not necessarily something bad with this). Lets not set any precedents, lets try and keep this clean. Guild Wars Wiki is a site run by the community, hosted by ANet. If they're willing to post on here and say with an official warning "Don't add the Guilds section because we don't like it", then so be it, just as long as it's written down and concrete solid proof that ANet is actively shaping the wiki to what they want it to be. Until they do so, I really think all this speculation about what they might want or not want us to do should be dropped. It's unfair to the community, it's unfair to the editors, it's unfair to this new Wiki.

• "We're not really a public forum." -- The word I emphasized above is "community". That's who they are giving this new wiki to, and that's who they are allowing to build this site. It seems rational to me that from this stem two conclusions, a) this wiki is not only merely documenting the game, as an incognito http://docs.guildwars.com, but is also a community site, and b) that because this site is being run by the community, I see no reason why its ultimate goal isn't to help the community itself, in any and all means possible. The Guilds section being open for all guilds being one of those examples.

• "Would this help players or not?" --Why wouldn't it?
  • "Hi, I'm Johnny, and I just bought the game today. I'm looking for a guild, and maybe I'll even create my own. I just have no idea what to look for, or what kind of guild to build."
  • "Hello, Johnny. If you go to GuildWarsWiki, and click on Guilds --> PvE or PvP, you'll see many guilds listed there. Scroll through them to see what each of them is all about. If one interests you very much and they have listed contact information, you can even contact them and see maybe they'll accept you! Even if no guilds really tickle your fancy, at least you'll get a good idea of what guilds are all about, and will have more practical knowledge on what to do with the guild you'll create, or the guild you'll find yourself part of one day."

I think that's it. If I missed anything, I'd love to hear about it. Now, lets change places. Can someone give me exact bullet points on why allowing all guilds to be listed on the wiki would be BAD ? Why would it hurt this wiki? I'm really looking forward to seeing what others think about this. --Dirigible 23:23, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Let's arrange a little wager. Six months from now, if not earlier, everyone will have lost all patience with guild articles and will want them off the wiki. It took about a year for guildwiki to lose faith in builds, and those were at least somewhat objective. One of the first fights to erupt will be about which guild copied which other guild's formatting. We've seen this with user pages on guildwiki already.

Anyway, six months. Mark your calendar. S 23:32, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Well if we don't permit anything fancy. Only what does the guild do and how to join them there shouldn't be fight. Only a really bloated category that nobody use and can't be clean up because nobody will check if those guild still exist.Aratak 23:41, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Yep, keep it clean and they should be fine. Right from the start, don't let it turn into a design contest, an advertisement page, or a forum used by the guild members. Guilds should be significantly easier to manage since it'll be lacking the vetting part of the builds, which was the primary source of fights and ugly drama. Ab.er.rant 23:54, 7 February 2007 (PST)

We could keep it really simple has this, maybe limit the number of officers and don't allow ordinary members. After we decide on a model we just don't allow anything else.Aratak 00:09, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I can see it getting bogged down by local chat-spam "first 20 members will be officers, have cool cape and hall" guilds looking for some free advertising if all guilds are allowed. — Skuld 00:19, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I don't know how it would be enforceable, but there could be some criteria to limit the number of small flash-in-the-pan guilds. For example, disallowing guilds that are less than 30 days old. Disallowing overt recruitment spam aside from contact information.

BTW, when considering the number of player names that should be allowed on a guild page, PvP guilds should be allowed to post their tournament roster of 8 + 2 alternates.

Also from the left field: there should be some consideration on how to handle large meta-guilds like XoO and/or training guilds strongly associated with a main GvG guild.--Drekmonger 00:28, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I don't think there is any way to check the age of a guild. I think strong guide line like no tactics for recruitment (easy officer statues, free gold and weapons.) only what the guild does together. Then people could make a choice Aratak 00:32, 8 February 2007 (PST)

You can't tell a guild's age and you can't tell if a guild is real or made up or disbanded. I have a few objections ot Aratak's example. First, do not allow a "requirement to join" type section. That would imply that the wiki allows ppl to put up recruitment notices. The guild pages are not for advertising. A description is what the guild focuses on is more suitable. An image of the guilds cape or banner is allowed. Screenshots of characters of that guild should be disallowed. We also need some sort of disclaimer to disassociate the content on guild pages from Anet. Ab.er.rant 03:32, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Why shouldn't there be such a section (requirements to join, that is)? What's wrong with the wiki allowing guilds to have a paragraph describing what qualities new members are supposed to have to be considered for that particular guild? Where's the harm in that? (Not a rhetorical question, I'm asking a honest question) And actually, why not go full out and have two "Recruiting PvE Guilds" and a "Recruiting PvP Guilds" categories, to make it easier for anyone who's looking for a guild easier to find what they want. A recruitment section is actually fully supporting the "Guild pages should be actually helpful to the community at large, and not merely serve as a show of epeen about how much FoW a particular guild can grind in a day" idea. I really don't see how this can abused, but I can see how it can help. Points against? --Dirigible 05:40, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Because the potential for abuse is there. It's like a license for the guilds to advertise. "This guild is looking for extremely dedicated faction farmers who can donate at least 10000 faction per day. Anyone interested and is able to do that will be made an officer." And that's just my lame example... you can't stop people from making statements like that, offering rewards, money, free gifts to join their guild. All you can do is revert... and they'll just do it again. Removing it is a way to save the "recent changes" list. There's already a list of people to contact, add the short guild description to that and it's more than enough for someone who has no guild. And what's stopping these guild-seekers from posting an application on the guild page itself? The point I see as most important to even give this a chance to work, is to minimise the content that are allowed or implied (most users don't read policies). You think guilds should be documented, I'd say maybe, but don't let it turn this wiki into some sort of job ad for guild members... (also see my response to Karlos' wrench below). Ab.er.rant 07:08, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Speaking as a member of XoO, I was actually planning to incorporate all the various divisions of the Meta-Guild into one page. We don't really think of each guild in our alliance as a separate guild, since we use the same forums, talk on AC rather than GC, and really are just different parts of a group that choose to focus on different things. Rather than making a thousand individual pages, I was looking at just distinguishing between each division with a sentence about the individual focus.--Pepe 12:08, 8 February 2007 (PST)

The man with the wrench

Before Dirigible manages to slip this one through, :P Allow me to mention some things:

1. I don't believe "we're close to consensus." None of the major opponents of Guilds on the wiki have recanted other than Tanaric the Unfaithful. He has been declared a heretic by Redemptor Karl. Please do not try and rush this through. I am still vehemently opposed to us catering to the EGOS of experienced PvP players to get their contributions. If this is about EGO, then I personally (a very black and white, uptight guy) do not want their contributions.
2. I have to commned you, Dirigible, and the guys at WoWWiki for putting a nice effort in place. That has to be THE best argument FOR guilds that anyone has ever made. However, we need more information about that effort. How many guilds are in WoW? How many of the top guilds in WoW are in those 172? (Seems like an awfully small number to me.) What are the rates of problems in that section? What is the overall feeling in WoWWiki and in-game in WoW about that section? I never played WoW and therefore do not use their wiki, so I have no data to provide there. Does anyone know? If you check some of the guild listed there, you find they violate that policy, but nothing is enforced upon them. One guild page I saw had just one paragraph of text about guild vision, none of the required info.
3. Because there's much angst and rivarly in the PvP section especially among mid-level PvPers (not noobs who are in awe of the skill of others, nor veterans who simply lost their ability to rage), those who make smurf guilds and the like, there is reason to expect a fair amount of friction in a Guild Wars Wiki that does not exist in a WoWWiki.
4. Overall, I see adding ~1000 pages, 95% of which will be edited less than 5 times in their entire lifetime while 90% of the edits will be trivial and a sizeable percentage of them will be reverted later (vandalism, advertisement, jokes, guidl only info). This can't be a good thing, can it? This has "Builds" written all over it.
5. Having an in-game directory of guilds is an unrelated topic to having guild pages on the wiki. The game already has mechanics internally for knowing all guilds in the game, if the developers wanted to implement a directory of guilds (say by territory), then they would query their own servers, not an incomplete (and arbitrarily user filled) list. We're not ding the game or ANet any favors here.
6. The only form of factual "Guild" information I would accept (and it is ALSO a form of documenting something in the game world), is to document the guilds on the trophies in the Great Temple of Balthazar. That's IT. This will also allow us to link to their names from the championship pages. So, the WM page, for example, would say, 1st Place in the X championship and 4th in the Y championship and so on. Perhaps list their territory as well with an External link to their GotW page if it exists.

Ok, that's my wrench. :) --Karlos 06:14, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I would accept listing those guilds which are listed on guildwars.com, presenting no more information than that site. However, making individual articles for them isn't necessary nor wise. A single article (or possibly a few articles which divide the guilds alphabetically) would work very well. Guilds which aren't mentioned by the guildwars.com website should only be listed in rare special cases when most of the players know the guild. This would prevent people advertising all of their self made guilds in the wiki in hopes of new members to their guilds.

Guild articles would be a massive waste of time as they would most likely be vandalised a lot without providing any useful information for most users. Verifying information and keeping it up to date would also be a problem for most of the time. Keeping to the official stuff which comes from guildwars.com would be easy enough to not cause a lot of trouble. --Gem (talk) 06:25, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I think using WOWWiki as an example is a bit of a stretch. Guilds work different in WOW and GW and have different functions. I agree with everything Karlos said. - - BeXoR 06:28, 8 February 2007 (PST)

After reading Karlos' points, I'm leaning towards siding with him now, mostly with concerns as to how guilds (and builds as well if allowed) would dominate the recent changes (see the recent changes in GWiki now)... as for why WoWWiki works, it could be that it's not an official wiki, and you can bet not all the millions of players even know of its existence. This wiki is official. The moment it becomes a news item on the official GW website, thousands of people would notice that Guild pages are allowed... out of that huge amount of guild pages that gets created, I'm thinking that most will get abandoned... like an abandoned guild. And there's no easy way to verify which guild actually still exists... who's going to want to verify and clean up non-existent guilds? Who wants to help monitor those thousands of pages? Ooo... the more I think about the maintenance of them, the more I'm reminded of the tempers that flared up with builds pages at GWiki... Ab.er.rant 07:08, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I think the wiki needs to try this experiment with guild articles, see it fail miserably, and learn from the ensuing bitterness. One year ago an opinion such as "builds should be removed from guildwiki" would have been met with derision. Today it is conventional wisdom. There is nothing, but nothing, quite as educational as seeing your cherished ideas burn before your eyes. If this is a 10 year wiki project, then six months spent learning this valuable lesson will be time extremely well spent. S 07:41, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I would still rather see a phased roll-out. Notable guilds first ... if we can agree on what "noteable" means. Once that's in place, then open it further. My concern is that if it fails, as many appear to believe, then a rollback would remove all guild data. If that took place, it could be near impossible to re-open the door enough to allow noteable guilds to have articles. By doing a phased rollout of guilds, if it does fail and their removal is needed, we could still have partial listings.

Also, to me, it's important to reach out to the PvP community to get more involvement than what was seen in GuildWiki (I play PvP, but more casually, and certainly not to the level of the players I would love to see more involved here). If a full rollback takes place, it could permanently alienate the core PvP players. By doing it as a phased rollout the PvP community will see two things: first, that an effort is being made and plans for expansion exist. Second, worse case, if a mass-removal/cleanup is eventually needed, a phased roll-out could still leave the community the entries for noteable guilds. --Barek 08:23, 8 February 2007 (PST)

This is one of those discussions where I wish I'd been here from the start, because reading it all now is a pain :)

My feelings on the matter at present are in agreement with Karlos when he says "This has "Builds" written all over it."

Karlos the wise? ;) LordBiro 09:10, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I should say that I also agree with Stabber to an extent; we should try it and see if it works. The only problem is that, much like builds on the GuildWiki, will we be able to remove this section if it gets out of hand? LordBiro 09:12, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Karlos:

1. I agree that we are not close to consensus. However, I also see that the majority of those dismissing the idea are justifying their dismissal with fear because of the builds section. I did the same thing, initially, but guilds are significantly different than builds. With builds, there absolutely had to be some sort of quality rating, which resulted in arguments and drama. Guilds need no such thing -- I'd argue against allowing text like "we are the best guild in the game" on guild pages for that very reason. With builds, there were often arguments on how to tweak the build in different ways, and everybody had a different opinion on optimality. Guilds have no such analogue. In short, the drama issues from the builds section simply don't exist with guild pages.
2. In terms of problems, anybody who's interested can patrol guilds for vandalism or style errors. Having the section certainly doesn't require our current sysop team to do the work. Personally, it doesn't seem all that likely to me.
3. About adding another 1000 articles, who cares? We have infinite space. If nobody really uses the section, so what? Nobody needs to know it's there.
4. This is backwards reasoning. If the designers of the game wanted people to have skill data at their fingertips, they'd put a skill browser in the game. Because it's quite possible, based on the conversation last summer, that there will eventually be a wiki browser built into the client, their guild browser might in fact be our guild listing.
5. That's not really a justifiable stance. It's a gut reaction.

Gem: you don't have an argument. If you don't want to be involved with guilds, don't be involved. One thing we learned from builds on the GuildWiki is that they're quite easy to ignore if you're not interested.

Ab.er.rant: It's nobody's responsibility to clean up the guild section. That's not the wiki way. If somebody comes by and notices one of the articles is about a guild that no longer exists, he can slap a delete tag on it. Easy enough. We must move away from the mentality that so plagued the GuildWiki—nobody owns or maintains sections of the wiki. Everyone who wants to does their part!

Stabber: Right on, though I don't see where it will fail. For those of you worried about the clean up tasks, I pledge that if the decision comes down to remove all guild pages, I'll do the work myself.

Barek: The problem is that including criteria of notability on guild pages adds to it the spirit of competition and drama that so plagued the GuildWiki's build section. If we do a rollout of that nature, we're condemning this section to a quick and painful death.

Biro: Yes, we could very easily remove this section, just like we could have removed builds. I do suggest we have a separate namespace for guilds, to make ignoring them easy for those who wish to and to make guild-wide maintenance (read: removal) easy if it comes to that.\

—Tanaric 11:24, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I don't understand this, we say we want to "learn" from the problems GuildWiki has had, yet, for the sake of "trying" this, you want to ignore EVERY mistake the wiki has had with the builds section. Let me address your points:

1. "The majority of naysayers are basing their opinion on the builds section on GWiki": This is YOUR qualification of the problem, however, the decision to refuse to post guilds in the wiki was taken before and during we had a builds section in the wiki. You are rewriting history Tanaric. You are excited about the idea and dismissing very petinent facts.
2. "The builds section necessarily required a quality rating": Not really. There exists a world out there (Guru forums for example) where you just post your builds. Period. People can talk about them all they want, but they cannot vote on them. Good builds get linked to and posted in other places (and get more edits and views), bad builds just fade away. Voting on builds was the reason GWiki Builds section went down the drain.
3. "Having the section certainly doesn't require our current sysop team to do the work" and "nobody owns or maintains sections of the wiki" cobined with "I pledge that if the decision comes down to remove all guild pages, I'll do the work myself": This is just preposterous. Does not seem like you are even trying to make your arguments work together. On the one hand, no one is responsible for any section, but we are supposed to be more open to trying this because you declared yourself responsible for cleaning up the mess afterwards? Do I even need to remind you of the simple "What if you die next week or lose interest in all wikis nex month?" Where do we cash your pledge? Such a pledge should NOT, under any circumstances, be factored into anyone's decision making process.
4. On top of that, you are the one refusing to learn from the GWiki experience. Do you know EXACTLY when the build section went down the drain? It was when Xeeron got burned out. The precise moment in GWiki history when the section lost it's meaning is when Xeeron turned down our offer to become Builds Admin. All the policies and structures were there, but the wisdom to oversee things and keep the active contributors contributing positively was lost. That's when it started to degenerate, because none of the other admins had the energy to go in and pick up that slack. The only one who tried, lost his adminship along the way. Leadership and ownership is needed especially when charting new ground, especially in a section that can be a hotbed for a lot of problems in the future.
5. About adding another 1000 articles, who cares? We have infinite space: Again, you are being dismissive of the argument. Care to read the example I mentioned to the end? 1000 articles, of which 95% never get edited more than 5 times, never get viewed more than 20 times, and 90% of the edits to them are trivial and half of the edits should be reverted. THAT is the total picture. Not the 1000 articles. I was NOT complaining about bandwidth... I was complaining about useless content. We should not have such content even if we're hosted on the biggest servers in the world.

--Karlos 13:20, 8 February 2007 (PST)

So this is what it's like to do battle with you, Karlos! Now I know how Tetris L used to feel. :)

1. The decision to avoid posting guilds on the GuildWiki was, as you mention, decided before builds appeared to suck. The opinions about builds here, on the official wiki, appear to me to be supported by the failure of the GuildWiki's build system. I'm not rewriting history, but I am focusing on the present.
2. That's all well and good for Guru, but we don't allow talking about things like that. We're not a forum. Both Guru and GuildWiki had a build voting system. The fact that Guru's is circumstantial in nature doesn't deny that it exists. Without voting on builds, GuildWiki's builds section would have been even more meaningless than it is now, because it would have been an unnavigable heap. As it is, it's still an unnavigable heap, but there are at least a few vetted builds that people can find and used.
3. I've been making my "stop owning articles" claim for, what, a year and a half now? Longer? Nobody really buys it in practice, even though it's becoming accepted in theory. The only way to get both sides of the court on my side is to play on both sides. I think the guild section will work without a dedicated deletion manager. I think it won't need to be wiped. There are concerns that I am wrong. There are concerns that it will be impossible to wipe. I offered to do the job, should it come up. That's it. I've made similar offers before, on the GuildWiki -- I deleted most of Ollj's articles, for example.
4. I'm not going to talk about Skuld's contributions to builds, except to say that I disagree with you and you know it. The builds section was floundering far before we offered builds dictatorship to Xeeron -- otherwise, I'd never have offered it to him! What we need is a good foundation in policy, and, yes, some contributors who are willing to oversea the situation with the policy behind them. The problem was that the policies governing builds were fundamentally wrong for a wiki environment, which is why I'm pushing so hard to get a good guild policy on the ground so we can give this a try. I have no doubt that quite a few people are going to patrol guilds using that policy, assuming we push it through -- some might do it just because they want to see me proven wrong!
5. I'm dismissive of this argument because it's complete conjecture. There is no evidence to support that guild pages will be vandalized more than any other article on the wiki. I fully expect some vandalism, especially when it first comes out, but I think it will be at a maintainable level, and I think it will decrease as time goes on. I think that limiting our scope when our userbase is about to become incredibly broad is a foolish gesture. We can always appoint more sysops if the need is there -- and I fully expect, within the next year, for our sysop team to double or triple in size!

—Tanaric 13:42, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Tanaric ... I'm confused. You said "The problem is that including criteria of notability on guild pages adds to it the spirit of competition and drama that so plagued the GuildWiki's build section. If we do a rollout of that nature, we're condemning this section to a quick and painful death." I really don't see a comparison between the two. Setting an externally measurable criteria for notariety is totally different than using an internal vetting process. Can you elaborate on your logic on that one? --Barek 17:41, 8 February 2007 (PST)

For what it' worth I agree with Karlos completly on this one. I see no need for a guilds section on the wiki simply because they're so transient - give it a month or two and probably about half the guild pages we'd have would be out of date and useless. We should document the tournaments, and by extension the tournament winners, but that's pretty much it in my opinion. If needs be we can always allow guilds later - it's much easier adding stuff at a later date than trying to take it away. --NieA7 04:35, 9 February 2007 (PST)

On verifiability

I strongly believe that enforcing a verifiability requirement on a guild pages program will doom the program to an early death. This makes having a guild article a privilege that we're granting to only the elite, which is not only unfair, it's unwiki. Verifiability essentially adds a vetting procedure to the guilds section, which as most of us know, worked horribly on the GuildWiki builds section and was the source of most of the problems (no offense intended to Xeeron). Finally, it could be argued that the guilds that really need exposure on a resource like this will be unable to get it, because they will be unable to meet such a verifiability requirement.

Honestly, what does the verifiability requirement add? I support changing it to simply, "A guild listed must actually exist." If a guild article for something that strikes you as fake pops up, and you want to verify it exists, you can personally do so by leaving a message on its talk page to get in touch with a member. If nobody responds for a week or so, that would be sufficient to conclude the guild doesn't actually exist, and you could put a delete tag on it. No harm, no foul.

Really, though, even if the guild doesn't exist, what harm can the article possibly do? At the worst, it could cause a single reader to seek out that guild and fail to find it. However, I'd hope that they themselves would note this, either via a delete tag or via the talk page.

—Tanaric 11:34, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I don't entirely agree or disagree with Guild articles, but I don't see how you can say that a verifiability requirement is unwiki. Doesn't Wikipedia have a verifiability requirement on all articles? Perhaps we are interpreting with word differently. LordBiro 11:42, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I'm starting to see the possible good sides in guild articles. We should definitely try the guild section out. We could even allow all guilds, not just ones documented on gw.com. We could possibly set some requiremments, like having a number of members, being open to new members or being widely known. (Only one requirement woul need to be met) --Gem (talk) 11:58, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Biro: it's a tricky point. Because Wikipedia deals with real information, presumably there is a documented source for everything out there. However, with guilds, there is no such source, because the ladder only has the top X guilds. By enforcing a verifiability claim from the beginning, we exclude smaller, newer, or social guilds without any chance for them to possibly qualify. For example, I certainly can't prove my guild exists, because it's only four people. We don't even have a guild hall. However, I'd still put an article on the wiki about it, just for fun. Under my looser proposal, if one of you was offended by our name or something (we're the "Kings of Christ"), you could ask me, and I'd toss you an invite sometime just to prove it. Under the proposed guidelines here, I would never get that chance. —Tanaric 12:37, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I'm sticking to my opinion of Guild Pages should NOT be allowed. A general guild guide (outlining the different TYPES of guilds and the various COMMON requirements to join them) would be fine. But, maintaining over 500,000 guild articles? Come on now. That's a ridiculous and incredibly dumb thing to ask the members of this community to do. And don't think that there won't be that many. Over 3.5 million people log into and play guild wars on a regular basis. And at least 78% of those are members/leaders of guilds. — Jyro X 12:40, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Nobody's asking this community to do anything. If you don't want to deal with guild articles, don't participate.

Imagine this sort of logic on Wikipedia. "You want to add a computer science portal? But I'm a historian, I couldn't possibly learn enough to contribute! This is a horrible idea!"

—Tanaric 12:42, 8 February 2007 (PST)

That doesn't make logical sense Tanaric. I am a leader/member of a guild (a pretty successful one at that). It's not a matter of participating or not. I'm sorry that I strayed off topic and brought up that point, but the true issue lies with is that the vision of this wiki? I thought the purpose was to document the game, not the community. Guilds on a whole ARE part of the game, but individual guilds? That would be like saying every single player is a part of the game (which would b e a valid point) and that would in turn justify the creation of Character pages (outside of user space) for every character you see in the game... It's a slippery slope my friend. The true question is where do you draw the line at what needs documentation? And how do you justify that boundary? — Jyro X 12:45, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Now that is an excellent point, and one I'd like to see argued further. :)

I think we have to take community interest into account. There is a significant community interest in finding and categorizing guilds. There is unlikely to be significant community interest in finding and categorizing individual characters. I agree that there's perhaps a slope, but you haven't convinced me that it's slippery. One could argue that, since we already have a user namespace, and there is in fact significant community interest in finding and categorizing users, you've got the arrangement of the topics on your slope incorrect. We already have articles on each user, so why not on each guild?

—Tanaric 12:50, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I agree with Tanaric. I think we have to consider the community as a whole. Particularly since the community is what makes the wiki work. While there may be a limited number of major contributors many other people will come here looking for information of all sort. And as Tanaric stated, if any one or group of individuals doesn't feel the need for any particular section, be it a guild namespace or builds or user pages, they are free not to pay any attention to that section. Lojiin 12:56, 8 February 2007 (PST)

So your reason for justifying the creation of a new namespace/section is that "If they don't want to see it, they don't have to click it." That doesn't have ANY strong footing as a rebuttal against the creation of Guild Pages/Namespace. — Jyro X 12:58, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Tanaric makes an excellent point. We have the user namespace for user and character info so why not guild namespace for guild info? Seems logical (and fun :) ) to me. --Gem (talk) 13:00, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Actually, the user space was never declared as being for your character info... Actually, character pages were disparaged by most Wiki admins I encountered. They weren't against the rules, but there were a few petitions to have them removed. And I found even mine (coming in at 10 PvE characters and 1 PvP) to be too much of a hassle just to maintain myself. I think this wiki should uphold to a higher standard of quality than just allowing users to throw a bunch of crap in their user space and leave it as a big pile of stagnant charr poop. — Jyro X 13:04, 8 February 2007 (PST)

The current proposal of the user page policy was made really allowing after discussing with the admins and other people. It seems that character info will still be allowed, but the policy encourages to only use one sub page for them all, not one for each character. --Gem (talk) 13:08, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I think you misunderstand Jyro, though feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Tanaric isn't suggesting that the justification is simply that "if you don't want to see it don't click it." What I think he's saying (again, if I'm wrong Tanaric feel free to correct me) is that there is a potential community in having the space. Which would justify its existence. The "if you don't want to see it, don't click it" simply applies to those who have no interest. Lojiin 13:09, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I would like to question the hypothesis that there is "significant community interest in finding and categorizing guilds." Says who? Again, if GuildWiki is any indication... How many people got on and tried to create pages for Guilds once a day? Once a week? Once a month? I know we had a decision early on to disallow them and that would have turned off the regular contributors... But the average users who do not eye the Recent Changes and do know about Talk:Girls on Top... How come we did not see this as a recurring problem in GWiki? We have the stats right there in GWiki... They are stacked against this argument. --Karlos 13:26, 8 February 2007 (PST)

How about having two categories of guild; those who have achieved recognition in game (strictly; those on the trophy, ladder season winners/runners up, GotW) and another for guilds who just want to have their details on the wiki. That way, if something goes disasterously out of control you can simply delete all in the second category without loosing the sort of information which would be interesting over long term. Only the first group can be linked to from pages outside of any guild namespace to keep it clean and prevent any "look at me" vandalism. I like the idea of verifibility because as others have said this section could quickly fill with guilds which no longer exist. Having a visitable webpage for the guild or being in the top 1000 might allow for the process of deleting dead guilds pages to be automated. --Aspectacle 13:29, 8 February 2007 (PST)

To Karlos: Potentially we didn't see it strictly because it didn't exist. If there was a section that the average user was aware of it could have attracted alot more use. People didn't come to Guildwiki and see a link on the main page or on the Guild page that said "See here for some existing guilds". Since it wasn't there no one knew about it or tried to use it. Since, as you stated, the regular contributors would have been turned off to the idea. Lojiin 16:17, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Aspectable, if you allow guild pages yet disallow links from pages outside of the guild namespace, what exactly is the point of allowing the guild pages in the first place? So that guildies can have a place to point to and say that's my guild? If it's purely for that reason, then why not just push such guild pages into the user space? --ab.er.rant (talk) 17:31, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I think there's too much theorycrafting going around, too much trying to read the future and predict exactly what will happen. Here's the thing, not a single one of us knows whether this would work or if it would fail miserably. Stabber, with all your dark seer-like clarity "this will die in 6 months", you don't know that. Karlos, you don't know that there'll be 1000 pages where half the changes are vandalism and the other half trivial. Jyro X, you don't know that there will be 500,000 guild articles. Tanaric, you don't know that this will actually work, it might actually turn to be but a huge fiasco as well. And yes, I don't know if this will work either. Now, you could retort with "what happened to learning from our mistakes, we should be able to draw conclusions and see where things are going to go in the future from what's already happened". My belief is that not a single one of us has sufficient information on being able to predict if this section would fail or succeed. Why? Because:

As it was mentioned above, GuildWars is not WoW. Just because it worked for WoWWiki, doesn't mean it will work for the GuildWars community, nor does it mean that it won't work. I brought up the WoWWiki example to show that the concept of having guild information pages is not so radical and "Wiki ideals"-breaking as it apparently seems to many of us. I brought up that example to show a place where they've found a solid solution that keeps all parties content.

And to answer your question Karlos, yes, WoWWiki has a good reputation amongst the community, and yes, the Guilds section is seen in a positive light as well. The 172 guilds might indeed seem low, when the actual number of guilds is much much higher. But there are other factors to keep in mind. Since the WoW population is so large (over 6.5 million players worldwide), the community is much more fractured as well. While WoWWiki is by far the largest wiki about WoW, it's still not even close to involving the majority of the community. The same with the Guilds section. It might seem tiny when you compare it to the entire WoW population, but it's a very realistic number when you see that it's only representing the community of WoWWiki.

Another aspect to take into account is that for WoWWiki there's just too many other rival sites that offer many of the same services (one prime example being Thottbot). GuildWiki, on the other hand, is unique in its role. How many really large communities does GuildWars have? 1) The guys that hang around the Guild Wars Guru forums, all of whom use GuildWiki, 2) Guild Wars Online, the staff of which due to their xenophobia created their own wiki, which never really took off since their community just uses GuildWiki instead, 3) PvPers, who hang around places like TGH, Gladiator's Arena at GWG, #gwp, and random guild forums (like Team iQ or TeamQuitter). I'd dare to say that these three groups represent the majority of the English-speaking GuildWars community today (with the smaller local communities of GuildWiki itself and GwVault representing the majority of what's left). Every single one of these community hubs has made their effort to have usable information about skills/collectors/armor etc, and as everyone knows, all of those have had mediocre results and remain largely unused, ("why bother, just use GuildWiki instead").

What I'm trying to say is that while WoWWiki has had to compete with other major sites which aim to offer the same content, GuildWiki is pretty much leading alone in the role of providing information about everything that revolves around the game. If a Guilds section were to be added as well, Guild(Wars)Wiki would have no rivals in that either. Furthermore, once the link to this wiki gets posted on GuildWars.com, it'll attract many more players that don't even fit in any of the above communities. This place will become the closest thing to an Official community site that this game has, bar none. So, if I dared to speculate on the possibility of a Guilds section being vetted here, I'd guess that there will be a huge number of guild pages being added, the ratio of which to the total number of players would be far higher than for any WoW site. Is that good? I think so.

Another reason why not a single one of us can predict what would happen with a Guilds section is because it has never really been tried in the past. Karlos, you ask "why haven't people rushed to try creating guild pages in the past". Like Lojiin suggests above, maybe the answer is because such a section didn't exist. If people were aware they could do something like this, maybe they would have rushed to add pages about their Guilds?

Many are trying to compare this to the Builds section, at least in the state it used to be on GuildWiki, and are trying to reach at the conclusion that it will fail in the same way. This is an unfair comparison and conclusion to make, I believe. The reason why is because they work in completely different ways. Just like you said, Karlos, the Builds section was doomed because it was designed on top of a weak voting system. We know the problems with this system, it was somehow supposed to separate the good builds from the bad builds, ignoring that those who were voting were themselves often incapable of making such a distinction, because those who were voting were also those who were submitting the builds in the first place! And there were, like there always are, huge egos that insisted that their expertise on build-making was unmatched; these egos were on both camps, both voters and votees (I really really hope that's an actual word).

The exact moment that the builds section died was the exact moment that the policies and structures to support it were vetted. It was incredibly flawed from the very start. It was only when Xeeron got burnt out that it became too obvious that this was indeed the case. He was the glue that was trying to keep that broken piece of heavy machinery together. When even that wasn't there anymore, kapow. Look at the mess that's over there now.

Hopefully, the Guilds section would learn from this past, by trying to avoid this pitfall. As it's been repeated countless times, it's about factual information, lets keep it like so. Lets keep the Guild pages moderate in tone and what they offer. Merely information. Lets design the guidelines so that they ask from these pages useful information; what the guild is about, what their goals are, what they usually do, what kind of members they have and/or look for, what kind of achievments they are proud of. Nothing more than that. It'd be like the Guild of the Week pages in tone. It'd be like the Guild Wars Guru builds section that you mentioned above, Karlos: You post your guild, people can talk about it, people can ask questions about it, period. No voting, nothing of the kind. Very interesting guild pages will get linked to, others ... whoooooooooosh... will fade away.

This became slightly too long, but I really needed to say what I had to say. I'd rather have no regrets about this in case the Guilds section never gets through, at least I made my voice heard.

My final note is simply to ask everyone to ponder for just a moment on whether we are speculating a bit too much about what can or will happen if this section were to go through. I really believe that none of us is in a position to give a really substantiated opinion on whether this section would be a success or a failure, because it's unlike anything we've tried in the past, and the context in which it's being presented doesn't point to a clear answer either. Just like Tanaric or Stabber, I believe that this section should be allowed to be created, at least to see how it goes. What do we really have to lose, after all? Lets make the best possible effort together to avoid all pitfalls we can think of, and give it a go. Yes, there'll likely be issues that will come up in time, which we simply can't predict now. Yes, there'll likely be much vandalism at first. Yes, there'll likely be many modifications to the Guilds policy over time until it consolidates. But all three of these would be likely for ANY new section that we could possibly add to this wiki, and it has nothing to do with this being about Guilds.

And yes, there's a chance that this thing will just flat out not work. But hey, the next time you try out a new restaurant and order some exotic dish with a new type of red wine that you haven't tried before, there's also a chance that at least one of those three elements could be pretty damn bad. Is that a sufficient reason to not even try new things? I'd really like to hope it's not. :)--Dirigible 12:23, 9 February 2007 (PST)

No offense intended here ... but I will not be reading your post. To be blunt, I lack the time (recent changes show (+8,749 on article size from it!) Can you summarise it for easier viewing? --Barek 12:27, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Short version: We have no idea whether this will work or not, that too many assumptions are being made from both sides on something that is completely new to both the wiki and the guild wars community in general. As such, like Tanaric or Stabber, I ask we give this a try. The rest is simply me trying to argue why I think it's this way. :) --Dirigible 12:32, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Thanks! I love bullet point summaries! ;-)

Just to clarify; if I were home, I likely would've just read it ... limited time in-wiki when connecting from here though. --Barek 12:34, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I read it and it wasn't that long. It is very well thought out and worded which made it easy to read. I will now say my opinion on this subject is that (as with many of the other ideas being thrown around on this wiki) we need to try new things. But we also need to have firm guidelines about permissible content and a list of possible scenarios that arise from this (good and bad) and contingency plans to deal with the outcomes. Until someone actually starts making an example of some sort we can't really say yes or no, because so far we only know what no looks like. - - BeXoR 12:39, 9 February 2007 (PST)

With multiple comments endorsing the content of the post, looks like I should read the whole thing. But it'll need to wait until I'm home. Sorry I didn't have more time right now. --Barek 13:10, 9 February 2007 (PST)

That was a well thought and written post. You didn't mention some of the worries of some people, but the main points got handled. I think the most important thing here was that we should try the build section and from the beginning have the system designed to avoid the problems which users foresee. No voting, no opinnions. Just hard facts like avarage number of members, guild leader, PvE/PvP concentration points, information on how to contact or find more info (website, irc, e-mail, ...). --Gem (talk) 13:02, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Discussion on the policy suggestion content

The above discussion is about whether to accept guild pages in the wiki or not. I would like to discuss the contents of the policy here, separated from the yes-no debate. What would you like to see modified if anything at all? I would personally not like to see a guild portal with featured guilds. A featured guilds system would promote competition and possibly vandalising other guilds articles and would also cause the guilds articles getting more attention than they should. I would also like to allow more guilds than just those which can be verified as that mostly limits the guilds to PvP guilds and would render the guild name space useless for PvE players. I would suggest allowing guilds if a) they can be verified as mentioned in the article. b) they are accepting new members c) are near the maximum size of a guild. This would allow more than just the good PvP guilds and the GW.com guilds of the week to be published, but would not allow small friends-only guilds which no one else is interested in. --Gem (talk) 13:53, 9 February 2007 (PST)

If the point of guild pages is to make it easier to find them, it stands to reason that it must live up to this promise. Amorphous categories of 500 guild articles are useless. Hence a guilds portal. A featured guilds program, assuming one is started, should select well written guild articles as exemplars of this policy. I think all verifiability restrictions should be tossed. Who has the time to verify anything if it can't be found at the other end of a clickable link? The enforced deletion linked at the end takes care of the occasional prankster who writes an undetected bogus guild article. Our patience should outlast any random prankster's. S 14:09, 9 February 2007 (PST)

The deletion rules should indeed take care of bogus guilds and small guilds which are forgotten or disbanded. --Gem (talk) 14:25, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I find this line a bit inappropriate: "Guild pages that have been inactive for over a month may be tagged with {{inactive guild}}, and deleted after 7 days from then if unchallenged. Any member may remove this tag." How do you define inactive? Is it when no one visits or when no one edits? What if my guild is mostly static and there's really not much to add once I've added all the content I'd ever want to add? --ab.er.rant (talk) 23:13, 9 February 2007 (PST)

The way I see this is that if the page doesn't get meaningfull edits for a month it gets tagged. If the guild still exists and the guild members want the page to stay they can remove the tag. This will clean guilds which don't exist anymore or which have been forgotten or become inactive, but active guilds will not get deleted. If your guild is static and doesn't need updating often you just need to remove the deletion notice once a month if someone even places it there. --Gem (talk) 23:30, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Contingencies

I think consensus has begun to gallop towards some sort of pro-guild-pages conclusion. (Or the opponents are asleep.) Per BeXoR above, we have to watch this baby closely and keep the pumps running on the bathwater. All sections below are editable. Use the wiki process to improve them. S 14:35, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Contingency 1: lots of guild pages created to flame other players/guilds

1. Flaming should be treated as a punishable offense. The first time should get a rebuke, the second a stern warning, the third a block.
2. Guild pages that exist solely to disparage the guild should be deleted on sight. (Part of the not-yet-existing speedy deletion policy.)
3. Depending on how bad it gets, it may be necessary to prevent guilds from mentioning other guilds.

Contingency 2: lots of guild pages created and forgotten

1. No need to panic. Automatic inactive guild deletion will get rid of the junk eventually.
2. If this gets to be a drag on admin time, we can create new admins.
3. If it gets really bad, we can raise the bar for admission.

Contingency 3: no one follows the guild page policy

1. Establish a speedy cleanup track for non-compliant guild pages. Seven days after creation, if it is still non-compliant, it may be deleted at any time.
2. If it gets bad, establish a policy that guild stubs must first be created in a Guild:List of proposed guild pages, and moved from there by a clerk.

Contingency 4: guilds overwhelm Special:Recentchanges

1. Take a deep breath and let it go
2. Migrate to one of the other community notification systems, such as Project:Discussion. Sitting at the mouth of the RC stream drinking it all in as it comes is not healthy.
3. Hide the guild name space from recent changes.

Discussion

I would not like to see a 'List of proposed guild pages' as this would need one or few users designated for the task. Anything whih realies on a certain user is bad. --Gem (talk) 14:54, 9 February 2007 (PST)

The right thing to do under Contingency 4 is to filter your Recent Changes list by the Guild: namespace. I'm still opposed to this and I imagine so are quite a few others, but considering you're saying you've reached consensus off of just a few people saying yes, I guess there's really not much else I can do to stop it from happening even though you've all failed to come up with a satisfying rebuttal for my very valid arguments against the creation of a guilds namespace. — Jyro X 14:56, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Where are these valid arguments? Bring them to this page please. S 14:58, 9 February 2007 (PST) Oh. S

If I may summarize your arguments, they are:

1. There will too many of these pages (cont. 2 above)
2. There will be no standards (cont. 3 above)
3. It's a slippery slope that can only end in perdition

1 and 2 are valid criticisms and we have to guard against them. Tighten the standards so they can be made more policable. Unlike a user page policy, I think I can fully support a strict formatting policy here. 3 is not a valid concern: it's your old and jaded bones speaking. Let the young ones have their time in the sun. They may yet teach us something. S 15:08, 9 February 2007 (PST)

What is the problem with articles being created and abandoned? Based on the WoWWiki style guide, there is absolutely no need to update these articles after creation, except in the rare case of a guild website change. What possible motive could somebody have in editing a guild article every day/week? I think, by nature, these articles are going to be write once and let alone. This is actually a good thing, as it means they won't have any chance of flooding recent changes (beyond the initial torrent). —Tanaric 17:15, 9 February 2007 (PST)

It's a question of how big you like your categories. Me, I like them small and relevant. If you want to relax automatic deletion to automatic uncategorization (and any related delisting from portals), that's fine too. By the way, I am surprised at your apparent lack of imagination of why someone might edit a guild page fairly often. S 18:14, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Specifics of Listing

Under the specifics for listing, you shouldn't require that they list every officer in their guild. You should ask them to choose a maximum of TEN or at the most TWENTY of their MOST ACTIVE to list as I know quite a few guilds that have 100 members sometimes have 1 leader, 60 officers, and 40 members. Listing 60 officers is a little over-doing it and a little more information than is actually needed. Ten or twenty officers should be plenty to list in order for anyone looking to join the guild to actually get in touch with someone from it. — Jyro X 15:00, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I modified it to read 'important officers'. --Gem (talk) 15:02, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Agreed. I was more interested in putting generalities about the guild, rather than members, due to the frequency that guild leadership changes. Granted, I'm in the XoO metaguild, so I may have more to write about there than most guilds. --Pepe 15:06, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Little Note

I'm afraid I can't read all the influx of edits being made throughout each talk page. I'd go blind. However, I reviewed this proposed policy and have noticed that categories and some wording hint that guilds cannot be both PvP and PvE. I'll change the wording and add a new category. Feel free to remove my edits. — Gares 15:17, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Jyro X's arguments

First of all, I doubt consensus about anything has been reached yet. People aren't on the wiki 24/7, so immediate answers to any message can't be expected. Anyways, starting this section in response to your comment above, since I'd rather no one felt that they're being done an injustice in any step of any policy-making, by being refused to give an answer to their worries. Pressing Ctrl+F and searching for your name from the top of the page. Here's your arguments that I see:

1. "Personally, I don't think guilds should be documented at all. [...] They are not things in the game that are there for documentation. [...] And I don't want any of that documented on this site as it holds no relevance to the game in any way, shape or form."

My answer to this one was: "It is documenting a very important part of Guild Wars, if not the most important one of all. This is an online game, the social element is part of the game from the foundations up, it was never meant to be played as a single player game with the data simply residing on an ANet server. It was built from the ground up with the intention to have a game where people could socialize/compete/interact with each other. And just so it happens to be that the main form of these interactions is guilds. Why in the world wouldn't that be worth documenting?" Also could be tied with another point that was made above, that the guilds section would be of help to the community, whether it is through recruiting, teaching new players what guilds work like, providing about a background for guilds that through their existence have actually changed how this game works (like KOR), or simply by providing a sense of community.

2. "To be more clear, it sounds like all this is is a push for a recruitment forum and I can't condone that course of action".

Again, why not? What's wrong with a player being able to go to the "Recruiting PvE guilds" category if he so wishes to, and find a list of them? There's many many guilds that are constantly open for recruitment, behemoths like XOO come to mind, plus there's always the new guilds that feel that they could be something special, or cater to a particular kind of player, but that simply can't get heard. What's wrong with that being made available? If you say "that's not what a wiki is for", I'd have to refer you to point 1 above again.

3. "Just sounds like you want guilds who gain a certain status to recieve lime light in this wiki."

What if we open it for all guilds, does that solve this issue? :)

4. "But, maintaining over 500,000 guild articles?".

Forgive me if that sounds like a gross overexaggeration. You forget that 1) A huge part of the GuildWars population doesn't even speak English at all, and that we might as well not exist for that demographic, we're invisible to them. 2) Even for the English-speaking players, how many do you think really get involved enough in the game as to check forums and wikis, and how many actually bother to POST IN or EDIT them? You're overestimating that number by far, is my guess. There's many players that play GW a few hours a week and that's it. 3) Even those that do involve themselves in online communities such as wikis/forums, I still strongly doubt that all of them would find interest in something like this. How many of them don't even have guilds at all? So, aye, I do believe the number you give is far far too high of an overkill.

5. "Guilds on a whole ARE part of the game, but individual guilds? That would be like saying every single player is a part of the game (which would b e a valid point) and that would in turn justify the creation of Character pages (outside of user space) for every character you see in the game... It's a slippery slope my friend."

For a partial answer to this question, see 1 above. Tanaric also directly tried to answer:

"I think we have to take community interest into account. There is a significant community interest in finding and categorizing guilds. There is unlikely to be significant community interest in finding and categorizing individual characters. I agree that there's perhaps a slope, but you haven't convinced me that it's slippery. One could argue that, since we already have a user namespace, and there is in fact significant community interest in finding and categorizing users, you've got the arrangement of the topics on your slope incorrect. We already have articles on each user, so why not on each guild?"

Hope I didn't miss anything. If I did, do let me know. --Dirigible 15:33, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Also in regards to #4, the math doesn't come anywhere near to adding up. Even assuming your values for number of players and % in guilds, the numbers come out far, far lower. Even assuming, say, 50 members per guild (which I picked due to the limit of 100 members), that's under 55,000 guilds. Out of that, most won't bother to make a page, to say the least, many don't speak English, and a lot of them just don't care. Math ftw. --Pepe 16:17, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Actually, your math is WAY off. Most guilds have less than 30 members. Therefore making their documentation fairly un-important. A LOT of guilds in the game even have less than 10-5 members. So, no my math isn't that far off. And to assume that just because they don't have many members or just because they're not native english speakers means that they won't be interested in making a guild article to advertise their guild on the OFFICIAL guild wars wiki is just plain irresponsible thinking. — Jyro X 16:53, 9 February 2007 (PST)

And yet, without actual numbers (you're making just as many assumptions as I am), this is really, completely pointless. Irresponsible? It's just plain logical. You're talking in terms of worst-case, without looking at all at what is likely to happen, which, it seems, everyone else on this page seems to understand (see Dirigible's answer to #4, above). This particular portion of the discussion becomes especially meaningless when we consider the fact that we aren't dealing with GuildWiki's belabored servers, but rather the nearly unlimited storage/bandwidth of ArenaNet. And maintain? What is there to maintain? A guild article is not something that needs to be edited constantly, daily, or even weekly - it's something that a member of the guild would update when necessary. Fine, we might need to have someone, be it a sysop or a regular user, go through the articles and mark them with cleanup tags every once in a while, but we are simply not going to have 500 freaking thousand guild articles. Theoretically possible? Perhaps (Though I disagree about the math, that 500k number would be assuming that every guild in the game had, say, 5-8 members - I know mine (XoO) does not), but likely? Very much not. If it bothers you so much, I'll even volunteer to police the section, if someone will make me a cleanup template (I fail at wiki coding). How can you possibly object to something you don't even need to help with and that will not affect you at all? --Pepe 17:35, 9 February 2007 (PST)

So is this "Guild Documentation" thing only referring to well-known guilds such as QQ, iQ and RenO? — Rapta (talk|contribs) 15:44, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I would like that, actual wiki articles on them and not shoddy recuitment posts. — Skuld 16:09, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I don't think that guilds should be documented. Even though I'm part of a guild that would be documented if we listed all the GotW, I don't think it's appropriate for the Wiki. The Wiki should document in-game mechanics, not player created. LordKestrel 16:36, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I do not understand why player created content should not be listed. MMOs are about community, and there are many advantages to including Guild listings in this wiki. One of the primary things I would like to see is historical guild information so that new players understand what the older ones are referring to. For instance, it is probable that KOR influenced Guild Wars more than any other guild in its history, and in large part are responsible for how skill balances are done. EP is another classic guild. Rift showed how to farm the ladder with a gimmick and almost make it to Germany. The list goes on-even though these guilds no longer are active, they had a lasting impact on the game.

Furthermore, one of the major demands in the PvP community is an in-game way to find guilds. If this wiki ends up being searchable in-game, it would be perfect for recruitment. Having categories for guilds that are/are not recruiting, as well as their requirements/who to message would be great. --Trevor Reznik 17:22, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Not really sure where you're getting that information or the authority to make those claims. I've been playing for the better part of 17 months and I've never even HEARD of KOR. And yes, I am an active PvP'r. Do I actively check the ladder listings and sit in observer mode all day? No. But claims like that aren't for the general public to make. Claiming that one guild is more influential than any other in the game is an objective opinion in any case and shouldn't be listed as per the guidelines listed in this article. And I don't see the benefits of listing guilds on this wiki out-weighing the negative points, but at the same time, I don't see the benefits of not listing them to extremely out-weigh the negatives of not listing them (if there are any). But, really. There are so many reasons NOT to list them and so many negative things that will happen if you do. Really, what is negative about not listing them? Please answer that. — Jyro X 17:42, 9 February 2007 (PST)

What's negative about NOT listing them? Here's what: We'd be killing in the womb an idea that could potentially be very good for the wiki.

Oh, and the very fact that you don't even know who KOR were even though you've played for such a long time, shows that an article page on them would be helpful. [ This whole next paragraph should NOT be considered as an argument in favour of Guilds section, since I know someone will inevitably drop the word "elitism" in a reply ].

And no, Trevor was not making baseless claims when he says that they've probably influenced GuildWars more than any other guild. (By the way, [KOR] stands for "Korea", one of the best and most active guilds during the BWEs. If you want to know how they influenced how Guild Wars works today, especially the skill balancing part, vote Yes to Guild pages. ;) /end_joke ) --Dirigible 18:04, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I recognize the difficulty inherent here. To be honest, the best thing to do would be to get Izzy in here to restate what he's said in the past. To be quick: KOR was the best guild in the game in the BWE's (just google KOR Guild Wars and read match reports about how they consistently dominated). Izzy has stated KOR was the guild that came up with frenzy warriors and warrior spikes. Shortly before launch, there was a Korean tournament, and KOR's build was nerfed right before it. With no time to adapt, they lost to War Machine, and the anger about this nerf prompted A.net to implement a policy where they were extremely hesitant to change skills midseason. I understand most of this material can't go on the wiki without reference. What COULD go on is that they were a top guild from the betas, and placed 3rd to WM and WM's smurf. Same with EP-it should be acceptable to post that they ran a very defensive build at the flagstand and ganked NPCs with a fragility spike, and EP (based on the interview with Samyel) believed that the nerf to healing seed and fragility was due to them (they went something like 110-1 with this on their Jet Li smurf). Another great example-how the pRp/EP match was a heavy factor in changing how GvG worked. Match 5 of that was a 96 minute fight because the GLs never came out of the base, and shortly after that match the 35 minute GL walkout was implemented. These are important guilds and matches, and should be referred to for historical reasons so that people can understand the evolution of the game.--Trevor Reznik 18:15, 9 February 2007 (PST)

For any statements of that nature we need to ask Izzy to come down here and certify them. Otherwise it is just conjecture, and conjecture of the pernicious sort as it is legend-weaving. The fan community believes anything they read in the forums. We can do better. The only thing documentable about EP, in my opinion, is that they had egos the size of Kryta. For reasons that I have never understood, they were idolized by segments of the community. I am sure they believed any number of things about themselves. But I've had this argument before, with other people, in other places. S 18:30, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Agreed. The vast majority of our content is about player-created things, including guides, general strategy, skill notes, mechanic research, etc. We are not merely an instruction manual. —Tanaric 17:23, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I agree with Tanaric, I am very proud of my guild, Heroes of Primeval Eden, because we're not a made in 5 minutes guild and we offer a great player experience for mature gamers who use their brain :). I'd like to see an "official" page of it in a wiki, it shouldn't be restricted to a certain user's name space. So long as the page is factual it should be revered in the same light as a build page, user-submitted content. --Jamie 17:47, 9 February 2007 (PST)

My guild totally sucks, and I'd still like to make an article on it. :) —Tanaric 18:09, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I could lean either way with guilds. I like the policy from what I've skimmed over and you know I am impartial to this. ;) — Gares 19:35, 9 February 2007 (PST)

So the question is more about article content, rather than whether they will be documented or not? - BeXoR 18:37, 9 February 2007 (PST)

A Guild page seems more like a userpage than an encyclopedia article. Why not just have a separate namespace? Seems like a reasonable compromise. -- BrianG 19:13, 9 February 2007 (PST)

That's what's been suggested, and it's also mentioned in the actual proposed policy page; these guild pages would reside on the Guilds: namespace. --Dirigible 19:30, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Ahhh thanks for the headsup, I went straight to the talk page haha. Looks good to me. -- BrianG 21:44, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Agree with current proposal

Ok, starting a new section, because I'm not going to try to figure out where the best place for my comment is in the 93kb long page.

I believe that the current proposed policy is pretty good, but I think that this issue should be revisited after 6-9 months to see how it is working. Tanaric stated that he believes so strongly that it will work that he will personally clean it up if it doesn't work, well let's set a time table for that. If on August 1st, 2007, it looks like the Guild pages are becoming nothing but problems/flame wars/targets for vandalization/etc... Tanaric, wipes them out and we ammend this policy to "No guild pages." And just a note for people, I was stongly against guild pages on GuildWiki, but I'm willing to give it a shot. --Rainith 20:30, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Ah, finally! A section I was willing to read in its entirely. Seriously, you guys fired off edits on multiple talk pages way too quickly to catch up... oh well, I was opposed at the beginning, but as the policy is written and all those really good points laid out by Dirigible was really persuasive, so for now I'm in support and we'll see how it goes. --ab.er.rant (talk) 23:19, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I agree with the current version of the policy. I'm surprised it didn't get any edits during the time I was sleeping, but maby that proves something. :) --Gem (talk) 23:38, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I agree too, see post in last subsection --Jamie 01:34, 10 February 2007 (PST)

Some minor changes

While I have yet to make up my mind whether having guild pages is a good idea, I changed some minor stuff in the current proposal:

• Categories are administrative stuff and should not be regulated in policies. If we ever want to change the category structure, we should not have to rewrite policy. Deleted the subsection on categories.
• Whether something is "unlikely" is an extremely subjective belief. Deleted that in favor of only "impossible or verifiably false".
• 7 days is too short a period for deletion for all but the most prolific editors, changed that to one month. --Xeeron 03:18, 10 February 2007 (PST)

Agreed on categories, the use of category tags should be described on the necessary formatting page. LordBiro 04:30, 10 February 2007 (PST)

From the policy page right now, a. "Guild pages that have been inactive for over a month may be tagged with {{inactive guild}}, and deleted after 1 month from then if unchallenged. Any member may remove this tag". The same policy page mentions b. "The guild shall be, or must have been, verifiably existent, such as with a ladder ranking, an in-game tournament trophy, etc."

Basically my question is, what happens with pages about guilds that satisfy point B, but cannot possibly comply with point A? Meaning, what happens about pages that are created from the start about guilds that are already disbanded/non-existent? Valandor, LuM, iB, nO, Clan ZPZG, KGYU, EP, iGi, emt, Char, Nu, SotW, Fish and probably many others I'm missing right now. These are all guilds with a very verifiable track record, and that all have an interesting story behind them, again verifiable and thus relatively safe from speculations. According to point A of the policy above, these guilds would be deleted after 2 months after their creation, simply because they have NO members anymore that could remove that deletion notice. Same with guilds who have been GotW and don't exist anymore. Maybe add a "Historical Guild" tag or category on these ones, which would keep them from getting caught in these periodical prunes of the guild listings?

Also, for the record, I would like to point out that I agree with what Tanaric mentioned above, it would probably be better to not delete guild pages for inactivity at all. There's really no harm that can come from keeping these guild info pages on here. To keep the listings from blowing up we can even still use the inactivity tag, but not to delete them, simply to move all the inactive guilds in an "Abandoned Guilds" category. If their members ever return, they can easily reactivate it by changing the category of the page. I'd rather we archive these guild pages instead of flat out deleting them. We don't delete user pages if they've been inactive on the wiki for too long, why do so with these guild pages? How does everyone else feel about this?

Oh, and another little tiny detail, how do we know whether the guy that changes the Deletion Notice or Abandoned Guild tag, whichever we implement, is actually a member of the guild (since the policy right now states that "Any member may remove this tag")? Can we change that part from "any member" to "anyone"? Avoids the headache of trying to figure out if someone is really a member of that guild. If someone mass removes these tags, it'll be obvious as vandalism, and can be reverted. If s/he is more subtle about it and manages to remove the tags from a couple undedected, big whoopee, in 2 months those guilds are going back in the inactive pot, I really see no harm in it. Would that work? --Dirigible 06:21, 10 February 2007 (PST)

I see the problems with deleting guild pages and activity checks, but you are right if there is an activity check, "anyone" is much less of a headache than "any member". --Xeeron 07:03, 10 February 2007 (PST)

I would not like to see small friend guilds of a few friends which get abandoned to stay on the wiki, but it would be hard to formulate the policy so that noticable guilds may stay even after they don't exist anymore. --Gem (talk) 12:45, 10 February 2007 (PST)

The thing is, why bother documenting disbanded guilds? I mean, a simple statement like "QQ is made up of members from KGYU, iGi and Val" is usually enough. — Rapta (talk|contribs) 12:53, 10 February 2007 (PST)

Disbanded guilds that don't exist anymore were only an example of why I think that particular part of the policy needs reworking. Right now it demands both that a) "The guild shall be, or must have been, verifiably existent, such as with a ladder ranking, an in-game tournament trophy, etc", AND b) That a member of that guild remove the tag. I mentioned a bunch of guilds that most certainly fulfill the first criteria, but can't possibly do so with the second. Dead guilds is only one example of those guilds. How about those that don't speak English, or that are mostly inactive? Concrete example that covers all three of those possibilities, the Korean guild The Last Pride [EvIL]. I doubt there's any PvPer that doesn't know their name, and likely a large part of PvEers too. EvIL right now is one half dead and one half inactive, with a few of their members recruited in the army, and the others simply abandoned the game. If someone were to try to make a page about them here, it'd simply end up getting deleted in two months, because I somehow doubt that Soul Wedding would log on from the army boot camp and log on to the Wiki to remove that tag from his guild's page. Should that be a reason against not having a page about EvIL here? I hope not. A new player who has heard about EvIL would be able to get here, check their wiki page, and learn why exactly that guild is famous.

Furthermore, (this is getting so long, and I think I'm getting burnt out on this particular topic), even pages about guilds that cannot claim to have such "fame and popularity" (for lack of better words) should be kept on the wiki. Why? Because this isn't supposed to be a shrine to iQ or EvIL or Val. True, it's likely that some of them are going to get more reads than others, but it seems fair to me to not deny any guild that right, even smaller ones. After all, this whole thing is supposed to be something aiming to help the GuildWars community in general, and documenting those "famous" guilds is simply just one particular aspect of that goal; it informs and educates the readers about what those guilds were all about and what made them so famous. For an analogy which I hope is not too inappropriate, just because almost everyone uses the dictionary to look up bad words and scientific terms, it doesn't mean that the other words don't belong there too. :)

So, at the very least, that line should be changed from "any member" to "anyone". Ideally, the entire line would be removed completely. Just because a guild is inactive on the wiki, doesn't mean they're inactive in-game. If they've set up their guild page and are content with how it is, there's no reason to force them to periodically return just to remove a deletion tag that someone keeps slapping on their guild's info page over and over again. We don't delete user pages, why do so with guilds. Hope that makes sense. What do the others think about this? --Dirigible 13:54, 11 February 2007 (PST)

That was a great post which convinced me even further that this is a good idea. Quote of the best part: "even pages about guilds that cannot claim to have such "fame and popularity" (for lack of better words) should be kept on the wiki. Why? Because this isn't supposed to be a shrine to iQ or EvIL or Val. True, it's likely that some of them are going to get more reads than others, but it seems fair to me to not deny any guild that right, even smaller ones." --Gem (talk) 14:45, 11 February 2007 (PST)

For these people none would be around to oppose the deletion gem. --Xeeron 03:42, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Then disbanded well known guilds wouldn't have any members to remove the delete notice. And if I understood correctly, there are well known PvP guilds which deserve an article but don't exist anymore. --Gem (talk) 11:26, 11 February 2007 (PST)

That is why anyone could remove it. So if anyone thinks there should be an article on Val, it would not be deleted. --Xeeron 12:07, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Not according to the policy page: "Guild pages that have been inactive for over a month may be tagged with {{inactive guild}}, and deleted after 1 month from then if unchallenged. Any member may remove this tag." --Gem (talk) 12:12, 11 February 2007 (PST)

That is why dirigile proposed to replace "any member" with "anyone" in the long paragraph up there (which I happen to agree with). --Xeeron 13:29, 11 February 2007 (PST)

On formatting

This policy leaves formatting far too subjective to be remotely considered policy. I much prefer WoWWiki's approach of a single, straightforward guild style and formatting article that must be followed more or less to the letter. The inherent flexibility in this policy seems like it will result in gaudy, self-aggrandizing fluff that cannot be reprimanded due to the differences in policy interpretation. —Tanaric 15:59, 10 February 2007 (PST)

Agreed. If anyone wants to mess around with formatting, etc. and doesnt' want to mess with content, I put up a basic set of content at User:MisterPepe/GuildPageSandbox, so feel free to mess with it to your heart's delight and find something you like the apperance of. -- Pepe 16:36, 10 February 2007 (PST)

Some headings and subheadings would be nice to make it easier to read. - BeXoR 11:51, 11 February 2007 (PST)

So... only document notable guilds? Yes? No? — Rapta (talk|contribs) 12:55, 11 February 2007 (PST)

I say no. Quoting Dirigible from the marvelous post above: "even pages about guilds that cannot claim to have such "fame and popularity" (for lack of better words) should be kept on the wiki. Why? Because this isn't supposed to be a shrine to iQ or EvIL or Val. True, it's likely that some of them are going to get more reads than others, but it seems fair to me to not deny any guild that right, even smaller ones." The point is that smaller guilds are as much part of the game as the large well known ones. They might become large and famous some day too. Even if not, they are still in a very important role for the players in those guilds. --Gem (talk) 14:47, 11 February 2007 (PST)

I say yes. We only document guilds that have a mention in game, simply because they are mentioned in game. The page is just a simple thing, probably with a list of their performances in tournaments and suchlike. Nothing fancy, no member lists, no pin-ups of the leaders etc etc. If you're in a guild you know about it, if you're not in it you don't really need to know the name of the third officer's dog. --NieA7 15:36, 11 February 2007 (PST)

"We only document guilds that have a mention in game, simply because they are mentioned in game" - YES. - BeXoR 20:31, 11 February 2007 (PST)

That seems like elitism. Also, at that point, we might as well just be linking to the list of tournament winners instead of writing anything up ourselves (which is viable, too -- half-measures are just bad here, however). Giving any guild an article is going to involve a lot of articles, potentially, but these will be both few and vanishingly small compared to the size of User space -- isolating them in their own namespace and enforcing some template rules should really be sufficient here. — 130.58 (talk) 21:06, 11 February 2007 (PST)

With a clear and simple style guide and this policy small guild articles would not cause any trouble. There is no harm for the wiki in documenting small guilds too. Besides those guilds could actually benefit from it as they gain more members, and players looking for new guilds could easily look for them by browsing the categories. (As long as we categorise the guilds wisely) There are a lot of people wanting to join small guilds. Most people woldn't want to join the well known elite PvP guilds at all, and probably couldn't even if they wanted to. --Gem (talk) 03:16, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I'd have to agree with Gem here. A clear format is definitely necessary. However, show would guilds be categorized? Even the basic categorization of PvE or PvP is not clearcut. --Life Infusion 10:24, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Categories are not an issue. We can have a bunch of them that each page can use, to make browsing through them easy. For example, HA, GvG, TA, Mixed PvP guilds, Farming, Faction Farming, General PvE guilds, Hybrid PvE and PvP guilds, Inactive/Disbanded guilds, Recruiting PvE and Recruiting PvP ones, and so on. The more, the better. --Dirigible 10:28, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Yes, there are a lot of possible categories and the more the better. (ofcourse nothing ridicilous) --Gem (talk) 10:52, 12 February 2007 (PST)

It's elitism in as much as the guilds that win anything are elite by definition, but I don't think it's an elitist policy. We document the game. Guilds (generic) form part of that but any individual Guild has virtually no impact whatsoever. The only Guilds that do have any kind of impact are the winners (by designing the pre-made PVP builds, for example), thus we document them and them alone. --NieA7 12:30, 13 February 2007 (PST)

So did we ever decide whether to stick to a certain format? Seems to be that way from the comments, and I'd have to agree. It would make browsing through them a whole lot easier. And, have we decided on what that format is? I saw Pepe's page but it didnt look like it's been touched, has anyone took a stab at this yet?

Also on the subject of small guilds. I think it would be a bad move to discriminate against small guilds and not allow them to be part of the crowd. For the same reasons that have been listed already. 15:56, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I'm working on a formatting guide for guild articles. I'll post it when I'm happy with it. --Gem (talk) 16:04, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Okay, look at User:Gem/Guild formatting and post comments here. --Gem (talk) 16:52, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Doesn't this formatting section feel more appropriate under the formatting guidelines rather than policy? And for the guild page, I'd rather it'd have less information so that there's less to scan through for potential abuse. Too much description and information blocks. I'd rather have the list of important members as a plain bulleted list. --ab.er.rant (talk) 17:32, 12 February 2007 (PST)

This IS a proposal for a formatting guide. It was not meant to be on the policy page. :D (Ignore the poor text in the example. I just needed some text to showcase the proposal)

The important members could also be as a bulleted list. I would like to hear more comments on the matter, especially from people in larger guilds which might want to introduce their main members. --Gem (talk) 17:47, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I really wouldn't make big ol' writeups of "important members". A bullet list of officers is sufficient (even that may be unnecessary if there's a separate entry for contact info). More detailed personal info should just live on userpages. My ideal would be an article that's informative but short, like just one page on the screen. — 130.58 (talk) 18:02, 12 February 2007 (PST)

That looks a lot better. Simple and to the point. I'm curious to see what the {{Guild}} is going to look like 18:55, 12 February 2007 (PST)

An improvement, yeah. They probably shouldn't be labeled "important members", though. Also, what would we do about membership in historical guilds? — 130.58 (talk) 18:58, 12 February 2007 (PST)

What are historical guilds? 19:01, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Disbanded guilds that used to be influential. We're bound to have a few listed since not every tournament-winning guild is going to last forever. — 130.58 (talk) 19:01, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I thought this was for active guilds. Certainly disbanded guilds aren't Active. I would probably say they're allowed, but only to a limited extent. And the format would change to show why they're listed (ie accomplishemnts) instead of what they do and contact information. And they would need a totally different category (ie. Disbanded Guilds) So people dont confuse them with active guilds, and at the same time people can easily avoid them if they didnt care about disbanded guilds. 19:11, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Okay, I'm totally with you now: let's hammer out the active-guild format now and just work on historical notes later. (I think they'll just end up being active guild articles with a lot of sections removed, anyway.) — 130.58 (talk) 19:34, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Warning about ratification

This policy should not be ratified until we have a functional Guild: namespace. S 07:01, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Namespace

Disallowing any form of redirection to or from pages outside of this namespace Doesn't this mean that user-pages can't link to their guild page? Qanar 07:56, 13 February 2007 (PST)

No. Redirection uses #REDIRECT. Links are only restricted from the main space and templates used in main space -- links from user pages are fine. The restriction on redirects in one direction is designed to prevent de-facto non-Guild:-space guild pages, which should be the politic backing for a speedy deletion criterion for such a cross-namespace redirect. The restriction in the other direction prevents guild pages from being mirrors of userspace content. S 08:02, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Let's Do This!

Alright, I'm going to admit, when I looked at the policy category to try and figure out which one to tackle next (jeeze, I'm one week late in figuring out there's a new wiki, and all the policy talk pages take an hour to read) I said to myself "Heck no." After all, even on the old wiki, we weren't stupid enough to allow guilds to document themselves. Talk about a Pandora's Box. However, as I mentioned, I decided to tackle this talk page and read all the arguments. Some that I thought were really good: Stabber "This is a stupid idea, but give it 6 months." Tanaric "The Guilds section is only work for those who decide to work on it, let's give it a shot." Maybe it's just the fact that, once again, I'm really tired, but I'm feeling pretty cocky right now. Anet essentially gave us huge, unlimited server power and said "Don't break any laws." Alright, we're not going to break any laws, but why not undertake one huge mofo experiment. Let's allow Guilds to document themselves, any guild, no restrictions, no delete tags.

• Yes, this might require a lot of bandwidth. If it does, Anet shouldn't have been stupid enough to give us access to that kind of power.
• Yes, this might result in a huge amount of guilds that will fill different categories. As mentioned above, add more categories, as many as possible, bandwidth isn't our problem.
• Yes, vandalism might increase exponentially with the inclusion of guilds. However, nobody knows that for sure. Let's find out if that's the case.

Worst Case Scenario: Having Guilds kills off all interest in the new wiki, causing people to return to the old one. However, Gravewit, rather than keeping that old stuff around now that his wiki was replaced, junked it. Wiki contributors flock to the streets, rioting and creating total anarchy worldwide.

Most Likely Worst Case Scenario: Guilds section doesn't work, after a few attempts to fix it, it is completely scrubbed, Tanaric is forced to do what he said he would do in such a scenario.

Guild Wars Wiki contributors have been dropped into a whole new world. I, for one, say that we should test the laws of that world, rather than saying "That's not possible, we better not try." Columbus said he was going to sail to India. People laughed at him, saying he would fail. Columbus sets out to do what he says. Columbus fails. Columbus becomes famous worldwide. Let's follow Columbus's example, let's try what people say cannot be done (again, I'm really tired, this could be just the sleep deprivation talking. If so, please forget I ever posted this). VegJed 22:21, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Alright, having slept that off, I apologize for the above post. Wow, I wish I could say that I was drunk when I wrote that. However, the point still stands that, if we're going to do this, I think that any criteria for admitting a guild will be detrimental. Saying that only guilds that have a verifiable impact can post information will cut it down to less than 1% of guilds. Before we do that, let's try it without said restriction. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

As to the "no delete tags" part of my above post, I only said that because it might be hard to enforce the policy, and I'm not sure if people should be forced to come onto the wiki once a month for their guild page, if it's only to remove a delete tag. However, if that's a requirement to seeing this part of the wiki open up to all guilds, then sure, require they sign on once a month to do so.

The above post did not mean to say that we shouldn't restrict what guilds can put on their page. After all, Anet wants us to keep this family-friendly. We could restrict it to important guild members and a mission statement, that would be fine with me. We could say "Any guild page which violates this policy will be immediately deleted." The issue with that is that vandals could then breach this policy on a rival guild page to have it deleted, but that can be discussed later.

All that the above post was supposed to say was "Let's try for the most complete Guild directory of any Guild Wars site, seeing as we're now the official wiki." In implementing such a thing, I also think that we should require that, in 6 months maximum, there will be a discussion of how the Guilds policy is working and how the policy should work in the future. We shouldn't give this policy free reign, all I'm saying is that we should give it a trial period, after which we can decide whether or not it works. Hopefully, this post was more lucid than my previous one. VegJed 08:21, 14 February 2007 (PST)

You should probably read the policy as it is proposed right now. I think it covers all of your points. :) --Dirigible 08:27, 14 February 2007 (PST)

So has the policy been agreed on? I dont have time to read the above discussions atm due to real life issues. I support the current suggestion. --Gem (talk) 12:00, 14 February 2007 (PST)

The policy should not be ratified until we have a working Guild: namespace. 193.52.24.125 12:20, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I agree with the current policy, the main reason for my post was I had seen people recently post on this page saying we should only document the guilds that had made an impact, which I personally disagree with (See late-night rant and next-morning apology). VegJed 12:28, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Image in tag template

→ moved to Template talk:Guild

The Stop_Hand Image? 12:58, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Failure

It has been said above that if the Guilds section is not successful then it will be removed and we will call it a failure.

One lesson that I have learnt from the GuildWiki is that it's often very difficult to agree on what a "failure" is. Some would argue that the GuildWiki's builds section was a success.

For this reason I think it is of vital importance that we set down the conditions under which the guilds section would be removed before we implement this policy. Consider this our "get out" strategy. LordBiro 10:29, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I agree. Here are a couple of my ideas regarding failure:

• A large amount of complaints by guilds due to vandalism.
• A large amount of guilds failing to comply with the content rules outlined in the policy. If you don't play by the rules, we take away the game completely.

I recognize that these are fairly vague, relying upon a "large amount." The reason is, I'm not sure how to quantitatively state what a "large amount" is at this point, as I'm still not sure how large the scope of this project is going to be. None of us do. I realize this probably didn't help at all, but hey, I tried. VegJed 11:44, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I would agree with LordBiro here. I'm more confused as to why this guild section is being compared to the GWiki Builds section. There isn't any lengthy vetting process here, or "original" submissions. If this section is only documenting notable guilds, there really won't be anything that goes wrong. However, every user should not create their own guild page on this wiki (but I'm assuming this isn't the direction we're going with this). That's more or less what the namespace is for. — Rapta (talk|contribs) 11:49, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Tanaric has said above that he will do the euthanizing himself if guild pages get out of hand. "If Tanaric says so" is a sufficient criterion, isn't it? By the way, no matter what "get out clause" we enact now, if the guild pages project "fails", then its supporters will cry rivers of text and there will be all kinds of drama before it can be removed. I fully expect to see people appealing to ArenaNet and them giving us a few fedup responses if it ever comes to that. As a matter of decorum, I dislike policies that include a Sword of Damocles hanging over the entire project: we have tight enough restrictions on the guild pages as it is. S 13:25, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I think the Guilds section will be mostly rubbish, and that nobody other than members of the Guild will visit the pages of anything other than the top rated PvP Guilds (if they decide to have a page here in the first place). Plus, given the general levels of camaraderie that seem to exist in PvP I bet they'll be a tonne of vandalism. Lots of people seem to want Guilds to have pages so it's clearly something that needs to be considered, however it feels a very peripheral thing (much less so than a builds section) - can't it just wait until basic policies for the rest of the wiki are in place? --NieA7 14:05, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I wonder what criteria Tanaric would use? Perhaps if he felt that too many guilds were using title case... ;)

Of course its supporters will be upset, but that is why I would have thought we'd need some criteria. Stabber, you described this project as an "experiment". What kind of experiment would it be if we had no means of determining whether it was a failure? LordBiro 15:01, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Well, this isn't a scientific experiment. About indications of failure, I laid out some #Contingencies above. I am not sure I'm wise enough to ever be able to decide if the project is a failure. Since I can just control myself, I know that my personal failure-point (which I fully expect to reach) will be when I mute the Guild: namespace from RC. This is why I am grateful that Tanaric volunteered to be the reaper if the project ever dies, because removing the guilds will require a level head and a steady hand. S 15:10, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I don't think it's fair or wise to leave the job to one person, but I will presume for arguments sake that it does fall to Tanaric to sort the problem out. I don't doubt that Tanaric will perform as well as can be expected in the removal of the guilds namespace, but wouldn't it make life easier for him if the could point to a list of criteria and say, "it's too late, look at this and this and this"?

I won't labour the point. The contingencies may well be enough. LordBiro 15:28, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I've left him a note. Perhaps Dirigible will also have a word to say here. S 15:37, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I would have left a message already if I felt I had something worthwhile to say on the topic. :P

I agree with you that demanding such clearly-defined failure conditions from the policy is probably not a good thing, a Sword of Damocles hanging over your head is anything but supportive. I think that starting the entire policy with such a sense of impending doom lurking in the background is definitely counter-productive. As it has been said above, we haven't tried a Guilds section before, much of the policymaking now is simply trying to look into the future and predict the problems that might appear. Of course, we aren't able to predict all of them (even though I think the policy is strict enough to prevent a majority of them that may arise). Normally, when problems appear which an approved policy is unable to deal with, that policy gets opened for discussion again, it gets worked on some more to try and ammend it in order to strengthen those weaknesses and deficiencies of which we are unaware now. Will we be able to do so with Guilds if we start it off like this? We decide on a Failure Condition X. It reaches that Failure Condition X. Do we point at the failure criteria list, yelling "IT FAILED IT FAILED LOOK IT FAILED SHUT IT DOWN WE TOLD YOU SO", or do we actually try and fix that particular problem, whatever it is? I think that this sword hanging on the entire project is drastically reducing its chances of working. I can understand and sympathize with overly-strict policies, at least until the project gets more established. I can understand (and actually really like) Stabber's contingencies, they are helpful and practical. But this trying to determine now when we will pull the plug is something else entirely. I feel that having these conditions is inappropriate, and that their existence is harmful to the future of the Guilds section. If someone can say something that will ease my fears that this won't happen, please do so.

Nonetheless, if it's decided that we want them (apparently people are already trying to formulate them), so be it, I guess. I'd suggest to look at the Builds section for inspiration on formulating these failure conditions. Many (most?) of us believe that the Builds section was a failure, that it's not working as it should be. The question is, what makes it a failure? How is it not working as intended/what problems is it causing? If we can't even pinpoint those Failure conditions for Builds, for which we have the benefit of hindsight, then maybe trying to arbitrarily predict them for the future of Guilds isn't such a good idea. If we can pinpoint them, then we can use them to speculate on when we can say "This isn't working" for Guilds. I personally don't know whether I'll be responding to this particular section of the thread again. It's obviously here for the benefit of those that are hesitant of the Guilds section, and it's likely that what I would say would only disrupt other editors' attempts to come up with that list of failure conditions; I'm too biased about this. --Dirigible 17:55, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Thanks for the note, Stabber.

I don't consider vandalism to be an immediate indication of failure. I expect a good deal of vandalism in the first month of our guilds program, and I expect a similar vandalism rush when the wiki is officially announced. Similarly, if we're ever integrated into the game client, I expect another rush of vandalism. In the latter two cases, the vandalism won't be completely localized around the Guild namespace, but all the same I expect it to see more than its fair share, page-for-page, than other sections. I fully expect to appoint more sysops to head off vandalism via short-term blocks -- assuming, of course, that I'm grandfathered in as bureaucrat.

If vandalism remains more rampant than real edits after a period of ~three months, I'd like to hold an open poll with the community (including off-site fora) to see if it finds the section useful. If they do, and if there are enough people here willing and able to revert vandal edits, vandalism is never sufficient to remove the section. Only if we are unable to keep up with vandalism, and the namespace degenerates into uselessness, will vandalism cause the section to be deleted.

I expect that, during the inaugural month, nobody will follow the guild style and formatting article correctly the first time. It will require a heavy hand to make sure that everybody is aware that this policy is active and well-enforced. That said, if many (most?) of legitimate editors after the inaugural period argue with us about Guild policy, and will not oblige, that is sufficient reason to close the namespace down.

I think the suggestions at contingency 1.2 and 3.1 are great ideas that should be put into policy. I think the entirety of contingencies 2 and 4 are irrelevant in terms of implementation or removal, so I won't discuss them.

If I missed a big point, let me know. :)

—Tanaric 15:55, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Hi Tanaric, that was fast. I feel as though you haven't really answered the question that I was hoping you would. Under what circumstances would you consider the guilds section being a failure? And should we codify these circumstances so that, if they arise, we have some definite reasons for pulling the plug? LordBiro 15:58, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I thought I answered that, but I'll bullet-point it to make it more clear. If I'm still not giving you what you need, yell at me until I figure you out. :)

• If the guilds section, after a period of three months, causes more vandalism than the wiki editors can reasonably contain, the section should be deleted.

• If the guilds section, after a period of three months, creates more drama about the required style and formatting than it creates meaningful guild articles, the section should be deleted.

• If, after three months, there is no community interest in the resource we have created, the guilds section should be deleted.

As to whether these should be codified, well... that's the community-at-large's decision, really. If you're working my deletion promise into policy, I suppose that my stating these is sufficient. —Tanaric 16:41, 14 February 2007 (PST)

If we really are going to go through with this failures condition list, demanding such clearly defined conditions of failure or success from the project, then lets do so seriously, no vagueness at all.

• "more vandalism than the wiki editors can contain" <--- Editors or sysops? If you look at the Builds section on GuildWiki right now, most sysops are avoiding it like the plague, only stepping foot there when they really need to. The whole section is a mess. Not saying that this has been caused by the current sysops' unwillingess to deal with it, but it has definitely not helped, has it? On the other hand, there's so many regular contributors around Builds that would be very glad to be sysops to help out with that section, yet that's not happened. Looking towards the future now, at Guilds: if that happens, if that vandalism keeps persisting (a very big If, I strongly doubt this will happen), I'd like us to at least try and get it under control before axing it. How? 1) try to rework the policy, to make it more strict against that vandalism, 2) get more sysops willing to actually help with that section instead of avoiding it. I don't know about 3 months either, seems too short a time to me; we don't know when the wiki is going to officially open its gates nor do we know how much interest the community will have on this section (more activity has the negative side effect of also having more vandalism). At the very least lengthen this deadline some.

• I really don't have anything to say about this, I can't even imagine what this situation would be like.

• Same as with vandalism above, I'd like there to be more efforts to correct the situation before axing it. If there's no interest, we should first 1) try one of the many ways there are to promote that section to get more people to post there, 2) relax the policies and formatting guidelines that govern that section, since they may be too rigid and scaring contributors off. Also, once again it seems to me that 3 months is far from being enough. We don't know how long it'll take for the wiki to open its gates, we don't know how long it'll take for the first wave of vandalism to calm down, we don't know whether the section will start with a boom or if it will grow gradually. Arbitrarily placing a deadline this short on it seems inappropriate to me. --Dirigible 17:55, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Even though I'm not a sysop, I'm psyched enough about this feature that I'll probably spend a fair bit of my on-wiki time patrolling the guild namespace =P Honestly, I'm not even sure if we need more than one actual sysop to help out in there - just give me a "Cleanup" tag, a "Recommend for protected page" tag, and a "delete" tag, and I'm good to go. XD -- Pepe 11:34, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Finality

Has this debate reached a stand still, is something more needed, is this proposal failed, or is it ready to be moved to official policy? I'd like to make sure the majority is on board before it is official. — Gares 10:53, 21 February 2007 (PST)

Considering as this page hasn't been edited for six days, and it's been leaning towards consensus, it's probably ready to move to official status. Do we have the Guild: namespace from ANet yet? Because we should probably make sure that it's been implemented before putting up any guild pages at all. Also, perhaps nominating one or more people to monitor the section specifically, even if they're not sysops (I volunteer, btw - I think that this will be really cool if we get it working) would help soothe any remaining concerns. - Pepe talk 11:09, 21 February 2007 (PST)

Before making this policy, the Guild namespace must be created. Thus far, it still doesn't exist. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:12, 21 February 2007 (PST)

Heh. Who do we have to string up to get that to happen? So far, nothing off of the Tech Admin requests page has been touched. Pepe talk 11:18, 21 February 2007 (PST)

For my opinion on the finality of this project btw, I see no reason for it not to become official, though only when the Guild/Guild talk namespaces are created.

However, I don't see a need for specific people to be nominated for a "neighborhood watch". Most contributors help to fight vandalism and make sure policy is being upheld throughout all namespaces. It's a nice offer, but I don't see the need for it. — Gares 14:29, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Heh, I agree on the idea that it's a little ULGGish, but it was a way I saw of dealing with people up in the original discussion who were concerned that it would take far too much time and effort to keep it clean, especially for sysops. It's all good =) Pepe talk 14:32, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I'm curious to see what comes from this, so you can bet I will be watching. Though I watch everything already, I just don't make myself known as much as others do. ;) — Gares 14:38, 21 February 2007 (EST)

That's a little creepy ;) Pepe talk 14:39, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I'm on the same page as you guys. Support for the policy, waiting to see what'll happen with the Guild: namespace. --Dirigible 15:02, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I don't like this. There are too many restrictions and too general an idea of what the page is supposed to represent IMO. Why not just make a short and simple Guild page template that must be followed if they want to post guild info. Pictures here and here, guild name here, officers and leader here, etc. Make it easier by telling them what they can or cannot post on a guild page with a template, not a huge list of no-no's that will be ignored or overlooked by every other person. I can't support this as is but I do like the idea of a guild page none-the-less.--File:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG Vallen Frostweaver 14:46, 21 February 2007 (EST)

There is a formatting guide that works this way: Guild_Wars_Wiki:Formatting/Guild_pages. Example of how it could be used is hat User:Qanar/Forever Knights(Qanar | talk) 15:00, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Well, personally I'd rather the policy became more liberal in how the guild pages can be formatted and the information in them structured, but as I've said before, I understand that compromises at this early point are necessary; the current policy is that compromise. I'm afraid making those pages even more restricted would be too much and really uncalled for, at least for the time being. Also, everyone will be on the lookout for possible policy infractions anyways; both those that support Guilds and those that don't (for their own separate reasons), so I doubt the policy will be "ignored or overlooked" at all. Lets see how the current policy works at first, and then make changes to it as we see more fit? How does that sound? --Dirigible 15:02, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I'm kind of in favor of something a little more liberal as well, as, well, the current version is just boring =\ I'd rather go with something like this: User:MisterPepe/GuildPageSandbox Pepe talk 15:09, 21 February 2007 (EST)

If that or another example template is provided with an easy access link on the main page or close to it then I can support it for now. I must have overlooked the example you supplied though my own overlooking contributes to my own overlooking theory. Perhaps something linking from the "guilds" link that is on the main page?--File:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG Vallen Frostweaver 15:37, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I've now had a chance to read the whole thing. The current draft shows promise, but I disagree with the wording in several places.

• I find the wording of "A guild that frustrates the Guild Wars Wiki" to be vague - what qualifies as "frustrate"?
• The entry for "No guild page should be linked from the main article space or template used in the main article space" contradicts a statement higher up on the page which says " Links are only allowed from official mentions of guilds, such as from articles on official tournaments".
• "All guild pages must live in the Guild: namespace" - I prefer the word "reside" over "live".

That's about it for now. With some clean-up, this draft could work. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:46, 21 February 2007 (EST)

For those wondering about why I went quiet, I am frustrated with the way issues have been discussed. I am not very optimistic about this wiki right now. :( Too many people trying to get in their ideas early on instead of regulating things as the wiki needs them. As such, I'm letting them have their way. I'm too drained to fight on all those fronts. My stand is one and the same: Regulate as needed, not as desired. Good luck with the Guilds section, the Builds section, the Deletion policy, I'll voice my thoughts if I have them and feel that someone will actually listen. --Karlos 16:07, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Hit it on the head, I don't like it either. Get the important stuff out of the way first aswell.. don't let the purpose and goals get lost. — Skuld 16:35, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I dunno. If stuff like builds and guilds weren't heavily regulated up front I think that they would have never been allowed to exist by the old guard from guildwiki, which is almost as bad as spending time over-regulating them.

Seriously - what is the important stuff? And why aren't *you* discussing it? Where *should* I be spending my time if I want this wiki to work?

I think this wiki needs an obvious infusion of wiki tools, input and interest from ArenaNet *soon* for me to think this wiki is going to go anywhere at all.--Aspectacle 17:08, 21 February 2007 (EST)

You want to kno where you *should* be? Contribute. Add articles. This wiki needs nothing at this point more than articles. It needs information. When the New Year Festival came around, I found myself using GuildWiki, not this place. Why? Not even the most basic info was here. I am not into documenting festivals and such junk or I woul dhave added it. I just find the current steps self-defeating. I would focus mor eon documenting bosses, bestiary and locations for ALL of elona first and foremost. Then I'd get to worry about whether admins are deleting articles too quickly. Right now, people "cant" use this wiki, so it's really irrelevant what policies we lay out. --Karlos 17:18, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I re-wrote a few of the mission walkthroughs for here, then the word came that I should wait for formatting to be finalised, so I started a formatting discussion about mission articles, and (finally) got some thorough feedback on my effort yesterday after having it up for a week or more. I'm getting mixed messages... I find it rather frustrating. --Aspectacle 17:25, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Can you point me to where that word was posted? I'd like to go bash the person who suggested it. Telling to people to hold off on contributing until formatting is settled is just wrong. --Karlos 17:27, 21 February 2007 (EST)

The Main Page. ;) --Aspectacle 17:29, 21 February 2007 (EST)

There was some discussion on the current notice which can be found here Lojiin 17:37, 21 February 2007 (EST)

On some levels, I agree with Karlos. This wiki is going to die unless content starts getting added. Just the basics - skills, quests, and missions are still missing significant amounts of information. But because of the warning on the Main Page and the large amount of on-going policy / formatting / guideline discussion still ongoing, few including myself are willing to add much at this point.

On a side note to Aspectacle's comment, from my point of view, builds aren't so much being regulated here as they are being off-loaded into the user namespace. From what I can make out in the draft policy, everything build-related except for voting and the namespace is being permitted here - basically migrating the section that will be ignored by the majority of admins to the user namespace. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:31, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Trouble is people (possibly myself included) "I don't want to edit because there are no formatting guidelines" but when it comes to formatting guidelines no-one is doing any work either, because of who-knows-why, possibly we're waiting for *something* from ArenaNet, possibly no really wants to talk about formatting. This is a miserable impasse which needs to be broken somehow. --Aspectacle 18:00, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I'd suggest that people just start filling in content in a clean, presentable format. Either A) people will like it and the format will become adopted. Or B) people won't like it and take up the discussion on the appropriate formatting page. I'm unsure who said it but I recall it being mentioned that on Guildwiki the style/formatting guides were drawn up around content that was existing at that time. At the very least, it'll help stimulate this wiki. Also, hopefully, now that the Karlos removed the note from the main page, more people will start contributing. As Lord Biro stated on the main talk page, we shouldn't ever be in a position where we're discouraging people from contributing. Lojiin 18:08, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Maybe I was wrong in my interpritation of it, but I took the notice as a note telling me that my time would be better spent in helping set policy rather than filling the wiki with information that most likely will be changed. I personally would have been pissed if I spent hours uploading skill images only to find out the next week all my work has to be re-done because policy decided that we need a change in the image looks. (which I almost did) ... I'm glad that notice was there to bring my attention to policy and to the fact that I might be wasting my time. The notice itself was only a warning, not demand anyway. Not only that but it directs people to policy which will lead them to be able to make an educated decision whether or not to upload their information. The way you guys are talking about it makes it seem like the person who put that up is doomed to hell. kaya 18:25, 21 February 2007 (EST)

No not hell. :) Just that when I saw Skuld say work on important things, when the front page says so clearly "work on policy and formatting first" and that so many of the discussions have stalled or never started in that area, my bottled up frustration on not making any personal progress on my own little area of interest came out all at once. I'm calm again; I can use the feedback I got yesterday and forge forward with my mission articles and trying figure out templates knowing that at least one person agrees for the most part with what I have suggested. I want to do things the right way, the right way to my mind was to follow the suggestion to sort out formatting, and I felt stymed there. <shrugs> --Aspectacle 18:36, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Hopefully removing that notice will help - looking at the last fifty recent changes entries here covers around 2.5 hours; while on GuildWiki the last fifty recent changes cover around 15 minutes. Granted, we're not officially announced here yet (have we been told when this wiki will be officially announced? Hopefully some of the requests at Guild Wars Wiki:Requests for technical administration will be addressed before then). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:45, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Reading through the discussion it is quite clear we need to re-prioritise the workload. I suggest we refocus our efforts on explaining how users can contribute new articles, such as skills, walkthroughs, etc. on the how to help page. This is something we should have probably done earlier. LordBiro 18:51, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Back on topic

Even if we should get the style guides done and even if we need content more than anything, it dosn't prevent us from discussing this policy at the same time. Back to the guild article policy.

I think that the policy and styl guide are great in general, but there are some small things which don't quite work. The policy says "Guild pages should not deviate from the style and formatting guideline for guild pages without excellent reasons." but then the policy lists certain things as allowed content even if the style guide doesn't allow them. I suggest either removing the stuff from the policy, making the style guide the real guideline for guild pages, or by making the style guide merely an example, but clearly stating that more content may be added than the basic stuff represented in the style guide. -- (gem / talk) 22:56, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Back on topic ... my comments were buried above, so restating here ...

• I find the wording of "A guild that frustrates the Guild Wars Wiki" to be vague - what qualifies as "frustrate"?
• The entry for "No guild page should be linked from the main article space or template used in the main article space" contradicts a statement higher up on the page which says " Links are only allowed from official mentions of guilds, such as from articles on official tournaments".
• "All guild pages must live in the Guild: namespace" - I prefer the word "reside" over "live".

I also agree with Gem in that both this policy and the template/style-guide need to be in sync or simply merged into a single consistent article. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:14, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I support fixing these minor issues and then making this policy. —Tanaric 05:21, 23 February 2007 (EST)

After reading the policy draft as is, I find myself wondering exactly what I should be putting into my guild article. As it stands, it mentions alot of stuff that I can't put in, but doesn't really specifically mention what I should put in. It's nice that there's a declaration that guild pages are meant to help, but elaboration is needed on what exactly is the kind of "help" that is expected. The formatting guide doesn't help either. That given example is essentially implying that guild pages should look like that.

I don't support this policy until it clearly states what is expected of a guild article (not just what is not allowed). As for formatting guidelines, unless we plan on forcing every guild page to look the same, it should only contain some advice on what are the useful sections to have, and some common sense guidelines about what constitutes a nice design and links pointing to editing help. -- ab.er.rant 05:30, 23 February 2007 (EST)

I modified the policy suggestion as discussed. I modified one line to read: "Guild pages should not deviate from the style and formatting guideline for guild pages in formatting or content without excellent reasons." This should make clear that the formatting guide is the guideline for all guild articles, both in content and in formatting. -- (gem / talk) 06:26, 23 February 2007 (EST)

Firstly, the formatting guideline isn't really a guideline but some kind of example article. Shouldn't it be finalised before declaring this as policy? Secondly, it is better to wait until the namespace is created, because any articles created with prefix "Guild:" will become inaccessible after the namespace comes into effect. There is a script called maintenance/namespaceDupes.php to remove these dupes, but it is better not to have them in the first place. Ray McCooney 09:48, 23 February 2007 (EST)

I agree completely. Before this can be made policy, we need the Guild namespace created. This is one of the items identified in Guild Wars Wiki:Requests for technical administration. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 10:46, 23 February 2007 (EST)

Ofcourse we will wait until the formatting guide is accepted and until the guild name space has been made. That still doesn't prevent us from making this an official policy, and discussing it throughly. -- (gem / talk) 15:07, 23 February 2007 (EST)

UPDATE: The Guild namespace is coming soon. See Guild_Wars_Wiki:Requests_for_technical_administration#Requests_pending_install. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:13, 27 February 2007 (EST)

Of small matters of "Of"

Do guild names have toi exact, as we all know All Guild Wars Strings Are Automatically Converted To Upper Case, do we follow suit when creating pages? My guild has an "Of" in it, but I notice in the example on the policy page it doesn't. Surely we should keep to to how the game displays guild names, even in the case of "Of" and other words? --Jamie 08:25, 2 March 2007 (EST)

Ingame writing. What I am more interested in: How do we display korean/japanese/chinese guild names? --Xeeron 08:38, 2 March 2007 (EST)

Just type them out. The wiki can display them. You just need those who can read those characters to type them in. -- ab.er.rant 08:43, 2 March 2007 (EST)

Well then, I will change the policy example, it's misleading, it should also be noted that names should be displayed as the name is in game eg "Heroes Of Primeval Eden".--Jamie 08:50, 2 March 2007 (EST)

Why must it be in-game writing? For example, my guild is called the "Scouts of Tyria". In-game it has a capitalised 'Of' but in all references we use the uncapitalised version. The official website also refers to us with an uncapitalised 'of'. Why could we not instead allow more flexible capitalisation, and have a redirect for the in-game strict version? _Biscuits 10:21, 4 April 2007 (EDT)

The strict version also makes the search engine work better. It's better to only allow one page, not one page + lost or redirects. -- (gem / talk) 10:36, 4 April 2007 (EDT)

It also has the added bonus of matching existing policies, such as the "Use the exact in-game spelling for proper nouns" concept found here: [1] MisterPepe talk 10:40, 4 April 2007 (EDT)

Zero tolerance Guild vandalism/heckling/harassment/spoofing policy.

In my opinion, there should be not a single iota of tolerance for Guilds that do any of these immature and destructive acts. I say this on the premise that even in an atmosphere where people are told to show respect and stay on topic (GWiki Build votes, for example) very few people do. Not being strict with the rules on the Guild pages is asking for trouble since they could very easily facilitate middle school drama. GrammarNazi 09:55, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

Guild/Guild Talk Namespaces

The namespaces have been installed. Seems the concensus was to ratify this policy once this happens. The formatting guide looks rather undesirable however. I'm sure someone will beat me to it, but I'll be trying to piece all the information agreed upon to make a quick format guide. — Gares 14:52, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

Addition of a guild navbox? & related guildwarswiki user pages

← moved to Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/Guilds

Interim

There's a bit of discussion going on regarding the wording of the template. The text was "Note: Please see GWW:CONTENT#Guilds for the interim policy on guild pages". The word interim seems to be undesired. I prefer the word, personally; interim describes it exactly. Temporary is being used at present, which does not quite say the same thing. Would "transitional" be better? LordBiro 14:06, 29 March 2007 (EDT)

I like interim, but whatever. Transitional would be better than temporary, IMO. MisterPepe talk 14:26, 29 March 2007 (EDT)

As a non-english speaker who haven't read english in school for a long long time, I understand neither of those words, that's why I changed it to temporary. Might just be me that's uneducated though. - Anja Astor 15:17, 29 March 2007 (EDT)

Inactivity Tag

Why have the inactivity tag? Just because they don't update GWW doesn't mean that they are inacative.--Eloc 02:19, 30 March 2007 (EDT)

As a clean-up mechanism. It's the only way to remove pages on guilds that nobody cares about anymore. Either the guild in question no longer exists or all their members are no longer playing, or the active players just don't bother with their guild page anymore. We don't know. So we tag it as inactive. If someone is still keeping on eye on the page, then they can just remove the inactive tag. -- ab.er.rant 02:27, 30 March 2007 (EDT)