Guild Wars Wiki talk:Guild pages/Archive 3

Guild page turning into a homepage?

This guild, Guild:La Legion De Tocqueville, is turning more and more into a guild homepage rather than just documenting the guild, and I don't know where we should draw the line. I was about to inform the user and restructure it into a single page, but realised I wasn't really confindent in my understanding of the policy. Would this be classified as violating some of the points under "strongly discouraged"? - anja 18:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Our guild policy doesn't read much like a policy, so I'm going to ignore it and simply ask: what harm is this guild causing? —Tanaric 18:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I think we have to distinguish between what is harm and what is standardisation. Otherwise I could start applying that argument to everything, what harm is there in my user page images not having User at the start....? What harm is there in my user page being huge....? and so on. --Lemming 19:58, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't recall standardization being a part of our foundational policy. In fact, I don't recall having a foundational policy at all. If we'd like to establish standardization as a goal of the wiki, let us devise a process by which such a goal can be ratified and accepted by all.

Having "User" at the start of a user image is a great boon in categorization and management of our image library. I'm not sure there is any harm in having a large user page, which is why I (and most everybody else) is advocating removing those absurd limits -- but that's another issue and I don't think it's appropriate to discuss it here. In any case, I believe that, in general, "What's the harm?" is significantly closer to culturally accepted that "standardization," in my biased opinion.

Since we've gotten into it, Anja's point about mere documentation also goes against culturally accepted ideals here. Again, we don't have a charter, so I'm dredging this up from common practice. Every mission article worth its salt here has tips on how to successfully complete that mission. I suggest that mere documentation is not anywhere near our goal here. However, even if mere documentation were our primary purpose, I don't see how this guild is abusing that. It documents itself more fully than most guilds, including a variety of information that's exceptionally relevant, especially for guild members. We have functionally infinite resources here -- I don't see any harm in allowing guild members the freedom of coordinating builds in their guild space -- especially since it doesn't violate policy.

—Tanaric 20:20, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

"especially since it doesn't violate policy." - Hm, all images this guild uses are tagged for deletion because of random image names.. poke | talk 20:25, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Then delete the images. The guild page itself isn't in violation. I imagine this issue is probably due to the language barrier -- anyone bilingual willing to step up to assist? —Tanaric 20:29, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Or, even better, why doesn't somebody step up and rename the images for them at the same time? I'd do it myself, but I have to finish a paper within the next 90 minutes or I won't pass this course. —Tanaric 20:31, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

(massive edit conflict) These are the points in the policy that I am mainly referring to:

Categorically disallowed:

• Guild pages, which include their talk pages, shall not be used as a chat forum, recruitment board or guild roster. Guild pages shall not be used to contact the guild members.

Strongly discouraged:

• Guild pages should not use large or large numbers of images. A single image of your guild members striking a pose or a guild cape is allowed. Profiles of every character of every player in the guild is not.

I'm not saying these points apply directly (only parts, or my interpretations) to this guild, my intent was to bring this up for discussion as I didn't feel either yay or nay about this way of organising the guild's page. I also want to point out this part in the guild formatting

• All guild articles should try to conform and adhere to the guidelines presented here, to maintain consistency in all guild pages. Please bear in mind that your guild page is not your guild's homepage. It is only to document your guild.

as the policy says all guild pages should follow the formatting guide unless they have very good reasons not to. I understand the formatting guide is just a formatting guide, but the line still is there.

I don't see any harm, but I simply don't see the benefit (for the community) either. - anja 20:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

As I implied before, I'm not particularly interested in arguing apocryphal lines in a vaguely-written "policy." There are enough of you who enjoy that kind of thing that I don't feel bad ignoring it. :)

That said, I will respond to your last line. I have two problems with "I simply don't see the benefit (for the community)." First, how much of the community must benefit before an article is considered beneficial to the community? Let's say only 40% of the wiki users PvP. Only 40% of the community benefits from PvP oriented articles. Should we remove them? Perhaps only 20% of wiki users play mesmers. Should mesmer articles be removed because they don't benefit most of the community? Where do we draw the line? Now, I grant that no appreciable percentage of the community will benefit from that particular guild page. However, that's not really a fair question -- what's more important is how much of the community benefits from guild pages in general. That number is pretty high, I think, and will only rise as our wiki becomes more language-neutral / alternate language wikis are opened. Case in point, over the last couple hours, more articles about guilds were edited than articles about mesmers.

There's clearly a desire for this sort of guild space, it doesn't cause any harm, we have the capability to provide it, and, depending on your interpretation, it might not even be against policy! I strongly support the type of space this guild is trying to create, and I oppose efforts to curb this sort of guild space usage.

—Tanaric 20:47, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

As we are arguing from totally different standpoints and on different premises, I think I'll leave it for the night, Tanaric. We'll see if I'm any wiser in the morning. :) - anja 20:55, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan to me -- I've made my point and I'll leave it to everyone else to do what they will with it. :) —Tanaric 21:39, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I suppose this makes it a prime candidate for Guild Wars Wiki:Projects/Policy Cleanup then. Some of the stuff on the guidelines page should ideally be moved into policy. -- ab.er.rant 03:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Category:Inactive guilds

Just want to say that I added a DPL list there so untagged inactive guild pages can be found without searching for them (and there are quite a lot of them..). The list only shows (it should) not already tagged Guild pages which have not received any edit for one month (of course this will be changed to six months when the proposal is accepted). poke | talk 21:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

And here, I made a list about Guild pages which do not use the {{guild}} template but are not tagged with guild cleanup either. poke | talk 21:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Smurf has something similar User:Smurf/Invalid guild names --Lemming 21:54, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, then I will delete my sandbox list as Smurf's is more detailed ;) poke | talk 21:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I thought we wanted to increase the inactivity period to 6 months? Let me go bump the old section above. -- ab.er.rant 02:25, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

What's our stand on alliance pages again?

I can't remember (and can't seem to find) the previous discussion on alliance pages like this: Guild:Chip Alliance. What's our stand on these? IIRC, it's that we don't allow them and should move it as the leading guild's subpage. -- ab.er.rant 04:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

No opinions? Then I propose we specifically disallow alliance pages and request all those guilds who want alliance pages to put them as a subpage in one of their member guilds. -- ab.er.rant 01:42, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Subpage of alliance leader page - otherwise naming conflicts may occur. - BeX 05:34, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

There was this big alliance. We allowed it because the alliance name was a by the alliance leader additionally registered guild. I can't find the discussion but as long as the Alliance name is registered for them (so that no naming conflicts can occur) it should be ok. poke | talk 05:43, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

(edit) Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/Guilds#Large Guilds - sub pages poke | talk 05:48, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

What about if the alliance page title is over 31 characters long? (as that is the limit in game), because while they technically do not own it ingame, no-one can challenge them because they do instead. (Or will this cause problems if there are two alliances by the same name and they both want it?) -- The Great Tomato 09:12, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Should we not also put it in the rules - as people who see Guild:The Imperial Guards Alliance page, and don't see that guild name as being a member of the alliance, will automatically assume that it must be okay and proceed to make something like Guild:Chip Alliance -- The Great Tomato 09:29, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

What about adding an optional parameter "title" to the alliance navigation to change the title, so it could be "The Imperial Guards Alliance" instead of "The Imperial Guards Elite Alliance"? poke | talk 13:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Guild:The_Imperium_Of_Lazy_Nation

(Reset indent) We've got another one: User:Scroz contribs in Guild: namespace. Personally I don't want to keep those redirects he made, and would like for this policy to be updated with respect to alliances. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 19:14, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the problem. He's doing it exactly as the formatting guide tells him to? - anja 19:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

You're right and I'm wrong. Disregard my comment pls. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 19:38, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Rosters

I'm not mantaining a guild page anymore, but anyway I think we should allow rosters in guild pages. Even Arenanet employees think so: look here. The main argument opposing rosters is that keeping them updated would generate too much edits: well, I don't agree.. on the italian wiki they are permitted and really we didn't see so much edits for that. --Lumenil 04:24, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I would just like to clarify the idea of it. Perhaps the wording was not the most appropriate, but the idea is neither to prevent people from using the word "roster", nor to prevent people from listing more than a handful of members. The idea was to discourage people from treating guild pages as if they're user pages. In short, guild pages are kinda like a brochure or flyer that gives you enough details for you to go and find out more about it if you want. -- ab.er.rant 07:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, reading this page I understand that most users consider rosters completely disallowed, someone is even against listing all officers. I don't agree with this limitation, and I ask for a rewording of the policy. --Lumenil 11:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Imo, rosters should be allowed as long as they are kept up to date. Maybe rosters must be updated once every week, or something like that. I know I am more then happy to keep my guilds roster up to date, as it takes a wopping 30 secs to edit the Wiki to input new members, or leavers. Lυмιиαяυs 12:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

"should be allowed as long as they are kept up to date" - that's exactly why they are not allowed. The thing we want to avoid is updating the guild page each day. In my opinion rosters should be allowed, as long as they do not list every user detail which need to be updated often (for example: only leader/officers and core members; but not new member who leaves after two days..) poke | talk 12:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Interesting problem... I see why the decision was made. Its either rarely changed and therefore outdated, or its changed often and there are 2 many edits. My bad =( Lυмιиαяυs 12:44, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I think people don't live to update a roster on a wiki. A normal person just forgets to do such things every single day. In my opinion Luminarus' scenario of these pages updated weekly is far more realistic. --Lumenil 13:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

This is still more often than we would like. The simple answer is have a link to the roster on your guilds website if you really want one. --Lemming 13:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

As the rationale for not allowing complete guild rosters at present is to avoid having guild pages updated too often, is there a view at all as to what 'too often' actually is? Is it once a day, once a week, once a month or something else? Would it not therefore be possible to include guild rosters but to have a guideline or policy suggesting rosters are not updated 'too often', as per what the definition of too often is? Or on another line of approach, is having a guild sub-page with a roster permissible, thereby leaving the main guild page full of mainly static information about the guild? --Winters Blessing 14:26, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Would guild sub-pages provide a viable solution to hosting rosters? WarBlade 21:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem is the possible recent changes flood. Moving the flood to a sub page doesn't help. -- (gem / talk) 05:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, recent changes is already flooded by edits in user namespace, especially since Galie's and Izzy's userspaces have become like a forum. I really dont think roster edits could do any worse. --Lumenil 12:07, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but you can exclude one name space from the recent changes by selecting the name space and then checking the 'inverse selection'. Having 2 spam name spaces makes it impossible to exclude all spam. -- (gem / talk) 20:10, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

"Updated too often" means that guild page edits show up a lot in recent changes. If just half of all the guild pages update their guild page (or any of their subpages) once a day, that's already too many changes that most of the community don't care about. It reduces the usefulness of "recent changes", which is something a lot users rely on to catch vandals and see changes. How much is too often? Given our current definition of what a guild page is supposed to be and what is an inactive guild, I'd say once a week is more than enough, once a month is even better. A guideline like that is not necessary. It'll just get disputed. And since most editors of guild pages don't bother reading the guidelines and policy, it's not going to be effective. -- ab.er.rant 06:48, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed change

Can we change "unlike other guilds, Zealots of Shiverpeaks has only friendly members" to "unlike other guilds, Example Guild has only friendly members". It seems strange to name drop in a policy and a bit odd to draft a proposal to change 3 words.

On a side note, does Example Guild exist in the game? Has someone here reserved the name? - BeX 02:23, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Good change imho. I think someone reserved the name. -- (gem / talk) 05:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd just like to say I don't think anyone from ZoS actually wrote that so it wasn't being devious or anything. --Lemming 20:42, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Ya, but it's still advertising. :P - BeX 03:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Guild-Stub Spam

Not sure if this is the right place or not. I was wondering if there is any feasible way to make it so that the Wanted pages isn`t spammed with Guild: pages. Is there an easy way to exclude this, and would it be as useful as I feel it would be? I`m still starting to learn this whole wiki thing, so please pardon any obvious moronism. Freya 23:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

You mean Special:Wantedpages :) No, not really, without some scripting involved, but if you want to ignore guild-stubs, you can try going to Category:Stubs and navigating from there. -- ab.er.rant 02:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of capitalization redirects

The deletions of these redirects is really.. counterproductive. In the last weeks I have seen several cases of where a guild page was first created with wrong capitalization, moved and redirect deleted. Then, weeks later, a new guild page is created with the wrong capitalization, which cannot be moved since the guild already exists on wiki. I would prefer if we made a clear point that these redirects should stay, to avoid confusion and double guild pages. - anja 08:20, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The one problem with this is double guild names (are these still possible?), but given how rare these should be, letting the redirects stay seems to be a good solution. --Xeeron 21:59, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Guilds can only exist with the correct capitalisation, so I would say that there is no reason to ever remove these redirects. I don't keep up with the guild namespace as much as other namespaces, are there any sysops in particular that regularly delete these redirects? LordBiro 22:07, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

All I know is that they are being deleted, and I'm not doing it. I don't think there is anyone going around deleting these specifically, but they get caught in recent as "bad redirects" and get tagged by various users. As we have no specific guideline on it, they get deleted after three days have passed. - anja 22:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I've been searching through the logs, and not seeing much of those kind of deletions... in fact (and I'm not meaning to take a jab at you, Anja, it's just odd), the only one I found in the first 1000 or so entries of the deletion log was one that you had tagged for deletion (although it wasn't a redirect, but it was something that probably should have been made a redirect instead, along these lines). (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yea, I tend to delete tag duplicates instead of immediately turning them into a redirect, if I'm not sure which version contains the most up to date info. Maybe not the best way to go about it. I guess I have been a bit confused then, but I still stand by my point :P - anja 22:33, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I deleted a couple some time ago as unnecessary after moving an article to the correct capitalisation, but your reasoning is sound, so I see no reason to continue deleting them. --Lemming 22:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Sub pages

I guess sub-pages are allowed, but shouldn't they follow most of the rules for guild pages, like no regularily chaning info etc? This guild has sub pages which have such info and I think it should be discouraged. I'm not sure if it's a trend or a singular case, but I'm bringing it up just in case. -- (gem / talk) 14:17, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

It's a bad trend. I've already seen and warned several about our policy of not allowing regularly changing information and for them to treat it like guild homepage. -- ab.er.rant 14:37, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I think we need to make this rule more visible on the policy page. Yeah, not everyone reads the policy, but it might help a bit. -- (gem / talk) 14:52, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I brought something similar up in the first section on this talk page. Apparently the policy is badly worded which made me and Tanaric (for example) read it in different ways. I think the policy needs a general cleanup and we need to make it even more clear what the purpose of guild pages are on the wiki. I always had the impression it was for presenting your guild to the users, not to keep it as a guild portal (with photo galleries, event schedules etc), but obviously not everyone shares this view. - anja 15:20, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I thought that we all agreed (those who took part in the discussion anyway) that it should be for presenting your guild, not to use it as a guild website/forum. That's why we had the 'no regular edits' rule. I support rewriting the policy to make this clear, but I don't have the time to do it myself. -- (gem / talk) 15:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

English only?

Seeing as this is an English only wiki, shouldn't you make Guild pages English only? Randomtime 09:59, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

See the previous sections regarding this in the archive:

• Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Guild_pages/Archive_2#Guild_pages_in_a_non-English_language
• Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Guild_pages/Archive_2#foreign_language

(Aiiane - talk - contribs) 10:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)