Template talk:NPC location

What is the default if the disambiguation identifier is (wrongly) not set? Take a look at http://wiki.guildwars.com/index.php?title=Shiro_Tagachi&curid=8537&diff=130025&oldid=102160 It seems that the editor has wrongly not set it there, now all entries point to missions. While it can be argued that the old page was wrong in this special case (I'd say he appears in the mission, not the outpost), it would be bad if this happened in cases where the previous info was correct. --Xeeron 14:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

If a disambiguation identifier is not set, then the template assumes that there's only one location by that name, and simply links to that page. If there should have been a disambig identifier, then this link will in fact be pointing to the mission by that name (since we've decided that mission locations take priority over explorables and outposts, thus they're the ones without an identifier in their name). If the link should take to the explorable or outpost page, then whoever notices the mistake can just correct it. :) --Dirigible 15:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

What's the point to using this?--§ Eloc § 02:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

See Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/NPCs/Archive 1#Location categories for mission NPCs. --Dirigible 01:14, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Eye of the North

Using {{NPC location|Eye of the North|outpost}} is miscategorizing pages. Corrran has fixed them all now, but the parameter is a bit weird. - BeX 07:42, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

It's just because there is something else called Eye of the North? What's weird with it? - anja 07:45, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

That it's essentially useless. :P - BeX 07:46, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

It's for linking to the mission outpost/explorable instead of the mission I guess. - anja 07:47, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought the idea was that while the link lead to the right place (disambiguated), the NPC category would be the same for all. Not sure if that's even a good idea, but I don't think it's used anyway, so....

08:20, 22 September 2007 (UTC) --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Backsword (talk).

MediaWiki bug

There seems to be a bug in MediaWiki affecting this template. To reproduce:

[[Core]]
*[[Battle Isles]]
**{{NPC location|Great Temple of Balthazar}}

[[Prophecies]]
*[[Kryta]]
**{{NPC location|Lion's Arch}}

This shows up as:

Core

• Battle Isles
  • Great Temple of BalthazarProphecies
• Kryta
  • Lion's Arch

The only work-around I've found so far (even through scanning MediaWiki's parser) would be to put any character after the inclusion of this template. Even a space would do. The question then is; would it be better to put this space after each and every use of this template, or to put it in the template? — Galil 08:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Or just use a bullet point for the word in the first place? Backsword 02:46, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

That would work too, though I thought the list without bullet point looked better, and it's how it seems to be done on most NPC pages too. Also, when the fix is so simple as to just add a space in a place it won't even be seen I see no point in changing it. I'll just input a space at the end of the lines whenever I run into broken lists. :) — Galil 03:41, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a mediawiki kludge to prevent [[Category:abc]] statements from adding empty lines in the layout. Newlines before or after a category statement are ignored. Swapping the output order (which I just did) should fix this, unless the template is used outside of ** lists. Tub 17:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Disambig Capitalization

Is there any way that this template can avoid automatically putting the disambig. section to lower case? {{NPC location|Lion's Arch|War in Kryta}} will turn into Lion's Arch (war in kryta) (which works right now due to a redirect). It just doesn't look right with the lower case. This will also let us add other places which have disambigs with quests to the template, without relying on redirects. G R E E N E R 20:26, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to call attention to this again. -- Armond Warblade 16:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Err, it can be done, rather easily, but will there be locations where we'll have to manually change it to lower case? --JonTheMon 17:02, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

If lower case is required, can't the parameter be entered in lower case? The current issue is that the parameter is converted to lower case regardless of everything else, causing unnecessary redirects and whatnot. -- Armond Warblade 17:13, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I realize that. I was just wondering if there were a lot of places where it was entered in upper case that needed to be changed. --JonTheMon 17:18, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd be willing to change that if they were found. -- Armond Warblade 17:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

A little DPL query is telling me that the parameters are passed in lower case in all current invocations of the template. Copy this code somewhere and hit "preview" to verify:

{{ #dpl:
 | uses=Template:NPC location
 | include = {NPC location}:2
 | format = <table {{STDT}}>,<tr><td>[[%PAGE%]]</td><td>,</td></tr>,</table>
}}

Hope that helps. Tub 17:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

You mean all the instances up to "Bedeviled Naga", right? ;-) --JonTheMon 18:01, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

It's called "proof by induction" *cough* There's an "offset = 500" parameter, but I'd have to do that.. quite a few times. I'll report back later. Tub 18:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, instead of that, if the idea goes forward, we can just keep an eye on wanted categories. --JonTheMon 18:42, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

~6500 articles later:

"PvP Battle": Drill Sergeant Mahoney, Haversdan, Warmaster Grast, uppercase is correct. Maybe the lowercase redirect can be removed after the change.

"Outpost": Keeper Shafoss, I changed that to lower case.

"War in Kryta": Livia (where it is correct) and a talk page that mentions exactly this problem.

I noticed that a lot of articles just use {{NPC location|something (War in Kryta)}}, which means that the (War in Kryta) suffix appears in the category name as well, see Category:Kryta NPCs for some examples. Not sure if that's intended to keep WiK and regular categories separate or not.

Now that was a lot of not-fun, I'll go play some GW and leave the rest to you. Tub 19:26, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

It should be "PvP battle"; I moved that article based on ulc. Those three have had their parameter adjusted, but it's (obviously) still showing up as "pvp battle". -- Armond Warblade 20:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)