User talk:Karlos

Can you check that all the title articles aren't in breach of copyright? A lot of it is copied and pasted from gwiki. - - BeXoR 07:20, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I've been cheking some content and rewriting it. (Some might be similiar to GWiki, but that' stuff which I have myself released for this license) --Gem (talk) 07:33, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Thank you for fixing the link in my article. I appreciate it and keep up the good work. EMonk 13:01, 10 February 2007 (PST)

Hey Special K (do you mind if I call you that from now on?) I'm glad you removed that notice from the main page. I think I've grown too used to just sitting back and letting people discuss things. I regret not removing it myself. LordBiro 18:36, 21 February 2007 (EST)

No problem. I regret not being there when it was first proposed and preventing it to begin with. I am busy in-game and sort of frustrated at how things have carried out here. If you see Tanaric somewhere tell him I want to talk to him about something that would provide much needed content here. Thanks Biro. --Karlos 18:49, 21 February 2007 (EST)

I could probably contact Tanaric if you wanted. Is this for his eyes only? :P LordBiro 18:59, 21 February 2007 (EST)

frustration

ya, it's kind of my bad for getting worked up. the box did need to go. sorry if i offended. Oblio 02:17, 22 February 2007 (EST)

You did not offend and no apology is necessary. I am sorry if I made you feel I was forcing my way. I always speak my mind candidly and sometimes too emotionally. --Karlos 09:25, 22 February 2007 (EST)

Karlos, you said you cannot comment on everything going on. Yeah, I tried it at the beginning and it nearly wiped me out. Pick you battles. I like Guilds, could car less about Builds, but I stay on top of the ones I don't want to see ruined or those that are irrelevant. I don't go quiet, but some things do slip past my radar. You used to have that "I don't give up attitude". I'm not sure if you are working again, or what, but I'd like you to get more involved, even if it means sparring with me from time to time. ;) Someone told me once, that if you were a native speaker of English that you would be the most dangerous person in a discussion. Let's see that fire again. — Gares 10:22, 22 February 2007 (EST)

Favor of the gods

I'll reply here, since I dont usually read 10+ pages long threads (I only found your comment by chance):

"Xeeron, no offense, but if we limited HA access to teams from the territory that has killed Lord Jadoth the most in the past 2 hours, how many PvPers would feel insulted by the mere suggestion?

It is insulting, to me, that I have to wait on my adventuring/farming/whatever because an overpowered Paragon build is holding HA indefinitely for Europe or Taiwan or America. It's not that it's out of my control, it's that in the control of other PLAYERS like me whom ANet deems to be more important than me. But I'll discuss that in a spearate thread."

So being in the control of those who spend most of their time faction farming is better? Not to me. But anyway, did you read the last sentence of my post (given that my post was 2 sentences long, I hope so)?

In general, nothing is wrong with PvP having some influence on PvE, so my answer is yes. However the current WaW system is messed up for so many reasons (huge (europe) and tiny (taiwan) opponents*; multi-continental guilds; furthering conflicts rather than bringing people from different countries together) that I cant wait to see it scrapped.

And also this suggestion which I quoted from someone else and like a lot:

I am strongly against it the way it is.... In my opinion it shouldn't be region based it should be GOD based... For example....a team (no matter the makeup) enters HA and they have to dedicate to one of the gods at the start of thier run. THEN if they win in HA thier GOD gets a win...pretty much keep it the same way as in PVP determines WHICH one of the Missions are open Either FoW or UW. Depending on which GOD has 5 wins in a row and can hold. That way it pleases everyone...the pvers get a chance to go into atleast one of the Areas and the PVPers still get to fight for a reason....

The question was "PvP should control PvE access?" and to that my answer is still yes. For the question "Should the current favor of the gods concept be changed?", it would have been different. --Xeeron 12:22, 22 February 2007 (EST)

Yeah, I read that, and still find it hypocritical unless you also endorse that PvE can control PvP access. Do you endorse that? I don't care in what scheme and whether or not it involved killing Lord Jadoth... Do you endorse that some PvE challenge controls some elite form of PvP? I don't want any PvP control over PvE whether it's the current War of the Worlds format or any other format. --Karlos 17:42, 22 February 2007 (EST)

PvE controlled PvP for a long long time without me complaining. You had to use PvE characters (fully decked out unlocked lvl 20s!) for high end GvG because of the armor switching, you needed a +5 energy weapon that could only be gained in PvE, Tombs needed you to complete most of prophecies before you could bring your character there, the <lvl 15 arenas can not be reached by PvP characters, you need PvE money to buy your guild hall (which you need for PvP) and the cape, you need to have a character in HzH or Cav to make your guild kurzick or luxon to join an alliance. I complained about none of these, so dont call me hypocrite please. --Xeeron 05:23, 23 February 2007 (EST)

Would you still accept it now? 2 years later? Would you be ok if they rolled back Balthazar Faction and PvP equipment creation? I never said PvE never had any control over PvP... ANet bent over backwards to make sure every bridge between PvE and PvP was burnt, right? But not the otherway around. Hence my question... Would you accept it? Now? --Karlos 17:49, 23 February 2007 (EST)

If they would implement it in a reasonable way - yes. --Xeeron 08:07, 24 February 2007 (EST)

Would you accept how it WAS now? Not some new "reasonable" way... I did not say I am opposed to any new "reasonable" way to do this, I said I oppose the way it has been done for the past two years. You are saying it's somehow not hypocritical to support that old acrchaic and very ugly system yet accept that ANet has bent over backwards during the same two years to free PvPers from any need for PvE. I don't want to focus this on you, I find the position itself hypocritical. Would you go back to that point in PvP dependency on PvE after arriving to the point you are at now? --Karlos 18:46, 24 February 2007 (EST)

I am not your enemy here. Yes I do believe that it can be implemented reasonably, no I dont think it currently is reasonable, yes I said so in the original post, therefore I am not hypocritical. Your last question is the same as above, so still: Yes if done reasonably. --Xeeron 06:49, 25 February 2007 (EST)

Fair enough. Let's leave it at that. I apologize if my opinion seemed to target you specifically. I don't think you, of all people, are a hypocrite. I still find the stand itself hypocritical though. Given how much ANet has invested in divesting PvP from PvE, the only fair thing, in my view, is to equally divest PvE from PvP. You know there is no turning back for PvP. It will not be brought under the influence of PvE again. All the elitist PvE-despisers in the PvP community would whine so much ANet's heart would break. ANet's Devs play with those guys, they hang around with those guys, they don't mix with the PvE crowd. So, yeah, given that PvP will NEVER be under any influence from PvE, there's only ONE fair thing left... Kill FoW and UW reliance on Favor. --Karlos 15:35, 26 February 2007 (EST)

If you keep talking like that, I'm going to have to setup a karlos-love shrine, and I don't want to be that creepy. Seriously, I couldn't agree more. -- Oblio (talk) 15:46, 26 February 2007 (EST)

Last time I was in Lornar's Pass I saw an engraving "We <3 Kyle The Vile" on the Grenth's Statue there. Seems someone beat you to it? :) --Jamie 15:57, 26 February 2007 (EST)

I fully agree with you that there's really no reason for FoW and UW entrance to depend on who wins Halls, but I need to clarify something. PvP is FAR from being free from any influence of PvE. One of the most obvious examples? You cannot have a Guild without PvEing, the registrars are all in PvE zones. You cannot invite anyone to your guild either as members or guests, you need gold, which you can only get through PvE. (And in the same vein, you need gold to have a cape for your guild). So, in order to actually have a guild in this game, you need to PvE, regardless of whether you want to or not, you are forced to, there's simply no other way. (You can't join an alliance either, since you need to be in Cavalon or HzH for that, but if you can't even create a guild, who cares about an alliance, right?)

And this problem only gets worse when you think about what happens with those guys that buy the PvP Edition of GW, who can't even PvE at all, they don't have any way to get that gold or to get to Kaineng to register a guild. Tough luck for them? (Oh, and by the way, you can only buy the PvP Edition of GW through the in-game store, which means that you need to buy an entire PvE campaign first, before being able to get the PvP only version).

ANet has done absolutely nothing with the goal of separating PvP from PvE. Removing the necessity to have a PvE char for PvP? That was completely and solely done from a balance point of view, since you had these PvE chars who would outperform PvP ones, and it was unfair. ANet has never shown any effort in separating PvP from PvE, and I doubt they ever will. They keep insisting on forcefully getting these two completely different beings to depend on each other and to like each other, even though neither of them wants anything to do with it. And if there's one major problem with this game, I think this would be it. If they only allowed both of them to be separate entities, many many problems would be resolved. --Dirigible 18:13, 26 February 2007 (EST)

Your response personifies every problem I have with the PvP crowd. ZOMG I actually have to create a PvE character and waste SEVEN FULL minutes of my life creating a storage account. What injustice is this? How can ANet make those players suffer so much? You want to compare this to being in Taiwan and doomed to never set foot in FoW cause your region wins favor once a month?

Let's imagine a guild that's solely into PvP. If they are that immersed and that good, they can make all the money they want in HoH (with the added inconvenience of making a sole level 3 char in Kamadan to sell the goods to players there, but that's a penalty of wanting to deal with the PvE crowd). I mean, if you REALLY want to have nothing with PvE, you can. Get your guild to win HoH, sell a Sigil (trader in HA), now you have the cash for the cape, use the other to get a hall. The ambassador is at the great temple of Balthazar, no need for Kaineng Center. Win HoH a few more times, get a Stygian Reaver, sell it on Guru for 100k + 100 ectos (tell the buyer to meet you in the Great Temple cause you do NOT want to soil your feet with PvE dirt) and ther eyou have it, a fully furnished Guild Hall with a water cooler.

You CAN completely side step PvE with the exception of making a level 1 noob character in Kamadan (or Shing Jea) and forming the guild there. How can I completely side step PvP as a PvE guy who likes to play in the UW or FoW? --Karlos 06:05, 27 February 2007 (EST)

Well, I love both PvP and PvE and play both a lot and like the interaction, so ANet made the perfect game for me. Though I realize that I am in the tiniest possible minority here. --Xeeron 05:52, 27 February 2007 (EST)

Xeeron, you are a half-breed. Not accepted by either PvEers or PvPers. Welcome to the world of gray. I saved you a seat. :p
Karlos is correct all around. Full-time PvPers do not need to grind for gold in order to set up a guild, HoH and Ventari's Sell forum or the auction takes care of that. It wouldn't suprise me that ANet placed guild ambassadors in the first city you get to in Nightfall so hardcore PvPers didn't have to spend time trying to getting to them like in Prophecies and Factions. Though I have accounts in both America and Europe, as Karlos mentioned, Taiwan, Japan, and others never see the dark reaches of UW/FoW, except for the rare time they have favor. I don't hold any ill will towards PvEists or PvPists, though both of their whining and trading insults is rather childish, especially for the older crowd of players. I constantly monitor forums, and two places that brings out the immaturity in players, young and old, would be the Halls and any thread in GWG that is about nerfed skills. It's sad really. But fair is fair. 10 minutes of PvE interaction does not compare to being at the mercy of HoH for favor. — Gares 08:39, 27 February 2007 (EST)

Quite unrelated rant: This is the one good thing about PvE players whining about favor, err ... I was to say, PvE players rightfully complaining about being oppressed by heartless PvP maniacs, err ... I really meant, rightous consumers complaining about ridiculous decisions by evil monopolist ANet, err whatever. I finally get to laught at asian nationalism. HAHA. There you have it!

Whenever people discuss the european union here in Germany (or in any other european state), it usually comes down to "they are useless burocrats regulating the curvature of bananas and trying to build a european superstate". So let me confess here: I love the european union! I love that there are no border checks when traveling to France, no different currency when being in spain, harmonisation of laws and generally people from different countries trying to think about the whole of europe instead of just their tiny little state. Have you ever wondered why there is a realm for taiwan, and south korea and japan, but none for germany, france and britain? Obviously ANet thinks that europeans dont have a problem playing with each other and for "europe", but Asians would have these problems when playing for "Asia". As long as no one agrues for merging Taiwan, Japan and South Korea into one realm, my pity for all those taiwanese players never seeing UW will be extremely limited. You want to feel all that great and different and superior with your tiny island? Well good for you, I'll take a continent and UW access 50% of the time.

Gets ready to be kicked of Karlos user page for unrelated ranting

PS: What stops players from all coordinating on moving to one realm? Then everyone would have UW access 100% of the time.

PS2: I have played in realm america since the start.

--Xeeron 09:00, 27 February 2007 (EST)

I love the EU too! Although we don't use the Euro as our main currency, which sucks IMO. Too many nationalist idiots wanting the queens head on a piece of paper. Anyway, I think it's funny that you love the EU and play for America. LordBiro 09:13, 27 February 2007 (EST)

Its really dated. Wasn't the original idea to have PvP to be the endgame, back when you couldn't make a specific PvP char on the creation screen? The game has moved on a lot since then. The lousy argument that it is to stop people farming the UW just doesn't hold true, people have 2 accounts, one on america and one on europe, I assume the gold selling botters would have a bunch on both too; and the system is further flawed: the americans who are dead serious about wanting to access the realms have switched over to euro servers. Korea gets about 1-2 hours a night, Japan sometimes gets 1, taiwan every once in a blue moon, and this is only because of euro and american guilds like the black parades, weefree men, the spearmen and whatever guild has [Err7] as a tag, playing under korean and japanese banners. The biggest irony is that the HoH isn't even prestigious, its simply whichever scrubs can abuse the mechanics the most, all the real competition quit a long time ago. I think there should be some sort of limit or something on access, but HA needs kicking completely out of the loop. — Skuld 10:27, 27 February 2007 (EST)

Indeed. I had no problem with Favor and PvP controlling access over PvE back when it was meaningful. I think around March of last year is when I saw how degenerated it had become. I observed many games and saw two Euro (or American) guilds dancing around the ghostly hero to take out the third. I saw horrific builds hold the halls because of more horrific builds challenging them. I saw America fail to get favor for 2-3 days in a row because some build was overpowered and had to be nerfed or some skill had an unexpected interaction with another skill. It wasn't the ideal chivalry, just a load of crap. I used to actually root for Europe back when most American teams were IWAY fame farmers. Now I just don't care. It's just retarded. --Karlos 14:24, 27 February 2007 (EST)

How was the WoW system ever meaningful? My guild is half european, half american, so we all choose the american realm when we started GW way back. Yet in Tyria, neither America nor Europe exist, so what I am fighting for when I enter HoH? All it did was foster bad feelings between the players from different realms. That is why the faction system in factions is so much better: You have to be Kurzick or Luxon, but you get to choose your allegiance yourself, the ingame mechanic does not depend on your place of birth. --Xeeron 16:05, 27 February 2007 (EST)

With regards to the War of the Worlds system, it was fine when it was meaningful. Back in the early days it used to have a lot of meaning. At least to me. Your guild is a special case. For the most part, up until December or January of 2006, there was real rivalry and pride in who has favor.

Then it was known (probably started before) that top American players are going to Europe to play there cause they were sick of the IWAYers or what not. And as I got to know more PvPers I discovered that favor and Europe vs America has little meaning to them. It may have been like that all the time, but I only sensed it on the PvE side around that time.

Faction system in Factions is very, very, very poorly implemented. You're the only player of the game I ever met who actually thinks it's cool. :P --Karlos 20:38, 27 February 2007 (EST)

One has to realize that something as complicated as re-implementing an entire portion of a PvP system is not so easily accomplished, and that I'm not sure if it would be worth it (for ANet) to dedicate so many programmers to try and fix these problems rather than working on new campaigns. After all, money does make the world go round. =P — Rapta (talk|contribs) 20:57, 27 February 2007 (EST)

As long as elite armor requires ectos and shards, PvEers will care. --Karlos 21:11, 27 February 2007 (EST)

Well, it might have been meaningful for PvEers, but never was for PvPers, who actually played the matches. All people I meet were interested in their rank, seeing their guild name broadcast or maybe farming sigils, never in gaining favor for their realm really. It might have looked all right from the outside, but it was broken right away. The factions system is not "cool", but at least it is better than the WoW one. I often saw people say something like "lets win for luxons" or taunt the other side at the start of alliance battles. That almost never happened in HoH, because people didnt care about realms. --Xeeron 06:08, 28 February 2007 (EST)

Your characterization cannot be fully true. I have SEEN first hand matches where both teams from Europe sit there at the altat dancing waiting for the American team to make its move and kill it. This used to happen fairly frequently. During the time that Europe was on the rise in HoH, there was a constant and consistent effort to deny America favor. I have seen that on Observer mode, many times. So, you can't say they did not care about favor. --Karlos 07:07, 28 February 2007 (EST)

It didnt happen whenever I played. Granted, I got bored with HoH after a year or so and only came back for a bit when it changed to 6vs6, maybe stuff changed after I left. However if that story is true, it shows one more reason why the system is broken. --Xeeron 07:40, 28 February 2007 (EST)

When I played PvP in HoH it was common for realms to team up in order to keep favour. LordBiro 09:10, 28 February 2007 (EST)

Poorly implemented or not Karlos, The Factions Faction system isn't as hated as Favor, so maybe a wrong makes a right here in this case? I don't mind the Faction system, but Favor really annoys me (as it does most people), I can only see benefits to removing it as people said above, the "war of the worlds" system isn't what people fight for instead we've seen first-hand teams rigging games to ensure constant favor, this really isn't about the gods... it's just a joke. At times like this I feel frustrated at the people who makes the games I play... why don't they listen to their partons...? or at least give us the feedback we want to hear "we're working on removing the favor system, a replacement may take time, but we are doing something about it"... --Jamie 06:51, 2 March 2007 (EST)

No-one rigs games any more. I've heard of koreans paying american/european guilds to play under a korean name and take favour so they can get their FoW, and when we make groups and have a majority from x side we joke about having to play for x region, but thats about it. Jamie, i'm sure they know it sucks, but I asume they have more important concerns, and ANet isn't a massive company so they probably don't have the manpower to put to a lower priority concern like favour. — Skuld 07:33, 2 March 2007 (EST)

Jamie, Factions sysem is retarded and no one really "cares" about it. That's the difference. This week I was bringing my mesmer through Cantha and I was constantly annoyed by these NPCs telling me I'm too Kurzick or too Luxons to sell me keys or teach me new skills. I found it annoying, but that's about it. We were joking in my guild (which used to hold HzH) how annoying these pity little things are. Rezzing in the middle of nowhere cause the res shrine you entered from was held by Luxons/Kurzicks. Once you move to Nightfall, the system looks ridiculous.

However, the reason it does not cause much angst is simple... No one cares. It does not affect the farming of the most precious rare materials in the game. Jade and Amber are like 5 cents each now. So, players no longer care. It's also highly perceived (coorectly or not) that Jade and Amber will not be used again. So, everyone dumped their supplies to the traders, GG. Everyone complained like crazy about the Elite Mission access cause that's where the money was. What ANet did in Nightfall (in my opinion) is create a new FoW (for weapons instead of armor) and make it independent of favor and/or faction. It's very accessible and simply hard. What they fail to realize is that they can't just walk past the FoW and UW because not only do they supply the crafter, they are the only source for the two most expensive crafting materials in the game. Ectos are the high end currency of the game, that's why PvE'ers care about UW. I like the challenge of FoW and UW, but I can wait for Favor to do those. What I don't like is if I want/need to farm Ectos and can't do what I want in the game cause some random group like Skuld's is holding HoH. :P --Karlos 18:17, 2 March 2007 (EST)

While you might think the faction system is poorly implemented, how else would you depict a war for turf over two rivalling factions, I am sure there are many ways to do it, but really the system they put in place works. Unlike in HoH are the people directly contributing to the flow of the line the ones who are doing it because they want to own towns. Makes more logical sense than HoH/UW & FoW --Jamie 04:56, 3 March 2007 (EST)

My brother is in a luxon alliance that owns some town, I forgot which but its a fairly big one. Now I know where all the wammos went. I quote, "GuildWiki sucks cos it lets noobs get rich" :P — Skuld 05:05, 3 March 2007 (EST)

You're saying the system of Factions works because you can't perceive any other (better) way that they could have implemented it. I can think of many, not the least of which is how World of Wacraft is implemented (not to say that system is ideal or perfect) with the Alliance and the Horde. Everyone in my guild (and current alliance) to a T thinks that of the three chapters, Factions was, by far, the worst. In fact, out guild has a few members who stopped playing the game a month or two after Factions came out and have come back strong because of Nightfall. My personal observation is that it was a disaster for ANet, PvE wise. I think they noticed it too in terms of dwindling active logged in player base, which is why they kept instating those special weekend events. I have no numbers to support my claim though. However, I can tell you that DoA is a LOT more busy now than Urgoz or the Deep ever were. --Karlos 15:17, 3 March 2007 (EST)

A lot of people in my alliance see Factions as a success, me included, it has everything you could want, fast leveling for canthans, quick access to leveling for tyrians, it doesn't have any monotony to it, it gets you into the action and keeps it coming, it is a short campaign but it doesn't drag on like Nightfall does... Assassin & Ritualist in my eyes are far better than Dervish & Paragon having extensively played both. international district is packed in Urgoz Warren literally, even after almost a year of Factions being released. One word to describe Elona? brown. Cantha? beautiful. but that's probably a preference when considering design of both worlds. sorry to cut the discussion short but I have places to be... --Jamie 14:00, 4 March 2007 (EST)

How isn't Cantha monotonous? >50% of the campaign is in the Canthan streets, which got boring after the first two areas. The rest is either the Jade Sea and the ugly green areas of the Luxons, and the beautiful Kurzick forest. Although Elona is really monotonous too, the open deserts are more to my liking than the crappy looking streets of Cantha. Really, only Prophecies had a variety of landscapes. -- (gem / talk) 14:04, 4 March 2007 (EST)

I disagree there, Gem. For most of a gamer's time if they spend it resourcefully leveling on Shing Jea Monastery, there is that. Then the next section kaineng which granted is a fair chunk of the game, but me and my guildies can easily accomplish in two or so evenings, then the rest of the area is pretty nice to look at. Places like Nahpui Quarter with it's celestial foes are inviting to the eye which are really quite impressive to look at, this helps break up the dull of the city, then there is Tan' Temple which is much more like Raisu Palace and the imperial guild hall. the areas are more or less varied. --Jamie 20:53, 4 March 2007 (EST)

Granted, leveling in Cantha is faster than anywhere else, how does having fast leveling make it "everything that I could want."?

When I needed to level up my mesmer for her Legendary Survivor title, I took her to Elona, got her the basic 5 heroes, took her back to Kaineng, did all the silly city quests till I went up from level 8 to level 17 or so. then I went and moved through Nightfall's Campaign till I got Zhed and Whiskers, then went back and did missions in Tyria and Cantha to cap elites and gain skill points, and I got my title.

How does having a crappy, very poor storyline make Factions everything I ever want? Do you realize how many of the city quests are retarded "go to NPC1 who tells you to talk to NPC2 who sends you to NPC3 to cash in your reward?" They don't even advance any story? All they are trying to tell you is that Cantha is mired in beaurucracy. From the quests from Guardsman Pah to Paomo to Officer Chitaro to Bryan, they are great for leveling up... But down right retarded.

As for scenery... Istan is a jungle, Kourna is farm lowlands and Vabbi is simply gorgeous. The most beautiful area in the entire game. Jade Sea always looked cool, but too blue and lacking in any details. The city is just a dump and the Echovald Forest is too dreery. After a while it get depressing and you just don't wanna be there.

You do realize that you can't possibly tell me (specifically) how crowded or not crowded Urgoz was. I used to own the place for over 4 months. Your testimony on that matter, to me, is invalid. People still do the deep and they do it more than Urgoz and I am sure there are groups there every day, but it's nothing like DoA. I was in both at their prime and DoA is just a lot more hustle and bustle.

We'll both have to stick to our versions of reality, I suppose. However, given that ANet moved away from the two faction system, moved away from the weak shallow storyline system, moved away from the 10 missions and you're done system, I'd say they felt the same way I did. You can tell me your prerogative all you want, but the facts are that they moved away from all the things you seem to champion in Factions (except double damage bosses). :P --Karlos 01:05, 5 March 2007 (EST)

And how is kaineng city quest being dull related to favor of the gods? Hands "successful discussion kidnap" badge to all of the above ;-) --Xeeron 08:35, 5 March 2007 (EST)

I R Teh ween! *shines badge* --Jamie 03:07, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Question

Hi, I'm leaving this message here because I found your name on the Bestiary/NPC... formatting talk pages @ GuildWiki. We're currently trying to create a formatting guide for it here as well, but so far without sufficient response. I'd appreciate it if you could drop by and leave your comment(s). Initial discussion started here, but is continued here. Thanks in advance ;). --Erszebet 09:42, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Ban/Block

How do we flag candidates for a ban/block? User:165.21.155.9 seems to be making a lot of meaningless edits to some pages, especially to the Ogre-Slaying Knife -- Scourge 09:14, 18 March 2007 (EDT)

Tag them with with {{Admin review|Reason}}. --Dirigible 10:00, 18 March 2007 (EDT)

Admin noticeboard

Hullo, Karlos. Just letting you know of the admin noticeboard page. Since we killed the {{ban}} and {{admin review}} tags, this is the only way for a user to contact the admins (without writing on the talk page of each of them, that is). Just thought I'd let you know about this. :) Cheers! --Dirigible 18:08, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Muchas gracias, added to watch list. --Karlos 05:48, 30 April 2007 (EDT)

Review

Salam Alekoem, could u pls take a look at this guy, he completly ingores warnings and keeps uploading images that have been deleted, shoekran ~ Kurd07:07, 2 May 2007 (EDT)

Title temps

I was just wondering. What are these for? I are curious =P -- File:Blackgeneralstar.png (General | Talk) 00:44, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

watch and learn :P --Karlos 00:45, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay ^^ -- File:Blackgeneralstar.png (General | Talk) 00:46, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for porting those over, Karlos! —Tanaric 01:05, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I know what they are now! Cool =D -- File:Blackgeneralstar.png (General | Talk) 01:06, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

They're not working as planned though. :( --Karlos 04:33, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

an apology long overdue

Hey Karlos, I'd just like to say sorry for the way I acted towards you however many years ago, I reflected on it a few months back and realize that I was in the wrong for doing so :) -FireFox File:Firefoxav.png 01:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

It's all good, just leave your ectos at the cashier on your way out. All is forgiven. :P Not sure I recall what the issue was. However, I apologize if I offended you whatever the dispute was. --Karlos 04:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Beg to Differ!

Most annoying NPC? Your nomination pales compared to mine: Wert, the peg-legged kiddie NPC from Diablo. I mean, what NPC is so annoying that they bring him back--dead!--in the sequel and give out his body parts as loot? :) --Gaile 01:17, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Ha ha... I beg to differ. Wert was not in the way, you could choose to ignore him all you want. Plus it was worth it to see Griswold whine that Wert is outdoing him.

Cespinar was placed in the teleportation hub of the game (kinda like the Guild Hall) and whenever you hopped in there, he'd be around saying annoying stuff ("I'm just a slave slaving away" or whatever)... On top of that, he could craft you some REALLY cool weapons, but only if you suffer through 100 dialog boxes of very poor humor in which he rummaged through all the stuff in your inventory one piece at a time... "A HOOD?! You're off to visit grandmother or something?" Even the funny ones ceased to be funny about the 20th time of going through the routine. :(

Deckard Cain served a similar purpose in Diablo... "Hello, friend. Stay a while and listen." "Just ID this junk, old man." :P --Karlos 04:11, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Who was the fat guy in Nashkel that followed you around, interrupting your actions every six seconds with a useless, auto-pausing remark? He'd be my second-place nomination, only because he was easily removed with a sling bullet to the head... —Tanaric 23:09, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, Noober. I had to flee town the first time I met him... Then just learned to use him as a snack for Boo. :) --Karlos 23:19, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

But if you really, really lusted after Godly Plate of the Whale, Wert was your guy. And with his greed, and his lack of charm, all you wanted to do was kick him in the pine-patina'd, Pledge-enchanced shin for all the good he did you. (Everyone else, please excuse this digression into in-jokes and avid-player references to non-existent goods.) :D --Gaile 06:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I had pretty bad luck with Wert, every time I checked with him I had way better stuff from drops on me than what he had to offer for bazillions more. So I pretty much ignored him. Plus, as Adria says "Earthen walls and thatched canopy do not a home create." The kid grew up in a troubled family. I think Oprah should have a sit down with Wert. :) --Karlos 07:24, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Er

I'm guessing you haven't read GWW:USER. - BeX 01:29, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm assuming you are referring to the page length? Well, right now the page is broken. Not sure if it will REMAIN that way or not. I'm talking to Tanaric about it. Basically, all the character details are supposed to be folded and only open up if you click on a specific "show" button next to a char. So, as it stands now, the page is ridiculously long. I'm not sure if it's going to work or not. If not, I'll move the char details to sub-pages.

Any other violations I am not seeing? --Karlos 04:15, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I replied over there on his page without seeing this. There's also a size limit for images, but if you'll be moving it to subpages it won't matter. You should fix up the "Guildwiki" heading though. ;) - BeX 04:18, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, this is ridiculous. I'll get back to work on it. Who ever came up with these arbitrary limitations?! My penalty for not being their to rain on their parade I guess. Hmm, this will take a while. --Karlos 04:27, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

All of the discussion should be archived on the policy talk page. The arbitrary limitations were a compromise because two sides of the argument couldn't agree on anything. It may sound silly, but it's been working so far. - BeX 04:29, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

It's not all relegated to the archive yet. I tried, but I wasn't too successful. -- Dashface 09:34, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

deleted redirect

Was there any particular reason you deleted the Shadow stepping redirect? It's something that a user might very well look for, as opposed to Shadow step. I don't see any record of anyone tagging it for deletion for any reason, and so far the conversation here seemed to include it as valid. I'd also have thought a delete tag would be in order to allow for discussion, given that it qualifies as neither R1 nor R2 of the speedy deletion criteria for redirects. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 04:09, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

"Shadow stepping" is a misspelling of "Shadow step"?

I specifically checked the policy on plurals and verb conjugations. I found plurals (and though I disagree with it, I won't delete plurals, for now) >:), but I have not found grammatical derivatives in the allowed redirects.

The conversation you point to, between you and Biro is about misspellings. Like "Silver Armor" to "Sliver Armor" or "Ambrance of Truth" to "Armbrace of Truth" (every american in thegame says it Ambrance for some reason). But that is a completely different monster than redirect "Shadow stepping" to "Shadow step."

The monster in point here is the grammatical derivatives monster... i.e. "Kiting" to "Kite" and "Shadow stepped" to "Shadow step" and "Enchant," "Enchanting," "Enchanted," "Enchanter" to "Enchantment." This has traditionally been frowned upon because it is very easy to link to the proper word by correct placement of the brackets. i.e. [[Enchant]]ing, [[Enchant]]er, [[Enchant]]ed and then redirect [[Enchant]] to [[Enchantment]] (or vice versa).

So, if you are suggesting we as a wiki start doing that, by all means, feel free to porpose it on the same talk page you referenced. I would be against it, but overall, people in this community have been more open to having more redirects as the processing power, space and bandwidth here is stronger than GWiki. --Karlos 04:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Karlos, you must have missed the discussion on this. Redirects actually ease the processing burden of the server by providing direct jumps from the search box. Please read from here down on the GuildWiki talk page to see why we changed our minds. —Tanaric 04:59, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

In the meantime, I've removed the delete notice from shadow stepping, as it breaks searching for that term. All necessary parties are discussing now, so having the tag there isn't helpful. —Tanaric 05:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Tanaric, what are you talking about? Have you seen this? All I am doing is enforcing it. Perhaps you have adpated the position of "every redirect is allowable and desired" but that page reads more like "every redirect other than THESE is not desired." If you too are suggesting a change to that policy, by all means, go ahead. In the mean time, are you also suggesting that it's a misspelling.

We're not discussing what redirects should be allowed here, Tanaric, the discussion is, does THIS specific redirect meet the current policy? I think the answer is a clear no. If you're gonna open the opic for debate (about widening/changing the redirect policy), then by all means. --Karlos 05:06, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

And... If you don't prove, in your very next post, that the redirect meets CURRENT redirect policy on GWWiki (not GWiki), then I am going to replace the tag. Because right now, you have stripped the process from right under my feet. --Karlos 05:07, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I can prove that very easily -- there is no redirect policy currently on GWW, and thus you have no grounds for this deletion. The link you've given me is merely a guide, not a policy, and beyond that, it's got a big "under construction" tag at the top. —Tanaric 05:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

BOGUS! It's as close as we have to policy right now. Why the heck override me on something we have upheld all along in BOTH wikis? We do NOT have grammatical redirects on GWiki or GWWiki. Instead of overruling me for upholding how we do things, how about you propose a change? You don't start policy on your own and start reverting and dictating it one edit at a time. That's extremely unprofessional. That talk page you directed me to is not even policy on GWiki. Ridiculous. I'll uphold your edit for 3 days, if you don't start a meaningful discussion for change to that proposition, I will revert your edit and we can take it to Biro whenever you feel like it. You can't just wing it like that. I just went to tell the guy we're all about policy and doing things in order and in comes Tanaric to tell the guy, we just wing it as we please. --Karlos 05:17, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

First and foremost, why are we discussing this like we hate each other? Last I checked, I'm rather fond of you.

More to the point, that style article you linked me to does not have the authority to justify deletionism. We do have a policy that mentions redirects -- Guild Wars Wiki:Article retention states that "Redirects are generally an encouraged means to improve navigation of the wiki. These can assist users who are using the search function to go directly to the article they are trying to find without the need of selecting an entry from a list of search results." There are no restrictions on this. The policy proposed to create such restrictions, at Guild Wars Wiki:Redirects, failed! Right now, no redirect requires policy support to be allowed to stay. The closest policy we have to support what you are trying to do is our Guild Wars Wiki:Deletion policy, which supplies immediate deletion reason R2: redirects for implausible typos or search terms. "Shadow stepping" certainly isn't implausible -- I've searched for it myself.

—Tanaric 05:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I still can't believe this. Read User talk:Dirigible#Redirects policy...

That's the source of my frustration. Your justification here, combined withyour justification there amounts to "arbitrary onthe-fly policy." I can't enforce that. --Karlos 06:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Karlos, I've been sleeping, but notice the conversation I linked to you, which included things like "Brother Mhenlo" instead of "Mhenlo". (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 11:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow, just wow, seriously. o_O - BeX 12:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

---

I've spent far too long deleting and restarting my argument here, so I will just try and blast through it.

• The particular conversation Aiiane pointed to was not really about misspellings. To quote my first comment there (and the second comment in the thread)

  "There is absolutely no harm in having 20+ redirects to one article. In fact it's very beneficial. Redirecting Brother Mhenlo, Brother Mehnlo, Brother Menlo, Mehnlo, Menlo etc. to Mhenlo is perfectly acceptable."

  While it is not about different uses of the word "step" it's clear that Aiiane was trying to show that I at least agreed that misspellings were not the only criteria needed to perform a redirect, i.e. Brother Mhenlo which was created by me.
• It has been a conscious decision not to produce a policy on redirects, as we only prohibit redirects that either redirect to the user or guild namespace or redirects that are inconceivable. I'll repeat this point: The official wiki has no policy specifically for redirects at all. And this is, to my knowledge, intentional.
• Without a specific policy on redirects we currently use other policies to manage those redirects that we definitely don't want. We definitely don't want redirects to the user or guild namespace, or redirects from inconceivable or ambiguous articles. This is covered in Guild Wars Wiki:Deletion policy#Redirects and Guild Wars Wiki:Article retention#Redirects. However, there is no location saying which redirects, specifically, are allowed.
• The formatting section consists of guidelines, these are recommendations on how things should look and feel, but they are not policies and do not govern what can and cannot exist on the wiki.
• As such you cannot "enforce" Guild Wars Wiki:Formatting/Redirects -- it is a guideline and not a policy. The document is only meant to explain which redirects should be categorised and how. If this is not clear then it needs altering. It does not say that redirects excluding the ones listed should be deleted -- and it should not since it is a formatting article.
• It has been consensus among many of us for some time that redirects for any purposes are acceptable since they improve performance. If you've missed these discussions then that's unfortunate, but the recent change in stance on the GuildWiki redirect policy is indicative of the change in consensus.
• There has never been any precedent that I am aware of for deleting redirects on this wiki, even if it has been long upheld on GuildWiki. If redirects have been deleted in this way then I would be very unhappy about it. Deleting redirects is typically bad practice, because deleting them costs resources and their existence improves performance. If you know of a redirect that has been deleted on this wiki and is not a redirect to a guild or user article or a redirect from an inconceivable term then please let me know and I will revert it.
• Tanaric was not "winging it". I think it might have prevented a lot of frustration if the deletion notice was not removed, and we just discussed this on the shadow stepping talk page, but Tanaric did not act outside of popular view, in my opinion. Redirects are a good thing and most sysops I know agree.

It is my understanding that Tanaric mentioned GuildWiki policy on Dirigible's talk page only for purpose of example. He did not say that Guild Wars Wiki:Formatting/Redirects was policy or that GuildWiki policy should be enforced here. I'm not sure if this has been misunderstood.

On this talk page above he also argued for the preservation of redirects as they aid performance. Karlos said the following on my talk page:

Tanaric likes a policy X (which is undocumented on this wiki) and when a situation arised where the written policy on this wiki coincided with X, he cited the GWWiki policy, and when one arised where it did not agree with X, he pointed out it was not actual policy.

This gives me the impression that Tanaric has cited something as policy when it was in his interest, and argued that the same article was not policy when it was not in his interest. As far as I can see this has not happened. He pointed out, as a matter of example, that GuildWiki had a policy enabling redirects, and then he pointed out that the official wiki has no policy regarding redirects. These two statements are both true, and don't seem to be at odds with each other, in my opinion.

Perhaps I have missed something, but so far I don't believe Tanaric's actions have been unfair, and I don't think his argument has been manipulative. I have tried to be objective here, but I am a huge proponent of redirects. As such if anyone feels that I have been biased in my analysis please don't hesitate to say so. LordBiro 19:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

You're obviously reading:

I feel obliged to note that plural redirects are allowed under new GuildWiki policy a LOT differently than I am. I read that as a) there exists a policy, and b) that it's pretty binding. I obviously assumed that link I was directed to was the policy. Lo and behold, the policy is unwritten, yet is approved by consensus. Wow.

In any case, I think some serious rewriting of Guild Wars Wiki:Formatting/Redirects is in order. I have not seen that "general consensus" on the talk page of that policy (not denying it exists, just saying as a guy trying to apply policy, I can't easily identify it), so I'll write what you just summarized in here, and hope that gets approved so everyone knows what the majority consented to but chose never to write in words. --Karlos 21:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

You keep on talking about Guild Wars Wiki:Formatting/Redirects as a policy and it is starting to really frustrate me. It is not a policy! It will never be a policy! It is just a guide on how to categorise redirects!!! :P You probably won't see any consensus regarding the removal of redirects on that page because that's not the page's purpose.

Regarding the quote of Tanaric's, I guess we do interpret it differently, but I think I know Tanaric quite well, and I don't think he would have meant what you inferred. I read it as a) there exists a policy on a completely different wiki and b) people there seem to like it.

I don't know what you mean when you say "the policy is unwritten"... which policy? As far as I'm aware no one other than you has said that GWW has a redirect policy. If Tanaric or I have implied it at any point, could you please say where as I'm really at a loss to understand what you mean. We don't have a redirect policy because we don't restrict redirects. I didn't think we needed a policy for things that we categorically allowed. LordBiro 22:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I would think Help:Redirect is policy. It reads pretty much like policy, and the link at the top of Guild Wars Wiki:Formatting/Redirects pretty much says it is THE page to consult on How to use redirects. Why would you have a help page that instructs people as IF there is a policy and then say to each other, nah, there's NO policy. --Karlos 22:39, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Help:Redirect also uses extremely inclusive language, so I'm not sure what your point is. It's certainly not policy, as it's not nearly specific enough to be enforcible - just like the formatting page, it's a guideline. Notice "encouraged to conform" - but not forced. I really don't see how you can say it "reads like policy" when it has such loose language. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Edit conflict, but yes, I was agreeing with Aiiane:

Help:Redirect is a how-to article. It exists because many people felt that we needed a Help section for new users to learn how to use the wiki, and since redirects are not particularly intuitive it made sense to produce a help article on redirects. I don't believe it reads as though a redirect policy exists, and I don't believe it reads like a policy article. It doesn't tell you what to do, it tells you how to do things. Not to mention the fact that it hasn't gone through the policy proposal process. LordBiro 22:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

It reads very much like policy in terms of which redirects to make or not make. It says go ahead and make redirects that speed up searching, something that formatting policy does not say. In any case, I got my answers and I think I understand the policy situation now. If you are saying that even now there IS no policy to enforce, then I disagree, I got my policy in Help:Redirect and I will enforce that (which is pretty much to allow all but the most illogical redirects). I wish there was a GWW:REDIRECTS that says that plain and simple, but at least I have a page to redirect others to. If anyone reading this finds that my understanding is wrong or threatening to them in any way, feel free to correct me, but I plan on at least using that as policy.

As for the rest of the stuff between me and Tanaric, it's just that, between me and Tanaric. We go back a long way and I have a lot of respect for him that redirects cannot overcome. I felt he acted pretty John Wayne, I still feel he did. That's the end of that. --Karlos 23:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I really can't see what all the fuss is about, what's the harm in having a few extra redirects that help a user get to where they're going? -FireFox File:Firefoxav.png 23:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

There is no harm ,and no harm was ever calimed. The entire dispute was about how this was communicated. --Karlos 23:05, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

For the record, LordBiro interpreted this comment as I intended:

I feel obliged to note that plural redirects are allowed under new GuildWiki policy.

I was indeed referring to the GuildWiki, not the official wiki, but perhaps I should have made that clearer.

I still feel I acted mostly appropriately, but perhaps I should not have reverted your delete notice. I'm sorry if any disrespect was implied, as it certainly wasn't intended. Beyond that, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

—Tanaric 23:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to just make it clear, however, that I'd strongly prefer the the deletion notice be placed there the first time, not only after the page has been recreated, given my understanding of GWW:DP. That was my biggest concern with all of this. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with that. —Tanaric 23:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

To clarify that, Aiiane, it wasn't that my edit as an admin was more important than your edit as a regular user. It's that I THOUGHT I was doing a routine policy edit while I believed the redirect was an "obvious" break of policy. So, I was wondering why you'd revert something so obvious (which obviously was not so obvious), and so that was my confusion. By no means was I advocating that straight deletion of an article/contested delete is the better course. I thought what I was doing was fairly routine. You'll notice that as once you contested it, I went the route of the template, because it was obvious now that it was not a striaghtforward "speedy deletion" anymore. --Karlos 01:15, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

And my point was that GWW:DP makes it rather clear what qualifies as a "straightforward speedy deletion", and even without the debate, I didn't see it listed there. Either way, I think we're on the same page now. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 01:26, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

User Image: Character-Saifuddeen Kenaani.jpg

The image you recently uploaded (Image:Character-Saifuddeen Kenaani.jpg) does not comply with the Guild Wars Wiki user image naming policy and has been tagged for deletion. Feel free to re-upload the image under a correct name. Thanks, — Rapta (talk|contribs) 01:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Err... I'm not going to bother with the other character images. I think you know your way around this wiki better than I do. =) — Rapta (talk|contribs) 02:44, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the heads up. --Karlos 04:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Hola

Hey Karlos. Just noticed that you'd added me to the list of candidates for the bureaucrat position. First of all, thanks, it really means a lot, especially coming from you. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline. Primarily because my levels of activity on the wiki have been steadily decreasing, due in equal parts to being busy in meatspace and dissatisfaction with how several core issues are being handled here on the wiki. And until at least one of those factors is resolved (and it doesn't seem likely that'll happen anytime soon), I think it'd be inappropriate for me to even consider running for that (or any other) position. Once again thanks, though, appreciate it. :) --Dirigible 18:36, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Heads up

Not sure if you have a strong opinion on this: Talk:Species#Shall we adopt this?. --Rezyk 18:26, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Canthan Paragon?

Oh I would SO like to know how your Paragon originated from the Factions campaign.  ;) Counciler 01:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

That's easy. Copy and paste error. You can even make Tyrian-born Paragons this way. :P --Karlos 01:53, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

:)

I left you a reply to your last post on my talk page. Just FYI.  :) ~ J.Kougar

4th Koabd title?

Looking at your character pages, I though you might be able to contribute here with the next rank. --Xeeron 14:33, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

What exactly do you wish me to contribute? There are no labels to 4th rank and beyond yet. --Karlos 23:30, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Cant you see the number of titles you need for the 4th tier? --Xeeron 11:14, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

No, it just says it is the highest tier in that track. — Skuld 11:24, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

User page

GWW:USER strikes again. I don't know if you were told about this before (I think you were) but you page exceeds the scroll limitations of the user policy. You might want to break some of that information off into a subpage.

Also did you know that User:Hidden stole parts of your page! o_O - BeX 08:10, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

O_O They could be brothers -- Scourge 08:57, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Or a flawed clone. -- ab.er.rant 09:12, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Hidden is in my guild, and he's been trying to copy my page I believe. Not sure how that's going.

With regards to the three screen scroll thing. I frankly find it lame, and have deliberately kept my page at 3.5 or 4 scrolls to see how far you guys wanna enforce that silly stuff. I fully agree with Tanaric that it's a ridiculous policy. I removed the images and significantly reduced the scrolling. I won't abide by centimeters and inches. Not because I am an admin or think the page is too important to be reduced or whatever, but because I am a user who thinks someone was overzealous in their GWiki experience and brought some ridiculous over-management into here.

So, put me on notice, inform an admin about me and ban me for it or go ahead and blank my page. Frankly, I think you should find something better to do, Bex. --Karlos 09:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Your page is well over the limit at 3 and a half at 1280 res (it allows for 2 scrolls in the policy). As an admin I would think you would hold policy, whether or not you agree with it, as something to be respected and upheld. And as for having something better to do, look at RC - one small edit to your talk page is lost amongst the hundred of other edits I've made today. - BeX 09:41, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

You'll have to go the whole nine yards on this one, Bex. I'm not budging on this. It's an oppressive policy and I think it's my duty to actually fight it.

I am not outside the realm of policy, and I am certainly subject to it like everyone else. However, my loyalty is to the wiki, not necessarily to the laws and edicts that sometimes we fall in love with.

My first significant edit on this wiki was when I checked it one day and the "community" (a few zealous invdividuals) decided to place a big sign on the main page that says "Please refrain from adding any content until we formulate basic policies" and I stpped in and removed it. Didn't even read talk pages, nothing. It was simply common sense.

In retrospect, everyone who is anyone would tell you that was one of the best things anyone ever did to this wiki. It was stagnating, and then boom, the flood gates opened. All those involved later on acknowledged that I was right to act outside of edicts agreed upon.

I may well be wrong on this one. But this is the precedent I am relying on here. Not that it's my right to break policy, but that it's my duty when I see lousy policy to protest against it. If I am wrong, the other users, admins, bureaucrats have all the power they need to bring me in line.

It's such a sound policy that I don't even know what happens now. Do you tag my user page with "This user is a Hard Drive hog" or something? Do I get banned for 5 days? What is the enforceability of this policy exactly? Feel free to point the attention of other admins here as you see fit. --Karlos 09:55, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not too worried about you breaking the policy, it's pretty irrelevant to me unless somone goes and makes a 10 scroll page with a 1400x resolution. However, I don't like it that you go against a policy by breaking it instead of discussing the policy on it's talk page. We have had major conflicts at GuildWiki due to people fighting against a policy instead of trying to change it through discussion and I would definitely not like to see anything similiar on this wiki. -- (gem / talk) 10:34, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I have to say I find it disappointing that admins don't care whether policy is broken or not. - BeX 10:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I find it disappointing that anyone would bow to this policy. — Skuld 10:42, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Bex or Gem, I am not daring you or making my request in jest. If you truly believe that as an admin I am overstepping my authorities, please bring it to the attention of any authority you like. I've asked Tanaric and Biro to chime in. Let's see what they think. But I truly find this policy unhealthy, too restrictive and based on some EXTREMELY bad assumption in terms of what rights and freedoms users have by default. I see that policy as stemming from: The user has no rights, and we shall bestow the following upon him. Whereas I think the right approach is: The user has all right, and we shall limit the following for him. There is a fundamental shift. --Karlos 12:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Karlos... You talk way too much for a Arab, not use too ~ Kurd 12:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Kurd, what has Karlos' nationality got to do with anything on the subject? -- Scourge 12:44, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

User:Kurd likes to keep the Kurd-Arab rivalry alive, how ever inappropriate, I think, lol. — Skuld 12:56, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmmmm.... /ponder *THINKS* uuuhh *THINKS SOME MORE* uuhh... nothing? ~.^ ~ Kurd 12:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Karlos, I'm not taking this too seriously and I hope you understand it. -- (gem / talk) 15:41, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Karlos. Who gives a shit??? — Skuld 10:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Whether or not I agree with Karlos is irrelevant. He is breaking policy.

That said, a preventative block does not seem appropriate, as he is not actively editing to make his page longer. Punitive blocks have no backing in policy on this wiki -- even the proposed blocking policy does not suggest punitive blocks unless mandated by the arbitration committee. The only thing remotely suggesting enforcement is the following line from Project:User page:

Content in your user space that violates policy may be removed by an administrator.

I believe that since the line uses the word "may," enforcement of this policy is purely discretionary. I do not think Karlos's offense is egregious enough to warrant my intervention upon his space. Naturally, I will not oppose any other sysop action to remedy Karlos's violation of policy.

I will not comment here on whether his behavior is appropriate for an administrator -- that is a bureaucrat concern. If somebody wants to enter that discussion with me, my talk page is always available.

I will not comment on the policy itself here, but I will remark on the policy talk page.

—Tanaric 18:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

/signed for Karlos, this policy is crap. It was made by (as Karlos said) overzealous editors who wanted a policy simply to to have a policy, not because the policy is useful or actually solves anything. I'll post on its talk page about this; hopefully this nonsense can be undone. It'd be a pity if a few radicals ruined the wiki for everyone else. -Auron 22:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Having considered a lot of things in those policy discussions very little opposition, I resent that somewhat. MisterPepe talk 22:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe the policy is completely flawed. And I blame myself as much as anyone for having that hideous thing there. I should have been paying more close attention to these policies back then. It was those kinds of unneeded and ridiculous policies that kept me away, and I am seeing every day that I was wrong. All these weird principles established as canon. The user's space is a courtesy? It is restricted by default? I prefer a much looser form of regulation where issues (people totally abusing their user space) are dealt with as they arise, not speculatively and overzealously. --Karlos 22:32, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Why?

Bro, what are you doing? Bex, Gem and Aberrant are all good people. If I remember correctly, the last time I had a brain implosion you set me straight. Well I'm going to do my best to try and work this out because I know you'd do the same for me if it came to the crunch. I really am asking the question of why you're doing this. We're not talking about Michelangelo finishing the Sistine Chapel and some politicians deciding that actually, the thing is a bit big really, we're going to lop the last third off. It's just your user page. And yes I know your civil disobedience campaign is hardly destroying the wiki as we know it but we both know this says a lot symbolically. When I read your comment to J. Kougar, it was probably the most intelligent thing I've seen here and it basically explained that there's a way to go about things, so what is it that you are doing here?

On a different tact, the comments on Gares' talk page were just wierd, as someone who followed it but wasn't at all emotionally involved, I found your comments a little odd. The impression that I got is that Gares' really wasn't that worried about any of the issues you raised on being modest, egos, how skillful someone is etc. etc. Which is not to say that he didn't have an opinion on them, just that he wasn't taking it all to heart the way you were and it was strange to see you get so worked up about it. Which makes me wonder if maybe you need to clear your head a little, before pushing on.

Why tackle this issue like this, in such a non constructive and damaging way? Why bring LordBiro and Tanaric into it? They're running in the bureaucrat elections, I'd say they don't need something like this. I've seen far greater injustices occur back on the GuildWiki and I don't recall you ever calling for civil disobedience. I don't disagree with you, in fact I think the user page length policy is pretty stupid. My user page is on the very limit of the max length so I've got a small section that's commented out, I could have just removed it but it's my very very small way of expressing my frustration. I guess I don't feel about it as strongly as you do but do you really need to go this far?

I hope this is of use to you, you've said some helpful things to me over the years so I hope that I can return the favour. As you've told me before, if you feel strongly about it, you should do what you think is right even if others think you're wrong. (*Cough* Supporting the Utah Jazz *cough*!) I just hope that you take a bit of time to reach a decision and that you're both doing it for the right reasons and with a clear mind. Best of luck old friend. --Xasxas256 13:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Hello Xasxas.. Wanted to talk to you last night on the whole Gares thing in-game, but you were not on when I was on. I wanted to pick your brains on that. PM me next time you see me on.

Well, you seem to be tying these things together and the only thing they have in common is that I was pretty straightforward (and somewhat confrontational) is all these exchanges. I cut to the chase and I call things as I see them. I try not to offend anyone but at the same time, I will not cut anyone any slack in a debate.

I have been very respectful to Bex, Aberrant and Gem. I have nothing but respect for all three. Just because I am calling out their logic on an issue or questioning their judgement on a policy does not mean I dislike them nor does it mean I have personal problems with them. I like Aberrant a great deal, in fact.

The main reason I did things the way I did is to bring it to the forefront. I have mentioned that I find this policy bogus before, Tanaric has, this seemed to generate no emotions on the part of the "leaders" of that policy (Aberrant, Bex, Pepe) and basically they needed to be challenged. I have been planning to write a diatribe on that policy's page and when Bex came knocking on my door, I saw an opportunity. I wanted to see how delusional we are as a community.

This is a serious test now. I honestly truly believe that this is a VERY bad and oppressive policy based on some SERIOUSLY flawed logic. I think it is very bad for the wiki to adopt the view that users are to be told how to run their user pages because it's best for all. It's a totalitarian elitist view that assumes the tastes of Pepe, Bex, Aberrant and several others are "correct" and that other tastes as "bad."

I would not recommend "civil disobedience" to change policy as a matter of course, obviously. But I felt this policy is so weird, and so poorly written (ans so harmless to violate) that challenging it was the only way to make people wake up and look at it. I'm not saying that's justification, but it's my reason.

It may well end up I lose my admniship over this or get banned or deleted or whatever, but I have always been one to fight for what I believe and to call things as I see them. This policy and the mindset behind it, must go.

One last thing, about Biro and Tanaric... What better thing to test their worthiness of their seat than to see them exercise their judgement? I frankly don't see this as an issue even. It's not like they will win or lose based on how they handle this. Well, unless Eloc shows better judgement than they do. :P --Karlos 22:44, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Dupek the Mighty

Hey - Dupek the Mighty really means in polish "Mighty Asshole" - [See link] :) --Gret 09:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Why assume it's Polish though? Do you have reason to believe the devs wanted to put a cuss word in another language in the game? If not, then why not put all the othe rmeanings of Dupek in all the languages of the world? --Karlos 09:33, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Becouse I'm polish and i can assume it... --Gret 14:22, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Asking emily about it ~ Kurd 20:54, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok this solves it ~ Kurd 11:50, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

My views on sysops

I don't know whether this discussion should be part of my reconfirmation or a separate thing and I don't mind so I'll let you decide whether we keep the discussion here or on my reconfirmation talk page. I intend this discussion as a general one about what the sysop status is and what it isn't.

You said: "I do not believe adminship should be a reward for being active. I thikn admins need to show a certain amount of leadership and I have yet to see Gem convince me of that. " I agree that sysophood shouldn't be a reward of any kind. I think that the sysop status is just what a regular user status with the addition of tools that can't be trusted to the hands of every user. On GuildWiki sysops were a lot more due to the way the wiki was run and built, the sysops were effectively the bosses of the wiki with only bureaucrats above them. On the official wiki we have gotten away from that as our policies don't give special leadership to anyone except the bureaucrats. Sysops don't have the powers to do what they want and they can't override the decisions of the community. People are still sometimes thinking of sysops as some kind of leaders due to the policies at GuildWiki, but I think we should get away from that mindset as soon as possible as it's not the case on this wiki.

I admit and hope that I haven't shown any 'leadership like qualities' on this wiki since that's exactly what I think sysops shouldn't do. -- (gem / talk) 23:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I have to back up gem on this. Of all sysop he is maybe the one comming closest to what our policies aim for, namely sysops that act as enforcers of policy, without much discretion. Whether you agree with those policies is another matter, but you cant fault him for trying to follow that spirit of the admin policy. --Xeeron 00:39, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

No, I can't fault him, nor hold it against him. But I don't necessarily agree. I don't even quite get the multitude of admins being promoted on a monthly basis here. I don't know we're doing that, but I admit to not have followed things closely and as a result, I know I can't really complain. However, my view is that an admin needs to show a certain level of wisdom and maturity. Gem had a little bout with Skuld earlier that showed me he was still not there. --Karlos 05:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Basically, sysops on this wiki are glorified janitors. The more we have, the quicker messes get mopped up. In theory at least, there is no sense of sysops being "above" regular users. This is very different than the GuildWiki.

While I would support your criticisms of Gem on that wiki (no offense intended, Gem), he is quite a good sysop here, in my opinion. —Tanaric 05:24, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, so you're saying that we have reduced the model of leadership in here to three people? Biro, Rezyk and Dirigible? All others are janitors and senior janitors? --Karlos 06:39, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

The concept is that it's not essential to have specific centralized leaders for all aspects of the wiki (and yes, that is a core difference from GuildWiki), apart from a rare few cases (in which case the bureaucrats serve their purpose). It's not so much "reducing the model of leadership" as it is using a different model that doesn't revolve around leadership. I should note that Wikipedia trends towards this latter style, rather than one centered around leaders. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 06:44, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Aiiane has expressed it quite well. We lack any sort of centralized leadership, in general -- when the need arises (and so far, it hasn't), the bureaucrats can serve in that capacity. I realize this is at odds with our sysop/bcrat/ANet mailing list of which the general public is unaware. —Tanaric 06:52, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, what I find odd is that experience in leadership/conflict resolution and so forth is not required in an admin, and that people like Xeeron (or yourself) think that's ok. I think that's inherently incorrect. If you step into a conflict (and you will be summoned by the admin noticeboard) you must exercise logic, wisdom and maintain a vision of the wiki as you step in. You can't just say "User X blanked a page... Vandal... Block." As Dirigible noted on the J.Kougar issue, much could have been avoided with more wisdom. I think Gem is a bit too trigger happy and impatient when reviewing actions and taking disciplinary action. I think that's a flaw. He's very diligent in scanning pages tagged for deletion and unused images but not responding to conflict situations. --Karlos 08:26, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

The sysop position here is specifically written to remove the impetus of judgment from the individual sysop whenever possible. I'm not saying it works perfectly yet. I'm also not saying it's better than what we have at the GuildWiki -- we have an excellent team there and the authority vested in that team works marvelously, in general. I'm merely attempting to point out the differences. That sysops are No Big Deal is the closest thing this wiki has to a foundation policy, which is ironic considering the vast majority of our foundation came from the GuildWiki!

So far, I think the system is working well. It's definitely more sustainable -- if any significant portion of the bureaucrat/administration team at the GuildWiki left in unison, the site would become headless and would not run very efficiently. Here, we can wipe the entire administration staff without causing much fuss. There is significantly more emphasis on community control of its own destiny. Whether it'd be better to have someone like me calling the shots is a matter of debate. I can appreciate both methods.

—Tanaric 08:32, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

You still ignored that admins DO exercise judgement on a daily basis whenever there is conflict. They can CHOOSE to punish violators or just warn them or even let something slide. This is a choice that SHOULD be rooted in logic, wisdom and vision of what's at stake. Not in a robotic manner. --Karlos 08:36, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I honestly intended to type a "At least, this is the theory." somewhere in there. I'm not saying it works perfectly, and I'm also not saying that admins can be totally clueless -- if they could, we wouldn't need an RfA process. I just think the bar for entry is much lower here than on the GuildWiki, and there's absolutely no reason to restrict the sysop pool to a smallish number, like we did there.

If it's relevant, I may have overstated my support for Gem. I support his sysop status, but only weakly. —Tanaric 08:46, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I see that atleast some people share my view of the sysop position on this wiki and that's all I needed to know. I didn't intend this as a discussion about me and my sysops status, but that's what it turned into. :/ -- (gem / talk) 09:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with Gem on this one. Sysop's on the OGWiki are at a lower level than the GWiki admins. Its simple fact. There will be more sysops here, because sysops don't have the power that they do on GWiki. That is just how it is. You cannot carry over your role from GWiki, as that is not your role here. And it may never be. I honestly think they shouldn't have people be sysops for both sites, as they tend to think they have the same powers on both sites. They do not. They are there for mediation, but with more mediators then people that need it, its useless. You may think differently, and I respect your opinion, but you need to realize these are 2 different Wiki's, with different Sysop's requirements. --- The Imperialist on GWiki --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:76.166.205.40 .

Applying the user page policy

I find your comment on the user page policy talk page "I said I will not enfore the policy on my user page and told Bex to go the whole nine yards on this. Block me, edit my page, sue my parents... Whatever the policy says should happen. Something that until now, has yet to happen." incredibly unfair towards your fellow sysops. One thing every sysop should try to do is calm discussions down, not further aggravate them. No sysop wanted to apply that policy because the situation was already heated up enough without further actions and because we were all hoping that the issue might be solved without having to go that far. While I personally would love to see the policy changed, and while I think it is kind of a moot point, because it likely will be changed, I am editing your userpage now to confirm with current policy so we can bury above mentioned agruement once and for all. --Xeeron 08:42, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure what it is exactly that you found unfair. That sentence you quoted says: "I did not object to my page being made to adhere to policy all I did was refuse to do it myself, and then as a way of showing how weird the policy was, I told Bex to go ahead and take it to the next level, whatever that level may be." What exactly do you find to be unfair to you and other admins? That I said that no one has done it. I was making a point that no one has cared enough to do it.

Go ahead and edit my page as you see fit. I am hoping to get the new policy passed very soon. At least no one can complain that it was changed without much fanfare. --Karlos 08:49, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I didn't particularly like losing all that information, so I added a link to the old version of your userpage to the new placeholder. Naturally, you can revert if you wish. :) —Tanaric 08:51, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

The part I feel is unfair is the "no one has cared enough to do it" one. We all cared a lot about this, as can be seen from the exploding talk page. There are reasons other than not caring for not doing something. PS: I already edited your user page to comply with policy. --Xeeron 08:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's a mischaracterization. If you felt something should be done, but not strongly enough to do it, then you did not care enough, I think. In any case, I edited your user page as well. Though it was tongue-in-cheek because the current policy says I can. :) --Karlos 09:00, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

:/ -Auron 09:02, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Blocked for two hours -- tongue-in-cheek vandalism is still vandalism. And, besides, I need to unflinchingly apply policy, right? :) —Tanaric 09:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Pretty ridiculous block. I understand why you did it, I don't think, however, that it is actually supported under current policy. Current policy says that other users can edit your user space all they want and the "convention" is that they'll tell you about it. I was not going to leave his user page like that, I wanted to tease him then revert it, but everyone was wound up tighter than a bunch of heket last night apparently. --Karlos 16:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

"Current policy" would also generally include not vandalizing pages. Just because the user page policy does not explicitly disallow vandalism does not mean that it implicitly allows it. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 16:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I am not trying to belittle policy, and I know that fighting vandalism makes sense, by default... However, I am serious. Check GWW:POLICY and tell me exactly which policy would Tanaric be enforcing. --Karlos 16:43, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

GWW:NPA. Specifically, making a threat (or in this case, actually following through on such a threat) of vandalism. However, I will grant you that as it stands, written policy does not specifically mention vandalism in general, but I would argue that at least as of current, the policy against vandalism is more of a generally accepted one even without being written. If you feel that this isn't enough, and that it should be written down, feel free to propose such. However, I think most of what actually needs to be written down would be within the scope of the proposed Guild Wars Wiki:Blocking policy. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 16:47, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

That can't be correct because it was a good-faithed edit, not a personal attack. I showed in the edit summary and in the talk page here and on Auron's talk page that I was joking wiht Xeeron. Unless Xeeron himself complained, how are you to construe this as a personal attack? i.e. under current policy, vandalism in and of itself is not a violation to be punished, it's vindictive vandalism. Am I misreading policy? --Karlos 16:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think blatant removal of content that doesn't violate policy from a page can be called 'good-faithed', and again, vandalism is a violation, vindictive or not. As I already mentioned, just because the user page policy does not explicitly allow vandalism does not mean that it implicitly allows it - and allowing other users to edit a page is not the same as allowing users to vandalize it. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 16:58, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. If I see two users who seem to know each other joking around with each other's user pages, I'll certainly stay out of it, or tell them to stop. I think Tanaric jumped the gun thinking I was being vindictive instead of seeing how it will play out. I understand why Auron reverted, he wanted to avoid friction not knowing how the joke will play out, I don't understand Tanaric's block, nor your constant "spiritless" recitation of policy that does NOT say that playing around with other user pages is wrong. Again... The fact that only the threat of vandalism as a personal attack is mentioned means that vandalizing article pages is ok, wiping user pages that are deemed ugly or distasteful is ok and even joking with your friend by removing his user page is ok. I don't see how you can read the current installment of NPA as disallowing any of these. --Karlos 17:06, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Personally, rather than blanking out the content, I would have prefered to see it moved to a sub-page with a link (not a redirect) from the main user page. Technically, that is allowed under current policy. But, it looks like we're close to getting a draft re-write of the user page policy, so most if not all of the content will likely be able to be reverted back by the end of the month at the latest. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:43, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not big deal, Barek. Blanking/shortening is all fine. Part of the whole spectacle was to see how people will enforce the policy. It's up to the Admin's discretion (which according to Tanaric, should not be exercised :P) how badly they want to mutilate the user's page I suppose. I am enjoying racking up points in the scale of how stupid this policy is. I think Xeeron made the perfect edit to help my cause. >:)

If I was implementing this stupid policy, I would have cut off at a fairly reasonable point, removed the part longer than allowed, put it in a subpage, then linked to it from the main user page with a link that says "Continued here..." But I wanted to show people how preposterous having someone come in and try to enforce that load of Char doodoo and thankfully, Xeeron chose to enforce it in a preposterous way. :) I don't begrudge him anything though. I submitted my own user page to this kind of judgement from day 1 of the argument. --Karlos 17:51, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

sys

Some people have started working on this, thought I'd leave you a note as you may find it useful, or may want to make some changes. --Xasxas256 04:34, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate the note, old man. I am greatly disheartened by how things have gone in the reconfirmation issue. Not by the oppose votes or me being an admin or not, but certain votes have caused me to doubt myself and others have caused me to doubt people I held in high regard for a very long time as well as form negative opinions of people I mostly liked. Everything and anything I do right now will be tainted. I'm keeping my distance for a number of days.

In all due honesty, I think the discussion on my reconfirmation page shows clearly that I am the absolute last person you want to be commenting on that. My vision of adminship and what revolves in it's sphere and that of the apparent majority seem to be at odds. I don't feel it's my place to say how their "senior janitors" are to carry out their job, since I don't think admins should just be (or are in fact) senior janitors.

Anyways, that's a lot more typing than I intended to do. :) Thanks again for the note. --Karlos 06:02, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Well you might be an incumbent but you're still in the job for now anyway. I'm not the only one who likes hearing your opinion on things either. I guess the problem is that sometimes you have to play the game a little, idealism can only take you so far. Sometimes you just have to back down and maybe even kiss some ass ignoring that it feels totally wrong. You can't be loved by everyone but you don't want to systematically piss everyone off at some stage or other, people remember these things. I don't think I'm the most forgiving person in the world by any means but when it comes to voting for sysoption, you're voting them into a position, not voting on how much you like them or agree with their opinions. There's probably a few members of the admin group who I'd go out of my way to buy a beer for if I met them in the street but there's probably one or two that I'd have resist pushing into incoming traffic, I don't think I'd get along with them in real life! You're welcome to type as much as you like, I'll read it! It'll be a sad thing if both Gem and yourself are both stripped of your position and go on extended wiki breaks, I've enjoyed hanging out/sparring with both of your totally different personalities. --Xasxas256 06:27, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think my own position as admin or not has any bearing on the issue. However, my current standing as this "controversial menace to society" does have bearing. I will generate unnecessary antagonism for good ideas I suggest/support and unnecessary sympathy for bad ideas I oppose. The amount of "bad will" I can sense in some of the comments, votes and discussions in that reconfirmation process is staggering. There are people on this wiki who are genuinely irked by my style of contribution and views... Not opposed, genuinely offended. There are also people who do not think it is cool to associate themselves with me at this time so they have stepped away. It's a pretty messy situation right now. When I stopped typing and started actually "reading" what was between the lines, I became very sad.

I was sad to see Gem go, but Gem's dilemma is to a great deal, self-inflicted. He faced those criticisms from the get go, and he always feels he needs to do something to please people. I wish I can push the fast forward button on his maturation process and help him decide for himself what's best for himself, but I can't.

In my case, it's more an issue of "I'm too old for this ****" (DannyGloveritis). I've never kissed anyone's butt for anything in my life and I won't do it for a friggin wiki. I know what compromise means, I know what being strict and lenient means... I don't know what kissing butt means. I am not trying to have my way, I am proposing ideas, if the people most affected by those ideas find them without merit, why should I try to entice them into using them anyways? --Karlos 07:57, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

", and he always feels he needs to do something to please people." If we aren't here to make this wiki the best place possible for all of the users, then what are we here for? To enjoy our own time? I enjoy my time when others are enjoying theyre's, so it's a win win situation. I don't see it as a bad thing that one wants to please others, but you've raised it as a negative point multiple times now and I don't understand why.

"I wish I can push the fast forward button on his maturation process and help him decide for himself what's best for himself, but I can't." What do you think that is the best for me? How do you think that I should grow up more? I know I'm temperamental, explode quickly, but also calm down quickly. This is something that has stuck to me from my father. But aside from that I'm not aware of other major flaws. When leaving the wiki this time I didn't do so because I was angry or pissed - I wasn't at that point - but because I see the community changing in ways that I do not like.

Personal attacks ftw. I've seen multiple of those from you recently, but I guess no one else is willing to say anything against them as you're entangled in so many hot discussions already and people do like you. -- (gem / talk) 09:27, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Dude! Weren't you in exile?! That was a very short exile! Where did you exile yourself? The next room? :P

Gem, I like you as a person very, very, very much. I also feel that I am probably the worst person in the world to tell you this because of my blunt nature, and my inability to lie or tell half-truths and my impatience and failure to explain things in a subtle manner.

The summary of what I said is that you often (not always, not most of the times, not rarely) act in a certain way because you feel that is what people "expect" you to do. So, people nominate you for sysop and rave about you, you're like "Yeah! I'm the man!" Then people doubt your adminship and you're like "I am sorry, what have I done wrong?" A couple of people vote against you and you go "I withdraw my RFA, I suck at adminship, time to take on knitting" and finally a couple of guys criticize you on the side of their dicussion and you go "ZOMG! I am hated by all... Farewell cruel life." Someone suggests a policy to do X, and you go "Yeah, looks Ok to me" then another guy (you like, or makes a more compelling argument) says it's bad and you go "Yeah, he's right this is kinda bad" and then both sides get into a heated debate and you go "Well, I really can see both sides on the issue, can't we all be friends?"

This not being tempermental, this is called being impressionable. Other people leave a great impression on you with the way they act, speak or carry themselves and you feel swayed by their conduct (towards them or away from them) more than you would have if you only processed the words or actions themselves.

The short prescription for this illness is to grow up. i.e. take more beatings from more people (on the wiki, at school, among your family) until you grow thicker skin, start to see through people's antics into their motives and strategy and address that instead of worrying about HOW they say things to you.

Finally, I mean you no disrespect, and I only explained this so you know that I do not dislike you or think you are incompetent but feel you are not ready. If you feel any of this is a personal attack, please go ahead and report me to any admin or bureaucrat you like. If you just want me to block myself, that's fine too, just tell me for how long. --Karlos 11:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

.25 fortnights imo -Auron 12:25, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for a much better post than most of your recent posts. (which you thought I wouldn't red, I guess) I know that many users might have thought that my wiki break means a total break, no reading and no posting, but I'm taking a break from contributing and socializing, I'm still going to take part in discussion on everything related to the last few days/weeks until people stop discussing the events.

My temperamental nature might not show up in a wiki environment like it does in real life due to the amount of time needed to write a message versus the time needed to say out something. When writing something I have time to calm down and rewrite stuff which can't be done when communicating in real life. I could still point out many cases where my temperamental nature is clearly visible from my posts.

On the wiki I have also acted a lot like you said, changing my opinnion quickly based on the reasoning of others, giving the illusion that I want to be friends with everyone, although in reality I'm just easily convinced and I've felt that as a sysop I need to serve the whole wiki community, not just myself. I am able to agree with users that I don't personally like as long as they provide good reasons, but I know I'm too easy to convince most of the time. I guess this ease of affecting my opinnions is what causes you to draw the conclusion that I'm saying what I say because I want to be friends with everyone, while in reality I'm always saying what I think at that exact point of the time.

And I'm not asking anyone to ban anyone here unles I think that it would benefit the wiki. Banning a good contributor in the middle of interesting discussion would be plain stupid. I felt insulted due to a few of your comments and you didn't stop when I said about it the first time, but it's ok. I know you didn't mean to insult anyone. :) -- (gem / talk) 19:56, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Your comment above

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that "...others have caused me to doubt people I held in high regard for a very long time as well as form negative opinions of people I mostly liked" is at least partially in reference to me. I've always valued your insight, and so if I've done anything you disagree with, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know. —Tanaric 22:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather not discuss it here. This is not GuildWiki and I've learned that the hard way. I can't really get into casual open discussions with you about anyone including yourself without someone pointing the NPA gun at me. I've been painted as a loose cannon and villain and I am intelligent enough to recognize that any indulgence of criticism in the name of free-speech on my part will only place me in more trouble at this time. So, another time perhaps. --Karlos 09:33, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I can understand that. If you're willing, toss me an email or leave me a message on my GuildWiki talk page. Be a shame to lose a decent relationship because of a serious of ridiculous over-reactions by everybody involved. —Tanaric 20:15, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

eles in EotN

i agree with you, i was expecting more obscenely over-powered fire magic skills =P - Skakid9090 00:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing innovative, nothing new, other than the e-storage damage spell. Everything else is zzzzz. --Karlos 19:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Creature stuff

Can you take a look over the latest incarnation of Guild Wars Wiki:Projects/Creature traits and let me know your current thoughts about its structure? My general understanding/guessing at your stance is something like:

• Okay with the first 5 columns (name, type, affiliation, profession, boss) as traits of each creature.
• Prefer "fleshy" and "double damage from holy" to be traits attached to a type/species/family, with some individual creatures named as anomalies.
• Probably don't like some of the grouping names I picked.

Anything way off or missing? I'm not sure which parts of User:Karlos/Species you are still strongly for, given the various new info we have now. --Rezyk 20:08, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Since you mentioned my name

"It's one thing to do like Biro and Dirigible and pretend nothing is happening..."

Being that this is mostly about you, I'm posting here and not on Tanaric's page. I certainly did see that something was happening, Karlos, but it was something that I really didn't want to get involved with since I strongly disagree with how you are taking on this issue.

In all honesty, I don't find your posts on Tanaric's page regarding Skuld's block to be in good faith. In your first message in that thread you wrote "I believe the right thing to do while a block is challenged is to remove it till it's proven legitimate", then once he did so you were bothered that Tanaric "unblocked him in such an arbitrary manner". Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess. Then, on his page you're challenging the block, yet on Skuld's talk page you admit that he had it coming. What's going on? If you know why Skuld was blocked, if Xeeron knows it, if Lemming knows it, if Auron knows it, if Chronicinability knows it, if Skuld knows it, then why in the world would you be making such a fuss about it? And then, of course, you're offended on Skuld's behalf by the tone of that block message, even though you know very well that him and Tanaric are very close. Just in case I'm ever blocked with such a message from an admin on this wiki: please don't come to my rescue; if I'm offended by it then I'll complain about it myself. If you want admins to always give a fully written out reason in the block summary, bring it up either at the talk page of the adminship policy or the blocking policy, but please don't try to start a personal war about it on anyone's talk page, I really don't think that's the best way to go about dealing with these issues.

I also don't agree with this method of discussion which consists of demonizing other editors in such an uncivil way. You're bringing up that year-old GuildWiki issue between you and Rezyk after he said he disagrees with your take on the block issue? Come on, Karlos, that was way out of line and uncalled for and just not cool. Why are you trying to pick a fight with people that don't want to fight with you? Tanaric, Rezyk, Gares, Gordon, etc, these people aren't your enemies, Karlos, they don't want to be your enemies. Why are you antagonizing them and bullying them and insisting on making it so personal that they're forced to react? A little less hostility and a little more cordiality would go a long way.

Bottom line is that I really like you, be it on GuildWiki, GuildWarsWiki and in-game, and to a certain degree even look up to you in all these settings. You also know that I have neither grudges nor unburied hatchets with you, I have neither reason nor wish to slight you or say unfair things about you. I'm writing this message in good faith and because I'm genuinely not happy to see this happening. I really like the Karlos from W/E Starburster, the guild policy talk page and the species discussions, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of that instead of more of this. I realize that what I want isn't really worth a damn; I'm just mentioning it so you have an idea of who some of us keep hoping to find in every edit you make in this wiki.

Cheers. --Dirigible 08:33, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Since you're in a candid mood, and more importantly, in a mood to actually provide commentary and not just observe in silence. I would like you to complete this circle with feedback on three things: my reconfirmation process, the whole "GWW:USER gate" as well as explain to me how Rezyk bringing up the sarcastic comments about "antiestablishmentriansim" and "people thinking he's bringing policies from other wikies to this wiki" are NOT aimed at me. They were unprovoked and obvious cheap-shots. He chose to reference these past disputes between us out of the blue. I don't get how you can read them any other way, but I'd like to get your input on those three issues, then I'll give you my input. Knowing how you feel about those issues would fill in some blanks that I can't figure out at this point. --Karlos 12:40, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Even if they are "obvious cheap shots", is it impossible for you to not lower yourself to the same level? Experience has shown me that you certainly know to an extent what you're talking about, even if we disagree at times, but it frustrates me how often discussions seem to suddenly turn into squabbles between individuals rather than an actual attempt to reach consensus on an issue. The best response to such attacks is no response, in the light of what's good for the wiki, is it not? (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 14:23, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Never, ever, tell a regular user to take the higher ground vs a Bureaucrat. That's just wrong. It's like telling a citizen who was subject to abuse of power by a government official that he should take the higher ground. It allows the corruption to seep in and continue. It's his position combined with his attitude that makes it impossible for me to ignore it. It's the fact that he got in on the conversation to make say this approach won't work and that he won't get muddled in it, I ask him if he wants me to step out of it so that he can process it, and he makes snide and cynical remarks at our past differences. I find that extremely troubling as a user. So, he's holding a grudge? He's not going to take proper steps in how many other instances because of that grudge?

I always hold authority to very high standards and questioning authority is my bread and butter even in real life. You've been witness to my discussions with Andrew Patrick about the Scribe and ZoS and with Gaile about ANet's support. If I feel the guys in charge are doing something incorrect/invalid, I'll make sure I let them know about and in no uncertain words. I'd rather keep this focused on Dirigble's thoughts, so if you add more thoughts to this, I might not respond to them till I hear more of what he has to say first. Thanks. --Karlos 21:47, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

The thing is, I see this pattern come up in conversations that you enter even when it's not with someone in positions of authority - you seem to take things extremely personally, even when it's not necessarily warranted. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:01, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Dirigible, if you're up to try mediating (not arbitrating) a better understanding between myself and Karlos here, I would be much obliged. Feel free to ask me about my meaning/motives for whatever. This would be non-committal as far as I am concerned (i.e. you anyone can step out of it at anytime). I would have much more hope with that than Karlos and I trying to resolve this directly. If not, I'll understand. --Rezyk 22:21, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

If you don't mind I'll be observing in silence for a while longer. Pretend I didn't write this. LordBiro 18:53, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

This means, I guess, that I'm one of those "people who do not think it is cool to associate themselves with me at this time so they have stepped away". Alright. Even though a part of me thinks that answering openly like this is exactly what I shouldn't be doing, here are your answers:

• Regarding your reconfirmation... not sure what you expect me to say about that. During the first bureaucrat election here on the wiki, before nominating Aberrant I strongly considered nominating you. The reason I didn't was because back then you were relatively inactive on the wiki, which was understandable, I figured you'd simply lost interest in this place; I felt that although the idea of making Karlos the Bureaucrat a reality was mighty appealing, a more active user in that role would be more appropriate. Then happened the whole civil disobedience issue and the following fallout from that, so even though I was very disappointed that the community didn't trust you in the role of an admin anymore, I can't say I was really surprised. It was obvious that what you expected from admins wasn't the same as what the rest of the community did. Even though it was the complete opposite of what I'd have liked to see happen, it was still the right thing, from a community-comes-first perspective.

• Regarding the GWW:USER issue, a.k.a. civil disobedience... hmm, I guess you could say that I felt offended at a personal level by that whole story. As one of many others who've worked hard to get changes to happen on this site, who've worked hard on trying to get policies and guidelines to be sensible and healthy for the wiki, who spent hours writing some of the posts on the Guilds policy trying to convince you and others who were stubbornly against them that guild articles wouldn't be the end of the world, I found it offensive that you of all people would choose to ignore policy to change policy. Until GWW:GUILDS was complete we deleted all guild pages on sight. Until the builds policy is finished, we're also deleting builds on sight. And we're certainly not having revert wars to pick which of the three revert policies we want to use here. On Auron's talk page you once wrote "Just so you understand, undermining and breaking policy to joke or make a point is an offense punishable by banning". What happened to that? What changed in these last seven months?

• Regarding what Rezyk said: well, I think the easiest way to figure out what he meant is to ask him what he meant. He's suggesting someone to mediate between you and him, asking if I will do that. I will, but only if you agree with that as well, despite these last two posts by me here. If you don't, I won't take it personally at all, we can find someone else to help out. We can ask Biro if he wishes to do so, we can ask Barek, we can ask someone else who you believe will be impartial and act fairly. What do you think?

Cheers, --Dirigible 23:28, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Finally have the time to give this due concern. I'm going to explain my feelings about the whole wiki and certain developments and hopefully, if nothing else, you can see where I am coming from and why it's based in concern for this wiki, not some angry tantrum. However, not all of the issues can be addressed or fixed. A LOT of things will be mentioned and some people will be referenced in ways that are not too flattering, I do not mean to insult anyone, but I also do not beat around the bush. I feel that I can't affect change in this wiki anymore, hence my pessimistic tone, but the best I can hope for right now is to open people's eyes and hope that somewhere along the line remnants of what I am warning about will stick in someone's head long enough to maybe cause them to affect a change one day.

The culture

From day one, I have felt there is (what was then a subculture, but is now a culture) of people who dislike GuildWiki (or the way things were done on Guildwiki) and were on here early enough dictating, calling shots and drawing policies in a way to make this wiki NOT like GuildWiki and not because GuildWiki's way was not good or not successful. (And yes, Rezyk is primary among them.)

A side-effect of that is you can see the popularity of GuildWiki declining on this wiki. In this small thread you can see that not ONE of the "big guns" who got in to "untangle" the parties said the obvious (which is, in my mind: "We owe a LOT to GuildWiki") instead, note how Aiiane steps in like "big sister" and scolds "both sides" for being immature and Xeeron jokingly joins afterwards as if the side that says GuildWiki was somehow partaking in something childish, when all they said was that Eloc was out of line, which he was. Tanaric made a veiled attempt at siding with GuildWiki and the other two admins pretended to be impartial in a childish interaction. I would have thought the one thing that needed to be said was that we owe a lot to GuildWiki and that we should always look at them as a model to build upon, even if we differ, not a rival to shut down/have exclusive content from. I have no doubt that maybe ANet would like to see this site kick GuildWiki's butt in terms of content and viewers, but those who were there all along should have known and said better. But this issues ties with the bigger issue of the popularity contests.

The popularity contests

I believe the process of selecting admins and bureaucrats on this wiki is disasterous, to say the least. I understand the need for transparency and so forth as well as Mike O'Brien's desire for not having immortal Bureaucrats who rule for life, however the current system is very unhealthy.

I first noticed this when Tanaric's reconfirmation for Bureaucrat came up. You could see the ripple-effect of this election all over the wiki. It has, in my opinion, radically changed the view of many people on how they should act on the wiki and what they should or should not say. Tanaric was doing Okay until I had the idea of nominating that other guy who ended up beating him. I always thought I should have waited to pit you against Rezyk, but in retrospect, I don't think Tanaric losing his seat is that big of a deal now, at least Rezyk does what he believes is right all the time, albeit in sometimes nefarious ways.

I even asked on Tanaric's election page... Why was he not getting enough votes and even oppose votes. Not much was said in response, but the unwritten answer was clear (and you could see Tanaric's actions and words and views change drastically before and after that election)... The assumption was, Tanaric lost probably for taking unpopular stands and for being too fond of the old wiki. He was less known than you because he contributed less (that gave him less total votes)... But he garnered "oppose" votes because of his unpopular views/stands. This is my interpretation, I am sure there will be much made of this.

I could see the ripple effect from that moment on. There was a "popular" crowd (Bex, Pepe, Aiiane, ..., appologies for forgetting anyone who should be here) who influenced the votes and views of others (wittingly or not) and if you wanted to be an admin/bureaucrat on this wiki, you had better make sure you're okay with them. This was the actual effect (and I even commented on that as my last comment on that talk page). Newer users who had the 100 edits but did not know Tanaric from Vizier Khilbron would be highly influenced by votes from the users that were popular (for different reasons, lots of edits, cool user page, made a nifty wiki tool, is cute and cuddley on talk pages, ...). The most obvious example of this is the election of Lemming64. A VERY nice guy, but (in my opinion) a big time waffle maker. He has been unable to make/take decisive positions on any matter, always waffling and being not sure if he can/should make/take any position. An incredibly bad quality in an admin because it will allow for Gem-like actions. i.e. When he's forced/expected to take actions he will not use proper reasoning all the time but cave-in to the pressure of expectations.

You could also see that, because it's a popularity contest, you could not really vote your opinion honestly. In my own reconfirmation, I am 100% certain that Gares' and Gem's votes were "retailliatory" votes for my votes on their reconfirmation. Just a ridiculously bad culture. I was the first one to open everyone's eyes to Gem's flaws as an admin. He was winning the popularity contest until I stepped in and said God's honest truth, and THEN the silent brothers (you and Biro) chose to speak up and then Gem decided to withdraw (he could have stayed in the process and got reconfirmed anyway, but he's a nice guy). One person on the wiki told me in game that my honest votes will cost me my adminship, and he was partially right (I think there was more to it than that, but that was a factor).

This system is extremely corrupt. Bureaucrats (and admins, whether some believe it or not) do a LOT to shape a wiki and it's a shame that this is the way they are chosen. I am not trying to solve that issue, right now, however, I am noting this very negative thing I see, since you wonder why my outlook is so negative.

The silence of the lambs

During my reconfirmation process, the one thing that frustrated me the most, was the rewriting of who I am and what it is I stood for. I am partially to blame for this as I was perhaps not active enough here and because of the GWW:USER stand which allowed some who don't know me (or don't like me) to paint me as this rogue operative who thinks of himself as above the law. What I found most frustrating was the silence of people like you, Biro, Barek and others. People who knew me, people who knew the demonization being done by Erasculio and the public lynching was unfair and uncalled for and said nothing. Let me ask you this: why didn't you bring up "W/E Starburster" there? I was being painted before those who did NOT know me in THIS wiki as this bad guy by Erasculio and (to a lesser extent) Aiiane (two people who don't really know me, but were making absolute judgements about me) and those who DID know me said NOTHING.

I do not begrudge Xeeron his opposition to my views because he always held those views. Even when he was in charge of the Build section (figuratively) he believed in powerless admins to a fault. I believe the death of the builds section on GWiki was a direct result of him never accepting more power, but that's for another talk page. On the flip side, I found Tanaric's vote (after his behavior had been neutered by the bureaucrat elections) a rather comical one.

Winning or losing the reconfirmation was not the issue, it's that I had to stand there and explain that I do provide useful insight, that I do have a different perspective, that I do stand for solid ideals useful to a wiki and seem like this highly delusional guy who thinks too highly of himself when there were those who KNEW what I was talking about and refused to even chip in saying... "You know what guys, this guy did a bunch of great things some of them in effect even now." It's that I had to stand there and point out the obvious (that admins DO hold sway and power whether they like it or not) while a couple of people preferred to live in denial. It's that I had to bring up the issue of the mailing list to put those people on the spot instead of others speaking up that this Utopia of "senior janitors" doesn't really exist in reality.

Tanaric

I have had a major crisis of faith with regards to Tanaric as you can see above. I feel he's trying to get accepted by the "hip" crowd of this wiki now and as such is trying to distance himself from the not-so-hip people that may have cost him his bureaucrat seat. Even in terms of views, I don't think he provides as much leadership as he used to. He seldom "startS" any change in this wiki these days.

I felt his statement that admins were just glorified janitors on this wiki to be completely false. He knew better and I knew better. He may have been trying to tell me what others think that admins OUGHT to be, but it would seem to me that he made a statement he does not believe is true in support of a view that he does not even think is realistic. He gave credibility to a view that he himself does not find very credible.

The incident with Skuld was to call him out on that view. What he said to skuld reeked of someone who thinks admins are special in someway. I challenged his reasons to get him to say more on tape. It's not in bad faith, it's to challenge an ideal that he defended and then violated himself. It's like when the ACLU opposes the government's right to hold military tribunals for 9/11 suspects. It's not that the ACLU thinks those guys are innocent, they are challenging the process. I never said Skuld was innocent. I wanted him to explain his opinions on admins that he made on Skuld's talk page some more. Unfortunately, he chose to just roll back the block and then pretend he was joking.

Rezyk

My issues with Rezyk are between me and him. We can try and work them out at a later time perhaps, but I don't think here in this talk page with all the other people who will be complaining about every other sentence I said is a good place and time to do it.

However, for the purposes of your remarks, I feel he brought up the earlier differences with anti-establishmentarian remark and the other wikis remark and I think you should ask him why he made them when he made them if you want to know his motives. I'd be curious to see his explanation as well. Granted, I will be less open-minded to them than you.

Misc.

• The incident with Gordon was a misunderstanding in terms of how he phrased something and how I read it, but the bigger issue of allowing a Dev to answer a question is very pertinent and I think applies to all. I think if a user asks a dev a question on this wiki, that others who chip in should try and answer the question if they can, not try (wittingly or not) to show the question does not have merit. Let the Dev decide that. We're not enforcers and pimps for ANet's staff. If someone asks "Why are Grawl shorter than Charr" give them an answer or let the Dev answer/ignore them if they like, don't post "Don't waste the Dev's time with such questions" you're not their agent. This is not what Gordon did, but this is the general principle I was trying to communicate to him.
• The issue with Gares is pretty lame. I wish he would have come out and discussed things openly. And yes I still believe there was much more there than he said. Maybe I'm delusional and just picking fights with random people.
• On GWW:USER, I think I have made my position known but in case it was missed. I never broke the policy, I never deliberately made my page longer than it should be. I found it ridiculous that people were trying to enforce it to centimeters and I decided not to do that for them. There is a BIG difference between GWW:USER and GWW:NPA. What those guys in W/E Starburster is not what I did with my user page. I still believe I was right, I still believe the policy was (and still is, I believe) atrocious and I find it lame, incredibly lame, that no one was able to get common sense to prevail in all those many "iterations" and "sessions" of hardwork you and those 1000 other people who worked on this policy put in. See: USA Patriot Act for more details. It is entirely possible for a full legislative body to miss the boat and it's okay for someone to tell them that and a little civil disobedience on the side to bring attention to the issue is okay in my book. This is not the same as W/E Starburster in my book.

In the end

I know I have probably made more people angry with my responses. I appreciate your insight (Dirigible) on these matters. The issues of the popularity contest and the culture in the wiki are of great concern to me. They are killing my appetite to contribute. There are days I avoid looking at the wiki altogether so I don't get provoked by a talk page into ranting about these issues. I find it very hard to sit there and do nothing, and I feel I have been defeated (not in terms of adminship, but long before that). I feel there is no way for the common sense, average user view to be presented to the shakers and movers in power in the wiki right now and I feel there is a natural tendency right now for people to be hostile to ideas and proposals I make. Finally, it is true that there are other things going on in my life making me more on edge than usual. But you know me from all those Urgoz/DoA runs and you know I never hold grudges and even if I do get animated on TS I try to listen and teach as best I can. :)

--Karlos 19:22, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

To address the two points where my name was mentioned; my greatest regret from GuildWiki was arguing so strongly for Gem's promotion and losing my temper with Tanaric when he decided that Gem was not fit to be an admin. I regret this because Gem wasn't ready to be an admin. I have had concerns regarding Gem's ability to carry out his role as an admin since he was promoted, and I've discussed it on various occasions with those users that I am friends with. The fact that you voted neutral on Gem's RfA had no affect on my decision.

On the second point, regarding your own RfA, I stayed silent because I decided that you had enough oppose votes. LordBiro 21:08, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Care to explain why you would have voted oppose? --Karlos 23:23, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Do you feel that we'd need major changes directly in the RFA and election policies to adequately address the "popularity contest" issue? Or that it can still be reasonably "fixed" within the existing system (maybe with minor policy changes and/or natural counterculture)? --Rezyk 00:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I would be interested in hearing about changes that can improve our GWW:ELECT as well. It would've been much more helpful to have voiced them out either during its formulation or during the first review we've had of it in the talk page there. I'm not sure how much difference there is between the RfA here and the RfA on GuildWiki, except that bureaucrats are not given a veto power to either promote or demote sysops (isn't that a good thing?). -- ab.er.rant 01:48, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

While I don't really disagree with the "popularity contest" claim I don't agree with it either. I was very disappointed with the number of oppose votes Tanaric received. That said I think Dirigible is an excellent bureaucrat, so I don't think the community made a bad decision there. In the last election Tanaric received very few oppose votes, and I think the election was a lot fairer. Basically what I'm trying to say is that we've only had 2 elections and neither of them have produced particularly controversial results.

Regarding RfAs in general, there is an element of popularity contest there, but remember that bureaucrats can use their discretion if they think some people are voting for the wrong reasons. Compare the GWW system to the GuildWiki system; GuildWiki also has a "popularity contest" style RfA, except that a sysop term there is for life and the responsibility of a sysop on GuildWiki is greater than that of a sysop on GWW.

I don't think we need to go altering our election or RfA procedures just yet. LordBiro 06:44, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Rezyk, to answer your questions, I am not the best one to ask right now. My view is negative and tilted towards doom and gloom. I know the corruption is there and I see its effects. However, I am too frustrated right now to contribute in any meaningful manner. I am trying to minimize my interaction on talk pages and policy pages because on the one hand I am frustrated with the dominant view and on the other hand, my increased frustration is translating into tangible anger in my posts which does not help my cuase nor does it help things get resolved in any meaningful way.

So, this is the end for now. Not closure really, but I'll stop discussing my ideas for now because I don't think my discussing them at this time helps the wiki. If you feel that this is a problem as I do, feel free to work on solutions from your end.

To everyone else, those are my views up there on this whole mess. Please excuse me if I do not partake in serious wiki/policy debates for a time. I might stop using this wiki altogether, I am not sure. I am trying to not take any decisions right now. --Karlos 23:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Just thought I'd mention, Erasculio's pretty much the poster face for fanboyism over at the unoffical GW site forums (Incgamers, formerly GWonline). He faithfully and blindly defends any single ANet decision or Gaile posting, and I know a handful of posters who have ceased participation on said forums as a result of the frustration from having to deal with blatant fanboyism. Hardly any intelligent conversation to be had there. I don't know you personally either, but I contribute on a small scale over at GWWiki, so I know of you, and at least I can see you're impartial when it matters. Hope the whole situation's been cleared up. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:218.186.12.11 .

Let's not start this sort of discussion. -- ab.er.rant 03:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Your comment on Skuld's page

I wish you'd have given me the reason you thought my block was unjustified on my own talk page when you made the challenge instead of posting it on Skuld's page much later. My statement to Skuld only meant that, for example, he could have said "shut up" to me on my talk page with no penalty, because we're moderately close by wiki standards and I'd have known he was joking. To contrast, Skuld and Lemming aren't particularly close, they have no established rapport or history, and such a comment was surely inappropriate to him.

I'm a little hurt at all your insinuations/accusations lately. I'm beginning to think you've lost it -- and that's not a personal attack, merely a probing question by somebody who considers himself a friend. I once again request that, if I've done something to justify your recent apparent personal crusade against me, that you tell me about it, either here or off-wiki.

—Tanaric 08:09, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've laid out the case up there, we can continue the discussion here, but my thoughts on why I feel you're not doing a good job as you used to are up there. --Karlos 19:23, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for responding, I'm glad we're getting this out in the open. Point by point:

the GuildWiki vs. Official Wiki

I like the GuildWiki. I like the Official Wiki. I side with neither and I participate with both. Recently, this place has been considerably more interesting, and thus my level of contribution at the GuildWiki has fallen -- not that it was that high before. I agree with you about using GuildWiki as a model. However, I saw no point in saying so to Eloc in that thread of conversation. I haven't the highest opinion of that particular editor and I'm not sure he can learn.

The bureaucrats

I believe Rezyk is the strongest bureaucrat we have -- certainly better than I was, at the very least. If he is guilty of trying to make this place unlike the GuildWiki for no good reason, I am equally so.

I do not believe I have drastically changed before and after that election. I have been deliberately more hands-off than I ever was at the GuildWiki since I blew up at Gem about images in signatures. I realized what you realize -- that, regardless of how baseless my opinion might be, my voice carried disproportionate weight in discussions. I decided that the easiest way to avoid abusing that weight was to opt out of discussions that weren't going horribly awry. In the process, I missed the user page discussion nearly completely. Sorry about that.

Finally, I happy with the results of both bureaucrat elections. I've never stated a desire to be a bureaucrat on this wiki, except perhaps for one light-hearted comment about being "tired of gruntwork" on Dirigible's IP's talk page. I removed myself from the position as soon as my self-appointed grandfather term ended. I put myself forward in the first election was because 1) I was the incumbent and 2) I honestly didn't think anyone else would run. I'm quite glad I was wrong. Dirigible earned the seat fairly and I think he's at least as good at the job as I am. It was Rezyk who nominated me for the second election -- I did not intend to run that time around, and did not expect a nomination, least of all from him.

Though initially I expressed to Biro (privately) that I would resign from the election if I somehow beat him, I realized afterward that this was not true. I've pushed for a system in which the community chooses who sits on ArbComm. It's not my responsibility (at least, not on this wiki) to second-guess the community -- if they desired me for the position, I will perform to the best of my ability. That remains true -- if I'm nominated and chosen to replace Rezyk in the next election, or Dirigible in the fourth, or on GW2 wiki years from now, I will serve as the community desires.

While it's an honor to be chosen to serve in such a position, I have never had any sort of lust for position, title, or authority. I've tried to make that clear while editing here (and on the GuildWiki!).

Re: Gem

You were not the first to open everyone's eyes to Gem's flaws. I believe I campaigned pretty heavily against him becoming admin at all -- the community on the GuildWiki revolted because I was ignoring their adminship process. I don't often capitulate in situations like that, but I did, and I appointed him. You can see the result.

(To outsiders, that last paragraph is relevant because I appointed him on the GuildWiki just before sysops were grandfathered over here.)

Beyond that, I've had conversations with both Biro and Auron about Gem's failings as early as March. I think I spoke with Gares and Fyren too. As I often do when I'm not sure about a course of action, I watched and waited. By the time Gem's reconfirmation came up here, I had seen no improvement in the characteristics I was unhappy with, and so opposed his reconfirmation.

Your sysop status

I oppose you as a sysop here because I (and many others) want this sysop role to be mostly janitorial. The position adds nothing to your wiki ability and you add nothing to the role we're trying to shape. It's got absolutely nothing to do with 1) my bureaucrat ambitions, because I have none, 2) my sysop ambitions, because I have none, or 3) my dislike for you, because I have none!

Re: Tanaric

I don't care if Bex, Aiiane, or Pepe like me. Right now, I believe some of those people do -- I've grown quite fond of Aiiane, and I intend to converse with Bex to get to know her, because I'm having trouble reading her over wiki (as I noted on her talk page). I think Pepe probably dislikes me slightly. I certainly don't intend to change myself to please them. Further, and probably more importantly, I don't care if Biro, Auron, Skuld, or Karlos like me either. I have and will continue to have opinions that all of them disagree with, and, when I feel they're worth expressing or defending, I expect a certain amount of conflict there.

I believe you have entirely misinterpreted my block of Skuld, and I don't know what more I can say about that.

I agree that I seldom start any change. I do not want that sort of role here.

If I've missed anything you desired a response to, please point it out. As you well know, I tend to forget to reply to everything with conversations this broad. Glad we're discussing things again. :)

—Tanaric 01:20, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Since it looks like you are asking for comments, I'll add my 2 words about those parts of your post that concern me. My joke on the gww vs gw debate might have been a bit tasteless, but honestly I could not help it. The discussion was so absurd that I didnt see any other possible response.

Something more important: My own view of guildwiki. I left there for a reason and that reason is still valid. I feel the top leadership of guildwiki was very intransparent and in the case of Gravewit, incompetent due to inactivity. My leaving a wiki I liked a lot was due to those reasons. When this wiki started I hoped for a fresh slate and mostly this wiki has evolved in a (in my mind) much better direction. That doesn't take away either the great work down in establishing a wiki for GW in the first place or the many great editors who still work there (Fyren comes to mind first as someone I always looked up who is still active over there), however, if I have to choose, there is no doubt that I prefer gww to gw.

I dont think I need to say lots about my vote on your RFA, my view of how sysops should act is very different from how they used to act on guildwiki and I feel that you would help this wiki (how I prefer it to be) much more as an outspoken editor than as an sysop. This is not at all personal, but our opinions on what sysops should do differ a lot. --Xeeron 10:04, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Xeeron, I was not asking for comments. Tanaric is trying to discuss my thoughts on him with me, it would be nice if you stay out of it. I already know your views, and as I said above I hold no grudge towards you and understand you quite perfectly. --Karlos 23:40, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Tanaric, I have no nice way to say this, so I'll say it to you very bluntly... Your response reads, quite shamelessly, like a rosy political speech by Barak Obama. "Rezyk is our best bureaucrat! I was the first to oppose Gem (yet vote in support of him)! I haven't started things, but that's not my role! We are in favor of more Janitorial style of adminship!"

Just empty slogans and shameless self-advertisement. If I felt one sentence of that response was directed at me, I would have replied to it, but it's meant for the eyes of others. I hope they read it, and are pleased with you. Maybe one day you and I will talk about this, openly and frankly, from both sides, but I will not let you set your political campaign headquarters in my talk page, so, you will have to excuse me. --Karlos 23:40, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

You are fighting with ghosts. I hope nothing has happened in your personal life that is causing you to act this way here. Let me know if you snap out of it. —Tanaric 19:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Karlos the Ungrateful

I lol'd. Much better than Felix the Charr. This will definitely be my next Brand the Boss entry. srsly --Ravious 15:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Too many screenshots?

Lol, just saw the "your screenshot folder is full" message in Image:User Karlos EDA Bug2.jpg. Incredible. Don't you ever clean your screenshots folder? :P The most I've had sitting there was about 300+ -- ab.er.rant 11:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Look at my talk page... What do you expect? :)

Seriously though. I have TONS of screenshots I took in hopes of documenting certain things, pictures of monsters and so forth that I have never sorted through. Especially at the release of each campaign, I'd screen shot everything that is worth noting and then go back and sift through it later. My policy though is that if I'm in doubt whether something is on the wiki or not, I'd leave it there for now. Also, if a screen shot requires a lot of work (like I'd have to create an article and a couple of categories and so forth) I might leave it for later.

In addition, I have close to 300 trophy screen shots. First time killing Glint, the Dragon Lich, Maw the Mountainheart, first time in 15k armor :) Fond memories I like to keep. Those two new ones were for naught though, I forgot how the skill works. :( --Karlos 11:12, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

And you leave them as as sequentially numbered images? :) I take them out and rename it and organise them :P I can't bear to leave them as numbers, heh. -- ab.er.rant 13:55, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I have countless GW images. So, the Screenshots folder only has the "unprocessed" ones or the trophy ones (the ones I want as whole). It's amazing to see my Whammo's build back in June of 2005. :) Now, my GW images folder has about 900+ images. Those are the images I cropped and named for the wiki(s). Anything I ever uploaded to either wiki is there and stays there in case it's ever needed again.

My screenshot folder has about 990 images and yes, most of them need to go. :) I am not sure how I got it to 990 images this time around. After Nightfall's release, I took many images of boss skill boxes as I was capping them, but I cleaned all of that out and put the info on GWiki. So, no idea what I've been doing with my PrntScrn button. :) --Karlos 22:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Alkar's Alchemical Acid

Hi. Seems you're one of the first to unlock this skill. Could you please describe the skill icon so we can upload it? Chriskang 18:56, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by "describe it so we can upload it" but here's the skill icon:

File:Alkar skill.jpg

--Karlos 20:55, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

User page

I guess you'll have noticed yourself, but I thought I'd put a link here http://wiki.guildwars.com/index.php?title=Guild_Wars_Wiki:User_page&curid=468&diff=339360&oldid=227719 =) --Xeeron 09:39, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. You know what you have to do now. I wasn't the one who defaced the page and I won't be the one to restore it. --Karlos 15:02, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

No need, I already did. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 15:04, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Effective Monk Guide

I'm working on My own guide, If possible, I'd love some feedback on what I have so far. Thank you.--Zakek xek 00:39, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikia move

Today I found the time to read up on the wikia move of guildwiki. I never trusted Gravewit and I find my worst suspicions come true. We two have had our fair share of arguements on this wiki and the other, but one thing I never doubted is your honest will to make the wiki a better place for its users and out of purely altruistic reasons.

Gravewit and Wikia have one basic strategy: They keep still, not responding, not engaging in discussions with the community. They hope to ride it out and cash in (well Wikia, Grawevit already did) once the storm has gone away and unaware and forgetful users and contributers provide them with flowing ad revenues. I truely hope that you go through with taking action against him. These kind of people get away with scamming all their contributers because noone cares enough to act. --Xeeron 12:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, there are a few options on the table. A lawsuit (even in small claims court) is a pain and likely the last solution. Dirigible and Xeon have been contacting gil (as I have) and I have contacted CreativeCommons with questions, hoping to shed some more light on the whole non-commercial clause. I think input from CC would go a long way into causing Wikia to act (one way or another). I am hoping to find someone who can take the case for free as I do not have the energy or financial means to do so at this time. However, I plan on fighting as hard as I can. --Karlos 17:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

If there's anything you think I can do to help this ridiculous situation, let me know. I have no solution and no plan, and am ready to simply walk away. —Tanaric 23:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

For the record, reading the open letter you posted on Gravewit's talk page did not help our little problem of trust. You were actually going to be in on it with them basically. I know that it is possible for a non-profit to hire people, but it seems to me you knew he was making money and chose to get in on the money making, rather than expose it.

However, if you are sincere in your offer to help, then the best thing I can think of right now is find us allies. You seem to be more into on-line communities and the like, do you know of any non-profits, notable people who would care about/champion this cause? The more allies the better in this struggle (hence I am ignoring my crisis of faith in you).

The number one objective of mine right now is that Phil does not get away with it. I would be very happy if we stirred enough crap that Wikia backs away from the purchase. But if that does not happen, then I want to find ways to diminish Phil's profit as much as possible. Just out of principle. In terms of GWiki itself, I don't thin much will change between Phil's stewardship and Wikia's. In fact, theirs will probably be better.

I have no personal relationship with Phil. I just feel the need to uphold justice and make him pay for betraying the community's trust. It could be I am misfocusing my efforts and too driven by passion. If others see wiser goals to pursue, then by all means. I just think that Phil has made enough mistakes doing this that he can be nailed for it, and if he is, it would be a very nice win for online communities everywhere. On the flip side, what he did is so cheesy, and so cheap that it will motivate wiki-sysadmins everywhere to exploit their communities likewise. I am sure GCardinal of PvXwiki is watching all of this with great interest. I also believe the legal framework is there to foil such a practice. --Karlos 23:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

My intent (and the business plan I was temporarily involved with) involved spinning GameWikis off into a for-profit site. GuildWiki itself would never, EVER be used for profit, per its license. I was adamant about this, and at the time, so were Nunix and Gravewit. This is one of the reasons why the other GameWikis are under a GFDL license.

Prior to that, there was talk of using a little of the excess money in GuildWiki to hire me to manage the community. This was still supposed to be a non-profit venture.

Yes, I knew GuildWiki pulled in more than it spent every month. I posted this, in response to some of your own concerns that mirrored my own. I told everybody about for-profit plans that had previously been in the works and I mentioned the one-time plan to cut me a paycheck. At this point, I abandoned the notion of a for-profit GameWikis, figuring greed would mess everything up even if I could get things together. I also mentioned that we make more money than we spent shortly afterward.

I don't think I've been anything but transparent. I was, however, a little naive. Once I realized that this money was probably going into Phil's pocket, and that under no circumstances would we ever get financial control of the wiki back, I cut ties with the man. We haven't spoken for about ten months. I also left the wiki in disgust, and briefly noted why.

I came back because I didn't like the state I left the wiki in. I didn't want to see Gem made into a sysop and I didn't want the builds section to stay, but that's not really relevant.

In any case, to actually respond to you, I'm not nearly as in touch with online communities as you give me credit for. I'm only involved here, at the GuildWiki, and at Ormgas, a streaming radio station.

I completely agree with you in terms of justice. At the very least, I'd like to see all investments paid out in the manner you described on his talk page. I'm researching what I can offline, but honestly, I don't see what we can do. As far as I know, the CC license has only once been upheld as enforceable in court (in Holland) and the GFDL has never been upheld in court. Since copyleft licenses are so legally untested, the odds of finding a lawyer who would take our case pro bono, or even for a cut of the final settlement with no up-front fees, seems pretty unlikely. Unless somebody wants to financially back the GuildWiki community legal fund, we're pretty much out of luck.

—Tanaric 01:39, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

If someone is found who would take the case for a small enough amount of money we could hold a donation round and would surely get a nice sum together. I know I'd go for it.

Oh, why do I always spot my name when Tanaric discusses evil things in either wiki? ;P -- (gem / talk) 10:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Lol, you're part of the evil equation I suppose :P -- ab.er.rant 15:04, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Just so you understand, Gem, legal fees are obscenley expensive here in the US. A lawyer charges anywhere from $100-$300 an hour of his time. So, sitting with one to explain the situation in and of itself would cost a lot. I think our best shot is if an organization takes interest in this (like how the ACLU gets most of their legal work done by volunteers who believe in the cause, not by actually paying for it). Alternatively, we could have a lawyer take the case for hope of a part of any financial settlement. I just don't see that there is that much cash in this case to lure a lawyer into doing that. --Karlos 20:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah, indeed. The system in Finland is pretty more friendly with state/city lawyers and private lawyers with no such ridicilou fees. And it is true that there will most likely not be large sums involved in this case, so getting someone with hopes for that is very unlikely. I guess I'll let you guys handle the situation to the best of your abilities and offer my help if asked for. -- (gem / talk) 20:24, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Jibes

Could you please attempt to avoid needlessly antagonizing Erasculio or others by referencing them in discussions which have nothing to do with them as individuals (such as [1])? Making such jibes results in the entire conversation devolving into bickering between individuals which detracts for the original purpose of the discussion and prevents us from reaching any sound conclusions, not to mention clouding peoples' judgment because of their personal animosities. To some extent, such references are violations of GWW:NPA, and they contribute very little to the actual discussion. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 00:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Question: Could you please clarify your capacity here? Are you acting as an Admin giving me warning about a potential violation of policy or as a concerned user giving advice? --Karlos 03:33, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Does it matter? Both should carry the same weight. - BeX 04:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

It matters to me, I would like to know before I can formulate my response. --Karlos 05:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I want to ask the same of you Karlos, it's tiring to see discussions derail into personal wars bordering to personal attacks on both sides. And since you asked, and like I said to Erasculio, I'm not saying this as a warning in my position as a sysop. I'm simply giving an opinion as a tired user. This may change, depending on the behavior of people involved. - anja 05:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm feeling the same way as Anja. It's kinda of sad and frustrating that it's turning out like that. And I'm asking as a fellow wiki(s) user who knows your contributions. -- ab.er.rant 06:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. I did try to intercede a little during the re-affirmation, and I wasn't aware that so much has recently taken place until now. -- ab.er.rant 06:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I want to thank both of you for being fair and even handed and actually taking the time to examine the issues. A word of truth never hurts.

With regards to this issue, I plan to see this through. This is a test of ArbComm and the character of this wiki. I expect to fail and go out in flames. So, as Jon Irenicus says: "The pain will only be passing... You should survive the process." --Karlos 06:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Karlos, in posting here I was posting only as myself, a user. I do my best to make it explicitly clear whenever I am acting in my sysop capacity.

In the same spirit as my original request, could I suggest [2] as worthy of a read? I think it's particular relevant to the current situation, and while I certainly can't force you to agree with it, nor should I try, I think it makes some valid points that you might wish to consider. I respect you as an individual, even if you frustrate me at times or if I may personally think your opinions are misguided. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 20:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

If by disrupt you mean don't stir up anything and try to go unnoticed by the eyes of critics, I don't live by that motto anywhere in my life. I'm a big believer that in the Western part of the world (and in many others) rights are not handed to you. You need to go and get them. Much like the civil rights movements in the US, I believe the dominant culture in the West is that if someone has a problem, they need to speak up or get brushed aside.

I believe this wiki has a problem (a bunch of them really, but most rooted in a central problem of the "in-crowd") and I am trying to fix it. I cannot fix it by "becoming" part of the in-crowd because that would violate the trust of what I am trying to represent (not to mention that, by now, most of them don't like me a whole lot).

I am not guilty of anything in that link you provided. I am NOT playing with policy, I believe I am being personally attacked and I believe my rights on this wiki are not protected. I don't know how much clearer I can make it but I just said it to Aberrant on his take page and to Gem just a few sections below on this very talk page.

I believe the creation of the IRC channel allowing the formation of the in-crowd was the first step in the downfall of this wiki, then the creation of a cast of inept and impotent admins was the second step. Now it is possible that there are people out there who are perfectly fine with this new design. However, I believe awareness needs to be raised on the wiki about what is going on. I am raising awareness by participating in relevant talk pages (like the Community Portal and the No profanity talk pages), not by asking for administrative action. I am disguisted at our class of bureaucrats sitting there and having a laugh with the people who make fun of me on the IRC channel and yet having the guts to PRETEND to be impartial judges and advocates of what's best for the wiki. Just complete and utter bogus. However, I am not trying to make any points. If I was, I would have kept silent, let Biro participate and then produced the screen shot to tell him I knew it was bogus all along. But I am seriously interested in how Xeeron and Dirigible will handle this. I actually still have faith in their powers of reasoning, I simply fear their pragmatism. That they would find it more in the best interest of the status quo to not uphold justice. I honestly do not think either of them fail to see the blatant attacks in Erasculio's style of arguing.

When I ask for administrative action it is because I am dead serious, though. I am defending my person against cheap shots, mockery and harrassment that has gone on a little too long. Is it disruptive to the wiki that I defend myself but not disruptive that this style of treatment is allowed to go on? I tend to believe allowing Erasculio to debate in that style is FAR more disruptive than starting an ArbComm request asking him to stop. Feel free to disagree. --Karlos 20:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi.

Grow up, please. This is a plea more than anything. All of your edits are in bad faith. You are not helping the wiki. I called you a dick based on your poor faith edits and shitty attitude; if you improved those, maybe people wouldn't be calling you a dick or saying "FUCKING KARLOS" in IRC. If everyone is saying the same thing about you, there's a slight possibility that they're right. My suspected violations of NPA are nothing compared to your level of disruption on the wiki - your putting my name on the admin board proves that you're just being petty instead of focusing on what's important to the wiki. Please re-think your purpose on this wiki before continuing to "contribute." -Auron 09:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't take any advice you give me seriously after you've insulted my race and my religion. Sorry. Like I said, if you somehow think I "deserve" these insults and this stream of harrassment, join the line, stand right behind Erasculio and LordBiro. Feel free to line the whole wiki up. I'm seeing this through to the end and like I said, I don't have very high expectations. --Karlos 09:11, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

That's nice. I'm not even going to bother playing word games with you like I do with most people. If you feel genuinely insulted, I respectfully apologize; I didn't know you well enough to make that judgment correctly (the judgment whether or not I can joke around). You probably already know that I knew who you were (on IRC) for hours by now; think about that for a minute. Every comment of mine was made with the knowledge that you would see it. I thought that given the light-hearted discussion that I could make a joke and it would be understood; the little bit of PvE we've done together made me comfortable enough with that. Again, since it matters to you, I will refrain from any such comments in the future.

I guess it's up to you whether or not to ignore me based on one offhand comment, but do you similarly ignore the advice and comments of Cory, Baxter, and everyone else for any particular reason? Does anyone that disagrees with you automatically offend you, so much so that you ignore their comments? It's catch-22, I guess; anyone that thinks you're being petty is automatically ignored for some reason or another. That's the only logic (however twisted) I can employ to understand your reasoning on ignoring everone's stance.

Like I said before, I sincerely apologize for any comments that slighted your race/religion; I'll keep those comments to myself until I learn enough about you to joke. -Auron 09:45, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

My respect

I'm very sad to see you to take part in this all out war on the wiki. I began to hold you in very high respect when I first saw you contirbute to the old GuildWiki back in the days when I was new. That respect kept growing through the months that I spent in the wiki when I followed your intelligent contributions to the wiki and the community and discussions behind it. That respect stayed very high even when you had your problems with Stabber and I was always on your side, although not always as openly as I could have. I still remember that Karlos and I still respect that Karlos. Now it seems like a completely different person with very different views and ideals has hijacked that man. From personal experience I know that some things in the real world might cause so much anger and frustration that you need a channel to let it out. I've done the same more than once, even during my time in the wikis, but I've always tried to channel the anger to places which aren't harmed by it and to places that aren't so important to me. I know you have a gret passion for the game and you are definitely one of the best if not the best PvE player that I know of. I also know your marvelous wiki background and respect what you've done to the community. I also know that you would not want to harm something that is so precious to you, it's clear from your worried messages on Gailes talk page that you really care about all of this. I think you know that the wiki will get over this no matter how it ends just like it has gotten past the Stabber case or any of the other larger problematic situations, but don't you agree that there are better places for channeling the anger and frustration in you? Are you sure you want to cause so much pain in others who have held you in great respect and now are forced to watch how you act in a very contradictionary way. I am not asking you to stop this and I'm not asking you to change who you are. From personal experience I know that it is not possible and you are too strong willed and too deep into this to just back off and stop. But what I am asking is to consider your passion for the game and the community and whether you want to stay in such a respected position that you can still have the same positive influence and keep things in the right direction. If that is what you want, then you shouldn't be burning bridges to every user who feels frustrated because the man they respected is no more, but instead you should concentrate on what you started with and keep it at that, the situation with Skuld and Erasculio. However, if you aren't too conserned about keeping that position and the respect of others, keep doing what makes you feel good and you'll probably get a decent amount of the excess anger and frustration poured into the wiki and you'll feel a lot better afterwards. In either case I will still respect the good old Karlos that I remember and I will remain sad about the fact that we never really got to know each other better outside the wiki. -- (gem / talk) 09:54, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

None of this makes me feel good. I am not enjoying any of this. However, if the arbitration request miraculously does what I ask for and finds an injustice done that might go a long way towards changing my grim view of this wiki and its leadership. Right now I don't feel I belong. Ridiculed, maligned and unappreciated, this sums up my feeling of how this community treats me. Your effort is appreciated, even though you took part in the suicide bombing joke. This is no different, to me, and no less important than the Gravewit battles I fought (and I will turn out to be right, a few years later, unfrotunately). The in-crowd is in control of this wiki, not the community, and they have their standards of hipness, coolness and leetness that must be maintained. Rule of law and general benefit of users be damned. I will fight that and die trying. I am sure there are dozens of people reading this and thinking "Wow, what a drama queen! It can't be THAT bad..." But it is and like the Gravewit issue, it will playout itself in due time. We have a saying in Arabic (yup, suicide bombers have their own language)... "In the end, only that which is correct will turn out to be correct." The truth has an uncanny ability to come back and bite people (and online communities) in the butt. --Karlos 10:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

"Right now I don't feel I belong. Ridiculed, maligned and unappreciated, this sums up my feeling of how this community treats me." I think I understand that. To me it seems like this all started from a chain of bad coincidences, although I can't be sure if there is some sort of logic behind this all instead of a coincidence. Either way I would hate it lead to you or someone else leaving the wiki.

"The in-crowd is in control of this wiki, not the community, and they have their standards of hipness, coolness and leetness that must be maintained. Rule of law and general benefit of users be damned." I have gotten a partially different view of the situation, but give that everyone seems to have a different view from everything nowdays it's not too surprising. It is true that there is a certain group of active users who take part in most discussions and tend to get things done their way. This is how it goes with any wiki that has some very interested and passionate users and a lot of those who don't really care about the back stage stuff. But I do think that many of them are pursuing the best of the community although you seem to think otherwise. Ofcourse our difference in views on this matter might be explained by the difference in parts of the wiki that we follow closely. I would be intereted in discussing this further, but I think it's best left to a later time as we have lots of other stuff going on at the moment.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond and to show that you care about the wiki. That's what matters to me when I think about you. :) -- (gem / talk) 11:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

IRC

This may or may not mean anything to you, but I certainly wasn't trying to make any sort of connection to suicide bombers with my martyr comment. Obviously, being the first person to say anything, I didn't know that Auron was gonna grab the ball and run, let alone where. Honestly, even after Auron's comment, I didn't even recall you being Arab until you mentioned it on the Community Portal talk page, and had to check your userpage to confirm it. Just wanted to let you know that. Take it as you will. - Tanetris 11:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Re:Why I left

Thanks for taking the time of writing all that down. While I may disagree with you on a couple of points and am simply not sure about quite a few others, the fact is that seeing things from the point of view of someone else always helps in keeping track of the big picture. I think disagreements are generally healthy, as they give options, allow for alternatives and create fertile grounds for best-of-both-worlds solutions; it's only when they are seen as battles to be won instead of puzzles to be solved that things get messy. Looking back to this last half-year or so I can recognize that same motivation in many arguments I've had and personal decisions I've made on this wiki, a fact which I regret and due to which I feel I owe apologies to many. Maybe in time I'll get around to saying them all, but this seems like a good opportunity to do the Karlos one: I am sorry for any unfair words I shouldn't have said and silence I shouldn't have held, for any actions that I shouldn't have taken and passivity that I shouldn't have succumbed to that has affected you, regardless of whether I have done so consciously or due to willful ignorance, including those cases when I simply should have known better.

As for the wiki's future, the GuildWars wiki community you and others created was split in two fragments, and Gravewit made sure to send one of them the way of the dodo. The GWW is going through a difficult period right now as well, the wiki equivalent of reaching puberty early; seeing changes we can't quite explain, having conflicting feelings, being in a state of perpetual confusion and irritability. Maybe we tried to make it grow too fast; most of us here had considerable experience in our respective different backgrounds in online communities, and too many decisions were probably made based on personal ideologies and mental baggage we had brought with us, instead of something that would be appropriate for this community; it may very well be that this general tension that we are seeing now is one of the first few symptoms of those poor decisions. It will probably take a while for this community to realign itself until it finds its identity, which I'm getting the impression isn't the one we've assumed it was so far, but may very well not be similar to GuildWiki either. Here's to hoping that goes well.

Here's also to hoping that whatever real life problems you've been having end well for you; despite what anyone may think (including myself for the few hours after that time you scolded me on TS for resurrecting the hero on the wrong side of Mallyx's gate), you're a great guy, and you deserve nothing but the best. Hope to talk to you again soon, either here, in-game or maybe even (why not) in some other game or wiki. Cheers, Karlos. --Dirigible 02:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Farewell

No long text from me. Just wanted to let you know, in my mind, the wiki is losing a most valuable contributer. --Xeeron 09:49, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks and goodbye

I am deeply saddened by your departure; despite disagreeing with you on numerous occasions recently your previous deeds have certainly not been erased from my mind. I have always admired the fact that you argue for what you believe is right, even if I don't always agree with what you think is right, and even if I don't always like the way that you argue.

I hope that at some point in the future you will be able to return to the wiki and think "well at least they fixed that". LordBiro 16:40, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Farewell, old friend.

I know we haven't acted as friends for quite some time, and that bothers me. Nevertheless, that's how I still think of you, and I wish you the best. If you're ever in Minnesota, shoot me an email and I'll buy you a beer.

—Tanaric 19:23, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Lamees Screenshot

Can you tell me what Paragon skill you used for the screenshot of Lamees on GuildWiki, as I plan to do something like that and don't fancy the idea of messing around with Paragon skills for hours. If you want to keep you idea exclusive I uderstand that as well. Lyra Valo 10:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

It is a skill of the "Chant" subclass. Try something starting with "Anthem of". — Skuld 10:56, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Noticed your other post – I think Anthem of Flame causes levitation. — Skuld 10:57, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Keke, i'll check it out. Lyra Valo 13:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmmmm.....

What would it take to give you back the wiki- & gw fun? --Silverleaf 22:40, 26 July 2008 (UTC)