GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting

When to Link
I've noticed a lot of irregularity of when people are linking within articles to other articles and when they are not. The style suggested is the first reference only. It's not much of an issue, but is there a way to opt to auto-dereference non-first links? --Fyren 21:36, 30 Jun 2005 (EST)

I don't believe there's a preference for it, but I do believe a script could easily be written to go through the site and fix any articles not conforming with that style. &mdash;Tanaric 21:41, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Second paragraph of Style and formatting. --Fyren 22:08, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)

Content Organization Meeting
I think we should find a time to all get together and spend an hour or so in TS going over our wiki structure. With the additional content and accompanying paradigm difference from the other wiki, I think it would be a good idea. I'd personally like to talk about developing standards and priorities. Adam
 * Yeah, this is a really good idea. TS would be fine by me, or IRC, or anything really :) would be good to sort things out! My Guild's IRC channel is #ltd-gw on irc.quakenet.org, #ltd-gw. My bouncer is always connected, but sometimes I'm not there. If my name is BAXTER then I'm offline, if it's baxter then I am online. If I'm offline the people in there are usually pleasant ;) LordBiro.
 * I'd love to participate as well. The earliest I can do so would be Sunday (international flights and the accompanying lack of sleep will keep me out until then).
 * &mdash;Tanaric 20:23, 20 May 2005 (EST)

This should be sorted out! Like, soon! I think the most important project right now, before this thing gets any bigger, is completing all the Style & Formatting sections, and making at least one article for each of those (preferrably more, if you're cleaning up old format). Nunix 16:22, 20 Jun 2005 (EST)

Plurality of Item Names
I noticed that the articles for items have pluralized names. Is there a reason behind it? I tend to use the singular form, because then I can type Stone Summit Badge or Stone Summit Badges and both work. The current form requires Stone Summit Badge to get the singular form, and I'm lazy. --Tanaric 20:56, 20 May 2005 (EST)
 * I think Tanaric has a good point. And I'd rather address the issue now (in the formative stages of the wiki, while we're still setting standards) rather than after much more content is added.  Any content pages we rename will have redirects created for them as well, so the migration should be fairly painless.  What's important, though, is that we're all on the same page. Adam
 * I don't know where but I'm sure someone spoke about using plural forms (it could well have been me, i really can't remember, lol :P). I think if we stick to plurals we can just use redirects on the singular pages. - LordBiro 02:33, 21 May 2005 (EST)
 * I've been thinking about this and had a bit of a u-turn, I think it will really be best to use exactly the same name as any singular item in the game. This means most things would be singular, but some things such as 'Bones', 'Scales' and 'Shells' would remain in plural form, because that's how the game refers to them... Does that make sense...? - LordBiro/Talk 22:09, 21 May 2005 (EST)
 * I agree, except for the Bones and Scales bit. If you manage to acquire only a single Bone or Scale, they are in fact referred to as singular.
 * &mdash;Tanaric 02:57, 22 May 2005 (EST)
 * I'm still not sure on this one. I'm still leaning towards singular. Mainly because this is how a proper encyclopedia or reference book would do it. Gravewit 03:07, 22 May 2005 (EST)
 * I don't mind either way with item names, I had been using plural, but that is no big deal, as long as plural redirects to singular or singular redirects to plural then they can both be used.
 * It looks like singular is winning. Are there any good arguments for plurality, or should singular become policy?
 * &mdash;Tanaric 05:17, 22 May 2005 (EST)

I've migrated all items in Category:Collector Items to be singular. Adam

Number Ranges
What should the format for number ranges be?

I've been using (#...#) for a single number that varies (for example, the minimum damage of a sword). I've been using #–# for a range. Thus, weapons' damage all look like this: (MinMinDamage...MaxMinDamage)–(MinMaxDamage...MaxMaxDamage). This fits with the in-game notation for skills with damage based on skills. Any thoughts? &mdash;Tanaric 23:01, 20 May 2005 (EST)
 * Tanaric, I'm not sure if the use of the notation "(1...3)-(8...12)" is very elegant... I see why you are doing it and it does make sense; we do use the notation (X-Y) to describe the amount of damage done by skills, but I dont think your suggestion is very intuitive. Perhaps a better way would be to simply say:


 * Min Damage: (1-3)
 * Max Damage: (12-17)


 * I would feel a lot more comfortable reading that anyway.


 * I'm not even sure if this information should be documented in this way. My reasoning behind this is best explained through an example. If someone sees that the best hammer they can possibly get in guild wars does 50 damage then they will want to get that hammer. More than anything they will want to know how to get that hammer, e.g. who drops it or who sells it. If the information is displayed in using either your notation or my notation then it is not very straightforward to point the user to a place where they can find that SPECIFIC hammer.


 * Perhaps a better way of documenting this is having an article for a specific hammer, say it is the "Hammer of Biro", and then saying who drops which specific instance of that hammer, e.g. we can say "Charr Ashen Claw drops 12-20" and "Lightning Drake drops 18-30 with +20 Health" or something.


 * Sorry about the ridiculously long post!
 * -LordBiro 09:06, 21 May 2005 (EST)
 * That format looks fine to me. I didn't mean to purport that mine was best, only that it provided information unambiguously (if unelegantly).  Can't very well maintain weapon pages without a defined format. :)


 * That said, weapon drops are fairly random. The stats are completely unlinked to the name; the stats on an item seem dependent upon only the level of the enemy dropping said weapon.  I don't think there's any meaningful way of corrolating monsters to specific drops.  It might be possible to corrolate monsters to general item types (I've never seen a Charr Axe Wielder drop a Fiery Dragon Sword), but the list on each monster would be cumbersome.


 * Might be better to move this discussion to the weapon template, if one exists.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 05:28, 22 May 2005 (EST)

I like #...# for a variable range that depends on an attribute (frex, "damage of 8...20" for a Blood Magic skill) and #-# for a static range (for a weapon, i.e. this sword does 1-5 damage). I think simple additional context description can help sort out any oddities; say, the maximum possible damage range for a sword is 6-22 and -identify- that range with that description. So, uh, part of this is just to mention that we get number ranges places besides weapons. ;)

We may want to add somewhere a page or section to one of the Formatting pages saying how certian types of numbers are to be used. E.G. the heated fractions discussion that was had, the decision to use xx...yy instead of xx-yy and so on. It may be illustrative to the newer members, which is who we should be the most helpful toward. Gravewit

Terminology: Ascalon (pre-sear)/(pre-searing)/(Pre-Searing)

 * I dont know how to refer to the different Ascalons, any suggestions?
 * It's referenced as any one of those all over the place. I was thinking the same thing last night. I supposed it doesn't matter to much, so long as we make it consistant. Gravewit
 * ok, i'd like to use the terms (Pre-Searing) and (Post-Searing) in uppercase if thats ok with everyone? - LordBiro
 * Good with me. Anyone else have comments? Also, note: to auto-sign talk pages it's . Gravewit
 * Yeah, that's fine. I tend to like "pre-Sear" but have no qualms conforming to the masses. And I'm pretty sure the game uses Pre-Searing and Post-Searing anyway, doesn't it? I'd have to dig for reference, though.. Nunix
 * ah right, ok gravewit :) i'll bear that in mind! -LordBiro
 * I tend to use pre-Searing and post-Searing: only the Searing part is uppercase. It's proper, grammatically.  Check out Webster's usage for "post-Darwinism–pre-Freudism" . -Tanaric 20:32, 20 May 2005 (EST)
 * As for using post-Searing or Post-Searing, I'm fairly certain the game uses upper case Pre and Post which while incorrect (according to websters at least) I think we should reflect.
 * I cannot find any instance in game of the word "pre-Searing," regardless of capitalization. If the term is in-game, make sure that it's not the first word of the sentence, or the capitalization of that word should not bear on our decision.


 * If an in-game instance of "Pre-Searing" can be found in a case where it should, grammatically, be lowercase, we should use "Pre-Searing" in all cases. If not, the grammatically correct "pre-Searing" should be used.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 05:40, 22 May 2005 (EST)

Cleaning Up Talk Page
Hey, stop editing my speaking :P lol - LordBiro/Talk

I'm trying to make this slightly more readable. Is this better? &mdash;Tanaric

Yeah, it's ok, but I wish I hadn't started using lines, its starting to get a bit... weird :) And yeah, I think the discussion about proper weapon formatting should be under GuildWiki_talk:Style and formatting:Weapons, even though it doesn't exist yet. If anyone else agrees feel free to start moving things whenever :) - LordBiro/Talk

The trouble is that, without lines, many of our comments become indistinguishable&mdash;too many of us are longwinded, and take more than a single paragraph for a comment. If our comments are more than a paragraph, the traditional method of seperating comments by paragraphs doesn't quite work. :) &mdash;Tanaric 05:44, 22 May 2005 (EST)


 * Yeah, I have to agree with that :) hehe, I don't know how else we can format talk pages though! - LordBiro/Talk 05:58, 22 May 2005 (EST)

Recursive linking
I'm rolling back the changes Tanaric made to Style and formatting. He removed a reference discouraging recursive linking, or in other words, linking to the current article from the current article. This is a formatting rule of Wikipedia, and so I think it's a good idea to include it here as well.

This was not just an addition to the content, or a minor change in meaning, this was quite a significant change in meaning, and so it should have really been discussed first. If you disagree then please explain why! :) - LordBiro/Talk 03:45, 24 May 2005 (EST)
 * I saw no need to discuss the change, as if you disagreed, you'd roll it back. That is the nature of a collaborative work.  You did roll the change back, and so now a discussion is appropriate.  If this seems wrong to you, we can start another discussion about it. :)


 * Back on topic: the purpose of a link in a wiki is to reference something which really should have an article about it. This does not take into account whether the article exists or not, or whether in fact you're writing the article in question.  It's the classic argument for CSS styling instead of HTML styling: the text of an article is content, and how that content is displayed is seperate and irrelevant.  MediaWiki takes care of displaying recursive links properly: it bolds the name instead of linking it.  However, if you manually bold something in the text, that bold is merely for display purposes, and means nothing in-context.


 * Furthermore, if the text is moved somewhere, or if it's, the recursive link makes more sense.  With the recursive link, looking at the article on its own will show bold, and looking on it from the context of another page will show a link.  Again, this is proper behavior.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 02:19, 25 May 2005 (EST)
 * Hehe, sorry if I sounded hostile in that argument! Firstly, you are indeed right, I just really wanted to justify the roll back Tanaric :) I don't want people thinking I am doing things unreasonably.


 * Your point about recursive linking is a good one. I'm not sure if it has persuded me to agree entirely, but I do concede that, since the link is handled correctly by MediaWiki, and since it produces semantically rich content, the formatting section should be changed to allow such linking in articles. To please me, could we come up with a paragraph that summarises this discussion as a means of explanation to go on the formatting page? :) - LordBiro/Talk 03:35, 25 May 2005 (EST)

Capital letters for minor words in article title
We're running across instances of broken links because of character case. For example, Signet of Capture and Signet Of Capture link to different places. What should we use as a standard?

I think that minor words like: should be lowercase, as that is how we would write them in article content. Adam
 * a
 * the
 * of
 * and


 * Adam, I think we should stick to whatever Guild Wars uses. If Guild Wars says "Signet of Capture" then we should use lowercase 'o' in 'of' as well, equally if it's uppercase we should use uppercase. I know that might result in inconsistencies, but I think it makes the most sense. Feel free to disagree ;) hehe - LordBiro/Talk 03:59, 24 May 2005 (EST)


 * I think we should write them in grammatically proper ways. This means that Adam's method is correct, with the exception that the first and last word of a title are always capitalized.  It should be noted that this won't affect the debated pre-Searing/Pre-Searing articles, because the first word in MediaWiki is always capitalized in the link, whether you type it that way or not.  &mdash;Tanaric 02:21, 25 May 2005 (EST)


 * Well it seems I am outvoted ;) It doesn't really make too much difference if Guild Wars uses the incorrect capitalisation, provided we redirect from the incorrect spelling to the correct one :) Feel free to add this to the formatting page (provided no one disagrees). - LordBiro/Talk 03:38, 25 May 2005 (EST)


 * I think both of our arguments are the same, anyway. As far as I've seen within Guild Wars, all text is grammatically correct.  If it isn't, /bug is in order. :)  &mdash;Tanaric 02:58, 26 May 2005 (EST)


 * Aye, you're both right, in that we need to follow however the game displays this information. Copy editors are useful after all! Gravewit 03:05, 26 May 2005 (EST)

Since yesterday (July 14) User:Tanaric is on a "Case Crusade" to change ALL capital letters in article names (except the very first letter and names) into lower case letters. When has this been decided?? Actually I'm strongly against this. I feel that all NOUNS in article names should begin with an upper case letter. --Tetris L 18:19, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Oops, I didn't notice the section "Article Titles in Title Case ". See my note down there. --Tetris L 18:59, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Heh, I wouldn't cause *too* much trouble without getting Biro's blessing first. I appriciate your earnest defense of the wiki's integrity, but I wish it hadn't been at the expense of my own. :) &mdash;Tanaric 23:50, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)

Region listings
So, currently the convention is to list regions as (I'll use shorthand tho): Should we keep "East Kryta" and "South Kryta" or change East to North? Is there any game material that suggests Maguuma was at one time part of Kryta empire/nation? I started the East/South thing but lately it's been bugging me.. where's west? where's north? ;p I think I initially made the break there cos.. I hadn't progressed that far and was just looking at guild-hall map. =p I still like breaking them up to some extent because of the order in which you usually explore them. Nunix
 * Pre-
 * Post-
 * N. Shiver
 * East Kryta
 * Maguuma
 * South Kryta
 * Crystal Desert
 * S. Shiver


 * Personally I think we should use Kryta and Maguuma, and forget about East and South. They are important to an extent, because they are in different 'periods' of the game. But physically the locations aren't very different; they are still patrolled by the White Mantle and besotted by Undead. I agree with the differntiation of Northern and Southern Shiverpeak Mountains, because they are two very seperate locations (south of beacon's perch is considerably more difficult that north of beacon's perch!) Also, we need another location on that list, the Fire Islands, if that's the correct name! And there might possibly be a location after that. LordBiro/Talk 02:39, 7 Jun 2005 (EST)

NPC and Bestiary
Just to clarify, someone spoke about this before (not sure where). Should NPC's be included in the bestiary? After all, Prince Rurik is an Ascalon Human, just like Yerk Plopsquirt is a Krytan Mergoyle or something... I dunno, I don't mind either way, but I noticed Nunix added a new style section for NPCs and it got me thinking :) LordBiro/Talk 09:45, 9 Jun 2005 (EST)
 * I think we should have a separate main category for NPCs and a master list. I think most people wouldn't look under "Bestiary" when they seach for a collector, skill trainer, etc. --Tetris L 20:42, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)

Historical Context
Some articles (Infusion comes to mind) refer to the behavior of certain game mechanics in previous builds. This does not seem useful to the reader. I think it should be policy to only refer to the most current build in articles. Tanaric 18:44, 16 Jun 2005 (EST)

Yeah, I agree Tanaric. Perhaps information on previous versions should be kept in the discussion section of an article, if at all. 01:11, 17 Jun 2005 (EST)

I was thinking about this exact thing yesterday night. Perhaps a Infusion/History page? I would very much like to keep the old info, for the purpose of history. How do you feel about a /History page? Gravewit 01:17, 17 Jun 2005 (EST)

Hmm. A whole page probably isn't necessary; shall we just throw it under a ==History== section at the bottom of the existing page? Either way works for me. Tanaric 01:34, 17 Jun 2005 (EST)

I considered a history section, however, thinking fourth-dimensionally, that would tend to get longer and longer to the point of uselessness to the average user as time marched onward. Gravewit 02:15, 17 Jun 2005 (EST)

I would rather see a ==History== section than a page... but only just. Equally, I've changed my mind about putting this info on the talk page. It might be best just to omit the data. The wiki is an encyclopedia of the game as it exists, not as it used to exist. If someone is really interested in finding out how an article used to look (and how something behaved before an update) they could look at the history of a page. As long as we remember to put 'Update, 20050615' when we change an article due to an update then that should, in my opinion, suffice. 06:14, 17 Jun 2005 (EST)

I agree, Biro. Thanks for providing a good argument for the point I was trying to make. :) Tanaric 19:37, 20 Jun 2005 (EST)

Article Titles in Title Case
Is there a reason all the articles are in title case? This goes against typical style on MediaWiki-based wikis, and it's a pain for linking. Obviously, skill articles and other proper names should be in title case, and, since the games does it, item names should be as well, but pages like Mobile Object really shouldn't be. &mdash;Tanaric 17:20, 14 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * You're correct Tanaric, I do often add many of my new articles in Title Case, it's an automatic reaction from me! I presume other people do the same. As far as I'm concerned you are justified in renaming (moving) any obvious offenders, and I will try to move any such offenders in future as well. I would imagine any articles in Slang & Terminology that use title case fall into the list of obvious offenders. 07:48, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I'll start working on it right away. I'll leave redirects on pages I move, for now. If I fix links to point to the correctly-cased pages, should the redirects be removed? &mdash;Tanaric 15:45, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)

Since it is a Wiki requirement that the very first letter of an article name MUST be a capital letter it kinda feels natural to me to capitalize all nouns in article names. --Tetris L 18:53, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Okay, I stand corrected. According official Wikipedia policy all subesquent words except names shall be lowercase. --Tetris L 18:57, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Oh yeah? I didn't know that; it just seemed logical from the software platform (MediaWiki) running this site.  Having all-lowercase titles make linking much more natural. I, as always, fight against making Wikipedia policy our own without careful thought, but in this case, the policy is both well-considered and applicable to GuildWiki.  &mdash;Tanaric 23:52, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)

& -> and
Since I had to move this page anyway (due to Title Case), I changed the ampersand & to the word "and." This makes the URL look much better, and makes those users so inclined to type article names directly in their address bar able to do so with these pages and not have to remember the HTTP entity for the ampersand. &mdash;Tanaric 15:56, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * This is fine by me Tanaric. 19:28, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Out of interest, have you been altering links when moving pages or have you been relying on redirects? Also, I know we can can browse through double redirects on Special:DoubleRedirects, but is there any way to find pages that link to single redirects? 19:31, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I've been as complete as possible when altering links, but I'm sure I've missed some, and I'm sure I've done some preemptively. Unfortunately, I work on the wiki at work, with IE6, and my taskbar can only hold so many spawned windows, and this is inherently a recursive process.  When the dust settles, it will be a Good Thing, but in the middle, there might be some erroneously red links, or some redirect pages that are necessary. &mdash;Tanaric 23:46, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)

Plurality of Category Names
I'm puzzled if category names should generally be in plural or singular. Currently we use a mix of both, which leads to a lot of broken links. The Wikipedia Naming Conventions aren't 100% clear on the matter either: They say categories should be singular, except if it's for a list. But isn't it the purpose of ANY category to list items in the first place??. --Tetris L 20:38, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I've always preffered Categories to use a plural name, such as Category:Weapons and Category:Locations. I did disagree with the use of Category:Enchantment etc. since it uses a singular name, but no one really agreed with me :) 22:17, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I agree with you about Enchantment needing to be plural, but I have no answer for the inherent contradiction that results with the Skill(s) categories. I'm still thinking about it. &mdash;Tanaric 23:48, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I agree that all categories should be plural. Categories are also subject to my case crusade, but since they're the most painstaking to change over, I'm saving them for last (there are only a few offending categories anyway). &mdash;Tanaric 23:48, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Just for the record: I prefer plural for categories too. --Tetris L 00:02, 16 Jul 2005 (EST)

Main Page Advertising
Under Helping Out/Getting Started the formatting guides are described as "For the nitty-gritty of aesthetically pleasing comformity". This doesn't sound like a lot of fun. I think it might be a good idea to change this in order to encourage new contributors to read the formatting guides. Maybe something like: "Everything you need to make a good looking article. Recommended reading."