GuildWiki talk:Community portal/Archive 17

10000 Articles!
I just noticed that we've broken through the 10000 article barrier. I'd say a prominent note on the main page and a big Thank You to our contributors is in order for reaching this milestone?! -- 10:18, 25 September 2006 (CDT)
 * I've drafted a message at Main_Page/site_notice. I've also mocked up Main Page/editcopy to show how it would look.  If that's what you had in mind, let me know and I can re-activate the site notice banner on the Main Page.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:11, 25 September 2006 (CDT)
 * That looks very good. And ... err ... yay us! --Xeeron 11:30, 25 September 2006 (CDT)
 * I went ahead and added the notice to the Main Page. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:37, 25 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Nice! (Unfortunately, there are at least 400 pages of junk in the wiki...) ~ Nilles (chat) 12:18, 25 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Does it count user name space stuff? Or only main name space? --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 13:21, 25 September 2006 (CDT)
 * I was simply referring to Untested builds and Unfavored builds - about 80% of then or so are junk that might work in game but actually are not meant for documentation. In fact, I'd simply delete and abandon these pages for the sake of simplicity. After all, new players who search for new builds are in search of new ideas and a grasp of uniqueness. We don't serve them by displaying builds like Me/Mo Faster Caster - builds, that any of those players could easily invent themselves. ~ Nilles (chat) 16:01, 25 September 2006 (CDT)
 * I would still like to know the answer to the question. :) --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 16:29, 25 September 2006 (CDT)
 * GuildWiki's Special:Statistics page doesn't specifically mention user pages. If that query is universally consistent across all MediaWiki installations, then user pages are not included per Wikipedia's Special:Statistics.
 * To be certain, we could always test it and delete the test-created user page afterwards (being certain to refresh the cache to ensure the numbers shown are correct). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:33, 25 September 2006 (CDT)


 * As far as I'm aware it only counts articles in the main name space that are not classed as short articles.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 19:09, 25 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Hooray for the wiki! This is a major milestone in its history - now let's shoot for 20 thousand, eh? ;) [[image:ordinsig.gif]] Ordin 20:45, 28 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Based on the rate of article growth following the release of Factions, I suspect that we'll be well over 12,000 pages by November sometime :-)  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:49, 28 September 2006 (CDT)


 * As Biro said, it's articles in the main namespace. But they also have to contain a link to another article, so dead-end articles don't count.  I think it might also have to meet a minimum length, but I'm unsure and too lazy to look at the code right now.  --Fyren 20:50, 28 September 2006 (CDT)

State of the Wiki: Builds
I argue that as an encyclopedic reference to Guild Wars not including popular builds would be very narrow-sighted. Now how this would be done is pretty tricky. Shandy 07:11, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

That was one of the first answers I got when I started talking about builds on the wiki. And Shandy was right, including builds has worked out, but it is tricky indeed. So for all those who are not involved in the builds process (but often see lots of build related pages spamming recent changes), let me give you a quick overview what the build section currently does, why there was a lot of talk about it in the last months, what is not running smooth and why adding builds to the wiki is still a great thing.

History
The wiki was founded by a crowd of PvE lovers, so after the first months, there was decent coverage of most PvE aspects of the game, but the builds section was almost entirely consisting of the pre-builds, plus several weird concept builds. To sort out those of them worth keeping, a build vetting process was introduces. Later, when people started to post more new builds as well, that evolved into the voting, which is more or less in the same form still in use.

The new section drew some attention from those who possess superior (to mine) wiki skills, so soon we got nice templates, ordered categories and a beautiful builds portal. Unfortunatly, as the number of people working on the wiki to test builds grew, the number of new builds exploded. That lead to several attempts to streamline, change or speed up the process of build vetting, most of which did not have a big impact.

Right now, a refined version of the basic voting vetting is still in place, I tried to write that (and all other relevant stuff about builds) down here.

The basic problem with builds
The basic problem with builds (and reason behind 95% of all troubles related to builds) is the nature of builds as subjective articles. Unless almost all other aspects of the wiki, the quality of a build can not be objectively measured. That means, if there is to be any skale among builds, it will be a subjective one. That of course can give rise to many conflicts: Either if people disagree about builds, and, maybe even harder to solve, there is a conflict about the correct mechanism of how to take lots of subjective opinions and synthesize them into one wiki article. The later lead to long discussions about a build policy, without any consensus reached yet, meaning the wiki currently does not have any build policy.

Why are builds on the wiki still a great idea
Despite the frustration which can arise about all the conflicts related to builds, this should not distract from one fact: The users love them! The build portal currently gets around 15.000 views per day, making it the 5th most popular page of the wiki. The guildwiki has proven that builds do not only belong on forums, but that the wiki concept can be used to provide simple and easy access to build ideas to all users. The builds section has also helped to attract many new users to the wiki, especially from the previously hardly represented PvP part of the community.

Let me put in 2 maybe somewhat specific lessons that can drawn from the builds part of guildwiki:
 * Templates and nice structure works, even for new users, as long as the user side is kept simple. There is possibly no template in the wiki which is more successful than Template:Skill bar. I have seen literally hundreds of new build articles, done by first time users, and more than 99% of them understood and correctly used the template (and the later attribute template as well) for their first build. As long as there is a page describing their use and the template keeps using plain text on the part the user sees, they do work, making articles much nicer to read.
 * Users like portal pages. The builds portal consists to 80% of just a listing of Category:Builds, yet after it was introduced, the number of pageviews skyrocketed. New users unfamiliar with the workings of a wiki will have a hard time if they hit a link on the main page and are dumped in a category with a one line description. The best information is not good enough, if users cant find it. Some other parts have great portal articles as well (for example the green weapons lists), but there are still several links on the main page which lead to ugly categories. Some beautification of these links would maybe be one of the simplest ways to enhance user value in the wiki.

So in the end, builds on the wiki work, not without some problems and effortless, but the result proves that the effort is well invested. --Xeeron 10:46, 6 October 2006 (CDT)

Discussion
It would be such a shame to break up the above with comments, so I'll put mine here instead :) This is a good summary for anyone unfamiliar with the Builds section of the wiki who is interested in learning about the recent discussions. Good work Xeeron! You've kept it pretty objective, so I don't have any problems with it.

It is certainly true that portals in general are generally well received, and for some time I've been an advocate of creating articles to compliment the current category setup that we have on the wiki.

Anyway, good work Xeeron! <- for you.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 11:34, 6 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I am continually amazed by you Builds people. :) &mdash;&mdash;Tanaric 02:17, 7 October 2006 (CDT)

Halloween skin
I have an idea, maybe we could do the site up in orange and black for halloween? :)

I'm thinking of a crossed flamberge over pumpkins for the logo, and replacing the white with black and blue with orange for the week leading up to halloween. Mad king background instead of books? :p Any thoughts? &mdash; Skuld 10:09, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I am willing to do some work :) I'll make some drafts and throw down a link here :) -- Ifer (t/c) 10:27, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Sounds fun. Has there been any news about a Halloween event this year? I think it was announced last year about this time, iirc. &mdash; Gares 10:30, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Yeh, i'll try find the gaile log brb &mdash; Skuld 10:33, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10056831 &mdash; Skuld 10:51, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Thx. Can't see GWG from work, but I'll read about it when I get home. &mdash; Gares 11:01, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * If you make it the default skin/CSS, I will kill everyone involved. --Fyren 16:50, 9 October 2006 (CDT)
 * And I'll dismember and burn the remains. This sort of thing should be an optional skin - not changing the default ones. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:07, 9 October 2006 (CDT)

before we let your edit thru
As a protection against automated spam, you'll need to solve this equation before we let your edit thru: 

Could someone PLEASE take care of that horrible english? -- Ifer (t/c) 10:34, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I changed thru to through, do you want to message altering in any way? &mdash; Skuld 10:51, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Thanks a lot :) That has annoyed me since I started working on the wiki ;) -- Ifer (t/c) 11:05, 9 October 2006 (CDT)

Skill box revamp
I've proposed a bunch of changes to the skill box template (and been posting about it for about ten days at the talk page linked above). This includes parameter name changes, auto-generation of progression tables, slight display tweaks, and factoring out all the CSS into MediaWiki:Common.css. Each topic has its own section at the linked talk page. I plan on making these changes soonish so they're live before Nightfall and allowing for at least a couple days for changes/fixes. Please comment at there. --Fyren 06:04, 15 October 2006 (CDT)
 * Functionality-wise I don't have any objections. It looks like you've planned well and the use of the new template is easy enough to grasp with examples at hand. The only thing left to do before implementation is probably writing a style sheet to adjust the looks of it, right? ~ Nilles (chat) 07:18, 15 October 2006 (CDT)
 * I did, but it's not site-wide (yet). The second paragraph in the CSS section describes how to apply it for yourself.  --Fyren 07:40, 15 October 2006 (CDT)
 * As just an ordinary user, not a contributer, I myself find the current changes to the skill summary pages detrimental compared to the version that existed at the beginning of October. I rely on the skill summary pages to allow me to quickly see the textual descriptions of all the skills for a specific attribute or class as well as the cost/casting/reset information.  I recognize it's a work in progress at the moment, but can the finished version please include the textual description of the skill's effect? --IzzionSona
 * Not sure what you're saying. The same descriptions are still there and in the same place.  The same stats are still there and in the same place.  The progression tables were moved up, but they still have the same data.  Can you be more specific?  --Fyren 00:28, 20 October 2006 (CDT)
 * If you meant the quick reference pages, I've fixed a (somewhat major) copy and paste error. --Fyren 01:03, 20 October 2006 (CDT)
 * My comment was the quick reference pages, thank you for the modification to them. And much thanks to all of you who put in the time and effort to make this wiki successful.  It's a huge boon to my Guild Wars experience --IzzionSona

Ok, so I'm new.
I'm new here and I'm a little bit confused on how to post a build. Could someone fill me in, please?
 * Check the links near the bottom of builds. --Fyren 01:08, 20 October 2006 (CDT)
 * those links should help enough.. If it does not, you can ask me. One more thing: sign your comments on talk pages with four tildes, ~, and it will result in this : Ifer (t/c) 03:11, 20 October 2006 (CDT)

Brainstorm: Give Builds their own namespace
There is a difference between Builds and all other types of GuildWiki articles on a fundamental level. The difference is sufficient that I think it can warrent its own namespace (PvE builds and PvP builds are all sharing the same namespace, so I'm not trying to do any sort of PvP segregation here). For example (picking the first build name I see from Recentchanges), "R/Rt Brutal Needler" would become "Build:R/Rt Brutal Needler". This would help the filtering of Recentchanges, Watchlist, and built-in search functions which categories cannot emulate. Of course, simply naming articles that way won't create the namespace (for the purposes of recent changes etc), we'll need Gravewit to fiddle with the mediawiki settings to get the namespace to work. I want to toss the idea out and see what ppl in general think before presenting it to Gravewit. So, care to comment? - 12:12, 22 October 2006 (CDT)
 * I like it - we should've done this from the very start. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 13:08, 22 October 2006 (CDT)
 * Great idea! Iäm all for it! \o/ --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 13:10, 22 October 2006 (CDT)


 * That's a very cool idea. ~ Nilles (chat) 13:45, 22 October 2006 (CDT)


 * This is exactly the situation that namespaces were designed for. We can discuss how we do this on our side further, but I'll make the technical request to Gravewit now, so we have the structure in place when we're ready. &mdash;Tanaric 15:07, 22 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I am sure I have seen this idea voiced before, no idea why it didnt get taken up back then. --Xeeron 17:10, 22 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Tetris suggested it. --Fyren 19:11, 22 October 2006 (CDT)


 * This will probably mean more incorrectly named builds :P That's ok there's always plenty of us happy to help out with that and the benefits definately outweight the small negative, I'm all for it. --Xasxas256 20:59, 22 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I'm not opposed to this idea but I'm fairly certain it was discussed previously. I wasn't very active at the time when builds were first introduced, so I'm not 100% sure where the information would be, but before anything is implemented I think it would be a good idea to find out why this wasn't implemented initially. Anyone have any suggestions as to where to look?  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 04:39, 23 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I know what you're talking about, I think I recall something along the lines that it was too much work. I think we just failed to find concensus and it got lost in the discussion. Like "usual". ~ Nilles (chat) 05:55, 23 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Actually, Honorable Sarah seems to have first raised the idea: It is both here. Cant really see any reasons for not implementing it there, seems like all people who cared enough to do it didnt follow the discussion. --06:04, 23 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Both Build: and Build talk: are up and running. Can we get a bot working on this? Build should stay where it is, but Builds should be moved to something like Build:Main Page. The redirect should stay more or less permanently, as other sites link directly to the builds portal. &mdash;Tanaric 09:55, 23 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I've moved Builds to Build:Main Page (note, the namespace is sigular form of Build). That seemed a better name than something like Build:Portal, but others can discuss.  Also confirmed that the new namespace is working.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 10:09, 23 October 2006 (CDT)