GuildWiki talk:Builds

Don't like the no deleting bit, I think an extra bit, "if the build is not seen to be seen as little value to a reader" and if it is abandonned by the author (first point aswell) &mdash; Skuld 08:25, 2 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Moving this to Builds. By definition, everything in the GuildWiki namespace pertains to things on the wiki. :) &mdash;Tanaric 15:51, 4 September 2006 (CDT)

Editor's notes
I hope you don't think it too forward of me to edit this policy to be in line, stylistically, with the rest of the build articles on the GuildWiki. This mostly involved changing "the wiki" to "GuildWiki" and changing some wordings to be more personal ("the standards of the wiki" to "our standards", etc.). I also removed the NOTOC tag, as there's no reason to prevent a TOC from displaying on a policy article.

I take a great interest in policy, as everyone knows, and I'm thrilled that somebody besides me is getting involved in writing this stuff down. I also think this article is off to a good start, and I think it will become a great policy article after some of the rest of us help contribute.

One thing I think needs to be clarified.

As soon as a build is ready to leave stub status, it is placed in the category untested builds.

When is a build ready to leave stub status? That could probably encompass a whole heading by itself!

Finally, I think the policy as proposed should be subtly changed. Votes are non-binding on GuildWiki and always have been. I don't disagree with the usage of Rate-A-Build, because I believe it provides a great summary of what the build is to a reader, but I do disagree with making the results policy. I'd like to change the "X votes" for favoring/unfavoring a build into "consensus." More specifically, I think a build needs a consensus for favoring for it to become a favored build. If the vote is 50/50, and, more importantly, the discussion is 50/50, I think the build must be marked unfavored.

&mdash;Tanaric 16:13, 4 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Consensus won't be found even on builds that you will see all over in higher-level GvG if the previous votes are an indication. I think the entire process is pretty broken, but I can't really come up with something that makes sense.  I might just still be stuck in the same mindset I was in a year ago when I was arguing against having builds at all.  --Fyren 16:37, 4 September 2006 (CDT)


 * I have been giving this some thought recently. My ideas aren't really fully thought out, so please don't presume that this is a solution or anything!


 * I was wondering, if we were to think outside of the limitations of mediawiki for a moment and outside of our current system of using categories, what would the best solution be then? I was wondering if there would be some way to "rank" builds. So every build article had a number of stars on them or something, and users come along and vote and this increases the rating of the build, or it decreases the rating of the build. Having a single row of stars wouldn't make any sense, since it's not really practical to mark builds as overall builds, there should be one row for PvE, one for PvP, perhaps other rows depending on what the build is aimed at.


 * I realise this may be a pointless thought exercise, and I'm not a huge fan of voting myself, but I just thought I'd share my half-baked idea with you all to see if you could bake the other half :)  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 16:55, 4 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Tanaric: Thanks for the correction, to my utter disappointment, many many years of learning and using English have not yet been enough to write stuff the way I want it to be written, your version is much better.
 * For me the difference between a stubbed build and an untested build is formal (are the headings right, is the skill bar working without red links, is something written under 'usage') everything relating to "does the article work in the wiki as an article is supposed to work her" whereas the difference between untested and tested is down to "does the build work like an build is supposed to work in guildwars". So far there have been very few problems with getting articles from stub to untested, thx to the syntax help most people get it right when creating the article and in case they dont, it is usually corrected very fast. Most builds stuck in stubs are abandoned by the original author before the idea of the build was fully written down.
 * I wont be opposed to writing in more general form about finding an concensus (if people are worried about overly tying our hands by writing it into a policy article), but the number of votes needed should be written down somewhere (unless the voting procedure is completely abandoned). There have been several and repeated problems which all did arise from the fact that there was no such exact number written down and people disagreed over the amount of votes needed/felt treated unfairly.


 * Fyren: I agree that the vote process is not perfect. However it is far better compared to what we had before and I have yet to hear a better proposal (exception, see below). I feel that the number of visits on the build page show that they are a popular and demanded feature of the wiki and unless I see some better way to organise them, I will defend the voting process.


 * Biro: That is a very nice idea (reminds me of the way posts/users are ranked on many message boards). However there are 2 drawbacks. The first being that I have no idea how to implement that in an automatised way (maybe someone else can help here), but doing it by hand would definitly impossible. The second is that a ranking with stars according to categories would help a lot to make the vetting process more detailed, but it would still have the same basic problem: It would still be people judging builds along their subjective views, therefore necessarily people disagreeing as well. --Xeeron 18:20, 4 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Xeeron: I appreciate your kind comments on my edits. There were a couple more I'd like to reword to better fit native English, but I was hesitant to edit too heavily at once. Since I appear to have your blessing now, I'll do so when time permits.


 * I honestly don't see a good wiki solution for builds, besides total anarchy, which would be basically unusable. I think our current system works well, but I think our current solution is fairly unwiki&mdash;it is essentially a moderation board of ~6 hardcore editors that choose which builds become favored.


 * I think Biro's method is probably the ideal way of doing builds. Unfortunately, that is impossible within the wiki structure, which means it's impossible to host here. Honestly, I think the best solution is to have a sister site that deals exclusively with builds&mdash;the software for Biro's solution wouldn't be hard to whip up from scratch. I'd even be willing to host and implement it, if it meant that GuildWiki no longer hosted builds.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 18:31, 4 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Ooh, a challenge says me! Rating-star-generator proof-of-concept: http://www.t29.dk/~nica/gold.php (Not really useful for anything in practice, unless a seperate box is built that hosts non-wiki code, but I figured it would be fun to do.) --Bishop 15:27, 5 September 2006 (CDT)

Comments on process
I know this has been said in many different places, but I think it's the most relevant here. I think voting is the wrong way to vet builds. I further suggest that build vetting be treated like Featured Articles on Wikipedia. My proposal is not very fleshed out, but briefly: (Below these are the unfavored, archived, etc.)
 * "Featured builds" (currently called "tested builds") are builds that have been rigorously tested by the community and found to be valid and viable.
 * "Untested builds" are builds that have been found to comply with GW:BUILD and satisfies GW:WBE. However, no consensus has emerged that this build is valid and viable.
 * "Build stubs" are builds that are waiting to get into Untested, but currently fail GW:BUILD or GW:WBE.

Now, when someone thinks that they have found a build that is worthy of being featured, he nominates the build for this status and then initiates commentary (i.e., a "vote") on the nomination. The nomination will be a two-edged sword. If the build is found to be exceptional by a supermajority of participants in the discussion (sometimes called "consensus"), it will be made into a Featured build. If the build is found to be terrible by a supermajority, it will be demoted to Unfavored. If no consensus emerges, the nomination (not the build) fails, to be revisited at a later time perhaps. This build will then return to untested.

The nomination will have to come from a non-author. This means that at least one other person must agree with the author that the build is solid and that it satisfies the style guidelines. This will force the author to look for someone willing to nominate the build. I will list myself as an available volunteer for this, and I hope others who care about builds will do so as well.

Why this is better than the current process:
 * There is no feeling that the entire incoming deluge of builds should be taken head on. People can relax and participate in only the nominations they care about.
 * Featured builds will hopefully be of much greater quality as they will have to satisfy style guidelines before they can even be nominated. There will be no premature voting on builds that have huge gaping holes (such as where it is to be used, as I found with A/Me Genjutsu Specialist, a build that was rushed into tested).
 * This will prevent hit-and-run builds, as if an author wants a build to be nominated he will have to put in some effort.

Potential demerits:
 * The untested builds category will be large and potentially unnavigable. This is almost the reality today.
 * Builds can languish in limbo indefinitely.

Comments? zaishen 05:44, 7 September 2006 (CDT)


 * One further note: I am most concerned about the quality of the tested builds, as I think there are pretty serious problems with many of these articles. I think as a class they do not proudly represent the best of GuildWiki. I have started to go over them and clean them up to conform with the style guidelines and the grammar of the English language. Others are welcome to aid this process and if there is enough interest I will make this into a proper volunteer taskforce with centralized coordination (think WikiProjects on Wikipedia). zaishen 05:52, 7 September 2006 (CDT)


 * So its like double voting, but the first voting part is just a normal joe that nominate the build which he things got potential, then the second voting take place where people actually test the build? Not a bad idea. -- [[Image:Ritualist-icon-small.png]] Cwingnam2000 06:04, 7 September 2006 (CDT)