GuildWiki talk:Community portal/Archive 17

You broke GWiki for browsers
Since some time, about 1-3 weeks I can't remember exactly, the Guildwiki is broken. Following issues: it's kinda hard to explain, when you type, the typing will just go outside on the right side and you can't see what you type anymore Everything worked fine before, please look into these issues. --62.158.104.40 14:43, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Internet Explorer 6: Huge spacer on the right side which serves no purpose other than make a scrollbar appear
 * When in the field where you type stuff like comments, like I am doing now, you can write "outside" of the box,
 * Opera 9: Same annoying spacer on the right side,
 * can't even contribute anymore in Opera, since when you press "Save Page", it will show a preview, and that preview is BLANK.


 * I'm not certain, but it sounds like all of those are issues with the new Monaco skin (which was forced on us by Wikia). I suggest you create an account, then follow the directions here to set your skin to the classic (and bug-free) Monobook.  As a bonus, using Monobook while logged-in will also remove almost all the ads from the site.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:24, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Quizzical (iirc) also filed a complaint about Opera being completely disfunctional. However, he didn't say anything about a white space, afaik.. O_o" IE6 is just a hopeless browser ;) --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  16:35, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * No matter if a browser is "hopeless" or not, it's not like they're using a 10-year old program. There's no reason for it to be broken to hell like it is.  Revert the default skin to Monobook until Monaco isn't crawling with bugs.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.jpg]] 17:21, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Generally a newer version is a version with less bugs and (visual) glitches, mrite? --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  17:25, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * True for IE6-7, but what about the Opera problems? And some people still prefer IE6 over 7, I was one of them, but I got so annoyed with wiki not working right in 6, that I finally cracked and downloaded 7.  I think wiki should be a type of site that works ALWAYS, instead of being specialized to one single browser.  It has a very large userbase, both net-savvy and not, and it should keep that in mind.  Leave the fancy crap out if it doesn't work for half of the users out there.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.jpg]] 18:29, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, Microsoft just needs to figure out that standards compliance is a "good thing", then 99% of the browser-compatibility issues will go away (because 99% of them are caused by people coding websites for IE, which is maybe 50% standards-compliant, instead of coding to the standards, of which Firefox and Opera are 99%-compliant). All figures in the preceding comment are gross estimates, don't take them as fact!  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 18:40, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * As for IE, I have run GWiki in the latest versions of IE and it looks fine. However I will check again. The site should work in all browsers. I don't use Opera myself but I will investigate it. I will see what I can do to make sure that Gwiki works reasonably well in all browsers. In the meantime, I do recommend making an account so that it doesn't stop you from contributing and using Guild Wiki. &mdash;♥ Jedi ♥ Rogue ♥ 18:47, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Alright I just previewed GWiki in IE7 and it looks fine. I cannot make any guarantees about older versions so I recommend upgrading. I'll look into Opera later today. &mdash;♥ Jedi ♥ Rogue ♥ 18:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Heya. The Opera problem is a known issue and we're working to resolve it.  I anticipate that it will be fixed soon.  The bugs with IE6 are problems with the GuildWiki custom CSS (rather than Monaco itself), and I've been playing around with and working to fix for you.  Unfortunately, there aren't any useful debugging tools for IE6, so it's a pretty big pain to figure out the problems.  Fortunately, for IE, the bugs are annoyances ... I think all the show-stopping bugs are gone.  If any of you CSS gurus are bored and want to try to fix some of the IE6 bugs, I've set up a test wiki here ... I can make you a sysop if you want to play around without flooding GuildWiki's recent changes.  --KyleH (talk) 19:16, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * As the problems seem to be in monaco.css, logged in IE6 users can just switch to another Monaco theme if they don't like Monobook. Better yet, switch to a browser that supports CSS2 properly. --◄mendel► 01:01, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * IE6 is not the latest version of IE. I don't feel obligated to make us compatible with browsers that should be updated&mdash;♥ Jedi ♥ Rogue ♥ 03:23, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


 * For browsing, the wiki doesn't look appreciably different in Opera 9.51 from Firefox 3.0.1. There is a very thin empty space just left of the scroll bar in both browsers, but it looks fine to me.  Opera does have a sidebar feature that sometimes shows up at nuisance times if you click on something wrong; by default, it appears on the left side, though, not the right.  If that's your problem, F4 will get rid of it.


 * The problem with Opera right now is that some Wikia bug prevents the browser from saving edits. If you're only going to read the wiki, and not edit anything, Opera works just fine.  Indeed, I'd argue that it works better than Firefox, mainly because of mouse gestures that make it easier to navigate pages.  The Wand is also quite useful when the wiki logs you out.  Quizzical 05:44, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, then don't hesitate to add mouse gestures to firefox here. --◄mendel► 08:58, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It seems fixed now :P

Question Regarding Widgets
Moved to GuildWiki:Wikia staff noticeboard.

EotN PvE skill discrepancies
A number of PvE-only skills in EotN currently have discrepancies between the progressions given in the and what is actually showing up in-game. This was first discovered on Feel No Pain, where the notes said the Health regen should be 1...3 and no change to the health boost (previously 100...200), but it was discovered to be 2...3/200...300 in-game. Today, Radiation Field was edited for the same reason: from the notes, it should be duration 4...6, Health degen 2...5, and Disease 12...20; in-game, it is duration 5 (not green, so not variable), degen 4...6, and Disease 12...20.

My main character has all EotN PvE skills, so I checked his numbers against what we have, and I found that the following skills also have this problem. Based on his numbers at rank 7 in Asura/Deldrimor, and values for r0 obtained using CheatEngine on a mule character with no ranks, I extrapolated the second table for the "real" progressions.

Could other people please report their numbers for these skills at other title ranks to verify the correct progressions? &mdash;Dr Ishmael 23:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Smooth Criminal Correct at R3 according to your chart, 13/6. (Rank 5 also correct, 15/7. Don't have earbite or low blow, unfortunately. -- [[Image:Isk8.png]]   Isk8   (T/C) 23:29, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * All three correct at 5 Asura/6 Deld[[Image:Entrea Sumatae.png|Entrea Sumatae]] Entrea   [Talk]  23:53, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) You can get R0 easier. Just equip a skill and look at your template. Templates always show R0. A few skills had bad descriptions at the update page, and I don't know what rank range Anet used when posting that... Anyway I have characters with max or 0 so can't help here :( &mdash; Poki#3 [[Image:Poki.jpg|19px|My Talk Page :o]], 23:56, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Checked on my wife's main character (should've thought of that sooner), r6 Asuran/r5Deldrimor (backwards from Entrea), and her numbers also match the table. Seems sufficient evidence to me.  I'm-a gonna go modify them there templates now.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 02:35, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

abbreviation redirects to pvp versions
There are some skills which are more commonly used in PvP and that is where you are more likely to see the abbreviation. I would like to have the redirects for some of them point to the PvP version by default for those skills. I would make a list first in case PvE players want to point out that the abbreviation is equally common in PvE. Does anyone have any thoughts about this?&mdash;♥ Jedi ♥ Rogue ♥ 17:03, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The PvE skills are the unaltered forms; that would be like pug redirecting to Dog instead of PUG. So, no. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 17:19, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Not always - in some cases the PvP skill is the unaltered, pre-split version, while the PvE skill was the one that changed. I don't see a problem with changing some of those redirects, especially for abbreviations that are rarely used in PvE.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 18:39, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Unaltered form? Unyielding Aura is changed for PvE specifically. Fallacious logic. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  18:40, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * SciFi is having a cookie and a javascript hooked in that, if it detects a redirect to the game mode you don't prefer, re-redirects that automatically. --◄mendel► 22:55, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Reused Item skins
The Ancient Hornbow, Ancient Longbow and Ancient Flatbow share a skin, as well as the Ancient Shortbow & Ancient Recurve Bow.
 * Should we merge those, like we did with the Destroyer/BMP skins?
 * They all drop in the same basic region anyhow (The Desolation for Ancient), so that's not a problem.
 * Currently, there is no standard on it. My opinion is one shared page, and redirects.
 * I feel it's redundant to show the same skin 5 times, of which two (three if counting PvP reward Bow) are a minor variant.
 * It reduces the clutter on the Gallery page.
 * And should we merge the other shared skins?


 * Tormented/Bramble/Plagueborn/Skull/Vabbian/Azure/Bladed aint merged either.
 * If there are others, please tell. I just glanced over the Gallery.

Oh, side note: The Ancient Bow page exists because of the PvP reward item, which shares it's skin with the Short/Recurve bow. --- -- (s)talkpage  17:32, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It needs more work either way. If we do a listing of bows by skin, this won't matter. If we want to have a gallery of just a single bow type (say, Hornbows) we need the "bowclass" attribute in the BowInfo, and if these bow "families" share a page, that probably means an awkward "name1=", "bowclass1=", "name2=", "bowclass2=" in the template. I just dunno. I think it's not too big a deal at the moment, especially when the gallery system is still in flux.
 * It would actually make a lot of sense to separate the bows into 5 categories - we don't put swords, axes and hammers in the same category, either. That would eliminate the need for "bowclass" completely. Or keep single pages for each bow in the family, and transclude the location and notes across them? --◄mendel► 18:47, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'm for merging Bow articles. They're all bows... &mdash; Poki#3 [[Image:Poki.jpg|19px|My Talk Page :o]], 16:21, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I would still like to see a differentiation between, for example, the Tormented Longbow and Shortbow skins, they look quite different. That can be done within the Tormented Bow article.  But, both of the skin variations should still be in the Gallery.  You can try to come up with a name convention of sorts, like the greater/normal that I'm seeing in the Ancient Bow, since in-game they're named the same (right?).  Same goes for all other skins with this 2-3 split between bow types/skins.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.jpg]] 17:23, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * An example of a 2 skin bow set is Undead Bow. You don't have to combine the picture though. The navbox can handle more then one image (Steel Daggers). Oh, and Lesser, "Normal" and Greater weapons are totally different skins altogether with different names. Previously we had different skins in one name (like the Steel Daggers), but in EotN weapons that behave like that are named different. &mdash; Poki#3 [[Image:Poki.jpg|19px|My Talk Page :o]], 21:53, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Monster and NPC screenshots missing
I just updated the Monster images project with a long list of missing screenshots. These aren't all strictly monsters, quite a few NPCs (including PvP Zaishen), including quest-specific NPCs, have their pictures missing as well. Take a short look at the Style_and_formatting/Images guide and go on a photo safari! --◄mendel► 15:23, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * New list just in. In the past week or so, some editors (special thanks to Mrguildboi and Wizardboy777!) have provided 25 images and changed (2.55% missing) to (2.08% missing). Good job! --◄mendel► 20:09, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * New list just in. It's been awhile because the dump has been damaged (thanks to Dr ishmael for spotting that). There've been some uploads by half a dozen contributors, most prominently (and recently) User:Bikeboy854. We're at 1.82% missing images now, good job! --◄mendel► 13:42, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Not a Fansite?
I was looking on the official guild wars page, and then stumbled upon the the list of fansites. I was suprised that this site wasn't listed on there. Why is it not? I mean the wiki is popular, its part of the reason A-Net made their own. Is it because they don't like us because we're separate from their wiki, or is it that they don't think its really important. I mean, GuildWiki is usually more factual that GuildWarsWiki, and has notes that are more helpful than on their site. Is it just because GuildWiki is not connected to A-Net like GuildWarsWiki? Arcdash 01:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * They feel the GWiki (this here) shouldn't be promoted to draw more attention to the GWWiki (official), or something akin ot that. Basically, they're boycotting us :O I think --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  12:49, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * When i questioned our non-appearance on the fansite list some GWW person leapt to Anets defence - apparently the reason Anet made their own wiki is because of some licenscing law which means copyright bla bla NS-C something something license bla bla entails the copying of content under GDFL something and so forth meant that this wiki couldnt be linked to from the in-game help menu, so they had to make their own wiki to achieve help-menu linkage. And as such, because of this license stuff and the fact that they seem to beleive that since they've now got an official wiki we should just quietly close down or something, we can't be listed as a fansite - its all in the copyright--[[Image:Cobalt6.jpg|50x19px]] - (Talk /Contribs ) 14:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * We used to be a Specialty Fansite, but stooped being one right after the official wiki went live so yeah... -_- "According to Wikipedia GW.com, we don't exist!" &mdash; Poki#3 [[Image:Poki.jpg|19px|My Talk Page :o]], 14:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * We lost fansite status around October 12, 2007, or so. Check the Fansite and Fansite status pages too. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 16:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Upgrade to MediaWiki 1.13
The upgrade is due sometime next week, KyleH has announced it here and asked for bug reports to be posted on that page as well. --◄mendel► 12:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC) (edited 18:10, 6 September 2008 (UTC))
 * The link is fubar ("Not a valid Wikia" error). Is this it? &mdash; Poki#3 [[Image:Poki.jpg|19px|My Talk Page :o]], 14:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * W00t - I think Release notes Random Time  14:20, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * At last we get hiddencat (lets it be in a cat without the cat showing on the page) Random Time  14:22, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Two features I see that I like:
 * Automatically move subpages when moving a page
 * Automatically fix double redirects when moving a page
 * Much less work for me. :D &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:42, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * <3 Faster human-botmode is faster. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  15:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I hate you
Ok, ever since you joined wikia, things have been going bad.
 * The site is waaaaay to laggy
 * The skin is gay
 * The new buttons are cool, but the skin is gay
 * from the site being so messed up, it's making me go to gwwiki- why are you torturing me like that?
 * i cant use the url anymore, i have to go to pvx, then find a link to come here
 * it crashed my computer
 * it doesnt even look good
 * the search bar is messed up
 * in the top right corner it has My Watchlist and Contributions are hidden, thats gay
 * Joining wikia isnt a good thing, its just, idk, just bad--[[image:"Burn Baby Burn!".jpg|19px]]‎ Fire</tt>  To</tt>ck</tt>  21:49, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You can change back to monobook in Special:Preferences - you can still hate wikia though <font color="Orange">Random <font color="Black">Time  21:53, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Not for me.
 * Change it. I like monaco.
 * QQ? GWW isn't the end of the earth either.
 * guildwars.wikia.com- Simple. easier than the old one, imo.
 * I doubt it was actually us.
 * You've said that. Change your skin or use the monaco-customizations.
 * Yes, I hate the new search bar, but I don't mind that much.
 * If the droplist weren't broken half the time I wouldn't mind. And your watchlist isn't hidden, only your prefs and contribs, and who checks those frequently anyway?
 * ...lolwhat? --<font face="vivaldi" size="3" color="Steelblue">Shadowcrest  21:56, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You consider it you be:
 * gay       /geɪ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[gey] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation adjective, -er, -est, noun, adverb
 * –adjective
 * 1.	having or showing a merry, lively mood: gay spirits; gay music.
 * 2.	bright or showy: gay colors; gay ornaments.
 * 3.	given to or abounding in social or other pleasures: a gay social season.
 * 4.	licentious; dissipated; wanton: The baron is a gay old rogue with an eye for the ladies.
 * 5.	homosexual.
 * 6.	of, indicating, or supporting homosexual interests or issues: a gay organization.
 * –noun
 * 7.	a homosexual person, esp. a male.
 * –adverb
 * 8.	in a gay manner.
 * Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
 * Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006. --[[Image:OrgXSignature.jpg]] 22:05, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
 * Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006. --[[Image:OrgXSignature.jpg]] 22:05, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gay
 * Searchbar: just don't use it. If you have a search box on your toolbar, click the little triangle next to it NOW and add this wiki to it. --◄mendel► 23:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Firetock, what browser/version are you using? Can you screenshot the Searchbar and Watchlist issues?  You might be observing something that is not typical of the general user experience. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 19:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Shouts without quotes issue
Has Anet fixed this? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:M.mendel (contribs) 04:04, 13 September 2008.


 * Nope, and they haven't even commented on the bug reports that Gimme submitted a month ago. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Guildwars Texture Quiz
The quiz is at User:M.mendel/Quiz1.

I'd put a link on the Communty Portal itself, but we don't do links into userspace? --◄mendel► 09:30, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

GuildWiki Security
As many of you might or might not know, PvX was recently hacked. Their entire database + backups were destroyed, but luckily someone had a downloaded database. Is GuildWiki safe enough to survive such an attack? Chances are that they might strike again. <font face = "Matura MT Script Capitals">Silver Sunlight 19:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think wikia has enough security - don't they? <font color="Orange">Random <font color="Black">Time  19:27, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Wikia ought to have enough security...and in any case I am sure someone has the full current DB dump on their computer. Somehow I also think we are less of a target for this sort of thing, since it's...different...at PvX. :p The most risk I can see is a terrimad Gravewit griefer coming back for belated revenge. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 19:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * O yes that's true... I kind of forgot about Wikia's existence :P <font face = "Matura MT Script Capitals">Silver Sunlight [[Image:SSunlight.jpg|19px]] 19:57, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I download the current pages dump pretty quickly after it comes out, usually once a week, but sometimes wikia fails (last week they had the Mediwiki 1.13 rollout, so no dump). I also have an all pages dump of mid-august, but as it's 1 GB (8GB expanded) and it's not terribly useful (can't be used with awk as all that happens is that my harddisk (giga)thrashes a lot) I won't be updating that much. We don't currently have a download of all images; if we had those destroyed right now, we'd probably have to grab the whole set from gww. I could imagine grabbing all of these from the server, but in theory Wikia have off-site backup in another state, at least that's what staff (sannse?) told me on irc. --◄mendel► 21:06, 17 September 2008 (UTC) & 21:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think guildwiki/guild wars wiki are in any danger - the problem with PvX was a security hole in our version of MySQL, and GuildWiki/GWW use newer versions (so what probably happened was a newer version fixed said security hole and some hacker reverse-engineered the patch to find out what was fixed and then used that knowledge to take down unpatched versions, which is actually a fairly common practice and is why you should always keep your computer up-to-date). In addition, PvX is basically operated by two private individuals, where guildwiki is operated by wikia and GWW by arenanet, which are both fairly large companies with more time and money.  &not; Wizårdbõÿ777  ( talk ) 22:56, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

re-making Category:GuildWiki
With the creation of Category:Categories it is now an even better idea for new users to use the category structure to acquaint themselves with the wiki and its general structure (although some category pages could use a bit more explanatory text). The one main category that is too cluttered for this purpose now is Category:GuildWiki; it combines useful information about guildwiki with maintenance pages. I have suggested dividing it up at Category talk:GuildWiki; please comment there if you're interested. --◄mendel► 06:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

converting STDT to CSS...
I'm currently trying to convert our template from old-style table attributes to CSS. I can easily reproduce the proper styling in Firefox, but IE is a pain in the butt. I've come up with what I think is a good compromise, but I'm wondering if someone else could do better.

Here's three tables, one using the attributes from STDT, one using class="stdt" (which I added to MediaWiki:common.css), and one using class="stdt2" so that anyone who feels like helping with this can tweak it using their own css page. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 01:01, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

New Parser
GuildWiki has upgraded its "engine", the wikicode parser. If you notice pages that don't look right, please report them on Forum:New parser. --◄mendel► 23:38, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

International InterWiki links
I've been working on the suggestion to add international wiki links to GuildWiki. I'm at the point that I've got something that works well on Firefox and somewhat ok on IE7; all that's left now is to write the templates, test them, and then have a bot add a lot of translated names and wikilinks to the wiki. Oh, and get community support, I need to do that, too. :-P Anyway, at this point there are some decisions to be made: Please read Languages for more information, and see GuildWiki talk:Languages for a demo of the two placement options. Please discuss there (not here). --◄mendel► 09:57, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) What languages and Wikis should be shown by default? Users can customize, but I believe we should show some languages and links to advertise the feature and make the common options available for anonymous readers.
 * 2) Where should the translations and links be placed? They could go on the article headline, or in a category-style box at the bottom, or maybe somebody has a better idea?


 * There's a poll there now; I'm afraid to continue working on this feature unless at least some people tell me (by clicking the poll) that they've noticed that a lot of Wiki pages will get changed when I do this. There's going to be drama if I do this and everybody is surprised. :-( --◄mendel► 08:15, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Bellybuttons
If I start an article in the user namespace documenting armor combinations that show the bellybutton (with an emphasis on Female Mesmer armor), would you (members of the GuildWiki community) find it offensive? Please sign below. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 01:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * a Navel gallery? I would find it offensive that you thought it was necessary, and I would slightly doubt your sanity. But the page itself would be quite inoffensive, in my opinion. (if we're seriously voting on this, just scoot my comment under a header.) --[[image:GEO-logo.png]]<font color="#237d00"> Jïörüjï Ðērākō.> <font color="#237d00">.cнаt^  03:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I would be considerably pleased with such a gallery. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 03:39, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There is a difference between usefull and necessary. Weapon QRs, armor galleries, and skill QRs are by no means necessary, as they are just secondary organizational pages that restructure info already available elsewheres in the wiki.  But they are useful to some people.  The gallery of armor combos that reveal the belly serves a useful function to people who has interest in a particular fashion style. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 06:58, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * In the light of the ongoing discussion, I would see it as a deliberate attempt to provoke, and I wouldn't like that. --◄mendel► 05:41, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The idea did came about due to that discussion, but is not an intention to provoke. I also want Mesmer glove gallery and face/hair galleries, which I would just go bold about.  I am only asking about the belly because it might be controversial.  If in the end nobody actually find the subject matter itself offensive, esp those involved inthe other discussion, I would ask you to reconsider your objection.  Though I'll respect your sentiments on the matter and not create the page if you (or anyone else) still object. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 06:42, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * So it is a matter of listing which chest pieces and which leggings leave the lower belly exposed, and combining these; and to make a gallery of these would appeal to those players that prefer to play with it exposed (would that be essential to indicate you're playing Me/E ?) and want fashion advice. The gallery presumably wouldn't have closeups, but rather full-body images comparable to the ones used in the armor art gallery (&rarr; guide). Now why wouldn't this page (and the others) be in mainspace? --◄mendel► 11:56, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I was actually thinking about chopping the head and lower leg off in cases where they don't matter, so that the torso section with the armor mix-match can be shown in more detail. One reason to not have it in the mainspace right now is that I am not yet sure how to handle neutrality of the combinatorics, or if would be managable at all. If in the end the best way to order/present the data is by personal preference, then it might end up staying in personal user space forever. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 22:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Since it's to be used for fashion selection, it'd be best to be able to mentally compare them (or even side-by-side them, only today I stumbled across a user's page where that had been done) to the other armor options a reader might be considering, and if you mentally have to allow for heads and legs being chopped off, that's more difficult. So I urge you to not chop anything off. If you follow the guidelines, the uploaded images at full size will have enough detail in the navel region. --◄mendel► 00:14, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Good points on whether to crop, though I think that issue is quite beside the main point. Whether to chop and whether the article is in user space vs mainspace is among the least of my worries. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 04:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Page which has a purpose has a purpose. Move ZIG. (T/C) 07:03, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * User:RoseOfKali/Mesmer gloves. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.jpg]] 07:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * OMG, they actually look different! @_@ [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 07:06, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

New title display templates for userpages
Just thought I'd announce here that I created a new set of title templates for people to use on their userpages. The original templates, / and the individual templates, are plain-text templates, and I thought some people might want something a little spiffier. So I created a new set based on the template. I see User:Balistic Pve noticed what I was doing and got a headstart on using them. :P I hope other people find them useful, too! &mdash;Dr Ishmael 20:53, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * for character-specific titles
 * for account-wide titles
 * List of individual TitleBar templates if you don't want to use the big lists
 * Neat! Thanks for the heads-up. &mdash; [[Image:Fin_sig.gif|User:Kyrasantae]] <font color=#000080>kyrasantae   03:11, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Number of GW players
wasn't sure where else to put, so i was told to go here, anway: Do we know roughly how many ppl play GW (own an account, play at least 5 hours per month, etc). been curious about this for a while. tnx to any1 with constuctive input.Akbaroth 01:24, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * On the upside of 5 million if anet is to be believed. [[Image:Rsz_PLSig.jpg‎]] 02:36, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought they claimed over 9,000 a day [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 03:28, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No, that's deaths to Great White Shark attacks. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 04:13, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh?! [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 09:05, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd kill myself too if someone actually used that to attack me. Vorse Raider is much better. (although, knowing Yu-gi-oh!, power creep has probably made that a lackluster choice by now.) --[[image:GEO-logo.png]]<font color="#237d00"> Jïörüjï Ðērākō.> <font color="#237d00">.cнаt^  20:01, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 22:27, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Syncing

 * There is no article about it, it seems, haven't found anything
 * Why the hell is there no option to report these poor skillless fucks who deem it necessary to steamroll absolutely random groups in RANDOM ARENAS with their premade syncer build, instead of going to TEAM ARENAS? ANet is nuts.
 * Easy faction and/or for the lulz [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 02:51, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Easy glad points rather [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 03:08, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Easy whatever...on the cost of other players' time and fun - sounds exactly like the principle of scamming to me. Also, it wasn't the question WHY they do it but WHY it isn't reportable.
 * Because ANet is oblivious to the problem [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 12:58, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not 100% chance to synch (unless you get a 100% empty district no.1, which is rare nowadays), and you cannot tell when someone is really synched. When I ran a Shatterstone Ele in RA, I always looked at my teammates and then spiked their targets (or another squishy if the spiker's target is almost dead already), and quite some people called us Synchers. It's actually just co-operating with people the game put you on a team with. I would've caught Dishonorable a few times back then if you could report spiking, haha. Maybe even a ban. Also, the reason people pick RA over TA; Easier. TA is full of lame shit and if you play a balanced build you get steamrolled to hell and back into the Realm of Torment to end up somewhere in the Desolation. Or you find some newcomers and do what lamers do to you. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  20:56, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You may have misunderstood the original post, Vipermagi. It's about real synchers, where the enemy team is composed of 4 members of one and the same guild. 4x[Lame]. I just recently encountered some who ran that stupid 4x /A Holy Strike Shadowstepper absolute-lameness build. In RA. It was just a big WTF. Needless to say they won - ran away for 5 minutes like pussies, then spiked one of us dead and won through timer. Simply unfair. These people will try syncing all day until they all 4 get together, in some polish disctrict or something. This needs to become a bannable offense, because that's what it is, stealing other players' time and fun.
 * Four of same guild member would seem to be a good enough "proof" for synching. But then I think what solution would be is to just prevent syncing by having teh "random" algorithm work better, so that you'll never end up with anyone in your guild or alliance, for example. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 14:22, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, then 4 people from one alliance pop by, 4 different tags and to hell goes your argument. If you are stealing one's "time and fun" (not disagreeing, just quoting) by softening up a pile of disorganised people, shouldn't smurfing be bannable (Smurfing; High ranked GvGers join über low guild and GvG against low-ranked guilds just to race the ladder again)? Or running. Sure, it's with consent, but they are missing out on a part (big part for Proph) of the fun.
 * "Simply unfair."; Life's a bitch. Do you think it's fair getting banned for 30 minutes from BNet because you were scrolling in a Diablo II game (scrolling changes right skill slot to next hotkeyed skill, used to cause minor lagg. If several did the same, a game could easily crash. Nowadays BNet servers can handle it, but the autoban still happens)? It happens. I got banned for that a few times, actually. SooOOOoo fair. Get a grip.
 * I do agree; synching is lame. However, it's just not possible to stop it, rationally. Preventing people from ever joining an alliance member (includes guild) in an RA match is immoral, imo. It's random. Random includes luck. When you're amidst 50 people and both get randomed into the same team, you're in luck. However, by your logics, they'd be synching. And they'd be fucking banned for it! And having a report function for it? Like the leecher thing works. You need >50% of your team to report, which is you and 2 others. Whenever I report someone, I score Dishonorable points because noone on my team cares. Sure, I don't get Hexed for it (I know when to stop reporting scrubs), but if I suddenly drop out for whatever reason, I might just be. Just because my team mates condoned leeching by not reporting it. This also comes back to the "Simply unfair. " point you made. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  17:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * @Vipermagi: Smurfing - definitely. Running - no, simply because the runees CHOOSE to get run. And no, 2 guild members in the same team can be random. 4 CAN NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, the chance of that happening is little more than 0,00000118% with 30 people in 1 district. To make that happen they would have been synching by going to an almost empty district. I don't care whether they make it bannable or improve the randomization. Just do something about it, it's lame as hell.

He does however have a point that we don't have an article on Synching. We document a lot of PvP terms and it would make sense to make an article for this one as well. It is used very often. <font face = "Matura MT Script Capitals">Silver Sunlight 17:15, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

QQ
Since I never got a real answer last time, I'm reposting this so I can finish my userboxes. I intend to upolad two pictures for use on two of my rollback user boxes, however I don't know what liscene I could use, if I could even upload them. and --<font color="Black">îğá†ħŕášħ 00:22, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Giga, my answer was that it'd be better to use images where the legality is beyond doubt, and I think I even linked you some good ocarinas. --◄mendel► 03:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * TBH, all the ocarinas you linked me sucked.--[[Image:Gigathrash_sig_G.jpg]]<font color="Black">îğá†ħŕášħ 03:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I thought commons:Image:Ocarina.jpg would do, but obviously your standards are higher than mine. --◄mendel► 16:11, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Wanted Pages
We have them. 6000 right now. Against 17,136 legitimate content pages, it's 35%. Against 108,835 total pages on GuildWiki, a meagre 5.5%. Some of them are simple typos, others are more difficult. --◄mendel► 06:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well I've had that on the todo list for like a year now :) I think we stopped botting to eliminate the Build ones, though, for reasons I cannot remember [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 12:16, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, with the Job Queue killing last week, (10s of) thousands of Image talk: pages have been eliminated from the wanted list, so we've been making a great stride with little effort. And the 6000 is not counting the Build: pages. Now identify some pages that have a lot of red links (like the category tree, the missing monster image list, or the uniditified skills list) and we could be down to 5000 in no time ;-) Of course, as the mosnter image list illustrates, sometimes it does take work, but it makes the wiki better. --◄mendel► 13:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I stopped running the buildbot because it was becoming ineffective - it had taken care of everything it was programmed to handle, and what was left wasn't worth reprogramming the bot for. I was planning on taking care of the rest in human-bot mode, but, like so many other things, I never got around to it.  I can take care of that today, though.
 * As for the category trees, it seems very unlikely that Galil will ever return, and only slightly more likely that Wolfie will, so I vote we replace the pages with a note that they've been deprecated in favor of Special:Categorytree. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 16:29, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Or wrap those pages in a giant "nowiki" tag. Didn't the Template:DeletedLink have the problem that the #ifexist doesn't actually take pages off the wanted list? --◄mendel► 17:55, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, but Wolfie has returned. Or am I hallucinating? [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 18:26, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Bah, the comings and goings of you meatbags is meaningless to my silicon mind. :P
 * @Mendel: Blank it, nowiki it, comment it, whatever. Comment is probably best, actually - keeps it in the current revision, but readers aren't bombarded by a huge wall of unformatted wikitext.  Definitely put a notice about the new specialpage, though.&mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 19:05, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't do it myself - Wolfie'd go spare. --◄mendel► 22:54, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well obviously, since Wolfie is back, we should ask him and wait for his response. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 23:35, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Wintersday
User:Entropy/Wintersday

Attention GuildWikians!

We're planning some stuff for Wintersday, please visit the page above if you are interested. There will also be in-game events - a party in my Guild Hall, presents from "Secret Dwayna", and a raffle! We're looking for people to sign up, and also to donate presents/prizes as well as party items and consumables.

Hope you can help out and/or attend - we're looking for 100% participation. ;)

(T/C) 05:23, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

consistent Infoboxes
I want to change the various infoboxes to be more consistent in their look by having them all use. I have already done this to Template:WeaponInfo: before, after. The most obvious change is the color of the borders; the skill box and some other infoboxes have been using the silver border all along. My motivation is that the change makes it easier for the infoboxes to all look alike for Wintersday.

I intend to do the changes tomorrow unless somebody vetoes that here. --◄mendel► 14:28, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd thought of this some time ago, but then dismissed it as there didn't seem to be any need for it. Now you've discovered a need, go for it!  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 16:19, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Just to point out that some ppl use a dark-background theme, which was the motivation for silver borders (shows up decently ok on both White and Black backgrounds). -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 00:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I put off updating Template:CraftingMaterial until I verify that all images have a transparent background. The same goes for Template:Alcohol, Template:SalvageItem, Template:CollectableDrop and the Category:Templates/Item boxes group. They retain a white background. Template:QuestItem has been updated, if anyone wants to compare. --◄mendel► 11:37, 9 December 2008 (UTC) & 11:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC) & 15:17, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I found out that we get the "corner ads" on infoboxes even with quite short articles, see the "New Look" forum for details. --◄mendel► 11:18, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

The collector subpages seem to have tables that could all be changed to use ; they appear to be the most prominent pages (I've been using Special:Random a lot) with non-"icy" tables with the current wintersday deco draft. --◄mendel► 11:28, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I have changed that for all collectors except the Deacon of Whispers who has no table. --◄mendel► 00:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Wintersday Wiki Reskin goes live
I am planning to turn the Wintersday Wiki reskin on tomorrow (Wednesday). It will reskin the Monaco and Monobook skins with a Wintersday theme.

The skin has been undergoing testing and improvement for two weeks now. Known bugs at this time include a slight graphical error concerning the tabs on Monobooks when viewed with IE7, and a possible incompatibility with importing monaco-common.css that hasn't been diagnosed yet. There will be bug report section on "report a wiki bug". --◄mendel► 00:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The reskin has finally gone live for Monaco yesterday. Current poll results indicate that approximately 12% of our users that can see it are asking us to turn the deco off, while 75% of those are asking us to keep it on and do this again next year. Which of those should we listen to? (Well, obviously we're listening to all of them, but which of the two options should we pursue?)
 * In two weeks we're going to turn it off anyway. Should we rather do it now, and limit the reskin to the Wintersday wiki logo in the upper left corner, like the other wikis do? --◄mendel► 04:14, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I say the majority wins. The instructions to turn it off will hopefully be deemed acceptable. And for those without accounts... *shrug* well, you can never please everyone.[[Image:Entrea Sumatae.png|Entrea Sumatae]] Entrea   [Talk]  04:18, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

get rid of shear
The biggest complaint seems to be slow page-scrolling due to the huge background image - it's 302 kB. My system is about 3 years old, and I can see a bit of shear when I scroll, but it's not sluggish unless I have many tabs open. Still, I say we either remove this image or replace it with a smaller one. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 04:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Especially because the picture is only visible on the sidebar, so the vast majority of the picture is never seen. A smaller, tiling picture that fills only the needed space would be good.[[Image:Entrea Sumatae.png|Entrea Sumatae]] Entrea   [Talk]  04:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Try setting the position of the trees to "scroll" instead of "fixed". --◄mendel► 04:44, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * (ec) Well, actually, it can be seen on very short pages that don't reach down to sidebar height. Nonetheless, though, a similar but smaller and tiling picture would both be faster and more aesthetically pleasing. And the trees pic isn't the problem, it's the rather large snowfield pic in the background.[[Image:Entrea Sumatae.png|Entrea Sumatae]] Entrea   [Talk]  04:45, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Try this : /* remove shear (Monobook) */ div#content { background:white url('http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/gw/images/1/14/Snow_tree-bright-2000.jpg') no-repeat right bottom scroll; } div#p-cactions div.pBody ul li { background: white; }

/* remove shear (Monaco) */ div#article { background:white url('http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/gw/images/1/14/Snow_tree-bright-2000.jpg') no-repeat right bottom scroll; }
 * 1) page_bar ul li { background: white; }

Does it fix the shear? --◄mendel► 04:57, 20 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, and maybe we'll have to do that as well, but I'd still recommend replacing the large snow image. Some people couldn't even tell it was supposed to be snow.  Do we have to use such a high-quality photograph?  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 05:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Some people can tell. ;-) (And actually it looked better at 1.6 MB, but I'm not advocating that - and neither do I expect people in Arizona to recognize snow when they see it :-P). We could play around with the x/y position to get a more snowy section to show in the sidebar. --◄mendel► 05:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)


 * To place the size in some relation, each wiki page references 548 kB of javascript for the monobook skin, 694 kB for Monaco. --◄mendel► 17:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Screw
Screw the shearing. This shit in the back makes it hard to read the pages. What moron thought a busy background blended with text was a good idea? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.181.253.68 (talk &bull; contribs) 22:59, 22 December 2008 (UTC).


 * Nobody thought it would be, that's why everybody else sees a white-gray background behind the page text and the nav boxes, unless you have a bug. Unless you're using IE6, a screenshot would certainly help track that down, please include details about your browser and general system settings. Some workarounds have been posted to GuildWiki talk:Wintersday/Wiki decorations. --◄mendel► 23:08, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

License incompatibilities
The reason why we haven't allowed GFDL content on our text pages (the issue last came up re: the archiving guide) is that it impairs the ability to share a full database dump of the wiki, and incorporating GFDL content into our database would require that, I believe (and it would also possibly require to place the whole wiki under GFDL). --◄mendel► 00:13, 18 December 2008 (UTC) P.S. If you know of a more suitable place to have this discussion, feel free to move. --◄mendel► 00:14, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Well that's f***ing stupid. I hate all this licensing crap.  What can we do about it?  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 00:40, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If we can't use this one, then we'll have to get rid of Template:Archive box and Template:Shortcut, as well. Archive box isn't used directly, but it's been subst:ed onto many users' talkpages, and Shortcut is used on pretty much every policy page.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 00:59, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I've rewritten Template:Shortcut. --◄mendel► 04:09, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Great, now rewrite all 15kB of Navbox2. :P Seriously though, who really cares?  Why is this even an issue?  Why can't "free" licenses just be free?  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 04:27, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Because nothing in this world is ever free? Did you know we have to pay for rain? Because rain uses the storm drain systems, so we have to pay for it on the sewer maintenance part of the bill... >_< RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 04:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * That's not paying for the rain, that's paying for the rain to be taken away instead of sitting around and flooding your yard. >.> &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 04:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Take a navbox from another CC BY-NC-SA wiki? But really, I don't see a statement like all my contributions to this wiki are hereby released into the public domain on your user page &mdash; and that is basically the free-est license there is (because it is no license). Everything else comes down to the will of the author; GFDL authors say "I want others to be able to make money from my work" and NC authors say they forbid that; and only dual-licensed material says "I don't care". If you don't care, that's fine, but that doesn't mean others have to feel the same way. GWW is the same way with regard to our material: there's no way to include it even if it is marked with our license. I used to believe we could sort of integrate it step by step, but when you ask yourself how the database dump is licensed, you see the problem. And these licenses are in fact important, because they are the only reason we are legally allowed to publish this stuff on the web at all. --◄mendel► 04:59, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Some of these look nice, but they don't do what you want, I'm afraid:, --◄mendel► 05:13, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * They're all hard-coded, no underlying "navbox" template. Bah, whatever.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:24, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Heh, you Germans are funny people. . XD  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm confused about what is the issue here. What happened? I gather that something was copied from Wikipedia or GWW, and I know that's generally a Bad Thing(tm), but other than that I'm lost. (T/C) 06:23, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * JUst curious, but what part of the GFDL would not be good for the wiki. We already have the GFDL under the licensing for images we upload, so I assume there has been at least one already uploaded. Sorry if this is a strange question. In software I have edited manuals with the GFDL listing and it was easy enough. I don't see how it is really different here? [[Image:Spikeicon.png]]Tenetke Mekko 08:39, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Dr Ishmael copied a Navbox template from Wikipedia, and the Archive box and the template it uses (?) are also affected.
 * The problem is this: A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it with you may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document [..] provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License because if I read that right it means that a) if you subst: that template onto a page it becomes a GFDL page (or becomes illegal) and b) if you publish this page as part of a database dump, the dump becomes GFDL (or illegal). The images are not part of the database dump and never really intermingle with the wikitext, so I can see how those would work differently.
 * Editing a GFDL manual (or a GFDL wiki) is no problem as long as you release the edit under GFDL yourself. --◄mendel► 09:48, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Then we've already got problems, because the Archive box template has been subst:ed into numerous usertalkpages, including my own. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:08, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry forgive my ignorance, but why does it matter if the dump becomes licensed under GFDL? Isn't wikipedia already licensed under the GFDL? I think I read somewhere it is, so couldn't this in a way be a derivative of wikipedia? That may not be how it works, I have no experience with this type thing. I see blow the edit box that all contributions to GUildWIki are considered to be released under the CC 2.0 by-nc-sa license. I read the copyrights link, as anyone should, and to be honest it sounds so much like the GFDL. So what does it honestly matter one way or another? I admittedly do not know the implications of this, but after having some experience with GFDL I don't see how it is a bad thing at all? [[Image:Spikeicon.png]]Tenetke MekkoMy Talk Page 15:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It's because the GFDL specifically states that GFDL content can be used for commercial purposes, while the NC part of our CC BY-NC-SA license says it can't be used for commercial purposes. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem is that our editors have licensed most of their contributions as CC BY-NC-SA, and we can't just go and change that license to GFDL. Only the authors have that right, and some of those that have moved to GWW have done so, but not all by far. --◄mendel► 16:22, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I understand now, thanks for explaining it. I just had so many questions because this is the first time helping out with a wiki like this. Anyway thanks for explaining it to me. Also love the user box, thank you for making it because I have no idea how to do that as a template [[Image:Spikeicon.png]]Tenetke MekkoMy Talk Page 19:07, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

new navbox formatting
I've redone a couple navboxes in a new format. Template:BooksNavBox has the items left-aligned, while Template:SpecialEventsNavBox has them centered. There's a couple other minor differences, but the alignment is the main thing I'd like to get everyone's opinion on. I like the navbox items... left-aligned centered something else &mdash;Dr Ishmael 16:13, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Whatever looks best, I guess -- if the box is too wide, some centered items get "lost". --◄mendel► 16:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Lost? RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 18:52, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If one row of links in a centered format is really short, it can get "lost" between the longer lists above and below it. A left-aligned navbox would make everything easy to find next to the header cells, although a centered format sometimes looks nicer.  All of our current navboxes are centered, but since most of them have everything as one or two long lists, things getting "lost" isn't a problem.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 19:05, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Implementation
The poll said left-aligned, which was my personal preference anyway, so I'm beginning to implement this. I have a list of the navboxes I plan on reformatting at User:Dr ishmael/NavBox reformatting, anyone can add anything else they think needs the new format. I'd already done Books in this format, and today I did Armor and Assassin armor.

Please leave me any feedback or other thoughts you may have about this, now that you can see the new format "in action" on a couple more boxes. I'll wait a day or two before going through the rest of them. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 20:59, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * They're looking ok. The biggest change is the legend down the left side; what with the extra color, it makes the box look "heavier" (except for the assassin armor nav), and it adds information that most people will ignore. It looks like something GWW would do. I have edited Armor to adress the following concerns:
 * light color, should be standardized for all Nav boxes
 * no br tags, use of nowrap to wrap a line symetrically where desired, makes more sense for widescreen users
 * only one column of legend, and that not bold so as not to detract from the important content
 * GW:EN instead of Eye of the North to make column less wide
 * use of padding instead of fixed width; applied padding to nav content as well
 * line height adjusted to match text size better
 * If we can see our way to adopting this or a similar format, we should make CSS for it so that we can just do class=navbox for the whole table, that would make it a lot more readable, and still allow individual variations through overriding the style. (It'd also get so simple as to not need a general template any more, which you probably were going to construct?) So what do you think? --◄mendel► 22:14, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * "It looks like something GWW would do." ...huh?  Where the heck did that come from?  I based this off of Wikipedia's navbox and the templates you linked me to on the French/German wikis, so why are you bringing GWW into this?  Besides, convergent evolution usually indicates that the shared trait is a good thing. :P
 * Anyway, I agree with reducing the levels of headers. The only problem with using nowrap is that when it does wrap, you've got an extra bullet that's either hanging off the end of the first line or looking really lost on the second line.  Other than that, I'm going to be honest: I think your version is ugly.
 * The color is way too faint, and although I understand your concern about "heaviness", I don't see what was wrong with the lightblue color, especially after reducing the left-hand headers to a single column.
 * The reduced lineheight makes the lists extremely cramped and hard to read.
 * The lack of bold on the headers drastically reduces their visual importance, especially with the extremely faint background color. If I were looking at that for the first time, it would take me a while to figure out how the lists were grouped, as I wouldn't know immediately that the leftmost cells were supposed to be headers.
 * Basically, I feel that those three things completely ruin both the aesthetics and the usability of the navbox. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 23:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Can we compromise on the color and find a lighter light blue? Or a darker gray? &mdash; I'd rather have it have no hue at all, because all other navigation elements in monobook don't either. In fact, if the Nav box looked like the ToC that'd be good.
 * The line height looks bad when lines wrap because lines that belong into the same section but have wrapped have the same distance from each other as to the lines in the surrounding sections. That is bad and needs to be fixed somehow.
 * The visual importance of the headers needs to be reduced because they're not important. We know this because the Nav box didn't have the headers before, and because most people who use it won't need them. We visually set them off with the background color, and the additional boldness is not needed because they don't need to be set off further.
 * You reverted the padding, too, why? --◄mendel► 23:23, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I thought that hitting "Undo" and then re-doing the edits I wanted to keep would be easier, guess not. And actually, I just discovered that it's the padding that's making it look so cramped, not the lineheight.  The default padding is actually 2px, not 0, so your "padding: 0em 1em" was actually reducing the vertical padding.  Without that, the lineheight works fine for lines wrapped within a cell.
 * I'm adding the headers because I think they are important in order to better organize these navboxes. Take a look at Template:TonicsNavBox, for example, and tell me that thing couldn't use some organizing (festival tonics vs. Zaishen monthly tonics, to start with).  After they've been organized, people will need to know what the various groups are so they know which group to look in for the item they're seeking.  And I don't care if I sound like a sheep here, but I also partly like it because Wikipedia does it this way.  (I could care less how GWW does it, though.)  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 06:49, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The padding / line spacing looks good now.
 * potential compromise Colors:


 * Names / RGB values:


 * I would prefer the E6 gray, and next to that the #DEF or #DEE blue. Feel free to edit these tables directly if you want to add more choices.
 * I see the headers more as legends, and as such, I don't want the viewer's eyes to be drawn to them too much. It's clear from the colors that these are the headers. If I want to find something quick, if the nav box isn't too cluttered, I can find it quicker by scanning the nav content itself (especially if there are images), and that means that the grouping must be recognizable subconsciously (as it is now, with the spacing) and that I must be able to subconsciously start the scanning, and that means the headers can't scream scan me first!.
 * In other words, if I use the Nav to find, say, Ancient Armor, then "seeing" the word "Ancient" means I'm done; only when I can't find that, I need to stop and read the legends and think about which group it would be in. To be navigating in groups (the reason why we have them, otherwise going all alphabetic would be better) you need to figure out what they are, but if you want to stay in a group while navigating you probably have a good idea what it is without consulting the legend, so here, too, the header would be a distraction and not help. The header only helps when you are lost, and we need to provide just enough visual cues that their function is clear to someone who is lost; we should turn down the visual "volume" so they don't distract at any other time, because that makes the subconscious scanning more difficult.
 * WoT'ing you to death again, am I? Here's the short of my argument: I agree with you that, yes, headers are important and it's good to have them, and you've explained well why that is so. I do think they're not the most important thing in the NavBox (the content is), and the formatting should reflect that. --◄mendel► 07:27, 11 January 2009 (UTC) & 07:30, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Devil's advocate time: why doesn't Wikipedia do it that way? &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 07:42, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know the historical reasons, but my guess is this: Traditionally open source projects have had a terrible record on HCI issues (because the techs that make them are "pro" type users and few programmers (used to) have HCI training), and once it's become tradition, that is a strong point for keeping it that way rather than break user expectations. The "tradition" of headers down the side is just getting started here, so we're free to it as best we can. --◄mendel► 07:53, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * But if you want to "tone down" the headers so much that they're practically invisible, why bother adding them at all? &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 17:02, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I have never advocated white on white headers! :-) What you want me to say is: "ok, it works for wikipedia, so it'll work for us, go right ahead", and of course I could say that, and it would work, but I believe it could be better, so I don't. But just tell me you won't compromise on the color and I'll have to. --◄mendel► 06:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * White on white would be completely invisible, but I said practically invisible, which describes WhiteSmoke on white. But color's being discussed below now, so...
 * It's pretty much you vs. me on the bolding issue, and I don't agree with your argument that it's overly distracting. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 16:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

So anyway, I think the navboxes worked just fine the way they were before anything was changed, and so whatever is done here is of little concern to me - it is improvements in that it is one less click to get to where I want, so the aesthetic nitpicks don't matter much. In my opinion, though, there ought to be coloration of some kind - grey looks boring and ugly. (T/C) 22:28, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. We have plenty of coloration all over the wiki, don't see a problem having it in the navbox.  Keep the gray for Common armor, and that's where it should limited to.  You can pick a pale color on par with the main page, or do the usual profession colors for each navbox like the ones in the Elite skills list.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 00:33, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * We don't have it "all over the wiki"; if you truly think that, I'll do the categories box in a nice pink first thing tomorrow. We have color on the infobox headings and on important messages, to draw the eye on them; nav boxes aren't as important as that. The TOC is a kind of nav box, it isn't colored (but it could be); the link boxes in the sidebar, the categories box, they're all grey. The reason is that the Navigation must be there when you need it, but it isn't the important page content. Too much color = cluttered pages. But hey, maybe the wiki looks better if we color all the navs I mentioned lightblue and make them bold type! --◄mendel► 06:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The TOC, categories, and sidebar are part of the wiki framework - they show up on every single page (that has categories and >=3 sections), which is why they don't need to stand out. Navboxes and infoboxes only appear on certain pages, which is why they need to stand out so people know they exist.  Someone reading an article sees the infobox at the top of the page, and it's brightly colored to stand out and say, "Hey, here's a bunch of quick info about this topic!"  When they finish reading the article, they see the navbox at the bottom, and it's brightly colored to stand out and say, "Hey, here's a bunch of related articles you might be interested in!"
 * Yes, too much color is bad, but this is just a small table with a bit of color at the bottom of the page. How is that "too much"?  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 16:31, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with Ishmael. Navboxes are always at the bottom of the page.  Surely the can't be more distracting that that banner ad screaming at you, no matter how much color they have.  Most people won't even bother to read the bottom of the page, unless it's somehow attractive and draws their attention.  Some color, and even bold text, will not interfere with anything, but I think it will help with readability of the different sections more so than simple alignment.  I love the current Template:ArmorNavBox and I think the rest should be close to that.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 22:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

CSS Implementation
I have an idea how to set up CSS so that the formatting can be easily overridden by personal CSS, but it may be a few days before I get around to demo'ing that. This might be a compromise. --◄mendel► 11:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't wait to see it. However, I don't feel like it should make many people have to code their personal CSS because they don't like how it looks.  If a compromise is reached, it should not involve anything like "well, they can override with their own CSS if they don't like it" kind of thing.  I, for one, have not a slightest clue what that even is, and I'm sure I'm in the majority of the users on the wiki.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 19:32, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * While it is good to generally do CSS in such a way that is easy to override, I agree with Rose's concern of using that as a "compromise". Of course, if you only represent your own interests, and say "if you do the CSS that way then I'll be ok because I'll just override my own copy", then that's probably ok. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 19:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Done. I would have liked to get "Position:fixed" to work with the show/hide thing, but so far that's what I have to offer. See User:M.mendel/navbox, both tables are generated from exactly the same page text, with only the centrally applied CSS being different. The problem is that we're going to have to compromise on the bullets because of IE7. Say, Dr Ishmael, didn't you make a persistent show/hide for the split skills draft wayback when? --◄mendel► 21:11, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Um, yeah, the blue is so much better than all-white it's not even a contest... RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 21:22, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The all-white is the extreme end, and you need to judge that on the actual page. --◄mendel► 22:07, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * As a more casual user of the wiki, I must say that the all-white does NOT work. Having the headers stand out from the rest of the table makes more sense to me - it's less visually ambiguous.  Jink  23:27, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I've reuploaded the screenshot to show the light gray color better, and I added dotted lines. I am still thinking about the headers - on the category box it's not a problem. --◄mendel► 23:41, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, new screenshot - the separator is now a, as with the categories. That also makes the headers stand out more; I experimented with blacking them (or making them a darker blue), and while that stands out (in fact, if you don't set those to be links they will), they aren't recognizably links then. --◄mendel► 00:05, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I can not visually distinguish the columns without the blue. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 03:11, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I can see the column on the FF3 thumbnail even! And you can't? --◄mendel► 04:00, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * C'mon, you know that I don't use UglyFox. Either way, no matter if it's FF or IE, it looks horrible and cluttered without the color. Please leave it. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 05:51, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * First you said it should look like the monobook sidebar boxes, now you're making it look like the category box now. Navboxes are not part of the base wiki framework, and I don't think they should pretend like they are.
 * The pipe works as a separator in the category box, but for some reason it seems to blend in with the text on your screenshot, probably because there's so many lines of text. It looks a little better when I apply it to your demo page at my higher resolution (without so many linewraps), but why not stick with the bullet?
 * We should leave the separators in the wikitext so we don't gimp IE7 users. Both versions look horrible with no separator between the list items.
 * There's an error in your css for the base navbox class - padding should be "0.1em 1em" to keep the vertical spacing at the default.
 * &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 05:58, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * >_< The white version looks fugly no matter what browser you use (FFuglier3 in FF3, if you ask me), it's a continuous string of meaningless text and you have to read the whole bloody thing to figure out what is even in there! It looks like someone was writing some code and forgot to finish what they were doing... GARBAGE! I still don't get what's wrong with the blue. And forgive my tone, but it seems like EVERYONE is against the white and is starting to get annoyed with this issue, but Mendel for some reason is still trying to push it. Please, leave it be. There's nothing wrong with it, and if there is, you're not fixing it. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 08:13, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Rose, you are saying the same thing as in your "the blue is so much better..." post, only longer. I got the message. You also wrote, earlier: "If a compromise is reached, it should not involve anything like "well, they can override with their own CSS if they don't like it" kind of thing." Well, it will involve that, because there isn't going to be a compromise on the color, and I am doing this exercise to make sure the version I can get when I override it is not a compromise, but my actual preference.
 * That is why fixing things for IE hasn't been a priority for me (the other thing that is broken on it are dotted lines), but of course the bullets (or whatever separators) have to be there. In a pinch, we can do as the doctor suggests, but we could also try background images (much like the link type pics, only in front and not after) or a bullet list that is displayed inline (though I think that one isn't going to work).
 * I don't know where the padding that the doctor speaks of is wrong, please correct my monobook.css. I thought I had lifted all the settings from the current armor navbox as is.
 * The base class could probably use the  rule as well, it would certainly make all headers not wrap if they are links.
 * Concerning the look of the pipe separators, my demo page and my own .css have slightly increased vertical separation over the latest screenshot. I'm uncertain how it looks with sufficient separation and no border, but since that version isn't going to get past Rose, the point is rather moot. It is also possible to increase the space around the pipes, but I haven't played with that yet.
 * I think that the nav boxes should look like the rest of the nav tools. It's just professional website design to not bother the user with the technical details of where content comes form, but make the look depend on function for the user.
 * I was also asking about the persistent show/hide feature, because at least on firefox it works to have the nav be "fixed", that is, it is always at the bottom of the screen; if that was persistent, you could easily browse through all pages in the nav without scrolling to get to the next one, but it needs be able to be turned on and off so it doesn't annoy when you don't use it. Actually, the toggle ought to adjust whether it's position is "fixed" or "static". There's a problem with the width when it is fixed which needs to be solved, but there'll be ways.
 * None of you have commented how much simpler the code for the navbox on the actual wikipage is now; I think we don't need a navbox template at all. --◄mendel► 13:05, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

"If a compromise is reached, it should not involve anything like "well, they can override with their own CSS if they don't like it" kind of thing." Well, it will involve that, because there isn't going to be a compromise on the color.... -- What do you mean by that? It sounds like you're trying to say that it's going to be white, and people will have to make their own CSS to change that. I really hope that's not what you actually are trying to say.

I can't figure out exactly how you intend the final version to look and work, still.

The code was simple enough before, casual users do not edit navboxes, and plenty of users here were perfectly capable of navigating that code before. Even I could figure it out, and I'm not a coder. Unlike an article, once a navbox is made, it's done, and it's rare that items need to be added to it (like the zaishen tonics).

Show/hide I couldn't really care less about. I do get kind of annoyed when things are hidden by default in the navboxes, but I can't remember where I saw that. It makes sense for TOC at the top of the page, but at the very bottom, where navboxes usually are, I don't think it matters one bit whether it's hidden or not, or if anyone has that capability, because there's nothing beyond the navbox.

Increasing spacing between things will not change a blob of text into something else, or make it more readable, it will remain a blob of text with more white in it. I don't think a navbox should look like some of the other tools, like the sidebar or whatever, because it just can't. Most of those tools that I see around the wiki have one bulleted item per line, or are one line altogether. A navbox is structured differently, with rows of multiple items per line and often columns (like in the Armor one), and to be able to navigate that, you need distinction between headers and the items that belong to that header. If they all blend with each other, that's bad. Professional website design not only makes things look good and uniform, it makes them easy to navigate. If you really don't want to go with color, make it look like a table that it is, with a vertical line separating the left-hand headers, and horizontal lines separating items that belong to different headers. White space or some tiny dots are not the kind of separators that make things easier to read/navigate.

One last thing. I opened your screenshot and asked my husband to look at it. I told him "these are two versions of the same thing, what's your first impression?" The first thing he said was "well, the top one is easier to read." He doesn't play GW, had no idea what the screenshots were for, and has never used a wiki outside of the main Wikipedia.com. RoseOfKali 20:14, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The first lesson in HCI design is that you don't go impressions on these things, you measure them, not by how well you think they look, but by how fast users are actually able to get where they need to be (or if they are able to get there at all). If any of our readers actually has the opportunity to do some assignments on freely chosen tasks in a usability lab, get a catalog of questions and tell your subjects to find the answers here and on gww and find out which works better and why.
 * One of the fastest ways to get around the wiki is the category system but nobody uses it because it is hidden in the footer next to the ads. If it was clear that categories are about as useful as navboxes, users wiki experience could improve. But I digress.
 * White space is actually a kind of separator that makes things easier to read and navigate.
 * On the matter of color, it's going to be lightblue. I offered compromises above to no reply, and I've given up.
 * You totally misunderstand my intention with the showhide because I can't demo it it yet. I want to have, in effect, a nav that stays visible on the screen as you click through the pages on it.
 * Thank you for your comments. --◄mendel► 22:01, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Negligible issues are negligible. We're not going to run tests in a usability lab to determine which format provides 1...5 nanoseconds faster time for finding information. You are trying to fix something that does not need to be fixed; the navboxes were perfectly navigable before, and the current revision will automatically make that faster as it will require one less click and make obsolete the loading of an entire page of images. But it completely detracts from that navigability if one cannot distinguish items in the navbox anymore. The whitespace version is less useful than the original navbox. That is why I am complaining.
 * The category system is quite useless to me, and I am pretty certain no one else uses it much either. If I am looking for something very specific, e.g. Category: Contains steel, then that is when a category becomes useful. But usually the various QRs and the searchbox are good enough for me. I find using the category tree to be a series of futile clicks that do not save me time. Also: it goes against intuition to use the category tree as the main method of navigation. Navboxes just work better because they are highly visible and graphically appeasing.
 * Compromises: to be honest, I don't understand much of what you've said because it gets lost in technical jargon that I am unfamiliar with.
 * Showhide: Navboxes ought to remain open by default (I was under the impression that that is how they always were); if they could be made like a TOC, where they remember if you left them open or closed, that would be ideal. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 01:02, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * As far as the show/hide-ability goes, Mendel wanted that in conjunction with setting "position:fixed" for the navbox - that would make the navbox always appear at a fixed position on your screen, which would be marginally useful for long page so you didn't have to scroll to the bottom to find it. (I say marginally because there's no need to scroll at all, the "End" key takes you to the bottom instantly!)  However, doing that would reduce the usable area of your browser window (even when the navbox is hidden, since the header bar is always visible), and I think we should avoid doing that.  People are already reducing the size of their viewing pane with various Yahoo!/Google/etc. toolbars, we don't need to help them reduce it further.
 * I agree with Entropy - a few tenths of a second or whatever isn't going to make a difference to normal people. HCI (by which I assume you are meaning "Human-Computer Interface", you've never actually explained that acronym) principles are great in theory, but I know from experience that they extremely difficult to put into practice.  People want interfaces that are visually pleasing, they could care less how optimally they are designed.
 * And as for the "unanswered" issues Mendel has brought up:
 * I did offer a compromise on color somewhere above, saying that I'd be fine with a somewhat lighter blue as the default, but it got lost in the rest of the debate.
 * I think the css class is a great idea, but I didn't think to mention that while we were still debating the design issues.
 * &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 06:23, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Osht, if you are talking about those horrible floating boxes that don't go away, I would personally have to disable that through my .css, because I cannot stand those. :( Even when they are being used for legitimate content, they are obnoxious and look like ads to me. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 06:44, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hells no, no floating bull crap unless it can be closed completely, and even then, still no. Like Dr said, the End key is there for you.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 09:12, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) You seem convinced that I am always going for the dumbest idea possible; could you kindly entertain the notion that I have meant it in such a way that it is actually smart? See, I do know that a floating box is not useful at all when you don't need it. That's why, if you hide it, it would not be floating at all. You show it and it "floats" at the bottom of the window. Floating is very good when you are, say, looking through a set of mesmer armors because you don't need to tab, you have the box in view and click on the armor name to switch pages, and the box stays in view, no keypresses needed. When you want it to go away, it hides and can then be found at the bottom of the page where it is now, and that would be the default position. None of the concerns you have raised apply. I'm going to rig up a demo soon. --◄mendel► 12:28, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone is accusing you of going for the "dumbest idea possible" (unless someone actually did and I missed it in the walls of text above) but I have to agree that floating boxes are annoying and really aren't necessary for this wiki. If the box is hidden when closed... well, I'd keep it closed all the time, and there would be no reason at all for it to be floating in the first place. Has there been some call for it by wiki users that I've missed somewhere?  Because all I'm seeing right now is that people (or at least those who have put the effort into commenting) don't want this feature, but you simply won't consider their stance on this issue because they "don't see how cool it could be." (This is my interpretation, not an actual quote.) Pity there isn't more input from other users on this issue.  Jink  14:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Personally, I don't mind floating boxes, as long as they can be "minimized" (removed but still accessable from a set location), which is not the case here on guildwiki. Floating boxes could be usefull for the content box of long pages, so that if you get a little lost, or want to go to a specific other part, you don't have to scroll up completely. And sometimes on talkpages, it isn't even at the top because there's been a long discussion before any headers/titles were made. But that's about the only usefull application I can think of atm.--[[Image:El Nazgir sig.png|Talkpage]]<font color="Green">El_Nazgir 14:49, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Since you gave the example of looking at armors, I'll tell you exactly why I still don't like it. Many people still use video card/monitor combinations that have a max resolution of 1024x768, like my laptop and monitor at work.  At that resolution, the armor images in the gallery take up the majority of the viewing pane, and the additional headgear images in the component/dyed sections make those sections fill the viewing pane completely.  A navbox floating on top of that would be obstructing what they're actually there for, to look at the armor, so they'll hide it in order to see the armor.  Then they'll have to go to the bottom of the page anyway to find the navbox again.  In general, people don't like stuff that floats over the content they're actually looking at (cf. the opposition to my snowflakes for Wintersday), thus I feel that most people would hide the navbox permanently, like my wife, and the feature would see very little use..
 * I thought of something to say about the HCI stuff as I was waking up this morning - If this were a business application, I could understand efficiency being paramount and trumping any aesthetic concerns. But it's just a wiki for a video game, so I don't see anything nothing wrong with aesthetics trumping efficiency.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 14:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, i really haven't been following this discussion very closely. What i'm seeing is Mendel wants to add css functionality to the nav boxes. Well, how about this as a compromise: code the nav boxes in css to look exactly like they do now.  So, mendel can play with his using his css, and nobody else notices any change? I'm likely quite wrong about what's going on, but that's what i'm getting thus far.  --JonTheMon 14:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Mesmer armor is much more useful than any navbox could ever hope to be, floating or not. IT HAZ PICTUREZ!  It, basically, IS a giant navbox with pics.  What I think you're proposing is a cool idea, but the application in this case is un-warranted, and largely un-wanted, don't waste your time with floating boxes.  And seems like JonTheMon got a "virgin" look at this convo and proposed basically the best solution, because it does seem like most, if not every one, like the navboxes how they look now and don't want any changes.  I'm sorry that you seem so excited about this thing, and nobody is hardly giving it a smallest chance, but this is a democracy, afterall.  :P  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 19:53, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Just dropping by to say that, the multiple sub-issues might do better by being divided into sub-sections, with all sides of arguments re-summarized at the top. That'll greatly help new people to jump into the discussion (or at least the parts they care about). As for the floating/showhide issue, I propose an OPT-IN model -- provide a tiny button at the corner of the navbox that if the user clicks on it, it pins the navbox (js cookie trick) so it stays at a fixed location. For users blocking or turning off JS, the navbox does nothing fancy. Progressive opt-in enhancements for those who want it, with minimum impact for users who do not (or are restricted technically). -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 20:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Pop culture policy change

 * copied from User talk:entropy

Everyone please read this and tell me what you think. I think it will help with trivia revert wars and related stuff. --Macros 18:13, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that using the oldest reference makes the most sense. However, if there is a strong secondary source, possibly fueled by the first, it deserves to be listed as well.  So, in case of Rebel Yell, I think the Confederate Army and Billy Idol should both be listed, but putting more emphasis on the original source and listing it first.  In this one, the original makes more sense, since we're talking about armies and uprisings, it's directly related.  But listing Billy Idol in addition will save numerous reverts and discussions by those who somehow strongly feel that it's the true source.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 19:59, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Mendel said much the same thing on IRC. If, for some strange reason, the secondary reference is more well known than the original one, then perhaps both should be put in the article. --Macros 21:10, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Exactly. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 04:16, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion regarding Skill pages
GW seems to be doing a lot of tweaking of spells and skills, etc., of late. It seems to me that one thing that would be useful on those pages would be a subsection which had a quick historical listing of nerfs and buffs. Yeah, you can sorta get this information via the archive pages, but that requires a lot of extra effort. When the game updates affect a skill, it would be fairly easy to add a line at the bottom showing the date and the old form of the skill. This would be incremental, showing the whole history of the skill (I don't think all the skills necessarily needs to be backdated, just starting from "now" would be helpful). I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out when the Rit skill used in doing Dwarven snowman runs got nerfed to complete uselessness. It could have been a lot easier to see what had happened if that info had been somewhere at the bottom of the skill. This would help people who were trying to figure out how/why an older character which hadn't been played in months had "suddenly" become completely ineffective, too. 07:21, 6 January 2009 (UTC)OBloodyhell
 * See Suggestions/skills history. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:55, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Back to original monobook and shizzle?
So, it's after wintersday, anyone complain if we take the decorations down now? <font color="Orange">Random <font color="Black">Time  21:04, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No complaints here. Hell, I'll do it for you if you take too long. =P --[[image:GEO-logo.png]]<font color="#237d00"> Jïörüjï Ðērākō.> <font color="#237d00">.cнаt^  21:07, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think the plan was to match the in-game decorations, and they're still up. I'd be fine with taking ours down early, though.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 23:34, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The issue's been raised by quite a few people, so this is 24 hours notice for taking the decorations down so as to give people who like it up a chance to object. I would've left them up as long as there's snow in Kamadan, but since the wintersday event itself is over, I'm ok with taking them down. Probably the snow will go with the Thursday update anyway. :-P --◄mendel► 05:27, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Down they go. --◄mendel► 05:35, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
 * OOOH! Ctrl+F5 does magic! RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 05:52, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

map style guide
Should we do a mini style guide on maps? It'd explain how to best get the "red dot path" style maps, and how best to mark important points on a map. The idea is to achieve that standard of quality on all maps uploaded to the wiki. It is obvious that a bad-looking map is often better than no map at all, but it also often means that someone has to go and redo it, which is just a waste. I must admit I've not uploaded any maps yet, so I couldn't write that guide myself. --◄mendel► 08:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know about standardization (having done every quest in the game, I've used many of them, and have yet to have serious problems excet for one), but I'd be interested anyway to know how the good maps are done, since I've never been able to make one. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 23:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Simple quest maps, that show a path from A to B, don't really need a style guide - you just take a screenshot and crop it. More involved maps with annotation and stuff, like for missions or the running guides (or more complicated quests) might could use a guide.  Something I always have trouble with is finding a small font that's still legible, or good colors to use for arrows and stuff, so covering that in a guide would certainly be handy.  Of course, we already have maps for nearly everything we need them for, so this guide might be too little too late.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 00:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been redoing quite a bit of maps this month and can say with certainty that getting a higher standard on them is not nearly as simple and just wandering around for a while and then Screenshotting your "red path". In a lot of cases, 72 DPI is "Shit" .  And a Style guide is also going to be "shit" unless it takes specific color-coding into account such as allowing different colors for different backgrounds.  IE:  boundries/lines that look good on an Ascalon map will look horrible in the Shiverpeaks.  So far the only thing that really comes through universally is the Red-Dot path itself.  ...But Hey, maybe that's a starting point for a Style guide though?? IE: NO MORE HAND-DRAWN PATHING if it looks like a 6-year-old could have done a better job, Eh?  ;D  ...and if anything ever needs some "retouching", then feel free to get on me about it, I'm  like some kind of expert or something, lol --ilr[[Image:Ilr_d-small.png]](12,Jan.'09)

Polls with adjustable width
Do we want them? See here. --◄mendel► 18:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've yet to meet a poll with an option so long that it merits extending it. Don't see the point atm. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 23:11, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Poll Yes we want polls with adjustable width just in case we run into a poll with an option so long it merits extending. No we do not want polls with adjustable width just in case we run into a poll with an option so long it merits extending.

&mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by PanSola (talk &bull; contribs) 23:19, 14 January 2009 (UTC).
 * Well, I mainly thought about polls that could be less wide - I remember having trouble to place the poll for Tenetke's Wintersday logo designs next to the poll for them. They'd also auto-size to fit table cells you'd put them in, which allows to integrate them better into existing layouts. We could have a poll of the week in one of the mainpage boxes, for example. (Mind you, I'm not advocating that - just advocating that we get the option to do it if we choose to). --◄mendel► 23:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Adjustable is fine, but I wouldn't want them to expand to the full pagewidth by default - the current width is fine in the majority of cases. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 23:47, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, I misunderstood. Yes, I can see how a smaller poll could be useful. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 00:30, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Revising: ? Y N -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 00:46, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Added to common.css -- ◄mendel► 20:22, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Semantic Media Wiki & Semantic Forms
Since over a year ago I have been contemplating introducing the Semantic Media Wiki extension into GuildWiki. However I haven't had the time/initiative to really think about the associated structural changes, and thus haven't really pushed for the idea. However, I very recently learned that Wikia now also has Semantic Forms (which is itself an extension to Semantic Media Wiki). Between the current active users of GuildWiki, I believe we have enough technically-inclined people to make it work (I'll be active at least in this project). Its implementation is supposed to make standard data more easy to input by average people (using forms), while making various data easier to look up (using SMW "ask" queries, which are more powerful and more efficient than DPL).

To completely explain SMW and SF, it'll involve very lengthy text and still many people will remain very confused. So what I propose is this:
 * 1) We request Wikia to enable SMW and SF
 * 2) We do a pilot project adapting a portion of Mesmer skills, Mesmer monsters/NPCs, Mesmer equipment, and Vabbian locations to use SMW.
 * 3) The community checks out the result.
 * 4) * If the community likes it, we spread it to the rest of the wiki
 * 5) * If the community does not like it, we undo the changes and then ask Wikia to turn off those extensions.

Collecting feedback for one week. For those really curious, you can read about SMW at semantic-mediawiki.org. Information on SF can be found on mediawiki.org. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 04:19, 16 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Is this sort of like what GWW does with forms n such, or is it something else entirely? [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 04:29, 16 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I haven't visited GWW in so long, I have no clue what they do with forms o_O -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 04:38, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Man, what's with you and mesmers? [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 04:42, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been a devout follower of Lyssa, twin goddess of Beauty and Illusion, since GW was still in beta, IIRC. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 05:14, 16 January 2009 (UTC)


 * It'll create a division between editors who can get the stuff on http://postable.net/smwqr/smw-quick-reference.png into their heads and those that don't - one kind can create and modfiy page structures, and the other can just correct data and enter new data that already has a place on the page. It seems as bad accessibilty-wise as DPL. Do you know the performance impact of SMW? I can see some benefits for new wikis, but none at all for an existing wiki with little data to be added. I think I have a basic understanding of SF. So what benefits do you expect? We can point to wikia wikis that have it enabled and are testing it out, do we need a pilot? --◄mendel► 11:56, 16 January 2009 (UTC)


 * For the important pages (skills, equipment, npc etc), SMW won't change actual page structures any more than existing intricate templates do. I don't expect 10% of our active users to actually know how Template:Skill box works, but we use that template on every single one of our skill pages.  Indeed, the average user is probably not capable of figuring out how to change how any of the infobox looks.  SMW and SF does not make those pages worse, while providing benefits for data entry/correction.  And in the meantime, I welcome any discussion/ideas to make our infobox templates more accessible for average users to figure out how to change.
 * What your concern does affect, was my intention to use SMW to generate various quick reference data. I would argue though, that once we get a few examples in place, it is easy for users to copy from one and figure out how to change it for their needs (assume they have enough knowledge on table-syntax and templates), without necessarily understand most of the SMW syntax at all.  Not everyone understands the underlying layers of templates that powers our existing skill qr system, and many people might not know how to make a new skill qr based on some new property, but I felt the hurdle was sufficiently low to copy from an existing one and modify into a new one (provided basic table/template syntax).  I see the technical hurdle for SMW/SF as being very similar.
 * There is one wiki I noticed SMW/SF being deployed recently. However, the guy in charge there enjoys using template systems even more complicated than our Skill box system, so I'm not entirely sure if using that wiki as an example would really demonstrate the good things, or scare ppl into thinking we'll have to introduce even more complicated template systems and namespaces (I believe half of the stuff he's doing are unnecessarily complicated/convoluted for the actual functions they perform).  But as a demonstration, first take a look at this.  It's structurally similar to our basic Skill details page like Template:Backfire, and is used in a similar way (their "Infobox:Black Star" is just transcluded indirectly onto the Black Star page).  Now take a look at this, it is still the same page, but with a different action ("edit" vs "formedit") which I consider to be significantly more new-user-friendly.  How was that form generated?  From this page, and if you want to modify the form to add an extra field for something like Height or IQ or Education, anyone sufficiently familiar with basic template-coding should be able to modify the form without actually studying SMW/SF syntax.  That is a demonstration of SF.  I haven't found a good demonstration for SMW's other uses that I intend for GuildWiki yet.  Generally a pilot would help as it best demonstrates stuff based on our data and how we use our data.  I am not currently aware of other game-related wikis using SMW yet, so it's really hard to find similar situations to demo. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 18:35, 16 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Performance-wise, certain queries can be strongly cached at the user's choice, to really help performance when the result is generally static. Otherwise, I only know SMW is significantly better than DPL, but no hard numerical metrics to tell you. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 18:37, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Reminder: Collecting feedback for 2 more days. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 18:27, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I still don't understand wtf it is, really, and I'm baed at reading technical stuff. So while I assume you can work out any potential bugs, I remain uncertain. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 18:29, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * That is the point of the pilot, so people can take a direct look at wtf it is, without going into the technical stuff at all. Right now I'm collecting feedback on whether we should have that pilot program limited to Mesmer/Vabbi/Lyssa-related pages. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 19:50, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Last call for comments regarding whether to have the pilot demo test to avoid lengthy technical discussions! So far I've got two voices being uncertain about the extensions themselves, without anyone really opposing the pilot test itself. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 18:28, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

class="sigpic"
Seasonal images will be added to links wrapped in  tags; you can add the class to existing tags if you have them in your sig. You can't see anything now, but once turned on, the image should be visible to all users on the wiki that see sigs with this, to the right of the link (the image shares the same link target). If you don't like the image, you're out of luck, though. See Sigpic for more information. -- ◄mendel► 01:41, 21 January 2009 (UTC) Sigpics I want one! I won't use one, but it's ok if you do. I don't want to see them.

Plese comment on GuildWiki talk:Sigpic, thank you. -- ◄mendel► 12:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

edit window
You have probably noticed already the changes. The full information is here.

Of particular interest is that we can petition Wikia to revert the changes. If enough users complain, then that is what we will do. Thus:

The New Edit Bar I like it meh Turn it off, please

It also seems that these changes cannot be overridden with .CSS or editing things on our side of the server, so that is out of the question. Sorry to disappont you, template wizards. :( (T/C) 17:26, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

UPDATE: Monobook users are no longer affected by the change and so things should look the same as always to them. (T/C) 17:56, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I personally think it is nice for new users. It'd be great if experienced users can turn it off from their preferences.  This is opposite to the "opt-in" philosophy I know, but I think the new feature provides a better editing experience for people new to mediawiki.   This is also something we can probably tackle from the js side if somebody is sufficiently motivated to look into. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 18:02, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't use Monaco, so it doesn't affect me in any way anymore. :D I agree that it makes it more "newbie-friendly", but of course as a "veteran" it was highly irritating - especially since I wasn't expecting a Monaco edit window in my Monobook.
 * Also, I am pretty sure that Wikia .js takes precedence over anything that we could throw at them, or else it would be easier to disable (i.e. we would not have to contact Wikia). Although I could be wrong, I've never seen an update like this which was just a change in .css/.js [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 18:12, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks god I'm not seeing this. It made me feel the same way like Vista or AOL - they invade everything you do and treat you like a 5-year old idiot. I don't know if I would have liked this even if I was a wiki-noob. The current buttons and checkboxes are easy enough to find if you found the edit button in the first place. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 18:31, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * People who move to Wikia from wikipedia aren't noobs, and they're going to be put off by this. -- ◄mendel► 20:42, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * People who didn't move to Wikia from Wikipedia and happen to in fact be noobs are going to benefit from this. If Wikia adds the ability to turn the feature off from preferences, that can potentially encourage more people to register for accounts (if monaco along wasn't sufficient to get them to do it...) -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 21:04, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it is beneficial that people who are too dumb to find the save button are unable to post. -- ◄mendel► 01:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Very few editors move from Wikipedia to Wikia. In fact, the vast majority of people who edit on Wikia had never edited a wiki anywhere before their first edit on Wikia.  Because of that, we're doing a lot of work to ensure that it is as easy as possible to make that first edit.  Admittedly, the edit window enhancement is a rather small change in the grand scheme of things, but it is one step in a long series of changes that we will be making to improve the usability of Wikia for the first-time editor.  We're also working on rich text editing and a number of other products to that end as well.  We're not the only ones working to improve MediaWiki's usability though.  The Wikimedia Foundation just received a huge grant dedicated to doing nothing but making it easier for users to browse and edit Wikimedia Projects.
 * That said, we realize that these new features aren't right for every wiki. That's why, if there is a consensus that these new features aren't right for your wiki, all you have to do is [mailto:community@wikia.com email us], and we'll be happy to disable them for you, no questions asked.  Regardless, I sincerely hope that you'll give these new features a shot, and react to the features themselves rather than just change in general. --KyleH (talk) 01:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't mind change, since some Wikia things I've found favorable, such as poll, youtube, and choice tags/extentions. I also like never being logged out on guildwiki (although this has recently stopped working). I think it's more the changes that affect usability which get to me, especially if they contain bugs (in this case, breaking Monobook editor). Everyone makes mistakes and these were fixed really quickly, but it's always a blindside when you're in the middle of editing something and suddenly the window changes.... :\
 * Kyle, we have been discussing about "fixing" the changes by use of .CSS or .JS, so that users who did not like the new window could disable it, but for new users etc. it would still be available. So far all attempts have failed, and if I read correctly, they are supposed to be that way (only Wikia can undo the changes); but I just wanted to double check if that was the case, as it would seem to be the most ideal compromise. We veterans are often the most vocal but we don't necessarily reflect the majority. ;) [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 03:07, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It should be possible to adjust things back to the way that they were using javascript, but it would probably take some effort. We didn't design it so that it is easy to disable it, but we also didn't set it up to explicitly thwart such efforts on your part.  I have, however, put a preferences toggle in our specification for the next release of the feature.  Is there anything specifically that is making it more difficult for you to use?  When I first started using it, I kept scrolling down past the save button by accident, but once I caught myself once I did that a time or two. Once I got past that, I grew to really like it personally. --KyleH (talk) 03:25, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * When I'm on a low-res laptop, I really don't want the edit window to be resized super-short, for one thing. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 03:38, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * My screen is 1680x1024 or something, but I find that I keep hitting "Show Changes" instead of "Save Page". I also personally find it hard to write edit summaries longer than just a few words, which I am fond of doing. (But then again, I don't use Monaco so this no longer affects me) [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 03:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Can we get wikia to increase the edit box size? --JonTheMon 23:33, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It's been mentioned [w:Forum:New_edit_window here], and Kyle is trying to get the devs to make it grow with the window width, but it's still going to be a lot shorter than it was for most people. -- ◄mendel► 09:35, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
 * We have two changes scheduled for release soon: 1) the summary box should automatically expand with your screen width up to a maximum of 500px (for the summary box itself, not the screen width), and 2) the "Show changes" button will become a link so it's harder to confuse it for the save button when you blindly click. We typically release new code on Tuesday, so you should see these changes then ("should" being the key word--no promises that it will happen exactly on schedule). --KyleH (talk) 19:26, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Year of the Ox decorations
Looking good and non-obtrusive as well as small-filesized. ;) I think it would be good to "warn" users about the pending changes and ask for input now, so we learn from the Wintersday mistakes. Your thoughts? (T/C) 08:21, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * What? Where? When? How? RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 08:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Special:NewImages is a useful page. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 08:27, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * See this page for details ;-). These decorations are part of German GuildWiki's overall design, which I haven't seen yet; because of this, I don't want to be rash in suggesting a decoration that would still undergo changes. I am currently using a champagne bottle as a mouse cursor (that's going to be obnoxious to some in its present form, so it won't become a feature) and the lightened tile in place of the Wintersday "ice boxes" (but not on the sidebar), with the Image:Büffel-Hintergrund.png as page background; and I am sure that if we do just the latter change, everbody is going to like that. We have no custom site logo, alas. -- ◄mendel► 10:51, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * A "Celestial Ox" logo would be ideal; I know what it will look like, but ofc there is no officially released artwork yet, and won't be till it's too late. Maybe someone could create one manually, based off the Celestial Pig? The background I think is fine and hard to argue against; the tile is fine for the boxes/sidebar. But still, no matter how small the changes are, I think we should just play it safe this time.
 * Also: FDS cursor would be awesome. ;) [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 11:21, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, should they drop from the fortunes, we might be able to get one early, or have Ishy search GW.dat for it. --JonTheMon 13:52, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Move this to the community portal? -- ◄mendel► 14:41, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Unfortunately, the "celestial animal" model is more than just a skin texture, there's also internal textures or lighting effects to make the stars inside the animal, so I don't think it would be possible to mock up a Celestial Ox using TexMod or anything like that. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 14:42, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * So anyway, that Buffel-blabla image, I can't see anything on it unless I tilt my monitor waaaaayyyy up. :( What do I do to make it show up like it's supposed to? I'm sick of all this not seeing all the shades of gray and pale crap on my monitor. I have ATI Radeon X1300 Pro graphics and Samsung SyncMaster 931BF monitor (if that matters in any way). HALP?  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 18:17, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you need to adjust the brightness/contrast on your monitor, since I'm on a laptop and I can see it just fine...once it will display for you when you are looking at the screen head-on, leave it that way. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 18:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

God dam... >_< Took forever to find that setting, since I've never used the Catalyst Control Center, but I reduced contrast from 100/200 to 95/200 and it's like taking a plastic film off of that image. A mere 2.5% difference did that! O_O And I thought I'd have to increase contrast, but turns out I had to reduce it. Oh well, I hope I see things more clearly now. :P RoseOfKali 18:45, 21 January 2009 (UTC)



GW.com page has a nice model up. (T/C) 00:53, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I just uploaded that here. -- ◄mendel► 09:35, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

See http://www.guildwiki.de/wiki/Hauptseite for theuse of the decorations, I want the sidebar background for the wiki and maybe the brown background for where the iceboxes were on wintersday - and of course we can redecorate the main page like theirs. License is compatible, so we can just copy and paste if we want to. -- ◄mendel► 15:53, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I wasn't a huge fan of the changed backgrounds. I'd personally be happiest with icon changes and maybe a couple of pictures added to the main page. --JonTheMon 16:22, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Replacing the main background with the lights and the dragon is ok, since it won't be much different from the current one. But I didn't much like the icebox idea last time, it looked out of place to me, and will be much worse with the brown color.  Icons are good.  You can use fireworks and Canthan sweets and drinks to spruce up the main page.  Heck, go crazy on the main page if you so desire, but only there.  Decorating like this is always fun, but it's easy to get carried away and over-do it.  Please, don't.  Last time some users had to turn the deco off because it caused problems for them.  They shouldn't have to do that.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 19:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I assume this is consensus. Gonna do that ASAP. -- ◄mendel► 02:13, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Got it on User:M.mendel/monobook.css and User:M.mendel/monaco.css, and there's Year of the Ox decorations, too. The change will go live tonight, so I'd appreciate whomeever wants to have a quick preview by copying the .css to their own pages. -- ◄mendel► 23:29, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Aren't there any maps that show where bosses are?
I haven't been on GW in about a year and can't remember if there were maps of where the bosses were on GuildWiki...--Bandit :) 19:53, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * On their own pages. &mdash;[[Image:MaySig.png]] Warw/Wick 20:02, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Most (>90%, I think) boss articles have a map of their location, or possible locations for Prophecies bosses. Many (closer to 50%, I'd say) explorable areas also have a map of the bosses that appear in that area, such as The Mirror of Lyss.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 21:00, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

full spawn pattern documentation

 * And a handful of areas have full documentation of monster spawn locations, such as Old Ascalon. That might in fact be worthy as a project for hard core players to work on. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 21:04, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * [rephrased my previous comment, sorry, was having a bad day] So anyway, I think this Old Ascalon business is absolutely worthless. It is UGLY. It has little value for most people (I mean, seriously, what's the use? you got the monster/boss lists and boss maps, you got the number of foes, you got the area maps, what else you need?). It is a MONSTER-sized undertaking as a project, especially considering random spawns and multiple patrol groups crossing with each other in areas 3 times larger than Ascalon, etc. Whoever is doing this needs to stop, or put it up on the talk pages of the article as a bonus. Zone articles should have uniform formatting, and there's no way anyone will ever come close to completing this for every zone in all 4 installments of GW. I can only imagine how long Old Ascalon took, and then add the fact that it's one of the simplest areas to work with, out of the 136 vanquishable zones in the game.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 22:32, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Responding to an earlier version of Rose's comments but got EC While you assessment of "there's no way anyone will ever get even close to finishing this" is probably accurate, I would consider that more as a result of because most people on the wiki are used to not seeing information in such detail. Uniformity?  Back in 2005 most of us probably wouldn't have minded making all location articles like that, but the other users just had different focuses.  Back then I personally was trying to introduce a brand new concept to the wiki later became known as Armor gallery, something that's probably harder to achieve alone compared to collecting all the data on spawning points in all the maps.  Heck, somebody who is able to complete the Armor Gallery project alone probably has no life to begin with and would have failed out of college.  But a point of our projects IS to have things that, if many people work together, become less of a load per person so eventually we may hope to finish it.  We DO have working armor gallery pages today because we have multiple contributors working together (and/or on and off) to provide the data (images), and come up with improved standards for the content of the data (image quality standards) and layout of the data.
 * One of the values of the wiki is "Content over Presentation", and if Tetris L's presentation isn't particularly pleasant to your eyes, that does not negate the value of the data. I for one find the information of the spawn locations (and patrol patterns) to be valuable on some maps and at least interesting in other maps.
 * You are entitled to your opinion, but if we just relegate ourselves to just doing the stuff that even people who have a life can complete on their own, we wouldn't need a wiki. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 22:48, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Anyways, I do believe Tetris L put that spawn info project on hiatus in early 2006. It was only this discussion on maps that reminded me of his excellent hardworked research.  I find it a shame/pity that we as a community never picked up and continuted that effort, and I welcome any constructive ideas on how to better present the spawn/patrol information of the mobs. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 22:59, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * While everything you said is valid, I still maintain my stance. Doing this research is infinitely harder than getting some screenshots for an armor gallery.  You MUST follow EVERY patrol SEPARATELY WITHOUT KILLING them or losing track of them while crossing stationary mobs to map EACH PATROL route (just try this in Ferndale and see what you get), and you must enter some areas multiple times to doublecheck the random spawns similar to the Tyrian bosses.  A single one of the more difficult areas of this project requires a lot more dedication and effort than a full campaign's-worth of armor galleries for a single profession, and most users will not be willing to do this.  This only leaves a handful of people to carry on.  Tetris L abandoned the project probably because he got tired of it and found a better use for his time, realizing that the areas he completed are only the beginning, and that further zones will become much more difficult to fully document the way he was doing it.  And "Content over Presentation" is only useful if it does not jeopardize the presentation itself, because now you have to scroll back and forth between the map and the monster lists to match what's what, and in Old Ascalon's case, I still can't figure out the 3 items on the map, I only know of Gwen's Broken Flute.  A map is only so big, and the more stuff you have to cram into it, the more difficult it becomes, turning into nothing but multi-colored lines and color-coded 2-letter acronyms that take half an hour to fully decipher.  By the time you figure out what's what on a more complicated map, you would have already vanquished half of it.  So by all means, presentation is absolutely important if the content is to have any value.  And on that note, why do you find spawn maps useful enough to make them worthy of this monster project beyond the already existing cartographer maps, monster lists, vanquish counts, and boss locations, as well as quests that affect monster presence?  I always thought that was more than enough to let me adequately prepare for what's to come. I just think this is overkill for the amount of effort to create such maps, and the added value for the readers who later have to decipher them.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 23:30, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Pan was just making a random suggestion, which people are free to take or leave as they choose; I don't see why you are getting so upset. If a user wishes to spend their time compiling such data and adding it to the wiki, instead of spending their own in-money to upload screenshots of armor they probably won't ever like/use (Male Mesmer comes to mind), I don't see a problem with that. People are free to spend their time on whatever they feel is best...
 * If this is exclusively about problems with the Old Ascalon and other such articles/Tetris L's abandoned project, then I think the discussion ought to be moved to the more relevant page, as it is mostly unrelated to the original thread. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 00:14, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I know that people are free to do as they please, but consider the following: For this to be called a "project" all of these variations need to be taken into account, because if everyone starts doing their own thing, then this is not a project at all. There needs to be consensus on handling these random elements, a common legend, and at least somewhat uniform formatting of each map. And again, on top of the information that already exists in the zone articles themselves and in the vanquishing guides, I really don't think this would add much useful information, and is definitely not worth the humongous effort it would take. RoseOfKali 00:32, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Many areas have numerous patrols, and each of them has to be mapped. The hydra bosses in the Crystal Desert and Ferndale patrols come to mind as good examples.
 * 2) Many areas have random spawns. Tyrian bosses are a good example, but all of them are already mapped in each zone article where they appear.  Another problematic example are the wurms in the Norn lands.  Each area has a set pattern of possible spawns, but each spawn has a low chance to actually spawn in an instance, and all of these would need to be mapped. How many times would you check the entire map before you consider it complete?
 * 3) Many areas have NPCs that spawn randomly, or are quest dependent, and all of those would need to be tracked. Jora comes to mind here.
 * 4) What about chests? It's the same as with the EOTN wurms, there are predetermined spawn points, but each one has a relatively low chance to appear. How many times would you need to map the zone to be sure you found all the possibile locations?
 * 5) Quests. Many areas have varying spawns depending on quests.  Do we document the version with no quests at all? Or the one with the most monsters? Or the one with the least? Or EVERY version?


 * I claim there exist Guild Wars players with some spawn patterns and patrol paths semi-memorized in their heads for certain subareas of the zones they frequent. I claim their knowledge greatly helps them when playing in those areas (especially the difficult areas) compared to other players who only have a general idea of what monsters exist using what skills for the whole zone.  Based on what I claim, it follows that there is value in the data to be collected.  You've outlined some of the efforts involved in order to pull this off successfully, and if anyone seriously intends to pursue this project they should indeed carefully deliberate on those issues you raised.  But the (huge) amount of effort involved doesn't really, IMHO, negatively impact the worthiness of the project itself.  -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 01:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I hear there used to be a project for a GW LAN server; with the code for that, because it can decode the client-server communication, you can easily track monster positions during gameplay and generate maps automatically (as well as automate drop research, monster skill lists, and more). -- ◄mendel► 01:23, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This completely changes everything, and if you can dig that up, great. Now the only hard part will be putting all the information together in a readable way, instead of spending hours upon hours re-mapping the same zones and tracking patrols.  If you can make a map that doesn't look like mumbo-jumbo of letter codes and lines crammed into the smallest space possible, I'll be willing to help if there's anything I can do.  As far as counting on someone to already know the information you need... good luck finding them.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 01:31, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

GuildWiki 2 discussion
There's an interesting discussion on GuildWiki 2 (will there be one?) at Talk:Guild Wars 2. -- ◄mendel► 01:33, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

answers.wikia.com
Some of the questions get asked from here, see Image:Wikianswers.png and answers:Category:GuildWiki. -- ◄mendel► 00:34, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * This is a blatant copyvio of Yahoo! Answers and other such stuff imo. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 00:41, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Can't copyvio ideas. -- ◄mendel► 00:43, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Technically answers.wikia.com has been around since 2004, whereas Yahoo! Answers launched in late 2005. answers.wikia.com just didn't have cool interface (it was basically vanilla MediaWiki with an inputbox to create questions) and so didn't really take off. I think wikianswers has some potential especially if the software can auto-link related pages based on the page the question was asked from and the text in the question.   -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 00:49, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * So, this is for those who are too lazy to type the question into Google and decide which hit to explore? Of all the questions I read on there, about 15% made sense and were actually legitimate questions... Waste of server space? I think so... RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 01:20, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * So when did google answers beta launch? -- ◄mendel► 01:33, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The beta can be found here [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 01:41, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Server space is cheap. I think it's mostly built to be indexed by Google, so that when people actually search on google for questions, Wikianswers gets in the search results, and thus gets ad revenue (if it got enough of a library of answered decent question).  From this perspective, since it's not intended to be browsed, the ratio of junk questions doesn't matter.  What matters is the raw number of high profile questions with answers on there.  Not necessarily saying they will succeed, but again, server space is relatively cheap these days so it's probably worth wasting as a gamble investment. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 01:48, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * All that for ad revenue, eh?.. Didn't think of that. Well, that's one site I'm not going back to. :P It would be too dangerous for me, I would spend hours and days correcting people's spelling and grammar, not to mention figuring out what they were actually trying to say... >_< Peepel nead moar riting klass. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 16:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Their SEO efforts could be exploited for the benefits of this wiki. If many questions are asked about Guild Wars related stuff, and there are answers on answers.wikia.com and gets indexed by Google, that means if somebody tries to find out some GuildWars stuff on Google might run ito that answers.wikia page, which if we properly exploit it will give a short answer, then say "for more information on this subject, see the Blah article on GuildWiki", and link back to us d-: -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 18:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * See answers:Who is Prince Rurik for an example. -- ◄mendel► 18:52, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) We should really do as wikia do and export/import our glossary, that'd give us (with properly adjusted hyperlinks) hundreds of pages right there; then do the same for all NPCs (with a canned answer of "see guildwiki:npcname"), and hey presto! we have our own link farm. I mean, it'd be easy to do, but I'd feel sleazy all over; like when Angela culls 2000+ acronyms off wikipedia and uploads them in question format to wikianswers. -- ◄mendel► 18:55, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well we have less than 2000, so it's gonna be ok d-: -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 19:55, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * See these are exactly the kinds of big important moral decisions which only bcrats have to worry about, so in that sense I'm glad I don't have to :p (but for the record, I'd feel scrubby about it too) [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 21:11, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I respectfully disagree. I think Bcrats shouldn't be bothered with this type of stuff unless the user community wants an arbitrary tie-breaker. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 21:45, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Is there a location template?
Is there a location template? If not, should there be?

While trying to join the Year of the Ox celebrations, I've been looking up info on Kryta, and other areas. The information provided seems inconsistent. Some locations have sections on Getting There, Politics, Culture, History, and/or Notes; however, many do not. As a newbie trying to find out how to get to the Year of the Ox celebrations, it's frustrating -- I can't tell whether I can or cannot make it from Prophecies or whether I could create a new character in one of the other games that had half a chance of making it.

Does anyone else think this is worth doing? (I realize this volunteers me to help design and/or apply the template to existing pages.) It seems to me that it would be useful to have sections and/or info-boxes useful to gaming and to roleplaying. I'm open to the format and style.

For example:
 * Examples of Topics That Help Play the Game
 * Getting There
 * Portals to Other Locations
 * Prerequisites (including quests, recommended char level, campaign, ...)
 * Things to Do (including towns/outposts, monsters/enemies, NPCs, skills/services available, quests/missions offered, quests/missions that take you here)
 * Examples of Topics That Help Role Play
 * History
 * Culture
 * Other Notes

-- Tennessee Ernie Ford  17:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Style and formatting/Towns. Shing Jea Monastery already has a "Getting There" section.  What exactly is confusing you?  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 17:16, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm more than a tad embarrassed. I started at Kryta because I thought that was where I needed to go...and from there, I was lost &mdash; it does not have a "Getting There."
 * However, you are quite correct: I should have started at Shing Jea Monastery or Lion's Gate which do have "Getting There" sections. I'm not sure how I would recommend preventing that type of confusion or if it's even worthwhile.
 * So, I guess Kryta is a region vs outposts like the monastery or explorable areas like Lion's Gate &mdash; perhaps those small differences are only confusing to very new players like myself.
 * And cool: It looks to me as if the template already has sections that should cover the info I'd like to see. (So, I'm happy to spend my energy helping on content rather than format or templates.)
 * Thanks for your help.
 * Note: this section (no longer needed) can be deleted after 7 Feb 2009 or at Dr. Ishmael's discretion.
 * -- Tennessee Ernie Ford 18:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Glad to help - sounds like you've got it figured out now. And we don't delete discussions - they're useful for future reference, in case anyone else gets confused the same way you did.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 18:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * :-) Thanks again. --Tennessee Ernie Ford 18:49, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Final thoughts
 * The source of my confusion was the official wiki, for example the Official Lion's Gate's page does not include most of this site's standard info.
 * And, as a compromise to "deletion," I'll strike out this section (so folks can more easily see it's been addressed) --Tennessee Ernie Ford 19:46, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I un-struck (?) the section, because it might be interesting for people to read, which is rather annoying with a big black dash through it :) --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  20:20, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Haha, I was about to do the same, Viper, but you beat me to it. Always remember, Ernie, that chances are you were not the only one confused about something, and comments like this are useful. Don't worry so much about posting "nonsense" or "stupid quesions" or anything along those lines. I got Engineering Student of the Year at my college for asking "stupid questions" when everyone else was too embarrassed to say something. ;) RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 20:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Well, hmm, yeah. I found Ernie's last reply a bit confusing in and of itself, so since you have unstruck this, we ought to clarify that articles will look inconsistent if you accidentally get the impression that the official wiki and GuildWiki are one and the same; and that, viewed by themselves, our articles actually are pretty consistent. Since both communities share a common ancestry and hence, a similar style (e.g. the infoboxes), it is an easy mistake to make. Apologies to Ernie for putting it as bluntly as that. -- ◄mendel► 00:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)