GuildWiki talk:Fansite Status/Official Status Letter

Finally!! A light at the end of the status tunnel!
Ok, attached below is the response from Gaile Gray. They need us to fill in a form (word doc) and we will be formally in the review process. I will post the form itself on Gravewit's talk page to get the fastest response. Then once all the data is there, I'll send it (or Gravewit) and hopefully get this rolling. Here is the communication:

Hi, Tarek,

Thanks for getting in touch. I've been observing your site for some time, and indeed it's a robust resource offering a ton of great information for Guild Wars players. Could I ask that you fill out the attached Guild Wars Community Fansite Program Application Form? The form will provide a lot of valuable information, including contact info, and we use that as the first step in listing a site.

I want to thank you for your support of Guild Wars, and for the effort that you have put into providing an exceptional service to the community.

Regards,

Gaile Gray Community Relations Manager ArenaNet www.guildwars.com & www.arena.net

From: Tarek Sent: Monday, November 14, 2005 11:28 PM To: ArenaNet Community Team Subject: Official Fansite status for Guildwiki.org Importance: High

Hello,

My name is Tarek, and I am one of the admins of the site www.guildwiki.org (my alias there is Karlos). I am writing to you about giving Guildwiki.org Official Fansite Status. Please check out the wiki (which is the largest, most used, most contributed to wiki about any MMORPG, let alone Guild Wars) and let me know of your evaluation of our site as well as any recommendations. Based on the criteria listed on the Community Fansite Program, I believe we easily meet the Official Fansite status, if not the Elite Fansite status as I will demonstrate below. In addition, we are doing all the game players a gigantic favor by providing this easily searchable wonderfully hyper-linked database of content in the game covering all angles from Lore all the way to collector info.

The criteria listed on the fansite page is as follows:
 * Update frequently, at least once per week: Check out the â€œRecent Changesâ€ link to the left to see the frequency of updates, or follow this link: [ http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges]
 * Host or link to a Guild Wars-related forum: Each page in the wiki has a â€œDiscussionâ€ tab which is a forum to discuss the respective article. If the article is about Damage ([ http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Damage]) then the discussion will be about damage ([ http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Damage]).
 * Display Guild Wars material on a page separate from other non-ArenaNet materials: The entire wiki is solely dedicated to Guild Wars.
 * Present a sufficient amount of original content, not merely a compilation (mirror) of ArenaNet-produced materials: Hands down and barring no other site, we have the most original content on Guild Wars on the net. Check out the section on the Fissure of Woe ([ http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/The_Fissure_of_Woe]) and browse each area in the fissure for complete shots of areas and monsters and monster descriptions. Check out the compilation of species in Bestiary ([ http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Category:Bestiary]), the awesome skill lists ([ http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Index_of_Skill_Lists]) or the very detailed and organized Mission Overviews ([ http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Mission_overviews]) and Quests ([ http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Quests]).
 * Present materials in an attractive and professional manner: You can be the judge of that, but we use the standard Media Wiki interface which is similar to [ http://www.wikipedia.org].
 * Display an ArenaNet logo and link to ArenaNet's site on the page of Guild Wars materials: In the footer of every page.
 * Abide by The Expectations: We believe we have surpassed the Expectations but weâ€™re also looking for ways to improve ourselves.

Please review our site and the links provided and reply with regards to our status as an Official Fansite. We look forward to your response.

Thank you, Tarek/Karlos

Sending the Letter
I'd been waiting for Gravewit to send the letter, but it's taken too long. If no one disagrees in the next 12 or so hours from now then I'm going to send the letter from my own account. 21:11, 22 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Myabe the MySQL errors should be fixed before sending the letter? kaarechr 15:15, 23 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Basically, I've been waiting for a couple things in succession. 1) The domain guildwiki.org to start working, 2) moving to the new free hosting, 3) fixing the mySQL errors that just cropped up. I'm talking with the host tonight re: mysql and the hosting, but as soon as I've got mySQL humming along again it'll be sent. ~ Grave
 * Sounds great. If the MySQL database (and guildwiki pages) need an offsite backup just let me know. kaarechr 15:50, 23 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Well that's fair enough but the domain was sorted a long time ago and we could have sent then. It's not like changing host is going to make a huge difference really, like you said, a few minutes of downtime, and the MySQL errors only turned up yesterday. I just feel that we've unnecessarily missed out on two fansite fridays since the IE bug was fixed. 20:29, 23 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * If the hosting is changing IPs then we're going to need to coordinate a DNS update on the zones to make sure that the move is seamless. Phil I'll ping you via email about it. MartinLightbringer 08:12, 25 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Alright, the change will take place sometime this week, you shouldn't have to change anything, Martin, but I will let you know ahead of time if you do. I'm sending the letter tonight unless anyone has any objections. (Sorry it's taken so long. Ducks are hard to line up, some times.) Gravewit 12:06, 26 Jul 2005 (EST)

Discussion
This is just a draft... Just because. I think it conveys what needs to be said in an appropriately buisnesslike tone. Anything else?--Kathryn Maulhammer 16:54, 22 Jun 2005 (EST)

Good stuff Kathryn. I think perhaps instead of saying "If you would look over our site, make comments and add us to the listing we would be grateful." we should be a bit less presumptuous, "If you would look over our site, make comments and consider adding us to your fansite listing we would be grateful.". Do you think this is reasonable? 22:42, 22 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Sounds good to me. --Kathryn Maulhammer 08:18, 23 Jun 2005 (EST)

How would you feel about having all of the regular contributors signing the letter? I just feel a bit uneasy that all the sysops names are on the letter when we contribute as much as anyone else does. If not, then I'd rather just have "Signed The GuildWiki Contributors" or something. 20:56, 23 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Agreed, signing. Anyone else who wants to, should.  &mdash;Tanaric 22:09, 23 Jun 2005 (EST)
 * Right. This's been up for a few days now. Perhaps one of the admin's should send it in? --Kathryn Maulhammer 15:00, 25 Jun 2005 (EST)
 * I think a week from the start date would be long enough to ensure anyone who wants to sign it has signed it. That would mean that it should be sent on the 28th/29th. 20:59, 25 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I think this has been enough time, although I had hoped that we would be running the wiki from GuildWiki.org before we sent the letter. Should we delay the letter, or have we taken enough time already? 22:37, 28 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * If it can be done quickly (i.e. today/tomorrow), do it. Otherwise, just send. --Kathryn Maulhammer 02:09, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I second Kathryn's statement. Scratch that.  We can't ask for official status when our page doesn't render readably by default in the browser that 90% of the internet uses.  Fix the IE bug first, then submit. &mdash;Tanaric 20:01, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)
 * I second Tanaric's statement. --Fyren 21:09, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * After trying to find fault with the CSS (I couldn't) I wondered why it appeared that the footer was floating inside the content div. So I validated it and as you can see something's not right. I'm not sure if the validator is correct in identifying the unclosed div, but if gravewit can try closing div's in a couple of places then it'll be easy to determine where the problem lies (hopefully). 21:18, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I believe there should be a closing div just before the footer div starts. &mdash;Tanaric 22:38, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I've posted a detailed account on Gravewit's user talk page, so hopefully he can make the change once he gets around to it. Until then should we just hang about? :/ It seems Gravewit has been less active recently. 18:46, 4 Jul 2005 (EST)

'Formatting changed so that threads remain intact. Biro's comment about colons is now irrelevant. :)'

As a note to all, the IE bug seems to have ben fixed tonight! I just refreshed the page and lo and behold something snapped right and I no longer have to resize the page to remove the annoying footer from the middle of the articles! :) Thank you whoever did this! I do second the suggestion that the site be hosted on some straightfoward address like GuildWiki.org or GuildWarsWiki.org or Guildwards.wikipedia.org :) --Karlos 19:16, 4 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Hey Karlos, I just fired up IE and I can see the bug is fixed as well :) Re: the domain name, Martin has registered the domain name "www.guildwiki.org" for use by this wiki. I imagine it's just a case of pointing the dns to the correct ip, and having Gravewit run a new webserver using /guildwiki/ as the root, but this will have to be sorted with the hosting provider probably. I don't know, I've never transferred a domain name :) Re: the letter, we are trying to achieve Elite status as well, but this is not the purpose of the letter. I'm going to change it back for the time being, but if people disagree the nplease say so here. 20:54, 4 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I received an email from Gravewit and responded but never heard back. I actually registered several domains around the guildwiki theme and will point them all at the wiki when the hosting issue is resolved (IIRC that was still waiting to be setup). Re: the /guildwars/ vs /guildwiki/ that can all be transparently done with apache rewrite rules and in fact no top level directory is even needed (IOW the urls can just be www.guildwiki.org/index.php?title=Blah etc) MartinLightbringer(CS) 01:31, 5 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Forget the colons, I'm replying to martin in case you get confused! Would it make more sense to have a seperate http server for the wiki...? 05:02, 5 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Biro, I believe Gravewit is acquiring seperate hosting for GuildWiki; domain name redirects are tacky and unrefined, and the goal was to stop us from eating up all his bandwidth allotment. The issue of wwwroot folders is moot, as we'll never see where the files are located on the server.  &mdash;Tanaric 17:59, 5 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Martin, hopefully, Gravewit'll take that a step further, and allow www.guildwiki.org/Blah. There's no need to show the index.php in the title, as was mentioned on Talk:Main Page.  He did reply with nameserver information on GuildWiki talk:Domain Name.  &mdash;Tanaric 17:59, 5 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Ah. I missed that page update. Thanks. I'll touch base with him again and get this straightened out so that use of guildwiki.org for the wiki can move forward. MartinLightbringer(CS) 22:54, 5 Jul 2005 (EST)

Ready to Send?
We've got the domain name, we've got the IE error fixed... I think this is ready to be sent. &mdash;Tanaric 20:14, 11 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Yeah, the next thing to get done is short urls, but I think we can send now :) Short urls can work along-side the current one so this is no problem. Send send send! :) 20:39, 11 Jul 2005 (EST)

go for it Nuble 00:40, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I sent the letter on the 26th and I fixed the mySQL bugs. Still no reply. Will keep you guys posted. ~ Grave