Talk:Main Page

We should talk about how to organize the wiki.

Hi, I'd like to help with the Wiki (I was thinking of starting one myself, but someone pointed this out), maybe we should start by getting as much detail as possible? It can be easily tidied up in the future. Maybe just a note of places, characters, items? - LordBiro

I say, start putting in some information, get it formatted how you want it. The raw information is more important than the formatting at the moment, sure.

- Phil

What if we had our own Column section were anyone can add and write their own guide. -Cirdan

How do you mean? Of course you can write a guide for anything you want. - Phil

I've been thinking about this over night, and I've been looking at the documents that exist on this wiki at the moment, and they aren't very wiki-like. I think this is because there are lots of guides, but not many facts, as you'd expect to find in a wiki. A way to improve this would be to create different types of stubs (which I'm going to try and do now), such as:
 * Location stubs
 * Item stubs
 * Skill stubs
 * Profession stubs
 * Character stubs (for NPC's like Rurik etc.)
 * Mission stubs
 * Creature stubs
 * Monster stubs

Then we can go through the documents that already exist on the site and change any potential article text (i.e. the word Prince Rurik, Orison Of Healing or Ascalon City) into a link to an article. Since the article doesn't exist yet it will link to a blank page. We can then replace those blank pages with stubs. I've started making stubs, and I'll start listing them in Stub Templates. - LordBiro

Birdo: Excellent. I started doing this myself with the skills. - Gravewit

We definately need to get some kind of structure to the main page. Perhaps we'll do some kind of split column like a lot of the other mediawiki-based wikis do. wikipedia.org, http://www.hrwiki.org/ etc.

Hey guys, I turned on image uploading. Use it wisely. - Gravewit

flooded recent changes! sorry!
Hi Guys, I've been linking to all the skills and locations from the elite skills location page, and I haven't been setting "this is a minor edit", so I've pretty much flooded the recent changes page, sorry about that! - LordBiro

No problem. Re: formatting: I've been adding bits and pieces (started setting up the Mission Guides section) as I've thought of stuff. Should definitely feel free to "fix" information into a better format, especially mine. ;p -nunix/rood

Hehe, I think I'm going to have to go through some of the things I've "stubbed" :)

skill stubs?
How do I add skills to the skills catagory? -Cirdan

re: skill stubs
hi cirdan, i've been meaning to write how you expand on a stub, but haven't got round to it yet :)

if you edit the page you'll see that there's a line that says. Leave that in for the time being, then put in any information you like about the skill! One you're done, if you think you have enough information then put in the line to include it in the Skills category, and take out the bit of text that says. This will remove the article's "stub" status, and put it into the Skills category :)

alternatively if you don't think you have enough info on the skill yet then you can leave the there :)

there's no real harm if you do either, if someone disagrees they can easily modify it in the future :)

on another note i've been thinking about whether we could make greater use of templates for some articles. Wikipedia use templates to add information to pages in a standard way. For example, if you look at the pages Beaver and Woodpecker you can see they both have the same little box on the side, the template for which can be found at Taxobox. This would be really useful to have on details about all kinds of things in Guild Wars, most obviously the inhabitants of Guild Wars. I think using templates might help bring together a lot of the pages in this wiki!

- LordBiro

using templates
Ok, I gave this templates thing a go, the results can be seen on Resurrect, still working on cleaning it up a bit :) The skill template is pretty useless really, just a small one to test if I understand templates properly :) but still will be useful in tidying up pages - LordBiro

PS. just looking, wikipedia does this in a slightly different way. If i have time tomorrow I will improve on the template so that it can be more easily customised.

Awesome! I like where this is headed. ~ Gravewit

Hi
Hi all,

This is Isbot from www.gamesanalysis.com I found your page because you link to an article written by one of our authors - The PvP guide by Standard AI. I like what you are doing with your site and think you have some good ideas.

I was about to link to your guide to not getting scammed as part of my hint of the day but as I have quite a few regular site visitors I was a little concerned about sending a bunch of people here due to how easy it is to edit and/or change your pages. If this is your format and you are sticking to it with a the more the merrier approach then let me know in this space or via email and I will do my daily hint as planned. If you wish to change security or don't want a bunch of visitors coming in like that then let me know that as well and I will not put up a link to your site. In that case if the person(s) who wrote the scam guide would like to submit it to our site we would love to have it simultaneously on our site as well as this one because I think the information needs to be out there. I personally have never had anyone try to scam me in a Guild Wars trade but I don't doubt that it is happening. You might want to add what the reporting procedures to Anet are if somebody tries to scam you.

Thanks again and I too am working on skills, armor etc lists would love to have more data...

Good Gaming,

Isbot isbot@gamesanalysis.com

Hey isbot :) nice to hear from you! It's up to gravewit, the owner of this wiki, to decide whether you should link to this site, but I don't see any harm. We are currently working on standardizing a lot of pages, but I don't personally think any more people viewing this site would cause a problem. Like I say though, I would wait for a response from Gravewit :) - LordBiro

---

Re: the scam guide, it was ripped from one of the forum sites (though I can't find the original link which should be cited). I think the wiki is a great place to distribute information like that. If someone places something inappropriate in, the people who observe changes (I do myself) will tweak/remove it.

Re: the skill taxonomy, this is a great format! -Adam Skinner-

Thanks Adam :) I'm thinking of putting a brief guide up on how to use it properly, so anyone can add one easily. It's pretty straightforward though as I'm sure you've seen :) just a case of getting all the skills in now!

I think maybe we should start making use of the community portal since this place is getting a bit crowded ;)

Anyone who wants to link here is more than welcome to. I've made Adam and Biro sysops, so you guys can help keep the riff raff out if need be! ~ Gravewit

Oh, and by the by, if either of you wanna join up and do some quests or joing my guild, send a whisper to Rojhaz Gravewit. ~ Gravewit

Hey Gravewit, thanks very much :) by the way, if you want to contact me on Guild Wars my name is Lord Biro ;) hehe - LordBiro

terminology, Ascalon (pre-sear)/(pre-searing)/(Pre-Searing)
I dont know how to refer to the different Ascalons, any suggestions?

It's referenced as any one of those all over the place. I was thinking the same thing last night. I supposed it doesn't matter to much, so long as we make it consistant. Gravewit

ok, i'd like to use the terms (Pre-Searing) and (Post-Searing) in uppercase if thats ok with everyone? - LordBiro

Good with me. Anyone else have comments? Also, note: to auto-sign talk pages it's. Gravewit

Yeah, that's fine. I tend to like "pre-Sear" but have no qualms conforming to the masses. And I'm pretty sure the game uses Pre-Searing and Post-Searing anyway, doesn't it? I'd have to dig for reference, though.. Nunix

ah right, ok gravewit :) i'll bear that in mind! -LordBiro

I tend to use pre-Searing and post-Searing: only the Searing part is uppercase. It's proper, grammatically. Check out Webster's usage for "post-Darwinism–pre-Freudism". -Tanaric 20:32, 20 May 2005 (EST)

Skill Images
Hey Gravewit, I noticed the Necro images you uploaded, they are really good quality :) where did you get them from? - LordBiro

From the official site. I ran them through photoshop to cut down the filesize (they were originally jpegs. ew.). It was a pain in the ass uploading them all one by one, that's for sure. Gravewit

ah, fantastic :D i'll get working on some monk skills then ;) good stuff gravewit, i had no idea this minisite existed!!! - (this was meant to be me...) LordBiro

The fansite kit has them all in .docs, but if you open the file up in Microsoft Word and just Save As... HTML, it'll output to an HTML file + folder full of the seperate images. Nunix

Just as a not, I uploaded all the monk skills, but some of them had apostrophes in the file names, so you have to reference them like this: - LordBiro

Other Wikis
Hello.

My guild and some members of the Guild Wars Guru community have been working on a wiki as well: http://www.tanatopia.net/wiki/index.php/Sacred_Dragon:Index. There is no need for more than one wiki, so I'd like to consolidate. Since your site doesn't require namespaces, it would probably be best to move everything here. Any objections or other ideas?

Problems will very quickly arise if multiple wikis pop up, each with their own format and contributors. It slows the progress of everyone. Are there any plans to advertise this and assimilate (or be assimilated by) other wikis across the web (assuming more exist)?

&mdash;Tanaric 20:39, 18 May 2005 (EST)

I'd suggested as much on the GWG forums. I think it's a great idea to consolidate the GW wikis, regardless of where they're hosted. Adam

Hi Tanaric, yeah this sounds fine (Gravewit is the owner, so it's his call, but i'm farily certain he will be ok with this), i can see how having to use a seperate namespace would be very annoying! I really like your wiki. It seems to have some good guides :) will be good to see them 'merged' with our existing documentation! Although I notice that you seem to tend towards large articles rather than smaller ones, and we have been trying (in most cases) to do the opposite, i.e. a page for every skill, rather than one for simply monk skills or necro skills. I suppose this could have something to do with the namespace though!

Practically speaking, can we assume that it's OK to simply copy and paste any content across, making reference to original authors where necessary? And will a number of editors be moving from your wiki to this one? If so we should perhaps focus our time on completing documentation on standard formatting to avoid any confusion.

As for other wikis, I had planned on starting my own, as I couldn't find any Guild Wars wikis on google. There might well be other wiki's out there, but I don't know how to find them. I think that it's fairly safe to say that if any other Guild Wars wikis do exist they wont be as large as this one, and as long as we make it clear that any information from other wikis is greatly appreciated then I don't think we need to worry about it too much. - LordBiro 22:24, 18 May 2005 (EST)--

I just did a search for wiki on GWG and found the posts you referred to Adam, good stuff :) nice to see you've been advertising ;) hehe.

Adam: Yeah, sorry, should have given you credit. Your comment on GWG was right on the mark, and I'm trying to make it happen.

As far as permission goes, editors here may copy and paste articles, may reformat them, may do anything. In essence, everything Guild Wars–related on the Tanatopia wiki should be treated as if it was hosted here. Reformat it, restructure it, and move it over. I'll make a similar announcement on the Tanatopia wiki: right now, the community supporting it is pretty disjoint compared to this one, so it shouldn't make much difference to them where they're posting. A transitional page for style differences would be good&mdash;I haven't read much here, and I haven't written anything here, so I'll leave it up to one of you to write. :)

I only ask that when you empty out a page, throw a link to the corrosponding page/index/category/whatever here, so the users can find the information they're looking for. I'll add an announcement to my wiki telling all my contributors to hold off for a few days, or to come here.

I unfortunately won't be able to do much for the next few days, as I'm boarding a plane to Germany in just a few hours. I'll get as much done as I can.

&mdash;Tanaric 20:22, 20 May 2005 (EST)

CSS messed up?
is it just me or does the css look like its been altered? for some reason the article box is overlapping the sidebar... if anyone wants to edit the css i believe they can create a new stylesheet and modify that, and then once it looks correct replace the existing one with that :) - LordBiro 22:24, 18 May 2005 (EST)

Yep, it's definitely changed. However, I don't know CSS at all, so.. hopefully someone else can tweak it. Nunix

Well it looks like the Monobook.css file has been changed (I think) which is seperate to the one at MediaWiki:Monobook.css (I also think). So I dont know if we can change it! hehe :) - LordBiro 05:52, 19 May 2005 (EST)

Clarifying CSS
Just to clarify, to modify Monobook.css, rather than touch anything in the css file itself you can simply add some CSS to MediaWiki:Monobook.css. - LordBiro 03:56, 19 May 2005 (EST)

Content Organization Meeting
I think we should find a time to all get together and spend an hour or so in TS going over our wiki structure. With the additional content and accompanying paradigm difference from the other wiki, I think it would be a good idea. I'd personally like to talk about developing standards and priorities. Adam

Yeah, this is a really good idea. TS would be fine by me, or IRC, or anything really :) would be good to sort things out! My Guild's IRC channel is #ltd-gw on irc.quakenet.org, #ltd-gw. My bouncer is always connected, but sometimes I'm not there. If my name is BAXTER then I'm offline, if it's baxter then I am online. If I'm offline the people in there are usually pleasant ;) LordBiro.

I'd love to participate as well. The earliest I can do so would be Sunday (international flights and the accompanying lack of sleep will keep me out until then). Tanaric 20:23, 20 May 2005 (EST)

RE: Merging, Et. Al.
I see no problem with adding your stuff here. I welcome more content. It's a community effort.

Especially since "merging" is just a matter of where you decide to post content, so.. not like you need a special badge or anything. It's just, you know, a wiki. ;p Nunix

Yeah, we definitely need to get more of a solid game plan for how things are going to be organized. I think Skills are a pretty good example of how we should have things work. Templates are good. But we surely need to get things sorted before this gets bigger than any of us can contain. So, I am open to suggestions, more :Talk page threads would be useful. Gravewit

Plurality of Item Names
I noticed that the articles for items have pluralized names. Is there a reason behind it? I tend to use the singular form, because then I can type Stone Summit Badge or Stone Summit Badges and both work. The current form requires Stone Summit Badge to get the singular form, and I'm lazy. --Tanaric 20:56, 20 May 2005 (EST)

- I think Tanaric has a good point. And I'd rather address the issue now (in the formative stages of the wiki, while we're still setting standards) rather than after much more content is added. Any content pages we rename will have redirects created for them as well, so the migration should be fairly painless. What's important, though, is that we're all on the same page. Adam

-

I don't know where but I'm sure someone spoke about using plural forms (it could well have been me, i really can't remember, lol :P). I think if we stick to plurals we can just use redirects on the singular pages. - LordBiro 02:33, 21 May 2005 (EST)

Number Ranges
[Editor's Note: This topic and the last should be moved to the Talk: page for a Style Guide, when one is created. I'm writing the questions I have down as I think of them, or I know I'll forget :)]

What should the format for number ranges be?

I've been using (#...#) for a single number that varies (for example, the minimum damage of a sword). I've been using #–# for a range. Thus, weapons' damage all look like this: (MinMinDamage...MaxMinDamage)–(MinMaxDamage...MaxMaxDamage). This fits with the in-game notation for skills with damage based on skills. Any thoughts? &mdash;Tanaric 23:01, 20 May 2005 (EST)

In the name of simplicity, I vote for non-plural names. I believe I've been doing it this way, at last most of the time, but might've gotten careless on a few entries. Gravewit


 * I don't mind either way with item names, I had been using plural, but that is no big deal, as long as plural redirects to singular or singular redirects to plural then they can both be used. As for using post-Searing or Post-Searing, I'm fairly certain the game uses upper case Pre and Post which while incorrect (according to websters at least) I think we should reflect.


 * Tanaric, I'm not sure if the use of the notation "(1...3)-(8...12)" is very elegant... I see why you are doing it and it does make sense; we do use the notation (X-Y) to describe the amount of damage done by skills, but I dont think your suggestion is very intuitive. Perhaps a better way would be to simply say:


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


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


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


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


 * Sorry about the ridiculously long post! - LordBiro 09:06, 21 May 2005 (EST)