GuildWiki talk:Community portal/Archive 17

"Mission" should be the default location page
Most of us play the game with some sort of goal in mind -- to get better items, to beat a mission, to find a specific crafter, etc. When a given mission location is looked up, I'll wager that most people want to find out about the mission there and aren't very interested in, e.g. that the name of the Fort Ranik merchant is Gram. Many location names include a redirect to the mission name (mission), which is good, but it means that whenever that mission is referenced, it must be referenced in the following formet: "[ [ mission name (mission) | mission name ] ] mission" in order to make it display cleanly. Additionally, it means that most every mission location page has a blank page consisting of nothing but a redirect link to the actual mission page. I propose that all mission location pages should be about the mission, with a disambiguation link at the top to the "mission name (location)" page. For instance, see Chahbek Village (Mission) moved to Chahbek Village, although the page that link to Chahbek Village (Mission) would need to be changed. I would suggest a bot to do all of that. How does that work here? Do I have to put in a request in order to run a bot, like I would have to over at Wikipedia? Banaticus 00:08, 29 December 2006 (CST)


 * Remember that when linking to an article, you can also link to the redirect. You don't need to write  Fort Ranik  as you can write  Fort Ranik . There is no need to change the current system and it would need a lot of work to do so. The pages should be moved and many categories hould be changed from many many articles. (Monsters, bosses, NPCs, ...) --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 02:39, 29 December 2006 (CST)


 * Try this: Fort Ranik -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 06:39, 29 December 2006 (CST)
 * I'm not sure I quite get what you're trying to accomplish. Seriously, it's going over my head. So why should we move mission articles instead of simply having a redirect (like in the Chahbek Village example you gave)? Is there something wrong with the redirect?  Are they not showing up "cleanly" when you link to that redirect (as in Gem's example)? Are you trying to reduce the article count? I don't mean to play twenty-questions, just trying to understand. BTW, I reverted the change you made on the Chahbek Village redirect... It'll do us no good to have two identical articles. It should be either moved or not; duplication will just cause someone headaches. :-) --Zampani 13:59, 29 December 2006 (CST)


 * I don't see a problem with reducing the number of pages, especially if it reduces confusion, makes things easier to find, eliminates . Why link to a redirect when we can simply have the "default page" be the mission page?  Why continue to propagate a system that's unwieldy -- why would we want to create an empty redirect page for every mission location in the game?  More chapters will come out and it makes it difficult to find things.  Again, I'm not saying that someone should go in by hand and change every page.  Who do I have to speak with to get permission to just run a bot on these pages?  Unlike Wikipedia, there is no mention of GuildWiki bots in bot. Banaticus 19:06, 1 January 2007 (CST)


 * The thing is, even if you had a bot set up, community consensus seems to be against you. The most that I would agree with would be to change the pages from redirects into disambig pages, but I don't think that that is worth the trouble, and that the current system works well.  --Rainith 19:19, 1 January 2007 (CST)


 * Until you describe what's unwieldy or confusing, don't change anything. --Fyren 19:21, 1 January 2007 (CST)


 * I don't see anything confusing or hard in the current system. The change would mean editing hundreds of pages linking to the old names. Changing to disambig pages would be stupid as 99% of the players want to find the mission article with the mission name. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 20:00, 1 January 2007 (CST)


 * I really don't see what you're describing as confusing or unweildy. The current system works fine, and works well.  If it's not broke, don't fix it.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:08, 1 January 2007 (CST)


 * Gem is correct -- 99% of users want to find the mission article. Why make them type extra text?  That's the unwieldy part, that 1) we make every mission name approximately 1/3 to 1/2 longer than it needs to be, 2) that we created an extra redirect page for every mission in the game.  I don't see the benefit of making the page a disambiguation page -- that would then be an extra click to get to the mission page and would be a further drain on GuildWiki's already thinly stretched resources.  This is essentially doubling page views for all mission locations.  Additionally, it's not wiki "clean".  A bot can simply run through a list of pages and change them, so it really doesn't matter how long the list is from that standpoint. Banaticus 10:55, 2 January 2007 (CST)
 * They are currently reaching the mission article without keying the extra text. The claim that we make them type the extra text is erroneous and misleading.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:50, 2 January 2007 (CST)


 * Hi! I'm back and I agree, there is no reason to change the name of articles. At present no one has to type any extra. If you go to http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Fort_Ranik you get the mission. If you search for "Fort Ranik" you get the mission. If you link to Fort Ranik you get the mission.


 * There is no doubt that the mission pages are used more than the location pages, and there is also no doubt that the mission pages and location pages need to be separate articles, but I am yet to see a convincing argument why we should not use the system that we are using at present.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 12:40, 2 January 2007 (CST)

Policy on new content information
Hey all, I'm usually at OblivioWiki, though I was wondering how GuildWiki handles new news/content for upcoming expansion packs/games (i.e. how you guys handled Factions and Nightfall content prior to release). The first expansion pack for Oblivion is coming out in spring as mentioned and previewed in a magazine, so I would like to know how GuildWiki handled pre-release information from third-party sources (i.e. not the dev or publisher). Obviously, verbatim content is not allowed, but how about paraphrasing? Bullet points? Nothing at all except straight from the developer/publisher? Just mention that there is an expansion?

Much appreciated, thanks. -- theSpectator talk 19:40, 29 December 2006 (CST)
 * We only list information either from the developer, publisher, or magazines. We never list information in the article if it originates from a fansite or a retailer's site (although those get discussed alot in the talk pages).
 * We usually list the information in bullet points, and include a list of external links at the bottom for the sources. See Campaign Four for an example of an upcoming release for Guild Wars.  Eventually, it gets more detailed, and becomes a full article, such as at Guild Wars Nightfall for the recently released campaign 3. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:46, 29 December 2006 (CST)


 * Ahh, okay, thanks for the response. So listing some basic info about the expansion (based off the magazine article) is alright then?-- theSpectator talk 20:22, 29 December 2006 (CST)


 * It is generally okay to paraphrase the salient points of the article. Posting the article verbatim or including scans of the pages is not allowed (on GuildWiki anyway).  --Rainith 21:14, 29 December 2006 (CST)


 * Ahh, of course. Thanks for the replies everyone. -- theSpectator talk 21:33, 29 December 2006 (CST)

Unique skins of greens
I want to make a category for skins that do not appear as drops. For example the new Domain of Anguish items, some of them use new skins while others use old skins (such as the Iridescent Aegis). -- &middot;&middot;&middot;&raquo; Life Infusion &middot;&middot;&middot; 11:29, 30 December 2006 (CST)


 * I think that a category would make stuff complicated. Feel free to make a page with a list. Unique skin unique items or something. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 11:42, 30 December 2006 (CST)
 * Really? I would think that a category would be easier to maintain than a list.  But that's just me.  Still, either way you do it, it strikes me as a pain to keep current - but if someone wants to try to put in the effort, I have no objections. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:46, 30 December 2006 (CST)


 * I wouldn't like to see each green having an extra category for this. Keeping categories simple is good. The page wouldn't need regular updating, just updating the new greens from major updates / new campaigns. We allready have a million quick reference pages which need to be manually updated os why not one more? A million quick references is better than a million categories on all of the item pages. Categories are often forgotten, removed accidentally and so on, compared to a quick reference where mistakes are more easily spotted. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 12:09, 30 December 2006 (CST)
 * Even better, why not just add some sort of indicator to the current unique item lists? Put a star next to uniquely skinned items or something. One possible issue is that two lists will get out-of-sync (Unique items list (Prophecies) and Warrior unique items quick reference for example), but it would still probably be more useful merged into current pages than on its own page.&mdash;Aranth 06:49, 17 January 2007 (CST)

The time on the server seems to be out
I'm at +/- 00:00 UTC, and my computer clock synchronised with the time.windows.com server shows 55 minutes or so earlier than the server time. -- 11:34, 1 January 2007 (CST)

Small Suggestion Page?
Salut,

As Guildwars is far from beeing complete, there is always need for minor suggestions such as optimizing e.g. the interface. A suggestion page where everyone could lay out his suggestion including pros and cons would be quite interesting. This shouldn't end in a whine page where ppl want their class or race better to perform in general. This should only be a collection of _minor_ proposal changes for e.g. interface.

Why a wiki instead of simply submitting the proposal to the developers? It's quite interesting to see for yourself which other solutions there are for optimizing the same problem. The second reason would be perfecting the solution with many thoughts instead of delivering the developers every month another part towars a perfect solution. Another small reason is that it would the developers take one look at the wiki suggestion section to see what's demanded and what has been worked out.

As this is a suggestion, you're free to love it or blow it up, as you like.

yours sincerely, J. Stebens


 * I think you would be better posting this on one of the many fan forums. GW customer service reps check them frequently and I have seen many threads like this on a particular forum I visit. You are free to put stuff like that on your user page though. - BeXoR  [[Image:Bexor.png]] 10:14, 3 January 2007 (CST)
 * I agree, this sounds like what is already active on many fan site forums. Currently, the wiki here only lists abnormalities and possible glitches as recorded by the community (as the wiki isn't a forum per se).  Personally, I submit the entire list every month to Anet and so far there have been about a dozen or so items removed from the list in the past 3 or so months but they aren't necessarily fixes that were done at a specifcic point but at least were noticed and finally removed from the anomaly list by users.  If you think it merits value, I can go back through my previous e-mails and see what has been removed from the list and include that with my monthly update on the anomaly talk page.--[[Image:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG]]  Vallen Frostweaver  10:22, 3 January 2007 (CST)


 * The problem would be that the developers don't frequent the wiki and the wiki policies don't quite support this. However, I am going to start this kind of project on my own user name space really soon, and I'll post here when it is ready for the public to use. I am planning on making a monthly suggestion post on the major fansites based on the stuff gathered on my project page. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 10:23, 3 January 2007 (CST)
 * That sounds great. You submit to the forums and I'll submit to Anet.  I'll see what I can dig up on changes that were made since each version that I submitted previously to Anet already.--[[Image:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG]]  Vallen Frostweaver  10:25, 3 January 2007 (CST)
 * The project page is located at User:Gem/Guild Wars suggestions. I will post my suggestion list soon. Please don't do anything before that. And please discuss everything on the talk page, don't edit the project article yourself. I will add, remove or change stuff if necessary. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 10:43, 3 January 2007 (CST)
 * I posted links to other similar pages on the talk page of the article linked by Gem. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 10:48, 3 January 2007 (CST)

Profession colors
At this point, we have multiple profession color codes in use on the site. For just a few examples, see: There was once a conversation on standardizing; either on specific codes, or at least on color ranges. I'm trying to re-open the discussion at GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting/Profession Colors to see if we can try approaching a concensus on this. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:55, 3 January 2007 (CST)
 * Henchmen
 * Skills by capture location (Nightfall)
 * Elite skills list (Nightfall)

Question
I want to search for this: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=mending touch

No matter what I do (and I tried), it takes me to the skill page. I don't want to go to the skill page, I want to do a text search. How do I do that?

It works for this: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=ballad of restoration

I'm not averse to screwing something up then putting it back. Does anyone know? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by Martialis (talk &bull; contribs) 11:12, January 5, 2007 (CST).
 * Key your term in the search box on the left, then click "Search", which will take you to the results page at http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=mending+touch&fulltext=Search
 * Just hitting enter is the same as clicking "Go", which automatically takes you to an exact match if found, and shows results if exact matches are not found. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:19, 5 January 2007 (CST)
 * To add to what Barek said, since there is an exact match for Mending searching for "mending" will never take you anywhere but there. There is no article Ballad, therefore that takes you to the search.  --Rainith 16:46, 5 January 2007 (CST)
 * He searched for Mending Touch and Ballad of Restoration. The links are just broken. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 17:21, 5 January 2007 (CST)


 * The behind-the scenes difference (at least, as far as I understand it - Fyren knows much more on this and has poked around that part of the code some) is that hitting "enter" or clicking "Go" forms the search like this:
 * http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=mending+touch
 * While clicking "Search" forms the search html script like this:
 * http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=mending+touch&fulltext=Search
 * The "Search" button forces a text search result (note the extra html in the search string), while hitting "Go" or "Enter" will use internal heuristics (all caps, all lower case, and a few other variations) to find a likely match, then show text match results if no initial likely match could be found. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:30, 5 January 2007 (CST)


 * It's what Barek has said. Click search, don't press enter or click go.  It doesn't search for phrases, so it's actually searcing for mending or touch.  I don't know why you're trying to search like that, but looking at what links here for the mending touch article will probably be more useful.  --Fyren 01:45, 6 January 2007 (CST)

Old Skin
I know this happened a while ago, but I just found this page like 5 minutes ago...and searched all the archives but couldn't find it. Anyhow, what happened to that skin we had up till mid November or so? I liked it, and now that we've changed to the current skin (Classic) it just seems like the quality down-graded imo. - Entice789  (Talk | Contributions) 01:50, 6 January 2007 (CST)
 * Switch it to monobook in your preferences. --Fyren 02:39, 6 January 2007 (CST)
 * Ah, that wasn't there before o.o  Thanks!  - [[Image:Smoke_Trap.jpg|19px]] Entice789  (Talk | Contributions) 03:57, 6 January 2007 (CST)
 * It's always been there. --Fyren 06:53, 6 January 2007 (CST)

Collectors weapons cleanup
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/GuildWiki_talk:Style_and_formatting/Collectors#Collector_weapons_pages

I think that the collectors weapons pages could benefit from a standardization, and have created a sample of my idea on my talk page. I didn't know for sure where to put any initial efforts at generating discussion for it (long-time lurker, new contributor), so I put it there. The main reason I'm trying to start dialog on this rather than just going and making edits is that what I would find to make sense and be beneficial is often not in line with what other people would find beneficial. -- IzzionSona 13:25, 16 January 2007 (CST)
 * I think you got a great idea going. As a pretty frequent user of thoes pages I would have to say it does seem a little disorganized due to the fact that there's no standard format for displaying the information.  And it could use a better way of categorizing the items too.  [[Image:Kaya-Icon-Small.png]]13:39, 16 January 2007 (CST)

Question on editing other user's pages
What's the exact policy on user pages? Are we not allowed to edit other user's pages? I just went through some disambiguation links and noticed that quite a few of such links are located on user pages (and talk pages too). Can I just go in and edit away the ambiguous link? I suppose some users might consider something like that rude... -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 04:15, 17 January 2007 (CST)
 * When I've moved pages about in the past I've just gone in and altered the links on talk pages and user pages, and other people have done the same on mine. I think it's fine to change things in order that they keep their original meaning, what's a no-no is altering substantive content. Course, no idea what the policy is, that's just how I think things should be done. --NieA7 04:29, 17 January 2007 (CST)
 * There is no official policy, but that's exactly the way people act. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 04:59, 17 January 2007 (CST)
 * It's also good form to leave a note on the user's talk page saying what/why you've edited. --Rainith 12:02, 17 January 2007 (CST)

Clean up
Am I the only one that finds this page incredibly confusing? Old completed tasks haven't been removed and the entire thing is very disorganised. I don't even bother to use the article, I just read the talk page. Time for a clean up/archive? - BeXoR   12:28, 18 January 2007 (CST)

Character selection screen
Is there something about it? Because i can't find an article referring to it. I have searched for it maybe i missed it? --Phoenix 04:33, 19 January 2007 (CST)
 * Doesn't look like it. The closest one is probably this: Login screen. -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 04:46, 19 January 2007 (CST)
 * Weird when i think at login screen i think only at the part where i input my account name & password. After that should be another article about character selection screen or something similar. --Phoenix [[Image:Phoenix_Benu.png]] 05:07, 19 January 2007 (CST)


 * That makes sense. Feel free to sort that :)  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 06:51, 19 January 2007 (CST)
 * I modified both pages a bit. Now it's better. --Phoenix [[Image:Phoenix_Benu.png]] 10:04, 19 January 2007 (CST)

Orphaned Pages and other junk
Is there a way to see where template and stubby things are included in other pages? This guy, for example, is obviously included somewhere: Adhitok/Collector, but there's no way to see where, or in how many places. This guy is just a spelling mistake: Adhitoi/Collector

Has anyone tried cleaning these up and should there be a policy about including direct links with includes? Martialis 12:27, 22 January 2007 (CST)
 * You might be interested in this. — Jyro X [[Image:Darkgrin.jpg]] 12:29, 22 January 2007 (CST)
 * Oh. So they should both be deleted?
 * Wait, what the hell? Why isn't this on the list, but this is?
 * This list is fucked up. :-/ Martialis
 * Because the first link you listed is the actual article itself; not something that links to it. — Jyro X [[Image:Darkgrin.jpg]] 13:11, 22 January 2007 (CST)
 * I'm not too sure I follow this conversation but just to add, if you look on the left, just above the GW Specialty Fansite logo, you'll see the "What links here" and the "Special pages" link, which contains what you need. -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 18:28, 22 January 2007 (CST)

Skill details box should keep history
Right now if a skill's "skill details box" is updated, it's changed for all historical versions that use that box. So the old versions are incorrect and history is lost.
 * It's not possible to do otherwise with MW unless we give every template a different name when major changes are made. That would make updating harder and confuse people.  --Fyren 02:49, 23 January 2007 (CST)
 * History isn't lost. It's still there. You just need to crosscheck the histories of two pages (the skill and the template). -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 03:04, 23 January 2007 (CST)
 * His problem is that viewing the history of either doesn't work properly because it uses the current version of the template. The data is still there if you click edit, but you won't see it in the rendered article because of the parameter changes.  --Fyren 03:17, 23 January 2007 (CST)

End of game greens: Collectors, uniques, or both?
On a some of the collectors pages, the end of game greens are listed (like Warrior collector weapons), while on others, they're not (like Ranger collector weapons). I'm assuming they're on all the unique item lists, though I haven't verified this... My question is, should we have them on the collectors lists too? Or should they just be on the uniques list? These items are the only "collectors" weapons with max stats that have any prefix/suffix mods, so removing them from the collectors items pages would clean up the page considerably, but do people visit the collectors page looking for the end-game items? -- IzzionSona 11:11, 23 January 2007 (CST)
 * Despite it being technically incorrect, my inclination would be to list them only in the Unique refs, not in the collector ones. --NieA7 12:05, 23 January 2007 (CST)
 * I agree. to support that, I'll add that they have the color of what we call "unique items", (isn't that just the name we gave 'green items'?), and that, just like unique items, they are fully upgraded. Foo 15:02, 23 January 2007 (CST)

MW upgrade
So, I'm using OblivoWiki as a guinea pig and upgraded them to 1.9.0. In a few days or a week, assuming Oblivio doesn't spontaneously combust by then, I'll be moving GWiki over, too. --Fyren 02:51, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * Good idea. Btw 1.9.1 is the latest release. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Important_Release_Notes http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_9_1/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES --Phoenix [[Image:Phoenix_Benu.png]] 06:32, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * The amusing thing is 1.9.1 was released the morning after I upgraded Oblivio. --Fyren 23:50, 25 January 2007 (CST)


 * MW 1.9.2 http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_9_2/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES don't know if the bugs described affect GuildWiki enough to cause an upgrade or not. It's up to Fryen. --Phoenix [[Image:Phoenix_Benu.png]] 17:13, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * No, the changes don't matter to us, so I won't be upgrading. --Fyren 21:06, 7 February 2007 (CST)

Going to do this Sunday night/Monday morning around 3 AM EST. Assuming it goes like Oblivio, it'll mean 15 minutes where the wiki is either inaccessible or read-only. --Fyren 19:18, 26 January 2007 (CST)
 * Sounds great and the time is a good one. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 19:19, 26 January 2007 (CST)
 * Looking forward to it!
 * As both versions were mentioned ... I'm guessing you're still planning 1.9.0 as that was the test version - correct? Or are you planning 1.9.1? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:23, 26 January 2007 (CST)
 * Why not 1.91? --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 19:24, 26 January 2007 (CST)
 * 1.9.1. --Fyren 20:14, 26 January 2007 (CST)


 * 15 minutes when the wiki is read-only? Sounds like some wonderful dream... ;)  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 05:19, 27 January 2007 (CST)

Setting the wiki to read-only in a few minutes. --Fyren 02:51, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * Hit a small snag that caused the white pages, heh. Should be fine now.  Here are the release notes for 1.8 (since we were at 1.7.1) and for 1.9.  --Fyren 03:30, 29 January 2007 (CST)


 * I noticed the recent changes now display a (+number) after every edit. What does that mean? (I skimmed through the release notes, but that's all chinese to me O.o) --84-175 (talk) 03:45, 29 January 2007 (CST)


 * If I may answer that myself: Seems to me this shows the number of characters added/removed from the article. Not sure what it is good for yet, but it's neat. :) --84-175 (talk) 04:04, 29 January 2007 (CST)


 * Soooo did it also say how to turn it off!? --Xasxas256 04:08, 29 January 2007 (CST)


 * No idea about that, sorry. --84-175 (talk) 04:11, 29 January 2007 (CST)


 * I think they're quite useful. If you see -9999 you know something bad is happening :)  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 06:15, 29 January 2007 (CST)


 * I'm too set in my ways, I like Firefox 1.5, Winamp 2.9, Win Media Player 6 and Windows 2000! These plus and minus things are a confusing bloated addition! And no I'm not stuck in the past! Can't seem to find a way to get rid this new "feature" in my prefs either :( --Xasxas256 06:42, 29 January 2007 (CST)


 * Wow, I keep forgetting those things are even there - I glance right over them now unless I remind myself to focus on them. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:24, 7 February 2007 (CST)

Armor funciton types - box completion
Can I suggest people (or a bot) try to go through all the articles in Category:Armor function types and add the relevant insignia for each type? At the moment the bonus is listed, but next to the insignia entry on some pages it just displays — Biscuits (talk  contribs) 09:47, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * We're (Glynnis and I) changing the function pages style and formatting (User:Bexor/Armor Project) and the function box is going to be changed anyway. Don't worry about it cause the pages are going to be completely different soon and I wouldn't want anyone to spend a heap of time fixing something that's going to just end up deleted. - BeXoR  [[Image:Bexor.png]] 23:28, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * As your armor discussion pages are very very very long and pretty intense, I was wondering, how are things progressing and are you guys close to completion?--[[Image:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG]]  Vallen Frostweaver  07:34, 25 January 2007 (CST)
 * We have a few test pages up, and nearly everything is worked out, so soon it will just be a matter of implementing the changes. I'm estimating about a week. - BeXoR  [[Image:Bexor.png]] 07:36, 25 January 2007 (CST)
 * Excellent! Any word on if you guys will need image resizing to make the images fit into the thumbnail boxes?  I saw many images were redone with /attention and they look and fit great but wasn't sure if that was going to be in the end product.--[[Image:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG]]  Vallen Frostweaver  07:45, 25 January 2007 (CST)
 * Function pages wont have images on them anymore. The old system of having galleries was confusing and poorly implemented so we decided to get rid of it altogether. :) As for the thumbnails, there is an ongoing community project at Armor galleries project to improve the quality of the art galleries following the new s&f. As you can see most of the Mesmer and Ele ones are done, with more on the way! :) - BeXoR  [[Image:Bexor.png]] 09:33, 25 January 2007 (CST)
 * OK, it looks like you've put a lot more thought into this than me! I'll leave you to the good work :) — Biscuits (talk [[Image:Biscuit.png]] contribs) 09:27, 25 January 2007 (CST)
 * He as long as we are on the subject of gallery. I did most of the female monk and then got stuck on the tatoos.  So we are down to 2 choice: Monk Ascetic's (Dragon) Armor or Monk Ascetic's Dragon Armor.  Anyone have comment on that.  It may seem small but that got me completely stuck.  Once that is done I will finish with the male pictures.&mdash; ├ A ratak ┤  10:11, 25 January 2007 (CST)
 * My personal preference is without any brackets. :) - BeXoR  [[Image:Bexor.png]] 10:27, 25 January 2007 (CST)
 * Same here. — Biscuits (talk [[Image:Biscuit.png]] contribs) 11:15, 25 January 2007 (CST)
 * It'll be easier to type and more intuitive without the parentheses. -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 19:49, 25 January 2007 (CST)

Icon size, part 2
I brought this up before at GuildWiki talk:Community Portal/Archive 11. Some of the icons I reverted were re-reverted to the larger ones. Don't do this. Yes, the ones I reverted to look worse but bandwidth is more of an issue than an icon looking ugly. Here's a more up-to-date list of icons which are using disproportionately large amounts of bandwidth: Upload 2-3k versions but don't change them back to the versions with large file sizes. --Fyren 22:34, 28 January 2007 (CST)
 * [ Obsidian Flesh]
 * [ Shield of Judgment]
 * [ Echo]
 * [ Spoil Victor]
 * [ Twisting Fangs]
 * [ Reckless Haste]
 * [ Shadow Refuge]
 * [ Spirit Bond]
 * [ Ancestor's Rage]
 * [ Shadow Form]
 * [ Death's Charge]
 * [ Dark Escape]
 * [ Sliver Armor]
 * [ Dash]


 * I've just fixed Shadow Form (changed from 5kb to 2.5kb, with no change in quality). I'll list the rest here as I fix them. {Jioruji Derako} 18:42, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * Well, I reverted all of these to crappy versions that were smaller (where available). SF was almost 30k.  --Fyren 18:57, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * I'll go and download the icon packs later, and just overhaul these icons later. It's not a lot of them that need fixing, eh? Just these. <font color="Green">{Jioruji Derako} 18:59, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * I didn't actually look at every icon to see if they were too large, I just pulled a list of the 500 most used images and saw that these accounted for a lot more bandwidth than most. --Fyren 19:04, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * Hmm... well, these ones first... if other ones need fixing, I can make a project out of it. <font color="Green">{Jioruji Derako} 23:39, 30 January 2007 (CST)


 * Jioruji, I still have a program to resize and add borders to every icon. I don't have a lot of time to put them through photoshop or whatever to reduce their filesize, but I could easily run the program, send you a zip of them, and you could run them through as necessary? This is entirely up to you, though, and there may be some way to reduce the filesize using ImageMagick that I'm not aware of! <span style="font-family: Georgia, serif"> &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 05:57, 31 January 2007 (CST)

Make a move towards portals?
Should we do like wikipedia did and make a move towards portals? At least for Portal:Main Page and Portal:Build ? For details you can go here: Wikipedia:Portal. --Phoenix 17:44, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * We effectively have portals already - just not in their own formal "Portal" namespace. Is that what you're suggesting, to add the namespace?  If so, then I would say there's no real need. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:48, 29 January 2007 (CST)

Rating article
It is up to date. The only change between now and before is the value for K, as noted in the article. --Fyren 05:57, 31 January 2007 (CST)

Update!
Time to start updating all those skills now... this time they're sticking around (although ANet has said they will be making adjustments over time to these, so keep your eyes open). Block and Evade have been merged (again)... seems like a good amount of the changes from the temporary weekend are back, with little/no changes. Get to work! <font color="Green">{Jioruji Derako} 21:37, 1 February 2007 (CST)

On Rollover Content
Add functionality within the overall wiki that summons the Skill_box (for instance) template - pulling the info from the skill template itself for fill in - from a "on Rollover" javascript for all items (Skills, Weapons, etc).


 * I submitted this task in hopes that someone who knows how to do this notices it and takes care of it. Unfortunately, I do not have the know-how to get this done myself. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 169.147.3.28 (talk &bull; contribs) 13:59, February 6, 2007 (CST).


 * This has been discussed in the past. The feature used on some other forums is a package called "gwBBcode" available from gwshack.us.  My understanding is that the tool was looked at in the past; but due to server and bandwidth requirements, the current version is not viable for GuildWiki.  There was talk on their site at one time of improving the software add-in to make it require less system/network overhead - but to the best of my knowledge, they have not released it as yet. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 14:08, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * I see (thanks for catching my n00b posting). What about the tag? When rolling over anything that is linked it usually has a tag. What if there was a way to extract Skill/Weapon/Armor/etc info and condense it to the tag text that comes up on rollover anyway?... Like this:


 * [[Image:Way of Perfection.jpg|5,1,30 C:Factions, P:Assassin, A:Shadow Arts, Type:Enchantment Spell]]


 * That requires the user to remember to insert the extra text manually everytime they add a skill. Worse, it's a manually updated process - so any changes to skills like those just recently wouldn't automatically update.
 * To make it automatic would require either incorporating something like the gwBBcode software (which again, my recollection is that it has a sizeable impact on site performance); or re-writing of the core MediaWiki software (or creating an add-in that accomplished the task). Even if someone with the programming knowledge wanted to take on the challenge, it would still require some way of identifying which roll-overs should be substituted by the new coding and which can remain with their default MediaWiki functioning, as well as adding a process of populating the tags, which would require (likely) a once-a-day scan to refresh them to somehow embed the new tag info into the presented page.  It's not impossible; but it's not something that can be done easilly and not without consideration of how it could impact site performance.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:37, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * Correction ... after thinking about it ... we might be able to populate the tabs by modifying the "Skill bar" template (as I assume that's the one you most likely want to show this - within the builds section); let me know if there's someplace else you were thinking of implementing this sort of thing. I'll play with this some and see what can be done. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:00, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * Maybe we should give it another try. As for bandwith, it might even help save some (less full page requests). DeepSearch 15:21, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * Also, I don't think it makes too much sense to actually use gwbbcode, exspecially not their data. We'll most likely end with different skill data along the way, and have double the work updating it. Instead, I assume it would be possible to use our own data. DeepSearch 16:55, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * Edit conflict:


 * To take skill data as an example, I presume the request is to be able to type Word of Healing or something, and be able to bring up an info box on mouseover?


 * The first problem would be that in order for a certain link to produce a mouseover, that link would have to be different from other links on the page, so it would need a specific class. We could do this, but it means that typing Skill Name would not produce a popup. You would have to type or something.


 * And that is presuming that we have some javascript to handle the popup. With regard to the JS I'd expect you'd either need to hard code every skill and its details into a javascript file (this is the easy but ugly way) or use AJAX (or something similar) to say get the details from the template. I think we would be able to get this information from performing an XMLHttpRequest on the raw version of each skill template.


 * I think that makes sense... I might play around tonight :) I'm not that great at JS though, so someone might be able to see a flaw in my logic!


 * Anyway, whichever way we do it, I think it would be a fair bit of work. <span style="font-family: Georgia, serif"> &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 16:59, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * I started experimenting with something at User:Barek/Skill bar‎ and User:Barek/Skill tab that I think could do the trick - although it will require multiple inclusions to get it to display. I need to fix the code to get it to reference the skill contents.  But ... my wiki code knowledge is limited, and the lag is too severe at the moment for me to continue experimenting.  If someone with better wiki-code skills sees this and wants to work on the code in my namespace, feel free.  Otherwise, I'll see if the lag is any better later tonight and try figuring it out on my own again then. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:48, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * Hmmm ... okay, lag gone. Anyway, looks like I need to create template:Skill box tab to get it to work the way I want.  I'll draft it together to see if it's what you had in mind. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:29, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * Try this ...
 * Is that along the lines of what you had in mind? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:37, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * Is that along the lines of what you had in mind? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:37, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * That's much more like it. If you can pull from the Skill info automatically (including cost, charge, recharge) that's the info that I believe build masters would like to look at on the fly while researching builds. For instance, on a build page each skill used can be rolled over like your excellent representation above to get the respective data. I imagine that would definitely clear up alot of page loads, having to normally click on a skill to get its info. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by Muzikmon (contribs).
 * You should probably have read the discussion below. :) --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 19:13, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * Problem #1. Doesn't show up in Opera. Problem #2. In Firefox the bow I get on mouse over (If I hold over the icon for some time) only shows a very limited message. I can't quite remember what the character limit is, but it's pretty much insufficient. It seems that IE7 is the only one of my browsers where this would be of any use and there is no way I'm going to use it.
 * And thre's also the problem that it's not really intuitive. I wouldn't be waiting to have these mouse over descriptions and I wouldn't notice them by accident as they only show up after leaving the cursor on the image for a small while. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 19:00, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * Ahh - I'm limited to IE6 from where I'm at now ... was going to test Firefox when I get home tonight. But, if this is a browser specific solution, then that by itself rules it out in my mind.  Any solution should work at the very least in IE7, Firefox, and Opera.  Otherwise, it's not a real benefit to the wiki community (and could even seed confusion or even resentment if we geared a solution to a specific browser - could be viewed by some as trying to force a browser choice).
 * So, unless it can be made to work somehow for the other browsers, we're back to the original resource intensive solutions that, in my mind, aren't viable due to the resource requirements. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:04, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * Gem, can you check for me ... do mouse-overs on images in Wikipedia generate text boxes in Firefox? I'm guessing not in Opera though.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:15, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * Some of them do, some don't. I'm not sure what the logic is. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 19:20, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * Ah, images that have text in the image call (separated with a pipe) have the text in the mouse over box. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 19:22, 6 February 2007 (CST)

I have a suggestion that may allow such features as the gwBBcode to be implimented without affecting site bandwith. I own the gameinspire.com domain and would be willing to contribute my bandwith for a subdomain like gw.gameinspire.com that could act as a mirror of gw.gamewikis.org and lighten the load for all aspects of the site.

It could at least hold a database of skills/items from here that would feed the rollover content.

What do you think? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by Muzikmon (contribs).


 * You can sign your comments by typing four tildes ( ~ ). What comes to your suggestion, you should probably ask Gravewit, Tanaric or Fyren about it. Even if your suggestion were accepted, I'm not sure if we should implement anything which uses extra server resources or bandwith for a small nifty feature. The wiki is growing all the time and suh things might cause serious problems later. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 19:33, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * Thanks. I am new to wiki practices/guidelines. :) Muzikmon 19:38, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * When it comes to sharing resources, as Gem said, it'll need to be taken up with the names he listed. Although I know that sort of thing has been suggested and avoided in the past.
 * The example above uses relatively fewer resources, especially compared to something like the current version of gwBBcode. If we can get the above to work with Firefox, I would feel better with that solution; but I'm not sure what would need to be changed to make it work.
 * Also, after experimenting, I honestly can't find an easilly understandable means of it showing adrenaline, energy, sacrifice, activation, recharge, cause exhastion Y/N, and/or requirement (lead, off-hand, or dual). Leaving any of these out impacts the usefulness of the pop-ups for various skills - without icons, it's seriously problematic to convey these clearly.  I'm not sure the popup type above could ever be used for this list of info and still remain clearly understandable. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:47, 6 February 2007 (CST)


 * As far as the text only, I agree. It would be helpful to some and confusing for others. No real clear way to give a quick view like my original idea is based on. Therefore, I have submitted my suggestion for a mirrored site that would allow for the content and lighten bandwith to Gravewit, Tanaric and Fyren. I'm curious what they think. Muzikmon 20:10, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * Rather than just posting the same question on all their talk pages and having separate lines of dicussion, wouldn't it be better to just point them here? -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 20:25, 6 February 2007 (CST)

I am strongly against the alt tag solution posted above, as it's a blatant misuse of the alt tag. People using screen readers or text-only browsers will be greatly inconvenienced by that method. &mdash;Tanaric 20:39, 6 February 2007 (CST)

Anything that uses one template per skill in a build article would be bad. I'd be uncomfortable with an AJAX solution that would hit apache per skill, too. I'll think about this some more and see if there's something more... low tech that'll play nicer with the resources we have. --Fyren 00:23, 7 February 2007 (CST)

Mike O'Brien Announces GuildWars.com Wiki
I don't know where to post this, and forgive me if it's wrong or even if you want it deleted would be okay. But Mike O'Brien just posted on GuildWarsGuru.com that GuildWars.com is starting their own Wiki. http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2521817#post2521817
 * Yup - already posted at Community_Portal --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:22, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * This will be interesting. As I said in the forum thread, there are many concerns to be addressed and many questions to be answered. Looking forward to see it unfold. --[[Image:TurningL sml.gif|Tetris L]] 06:20, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * I could only reply to the email I was sent this morning, so I haven't read the posts on the gwg thread yet. I also have some doubts as I don't want all our contributors' work to go to waste. I am sad that it looks like GuildWiki will be shutting down after a while, I hope we can all stick together, admins and contributors alike, and continue our vision at ANetWiki. Here, at the least, the admin team have a comradery and work well together and I hope that continues after the move. If what Mike said about Phil and him spending his own money to help maintain GuildWiki, I wish that information was known to this community. There is no sense in one person bearing the financial load when so many would have gladly donated. It looks like Phil will not be joining this move and while I have questioned his dedication recently, I know what it feels like to have to abandon a project that you have put so much effort into. I wish Phil the best of luck and offer my services for anything should it be needed in the future.
 * This is not the end yet, as there are a lot of setting up still needed on the ANetWiki site, but I enjoy my time here and will continue until the very end. I just wish ANetWiki didn't use a .com extension, but it is a commerical site, which is why they did not use the nc-sa license and used GNU instead. Time to use a proxy so I can work on it during my free time at work. :P &mdash; Gares 07:48, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * This has been discussed around the server upgrade in November, when many offered donations to pay for a server upgrade, and we were told that the income from ads is enough to pay for the server hosting, and even for a little savings, to pay for a server upgrade. It didn't sound at all like Phil was still paying a lot of money from his own pocket. --[[Image:TurningL sml.gif|Tetris L]] 10:00, 7 February 2007 (CST)

Questions for ANet
I realize this is extremely short notice, but I'll be speaking with ANet sometime later today. Biro will probably be joining me. Possibly Tanaric and Gravewit, if they're free. The selection was conducted in an unwikilike manner, but it started out something like this:
 * ANet: Hey Fyren, who at GuildWiki would like to speak to us?
 * Me: I dunno, speak to you about what?

Anyway, here's a summary of what's going on: And that's it. You know exactly what I know and didn't need me to say it since Mike O'Brien already did say it.
 * 1) They're setting up their own wiki.

Here's how it directly affects us:
 * 1) It doesn't, much.  It's not like we're going to shut down.

They want a wiki linked to the game but don't want to directly host or fund us due to the no commercial use clause of our license (as Mike has said). As far as I know, they just want people knowledgeable about various aspects of wikiage and we're the obvious community to approach. That's probably why they've offered our admins adminship on their wiki. Some have already taken them up on their offer.

There were some license-related questions asked in the thread Mike posted in. I wrote up something quickly that deals with it and put it at User:Fyren/Licensing. After reading that, it should be clear that moving content between the wikis will be impossible in many cases and difficult at best for most.

Now, I don't expect there to be much to talk about with ANet. If people have questions for ANet, post them here and I'll ask somewhere between none and all of them when I speak to ANet. --Fyren 08:04, 7 February 2007 (CST)


 * I will be asking ANet what level of autonomy and freedom the new wiki will be allowed, as this has been the most important consideration for me since the original announcement. <span style="font-family: Georgia, serif"> &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 08:09, 7 February 2007 (CST)


 * There's probably lots of good questions to ask although at the moment I'm curious as to what information Anet will offer to the wiki. E.g. Raw documents (on bosses, skills, etc.) There must be some stuff that doesn't have to be redone from scratch.
 * Is the wiki entirely community managed or will there be Anet administrators? Will Anet be providing all the bureaucrats?
 * What content is allowed and what isn't allowed?
 * There's probably more important stuff than that but at this stage (it's after midnight here) that's all I can think of that I'm interested in. Cheers Fyren. --Xasxas256 08:15, 7 February 2007 (CST)


 * They are some good questions Xasxas. Gaile assured me in an email that ANet would not be staffing the new wiki, and that they wanted the wiki to be entirely community run, to quote her directly:


 * "In our proposal, Guild Wiki would not be an ArenaNet project. That is to say, we would not be staffing the Wiki as editors or moderators; it would be an independent site, as it is today."


 * If this is accurate then I would be very pleased. As for what content is and isn't allowed, I imagine this will be a difficult subject. In my first response to the announcement (wherever that has been archived to now) I wondered whether user pages and talk pages would be as free to discussion as they are at present, and this will be worth discussing.


 * Thanks Xasxas! <span style="font-family: Georgia, serif"> &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 08:22, 7 February 2007 (CST)


 * What makes them think it will work? I feel somewhat differently about contributing to a community help site, built from mutual interest and need, versus contributing to a site which sounds more like ANet is freeloading so they don't have to pay people to write their own documentation. If most or even some of the work must be duplicated, will the same people want to invest their time all over again to recreate the information?  Will new people want to invest their time if they see it can be made irrelevant (more or less) at a whim?  Won't the spammers/scammers/botters target the official wiki much more if it is accessible to everyone in-game?


 * My other question is, how do you duplicate the information without violating copyrights? I mean, if all the mission guides, tutorials, lore, etc needs to be rewritten, wouldn't a majority of it likely be rewritten by those who had read or helped create the original (and therefore open it up to copyright violations even if unintentional)?  And if that were somehow prevented, wouldn't that cause you to lose some of your best editors?


 * Peej 08:35, 7 February 2007 (CST)


 * To deal onlny with the last paragraph of text, that's not quite how it works Peej, unless I've misunderstood you. As a very real example, I designed and uploaded the profession icons. These icons are released under a CC non-commercial license. If anyone else were to copy them over to the new wiki, that would be an infringement of the license. However, if I were to copy them over to the new wiki, it would not be an infringement of the license, since I am the copyright holder.


 * I know your question is slightly different to this, but I hope this answers it. I have to leave the house for a while now, so I can't provide a more comprehensive answer :P <span style="font-family: Georgia, serif"> &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 08:42, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Fyren's thing might help too. --Xasxas256 08:45, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * To clarify, let's say you wrote a mission guide half-full of incorrect information and then I edited it to correct (a big enough edit to count for copyright purposes), then you wanted to move it, but I could not be contacted. If you then decided to "rewrite" the entire part I changed after your original post, it would probably turn out looking a lot like the edit I made; since you had read and probably even re-edited my part (since this was your article in the first place, we'd assume you look at it reasonably often), it would be hard to say that you didn't have my part in mind when doing the re-write.  Not that you couldn't manage to rewrite it in such a way to qualify as new writing, but if you had to do that for a significant number of articles, in a short time frame, with an open editing group (I'm sure a number of people would know no better than to just cut and paste the info from one site to the other).... -- Peej 08:53, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * The biggest probleme I see is like Fyren point out. Article can be edited by many users and that can be a mess since you have to have everyone autorisations to copy the texte else where. (edit conflict :&mdash; ├ A ratak ┤  08:47, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * You can't copyright facts, so you can't copyright the basic information of a walkthrough. The creativity for our mission articles that copyrightable content needs comes from the actual layout of the article and its information or particular suggestions that aren't pure fact.  If you write an article from scratch and aren't particularly familiar with our article on it, there shouldn't be a problem.  If you are very familiar with our article, then I really don't know. A company writing code (that they want to keep proprietary) to do something similar to a popular open source project might make sure their employees working on it have never seen the OSS code.  It seems a little extreme to suggest the same for GWiki/GWWiki, but it certain would be safe that way, heh.  --Fyren 09:26, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Another question: what happens to the talk pages for each article? Sometimes those are as useful/interesting as the articles themselves... -- Peej 08:54, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * I've gotten like 5 edit conflicts. This is killing me. :p Regarding ANet and the admin situation, they have ANet sysops as of now. I can understand that, so after the base is complete, they might just sit back and then let the community control it.
 * The transfer will be a challenge to say the least. Mike stated that a hundred of users have copyrights over articles, it's actually in the thousands I'd imagine. 25,000+ registered users and anons adding articles. Quite a task indeed. &mdash; Gares 08:56, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Out of our users (the 25k includes users of all our wikis), like 17k have made no edits at all. GWiki accounts for the vast majority of our edits, so again about 17k have made no edits on GWiki.  I'm drawing up some relevant stats already which I'll share in a little while.  --Fyren 09:21, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Talk pages fall under the same license as normal articles. --Fyren 09:21, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well, here's what my questions to ANet would be. First, and very important, what will happen with the current wiki policies, will they have to be scratched/modified? The most obvious example would be the recently approved We are not ArenaNet. I personally found that policy a very positive one for the wiki, but unfortunately it seems as if it won't remain for long.
 * So far, GuildWiki has never really had to worry about what ANet thinks of what we document here, simply because there was nothing much to lose in the first place. As long as nothing illegal was being done, at most they could remove the Specialty Fansite Status, and that'd be it. Big whoopee. But now, now all that changes... The question would be, how much does it change? Can they shut down the servers if the wiki isn't getting enough views to justify the costs? Can they boot an admin/user they don't like for one reason or another? Can they appoint their own people as sysops/bureucrats? How much of a say will they have in the policies that have been discussed in the past, or that will be discussed in the future? User pages, what is going to be allowed and what isn't going to be allowed? Right now people can list WTB/WTS on their user pages, if I'm not mistaken. Will they be able to do so on the new site as well? Will we still be allowed to comment on talk pages about how incompetent ANet is for fixing/not fixing bug X or issue Y, without risk of getting booted?
 * In this same line of thought, I'd like to touch on what Jyro X mentioned above, the Builds section. For what it's worth, if the Builds section has to go, I'd rather it go by consensual decision of us wiki users, or by decision of the sysops/bureaucrats with the logic that it's for the best of the wiki, and NOT by some arbitrary decision by ANet. It would be a very negative precedent, in my opinion. (Note: I'm talking about the Builds section as a whole, and not the individual builds in it, since most of the current ones I'm guessing won't ever make it on the new wiki for copyright reasons).
 * On to more practical matters, the most important of which is certainly going to be repopulating all the pages on the new site. My main issue is original research articles, such as Armor, Drunk or Guild Lord. This is all information that has been found out by the community and there is simply no other way to get it. If this material can't be copied over to the new site, what will be done to get the information over there as well? Conduct all research again, have the contributers spend innumberable hours reinventing the wheel? OR, is there any chance that ANet could actually contribute as well? I think that'd be a very positive action from them, if they could actually not only provide server space and bandwith, but actually contribute to the content. I know I wouldn't be the only one that'd be glad to see the devs clarify some of the game mechanics that have been subject of discussion forever. After all, if they want to actually supply this information as official in-game, they probably want it to be as correct as possible as well, don't they?
 * I guess asking what exactly can be copied over or not is also a worthwhile question. Bestiary skill lists? Maps of bosses/collectors/different places of interest? Pictures of monsters, items or areas? The armor galleries that Bexor, Aratak and others have been working on recently, can they be copied over (since they're still active on the wiki and I'm guessing that they wouldn't mind doing so)?
 * (Took me a while to gather my thoughts here, so edit conflicts abound; glad to see that others share the same worries as me though). --Dirigible 10:57, 7 February 2007 (CST)

What kind of system would they have for re-building all the information/articles? There would definately have to be a number of bots to re-initiate all the main articles (NPC's, Bosses, Skills, etc). And also, I would like to re-emphasize Savio's question about player-created builds on their wiki. How will/will they be handled? I honestly hope not. One way to look at starting fresh is that it gives us the job of house-cleaning without the actual cleaning. :P — Jyro X 08:57, 7 February 2007 (CST)


 * The following are my three main concerns/questions, and I'd like to see them addressed:
 * 1) How much information and technical support will the wiki get from Anet?
 * Countless hours of work went into gathering information for the wiki. Long lists and tables of data and numbers, ... Very often extensive research and exploring was needed to collect the facts and numbers. GuildWiki has a huge headstart here. But the official wiki could easily catch up if the wiki was linked with the in-game databases. I guess that a skilled coder of the ANet team could easily code a bot who does nothing but transferring data from the game database to the wiki, and update it as the game is updated. Is ANet willing to do such a link of the wiki with the game database? Because I think I'm not willing to collect all that data yet again, manually.
 * Furthermore, there are many questions that we've discussed and fought about on talk pages for long time, and we were not able to answer the questions and make a decission. In many cases ANet could have clarified and end the dispute with a few words. Is ANet willing to do something like that in future?
 * Will ArenaNet staff show up on the official wiki at all? Will they help us, or is this simply a new, entierly community-run wiki re-built from scratch on a new, more reliable host?
 * 2) How will the admin team be reinforced to deal with the influx of new users.
 * The effect that I fear the most is that when ANet announce an official wiki, everybody will be going there, assuming that this is the place where they can talk to the developers, complain about the game, ask questions, ask for favors, ask for help with tech problems, make suggestions, ... or simply to seek attention, rant, vandalize. We'll have the l33t veteran pro gamers, the casual gamers, the newbs, the kids, the trolls, even WoW players trying to disrupt Guild Wars' success. The user community of the new official wiki will be VERY different from the current GuildWiki community. Such a community is a bag of fleas, a can of wurms, a big kindergarten, and it needs surveillance and moderating 24/7. I've been a regular on the official Unreal forums, and I've seen it happen. It wasn't nice, I wouldn't want to see it happen again, and I certainly wouldn't want to be the one who has to look after it.
 * If the above is going to happen, the current admin team simply isn't anywhere near strong enough to handle it. By "strong enough" I mean strong enough by number of admins, and strong enough by authority. Regardless whether they are on ANet's payroll or not, the admins of the official wiki will be mistaken as representatives of ANet by many people, especially newbs and trolls. The admins are going to take a lot of flak for ANet, they'll be called nazis, idiots and what-not. I think ANet has to provide their meat-shields with a little bit of support to deal with that.
 * 3) How much freedom will the wiki have?
 * This has already been discussed at length in the thread on the GWGuru forum and here on talk pages. What is ANet's stance on We are not ArenaNet and Personal sites. What policies is ANet going to change or establish.
 * I'm looking forward to hear some answers. --[[Image:TurningL sml.gif|Tetris L]] 09:39, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well if more admins are needed, I'm accept to be nominated ;) Well selfish plug end here.  Anet can't just give us the servers and not help.  I agree with Tretis L, huge amout of time was given into research that could have been answered in 5 minutes by someone at Anet.  And please if we have a contact at Anet, it shouldn't be Gaile Gray, she is nice and all but her knowlege of the game is questionable.  My concern is also about content,  will they accept tricks on farmings boss, bug exploit for cartographer title?&mdash; ├ A ratak ┤  09:55, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * The easy one is 3: they are not GuildWiki and we are not them, our policies mean nothing on their wiki. Relevant (but not an answer) to 1, bare data itself can't be copyrighted, so you can look at GWiki and move over weapon stats or skill ranges and so on, just not copy and paste sections of the article that contain particular formatting or expression of that data.  --09:58, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Content cannot be copied wholesale between the wikis. See the licensing link in my first post.  --Fyren 09:58, 7 February 2007 (CST)

To clarify, questions that involve GuildWiki and ANet's wiki have a much better chance of getting asked. I'm talking to ANet to see what they want from GuildWiki (though that just seems to be contributors). I'm not collecting info to write an article on their wiki like GWG or GWOnline might do. If it doesn't relate to GuildWiki, I'm probably not going to ask it. So it's not that Tetris' #2-3 are bad questions or not something people want to know, but I'm not a reporter catering to the Guild Wars community at large. --Fyren 09:58, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Regarding some of Tetris' concerns:
 * I have a list longer than Fyren's talk page I would like to discuss with a dev dealing with questions of mechanics and in game content. I hope they offer assistance in this context. Obviously these questions do not concern topics as "anti-farm code" and such. ANet employees have registered user names on their wiki, so I am sure they will be around. I do not know the extent of their involvement however.
 * It is going to be chaos from time to time and the need for a fair amount of admins will be needed, I am sure. Dealing with issues, though, will be decided on what type of policies are in place. As the site layout differs from GuildWiki, I wonder about Style and Formatting if a transfer from GuildWiki is not feasible. We've(admins) have been targetted by vandals before, sometimes for no reason at all. Just take it in stride and obviously, I will petition for a policy as soon as possible regarding personal attacks, and I hope ANet does not think us too harsh when it comes to dealing with troublemakers on their wiki. &mdash; Gares 10:22, 7 February 2007 (CST)

How will users be dealt with? Meaning will they be allowed user pages? Will they be linked to in-game ID's? How much freedom/restrictions will there be? As I see it now from Mike O'Brian's description it looks like they will be duplicating this wiki (avoiding copyright stuff) without the builds section. That sounds fine and all but I too have a concern that it took a very long time to get the wiki info as far as it is now and manually adding in the info again I beleive will be more than the community may be willing to do in it's entirety. I guess I would like to know how much they are going to be giving the community to work with as in data, set-up, staffing, restrictions, freedoms, ID's, bugs, opinions, and so on...--  Vallen Frostweaver  10:40, 7 February 2007 (CST)


 * Darn edit conflicts. :)


 * For the record, I intend to administrate over there. Here are the questions I'll be asking in our conversation today:


 * 1. What is the Guild Wars Wiki's stance on User pages?


 * In our conversation last summer, Mike stated that he wished no user pages to be allowed, point-blank. I think this is a big issue, as our community here is one of our most important attributes. If they don't allow user pages, the GuildWiki will still have a significant niche.


 * 2. What autonomy as an administrator (and possibly a bureaucrat) will I have?


 * I'm well-entrenched in my administrative role here, focusing on policy and users far more than vandals and deletes. I'm not too inclined to go back to a ground-trooper role.


 * 3. When is in-game support of the wiki scheduled to appear?


 * As far as I can tell, the support of the game client for the Guild Wars Wiki is the thing most likely to put the last nail in the coffin for us, so to speak. We will, at the very least, cease growing at that point, and I expect within a few years after we'll have experienced significant shrinkage. In Mike o'Brien's latest message, he said that Gravewit is dropping significant money into the GuildWiki every month; if that's really the case, I expect him to pull the plug on the server as soon as he considers our languishing as a community inevitable.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 10:54, 7 February 2007 (CST)


 * About the user pages, that might be a something to bring up again, possibly to compromise with some restrictions. Too many red names is a killer and liable to make you go blind. :p In any case, most serious users have important information on their user pages to help wiki. Personal task lists, personal sandboxes, contact information, just to name a few advantages. I'd like that to be discussed and I'll do it after work if no one has mentioned it before I get home. &mdash; Gares 11:12, 7 February 2007 (CST)

A few questions of my own ... I have more - but those are the first ones that come to my mind. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:22, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * 1) User pages ... addressed by Tanaric above, but should be re-asked of ArenaNet to confirm their position. They do currently have a user namespace setup.  I can understand banning subpages and images - but some level of info seems reasonable.
 * 2) Position on builds. While I don't actively try to remove builds from GuildWiki, and have even helped the build community - I am on record as saying that I believe a wiki is a very poor medium for testing and rating builds.  What will AnetWiki's stance be on this?
 * 3) Foreign languages - there are many foreign language GuildWiki spin-offs. Is ANet planning to have official language wikis, or is that a stage 2 if/when they decide that the english one is working to their expectations?
 * 4) Policies, guidelines, and formatting - will the admins have a chance to work with Arena Net to get some of these in place, or will Arena Net provide inititial policies and allow the community to define others withing what ArenaNet allows? Asked before above - but still a question.
 * 5) What content may not be allowed on the new wiki which is currently allowed on GuildWiki? In the article space, this is a question of documenting actual glitches that can be used to simplify quests/missions.  In talk pages, assuming those are allowed (they do currently have a talk namespace), will speculation, rumors, alpha leaks, etc be permitted?


 * This is a happy turn of events for me, since it means that I'll be likely to return to wiki stuff soon. Since ANet correctly set wooing the guildwiki admins first, it is up to you admin guys to work out a good deal with ANet. The sooner things like Userpages and documentation of bug/exploits are put down in written form, the better. Secure a free wiki for us. --Xeeron 11:40, 7 February 2007 (CST)


 * It all sounds very involved, I'll be very interested to see what emerges after the talks between ANet and the GuildWiki admins. It's a pity they've chosen to limit the conversation to that kind of high level, though I can see why they'd want to at this stage. In terms of the bare bones of the new wiki can't the simple facts (which is what the backbone of GuildWiki) be copied across - skill data (not comments), weaponsmiths, collectors, greens (not how they can be reproduced) etc? I know about the problems with the licences but stuff like that is just fact from the game, no two ways about it and nothing that could be copyrighted by a contributor here. At least, that's what I would've thought. --NieA7 18:44, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * That's what you get for being mostly in another timeline with the rest of the active community... having to catch up on these talks, heh. Has this discussion with Anet been conducted yet? Let me help summarise the things most on our minds:
 * How much information and technical support will the wiki get from Anet developers?
 * How will the admin team be reinforced to deal with the great influx of new users?
 * How much freedom and autonomy will the wiki community and its admins have with regards to content and policy?
 * Will Anet control, censor, or restrict certain information from being made known?
 * What would be Anet's stance on user pages and personal content?
 * When is in-game support of the wiki scheduled or expected to appear?
 * Is there be a future plan that incorporates the non-English wikis?
 * Personally, it's kinda exciting that Anet is doing something like this. But it's gonna be a waste if a large portion of the information already here has to be reproduced and rewritten. -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 20:33, 7 February 2007 (CST)


 * Hi! I really want to know if they want to incorporate the non-English wikis, I'm the admin of gwiki.fr (a french one) and I'm afraid with that announce... I don't want to see all my work being down, because there's an official wiki :'( --User:Ouroboros 20:51, 7 February 2007 (CST)

Some random stats
These might be off a little since I didn't think about them very much and just threw some SQL at the database. Only articles in the main and build namespaces were considered. I drew these up to try to illustrate the problem with getting users to agree to multiple licenses. There are: --Fyren 10:45, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * 276694 edits total
 * 15.6 edits per article on average
 * 56494 edits anonymous users (so, ~20% of the total)
 * 3.1 edits by anonymous users per article on average
 * 9 different editors per article on average
 * 4.2 different anonymous editors per article on average
 * Wintersday 2006 had 768 edits, the most out of any single article
 * It had 301 different editors, 180 of which were anonymous

Short summary of the discussion
Biro will post something more substantial after he wakes up, but here's as short summary of what's going on including what's already known/announced: --Fyren 21:14, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * ANet's starting up another wiki. It has nothing to do with GuildWiki.
 * People can contribute to either, but besides that there's no direct impact on GuildWiki.
 * They're using the GFDL as a license. I layed out some of the involved issues at User:Fyren/Licensing.  If you want your own contributions here to be available there, use Template:GFDL or Template:User GFDL.  If you want your contributions there to be available here, you'll have to similarly release your contributions under our CC.
 * They're leaving mostly everything up to the community. A bunch of our admins have been given admin there.  The community can draft policy as they want. ANet does have concerns about being associated with content users might put on their user pages and similar things, so some areas will likely end up being stricter than GuildWiki.
 * Once the English site is on its feet, they plan to host wikis for other languages as well.


 * So all I have to do is to close gwiki.fr after 6 months of modding/improving hosting etc...? :x --Ouroboros 23:40, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * You can do whatever you want. --Fyren 23:48, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * They're not forcing you to shut down. They're just planning on hosting the wiki as they want to integrate their internal documentation with a wiki for an in-game help system (as least that's what they're saying). Once they start looking for french translations, you might get an invite to help out. But yes, it's kinda sad that all existing wikis will be affected once, and if, this takes off. Maybe you could start thinking about how to make any future transitions smoother (if you plan on supporting the official wiki that is...). -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 01:23, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * Yes I'm going to reconsider the way we make the project to make the transition easiest, if we have to do this
 * I think it's a great error if we make the project as an alternative, so yes I have to plan that transition --Ouroboros 02:26, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Just to prevent confusion: The only difference between Template:GFDL or Template:User GFDL is cosmetic right? --Xeeron 09:47, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * Yes. --Fyren 09:55, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Interwiki link
We should add an interwiki link with Guild Wars Wiki similar to the one we have with Wikipedia.--Phoenix 14:09, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * Also, my idea here. (Basically, this section of the talk page has and will continue to overshadow the general purpose use of this page; therefore a new page should be made just for this discussion, perhaps with those admins most "in the know" editing the project page (which could include the link to the official GW wiki), and the rest of us continuing the discussion on the talk page; and it should be linked from somewhere obvious, like the main page). -- Peej 15:13, 8 February 2007 (CST)

A plea to the admins and the regular contributors
I gotta say that I'm deeply confused and frustrated at the moment. I don't know what to do. Here's the situation, as I see it:


 * We have a big cruise ship here, with 26'000 passengers and 14'600 tons of valuable cargo. It's running full steam ahead, through rough water infested with sharks and corsairs, and ice bergs left and right.
 * Now all of a sudden pretty much the entire crew seems to abandon ship to board a small rough-and-ready rescue raft. That raft is not yet anywhere near seaworthy, and nobody knows which course it'll sail. It may never reach safe shore.
 * ''I don't care much about the cruise ship itself, but I do care about the passengers and the cargo. What's going to happen with them when the Titanic hits the iceberg?

You know what I'm talking about. So I'm asking you: Do you still care about GuildWiki? Do you intend to continue contributing here? Do you want to give up and leave behind almost 2 years of hard work for something that is currently not much more than a nice idea in our heads?

I'm asking especially the admins and other long-time contributors, as they are seen as role models, and their decision will be a signal for other contributors. Do you still consider yourself responsible here? Or do you step down as a GuildWiki admin?

It hurts to see GuildWiki go down the drain. I think launching the official wiki for the general public was grossly premature. I still see the risk that this thing will backfire and end in a desaster. Which may mean that both the cruise ship and the rescue raft may capsizle and sink to the ocean ground. Thousands of hours of work would be lost. That would make me cry. Seriously.

I beg you: Please, do not abandon ship. At least not yet, not until it's clear that the rescue raft is safe and strong enough to take over the passengers and the cargo. It took us 2 years to build this ship ... err ... wiki, and at the current rate of content being added manually to the new wiki it'll probably take it just as much time to catch up. Unless ANet agrees to provide the new wiki (their new wiki!) with some serious support (for example in form of an automated bot link with the ingame database), I'm afraight the new wiki may never catch up. :( -- 15:00, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * This is the emotional part of the same question I asked way above: "what makes them think it will work?" ;) -- Peej 15:08, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * What? This ship is the biggest ever!  It'll never sink!  Seriously though, unless the Official wiki really starts performing and looking better than this one (a looooong way off IMO) I will stay right here for what it's worth.--[[Image:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG]]  Vallen Frostweaver  15:10, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * Maybe I'm just overly dramatic. But I think this ship will sink if the entire team of admins and most of the main contributors will leave, in one for or another. Either vandals and trolls take over, or Gravewit will eventually pull the plug. --[[Image:TurningL sml.gif|Tetris L]] 15:24, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * My plan has been to stay with both sites (basically, hedging my options). I don't see a failure of the "rescue raft" (continuing your metaphore) as likely; but I do see it as still inflating and not yet ready to take on all the passengers.  In time it will grow enough to support everyone - but it'll take time.  But, with the engines failing here (horid intermittent lag/slowdown for many users here), the rush to head to the rescue raft is gaining more participants.
 * Okay, abandoning the metaphore now. I agree that more of the basic groundwork should have been put in place before openning the doors of the new wiki.  It's causing confusion and irritation for both participants and for admins over there.  It's a severe growing pain that needs at least temporary frameworks while more is discussed and implemented.  Just an extra week would have been enough to at least have the temporary stuff in place.
 * Unfortuneately, I'm also prevented from participating on the official wiki during the day by a firewall. I can contribute in the evenings, but it will impact my involvement with that project.  We'll see in time by how much it's impacted.
 * But, back to the initial question - no, I'm not abandoning GuildWiki. There is, at least for now, a place for both wikis to exist.  That could change in the future; but for now, I see no reason to leave here. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:18, 8 February 2007 (CST)