Talk:Bestiary

Bosses
Whew. User:Cacofanix Primus recently sent me an email containing one hell of a lot of information&mdash;complete skill capture lists for nearly every single boss in the game. According to his message, he's also got screen captures detailing every single spawn point (which he didn't send, as they're still in Guild Wars' default 2-3MB each bitmaps)

Why did he email me instead of adding it himself? I asked, of course. Here's his response:

''I am unwilling to integrate the content  into the  Wiki myself  in so far  as  I think I would  really  make  a  mess  of it. I am (according to my daughters, grandchildren and friends) very anal when it  comes to things  like that. I feel it would be better  for those  that can do it well to do it  rather  than me  getting  frustrated with myself  for  it  not  being  up to standard.''

I'm not sure if that's a good answer or not, but considering the wealth of stuff he's offering, I couldn't outright refuse. I'm not sure of the current state of the bestiary (having never worked on it), but I'm sure it's less complete than this. A few brave souls willing to help integrate this information would do a world of good for the wiki.

Anyone wanting to help, respond. Since I'll need to forward you his data, either have an email address on your user page or email me directly at the address on my user page. If anyone's particularily interested in getting the screenshots from him, I'll forward you his email address privately, and you can work with him on it. &mdash;Tanaric 18:10, 11 February 2006 (CST)


 * Can you dump it all in one page as raw-unedited info in Bestiary/RawDump, so whoever have time can nibble on it a bit at a time, instead of one person getting stuck with a mega-update job? -PanSola 19:07, 11 February 2006 (CST)


 * Uploaded to Bestiary/RawDump. Good luck, you'll need it. :)  Somebody clever with regular expressions could convert that whole mess into something rather neatly formatted.  Somebody godlike with regular expressions could have it convert to individual infoboxes that could be copy/pasted onto the correct boss pages immediately.  Somebody who knows how to use bots could make the entire process automatic. &mdash;Tanaric 17:47, 17 February 2006 (CST)


 * I would very much appreciate screenshots of boss spawn locations (for my boss map crusade). I'm not sure, though, whether my email account could manage that amount of screenshots. I agree with PanSola that it would probably be best to just slap everything on some website (maybe not on this wiki, so the database doesn't become cluttered, imageshack and the like come into mind for the screenshots) so it can easily be accessed by everyone. --Eightyfour-onesevenfive 23:47, 11 February 2006 (CST)


 * 84.175, send me an email, and I'll forward you this guy's contact information. You can figure out how to work images that way. &mdash;Tanaric 17:47, 17 February 2006 (CST)


 * 84.175, if you need a gmail account, I have like 300 invites... -PanSola 21:42, 17 February 2006 (CST)

Mark as Protected?
I've noticed that a certain few of the articles have been a nesting ground for spam bots. Mainly the ones that their wording may be interperted as sexual in nature. Such as anything with the word Domination or in this case Bestiary, which bots probably hone in thinking the article is about Beastiality. Think the admins could protect these certain articles and if anyone wants to add to them, post it in the talk page and an admin could change the article accordingly. Seems it would cause less work for the admins and Guildwiki would have less spam bot traffic. Any thoughts on this? --Gares Redstorm 20:40, 3 March 2006 (CST)
 * That is a really good catch, that would explain the attacks on Leather Square too, I can't believe I never put 1 & 1 together. --Rainith 11:22, 4 March 2006 (CST)
 * How about a trick: On the article, put nothing but an include tag to an unprotected sub-page. Then protect the page. Now those familiar with a wiki will still be able to edit the unprotected sub-page (without admin status), but bots will probably not be able to find it.
 * For example, Bestiary would contain nothing but:

Optional:Purge link.
 * Then Bestiary/unprotected would be the actual article.
 * Thinking about it again, this may even be a good way to protect pages like the Unique Item List from anonymous vandals while keeping it editable for those who know how to handle MediaWiki. :D -- 20:52, 3 March 2006 (CST)
 * No opinion. Personally I haven't felt the situation is bad, but maybe I jsut wasn't paying attention. -PanSola 00:56, 4 March 2006 (CST)
 * I kind of like Tetris L's idea. We'll try it for this article, see how it works.  --Rainith 11:14, 4 March 2006 (CST)
 * Going further, couldn't this be applied to other things as well, such as skill articles? It might even simpify things, honestly.  Although, perhaps instead of the include tag, Templates could be used, and just reprint whatever contents of the article as needed.  -Evil_Greven 11:19, 4 March 2006
 * See Talk:Main Page/Archive 4 (if you decide to ressurect the conversation, start a new one on the current talk page for the Main Page). --Rainith 11:22, 4 March 2006 (CST)
 * They raise a lot of good points. While it would help with the legwork (Oh yeah, Ctrl+V!), I tend to agree with keeping it fairly simple plain text.  -Evil_Greven 11:43, 4 March 2006

If domination and leather square are being targeted, the situations will really improve with /unprotected pages.. :p 17:03, 4 March 2006 (CST)


 * I don't get this idea t all, can someone explain tome why the bot will not just go and edit the unprotected page? --Karlos 19:41, 4 March 2006 (CST)


 * There is nothing to say the bot won't edit the unprotected page Karlos, which is why I only did it for this one, and not the others that I've protected because of this bot crap. This page is a test, so far it has worked.  If it ends up going a month without the /unprotected page being hit, I'd be ready to say it was a success and expand it to some of those other pages.  One week so far and we're good.  I'm less inclined to think it will work on pages where the vandalism is human driven (like the Unique items list) and more inclined to think that we'll be able to fool the computers.  Hell, I've thought of protecting Talk:Main Page and moving everything there to the editcopy's talk because this bot stuff pisses me off so much (I don't think that would go over too well tho).  --Rainith 18:59, 12 March 2006 (CST)


 * The hypothesis is the bot goes after this article simply because of the name and that it's too dumb to do anything else. It doesn't understand how a wiki works and will simply fail to edit this one page and that's that.  It won't "figure out" to vandalize the included page.  --68.142.14.8 19:04, 12 March 2006 (CST)

Categorize monsters by professions?
I don't know if this has been done, but I can't find anything like it on the Wiki. It would be cool if the monsters would be categorized by their professions. Tehvsx 07:36, 11 March 2006 (CST)
 * For each of the professions, there is a category listing of all creatures of that profession, but that includes things that are NOT monsters too. -PanSola 08:25, 11 March 2006 (CST)