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Photics' Wiki
Photics.com has launched a wiki. You can find it linked from the homepage. To put it bluntly, it's not very good -- whatever software they're using pales in comparison to MediaWiki (no category support means they're maintaining indexes by hand!), and there's very little unique content.

I posted angrily there, but... uh... I might have been a little less than diplomatic. Seriously though, a move so shortsighted and anti-community from somebody who is supposed to be a community leader bothers me.

Anyone have any plans? The exposure Photics' wiki will get just by virtue of being his will greatly overshadow ours. Yet his wiki platform sucks (registration required, even!), and seems a grandiose self-promotion. Tanaric 07:01, 5 Jun 2005 (EST)

I don't know, are we getting the address out there? Advertising on forums, 'cetra? I know I don't do a lot of posting elsewhere.. although a gamefaqs board post would probably be a good start. I'm not -really- concerned about "competition" because it's really a case where if one site's clearly got more/better organised info.. people'll go there. Also, need to absolutely submit it as a fansite to the guildwars.com community listing; I think mostly that means just pasting the ArenaNet logo all over the place? Nunix

Yeah, I mean, we've done a whole lot of work here (especially everyone but me!), I'm not worried. So long as you guys keep doing the awesome work you have been, we've got no problems.

I think more grass-roots advertising on some boards is good (that's what I did when we first started, and I'm sure the regulars here found it via guild hall or the other big site), but it also means we've gotta be more vigilant in keeping the spammers and assholes out of our nice little resource.

Now that we're pushing 300(!!) articles, I think we're just about ready to submit to the GW fansite listing. I'm still working on the site logo, but it's coming along. There will most likely be a domain soon, also. Gravewit


 * I'm quite concerned about this as well, for the same reasons as those listed above. I think we should continue to push this site as hard as we can. I suggest we start a project detailing what needs to be done for us to fall into the Official Fansite and Elite Fansite categories on guildwars.com. I am sure we are capable of it, we have a team of very dedicated admins, and an increasing number of involved editors. And overall we haven't had to deal with very much in the way of vandalism or anything.


 * Gravewit, could we perhaps share ideas for logos on a specific page? Would be good to see everyones ideas! :) LordBiro/Talk 10:47, 5 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Oh for sure. Any ideas or mockups or whatnot are welcome. How about Logo or something similar? Gravewit


 * Sounds good to me :) LordBiro/Talk 11:46, 5 Jun 2005 (EST)

What happened to merging? I took a look over there and they're updating and generally wikiing forward. --Fyren 21:12, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)

They never agreed to merge Fyren. 21:19, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)

The only wiki that merged with GuildWiki, to my knowledge, was my guild's. We provided GuildWiki with the pre-Searing Guide and the Massive Item Listing. Though, now that I think about it, I don't think any of the other editors came here besides me. They weren't too happy about the merge, probably because I didn't give them a say in the matter. :) &mdash;Tanaric 22:28, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * That's a shame Tanaric, is there no way you could persuade them to help out here? 23:52, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * At the moment they're just a skill, quest, collector, and enemy listing, so it's not a huge loss. Has someone asked if we can use their content?  --Fyren 00:11, 30 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Biro: Erm... probably not. I linked to GuildWiki all over our guild's wiki (...), but the motivation kinda died out when I moved the content here.


 * Fyren: It's a huge loss because it's a division of labor. However, since all this stuff is property of ArenaNet, I'm pretty sure we could take it all, no problem.  Any lawyers in the crowd? &mdash;Tanaric 01:13, 30 Jun 2005 (EST)
 * As far as I can tell from what (I think, heh) is their change log, they've got two people and a couple others that have done a little in the last month. --Fyren 01:28, 30 Jun 2005 (EST)

Fansite Status
In order to determine how we are doing with regard to applying for fansite status I've created a Fansite Status page to discuss how we are doing. Please have a look and get involved :) LordBiro/Talk 08:12, 7 Jun 2005 (EST)

ease of use
So, I mocked up the "new contributions" and "add a new skill" articles (see the green box on main page) to assist with what's being talked about above re: name-recognition; specifically, making how-to-contribute information very easy and simple to find and parse. It's wiki! Works best when lots of people come in and do stuff!

Are these enough, what needs to be improved, 'cetra? Also think about if anything needs to be significantly reorganised: are the main page article links the RIGHT ones, or should things be tweaked? Things like a link to all our style/formatting guides should be on front page, I think. Stuff like that. Nunix


 * Hey Nunix, I was just thinking, a How to Help page would be useful. It could tie everything together. Start by saying what needs doing, then quickstart guides such as your "how to write a skill in 30 seconds" and then more detail about standards. LordBiro/Talk 11:46, 5 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * exxxxcellent! Made sure that got into the help-box on Main Page and tweaked stuff in that section a little. Still needs some work.. the article's a great start! Nunix

more restructuring
I tweaked Main Page a bit; we had links to the same article from different places, links to articles which were depreciated and no links to the NEW article, stuff that was completely unused and could be folder into something else, etc. Better? Worse? Meh? Nunix
 * 1) "Featured Guides" is now "Quick Links". This is completely an ease-of-use box for things that people would probably want to get to right away and that might normally take several steps to get to but that you'd want to access to easy. And since we're avoiding "Long Guide Pages" the previous box purpose didn't quite seem appropriate. ;) They can just be found In-Depth.
 * 2) "Maps and Locations" are gone. Some of it got moved into Quick Links. Most of it actually, I think...
 * 3) Some stuff - especially in General and In-depth - was moved as a link into a higher-level article (collectors, specifically, got done this way; probably others).
 * 4) Renamed "Help Us" to "Helping Out"; I don't like "Helping Out" that much (primarily because we have a "How to Help" article and I hate re-using words so close together like that), but we should probably get away from language that suggests standard "site admin" stance. It's wiki! We want strange people to come in and type a few lines! Anyone have nicer box heading?


 * I like it :) Good stuff! LordBiro/Talk 08:20, 7 Jun 2005 (EST)

'Jargon' vs 'Slang & Terminology'
Currently 'Slang & Terminology' is a category, but the main page links to 'Jargon', which does not yet exist as a category. Should we change the main page to link to slang & terminology or move the documents from to jargon? LordBiro/Talk 08:23, 7 Jun 2005 (EST)

Ahh, didn't know about the other category! I'd just change the main page link then, and make sure it's an active category. Nunix

Ads
So, how do you guys feel about ads? I was considering sticking it in the bottom left, under the toolbox. A single google ad, or possibly a "your ad here" type of thing, so we can have more control over what goes there. It would be the size of the toolbox, not much bigger. This will be used to pay for more hosting space, of course, and the domain name. I'll keep full-disclosure on anything that comes in. Nobody's going to be getting rich off this, of course : ) Gravewit


 * I feel very strongly against ads. I would gladly pay to help with the server costs rather than use ads. LordBiro/Talk 02:56, 8 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Maybe a tip jar donations bin thing. I'm not sure. It'd be a fun experiment to see if a free (and awesome) guide like this can grow and sustain itself without getting bloated and ad-riddled. Gravewit


 * I second Biro's statement. Tanaric


 * No, I agree that ads are a bad thing, unless done extremely carefully. I do think a tip jar might be nice. If this thing were completely self-sufficient, I'd take it as a great victory for gamers everywhere. Who needs Prima! This would also allow me to accelerate the switch over to it's own dedicated hosting, seperate from my own site, and give @guildwiki.org email addresses, which might be nice. Gravewit


 * So toss us a tipjar, or your email address, so we can send you money. :) Tanaric 03:08, 11 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I think the "tip jar" might look better if it more resembled the link on the hrwiki main page. LordBiro/Talk 05:21, 12 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Well, I've done my good deed for the day. It'll at least register the domain name (I recommend http://www.godaddy.com, as they're cheap and have always given me great service). Tanaric 07:03, 13 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Already done Tanaric (well kind of), see Guildwiki talk:Domain Name :) LordBiro/Talk 09:24, 13 Jun 2005 (EST)

Search Box
Is there any way to change the search box so that is acts like a normal search engine instead of acting like Google's "I'm feeling lucky" button. For example, if you search for "elite" you get sent to a useless stub page instead of getting a list of all the pages related to "elite".

yes there is. instead of clicking the "Go" button, usethe "Search" button instead. pressing Enter will by default use the "Go" function. Nuble 16:07, 10 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * If you type in 'Elite' and get taken to a stub Elite, then think about redirecting this page to something like Elite_Skills_Location (which I'm doing now). This way in the future people won't be so frustrated :)
 * The reason the wiki acts like this is that searching through a database is intensive, and so it will try to avoid having to perform a search if a page with the same name as your search term already exists. Afaik all MediaWiki sites use the search function like this. LordBiro/Talk 21:41, 10 Jun 2005 (EST)

Is it really using that much cpu power? This is the opposite of the expected behaviour of a search box. One of the tenets of good user interface design is to never surprise the user. This might seem like a trivial problem now, but as we fill up the Wiki it will only get worse. Consider: "Shield Stance", "Illusion of Weakness", "Echo" versus "Arcane Echo", "Smite Hex", any of the "Energy ..." spells such as "Energy Tap".

Redirects only make the problem worse. "Illusion" redirects to "Illusion Magic". This hides spells like "Illusion of ...". Will we redirect "Earth" to "Earth Magic"? Then say goodbye to easy searching for "Armor of Earth". I know this probably seems silly to most of us. However, we are the people editing the Wiki. Of course we know where to find things. The problem is first-time users. People are impatient and quick to judge. One or two failed searches is all it takes to make someone decide that the wiki "sucks".


 * Well, in fairness, if you search for something, it stands to reason that you are looking for what you searched for. If you search for "Elite", odds are, you're looking for information on "Elite", which would be on Elite. 99% of the time, this is what the user wants. It is exactly the expected behavior. You can't expect the search function to make up for a user not knowing what they are looking for. Searching for "Elite skills", on the other hand, turns up just what you want. Remember: Go takes you to the page if it exists, Search performs a full text search. This is a Good Thing. It's like Google's "Feeling Lucky" button. Gravewit


 * "Redirects only make the problem worse." In that case do you think it would be better to remove these redirects? This is a serious question. The reason Illusion redirects to Illusion Magic is (I think) because someone moved Illusion to Illusion magic some time ago. Since Illusion means nothing really, how about just deleting the page?
 * On another note, try going to wikipedia and "searching" for "guild". You are not presented with a page showing all articles containing the word "guild" (if you press enter in the search box), but rather you are taken to the page Guild. You don't see many people saying that wikipedia "sucks" ;P I really think the search box is low on this wiki's list of priorities. LordBiro/Talk 06:04, 11 Jun 2005 (EST)

Fansite Status
We discussed earlier the steps that need to be taken to ensure that the GuildWiki can qualify for Fansite Status. I've started Fansite Status to formalise these steps. They are taken directly from the Guild Wars site, so please don't edit the 1st level in the list, but feel free to add sub-levels, as I've started doing already :) LordBiro/Talk 23:26, 11 Jun 2005 (EST)

Clean URL using .htaccess
Please look into using a clean URL. I think you can do this with .htaccess.

Current URL
 * hxxp://www.zerolives.org/guildwars/index.php/Main_Page

Clean URL
 * hxxp://www.zerolives.org/guildwars/Main_Page

Adraeus 09:37, 14 Jun 2005 (EST)

Yeah, it can be done. I don't think it's a big deal atm really. http://www.zerolives.org/guildwars works, which is good enough for me :) LordBiro/Talk 10:18, 14 Jun 2005 (EST)

IE Display Error
I don't know if this has been mentioned before, or whether this is the best place to do so, but the bottom bar (with the CC license, MediaWiki logo, and ArenaNet logo) floats over the text in IE 6.000.2900.2180... . I use Firefox at home, but at work I'm required to use this browser.

Some CSS/rendering bug also makes inputs very difficult to select -- their clickable area is reduced to 1 pixel or so. Tanaric 18:21, 15 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Hi Tanaric, I've just opened up IE, and yeah I have the same problem. There are so many css entries in the html that I'm not going to begin to diagnose the problem, but since wikipedia doesn't have this problem it's probably a change that gravewit's made that has had some adverse effect. So I think this is really up to Gravewit ;) LordBiro/Talk 20:55, 15 Jun 2005 (EST)

Well, if it's IE 6 I'll look into it. But that's as far back as I go, in terms of trying to make things work. IE 5 can suck a fat one. Gravewit 02:00, 16 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Can't seem to find the problem here. The CSS is totally fine, so it must be some IE-specific bug. That makes me want to work on it A LOT less, but I'll continue the search. Gravewit 10:40, 17 Jun 2005 (EST)

Uploaded screenshot to Image:DisplayError.PNG. I don't know how to merely make a link, instead of including it here, so I'll leave the honor to someone else. :) Tanaric 15:48, 17 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * There is a div   . The CSS at work on this is  .visualClear { clear: both; } . This is used to make sure that the footer clears both the left and right hand columns. It obviously isn't working :) Since this works on Wikipedia, could the changes to the GuildWiki stylesheet(s) be rolled back, at least temporarily? I don't want to think we are alienating the majority of web users (despite being disgusted that they use IE ;P).  09:21, 18 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * "rolling back" the css will be tougher than I thought, but I will give it a try. Also, as a side note, according to my traffic logs, half the users to the wiki use firefox. That makes me smile. Of course, the other half use IE. But still. Gravewit 04:32, 21 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Wow :D that's a huge proportion! Good stuff GuildWikians! 19:16, 21 Jun 2005 (EST)

A workaround: change the skin when you must browse with IE. I'm using Cologne Blue until this is fixed. &mdash;Tanaric 22:18, 22 Jun 2005 (EST)

News Czar
One of the requirements for an elite fansite is up to date news. I reckon we need a News Czar here on the wiki. Someone to update the Current Events and Community Portal with fansite news, and so on. Gravewit 02:55, 16 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * We'd probably need to move some of our front page stuff out of the way and include some news there. Otherwise, it'd be too hidden to be worthwhile. Tanaric 02:57, 16 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I don't think we need someone with a specific role in this capacity; it's fairly easy to copy and paste any new news from the guildwars.com site to this one. I've added my input to this discussion on the Fansite Status page.
 * I also think we should take steps to get the GuildWiki listed as an official fansite before we stress too much about elite status. This is an important issue and should be discussed, but it seems to me that, while we currently seem to meet the requirements outlined in Fansite Status for official status, we haven't taken any steps to get the wiki listed. Perhaps Fansite Status/Official Status Letter would be useful? 06:07, 18 Jun 2005 (EST)
 * Created a draft. Look over it, edit it, trash it, whatever. I'd like to see this listed, as, as far as we've gotten, we've still got a ways to go and more help would help. --Kathryn Maulhammer 16:58, 22 Jun 2005 (EST)

Usage
Wow, folks! We're on pace to push 5 gigs of graphics and text through the wiki this month. That's a lot of free info! We're averaging about 40,000 pageviews a day. Most impressive fellows. Gravewit 11:03, 21 Jun 2005 (EST)

Archives
I moved a lot of dead conversation to the Talk:Main Page/Archives page. This page was getting a little too large (34KB). &mdash;Tanaric 01:21, 30 Jun 2005 (EST)

How to Request Article Deletion
I made the delete template based of Wikipedia's deletebecause. I don't think that we need a voting system for deletion yet like Wikipedia. I made the template since there are some pages incorrectly named like (my) "Caravan In Trouble" and a correct version, "Caravan in Trouble," exists with content. Wikipedia has a "candiate for deletion" category which I removed, someone can readd that to the template if they think it's better, but the below seems sufficient.

So I guess the way to go about requestion deletion is to add to the top of the article that should be deleted, leaving the content otherwise intact. Merge content into a properly named article, if there is one. Check to see if anything links to the article and fix the links if necessary.

Anyone can look at to see what's been flagged. Admins would look there, check the reason given, see if there's reasonable dissent on the talk page for the article to be deleted, and delete the article, wait for more input, or remove the delete template.

Criteria for deletion is just a placeholder right now. Feel free to edit it or the delete template.


 * As always, I vote against any unnecessary complication... just delete the page if it's unneccessary. &mdash;Tanaric 05:25, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Because admins have to do it, unless I'm horribly wrong. --Fyren 05:39, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Didn't realize they had locked it down. In that case, I think they should unlock page deletion.  How is deleting a page any more harmful than wiping it blank via an edit?  Both are easily revertable in the cases of vandalism and overzealousness.
 * Don't listen to anything I say. I figured everyone could delete pages in MediaWiki, because I could on my installation of it... on which I'm an admin.  The other wiki software I've used in the past let anyone delete.  &mdash;Tanaric 21:30, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * I don't think you can undelete pages (at least as a non-admin). I can't see the histories of deleted pages.  I don't know if it's recoverable like usual vandalism.  All these things are why I did this.  If I'm wrong, then I would agree it's unnecessary.  --Fyren 21:41, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Admins can undelete pages and restore the entire edit history. It is completely recoverable.  If there were a way to configure MediaWiki to allow all users to delete, I'd like to see it happen.  I'm sure Biro will argue with me, though. ;) &mdash;Tanaric 21:44, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Lol, not at all! I don't mind anyone being able to do anything, since admins can easily rollback changes and block offenders. However, I'm not sure it's possible. If anyone finds out I'm sure we could suggest it to Gravewit. 22:09, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)