GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting

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


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

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

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


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


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

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 * I've been thinking about this and had a bit of a u-turn, I think it will really be best to use exactly the same name as any singular item in the game. This means most things would be singular, but some things such as 'Bones', 'Scales' and 'Shells' would remain in plural form, because that's how the game refers to them... Does that make sense...? - LordBiro/Talk 22:09, 21 May 2005 (EST)

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 * I agree, except for the Bones and Scales bit. If you manage to acquire only a single Bone or Scale, they are in fact referred to as singular.
 * &mdash;Tanaric 02:57, 22 May 2005 (EST)

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 * I'm still not sure on this one. I'm still leaning towards singular. Mainly because this is how a proper encyclopedia or reference book would do it. Gravewit 03:07, 22 May 2005 (EST)


 * I don't mind either way with item names, I had been using plural, but that is no big deal, as long as plural redirects to singular or singular redirects to plural then they can both be used.

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 * It looks like singular is winning. Are there any good arguments for plurality, or should singular become policy?
 * &mdash;Tanaric 05:17, 22 May 2005 (EST)

I've migrated all items in Category:Collector Items to be singular. Adam

Number Ranges
What should the format for number ranges be?

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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 * That format looks fine to me. I didn't mean to purport that mine was best, only that it provided information unambiguously (if unelegantly).  Can't very well maintain weapon pages without a defined format. :)


 * That said, weapon drops are fairly random. The stats are completely unlinked to the name; the stats on an item seem dependent upon only the level of the enemy dropping said weapon.  I don't think there's any meaningful way of corrolating monsters to specific drops.  It might be possible to corrolate monsters to general item types (I've never seen a Charr Axe Wielder drop a Fiery Dragon Sword), but the list on each monster would be cumbersome.


 * Might be better to move this discussion to the weapon template, if one exists.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 05:28, 22 May 2005 (EST)

Terminology: Ascalon (pre-sear)/(pre-searing)/(Pre-Searing)

 * I dont know how to refer to the different Ascalons, any suggestions?

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

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

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

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


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

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

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 * As for using post-Searing or Post-Searing, I'm fairly certain the game uses upper case Pre and Post which while incorrect (according to websters at least) I think we should reflect.

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 * I cannot find any instance in game of the word "pre-Searing," regardless of capitalization. If the term is in-game, make sure that it's not the first word of the sentence, or the capitalization of that word should not bear on our decision.


 * If an in-game instance of "Pre-Searing" can be found in a case where it should, grammatically, be lowercase, we should use "Pre-Searing" in all cases. If not, the grammatically correct "pre-Searing" should be used.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 05:40, 22 May 2005 (EST)

Cleaning Up Talk Page
Hey, stop editing my speaking :P lol - LordBiro/Talk

I'm trying to make this slightly more readable. Is this better? &mdash;Tanaric

Yeah, it's ok, but I wish I hadn't started using lines, its starting to get a bit... weird :) And yeah, I think the discussion about proper weapon formatting should be under GuildWiki_talk:Style & Formatting:Weapons, even though it doesn't exist yet. If anyone else agrees feel free to start moving things whenever :) - LordBiro/Talk

The trouble is that, without lines, many of our comments become indistinguishable&mdash;too many of us are longwinded, and take more than a single paragraph for a comment. If our comments are more than a paragraph, the traditional method of seperating comments by paragraphs doesn't quite work. :) &mdash;Tanaric 05:44, 22 May 2005 (EST)


 * Yeah, I have to agree with that :) hehe, I don't know how else we can format talk pages though! - LordBiro/Talk 05:58, 22 May 2005 (EST)

Recursive linking
I'm rolling back the changes Tanaric made to Style & Formatting. He removed a reference discouraging recursive linking, or in other words, linking to the current article from the current article. This is a formatting rule of Wikipedia, and so I think it's a good idea to include it here as well.

This was not just an addition to the content, or a minor change in meaning, this was quite a significant change in meaning, and so it should have really been discussed first. If you disagree then please explain why! :) - LordBiro/Talk 03:45, 24 May 2005 (EST)

Capital letters for minor words in article title
We're running across instances of broken links because of character case. For example, Signet of Capture and Signet Of Capture link to different places. What should we use as a standard?

I think that minor words like: should be lowercase, as that is how we would write them in article content. Adam
 * a
 * the
 * of
 * and


 * Adam, I think we should stick to whatever Guild Wars uses. If Guild Wars says "Signet of Capture" then we should use lowercase 'o' in 'of' as well, equally if it's uppercase we should use uppercase. I know that might result in inconsistencies, but I think it makes the most sense. Feel free to disagree ;) hehe - LordBiro/Talk 03:59, 24 May 2005 (EST)