GuildWiki:New User FAQ

Stubby mc Stub.

Editing articles

 * Why don't we list common drops in articles?
 * Because it's not very useful to most people. Folks are more interested in the special drops, especially rare materials and weapons.


 * Can I add an obvious references or bit of trivia?
 * Sure, if you can cite (or point to) a confirming statement by ANet staff. Otherwise, share your discovery/idea on the article's talkpage; let the community discuss the best way to present it.


 * Hey, what happened to my edits?
 * If you see edits of yours disappearing, check the article's History; our best contributors will often leave notes in the edit summary. In the case of more complicated edits, they'll post an explanation on the talk page.

Taking part in discussions

 * do it!
 * reply to user talk on the same talkpage, use your watchlist

How do I create a custom signature?

 * There are certain limits to the signatures you are allowed to use, for example, it must link to either your user page or your user_talk page and shouldn't be too long, refer to GW:SIGN for a full list.
 * To edit your signature, go to Special:Preferences. However, you must sign in for this to work. MediaWiki gives full details on how a custom signature works.

Deleting a page
Typically, the way to delete a page is to put on the page and wait for a sysop to notice. Of course, if asking a sysop directly works for you, that's ok, too. ;)

What are these admins doing?
But i still don't really know what a sysop is. Probably some sort of Master of wiki. Protector of the weak eraser of the wrong. Creator of all!!! or just someone who is an Admin or something like that. -- † The Falling One© 10:42, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

You probably have already noticed that some users are given to vandalism, or ill-considered actions. Imagine the horror that would befall us if these people could change the very core of the wiki! Therefore, some sensitive wiki functions are available only to trusted users directly; these are the "sysops" or "admins". Since we want everybody who is not a vandal to be able to delete a page that is no longer needed, we have this system where you can request that and have an admin do your bidding (within reason, of course) — for everything else you want to do and can't, leaving a message on the admin noticeboard is usually a good idea. I've been doing that extensively. ;-) So you see that admins are just a high-class kind of janitor. Of course, to become a trusted user, you must have shown experience and wisdom, and you do that by meddling in wiki affairs, so the admins really are the masters of the wiki --- oh, and all the other users who like to meddle in wiki affairs are masters, too. Hmm. --◄mendel► 11:41, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Revert wars aka GW:1RV
That's not explanation, that's naysaying. Good observation. That's what a "revert war" is, continued naysaying with technical means. The way to outmanouever the naysayer is to let his version stand, support your own version on the talkpage, and if the naysayer can't adress that there or at least come up with an argument of his own, you claim consensus by default, and a day later you revert to what is "clearly" wiki consensus. And that actually trumps 1:RV - anybody who tries to revert away from demonstrated (via the article's talkpage) consensus becomes the odd one out. It feels like it shouldn't be that way - if you are right, and clearly you are when there's no valid counterargument, why shouldn't your edit be allowed to stand? The point is that being right in certain ways upsets the wiki, so the smart people need to figure out ways to be right that don't. Continued reverts are not a smart way to be right. Of course, it could be that it turns out that the "naysayer" actually can explain when the issue is raised on the talkpage, and in that case your course of action caused the debate to start that should've been happening all along. It means you helped him, in a way; but if you are averse to helping people you don't even know, what are you doing editing a wiki? ;-)

Screenshot license
When uploading a Guild Wars screenshot, be sure to select the option that says "This is a screenshot from the game" in the Licensing drop-down box. This tags the image with the template, which basically allows us to use said screenshots on the wiki. I've tagged the image you uploaded earlier, so just remember to do this in the future. And for any non-screenshot images, just pick the option that fits. Thanks!

Don't use the Screenshot name
Image naming

Hey there, welcome to the wiki! Would you mind re-uploading your images with different names? Our image policy says that images have to have "descriptive names", and "Gw002.jpg" or whatever is not descriptive. The name of the character in the picture would be much better, for example. Once you do that, an admin will take care of deleting the old versions. Thanks!

Armor Image Quality
Please read over this advice to make sure the images you contribute are high-quality (if you do it right the first time, we don't have to ask you to do it again :D ). The most important points are the third and fourth bullets, about graphics settings and location. If you have any questions about any of this, just ask, and we'll do our best to help. Thanks for contributing! &mdash;Dr Ishmael 05:23, 13 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Were you on your max resolution when you took those? Most armor gallery images we have are at least 400px tall.  Of course, if that was your max res, then don't worry about it.
 * The angle of the camera to the sun is poor - this angle makes the right side of the image much darker than the left. Look at a couple other galleries here and here for examples of a "good" camera angle.
 * The images look a bit fuzzy, but I don't think it's because of post-processing effects... maybe excessive JPG compression? If your image editing program lets you specify a compression or "quality" level for JPGs, set it to 90% (higher than that doesn't improve quality much, but does increase the file size by a lot).
 * Finally, if you redo the images, could you remove the chest piece for the headgear images? That way people can tell exactly what is part of the mask and what isn't.
 * Oh, and because the male assassin model has a slightly "twisted" stance, you should probably align the camera with the shoulders instead of the face.
 * Otherwise you did well. :D Better than most of our first-time armor modelers, at least.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 03:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Weird Licenses
Ok, the picture concerned is Abel from here, the page says : "Usage: If you use these renders anywhere, you must credit us with a link back."

Randomtime cites Ziedrich's Terms of Use, and they state: You may not repost anything from our sites anywhere ever, except as used personally as your forum avatar and such.

I think it is ok to use one of these renders here, but what are you going to use it for? You can't use the full size that you posted on any page because it would just be too big. So if I were you, I'd crop and/or resize the image (to use it as an "avatar"), reupload it, put the link to the pages and a quote of the "Graphics and Other Original Content" section of the license on the Image page, and you/we ought to be legally in the clear.

But.

Not so long ago, I wanted to make it easier to post images under licenses such as this one. Then this discussion ensued, and the upshot is that it's really more in keeping with the spirit of an open wiki to only use open licensed images. If Ziedrich had put these images under the CC BY-NC license, this would be clear, and they'd pretty much get the rights that they have now. Maybe you could email them and suggest that? --◄mendel► 01:05, 19 November 2008 (UTC)