GuildWiki talk:Personal sites

I'd probably agree with something like this &mdash; Skuld 02:52, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * It's not really written up formally enough to be implemented yet. But that's a minor thing, this would be quite difficult to police I'd say and I don't think that people are using the GuildWiki as "their personal webspace" at the moment, there's just a large number of longish user pages.


 * I like the fact that people can get a little creative on their user page, the place would be intolerably boring if it was all just documentation. We're not getting paid for this, there's nobody looking over our shoulder making sure we're working all the time. I'm sure all of us at some stage have "wasted" time mucking around with the layout of their user page and browsed through other people's as well. What's the harm in having a user page which says a bit about what your and your characters are doing in the game, why not have a bit of fun with it, otherwise I'd feel like I'm being employed as a librarian to catalogue a neverending stream of information. Our user pages give us a personality here, I like the fact that I know the contributors here a bit, you know we're a community, not a bunch of nose to the grindstone robots. I'm not sure how you define a page length but I'm sure mine would be longer than a page, does my help guide have to go? Am I abusing the user category? --Xasxas256 03:19, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * I'm fine with that, I don't it when users with nothing but a user page, like it says in the article, using it :as their home page &mdash; Skuld 03:22, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * Where's an example I can peruse over? I don't remember seeing many user pages like that myself but our definitions might be different. The last one I can remember was that guy with the picture of the warrior who offered a running service. --Xasxas256 03:28, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * User:Prince Morda? Not trying to single anyone out here, just the first that I ran across with a good size page and no edits other than to their page (and one talking to Skuld).
 * Personally the only thing that I'm going to worry about on userpages are things that could get the wiki in trouble. Illeagle activities, stuff frowned on by ANet (porn, gold selling, etc...), etc....  --Rainith 03:38, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * gulp* O_O... --Jamie [[Image:Jamie.jpg|24px|(Talk Page)]] 03:45, 29 November 2006 (CST)

Point-by-point:


 * User pages should be short and concise.

Text doesn't hurt anything, though. A ten-page treatise on why I love Dragon Slash takes up less server space than a single picture.


 * GuildWiki is not your personal web page host.

Who uses their user page this way? I've yet to see anyone fill up a page with stuff unrelated to GW, other than an "about me" paragraph here or there.


 * GuildWiki is not your personal blog.

Who uses their user page this way?


 * Do not create pages for your guilds or characters.

I agree, but this seems to be a matter of taste rather than strict necessity. Are a few extra pages in someone's user space that big of a deal from a technical perspective?


 * GuildWiki bandwidth is not for hosting images of your characters and their accomplishments. Nobody cares what your armor looks like.

If a lot of people are looking at your picture, then they do, on some level. If they aren't, then you're not really eating bandwidth, are you?


 * User pages longer than a page should be deleted.

Uh, who's going to police all these user pages? Measuring "a page" on the Internet is clunky, anyway.

&mdash; 130.58 (talk) 03:47, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * What about clutter on Special:Recentchanges? &mdash; Skuld 03:50, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * The suggested policy does nothing to cover that. People can make 100 edits tweaking a short page as easily as they can spend 100 edits editing a long one. Heck, mine's pretty damn long and I've only made 53 edits in about a year, with no more than five in the same day. Recentchanges spam comes mainly from people who don't know how to really use the wiki software and are trying to do fancy layout tricks (e.g. all those pages with tables, rounded borders, &c.). Just plopping text on a page, even if you get pretty anal about it and save all the time, won't spam Recentchanges much. &mdash; 130.58 (talk) 04:59, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * Yay for 130.58! Agree totally with ya and I don't know why this issue has suddenly come up again, I don't see it being a problem anywhere. While User:Prince Morda may not be much of a contributor presently, I don't have any objections to that user page (although giving credit might be nice but that's got nothing to do with the issue at hand). --Xasxas256 03:53, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * Ummm, yeah. Just found this propoced policy and noticed that I should be more active with the user page stuff. As you might notice from my user page, I really think that we should allow longish user pages with a lot of stuff. However, we should clearly have a policy for such cases as the one mentioned above. We should think about deleting user pages of anyone who does not contribute to the wiki otherwise. I tried to suggest this earlier when I noticed people making advertisement user pages without benefiting the wiki in any way and the above mentioned user is another good reason for this policy. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 04:09, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * 130.58 has a spot on analysis IMO. I'm not opposed to policies on user page content, but this really goes against the grain of everything we have said about user pages in the past. I do not agree with even one of the points in this article as it stands.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 06:13, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * Agreed. A policy could be written up on what is and isn't permitted; but I really don't currently see anyone abusing the userpages and this current proposal has more flaws than advantages.  I have no problem with a policy clarifying that userpages should not be used as your personal web-page host - but it's not an urgent matter to me as I haven't seen it done as yet.  No argument that GW shouldn't be used as a blog; but where is this abused currently?  Eliminating subpages for characters and guilds is fine (I have no problem deleting mine for this - I rarely update them anyway), but again, what abuse dose this address?  I haven't seen anything to indicate that anyone has caused site issues from this.  The user page length restriction is just silly to me - especially as different resolutions would define how much material is a page differently - what's taking up a full page at 1280x1024 (or higher) could be multiple pages at lower resolutions. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 12:22, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * Another point that Barek just propmted me to think of: while we have no idea how much money GameWikis makes from pageviews, we must presume that a profit is made. Unless Gravewit were to say that a user page being used as a blog was causing a problem, I don't see what problem there is in it remaining.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 12:31, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * Xas states, "We're not getting paid for this...." You mean you're not? :P
 * For me, I don't like users with elaborate user pages that don't contribute, yet you see them edit it, as stated above, 100 times. Probably because they don't know how to use the preview button and that's the last you see of them until they want to upload a new image of their new armor or add a new character. Besides being a pet peeve, they aren't doing anything essentially wrong. As Rainith stated, if gold selling, porn, excessive foul language will be cause for immediate action. And I can confirm that Shade can write a full page praising Dragon Slash ;) &mdash; Gares 13:58, 29 November 2006 (CST)

I wrote this in like 5 minutes so it's obviously incomplete and needs much input from the community. The idea came from seeing the trend of user pages and expectation that if this trend continues there will be more content in userpages than the wiki. There is certainly confusion inherent in what is an acceptable userpage and what is not. The rules should be relaxed, and it would be enforced simply by watching an overabundence of recent changes from a userpage (a userpage that is too large usually shows itself with multiple image edits and subfolders). An important issue certainly is the question of how much money they make from pageviews. Regardless of bandwidth the images take space on the server's hard drive, which costs money. Examples of userpages with abit much or are just plain weird:
 * User:Oblio Example of your average user page, quite reasonable and nothing to complain about.
 * User:Gumby has uploaded lots of images including different versions of every skill
 * User:ST47illustrates the common use of subpages to create a good sized homepage, even the person who created them complained they should be deleted for lack of content
 * User:Baron Will ScarlettThis guy enjoys using guildwiki as a Flickr
 * User:Samurai snackshows how to make non-content with cheese and a snack golem
 * User:XxxPaineXxx/Elites Making a checklist of everything is very popular. Doesn't priest of Balthazar do this?
 * User:DKS01 Just past what I think is too much
 * User:Helena Okay, the skills are funny, but it's a waste
 * User:Crowley I don't even know what this is

The way it works is when people see other userpages with those things, they think it looks like fun, so they copy them. Such is the case with skill checklists, pictures of their characters, and usertags. Spayced 14:21, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * Well I use my page to keep info I need to check for wiki. Since I dont always update from the same computer, its way easier for me to keep this here.  I do agree that user page can make us feel more in a community then some random editer but some people do have irelevent stuff on their page or dont contribute to the wiki.  I think the trouble come from how to choose when its useful or not and what is to big.  I think it come to do we want userpage at all, if we do I say dont police  them unless they are way too big ( 100 of image) or that they use offesive language.&mdash; ├ A  ratak  ┤  14:29, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * No offense, but some people against this have pages I would delete. Don't you have to be in the game to capture skills you don't have? If you are in the game you certainly have access to a priest of balthazar. Spayced 14:36, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * I still fail to see the issue here. With one exception (the user page with multiple large images), I fail to see how any of the user pages referrenced pose a significant problem to bandwidh or server memory.  There are far bigger concerns without messing with drafting a policy for something that isn't an issue.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 14:55, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * Yes I do agree that skill unlock is too much, all those gray icon skill too. I personaly think we should only alow thing that is related to wiki like what image need update, what article need rewriting and stuff like that. I just dont like when they make something way fancier then needed.  A page with texte to keep tract of what elite you needed doest hurt the bandwith much but when you make hundred of image in gray to keep tract of it, that become a problem to me.&mdash; ├ A  ratak  ┤  14:58, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * While I don't use the gray icons, I have no problem with them either. At under 2k each, their memory and bandwidth requirements are pretty minimal.  This was discussed when they were first being loaded - as was much of the stuff being re-re-re-discussed in this proposed policy. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:01, 29 November 2006 (CST)

A thought - could an option be put on the recent changes page to exclude changes to user pages? Surreality 15:56, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * &mdash; Skuld 15:58, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * The option already exists. Select "User" in the namespace dropdown, then click the "Invert Selection" box and click "Go" --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:59, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * Dang it ... Skuld was quicker again ... lets face it, if I can't outpace Skuld on a talk page, I have no hope of ever returning to fps games. :-( --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:01, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * LoL, yes I just went found that out for myself as well actually. But if this is the case already then why worry about clutter on the recent change page? Just turn it off. Surreality 16:08, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * Probably not a good idea for admins to isolate a section of the site, and some ppl want to ignore builds :p &mdash; Skuld 16:11, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * Yes I suppose that admins do need to monitor the user pages. That might be a reason for having less on them. Then again admins might just have to monitor them more to check that people weren't putting on too much. (Thanks for pointing out the filtering feature btw) Surreality 16:18, 29 November 2006 (CST)

I was going to complain about an edit conflict, but there have been about 5 since I started writing this! :P

I'd just like to go through all of the pages and give my personal opinion on them.


 * User:Gumby I don't see any non-standard icons on this page. Could anyone highlight them for me?
 * User:ST47 Apart from the grey icons I don't see any problems. And the grey icons are now so ubiquitous that I don't really think they are a problem.
 * User:Baron Will Scarlett They are some big pictures. I'm going to reserve judgment on these for now... It might be best to recommend he use scaled versions.
 * User:Samurai snack Are you seriously complaining because he is using a picture of cheese?
 * User:XxxPaineXxx/Elites No non-standard icons, just strikethroughs of current icons. Not really a problem.
 * User:DKS01 Looks fine to me. He might talk about himself a little much :P but that's fine with me.
 * User:Helena Those skills rock.
 * User:Crowley You don't know what this is? This is awesome on toast. ;)

Server storage is, as far as I'm aware, not an issue. My only concern is the large images on that user page, because basically you are downloading the full sized image whether you want to or not. I don't think this alone requires a policy, though, and I don't think any of the user pages listed other than this one are of any concern. I will make a recommendation to Baron Will Scarlett to use the tag or something. But even then this will only be a recommendation. In my opinion, unless Gravewit or Fyren tell us that too much bandwidth is wasted on user pages then I'm not willing to endorse a policy that attempts to restrict user pages based on bandwidth usage.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 16:25, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * The point is those are just a few examples. There are hundreds. There could be hundreds of thousands if you let it go. It adds up, and I'd rather pass a policy limiting this expansion. However, if we can't reach a general agreement here then the idea will have to be scrapped until a later time when it will be worse (and possibly impossible to hund down these pages that have been accumulating over the years). Spayced 16:43, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * Gumby finished off Dashface's thingy (User:Dashface) &mdash; Skuld 16:45, 29 November 2006 (CST)

Here's a new fad: creating fake skills: User:Thervold/"I Really DO Know What I'm Doing!" I have no idea how many of these there are as they are nearly impossible to account for.
 * Most of the fake/humorous skills are grouped at Category:GuildWiki humor. Again, this is an issue debated previously.  My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I seem to recall an agreement permitting them only as long as they only exist in user spaces, and to request (I don't think it was ever even required) that they group to the humor category. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:55, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * I'm sure that these are just a few examples, Spayced, but I presumed that you had fished out some examples that you thought were particularly bad in your opinion. If you have examples of pages that are using more bandwidth/storage than these then I would be interested to see them.


 * While we're on the subject, User:LordBiro/Summon Greater Icon.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 17:50, 29 November 2006 (CST)

Define the Harm
Barek is right. Where's the problem? Pretty much everything on this page boils down to I don't like what she's doing! Good grief. Define the harm to GuildWiki, or leave people alone.


 * User:Oblio If you're going to delete user pages because somebody doesn't like them, delete this guy for being boring and wasting 12 seconds of my life
 * User:Gumby Yeah, he's a bad boy. He's sure uploaded LOTS of images. Wow... they total 643,072 bytes!  OMG!  That's almost half a meg!  With EXPENSIVE hard drives sitting at $0.65 per GIGABYTE, you can send me the bill for the space he's wasting.
 * User:ST47illustrates the common use of subpages... yeah, he does, which means that GuildWiki gets paid for NINE clicks if anybody wants to view this guy's user pages. He's a cash generating MACHINE!
 * User:Baron Will Scarlett - I absolutely LOVE this guy. He's got two of the coolest drunk pictures I've seen so far.  I'm definitely adding him to my favorites so I can give people the link as a great example of what drunk looks like.  The total space taken up by his horribly huge pics is 385,024 bytes.  Put it on my bill.  By my math, that brings my total up to $0.000668.  GuildWiki has generated more income than that just from me going to see what was so offensive about this cat's page.
 * User:Samurai snack What's the harm? Either people ignore it, and nobody cares, or somebody clicks in and GuildWiki gets paid for the click.
 * User:XxxPaineXxx/Elites You missed the point entirely! He CAPTURED all except the ones with a strikethrough.  This page is an inspiration to every geek who wants that whatchamacallit title for capping Elite skills.  This guy is great.  I wish I'd seen this before I got all jaded and lost interest in capping elites.  I dig this guy so much that I think his page should be linked from Skill Hunter under a subsection of Too Much Free Time or something.
 * User:DKS01 You say his page is past what I think is too much?? This is a FAN SITE.  He's obviously a FAN!  I mean look at his page and really read it.  This guy LOVES Guild Wars.  Why can't you love him for that?  He's not hurting you.  He's not using up some precious, irreplaceable commodity that he's taking out of your pocket.
 * User:Helena Okay, the skills are funny, but it's a waste Huh?  A waste of what?  I think everybody should be getting the point by now that hard drive space costs less than a sneeze.  Are these folks just not good enough for GuildWiki?  If not, who decides?  Which animals will be more equal in this New Wiki Order?
 * User:Crowley First you complain about the people who take up too much space and now you complain because there's virtually nothing on his page. What's the deal?
 * User:Barek Without this page, how would we ever know about the monk with Donald Trump's hair? There, but for the grace of God...  Maybe that's a bad example.  I should redact that.  Oh well.

So, down here in this section, somebody define the harm these pages cause to GuildWiki. If it's about Nascar, or World of Whachamacraft, or somebody's pet gerbil, then it's probably shouldn't be here (unless the gerbil has an IDS). If it's about Guild Wars, then this is where it belongs. --Boris 17:08, 29 November 2006 (CST) (I'll give 20 plat for a picture of a gerbil with an IDS)


 * How come Barek gets all the credit? :P  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 17:47, 29 November 2006 (CST)

The rationale behind a potential policy.
I think the first step to creating a policy, if we want one, is to figure out what that policy should achieve rather than what the actual words on the page should be. Meta-policy, if you will. Here goes...

Point the first:

Hmm, LordBiro pointed out something critical in the discussion above... At the moment, GameWikis profits from page views. The recent suckiness crisis was the result of insufficient hardware, not insufficient cash, and users making tons and tons of purely-legitimate page views (oh, those skill lists and boss locations!), not everyone rushing to the Internet to upload their favorite new dervish picture. So, in a way, doesn't a user with a popular user page add revenue to Guildwiki? I know my user page had more than a thousand page views before they axed the counter. I expect Karlos, Gem, Skuld, and countless others had many times that, since they contribute a lot more and a lot more prominently. One of them could probably slap full-motion video onto a page and it'd still be making GameWikis money. So, while some guidelines might be nice, we should be clear on this point:

So, I. User pages don't cause a lot of bandwidth/memory issues.

Point the second:

Recentchanges spam. Lots of people hate it. Folks making 100 flash edits to their user pages usually don't know a lot about the wiki software, much less wiki etiquette and Guildwiki-specific policy. So, this issue is really about what you do after the fact rather than while they're editing their page. I've seen prolific contributors often just leavea little talk page message asking folks not to spam Recentchanges. That usually seems to work out okay. We could make a policy called "Don't spam Recentchanges" if it makes the admonishment easier; I think it's already part of another policy, though. If you want to punish them for spamming Recentchanges... well, what comes of that? I see a lot of users trying to remake deleted pages. I see a few users vandalizing the wiki in annoyance. Both also create Recentchanges spam.

So, II. If the problem is Recentchanges, the policy should be directly about Recentchanges.

Point the third:

Any policy that goes against the grain of what a sizable subset of the userbase has already done, even if it's just a policy to crack down on non-contributors, will require a lot of effort to enforce, since you have to sift through existing user pages. If it's a problem for purely aesthetic reasons, we shouldn't do it. Let's get the build and monster articles all shored up first. Or, y'know, skills. ;)

So, III. Policing already-existing user pages eats a lot of effort.

Point the fourth:

People who use their eyes but not their fingers are users, too. That guy who only edits his own user page is still likely to be looking things up on Guildwiki all the time. I mean, how likely is it that a person who's never actually used Guildwiki is going to make a user page and then continue not using Guildwiki? Contributing editors are important, but it's important to realize that they are an empowered minority, and that contributing editors who participate in policy-making are a super-empowered hyper-minority. And they deserve that power because, well, they're stepping up to contribute, but they should exercise it in a way that benefits all. Is something that leads to trivially less Recentchanges spam once a week actively worth alienating even a handful of casual readers over?

So, IV. ''People who don't post content themselves are still "users," too. Their interest and perceptions should be taken into account.''

I think any set of guidelines as to what is or isn't appropriate should take those into account. Anyone disagree with that list or have another one to add? &mdash; 130.58 (talk) 18:07, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * 130.58, you are on a roll tonight! ;) I wholeheartedly agree with your summary so far.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 18:19, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * Tonight? It's been a whole day. Meh, I'm just embelishing what you say, anyway; you're just agreeing with a more verbose version of you. >.> &mdash; 130.58 (talk) 19:17, 29 November 2006 (CST)
 * I dunno what to say, you make a convincing argument. If the memory issues aren't going to be a problem then there's no problem. It's an easy mistake I made, given GuildWiki's past problems of grinding to a halt under heavy traffic.Spayced 19:21, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * I think this red hot discussion page has probably put more strain on the severs than long user pages :P Anyway it looks like we're in agreement that we won't implement this policy although there are certain thing we don't want to see such as porn links, gold selling links, anything that violates ANet's terms of use. As for users spamming recent changes, I consider it our job to help users out, I don't know how many times I've left a polite hello, welcome to the GuildWiki could you please: use preview more/tick the minor edit box/read over build writing 101 and S&F guide/some other new user common pitfall but reaching out to new users is good. Recent changes spamming in symptomatic of a lack of familiarity with the GuildWiki and is not caused by user page policy that is too soft! Great work too 130.58, we just had elections here and with arguments and rebuttal like that, if you were running for premier, I would have voted for you! --Xasxas256 19:53, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * The thing is, I still think your general idea -- that we should at least have some guidelines for user pages -- makes a lot of sense.
 * As far as the recent suckitude, the problem is with caching and page processing rather than actual data storage itself, IIRC. The wiki's actual database is fairly compact, despite all the changes kept (the content storage works a bit like CVS but with some compression, I think, and the relational database of what links where is unchanged by most edits). And the source of the Nightfall suckitude was definitely the skill list and all the PVE info about bosses, uniques, et cetera. Mostly processor load caused by heavy page-rendering, since the translation of wiki code into HTML (and all the templates and stuff) are server-side.
 * I definitely want to see a GUIDELINE, at least. Something in the general vien of "Here's what to avoid. Here's how to make a tasteful user page. Here's some tips for how to contribute to the wiki in other areas." A kind of "User Pages 101" page, if you will, with the rules Xasxas (who is faster than me, rar!) mentioned and some general tips about how to make something nice without overdoing it. &mdash; 130.58 (talk) 20:00, 29 November 2006 (CST)


 * I keep getting edit conflicts. The joy! :)


 * I would not be opposed to a User Page 101, but I can't help but think that it would be very brief, given how little we police user pages.


 * I'm glad we've come to an agreement that this policy isn't necessary at the moment. It's nice to see someone else taking an interest in the running of GameWikis, Spayced, and if the recent problems had been related to bandwidth/storage then I would agree with the majority of your policy proposal!  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 20:13, 29 November 2006 (CST)