Talk: Community portal/Archive 18

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Edit Window Bar take 2

Take 1 is here, and we wanted to have the new "floating" edit bar for Monaco (with the shorter summary box) turned off. Now that Wikia updated it, do we still not want it? Please post your opinions if you have them! --◄mendel► 20:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

What does the new one look like? And where's Archive #17? RoseOfKali 20:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Set your skin to monaco and edit something. Or click this. --◄mendel► 20:40, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't mind the new one now, just would have to get used to the buttons being in a different place. The Editing tips are useful for new users, and the blue bar makes the buttons stand out. As long as it stays blue, and not red like last time... :S RoseOfKali 22:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Press Ctrl-F5 to shrink the poll if it looks wider than high! Thank you for the feedback. --◄mendel► 23:15, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Poll bug

Hahaha! What did you do this time? RoseOfKali 01:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Ctrl+F5 fixed it, but that was still rather bizarre. :P RoseOfKali 01:06, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Why does everything break for you?--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 01:13, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

It broke for me too, briefly.Entrea [Talk] 04:11, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

It broke for me also, but like Rose did, <cod>Ctrl+F5 fixed it. — Balistic

Urmmm...

What happened to RC? I can't click the "Show new changes starting from {{{PAGERELOADTIME}}}" button RandomTime 07:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

After much fiddling, it's back - thanks to uberfuzzy from wikia IRC for helping me out RandomTime 07:54, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Remote Area

Named places inside explorables get treated as landmark or "Point of Interest"; there is no fixed format for those yet, and many don't yet have their own page. There's work to do! ;-) --◄mendel► 11:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I do think they all should have their own page, and link to the explorable area they're in. I don't know if there's enough uniformity to make a template, unless it's really basic, like "Located in explorable area so-and-so" and "Trivia" or "related information" or something like that. Some of them have nothing special about them, they're just there. Others are quest locations. Others are mentioned in lore. That kind of thing. RoseOfKali 20:20, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Presumable Template:location box can be used to hold an image, campaign info, type=landmark, and "Part of" would give the explorable it is in. Sometimes a map comes in handy as well. You'd want to list what quests it is involved in , and soemtimes there are NPCs gathering there, so basically it could be a cut-down version of a regular location article. --◄mendel► 22:19, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Why do we have a prominent link to the official wiki?

→ Moved to MediaWiki talk:Monaco-related-communities

New Bullet Points

← moved to GuildWiki:Wikia staff noticeboard#IE bullet point bug

New Video namespace (moved)

← Moved from Video talk:Bananaphone

→ Moved to Help talk:Video Embed Tool

moving conversations

The alternative to moving conversations is to leave them in place and to add a link to them from places where they're relevant (e.g. here). --◄mendel► 06:14, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Link from here to places where they are relevant means less things are buried under generic archives. This place was originally meant to be about generic community stuff anyways. That intention can partially be glimpsed from the wording "If you have any questions that aren't relevant to a specific talk page...". The moves are usually done with sectional edits that have a edit summary to hopefully alert anyone watching the topic that something happened in the thread, so when they come check it out they can follow the link to the new discussion. There is a flaw where people who only use the Watchlist to keep track and had too many thing watched so the move get flushed away may not noticed the moved discussion that might be continuing. So that is indeed a factor to be weighted upon. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 06:42, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Previously in...

Is there a policy about how to handle references to previous updates of the game? (couldn't find one in GuildWiki:Policy or Category:Policy_proposals) As a newbie, I find it distracting to read in the main text about quests, monsters, bosses, or loot that was available in 2007 or before Factions was released. Instead, I prefer to read about the game's current features.

For example, the Lion's Arch article lists three NPCs found in LA "prior to release of Factions," a Getting there item which is listed as "removed ...2007," and an exit "added in 2006." Given the current length of the article, these entries make it harder rather than easier to find one's way around.

On the other hand, I suspect if I were a long time veteran, I might want to readily see things that had changed (esp. if I had been away for a time).

An easy compromise might be to add to any article, where relevant, a Previously in Guild Wars subsection to the Notes that would include changes that occurred more than 6 months prior. For example, the various references in Lion's Arch would be replaced with the following:

--begin example--

Notes

lorem ipsum

Previously in Guild Wars

• Prior to the release of Factions, these NPCs were also found in Lion's Arch: x, y, z
• Before May 25, 2007, you could also reach Lion's Arch via the Canthan Ferry Captain.
• The east exit to Lion's Gate was added October 25, 2006.

--end example--

What do people think? I don't think this an urgent issue. At the same time, I am motivated (as I progress through the game) to re-arrange such references.--Tennessee Ernie Ford 08:27, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I do think it's a good idea to put things removed from the present game (and not likely to come back again) in a separate section away from the main contents of the article. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 08:52, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't have time now to look it up, but I've seen the issue discussed and the gist of it was, we document the game as it is, which confirms your view, T.E.F. We do have a nice Template:historical, which can be used thus:

{{historical|That's how it used to be}}

Historical note: That's how it used to be

Feel free to use it on articles where historic notes detract you; you can then easily skip the outdated stuff when looking for current info. --◄mendel► 10:17, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

This looks great! Assuming no one objects, I'll move >6 mo entries to Notes; leave newer entries where they are; and use the Historical template in both cases. Thanks for the help, support. --Tennessee Ernie Ford 21:46, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

You're a pleasure to support! :-)

A second advantage of the template is that players coming back after an absence can quickly find out what has changed, as well. --◄mendel► 03:40, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

My 2 cents; maybe a header for it, so skill pages with several bugs/anomalies don't get huge clusterfucks of those templates. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 13:35, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Seems sensible for long articles - check out Lion's Arch and let me know if you like the way that was handled.--Tennessee Ernie Ford 17:22, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Would you like to have the ability to place it all in a box (e.g. medium solid gray) with a simple |box or something on the template call? --◄mendel► 20:07, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Sounds sensible and elegant. I can imagine two use-cases: 1-2 entries (where the current solution seems fine) and 3+ entries (where a box makes more sense). I think whether the community needs one or both solutions is mostly a matter of taste. --Tennessee Ernie Ford 22:16, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Wiki Classification of GW Places and Locations

→ Moved to GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting/Locations

Tip of the Day

→ moved from right above

I think all we really need is some kind of general guide to the game itself that includes all the common terminology, such as clarifying the differences between the types of cities, how map travel works, etc. I met a guy in DoA once who, after visiting the Guild Hall, mapped to Kamadan, then into the Vortex, and then back to DoA, and I was like... you could've just used the "Leave Guild Hall" button... and he was like "The what button?" He got to DoA not knowing about it... And I don't think it is mentioned anywhere on this wiki. RoseOfKali 02:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

You don't know when that guy joined the guild. If he's unable to notice that button on that dialog, he's not going to be able to make effective use of this wiki either. But maybe we can collect tips like that and run them in the sidebar or somewhere, as "tip of the day". --◄mendel► 03:11, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's rather hard to reach DoA without being in a guild much of the time. And the guy actually taught me how to heroway farm DoA, so he's not an idiot, it's just one of those things that nobody ever talks about and you won't know if you don't discover it yourself. And a tip of the day thing is kind of a cool idea, because there are a lot of random little things that are great to know, but don't really fit into an article very well. There should be an actual article with those tips than anyone can access, and one of the entries will be selected to go into the tip of the day. RoseOfKali 04:16, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Gogo GuildWiki:Tip of the day. In other words, let's collect them and then see ho wwe can work them into some display. --◄mendel► 04:47, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I also like the idea of highlighting tips.

There's a Bug template. Can we add a Hot Tip template (using an "!" or light bulb)? (and, referring to the above conversation, maybe also Newbie Tip and/or Veteran Tip using same symbol, different color)

Bug! (example) wiki doesn't have a Hot Tip template...yet

I dunno if we need a "hot tip" template, it would be more of an application kind of deal, like java or something, which I know nothing about, and will happily leave that to Ishy or mendel or Viper, whoever knows how to code those. But before that is done, we would need to create an actual page of tips, as mender suggested above, and provided a link for it. I guess I'll get it started. RoseOfKali 20:59, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Tips placement

See Main Page/editcopy for an example. The tip of the day box will change once in a while, but not every time you reload the page. Due to the fact that Wikia development resources is focused on the Monaco skin, this widget which is powered by Wikia technology will not work on Monobook skin. I propose we put this box on the Main Page and in the anonnotice (using CSS to hide it so Monobook users do not see an empty box), until people with free time developes a solution that would work with Monobook users also.

Also, if anyone can change the color of that box to better match the ingame tip box colors, that'd be MUCH appreciated. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Test

← moved to GuildWiki talk:Tip of the day#Tips widget

Infobox change to accomodate ads

Currently, our infoboxes get pushed down by ads. There is a proposal at Template talk:BeastInfo2 that would make them get pushed to the left instead (but not changed to the proposed layout on that template). See Cootle Sizzlehorn/Test version2 for a demo. This change mainly affects logged-out users, which are most of our readers, I suspect. To be affected and logged in, set ads to show in your skin preferences. Please voice your opinion here or there if you have one. --◄mendel► 02:53, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Infobox change follow up

I had gone ahead and implemented the change. But now with long infoboxes, things can look really weird. Hence I am exploring the possibility of a "2-part" infobox system. You can see the difference in GuildWiki:Sandbox. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 08:55, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Would the "bottom section" be the one with the maps? Or is other content affected as well? --◄mendel► 09:17, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

This is just a general exploration of whether the idea of splitting infobox in general is something possibly acceptable to look at, or completely crazy. With specific infoboxes, which counts as "bottom" should be dealt with on a case by case basis, though generally I'd argue the image and the first batch of text info should be top, with the other stuff ok to go to bottom. So for the location box2 currently being experimented with on Vabbi-related articles, that means Neighbors and Services and Map might go to the bottom, while Part of is on the top. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 09:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

That sucks badly. Neighbors needs to be where I look first because that's what I sometimes use to navigate to a place whose name I don't remember. Keeping unneeded info out of the box would also be a good option: services duplicates the list of NPCs that we hgave on the article anyway, and I thought the purpose of SMW was that we could just tag teh NPCs where the article mentions them and SMW would then know wbout them. If I see "collector" in the services list and it links not to the collector's page but to a definition, this is worse than having to go to the NPC list in the first place. --◄mendel► 10:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

"the purpose of SMW was that we could just tag teh NPCs where the article mentions them and SMW would then know wbout them" <- completely true and I wasn't thinking straight when I did that. On the other hand, having a quick summary of the services offered at a location without scrolling down to find the list of NPCs than go through the tags after the name, IMO, has its value. Different people utilizes the page differently. You find the "neighbors" info useful to be prominent in the infobox despite it being redundant information in the article, whereas I see a similar value in having the redundant information of service offered in the infobox (though I personally don't care if it gets cut into the "bottom"). Besides, you are missing the main point. The main point is whether presentationally it is ok to cut the infobox into two pieces when there's a box ad (if there isn't a box ad the two pieces would join together). Which stuff going into the cutted part is not a concern at this point and IMO distracts from the core topic. That is a topic to be discussed infobox-by-infobox if the overall community decides the split-infobox style is an acceptable presentational layout to be adopted on a case-by-case basis (there may be infoboxes where nothing would be appropriate to be splitted off, even if "infobox-splitting" itself is overall an ok thing to do). -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 10:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Presentationally I see no problem with that if the information split off is sufficiently distinct, like maps. I would not want to split the tabular info. --◄mendel► 11:00, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I also think that small QR type things (like neighbors and services) should stay in the top, but maps and secondary images can go in the bottom. Either way, the ginormous square ad is still fugly, I wanna slap the person that came up with it... Many many times. What happened to simple banners? The new hotmail has a vertical banner on the right side instead of on top, but it's still the size of a banner, not f*ing half the window. I would almost say to push down the whole article and keep it together, or even move the infobox to the left and have the article below it for unregistered users... Also, the Alternate part of the current sandbox is really f*ed up if you have a wide window. Would a "clear" template fix that? RoseOfKali 16:37, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Wasn't there some code thrown around that would cause a banner ad instead of a corner ad? Would that be better? --JonTheMon 16:56, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Hells yeah I says. All ads are obstructive and annoying, but banner ads don't interfere with the layout of the page the way those square ones do. RoseOfKali 18:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Banners don't mess with layout, but they push everything down. Square ads provide more revenue than banner ads, and I for one would rather Wikia make more revenue on square ads than having to place more ads to compensate. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 19:08, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I would still rather have to scroll down 2 clicks than have to figure out what's an ad and what's an infobox. But when revenue comes into play, then there's nothing that can be done, really, it's gonna look ugly no matter what. RoseOfKali 20:10, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Location types

We've been trying to settle on a standard way to call some location types (see Location for a suggestion) over at GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting/Missions, of all pages. I'd call it a wall of text if sea of text wasn't actually more apt (41 kB = 21 printed pages right now), so I suggest reading down from the "Poll" heading and maybe reading backwards from that as far as you can bear to get up to speed. Whatever we settle on is what we're going to use on all articles here on the wiki. --◄mendel► 11:34, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Mission map notes

I would like to get opinions about adding notes to the maps for missions, quests or dungeons that have various alpha-numeric codes placed on them. This would allow the persons using the map to know what each code meant without having to scroll through the wiki page while doing the mission. Some discussion of this has already been done at Template_talk:Screenshot#Suggested_Useability_Change and an example is on my talk page User:Separ#Map Notes for Missions, Quests and Dungeons. I am soliciting comments for this suggestions usefulness or for any changes recommended. Separ 04:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea of making it easier to follow the maps. Why not add the legend to the map page instead of to the main article? Currently, I think the mission articles are well structured to offer full details rather than brief overviews. --Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:06, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Editing tips box bug

The editing tips box seems to be directly over the text I want to edit. Is there a way to have it appear to the left of the text being edited? Or move it with the mouse? Separ 04:24, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Umm, I broke that, sorry. Thanks for reporting this. It should be fixed now. --◄mendel► 11:31, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Using Firefox 3.0, I am still unable to move the editing tips box (which is blocking the left most portion of text). When the editing box is visible the Guildwiki Logo and navigation/news/support/search panel is missing, when I hide editing tips, the Guildwiki panel returns. Separ 04:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

When editing tips are displayed, the sidebar/logo is supposed to disappear. Wikia designed it that way, I personally think it's weird. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 05:22, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, it never could be moved. (You can't move the widgets, either.) Since the preview can be above the edit box, Wikia need to place the tips in article space to ensure they'll be at the same height as the article, and so the sidebar gets bulldozed. Feel free to rant about the Wikia interface team, I've done it often enough. It shouldn't be blocking the text any more though; try Ctrl-F5 or check to see if the change I made to MediaWiki:common.css is visible in the .css that Firefox loads — if you have the web developer plugin installed, you probably know how to do it, if not, the problem will probably go away once the caches update.

Now if somebody could tell me why the tips are invisible in IE7... I want my own server with a skin I can modify ... --◄mendel► 11:10, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Where do farming notes belong? Explorable, Beast, Drop, or Farmable?

Where do people think the notes on farming for a particular item belong?

The article on Iridescent Griffon Wings has notes on farming for the wings, which of course means farming for Desert Griffons. And the IGW article suggests Vulture Drifts as the place to go, so arguably that ought to include the same remark. And, of course, feathers are selling at a premium, so perhaps that article ought to suggest the beasties as a prime source. And, if the notes belong in more than one place, is there a smooth way to keep them synched? Do they all get the same level of details?   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:41, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if suggestions like these should propagate into everything possibly related to it. Farming is a very volatile subject both due to economy and demand for certain things, which varies, and the skills used to farm, which are also subject to changes, so I don't think we need to document any more than a simple note "Hey, go here if you want some." Other than that, there's Category:Contains feather if feather is what you're after. The reason the comment might have been put there in the first place is because most desert drops are also collectable for max armor or weapons, which used to be a good alternative to crafting before you get to Drok's. RoseOfKali 20:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

If the farming note is concerned with killing the beasts, I'd like it to be on the beast's page. The Griffon Wing page needs no note as the Desert Griffon is the only source; if it wasn't, there could be a note that mentions which source is profitable to farm (but put the details on the beast page). Same with feathers, suggest the Griffons as a good source, but don't go into details how to farm them. That way, we don't have to synch anything.

As it stands, I suggest merging the note on the wings page into the one on the griffon page.

I wouldn't put anything up on the explorable at all (or maybe "This location is good for farming ABC from XY" and state where the easily accessible mobs are). If there is a farming guide page, then that page can be linked from all the articles you mention to give it prominence. But we don't have many of these. --◄mendel► 01:21, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

So, the idea is → The thing being farmed gets the details; other pages can reference it, as warranted. In this case

• The D-Griffs get the note; the wings get bupkus.
• feathers get a "D-Griffs are good source;" the Drifts get "lots of D-Griffs here"

I like this better than detailed notes popping everywhere. Thanks for the speedy replies. I'll mend the wings/feathers.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Update: there's no info on farming in feathers, so I left it alone. Two explorables were referenced in the D-Griff article, so I consolidated the lot. There's not specific farming notes in the explorable articles, although the list of beasties includes vague location info; I left them alone.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:10, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Help me template

Wikipedia.org has a {{help me}} template, which sounds like a neat idea. What do you think? RoseOfKali 07:06, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

We don't have irc notification. I don't know whether anyone would check the category. I would suggest the "Ask a question" link on the sidebar might be a quicker way to get an answer, is the template better than that in some way? --◄mendel► 01:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Dunno, never used it, just saw it in their welcome template and though it was neat. The Ask a Question link sounds equally good, I guess I just never noticed it before. RoseOfKali 02:47, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Screenshot tag on concept art

Hey, do we have a copyright policy on concept art - I don't think the screenshot licence covers it in this instance. If we don't, here are my proposals:

• Any art used as a loading screen may be used on the wiki (fair use)
• Any other art is copyrighted by it's original artist, and therefore shouldn't be allowed on the wiki

Anyone else have any views? RandomTime 18:30, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, loading screens can be taken as screenshots, so there's no problem there. But I didn't think we had any concept art here, usually I just saw links to the official wiki where the art was hosted, but never actually uploaded here. I think it should stay that way to be safe. RoseOfKali 19:05, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Image:Gandara (Lady Saradomin).jpg RandomTime 19:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That should be removed. Plus, nothing links there. RoseOfKali 19:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Fansite kit license ftw. That has lots of concept art, and it comes closest in the art has been released by ANet and the uploader had no hand in it (whereas a screenshot is probably jointly copyrighted). --◄mendel► 02:24, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: Category:Concept art. --◄mendel► 02:25, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Video namespace

What's with all these random youtube videos in the video: namespace they keep appearing - youtube videos can be uploaded with the youtube tags. I've also had a look at Special:SpecialPages and can't seem to find an upload tool for the video namespace, if it's just for youtube videos, we can just use the tag. So, proposal:

• Clean out all Video: namespace with the junk, only allow non youtube videos which are related to GW to be uploaded
• Users wishing to post a youtube video on their page can use a youtube tag.

Otherwise, we've got a junk namespace filled with junk. RandomTime 18:42, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Imo, kill the video namespace, then stabs its dead body a few times, after which we shall pour Liquid Flame over it. — Warw/Wick 18:45, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Special:WikiaVideoAdd. Dunno, last I checked it was a bit buggy. Tell Kyle. ;-)

RT, the situation is similar to Image: namespace. If you want to organize it, use categories: each video has a page now, so they can be catted, and then you can separate the wheat from the chaff. And stop talking about "uploading" youtube vids, that's just wrong. --◄mendel► 22:52, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Turning CategorySelect off

CategorySelect is a new Wikia feature that has been added to the Monaco skin. I've made a case for turning it off wikia-wide (you can turn it off inidviduall in your Preferences), but Wikia staff demand consensus. So please express your opinion.

This is my argument: CategorySelect makes checking the categories a different task from editing the page, it is not as evident which categories are set by templates, and unless one is creating pages or add a new category to a number of pages (which can be done better by bot), I don't see how it would be useful to this wiki. --◄mendel► 22:25, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Votes for Turn It Off

DO IT. Lord Belar 22:27, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

It's broken in ie, the "Add a category" box appears twice. No more buggy features please. 22:36, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Can you provide a screenshot of this? I'm not seeing it. Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 16:46, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Off. It makes it too easy to add a category; that's a problem when a lot of thought has gone into cats.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:33, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I think all possible benefits from this feature are irrelevant for this wiki, where we have knowledgeable bot coders and mostly-complete content anyway, as well as a pretty thorough category tree. And since it's bugged in IE, which I use, I don't have much reason not to vote to turn it off... (T/C) 05:02, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Off. Don't see the point of this, it seems more confusing rather than useful, at least as it is now. New users usually don't know much about categories anyway - don't give them a tool to produce more mistakes in need of fixing than they usually do. And experienced editors aren't likely to use this. Also, what Entropy said. RoseOfKali 05:16, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Same reasons: dual edits, doesn't integrate category tree at all. As it has auto-complete for categories, that might be useful. But otherwise, nah. --JonTheMon 14:35, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

You get autocomplete (suggestions) when you start typing "[[Category:" as it is. --◄mendel► 21:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Here (diff) is a HTML comment that referred to a category on the same line that is now not on the same line any more, caused by CategorySelect. --◄mendel► 21:48, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

opt in for stuff like this, or we'll end up with people catorgorizing "neat skills i use" and such. --Honorable Sarah 23:04, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Yep. I offered a compromise of sorts in the other discussion on this: turn it off by default for each user, and if they want to turn it on, they can do it in preferences. This way new and inexperienced users who know nothing about it will not have the opportunity to "screw" with it handed right to them the first time they edit something. Though, it does sound like nobody here wants to use this, period, so turning it completely off isn't likely to hurt anyone's feelings around here. I know I'll never use it, I use Monobook. RoseOfKali 01:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Votes for Keep It ...

It's off

Wikia staff have turned CategorySelect off for our wiki (thank you, Uberfuzzy!). --◄mendel► 08:09, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Nice work!   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:07, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Secondary professions for a...

Who is the audience for the articles on "Secondary professions for a..."? They currently seemed geared towards veterans, rather than noobs trying to decide on their 2ry, a decision that they will have to live with for a long time.

For example, in the sin article, almost all of the combos reference elite skills. The Sin/Monk combo references two monk skills that are unavailable to Factions characters. Combos with Pa or Dv aren't even available for Noobs, as Factions chars are restricted to Shing Jea until they choose a 2ry. The As/Me combo currently only describes what people no longer do (not what you could/should do with that combo).

Would it make more sense to re-organize the articles? IMO, there are two independent avenues that would be helpful: (1) re-focus, based on the audience and (2) re-organize, based on the combination's purpose.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

(1) Re-focus, based on Audience

One size probably doesn't fit all (as some of the talk pages suggest), so re-focus the articles assuming three audiences:

• Noobs playing the prof for first time, picking their first 2ry. Also implies these restrictions (since most of the campaign must be completed before add'l options are available): non-Elite, non-UAS, stuck with the combo for a long time.
• PvP (assuming UAS), focusing on team roles
• PvE Veterans (assuming UAS), focusing on activities (e.g. farming, soloing, team play,...)   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF)

(2) Objective/Style-based Organization vs. Prof-based

The current articles force players to review each possible combo of profs in detail before being able to recognize what might fit their own style of play. Alternatively, we could organize based on purpose, allowing users to skim the choices before reviewing a smaller subset in detail. For example, some players prefer to Brawl (getting up-close & personal and staying there), which would probably only include 2-3 combos; others might be interested in surgical strikes (cripple and leave for party to finish off), implying an overlapping 2-3 choices (with different play recommendations). The idea would be to provide an overview of possibilities rather than an exhaustive menu, making it easier for players to answer their own question, "what 2ry should I choose?"   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF)

I agree wholeheartedly that all of the secondary profession guides need to be rewritten, because they are full of terrible advice. Past that, though, I am not sure.

The thing with secondary professions is that for any of the campaigns, they usually play a very minor role in actually helping you through the campaign. Even being nearly UAX, when I made a new character I rely almost exclusively on primary profession's skills. There are only a few truly useful ones, such as Warrior secondary for Wild Blow or Ranger secondary for Antidote Signet. Past that it is mostly a question of future planning for advanced PvE or PvP.

What I think is that the guides should stick to listing what benefits there are for each secondary profession for any given primary. This is without regard to UAX, PvE, or PvP... it might be worthwhile to separate tips with some type of identifier symbols, like "This tip uses skills/profession from a different campaign". But I think it's good to keep the audience broad and not discriminate against listing certain synergies because of potential limitations. (T/C) 23:03, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I always thought those pages were fairly useless, on the basis that there's nothing non-trivial that is worth saying. If you know what you want from your secondary profession (e.g., healing, interrupts, a particular martial weapon), that pretty much makes the decision for you. If you don't know what you want from your secondary profession, you won't use it, so the choice doesn't matter. Quizzical 23:25, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the only useful things to list there, especially for newer players who are actually unfamiliar with the professions yet, are possible "synergies" between professions, such as Apply Poison or Conjure enchants for all martial classes, Monk enchants or Warrior melee attacks like Wild Blow for Dervishes, or Warrior shouts for Paragons, stuff like that. Other than that, possibilities are really endless, and the articles would turn into a huge mess if you try to list them all. RoseOfKali 04:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Dialogue layout revisited

Well, see (and comment) at User talk:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Shortcuts#Quotes and Dialogue. The current proposals are (click to enlarge):

--◄mendel► 05:15, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

When did the ads get larger?

They're covering up "content" now too.

So what gives? 13:26, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Report bad ads. It's in the sidebar. --◄mendel► 14:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

What gives is that wiki has made some poor decisions about ads. I have noticed many examples of ads covering content. Since they are not really "bad ads" but simply the result of poor programming wiki is kinda ignoring it. There is really no good place to complain about this since the "bad ad" complaint does not really fit.

My solution is to contact the advertiser and tell them advertising on wiki is a waste of money for them since their ads are covering content and making wiki users mad.

I do understand the need for wiki to have ads, but the way they are placing ads now is counterproductive. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.35.239.90 (talk • contribs) 20:30, 5 April 2009 (UTC).

Report them, wikia will discontinue them and contact the advertisers. They contract a certai nad size out, and either somebody screws things up, or the advertisers try to take advantage. --◄mendel► 22:34, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

It's too bad Wikia overcomplicated the report process. I've ignored bad ads quite a few times because I don't feel like sending them an e-mail. Which, of course, was their intention. 03:25, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Two articles or one? Signet of Capture and Skill Capture

Should we have two articles or just one to cover Signet of Capture and skill capture. A lot of the info is duplicative IMO, so I think a single article would be cleaner and easier to read. If people agree, I am happy to take the first stab at combining the two (with "skill capture" redirecting to the skill).   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 05:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Signet of Capture should definitely have its own article since it's a skill, so redirecting and information reorganization might be best. (T/C) 10:38, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

The focus of the articles differs: "Signet of Capture" is focused on the skill and its workings, "skill capture" focuses on advice. (Maybe some content from unlock could be moved there.) I would find it untypical to move the advice in "skill capture" to that skill's article. --◄mendel► 11:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think these should be merged or redirected to each other or anything. Some info is duplicated, so a little revision and cleanup of the notes on both articles would be useful, but otherwise, leave them be, they link to each other. RoseOfKali 18:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikia outages/interruptions?

Have the wikia powers that be informed any of the b'crats/sysops (or bots?) about the recent interruptions in service? P'haps coincidentally, ever since the announcement that WikiAnswers was shutting down, wikia (not just this site) has seemed slower. I've been completely unable to access pages at least 3 times and have seen at least one formal database lock during biz hours (in wikia corporate awake hours). Do we have any info about why? for how long will this continue? etc? Thanks.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 09:22, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

For what I've heard, they're swapping ISP's. It's great they always keep us posted when the servers go to hell for a while. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 10:35, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

These aren't planned outages, so an advance information is not possible. Wikia is growing (at the start of the year, their total bandwidth was averaging 370 Mbit/s on a busy day, last sunday that was 410 Mbit/s), their infrastructure is being adapted to it on the fly by a very capable systems adminstrator, so what we#re experiencing means that Wikia may still be in business by the end of the year... ;-) --◄mendel► 16:34, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Good that rapid growth is keeping them in business. Bad that a 10% peak-usage increase is causing problems.

However: It's really not that hard to post a broadcast message saying, "hey, we know this looks bad — really, it's all good b/c it means more servers...bear with us good ppls." (in other words, I don't believe an unplanned issue absolves them their responsibility to keep their volunteer workforce up-to-date). (Plus: the people working to resolve the problem(s) aren't the same as those who would post the please stand by). A tiny effort goes an awfully long way towards maintaining good faith.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:53, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Kyle should be posting an ops update today on the Central forums. He just needs to clarify a few technical details with the tech team. -- sannse (talk) 10:37, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Presumably on Forum:Watercooler. --◄mendel► 11:31, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

KyleH has posted a statement at Forum:Site performance issues and improvements on April 14th. --◄mendel► 23:04, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.14 Upgrade

Wikia is going to upgrade the version of our wiki software from 1.13 to 1.14 on April 29th. There's going to be a site notice. Most other Wikia wikis are being upgraded a week earlier. Read more details at Forum:MediaWiki 1.14 upgrade and Wikia:MediaWiki/1.14. --◄mendel► 22:56, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Monster Images Project update

The list of missing monsters at GuildWiki:Monster images project has been updated. I am proud to announce that around 80 monster images have been uploaded since the last update, many of these for new monsters (we have 56 more monster infoboxes than we did in September). We now have 63 images missing. I want to take the opportunity to thank those editors who've shortened our "wanted" list by uploading monsters: Bikeboy854 (16 monsters), Lord Twitchiopolis (6), Immora (5), Kurtan (3), Cress Arvein, ***EAGLEMUT***, Balistic Pve, and Mrguildboi. Thanks to all of you! --◄mendel► 16:02, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

WOOHOO! Some of those elite places, e.g. the second round of Dajkah Inlet, are beyond my newb grasp, but I have a few more on my list. All the Zaishen are listed as being in the Heroes' Ascent, a place I do not have access to, mainly since I am only one step up from completely harmless in PvP to mildly annoying. There are some Zaishen NPC's in the Zaishen Challenge and Zaishen Elite areas. I am assuming that they look the same as the NPC's in Heroes' Ascent and plan on using shots that I can get there for those, unless someone tells me otherwise.Bikeboy854 00:27, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Documenting Zaishen quests

There will be 3 new Zaishen quests every day for a long time, people. It's not new content, but it could make for a lot of new articles, if we choose to document them that way. I like two particular options:

• Make a Zaishen namespace, and every quest gets its own article.

• Any boss, activity, or mission that is used as a Zaishen Quest gets a subpage (Molotov Rocktail/Zaishen), which is linked to at the top of the article by something like:

This article is involved in a [[PAGENAME/Zaishen|Zaishen Quest.]].

I would prefer the latter option, as it would be easier to organize; besides which it'll be easier to search for, and it won't require any disambigs or redirects.

If somendelone could make a template roughly like the one above, that would be splendid. 22:19, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

See Molotov Rocktail for a working example. 03:19, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

zquest articles

I think it would be more appropriate to have the zquest articles at Zaishen Quest/<blah>. Edit: The discussion I had with felix in game is below (thanks mendel!) --Shadowcrest 14:47, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Shadowcrest: Wouldn't those pages be better set up as Zaishen Quest/AB or whatever?

Felix: Nah.

Shadowcrest: Why?

Felix: People are going to search for the quest's name, which is Molotov Rocktail, or Alliance Battles, or Guild versus Guild.

Shadowcrest: .. and how would that help?

Felix: Well, those articles already exist.

Shadowcrest: It seems like you would include the linking factor as the first part of the name.

Felix: Also, when the Z-Quest article is a subpage of the main article, users can go back and forth with one click.

Shadowcrest: How?

Felix: Subpages get an automatic link to their parent article near the top under the title, and the link from parent to subpage is the Zaishen Quest template.

Shadowcrest: Those links could be easily accomplished by other links or disambiguation messages.

Felix: But there's no need to. You certainly could, but only to prove a point. The current method is less work-intensive, if only a little.

Shadowcrest: I could say the same for yours...

Felix: Paradox lol

Shadowcrest: It seems less intuitive to me, since the parent is Zaishen Quest, not Alliance Battle.

Felix: Well, technically the parent is whatever the main article is. So right now, the parent is in fact Alliance Battle.

Shadowcrest: How is the parent article for a quest from the Zaishen not Zaishen Quest?

Felix: The reason it should not be is because of the quest's names. We always follow in-game naming conventions.

Shadowcrest: And when two things have the same name, we generally put a disambiguation message..

Felix: But we don't need to because they're not actually two separate things.

Shadowcrest: Uh, AB != quest called AB, Molotov is not a quest, etc.

Felix: But they're so closely related that it would be silly to have completely separate articles. And the only advantage to putting them in Zaishen/blah (that I can see) is being able to list them all on Zaishen, but we have a category for that.

Shadowcrest: People not used to the wiki aren't going to check a category.

Felix: They're also not going to intuitively know to go to Zaishen when they're searching for Molotov Rocktail.

Shadowcrest: disambig msg

Felix: extra work

Shadowcrest: no more than putting in {{Zaishen Quest}}

Felix: You'd have to do it twice.

Shadowcrest: Why?

Felix: Two separate articles, no auto-parent link.

Shadowcrest: There will be one in the article.

Errors are mine. --◄mendel► 20:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

You can list a category using the categorytree tag, so it is quite possible to list all Zaishen Quest in that category on the Zaishen Quest page in a way that even new users cannot overlook.

I was planning to change the red link on the template to something that preloads a template for a Zaishen Quest page, but we could probably do that some other way if we're hanging them off the Zaishen Quest page.

Maybe different solutions have to be found for the Alliance Battles, but the mission type quests should be close to the mainspace articles, in my opinion.

--◄mendel► 20:38, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Workflow. If you're on the Molotov Rocktail quest, you'll bring up that page anyway, you see at a glance whether it already has a ZQeust on the wiki, if it hasn't, you hit edit, add the template, hit the redlink, and fill it in. You don't need to go to "Zaishen Challenge Quest" at all, because it doesn't really tell you anything new. --◄mendel► 20:43, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

One large problem with Shadowcrest's idea to give all the Zaishen Quest material disambig pages to connect to Zaishen Quest/whatever is that we would eventually have a disambig for every single boss, mission, or arena- and missions already have a disambig message due to (mission) and (outpost). So that would be a huge number of disambigs. 23:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Why even bother? It's only there for one day, and the quest page doesn't give any extra information. If your quest reads "Go kill Molotov Rocktail", you'll probably look for his page for tips to kill him anyhow, rather than the ZQuest page. At least, that's what I figure. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 09:19, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

See Garfazz Bloodfang (quest) for more info --Shadowcrest 14:24, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't see any relevance in that quest, it is a static quest available at any time. I actually tend to agree with Viper. There are 3 new quests every day, and it's a lot of work to keep them all updated in the wiki, and look, they go away unless you save them in your log, and only 3 at a time anyway. The quests are straight forward in who to kill, what mission to do, or what PvP to beat, and the monster/mission/arena articles already have info on how to do it, no need to repeat it. I think it's too much effort for what it's worth to make an entire new quest article for all of these. It might be ok to keep a list of what bosses were requested when by the bounty, what missions were requested when, what combat tasks, and what the rewards/bonuses were, like in a sortable table format defaulted by date. But having a separate quest article for each one is just a lot of work that few would be willing to do consistently, every day after day after day forever until all missions, bosses and arenas are covered and begin to repeat. Make a "Zaishen Bounty" quest article, list all the bosses and rewards and dates, and link to it from the quest name pages, whether they match a boss exactly, or are like Harn and Maxine Coldstone (latter would be a redirect). Same for the other 2 types. Done. A lot less typing and copy-paste errors for everyone involved. RoseOfKali 20:06, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Please don't decide what others would be willing to do (or find useful), have a little faith here. Point in our favor: so far all articles have been created. Surely it's much too much work to consistently shoot perfect screenshots of every single armor in the game, so why not drop the project? ;-)--◄mendel► 20:11, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn't decide anything, just stated an opinion and offered a suggestion for others to consider. And ffs stop calling me that. Starting to seem like you don't want me to talk at all, even though I'm expanding on someone else's comment. All you had to say is that I'm overestimating the work and that you would be willing to do it. I guess I'm sorry I tried to think of a way to reduce overall workload, instead of assuming others will do it for me. Anyway, the armor is always there. The quests are not. If you can't login every day to see what they are and document them, you're out of luck. RoseOfKali 20:22, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Your idea suggests a current table, so editors need to log in every day either way. --◄mendel► 00:29, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Of course, but with my idea there is less documenting to be done by others. Filling in a row of a table or entry in a list does not compare to creating an entire new article. For now, the new articles are being created as stubs and filled in while many people are interested in the new thing. Let's hope the trend continues months later. I think Viper and I are in the minority here, so I abandon this idea and will do my best to try and help with what the majority decides upon. RoseOfKali 01:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Look at the naming of the article to determine its relevance. Its only objective is kill Garfazz- just like zquests. Why the different in naming conventions? --Shadowcrest 21:05, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Good point, now I see the relevance of that link. "Kanaxai (quest)" or "Molotov Rocktail (quest)" etc. is the best place to put them, not a weird network of subpages. Still leaves it a little tricky with things like Blood Washes Blood, which is a quest to begin with... (zquest)? :P RoseOfKali 21:27, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree completely, with the Blood Washes Blood type things going at "Blood Washes Blood (Zaishen quest)". --Shadowcrest 21:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

"daily" template

tl;dr So here's another thing I think would be cool. We have the {{Zaishen Quest}} template. I'm assuming someone is also keeping a table or list somewhere of each quest and recording them day by day. Well, I think there ought to be a template to display each day's quests, e.g. {{Today's Zaishen Quests}}. When transcluded it would only include the first row or "today's" quests; past ones are farther on in the list, or in an archive (which is noinclude-tagged). This could be put on the Main Page, or on the Zaishen Quest page, or into a cool userbox. If there is some template wizardry which will allow that to be done with the current Zaishen Quest template, and just add another parameter or something, that would cut down on redundancy. Entropy (C) 05:14, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Ya, thought the same thing, gonna be possible with infobox. --◄mendel► 09:40, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

New blood?

I found this interesting when it pooped up on my computer. I wonder if this official introduction into Steam will drag some new players into the dying Guild Wars world.Entrea [Talk] 18:31, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

34.99€ for the trilogy, but no Eye of the North on steam yet. --◄mendel► 20:40, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

GuildWiki+Xfire Partnership

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know 1) who I am, and 2) some great news…I run the gaming vertical at Wikia, which means it’s my job to make sure your content is read by as many people as possible. To that end, we have just created a partnership with Xfire, which now uses GuildWiki as their default in-game browser for all 13 million Xfire users when they are playing Guild Wars. I would love to post this exciting news on the main page, or at least a link to a project page which has more information to let the GuildWiki community know about the partnership. What do you suggest we do for this? Cheers, -- Doug (talk) 21:42, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey, that's fantastic! Definitely main page material, maybe linking to GuildWiki:Xfire. 21:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

"vertical" = market segment? You're marketing the gaming wikis? Guild Wars Wiki is very well integrated with the game, if there is anything we can do to integrate GuildWiki with Xfire that doesn't violate our "noncommercial" clause we'd like to consider it. :) --◄mendel► 22:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Rockefeller of Wikis. Also: YAY!--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 22:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Experience has taught me that the solution to this sort of task always begins with paying confused, disinterested female models to dress up in exposing costumes resembling Eve, Vizu, Varesh, and Jora. -- AudreyChandler 23:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

(TEF dons a costume to enable him to resemble Eve, Vizu, Varesh, and Jora to ask the following question: ) Xfire? what is that? Am I sorry that I haven't been using it since the start of time? Does that mean that in-game when I press [F10], I'll visit here instead of the official wiki? (TEF un-dons the costume, which was starting to itch, not to mention cause the inevitable, though incorrect, speculations.)   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 23:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Xfire is a widely used instant messaging and networking service that integrates with various games. I have it installed but I haven't used it in ages. It's cool though. 23:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses, though I am sure there are more to come. Let me answer some questions here: 1)the gaming vertical is a segment we use to place all of the gaming related wikis on Wikia into a single bucket. Hence, spotlights that are gaming focused are run on the gaming vertical, and not on lifestyle related wikis. 2)There is no action item on your part, nor does this violate any terms. What it means is this, we have utilized Xfire's in-game platform to default to the GuildWiki when in-game, or rather - if you have Xfire, play Guild Wars, and use the the in-game browser, you will be defaulted to the GuildWiki. I personally think this is pretty damn cool =0). Which translates into an seamless integration of game and content for Xfire users that play Guild Wars. I was hoping to reach an agreement as to the best method of promoting this cool feature to the GuildWiki community. Thanks for all the support BTW =0) Any thoughts? -- Doug (talk) 23:56, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

The GuildWars in-game browser uses a special type of link to access wiki content which GuildWiki isn't set up for yet. So either Xfire isn't using this mechanism, or they have coded a workaround, or we should set up GuildWiki to have it. A screenshot would be nice. --◄mendel► 00:08, 1 May 2009 (UTC) & 00:09, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I think one of those bright orange system boxes at the top of the screen for a few days would probably get the point across rather efficiently. -- AudreyChandler 00:10, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

You mean, an unpaid Xfire commercial disguised as editorial content? --◄mendel► 00:28, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I believe this is more to let people who use Xfire know that they can now access GuildWiki via their in-game browser, rather than advertise xfire to people using GuildWiki. 00:33, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Xfire is in a better position to contact them. --◄mendel► 00:53, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I've never understood the whole point of the "integrated wiki with the game" bit, even though it seems to be the most common reason for people to use the official wiki rather than this one. If you want to use a browser while playing the game, why is \wiki so superior to Alt+Tab? The latter will take you to whatever pages you were already looking at, without having to type out the page names again. If I'm playing a computer game, I've usually also got Opera and Excel open and switch between windows frequently. Quizzical 01:23, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Hey guys, Felix has the right mind set. This is a cool to have feature, took some time to get working and not an editorial bit on Xfire's in-game capability. I would like to let all of the GuildWiki community know that we have this feature, exclusive to the GuildWiki. There is no work for us to do, nothing to fix, we simply want to announce the feature, throw in a screen shot, and a link explaining how it works. I've got some great screen shots here and here. I would like to get the word out before this weekend if possible. Thanks all!! -- Doug (talk) 18:37, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Use the page Xfire for the announcement, we will link it from the main page and the community portal.

Have you cut the ads from the screenshots, or do they not show at all on xfire? Having an in-game browser like that might make it useful to code the pages to display well in smaller windows. --◄mendel► 20:21, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I have written a stub for Xfire, feel free to unleash your marketing lingo as you please, Doug! :-) --◄mendel► 20:28, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

You guys rock! I'll put in a blurb with some screenshots. ;) -- Doug (talk) 20:55, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Wow, good news, although I personally use steam or playxpert's wikia widget. RandomTime 21:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Site notice for Xfire

Do we want to have a Welcome, Xfire users! site notice (box at the top of the page)? --◄mendel► 20:37, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I myself don't mind. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 21:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Why on earth would we not want it? We had a site announcement for pvx, something that doesn't matter at all; why would we not have one for something that does matter? 21:33, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Because people QQ'ed over the PvXwiki site notice. --◄mendel► 21:42, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, PvXwiki is not commercial, and has always been a "sister" community to GuildWiki. --◄mendel► 08:19, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Even after they basically rejected us by linking everything to GWW instead? :) Entropy (C) 17:58, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

OBTW, the poll doesn't seem to work (JS enabled except quantserv, ABP running, monobook) RandomTime 21:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Known issue; already on the Wikia noticeboard. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 21:41, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Aha, thanks - I should keep up more RandomTime 21:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Click the new "Monaco View" link in the sidebar and vote there. --◄mendel► 21:49, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

At a poll of 5:0:3 and no opposing comments here, I've gone ahead and created a sitenotice that I suggest should run for a week. --◄mendel► 22:27, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Capturing non-elite skills early from bosses.

Hi everyone.
In about a day and a half I plan to change the pages of certain Bosses. Currently, there is a rather clumsy and inelegant way of letting Users know that they could use a Signet of Capture to get a skill before they could find a Skill Trainer with it.
Along with several other Users, I have been working on an improvement.
Where previously there would be a rather large message in the Notes section for each skill, we plan to have a Signet of Capture icon to the right of such skills. Mousing over the Icon will inform them that the skill is available early by capturing it from this boss, thanks to a Template made by Mendel.
The idea is that if Users are interested, they can click on the name (or picture) of the particular skill, and the skill's page should give them all the information they require.
This way you get the same information, but in a much less cluttered format. Please reply here to avoid having discussions about it all over GuildWiki. Thanks. A F K When Needed 16:11, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Here is the Template to more aptly show you the idea: Again, please do respond here, thanks. A F K When Needed 16:13, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikianswers widget

There's a wikianswers widget on our sidebar now, for the monaco skin, and anons see this by default. It seems to be used in lieu of the search box a lot. See answers:Category:GuildWiki and weep. I've been answering a few recent questions by linking to our articles, often with the same name. --◄mendel► 14:02, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

If you try to answer these, see answers:Template:Guildwiki. --◄mendel► 14:26, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I came in on another computer once just to look something up and ended up using that thing instead of the GW search and was like WTF? Bad placement, IMO. It stands out more than the GW search. BAED. RoseOfKali 18:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Can't we just hide it with .css or .js hax? Or turn it into a searchbox? :p Entropy (C) 19:49, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, it's not an advertisement, so by Wikia's TOS we CAN hide it (.WidgetAnswers { display:none; }) Everyone in favor say "aye".

Jon suggests via irc to put a link to "ask a question" on our search results page. I think that might be a good idea.

I have started a discussion at w:Forum:Wikianswers_Widget. --◄mendel► 20:45, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I've had enough. Again. See answers:User_talk:Molokaicreeper#when_rephrasing_a_question_is_a_bad_idea for Wikia not allowing us to direct our users back to us. --◄mendel► 23:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

"Aye" for hiding it. I mean, I confused it for Guild Wiki search! Wikianswers is a fucking joke to me, anyway, but that's beside the point. Your Molokai "friend" and that Angela chick completely missed the point of what's going on. RoseOfKali 01:58, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

"That Angela chick" is Wikia's co-founder, and she pretty much runs WikiAnswers. Thank you for your kind support! :) --◄mendel► 02:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

We've done it, the backlog in answers:Category:GuildWiki is cleared, with the help of Balistic Pve and A F K When Needed. There are now 500+ questions (0.3%) that link back to GuildWiki. --◄mendel► 00:01, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Advertising * 4

When viewing it as an anon, Zaishen Challenge Quest has 4 300x250 box-type ads inside the article content. Thoughts? --◄mendel► 09:17, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Did you screenshot it? 09:38, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I have no tool to take screenshots that big. Don't you see this? --◄mendel► 11:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

That's why the PrintScreen button is re-usable, no? --- -- (contribs) (talk) 11:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Questions

Is Forum:Questions a feature we want to keep? The "ask question" input box ({{Question}}) could be displayed in various places on the wiki. --◄mendel► 19:50, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it looks easier to use for newer users than Request assistance Talk 07:54, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes. What RT said. Can we (i.e. you, M) make it equally easy to respond to a particular question?   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:43, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

The list of recently asked questions on the left sidebar is almost invariably nonsense. It's as if people meant to type in the page name they wanted to go to, or at least use the search function, but used the wrong box. Quizzical 18:31, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I know. I don't think we intend to put the inputbox there. --◄mendel► 20:56, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

TEF, a response right now involves clicking the link, thus loading the page; and then editing it. The link to the Category:Un-answered questions is placed by the preload, so to recat it, you need to delete the "un-" and write an answer. Did you want anything easier than that?

We can also display, say, the 5 most recent questions pretty much anywhere on the wiki, in a variety of formats. --◄mendel► 20:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Prehaps a template which contains the category, but I don't think that really matters, the part where it asks to explain OR answer is vague, and may confuse, prehaps one that says explain, then an empty line and then another comment asking to answer Talk 21:08, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, right, the person who asks wouldn't answer their own question. --◄mendel► 21:31, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikia deploys blog feature (opt-out)

Here's the latest news hacked from Wikia's data network.

Wednesday, we will be launching two new features: Wiki Blogs and the User Masthead

Wiki blogs are a new way for you and your community to contribute to your wiki. Wiki blogs are similar to normal blogs in that posts are attributed to a single author, are time stamped, and have a comment section. The wiki twist is that all posts are combined together into a central community blog or multiple blogs defined by category. Blog posts and comments are recorded in the Blog namespace and are logged in Recent Changes.

User Masthead is new section appended to the top every user page which displays user specific links including link to the new User Blog. This masthead also has a place for each user to have their own avatar. Avatars can be added/changed in Special:Preferences and can be managed like any other image on the site.

Check out all the details here!

This message was sent to sysops.

Hello MyGuildWikiSpace......

Entropy (C) 00:02, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Anyone who tests this feature on this wiki might be shot. Do your testing at w:c:communitytest, it's installed there right now. --◄mendel► 01:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Consider at least one Gwikian warned. Have the wikia powers-that-be at least started asking opinions from sysops (e.g. of large communities) ? It seems to me that they are adding features that aren't in high demand at the expense of other software maintenance (I am deliberately not comparing to hardware needs, tho' that seems also to be getting short shrift recently.)   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:14, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

When I first read this and saw

User Masthead

I thought I saw

User:Masthead

and was like "wtf? Who's that?" So I decided to create a shoepuppet and see what would happen to it once this feature goes live. --Macros 02:47, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

WTF? O_o Wonder who came up with this "bright" blog idea, but anyway, that's a "no" from me. Can't think of a tiniest purpose that would serve on this wiki. The Masthead could be good, though at first I read it "Mathhead" and thought "Methhead." :/ The ability to turn that off is always welcome. RoseOfKali 17:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Ugh, the posts are un-editable, DO NOT WANT Talk 17:12, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The blog posts are editable, very much so; it's just the comments to them that are not, and other people's blog posts. --◄mendel► 19:47, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

In case my implication wasn't evident, I am emphatically opposed to this new "feature". Entropy (C) 07:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Masthead

The Masthead will be seen on every user page and user talk page. It contains very visible Contributions and Email this User links, which isn't bad; but it clutters the page header. I have mitigated some of the wikia fail, and our version would look like this (mocked up on w:c:communitytest):

We could turn it off on User: and User talk: and only leave it enabled on the Blog namespaces, opinions? Screens of the original look are on display at User talk:Masthead. A blog fail list is at w:c:communitytest:User blog:M.mendel/Why this is beta material. --◄mendel► 13:42, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

To clarify, the screenshot shows my own page; on other people's pages, links for that person are displayed. These links are mostly available on the sidebar toolbox already, all it would take would be to edit it to include the blog link, and we could turn off the masthead with no loss of functionality. --◄mendel► 13:45, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I see no point to this "feature". It is simply redundant; those functions are generally not high-priority, high-use ones either. It would be like adding a tab to the Block Log for a particular user (some hax Warwick made a long time ago)...they are mostly more esoteric and obscure features that 1) most anons and new users wouldn't use anyway, and 2) more experienced users already know how to do such things easily, even reflexively.

If this feature does go live, though, I'm sure it could easily be hidden with a .CSS hax, so I'm a bit less concerned about it than the blog namespace. Entropy (C) 07:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Am I missing something? this masthead duplicates links already available on every page (with slight differences in names). We should choose one or the other. (Current top menu of name/talk/watchlist/more/logout) OR the new masthead. As Entropy says, redundant otherwise.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 08:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

From Help:Blog:

The masthead shows both the user avatar and links to user-related pages. The links you see depend on what page you are viewing:

Your own user pages

User, User talk, Blog, Contributions, Watchlist, Widget Dashboard, Preferences.

Other user pages

User, User talk, Blog, Contributions, Email user.

Anonymous user pages

User, User talk, Contributions.

I see three reasons for the mastehad to have been introduced:

1. blog link from the user page, and user page links from the blog
2. display what user is responsible for that blog, since the user name is cut off the page title
3. displays the avatar. Currently I know no way to display an avatar for a username.

We can easily disable (display:none) the masthead for user and user talk pages, and keep it only on the blog pages. GuildWiki users ought to be able to link to their blog from their user page if they so desire. ;-) (If this really catches on, there'll be a user box in no time.) --◄mendel► 09:19, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

So, the only useful features are related to the blogs which I also have no desire to see? Okay.

I don't like the idea of "avatars". You know why? Because this is a wiki, not a forum. Moreover, we're an old-fashioned wiki that doesn't use those types of "dialogue box" comments on talkpages, which is perhaps the only case I could see an "avatar" making sense. (And you know how little I like that style of "discussion".) Entropy (C) 13:56, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Talkpages are superior, and signature images are our "avatars". I think a little div#user_masthead { display:none; } would alleviate some of your pain. :) Or using monobook. --◄mendel► 15:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Monobook search box move

New search box position?

With a few simple lines of .css the search box in the Monobook sidebar can be moved up below the site logo, where the Monaco search box is. I am asking for opinions in favor or opposed to changing this for everybody who uses monobook.

You can try this out now by adding the following lines to Special:MyPage/monobook.css:

/* move search box to top */
div#p-navigation, div#p-news, div#p-support { position:relative; top:75px; }
div#p-support { margin-bottom:75px; }
div#p-search { position: absolute; left:0px; top:145px; }

--◄mendel► 14:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

It could be changed for all non-Monaco skins (at least, I don't know of other skins that use something other than MediaWiki:Sidebar) by adding * SEARCH to the top of MediaWiki:Sidebar. mendel's CSS hack is sweet and allows individual users to do this by adding it to their own Special:MyPage/monobook.css file, but for a sitewide change, the interface message edit would do the same thing. Nwash 14:57, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Fantastic! Doo eet pleez! RoseOfKali 17:07, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm happy as it is, but as long as you provide alternite override css for me to opt-out, go ahead Talk 17:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

There was a proposal to do something like this on GWW a while back. It pissed me off. I don't care one way or another, but if you are going to go ahead, please do leave the "original code" available so that users can "opt out" if they so wish. Entropy (C) 07:47, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

You don't want the search box at the top? O_o What's wrong with you?.. RoseOfKali 16:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, I moved mine already with Mendel's hax. XD WOO! RoseOfKali 17:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't really mind either way, but if it can be moved back, I will. When you get used to something as, well, insignificant as the positioning of a search box over the course of years, having it moved is annoying. Well, that's my case, at least. I'd get confused by the search box not being near the bottom of the navbar.

Besides, what's wrong with it being there? --- -- (contribs) (talk) 17:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Most wikis I use have it closer to the top, if not right under the logo, and for me, it's the most used navigation feature. I personally get a little surprised when it's actually close to the fold rather than being near the middle or top of the screen. (On my laptop, it's almost even below the fold--dangerously low in my opinion.) But I guess it doesn't matter; mendel's CSS hack lets those of us who like it at the top have it our way, and since monobook is mostly used by people who've been around for a while, leaving MediaWiki:Sidebar alone is probably the best option. Nwash 18:21, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Nwash, on your test wiki, can you try to put two search boxes on the side bar, one at the top and one at the bottom? --◄mendel► 18:37, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

The second * SEARCH is just ignored, apparently. One only search box shows up, and there is no sign of the second search box in the page source. Nwash 18:52, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

adding "without helmet"

Hey guys, I just made a survey over on Talk:Armor regarding adding a new picture in the overview section "no helmet". Please check it out and vote. --Taki Fujiko 00:49, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I moved the above notice from Template_talk:Armor_art_gallery#adding_"without_helmet". --◄mendel► 09:45, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Supersecret Wikia Memorandum

Hello.

We will have a short period of "read-only" tomorrow, August 5. This will last for about 40 minutes from 10am UTC (that's 3:00am Pacific, 6:00am Eastern). During this time editing will be disabled, but you will still be able to view the site.

This is to allow us to restart the main database server.

Thanks, Wikia Community Team

22:28, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Where did you find that? Talk 11:29, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

special:mytalk at the top in a rather large yellow box. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 16:01, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

That's strange, I didn't get one - I normally get 'em Talk 16:33, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you: I stole yours.--- -- (contribs) (talk) 16:38, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

That must be why I never got it, not that I'm complaining (those messages are annoying when you think you've got a proper userpage message, and it turns out to be that Talk 16:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I willing to suffer the disappointment of not finding a real message in order to know about system outages ahead of time. I'm much more annoyed when I get surprised by planned maintenance (and lose edits or suffer poor response time).   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:05, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Sannse turned it off as soon as Wikia was back up. I didn't get one on GuildWiki either, but that may be because I saw it elsewhere. --◄mendel► 18:51, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Report bug template

I've created a template that has the ANet-blessed links for reporting bugs. (I got tired of looking up the links each time someone tried to report a bug here...and I hesitate to post simply that this is the wrong site.) {{Report bug}} can be used inline, as in

You can report issues on the official wiki, by emailing support, or creating a support ticket. To the best of our knowledge, ANet employees do not act on information posted here.

  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:15, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Good job! Put this on our FAQ and at the top of the assisstance page? --◄mendel► 19:54, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. (And thanks for showing me the template template... how handy and recursive!)   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:13, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Good job! --◄mendel► 20:01, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikia upgrades to MediaWiki 1.15.1 (aka Wikia Supersecret Memorandum Referendum Addendum (ad infinitum)

Hi all,

We'll be upgrading MediaWiki, the software that runs Wikia, to version 1.15.1 very soon. We plan to upgrade most wikis on the morning of Wednesday, August 26th. Click here for more information about this upgrade. We don't anticipate any downtime or major changes, but if you notice anything unusual after the upgrade, please let us know.

Thanks, The Wikia Community Team

-

Just letting you all know. 16:33, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

That link says that we're not going to upgrade until September 2, while most wikis are tomorrow. Quizzical 20:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

It now says Monday, August 31st for the exception wikis. 00:39, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Try WikiAnswers Widget again?

Two months ago, I turned off the Wikianswers widget (see here), because it directed users to Wikianswers without that wiki allowing us to redirect them back to us. That policy seems to have changed, we placed prominent links sporting our logo on most (if not all) Guild Wars related questions (unless those concern builds, those are directed to PvXwiki, of course) and that practice has not been challenged. Also, Wikia has redesigned the widget to make it a bit more obvious that it'll lead offsite (not enough IMO, but whatever). I'd be in favor of turning the widget back on and seeing what happens. Opinions? --◄mendel► 07:51, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

What's the widget look like? Where can I see it? Does it still make people think it's a search box? --Macros 11:21, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Does it make it easier for wikians to ask a GW question (and get a GWiki answer)? does it make it easier for any player to ask a question and get an answer? A Yes answer would depend on more than just this issue being resolved. I would also like the opportunity for a few (a lot?) of us to test it out before it's re-enabled.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:11, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

logged out users would see this

It looks like this on other wikis

Well, if you want Q & A, we don't need the widget: I made a template somewhere that allows creation of questions (and a list of them) right here on the wiki, which means the RC reading population would see them.

The widget works by displaying the last few questions that were asked from this wiki, so Monaco users could see and presumably answer them (but then they'd likely not be using the backlinking template, and there's no way to find these questions from here).

Most other Wikia wikis show it; if you don't see it, then use the Widget dashboard to display it. To see it here, add .WidgetAnswers { display:block; } to your monaco.css file, and if you're using monobook, use the "Monaco View" link in the sidebar. You may have to employ the Widget Dashboard ("manage widgets" under the "more" button next to your watchlist link) to put it on the sidebar (scroll the dashboard to the far right!). We could presumably change the looks somewhat with CSS. An easier way to test it is to use it from w:c:communitytest (I don't see it there though, hmmmm).

My motivation is more one of becoming less "rebel" with Wikia, whose management has implied that she's not thrilled about me having turned it off. My proposal is to enable it for a test period of perhaps one or two weeks and then evaluate what happened - since it was enabled before, we can pretty much predict that it's not going to make the wiki explode. It did generate about 20 questions per day; they can, for the most part, be reviewed on answers:Category:GuildWiki. --◄mendel► 17:26, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

A test period seems completely reasonable to me.

I am sympathetic with the WikiExec who prefers to see more standardization. I would be more sympathetic if Wikia engaged those rebels (like us) who have reasoned critiques of recent updates; we're not objecting for the sake of being different (it would be less time consuming to be conformist). As long as wikis that predate wikia are not consulted about planned features, Wikia should expect some friction from people who also have thoughts about these matters.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:14, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Any way users can have an opt-in beta something to add to their CSS to enable? RandomTime 20:28, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Quote To see it here, add .WidgetAnswers { display:block; } to your monaco.css file, and if you're using monobook, use the "Monaco View" link in the sidebar. unquote. --◄mendel► 22:05, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

moving the proposed "currently" to main page?

Could someone outline the reasons we have not moved the proposed, "Currently" section from the edit copy to Main Page? I would like to see that info upfront for readers. Do we need more feedback? do some of the predictive templates need some TLC? are there other fixes required? I am willing to help with heavy lifting, should that be required.

• proposed
• same question asked on editcopy's talk (no replies)

Thanks!   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:51, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

Nope, it's because I'm lazy, I should have changed it ages ago, no objections, so I'll be bold and copy it up RandomTime 20:58, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

Ah, Laziness! (The only reason for which I cannot offer much help.) Thanks, dude.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:11, September 22, 2009 (UTC)