Talk: Community portal/Archive 11

Article count

Interresting - with the builds moved into their own namespace, the article count dropped by roughly 1,000 articles (redirects are not counted - and I don't think, in general, that they should be counted as actual articles). But - is there a way to get articles in the Build namespace included in the counts? Builds are becoming a major component of the site, so ideally the counts should reflect them. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:04, 17 November 2006 (CST)

Right, the article count only counts articles in the main namespace. I'll look into it later. --Fyren 20:29, 17 November 2006 (CST)

Meta

Finally, GameWikis Meta wiki is here. Gravewit 12:09, 18 November 2006 (CST)

? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 12:12, 18 November 2006 (CST)

Holy crap! <LordBiro>/<Talk> 13:25, 18 November 2006 (CST)

Woo ^.^ — Skuld 12:44, 19 November 2006 (CST)

Mashups / Maps

For those of you that don't know what this means it is basically a system which allows you to take a map and plot points on top of it. Frappr.com is a good example. broadbandreports.com uses mashups of local data against Google maps. The obvious problem with a Google mashup is that Tyria, Cantha, and Elona don't exactly show up on Google maps. I believe it would be a valuable resource if we had the utility for people to map information without having to go through the arduous task of creating screen shots, prettying them, and uploading them. This is just an idea, and the 'work' involved may outweigh the potential gain or time savings. I believe it is certainly worthy of discussion. Imagine, being able to pull up a Boss's page that you could navigate like a Google Map, zoom in various areas, see the monsters with a little pop up of what they drop, etc. Certainly a grand under taking though. What are your thoughts? ErkDog 14:22, 20 November 2006 (CST)

Sounds like a very intriguing idea, and I'd like to be in on it. I'm creating/created a project space for it at GuildWiki:Interactive map project. - Lord Ehzed 15:23, 20 November 2006 (CST)

The biggest problem I see is that it would likely require backend outside of what MediaWiki can do on it's own. Unless of course something was done with Java in which people created the map interactively and the applet saved a "capture" of the generated map. That would be more of a map creation tool, than a mashup though. A mashup works on the idea of a map, and data overlaid on top of it, such as boss locations, mission objectives, etc. ErkDog 15:33, 20 November 2006 (CST)

Well, you can use the Google Maps API to work with custom map images. We'd need high-resolution images of the maps and then they'd need to be cut up into tiles for various zoom levels. Perhaps someone has already done this; I know a long time ago someone had a simple map of Tyria with an overlay done with Google Maps stuff. Saving/loading marker info would be some more work (I assume not too hard, but I have no idea about the Google Maps API). Someone's already written an extension for embedding Google Maps into MW pages, so that should be easy to use/adapt. --Fyren 22:17, 20 November 2006 (CST)

I certainly think this would be possible (I know that this wasn't suggested but I imagine that drawing routes between locations would be impractical). I think boss articles would have to be reorganised into a similar format to the skill articles, i.e. using a template. <LordBiro>/<Talk> 06:41, 21 November 2006 (CST)

The same could be accomplished by placing multiple "pins". If the Google API already supports custom maps then that takes a great deal of 'work' out of the project, lol. And the great thing about getting this off the ground, is that we'd only have to get 1 set of high quality maps, which was largely the point. It's annoying all these boss maps and mission maps that are like 300 x 200 wtf? Does your game only run ate 640x480? and even if it did, you should be able to get a bigger damn U map, lol. ErkDog 08:08, 21 November 2006 (CST)

http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/#Custom_Controls Appears to be geared more toward customizing the interface, not the map content. ErkDog 08:11, 21 November 2006 (CST)

Looking at their reference might be more useful. For the images, you need to slice up the map into tiles at various zoom levels (otherwise it'll basically suck; you want it to load quickly and on demand while you move your view around, like the real Google Maps). Doing that might be annoying, I don't know. The extremely abridged version seems to be you make a new GTileLayer, giving it the URLs of the images, and then make a new GMap2 with it.

It'd be nice to make an overlay showing rough zone boundries, too. Then some code to load the requested markers (I think what you meant by "pins") from the database so we can display all the bosses in a single zone, or all the bosses with a certain elite, or whatever. I dunno about saving such info, since once the JS for the map is on the page, it's out of the wiki's hands. --Fyren 08:48, 21 November 2006 (CST)

What a happy coincidence I dicided to read this page ;) I've been wanting to do a GW map in Ajax style, like Google Maps, for quite some time, just for the fun of it (btw, ErkDog: Maybe I'm misreading you, but I think your definition of "Mashup" is wrong. It has nothing to do with maps per se, see Wikipedia:Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)). If anyone is actually starting to work on this, drop me a line, I'd definitely be interested in helping out.
As for using Google Maps - I wasn't aware you could use custom map data, and I'm still not sure. But GMapType looks interesting, and might be the way to go.
Thinking a step further, once the map works we would need a source for the data, and a system to specify exact locations on the map. Maybe this could be a part of Guild Wiki: A bot scanning, e.g. Category:Bosses, each article conaining fake geodata for our fake geo system (maybe hidden somehwere as a comment, no need to actually show it to the user). DeepSearch 02:43, 22 November 2006 (CST)

After doing some research, it seems like I'm once again too late ;) I think this is the map Fyren was talking about. DeepSearch 02:55, 22 November 2006 (CST)

I don't know why you think you are too late. There is no reason why we can't produce our own map, and it would no doubt be more flexible if its back end was powered by the wiki. <LordBiro>/<Talk> 05:07, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Well, without a doubt, the phototraffic map is currently pretty limited in it's uses, but I was thinking more in terms of the technical side behind it, and whether it would be smart to reuse that. However, after looking at the code, I can say that the Javascript part is actually way to simple to be an interesting challenge anyway ;) DeepSearch 21:11, 23 November 2006 (CST)

DeepSearch.... "Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API." Such as our data through Google's map API... mashup. Anyway, the one there is pretty poor in it's usefulness. The only thing really on it is Elites, and it won't zoom very far. I'm sure we could create something far better. ErkDog 08:05, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Your post sounded (to me anyways) like mashups always have something to do with maps, so I wanted to clarify. Sorry if I misread you. DeepSearch 21:13, 23 November 2006 (CST)

Job Queue...

The job queue length is 2,276. Now that the faster servers are in place, perhaps we could modify the job queue ratio such that the jobs are pushed out of it a smidgen sooner? Or do you have a cronjob setup to purge them daily? Or am I just talking out of my ear? ErkDog 08:13, 22 November 2006 (CST)

cronjob that usually runs them at 4 AM CST, but I had it not run last night and forgot to run it manually after I was fiddling with something. --Fyren 08:19, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Word, I just noticed it was pretty high :) Thanks, ErkDog 13:32, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Editing Inappropriate Comments on Talk Pages

I have noticed in the past few days that some posts that I feel are inappropriately impolite (cursing, etc.). What is our policy on editing another person's posts on a talk page simply to remove offensive material? Obviously, I disagree with editing for content, but I would like to think that these pages can remain mature. Thoughts? - Lord Ehzed 17:53, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Generally we do not edit other people's posts. That's a worse offense in my opinion. If the offense is just poor language, then all anyone can really do is ask the person to use cleaner language. If the usage causes concern in any way, I am sure as admins we can take a look at it. Now, the bigger issue is hostility towards other posters. Driving other users away from the wiki is not acceptable, no matter how much the hostile poster thinks he is doing the rest of the wiki a favor. So, I would not be as concerned about someone saying "this is a *bleeping* bug" as much as some user telling the other to "*bleep* off" --Karlos 21:36, 23 November 2006 (CST)

Although that said, asking a user to use cleaner language can get you into more trouble that you might expect! Regardless I'll still ask users to keep the language clean and there's others that do too, LordBiro asked someone to be more polite recently, we do have some standards or at least I think we do, I wouldn't hang around here if using foul language was considered ok. --Xasxas256 21:47, 23 November 2006 (CST)

We already had an extensive discussion about the topic and we have come to the conclusion not to edit people's posts (like said above). I know words can hurt, but a bad posts containing foul words isn't nearly as bad as a dis in properly written English. As a practical solution, I suggest to archive the talk pages early to "get rid" of the comments. ~ Nilles (msg) 01:08, 24 November 2006 (CST)

As everyone has said, we do not edit other peoples posts. That said, while you might be able to get away with the occasional swear word in passing (I'm sure I'm guilty of it) it's certainly not something we encourage, and being impolite to other contributors will earn you no respect. As Karlos says, someone swearing is not really a major problem (although I wouldn't blame you if you asked that person to refrain from it), but someone being anti-social (whether swearing or not) is an issue and should be reported. <LordBiro>/<Talk> 06:43, 24 November 2006 (CST)

Sounds good - that's pretty much what I was thinking, but I wanted to bring the question up for discussion. - Lord Ehzed 10:51, 24 November 2006 (CST)

If you ask me, ones personal comments are ones own edits - you don't change them because if you do it's kind of like changing what they said. The most I've ever done is fix a link, and I still get squemish when I see an entire section of a talk page deleted. --Armond Warblade (talk) 23:44, 24 November 2006 (CST)

Advertisements, mirror(s)

I'm not a fan of guildwar gold showing up, but I'm even less of a fan of animated butts showing up with flames coming out of them [family guy]. Not sure about anyone else but it really puts me off of this site/coming here, how are these served up/decided? Also I really think mirror(s) make sense as GuildWiki was spotty if not down and out a lot. I understand the server upgrade went through, but is it so bad to have some backup plans at the ready, if not already operational? Otherwise my go-to spot --CKaz 18:39, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Yeah the family guy thing is really annoying --FireFox 18:41, 22 November 2006 (CST)

These topics have been discussed at great length in other threads found on wiki and gwg. If you want to help rid the ads GoogleAdSense decides upon, post any ads you believe is wrong or vulgar here. Otherwise, you could change your skin preference to one that doesn't show ads. — Gares 19:05, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Use FireFox... install AdBlock Plus. Also I used to run Adsense on several of my websites. Ads are served up on a contextual basis. The advertisers put in keywords and AdSense matches them to the keywords and displays them. It's a small little window anyway. Who cares? Ohh wait you do, so install AdBlock Plus and never see ads again on ANY site. ErkDog 22:35, 22 November 2006 (CST)

For dumps, it appears the only way we can go is people donating their bandwidth to us. Gravewit has said we don't really have bandwidth to spare, so at best for images we can only give a few people full copies and let them do the rest. What "the rest" is, I dunno. Let them set up direct downloads on a web server. We could run a BT tracker. Suggestions? --Fyren 02:29, 28 November 2006 (CST)

I'd be happy to donate some bandwith. 1 or 2 TB is probably what I can spare atm. DeepSearch 06:32, 28 November 2006 (CST)

It's hard to donate anything, when you guys are -completely- unwilling to provide anything needed to run a mirror. I don't see how you guys can be using that much bandwidth. Can you enable SNMP and setup an MRTG to poll the gamewiki servers? My hosting company allows 800K/sec SUSTAINED before I even begin to go over my monthly alloted transfer limit. Although, you guys clearly fail to realize the implications and savings of mirrors to begin with. Mirrors would save you a great deal of bandwidth. But nobody can effectively mirror gamewiki, as it requires administrative cooperation. Gravewit, apparantly does not posses the wits to recognize this. His wits are in grave supply. Pun intended. And it has been outlined dozens of times that the database sections required to setup a mirror are NOT that large. Furthermore, their download can be offloaded to several places such as rapidshare, planetmirror, or GASP people who have the resources to run a mirror. But I reiterate, it is impossible to donate any resources to gamewiki, when they refuse, outright, to provide any material. ErkDog 13:05, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Should I repeat my first comment from this section? Maybe make the font size bigger? Make it red? Blink tags? --Fyren 13:31, 8 December 2006 (CST)

My apologies, I actually misread it initially. I'm at work and have to often glance over things and I expected the same lack of cooperation that has been shown to date towards mirrors and must have missed it otherwise. PlanetMirror accounts are free, and you could upload a dump there at any time. http://www.planetmirror.com I think given the specialized and narrow interest in downloading actual database information, a torrent would be less than successful. Although, that would also depend somewhat on the frequency you planned on providing mirror 'updates'. And given the nature of the Wiki, on the GuildWiki:Mirror page which would likely exist, people can list their mirrors, and what they are offering, IE copies of the dumps, or browsable content. But as far as on gamewiki's end, you could merely upload the content to PlanetMirror and let the rest of us get it from there, and list on the Wiki if we are also mirroring any content. ErkDog 13:45, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Ads showing up for me...

Recently (about 3-4 days ago), Ads started to show up again for me on the side. I have not had these show up for me since the days they were started. Gravewit used to have an "excemption" for those guys who donated to the site, is this no longer in effect? --Karlos 02:59, 26 November 2006 (CST)

I donated and have always had the ads show up if I don't actively block them. The new ads that started showing up recently are from adbrite, the old ones were google. --Rainith 03:16, 26 November 2006 (CST)

Don't look at them, or install AdBlock if ads bother you that much. ErkDog 13:07, 8 December 2006 (CST)

The problem is really that we can LOSE our Elite Fansite status with them, and the random people that show up here every now and then probably don't want to install an adblocker like that for maybe half a dozen visits. (Yes, I have AdBlock installed, and yes, I still consider this a problem.) --Armond Warblade (talk) 00:18, 12 December 2006 (CST)

Lahtenda Bog Collectors?

Am I the only one that has notice the Lahtenda Bog collectors aren't included in the nightfall collectors list linked from the Quick Access? Never mind, found them under armor link Lady Ryln 08:32, 28 November 2006 (CST)

Also - they aren't included on the collectable items list of that link. For instance, take a look at Mandragor Carapaces - those are collected not only by Timahr, but also by Chormar. Chormar's page shows that he collects them (he's an armor collector), but he isn't listed on the Mandragor page, and he's not listed on the General collectors (Istan) page.

I noticed this issue this morning, but there may be others I haven't had time to look at. Lady Ryln 08:38, 27 November 2006 (CST)

Never mind, apparently I'm completely confused... that's what I get for viewing the wiki before I really wake up... glad I didn't start trying to change anything.... Lady Ryln 08:40, 28 November 2006 (CST)

Quest-Stubs

So, there are a LOT of articles marked with quest-stub. Currently, 171. Going through them, I noticed that the overwhelming majority of them don't need to be marked as such. They either contain all reasonable information possible, like the quest starter, zone, quest text, intermediate dialogue, and reward dialogue. Now, as far as I am concerned unless a quest is notoriously difficult or confusing, this information should be sufficient to remove a quest stub. I really don't think I need a full list of strats and team builds to complete Gain Margrid and Special Delivery. I think quest-stubs should be removed so that the quest-stub list is actually something that people who are hoping to contribute can find articles to work on. Seva 23:46, 4 December 2006 (CST)

In order to remove the stub, quests should also have a walkthrough. --Rainith 23:53, 4 December 2006 (CST)

Yep go ahead and remove any that have all the appropriate information filled in. The only thing to remember is that all unstubbed quest articles should have a walkthrough section. For some quests such as the starters quests or as you mentioned Gain Margrid it may only be a line or two but they're supposed to all have it filled in. From what I've seen that's what the majority of our stubs are missing. (stupid non concise writing = edit conflict) --Xasxas256 00:00, 5 December 2006 (CST)

If you think that's a lot, you clearly haven't looked at the character, monster, or boss stubs. --Fyren 00:47, 5 December 2006 (CST)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Stubs on GuildWiki = utterly meaningless. :( -- 00:57, 5 December 2006 (CST)

Skill stubs are meaningful, at least for player skills. But then, that's because I've gone through almost all of them. --Fyren 01:07, 5 December 2006 (CST)

I see stubs as very usefull, as long as they are well categorized into sub-categories like skill-stubs or quest-stubs. (That's why i spent some time lately to categorize them.) But, of course, articles won't cleanup or unstub themself without some community action.

One could think of the following: Lets call out some Unstubbing Weeks where the community is called upon going through some stub category in some kind of spring-cleaning action. Lets say, for instance, we call this the "Unstub da Bozzes!" Weeks to complete the articles in category boss-stubs. There would be an announcement in the Community Portal and maybe on the Main Page as well to focus the effort. The objective would be to review the articles, fillup missing information and check for style and formatting. If an articles doesn't show any obviously missing parts then the stub tag could simply be removed (which should not be seen as the same criterion as beeing a perfect article, it's just no longer a stub anymore).

I intended to spark some unstubbing intiative once the turmoil from Nightfalls release has settled. Only if the community is interessted in such a project, of course. In my eyes, this is a good way to enhance the quality of our articles, to apply style and formatting rules and, finally, to get rid of most of the stub tags. --MRA 08:01, 5 December 2006 (CST)

Cross Session Pollution

Don't know about anyone else, but I keep Gwiki logged in, and often land on the main page in someone elses login. This could be due, and i think it is, to a problem with sessions, or indeed an update problem with the cookies. It really could do with being fixed, or else unsuspecting users will start making updates under someone elses name. Neon 07:50, 7 December 2006 (CST)

I believe this bug is being looked at currently, but it would appear that your edits are still under your account, just the wrong name appears. --Xasxas256 07:56, 7 December 2006 (CST)

Purge tags

Every now and then I find a page that has a link at the top prompting me to click it if updated content does not show. I finally got curious enough to figure out what it was (a {{purge}} tag, of course). Then I started wondering - why do some pages have it and others don't? It's kinda clutter-y, visually. Do we need it on all pages, or just some pages? If only some, then what ones and why? If all, then we need to start running around slapping them on the pages. If none, then all the better - we can get rid of them and (to me at least) the top of the pages will look better.

Comments? --Armond Warblade (talk) 00:35, 8 December 2006 (CST)

The tags are needed on pages with a lot of templates. If the templates are updated, but the page using them doen't update, just click the purge tag. I don't know if there is another reason. -- (talk) 03:25, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Its a laziness tag. I added one to Category:Candidates for deletion because when I do a big clearout, the list doesn't always update. Try to keep them off individual articles, if you click edit and change the url from "..action=edit" to "..action=purge" it's the same thing. Remove any you find on articles imo :) — Skuld 04:57, 8 December 2006 (CST)

If someone wants to remove them, you can find a list of pages using it as an inclusion here. -- (talk) 06:29, 8 December 2006 (CST)

You mean kind of like how it's on this page? But it appears to be irremovable. It -certainly- shouldn't exist on a talk page. ErkDog 08:06, 8 December 2006 (CST)

It was in GuildWiki talk:Community Portal/topnotes. I removed it for you. -- (talk) 08:09, 8 December 2006 (CST)

lol thnx ErkDog 08:11, 8 December 2006 (CST)

They're mostly useless since a MW upgrade that probably happened long, long ago. --Fyren 11:55, 8 December 2006 (CST)

How do you mean useless? What was the MW change? I haven't used them, mainly because it's easier to manually purge my cache. But if they do work still, then I think they still serve a purpose, especially on category pages. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:59, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Somewhere around the era where the wiki was 1.4, editing a template wouldn't update the pages it was included into. It does now. However, there can still be funkiness with category member listings and I think the "used on these pages" listing for images, but that's not so important. --Fyren 12:04, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Um, Barek, the purge cache link has nothing to do with cleaing YOUR cache. Which is why the link is aptly named "Purge server cache. Also Fyren, cache purges are batched. And if you have disabled the job queue and it only runs on cron, then it could conceivably serve an application. Now that you have the faster servers, it would probably be worth looking into to increasing the frequency that the job queue tasks can run, and then it can be caught up with cron if it's not caught up on its own. ErkDog 12:59, 8 December 2006 (CST)

In 1.4 they weren't. --Fyren 13:00, 8 December 2006 (CST)

For purposes of updating contents of categories, both using the {{purge}} link and clearing the local cache work equally well for updating the contents - at least for a single user. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 13:17, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Ohh yes, because I forgot, when you clear the cache locally in your browser it also tells squid to get rid of the copy it has, which it will immediately serve right back to you when you reload the page. Ohh wait no it doesn't. ErkDog 13:47, 8 December 2006 (CST)

You can't help but be sarcastic can you, ErkDog? <LordBiro>/<Talk> 14:15, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Meh, whatever. I'll let you and Fyren discuss the technical details - not that it matters to me. From a single user standpoint, they accomplish the same thing. If the contents of a category are changed, there are circumstances where I could press refresh and no difference; but if I either clear my local cache, or select the {{purge}} link, the contents of the category are updated. This was just re-tested prior to my post above. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 14:21, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Hitting Refresh on your toolbar is technically supposed to ignore your local cache. Emptying your local cache still has no impact on the Squid server, which is queried before the httpd server. If you are seeing new pages because you are clearing your local cache, odds are the Squid server is expiring the cache at the same time. What you describe would completely defeat the purpose of squid caches all over the world. "Please don't give me the cached copy unless I already have one." The purge link -does- manually cause the squid cache to expunge the entry ergo when your browser sends the IMS header you are spit back new content. But the Squid doesn't cache it's entries just because you are. No squid server does, that's the squid cache's job. To serve you content so the source doesn't have to. Whether you already have it cached, or have emptied your local cache is irrelevant. ErkDog 15:36, 8 December 2006 (CST)

Odd coincidence then that over the past several months, to update the displayed category I've just refreshed my local cache - and regardless of my clearing my local cache immediately or waiting for a set of edits, it's always been at that point that the displayed contents update.

As I said, I leave the technical side to those who understand it. But, from an operational user perspective, this has been my experience time and time again. Perhaps it's just a long-running series of coincidences, or perhaps it's something specific to the types of changes where this is seen, or perhaps theres something neither of us are recognising. Regardless, I really don't care, as long as both work, I'm content. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:43, 8 December 2006 (CST)

I probably shouldn't be wading into waters this deep, but I thought at one time it was mentioned that the squid server was only used for people who weren't logged in. --Rainith 15:51, 8 December 2006 (CST)

It does seem peculiar at best Barek. And Rainith, considering your information, then why does the purge cache link exist period? If the squid server was only for logged out users, it would never have to be hit as anyone who would likely even know it needed to be clicked, would be logged in, since they just edited something :) I find it peculiar that clicking Refresh on your browser does not yield updated content, but clicking an external link on a website which updates the server content does. Perhaps it has something to do with the IMS header. If your cache is empty, then an IMS header is not sent. If your cache is not empty, your browser by default, asks for the page if it has changed since -timestamp-. Although, a squid cache is supposed to ignore whether or not you send an IMS query, and use it's own rules to check for new content. But perhaps, as you said, there is some intricacy that we are both unaware of that illicit this behavior. I suppose as long as you are able to retrieve the current content, then how you do it, yes does not matter. ErkDog 15:59, 8 December 2006 (CST)

O.O -.- O.O <-- That's a huge blink. Anyone care to summarize all that talk above? I'm lost. And please don't try the technical stuff on me - I was understanding maybe one word in two there. Though I understood enough to say that if it's just a "lazy button", I recommend FireFox - shift-refresh clears your cache. --Armond Warblade (talk) 00:26, 12 December 2006 (CST)

Your cache, yes. MediaWiki's purge function clears the wiki's cache. — Skuld 03:43, 12 December 2006 (CST)

Above it was mentioned that your browser's refresh button is "supposed" to ignore the local cache- but in Firefox it doesn't, or at least sometimes doesn't. Or didn't. Or something. I've definitely had to do a manual full refresh on pages before to show updated content, on other non-wiki websites.—Aranth 19:16, 12 December 2006 (CST)

I've removed the Purge template from everything apart from Talk, User and Category pages. Always thought it looked stupid stuck at the top of a page anyway. --NieA7 05:03, 12 December 2006 (CST)

Stub templates

The stub templates right now leave something to be desired. I think they could be greatly improved by changing the link from "item" or "armor" or whatever semi-useless article they link to right now to GuildWiki:Style and formatting, or the appropriate sub-page (such as /Items for the item-stub template). Thoughts? Objections?—Aranth 20:16, 12 December 2006 (CST)

That sounds like an idea. I've never clicked those links, though, so I don't know where they go to. --Armond Warblade (talk) 20:54, 12 December 2006 (CST)

Change them to links to the stub categories and add links to the appropriate style and formatting pages. The stub templates have actually always bothered me, but I've never realised that changing them might be a good idea. :D -- (talk) 01:51, 13 December 2006 (CST)

It looks like Xasxas256 had this idea a while back- I'm going to go ahead and expand that stub template's format to the other ones. —Aranth 21:55, 13 December 2006 (CST) Alright, they're all updated now, unless I missed something. Also, damn, some of these categories are severely polluted... I'm going to go through them bit by bit at some point. Tedious things calm me down... I'll look into some semi-official organization for the task- perhaps a project page with a maintained schedule of how often to sweep stub categories, or sections of stub categories in the case of Category:Item stubs or other huge ones.—Aranth 23:51, 13 December 2006 (CST)

Some of us just go into them every now and then and verify that the ones marked as stubs are actually stubs. :P Generally I don't know enough about the subject to actually expand it, unfortunately. Also, what about that random picture in Category:Unique item stubs? I wanted to remove it, but I couldn't figure out how to remove the stub as well as the random text without deleting the image. --Armond Warblade (talk) 00:46, 14 December 2006 (CST)

I took just the stub template off- I figure it doesn't matter if the text's there under the image. *shrugs* maybe someone should say something on the uploader's talk page about about the normal way we organize information.(looks like it was an early edit, so that's not necessary)

Anyway, I figure more organization for maintaining the stubs can't hurt, since it's kind of hard for one person to start in the middle of a huge category like that and start going through them- at the least it'll save duplicated effort, as you could check the project page and see "Oh, someone checked this a week ago, it's probably good for another two weeks or so before we have to go through the whole thing again". And if the stub categories become more of an actual representation of missing information, then people could more easily go out and find out what needs to go on the page. Of course, this could all just be useless effort, but it's something I'd like to do because that's how my mind works (going out and looking for something that needs information, then going to find it). I'm thinking it'll go something like 1)create a list of small, manageable blocks of stub categories, and 2)leave a note on the stub category pages to sign the list if you happen to check through a block. So more or less just the current system, with more communication about what's been done and what's not, and when, so people can jump in to do a little more freely without just redoing the last editor's work. —Aranth 03:04, 14 December 2006 (CST)

I'll make a project page for the stub category checking. A similiar one to GuildWiki:Misspellings and I'll include it to the GuildWiki:Projects. -- (talk) 09:24, 14 December 2006 (CST)

Done. GuildWiki:Stub categories project. -- (talk) 10:27, 14 December 2006 (CST)

{{PAGENAME}}

There are over 1200 articles useing {{PAGENAME}}. As far as I know there is no reason to use it anywhere, so could somone use a bot to subt them? Atleast the articles in the main name space. -- (talk) 15:02, 14 December 2006 (CST)

{{PAGENAME}} to '''Name of Page''', perhaps? Would make it easier to edit it. --Armond Warblade (talk) 21:55, 17 December 2006 (CST)

IMO should be changed to {{subst:PAGENAME}}, which will substitute the actual pagename when the article is saved. Generally I do this on any pages that I edit that use PAGENAME in them. --Rainith 01:03, 18 December 2006 (CST)

I also do this manually when I see them, but could we get a bot to do it? Over 1200 articles is taking a long time if we only do it randomly and no one is probably willing to go through the list manually. -- (talk) 06:44, 18 December 2006 (CST)

I subst any I see on boss pages. Fyren did 793 with a bot I see — Skuld 06:49, 18 December 2006 (CST)

Watch

I'm just curious whether there's a limit to the number of pages I can watch? --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 02:33, 19 December 2006 (CST)

If there is, it's a pretty large limit. -- (talk) 07:09, 19 December 2006 (CST)

There is a limit. It's called sanity. I'm getting around 30 emails a day from guildwiki, and I can't check them at school (where I do most of my computer stuff). --Armond Warblade (talk) 00:39, 20 December 2006 (CST)

Why use email when the "my watchlist" link is a convenient bookmark? :P --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 01:52, 20 December 2006 (CST)

Cause I always check my email but almost never that list. 68.81.155.81 10:32, 22 December 2006 (CST)

I have over 200 pages after making a purge of the list. The e-mail option would be pretty useless to me. -- (talk) 03:50, 20 December 2006 (CST)

Collector armor

I had a look at collectors who offer armor. Their sections have a little disparity at the moment. Some have Name/Armor, some have Name/CollectorArmor, and some have both! I want to change them all to /Armor but Barek suggested I get some input first. Any disagreement with /Armor? - BeXoR 07:55, 20 December 2006 (CST)

/Armor is my preference. I don't see any negatives to using either naming scheme. — Gares 08:13, 20 December 2006 (CST)

Originally when I was making them I started off using /Armor, but then it was pointed out that that was used for the armor crafters also, so I changed to /CollectorArmor to try to reduce any confusion or conflicts (as ANet tends to re-use NPC names occasionally). I never did go back and change the ones that I made with just /Armor which is probably what is causing the confusion. --Rainith 12:06, 20 December 2006 (CST)

That is a good point. I hadn't thought of that before. I will start switching them over and putting del tags on the duplicate ones unless anyone has further objections. - BeXoR 12:30, 20 December 2006 (CST)

Sounds fine to me. --Xasxas256 16:32, 20 December 2006 (CST)

I did all the ones I could find. :) - BeXoR 01:58, 22 December 2006 (CST)

Icon size

About 78% of our bandwidth (just counting content, not HTTP overhead) goes to serving images. I drew up some stats on the most used images and saw certain ones weren't being viewed significantly more often but were significantly larger. Most of these were skill icons from the FSK or ripped from the game, sized around 16-19k each. Most of our skill icons are sub-2k. I reverted a bunch to the smaller, though lower quality images (log). It might be nice if someone could take the higher quality images and fiddle with the JPEG compression to try to end up with something ~2k in size but better looking than the older images. --Fyren 17:52, 20 December 2006 (CST)

I could give it a go, where are the larger originals? --NieA7 18:14, 20 December 2006 (CST)

They're still there, check the history of the images. --Fyren 18:15, 20 December 2006 (CST)

Image:Barrage.jpg, Image:Word of Healing.jpg, Image:Spell Breaker.jpg, Image:Spiteful Spirit.jpg, Image:Optional.jpg, and Image:Generic resurrect.jpg could also use some work. --Fyren 18:21, 21 December 2006 (CST)

Got 'em, I'll give them a go tomorrow. --NieA7 13:11, 22 December 2006 (CST)

Ick, sorry it took me such a long time, real life getting in the way and all that. Of the 34 icons (not including the Phoenix emote) I managed to losslessly reduce the size from 622KB to 205KB (down to about 33% of the original size), which is an average of 6KB each. That's a fair bit smaller than they were, but it's still bigger than 2K - do you want me to go ahead and upload them anyway?

The emote went from 234KB to 199KB by the way.It's just a big picture full stop, and there ain't much that can be about it short of resizing. --NieA7 18:18, 30 December 2006 (CST)

I only really cared about the skill icons due to how often they get viewed. If they're somewhere around 2k and don't look horrible (and are still 64x64), upload them. For anything else, if they're smaller and look about the same, go ahead and upload them, too. --Fyren 19:25, 30 December 2006 (CST)

It varies - some are around 2k and some are around 8k, with nothing much in between. They look exactly the same as the good quality larger ones (I just cleaned up the JPEGs rather than re-saving them, so they're identical to look at). I'll upload them tomorrow if I get a chance, starting with the smallest and working up to the biggest so you can keep tabs on their sizes. --NieA7 19:53, 30 December 2006 (CST)

If you can, please cut skill icons down to 3k or less, preferably around 2k. I don't care if there's a quality drop as long as they don't look horrible. --Fyren 19:57, 30 December 2006 (CST)

I'll upload all the ones that are 3k or less when I get round to it, then see if I can reduce the others further. For posterity, the ones that still need reducing are:

• Word_of_Healing
• Spell_Breaker
• Barrage
• Lift_Enchantment
• Crippled
• Trapper's_Speed
• DeepWound
• Burning
• Vocal_was_Sogolon
• Blindness
• Disarm_Trap
• Celestial_Haste
• Dazed
• Bleeding
• Battle_Scars
• Echoing_Banishment
• Empowerment
• Riposting_Shadows
• Star_Shine
• Poison
• Monster_skill
• Signet_of_Twilight
• Sunspear_Rebirth_Signet

Don't like re-compressing JPEGs as the result is nearly always very bad to look at, so I can't promise anything for these. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the wiki software doesn't like PNGs very much - is that still the case?

The wiki doesn't like resizing pngs, so using png for skill icons is out of the question. -- (talk) 09:51, 31 December 2006 (CST)

That's a pity, PNG is a great format for icons and suchlike. --NieA7 11:38, 31 December 2006 (CST)

There is a possible fix to the problem that has been asked from Gravewit a few times, but it hasn't yet been implemented to the wiki. -- (talk) 12:07, 31 December 2006 (CST)

I've replaced everything on the above list. Those that are in bold are still above 4k. — kyrasantae 18:13, 8 January 2007 (CST)

Maby we should not allow people to use their own elite skill quick reference lists for tracking caps etc. A page including all elites loads ~300 skill icons and is accessed often, especially as some users use their user page for this. The lists can be done without the icons. -- (talk) 20:30, 30 December 2006 (CST)

Actually, such a drastic change would be a bit too harsh, but atleast don't allow them on the main user page to avoid users loading it without wanting it. -- (talk) 20:31, 30 December 2006 (CST)

Collector weapon counterpart

Are those really still needed? I this they could really be removed from unique items' articles. Foo 19:17, 20 December 2006 (CST)

I have often used them and now after the addition of heroes I use them even more. All of my heroes need perfect weapons, so I just go through the unique item lists and view the collector weapon counterparts. -- (talk) 19:21, 20 December 2006 (CST)

I sometimes use the counterpart until I can get my hands on the real thing. Don't see why it should be removed. --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 19:30, 20 December 2006 (CST)

I hated them when they first got added but I'm kinda used to them now, they're kinda vaguely helpful although often it's better to look up the max collectors item and then add some mods. It is interesting to see what Greens can and cannot be replicated though. --Xasxas256 19:38, 20 December 2006 (CST)

I don't like them much either to be honest. Stuff like Perfect stat weapons (Domination Magic) is much more useful - I'd much prefer that the counterpart bits be removed and the perfect references developed. It'd be hard work though, all the quick refs haven't recovered from the release of Nightfall yet. --NieA7 04:00, 21 December 2006 (CST)

The point is, that every green now have a counterpart, and it's only about getting the components. it's just repeating data from other pages. Foo 04:52, 21 December 2006 (CST)

As long as a good reference is provided instead, I support the removal of these. -- (talk) 12:24, 21 December 2006 (CST)

I like 'em. If I find a great green then I can easily figure out a way to get it until I have the time/capabilities to farm one. I vote to leave them. 68.81.155.81 10:33, 22 December 2006 (CST)

Cleaning up Devona and gang

I had a spur of the moment urge to clean up the articles on Devona and gang. There was a previous suggestion to split them up based on the different version of the campaign they're in (Talk:Mhenlo) but that didn't receive much positive responses. I kinda whipped up a merged version of Devona here: [[1]]. I'm not sure if it's appropriate to make such drastic changes, so looking for feedback. Is it too way too edit-unfriendly? Too many tables? Still looking cluttered? Move the dialogue and quotes to the bottom or to a subpage? --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 20:35, 21 December 2006 (CST)

Looks good to me. I don't really have anything to add, other than I think it looks better/cleaner than the current version. --Rainith 17:07, 22 December 2006 (CST)

Looks great to me too. Foo 20:44, 30 December 2006 (CST)

I'd greatly like a cleanup/merge rather than a split, since that creates more clutter and exacerbates the problem. Looks good. Entropy 20:49, 30 December 2006 (CST)

ZOMG!

Wow, check out this post from Gaile on our board on GWG. If only we could get more info like that from them.  :) --Rainith 17:07, 22 December 2006 (CST)

Imagine if Gaile did all our error checking. How much would she just want to DIE? :P - BeXoR 17:14, 22 December 2006 (CST)

inputbox for builds

I have an idea to simplify and address some issues in [GuildWiki:Style and formatting/Builds#Creating a new build article|GuildWiki's build article creation process]:

1. Install the inputbox extension and its actionCreate modification. For an example of this extension+mod in action, see the Start a new article section on Wikinews.
2. Copy the [GuildWiki:Style and formatting/Builds#Template|barebones build template] into its own page (say, GuildWiki:Build form/preload).
3. Copy further instructions/tips for starting a build article into its own page (say, GuildWiki:Build form/intro).
4. Use code like this, where appropriate:

To start editing a new build, modify the professions and build name in the box below.
<createbox>
preload=GuildWiki:Build form/preload
editintro=GuildWiki:Build form/intro
default=W/any Buildname
buttonlabel=Start new build
prefix=Build:
</createbox>

This will show as an input box where users can type a new build name to get an edit form preloaded with the barebones template, with extra instructions displayed at the top of that form.

P.S. Merry Wintersday, GuildWikians

--Rezyk 06:27, 25 December 2006 (CST) Please do not count this comment as either support nor opposition toward any consensus.