Talk: Community portal/Archive 17

GuildWiki talk:Community portal/Archive 17/topnotes

Spoiler Warning

Seeing as the spoiler warning on the top of a page is so small, it does no good if someone accidentally glances down there without noticing it. I don't know if this is already in existence or if it is even possible using Wiki, but I suggest that there be a show/hide spoiler button. You know, one of those things where clicking it will show the text, and clicking it again will hide it. This would be useful for some pages which only partially contain spoilers. :) Sora267 21:58, 28 February 2007 (CST)

The show/hide boxes have been discussed before and we decided to keep them out of regular articles. Using them in user name space is allowed. -- (talk) 01:49, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Good, because there's nothing worse than going to a user page and inadvertantly reading spoilers related to the plot of the Real Life campaign. ;) -- Peej 09:00, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Generally speaking I find spoiler tags on the wiki to be a waste. The most "spoiler-like" information is on the quest/mission pages... and if you're looking up info on a quest or mission, you can pretty much expect to find spoiler info. In fact, using using GuildWiki is pretty much a giant spoiler, giving away details a user may otherwise not know about the game yet. Limited use of the current tag is my preference, and definitely not an irritating show/hide box. --Zampani 09:23, 1 March 2007 (CST)

I fully disagree. There are a couple times the tags have kept me from reading things I didn't realize would be spoilery- for example, after NF was released but before I bought it, I was reading the page on Shiro, and ran into the Nightfall-spoiler tag. I am ambivilent about a show/hide box. —Aranth 11:36, 1 March 2007 (CST)

A show/hide box would just make the information harder to get to for 99,9% of the users. Strongly against them. -- (talk) 11:40, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Oh, I forgot. People are too lazy to click. The tags DO work, but show/hide ones work better in my opinion. - -Sora267 20:46, 14 March 2007 (CDT)

The show/hide scripts never should have been forced onto people in the first place - it was added to MediaWiki:Monobook.js with no community discussion. I've been tempted many times to purge it. Something like that should only exist in a user's js so that it's optional if they want to use it. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:07, 14 March 2007 (CDT)

I'm in support of the idea. Would it be possible to alter the preference pages so that users can choose whether they are open or closed by default?--IAmAI 07:12, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

Updated price list?

I'm not sure if this is entirely plausible, but an updated 'price' list or some general idea of an item's price on an item's page might help avoid some scams I've seen (a fun example: one of my guild members bought a Miniature Pig for 100k, DURING the Canthan New Year, because he had no idea that they were free and the event had just started). The prices listed would just have to reflect within a ballpark how much soemone can expect to buy or sell an item for, so they don't end up getting ripped off. Jus' wondering. (NaminaeBlack)

GuildWarsGuru already provides a similar service, and just about everyone I know knows to go there. Maybe we should just link there from the scams page- I can't really see any way to link to such a page that'll give it any traffic, and maintanence would be a nightmare if we had our own. —Aranth 11:36, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Having our own list would just be asking for mass vandalism of the page, as sellers would constantly try posting higher prices and buyers would constantly try posting lower prices.

We once had links someplace on the site that had an offsite links section that pointed to semi-reliable trade values elsewhere, but I can't recall in which article and can't seem to locate it in hostories of pages that seem appropriate to the subject. I have no objection adding the links into the Trade article. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:51, 1 March 2007 (CST)

I saw a conversation about having a price list for items on the wiki or somewhere, but i think it was the wiki, but maybe not, and the same thing came up about it being a target for vandalism. I think we should have the page of all items, that would have all the items classified by what type of weapon, inscription, prices for max and non-max, etc. though, but one of those protected pages like the main page that only admins can change. The general wiki community could give "updates" on the talk page in the way of the fluctuating prices and whether the values of things are going up or down. It would be a fairly large task in addition to the improvement project, but it would greatly help out the wiki, because I'm always buying and selling and it's good to know the prices of things. I know links to pages with prices, but they're all spread out with the addition of the new campaigns, and they're on forum pages and not wikis. It would be great to have one master page for the price of all items. Then you could possibly have a link to it somewhere on the main page. Nhnowell 18:57, 4 March 2007 (CST)

Disagree. You won't get alot of support to have protected pages here in this wiki. You're also essentially giving more work to admins, that they have to also monitor the talk page and verify all the new information. And talking about abuse, how does protecting the page make it immune? If you suggest that new prices be placed in the talk page, there's nothing stopping me from posting false information about prices, and how exactly are the admins going to 100% confirm whether a claim is true or not? Price checks belong on forums, where it makes things much easier to maintain and where there's a larger population of traders well-versed in the market prices to verify things. If you put it here, you'll soon have people clamoring for a trading page as well. --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 19:44, 4 March 2007 (CST)

Aberrant is right on. As a rule of thumb, information that is well suited for a wiki is ojbective, fact based info. Prices are highly subjective, as value of an item is all in the eye of the beholder. --Zampani 20:17, 4 March 2007 (CST)

Who removed my Item Scams edit involving the price of Monastery Credits, Battle Commendations, etc. and why? I was simply posting the truth about them. Please do not remove my comment from there. Azinna Videl 10:15, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

I did, see Talk:Common_scams#revert_to_revert_of_Monastery_Credits_and_Battle_Commendation_comment, dont revert a revert, you have to bring it up in the talk page, see GW:1RV for that. -- Xeon 10:28, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

The icons and stuff

Hello guys i was planing to use little icons from classes and stuff in my user page or in my user name when i sign is there a "legend" i can follow with the code for those symbols i know the classes symbols but things liek weapon spell icon and such.... - Chrisworld 17:40, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Most skill icons are just image:skill name.jpg

For use in sigs, you should copy the current image, then resave it under a custom name so that a redirect can be done from it to your user page. Also, images in sigs cannot be taller than 19px, so you'll need to resize the images if you want to use them for that purpose (see: GW:SIGN for more info). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:48, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Those "legends" are called templates. We only have shortcut templates for the profession icons, not for skill icons. --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 19:57, 1 March 2007 (CST)

You have new messages (last change).

This joke is becoming old. it was ok at the beginning, but now I'm seeing it on a daily basis, and it's becoming more of a sabotage. I would have liked to be able to customize the color of my message, but any other way to prevent this would be good too. Foo 06:25, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Yeah, I agree, but theres nothing we ca nreally do about it. We could disallow them in a policy, but I don't support restricting users too much with policies. You could ofcourse ask anyone using them to remove them from their user page/talk page. -- (talk) 07:17, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Even if you could customize the color using styles, they could use the same class to mimic it. --Fyren 07:55, 6 March 2007 (CST)

That's true.A bit off topic, but I got a nice idea and I would actually like to customize the message shown to me. Is it somehow possible currently? -- (talk) 09:34, 6 March 2007 (CST)

I believe it would be possible. I'm not sure what the class of the "new messages" div is, but you could add something to your user stylesheet which overrides it. If the class was "newmessage" then you could add ".newmessage { background: pink !IMPORTANT; }" to change the background colour. <LordBiro>/<Talk> 10:57, 6 March 2007 (CST)

If it's that easy, could someone find out what the class really is? Foo 11:01, 6 March 2007 (CST)

It is just a joke on userpages, don't make a fuss of it. --SigmA 11:10, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Yeah, but unlike in real life, it's like you are telling it to me every time we meet. Foo 14:19, 6 March 2007 (CST)

...? --SigmA.

14:26, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Technically, I could see an argument that making a mock-message that is meant to trick users into thinking its a legitimate system message is a disruption of the normal operation of the wiki, and therefore a form of vandalism. I won't make that decision myself; but myself, I wouldn't debate such reasoning if another admin interpreted it in that way. I honestly do feel that the mock message should, if intended as a joke, have the image Image:Joke Alert.png (or a resized version of that image) displayed in some way on it. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 14:39, 6 March 2007 (CST)

GuildWiki:Post No Builds

GuildWiki:Post No Builds (talk). Just so everyone is aware of the discussion, and to keep the ball rolling. All opinions and arguments are welcome. --Dirigible 19:39, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Not sure this is the place to promote a particular policy suggestion, Dirigible. For fairness' sake, here are other build-related policies currently under consideration:

• GuildWiki:No Original Builds (talk)
• GuildWiki:Build Split (talk)

— HarshLanguage 20:22, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Quick References

I find it hard to use many of the quick references effectively. There are a lot of them out there, and it is slow to actually type it in, let only knowing exactly the wording for what I wanted. I don't want to be typing in "quick reference" every time I want to look something up. I understand it is easy enough to use if you know what to type in, but I think there should be some way of organizing them into a list or something that will make it easier and faster for people to use them.--Relyk 03:23, 7 March 2007 (CST)

Category:Quick references or any of its subcategories. --Fyren 04:17, 7 March 2007 (CST)

Oh, lol, thanks XD--Relyk 05:00, 11 March 2007 (CDT)

re: Poll: Does the build namespace cause more harm than good?

For those who hadn't seen the survey taking place (I almost missed it): GuildWiki_talk:Post_No_Builds#Poll:_Does_the_build_namespace_cause_more_harm_than_good? Don't reply to the question here. Direct all comments to the section below the poll. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:56, 9 March 2007 (CST)

In-game typos

← moved to GuildWiki_talk:Style_and_formatting/Quotes#In-game typos

Skill type quick references Trigger On End

Is it necessary to make a new template for such a list? The syntax is quite hard without some experience. I found this note and so i'm asking. Nemren 08:43, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

If the basic QR box that's used on the attribute-sorted lists will do, that's fine. You could ask me or Xeon for help with making a new one if you want one. --Fyren 10:01, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

Gah hardly come to this part of the wiki, i should drop in more, im writing a guide on how to create qr's. It is a work in progress and full of mistakes, User:Xeon/qrstandard. If you need help making/creating a complex quick reference, feel free to drop into our talk pages and ask. -- Xeon 10:07, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

I'll take a look, thx. Nemren 10:36, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

GW2 documentation

I brought it up briefly at Template talk:GW2 earlier: writing GW2 content here is not going to be a good idea. Having to mark things as referring to either GW or GW2 is really only going to lead to problems. Gordon just made Category:Playable races (Guild Wars 2). We'll end up with more and more articles with a GW2 disambig note in the article title. In the long run, if we (as in the GuilWiki community) to document GW2, it will end up on its own wiki. I can put up another wiki if we want but I'd rather wait till someone can actually play the game while not under an NDA. Another alternative to "putting up a wiki" and "not putting up a wiki" might be to put one up that's private or read only with a few people willing to seed info we do have... until people without an NDA can play. ANet will presumably have their own wiki set up at some point unless something goes horribly wrong with their current one(s). Any thoughts? --Fyren 21:36, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

My suggestion would be to just wait for the time being. There's still far too little information to be deserving of a new site, and it will be so for a whole while longer. The GW2 beta starts in 2008, which means probably a year or so from now. It won't be until a month or two before that time that the GW2 information influx will change from a trickle to a stream. Until that time all the information the wiki will have to deal with is going to be whatever little can be gleaned from the occassional magazine article that ANet releases to keep interest from dying, so it should be manageable. The most important thing is to keep everything properly labelled and categorized as belonging to GW2, in order to avoid overcomplicating the process of expelling that content from this wiki once a new place for GW2 info is found. And as you mentioned, the ANet wiki is something that must be taken into account as well. Having two wikis is already feeling slightly redundant... imagine four... The next few months will make or break the official wiki, which will in turn decide whether the community remains concentrated here, moves over there, or splits somehow between the two sides.

So, my first choice would be to just wait for now and simply treat GW2 content as if it were nothing but another future campaign. --Dirigible 22:15, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

Makes sense. Might be a waste of effort trying to incorporate the non-existent GW2 (not yet anyway) stuff in our article and category structure. --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 23:10, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

Personally I think that, even if a GW2 wiki is practically empty, it will make more sense than posting GW2 content here. <LordBiro>/<Talk> 15:44, 26 March 2007 (CDT)

Ah, but what to call a new wki like that? GuildWiki2? Guild2Wiki? GuildWikiwiki? And will ANet start up an official version of that too or will they have both on their official one? Hmm... I might ask that over there right now actually. -- Vallen Frostweaver 16:05, 26 March 2007 (CDT)

With the official wiki, it would make much more sense to just have an official GW2 one from my point of view, and not bother with a fan-based one. Then we avoid the awkward situation we have now with two wikis (3 if you count GWOnline) for the same subject matter. Of course it all depends on whether an official GW2 one is set up in time to meet the demand for info. — Biscuits (talk contribs) 17:15, 26 March 2007 (CDT)

It is my understanding that ArenaNet will have a standalone official Guild Wars 2 wiki, separate from the current official Guild Wars wiki. Whether we should start GuildWiki2 is really up to you guys. I honestly don't see the point. —Tanaric 22:20, 28 March 2007 (CDT)

I agree with Tanaric. There's no need to start a wiki yet; there's barely anything to begin documenting. We should wait until more information is released, as there will be little for anyone to record until the Beta starts a few years from now. - Krowman (talk • contribs) 22:26, 28 March 2007 (CDT)

Sorry, I was unclear. What I meant was that, since ANet is starting a wiki for GW2, I don't see the point in us starting one ever. —Tanaric 20:17, 29 March 2007 (CDT)

Resetting indent. There's hardly anything to document and we should really try not to fork on a GW2 wiki, so I would strongly oppose us ever setting up a GW2 wiki. Or, at least, until we find out exactly what's going on. Kessel 02:15, 9 April 2007 (CDT)

the offical wiki is not acceptable, reguardless of how complete it gets, because at any time, an anrenanet/ncsoft staffer could walk in a delete/censor/hide any information they wanted. at least here they don't have license control and a big red kill button. i agree that GW2 is too far off to start gw2.gamewikis.org, but i think it certainly should be started, if only to keep arenanet/ncsoft honest. --Honorable Sarah 11:16, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Why should you trust Gravewit (or me) any more than ANet? --Fyren 11:58, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

I don't subscribe to Sarah's argument, but I think it's easy to have more faith in an independent source than an official one. If there was a wiki about Gravewit then I wouldn't want it hosted by Gravewit, since he could just go in and alter anything he felt was unfair.

As I said, I don't really agree with this argument because ArenaNet have been very open and fair so far, but I can appreciate Sarah's concerns. <LordBiro>/<Talk> 12:41, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

I trust ArenaNet more than I trust Gravewit. I haven't made my mind up about Fyren yet. :)

More seriously, unless you're the one holding the keys to the server, there's always somebody else with "a big red kill button." You gotta trust somebody somewhere, and, so far, ArenaNet has been more open than Gravewit has.

—Tanaric 20:45, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

I think Sarah's giving ArenaNet a little too much doubt, given their track record so far. Of course, nothing will guarantee that won't change, but I think if there's something ArenaNet deems censorship-worthy, then there's probably some legal implications that they'd rather avoid. But this is off-topic. As for GW2, I think it'll be inappropriate and rather inelegant to add to this wiki. A separate wiki at a later date would be cleaner. --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 20:46, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

ArenaNet has a vested, monetary interest in the game. Nothing in ANet's behevior so far sugguests that they'd go to that length, but so far, that interest has not been threatened.

Gravewit, however, is actually loosing money on this little venture, and is doing this because he wants complete documentation of that game. That interest is much harder to threaten to the point of using that kill button.

it's not that i don't trust Anet, or that gravewit has some holy exception from suspicion, but that his motivations are simply harder to dislodge. --Honorable Sarah 21:28, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Are you sure about the losing money thing? With Gravewit we don't even know, he's never been transparent about that kind of stuff. Here's a chatlog from IRC (I trust you know who Inde is):

Mar 30 10:17:43 <Inde|guru>	  AreanNet really did a poor job (and I think it was intentional) informing the community 
                               that Gravewit just seems to be losing hand over fist in money
Mar 30 10:18:26 <Inde|guru>	 i talked to Gravewit and he said repeatedly that they aren't going anywhere
Mar 30 10:20:04 <Inde|guru>	 what they failed to address was the fact that if you take away his guild wiki then he 
                               loses a large part of his traffic and help on the other sites that might possibly have
                               made him money

Honestly, I don't even really know Gravewit, and so I don't want to go around speculating about what his interests on GuildWiki are. Just letting you know that rushing to conclusions based on hearsay is probably not the best way to tackle this. --Dirigible 23:09, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

When I used to converse with Gravewit, back when Fyren was added as a server administrator, he repeatedly told me that the GuildWiki was actually making a little money each month from ads, which was set aside for future work. Indeed, according to him, it was this ad money that paid for our third server. —Tanaric 00:36, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

i stand corrected, the system does work. --Honorable Sarah 01:58, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

Nominations for sysops

As some of you may have noticed, I'm in the market for some sysops. Sadly, most of my nominees have declined the position. If you have anyone in mind, I'd really appreciate it if you could nominate them via GW:RFA. —Tanaric 20:52, 2 April 2007 (CDT)

You might want to list those that you've already petitioned for it. I'm only aware of one at the moment that declined so I probably missed something.-- Vallen Frostweaver 07:40, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

GuildWiki:Requests for adminship/Archive. --Dirigible 11:00, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

Thanks. That'll do. -- Vallen Frostweaver 13:08, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

I had a person in mind to RFA, but that person refused too. :( --Dirigible 13:18, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting/Quick references/Weapons

I invite all of you to take part in a major discussion over at GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting/Quick references/Weapons. Topic to troll about include:

1. Collapsible legend
2. Sortable table
3. Splitting caster weapon types into different tables
4. <Attribute>-enhancing caster weapons
5. Standardized row-format for all caster weapons & column-hiding
6. Retiring use of colors to differentiate caster weapon types

It's nowhere near as major as the original introduction of weapon quick reference lists nor the use of templates to construct skill QR lists. However, the changes involved in the proposal aren't exactly trivial either.

Let the flames start burning! I dedicate the mirage resulting from the heat to Lyssa and Balthazar. -PanSola 01:32, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

Ladies and gentlemen, guys and gals, if you don't comment, then you will have no right to complain after things are implemented (or not implemented due to other opposition). Does everyone give me and Barek implicit consent to run around as a dictating committee? d-: -PanSola 21:21, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

I don't use the pages in question, so I'll leave it to you and Barek to decide. --Rainith 21:25, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

Last call for comments before the dictator takes the throne! -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 16:45, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Hard Mode Documentation

Is there a specific project going on for documenting the changes in Hard Mode? Things like enemy counts per zone (for the vanquisher title), enemy differences for hard mode zones, stuff like that? ~Avatarian 86 02:42, 20 April 2007 (CDT)

My two cents regarding enemy counts: leave them out. They vary by spawn and the last thing we want to have happen is people getting upset because they kill a number they see on the wiki and it doesn't complete it for them. — kyrasantae 12:52, 20 April 2007 (CDT)

I would like to include an approximate number of enemies in the area. I've allready screencapped a few areas that I cleared and I'll continue doing it so I can submit the information later.

What comes to how we should document the hard mode, I suggest adding the hard mode information in the same articles, just like some bosses have information split in the article if they show up as different level versions in different areas. -- (gem / talk) 20:48, 20 April 2007 (CDT)

Let me know how to add them. I've alot of screenshots to go through as well :P --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 21:35, 21 April 2007 (CDT)

Switching from Nightfall to Factions??

O.K, My first encounter with GW was GW Nightfall and i loved it but i noticed my Guild were all having GVG battles so naturaly i wanted to join in, so i bought factions but i have a problem.

I've now installed factions after finishing nightfall but how do i play factions i'm in Kamadan i just don't how to cross over to factions.

Please help

Az Lam.

Plague in Cantha. --Fyren 13:45, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

Also, you can start a new character in Factions. 16:02, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

This is a minor edit

Do we have any sort of policy that defines what makes something a minor edit? —Aranth 21:43, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

There's no policy about it as far as I know - just use your better judgement. Talk page edits should generally be minor unless you are raising an issue and it needs discussion. Any edits to the user name space should be minor. Spelling, grammar or link corrections are minor. Rewriting a paragraph could be major or minor depending on how much you change. Many recent changes patrollers will look at major or minor edits, but others hide minor changes from the list. Now we have the number of characters changed to show up next to an item, so that anything huge marked as a minor edit would look suspicious. I'm making this a minor edit, because while it is long, it is just a talk page edit. - BeXor 03:03, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

The problem with minor edits is that they work against peer review, they decrease the amount of traffic that the page will get. I know that many, myself included, completely abuse that feature, (when someone starts an article and marks that edit as minor, something is not quite right). If an edit is set as minor, less eyes will check it and there'll be a greater chance for something inaccurate or of dubious quality to remain unchallenged or uncorrected. I really need to use it less. =\ --Dirigible 03:48, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

I started out more or less following WP's guideline on minor edits but now end up flagging all but article rewrites as minor. When I go through recentchanges I ignore whether an edit is minor or not. --Fyren 04:07, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

I originally had my preference default to making all my edits as minor, and I hardly ever think about whether my edits are actually major or minor. I also completely ignore the minor status when going through recentchanges and watchlist (as in "I treat minor edits and non-minor edits equally"). After realizing the silliness and pointlessness of what I'm doing, I no longer default my edits to minor (but I still ignore the minor status when going through RC and WL). Also, I seem to notice that edits on the MediaWiki: namespace might not always make MW's interface update, especially for minor edits. Thus that's one more reason to not set it to minor by default. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 04:41, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

An edit being minor or not has absolutely no effect on MW (or your browser, or squid) caching or not. --Fyren 05:01, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

Personally, I mark all userpage edits as minor, along with any edits along the lines of simple reformatting, spellchecking, and link-fixing. If it's a bigger change, such as adding a section or note to a page (for example, something that could possibly be argued by someone), then I don't mark it.

I, Jioruji Derako, hereby acknowledge the fact that he is replying to a month-old discussion that has most likely ended already. -- Jioruji Derako.> 04:42, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

Normally i just mark them as minor and use the major as an indicator that they might be new and could be a vandal edit but in general i just ignore which one it is and look at the change, the undo button is seriously the best wiki tool ever. -- Xeon 21:22, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

late chime: i always use this rule of thumb: "if you think it might not be minor, it isn't". Minor is the default, anything big enough to cause you to think it's possibly not minor, is not minor. i also unflag edits i think need someone else to look at, like if i'm unsure of formatting or style. --Honorable Sarah 21:31, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Builds

i sorley miss the build section and was wondering where the page is that discusses the fututre of a build page. The wipe said that a build section might retrun in the future... is this going to happen??? --Echo Ftw (talk|contribs) 20:16, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

GuildWiki:Policy lists some proposals. This site is someone else's wiki moving forward with their own builds stuff, including copies of the builds which were once here. --Fyren 22:31, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

skill redirects

Just to bring up this subject again ... I honestly don't understand why the redirects from Mo skills, Me skills, etc that pointed to the profession skill quick reference lists were deleted. Per GW:REDIRECT, redirects for abbreviations are permitted, and this did not fall into either of the only two listed reasons for when not to use redirects. The only discussion that I can find having taken place anywhere on these is on this now blanked user page.

To me, these are very useful shortcuts to have from the search box. So, I wanted to actually start a discussion on this. If no one comments, I'll just re-create the redirects. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 12:54, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

I used those too, put them back plz — Skuld 12:56, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

I have despaired on many occasions at the treatment of redirects on this wiki. Since August 2006 I (and a number of others) have been in favour of producing more redirects for the wiki, and reversing the trend of deleting redirects. One particularly frustrating example is the deletion of "armour" redirects. i.e. Assassin armour, Dervish armour, Elementalist armour, Mesmer armour, etc. I know many of my friends who do searches for things like "dervish armour" are frustrated that they aren't taken directly to the results. I even started explaining how to remedy this to some of them, but then I noticed that they had recently been deleted.

I don't think that we should delete redirects unless they are obviously misleading. I had hoped that the changes to GW:REDIRECT last year would prevent such deletions, but apparently not. We need to change this. <LordBiro>/<Talk> 15:08, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

When I first arrived on the wiki, I agreed back at that time to minimize the use of redirects. But quite some time ago I was convinced by the arguments of others that there really was no justification for not supporting the use of more redirects. To me, unless it's a type that's specifically disallowed under GW:REDIRECT#When_not_to_use_redirects, then it should be allowed as a redirect. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:56, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

I actually thought this was resolved. I know originally we didn't want too many redirects particularly for incorrectly spelt things like Troll Ungent. But GW:Redirect was rewritten following a discussion where we decided that having more redirects was a good idea, it would reduce server load and make it easier to find things. I don't know if they were incorrectly deleted or if we need to add another line to GW:REDIRECT. Does Assassin armour → Assassin armor and Mo skills → Monk skills quick reference come under the category of an abbreviation or common misnomers or something else? Either way I see no reason not to restore them we just perhaps need to add a line to GW:REDIRECT. --Xasxas256 21:12, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

I restored all of the sorts of redirects I could find based on complaints in this thread, but I was nowhere near exhaustive. —Tanaric 00:59, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

No one complained about misspelled redirects like "ungent." Misspelled redirects should be rare lest people end up using them by accident and we end up patrolling what links here for them. --Fyren 01:12, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

Fair enough. —Tanaric 02:13, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

I don't see the problem with people linking to misspelled redirects. That doesn't suggest a problem with the redirect, but rather the linking article. The redirect is there as a safety net. If someone searches for "troll ungent" now they will get 0 search results. <LordBiro>/<Talk> 04:43, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

BTW, thanks Tanaric. <LordBiro>/<Talk> 04:44, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

If someone links to troll ungent now, they get a red link. I'd rather they get feedback that something is wrong than a blue link due to a redirect. --Fyren 06:04, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

Why not just use google search instead of the mediawiki search to search through this website? It would simplify everything. Ex: Someone searches for illusionary weapon, but gets nothing. Google has a good enough algorithm so that things like all lowercase will still yeild search results of names with the first letters capitalized. Wikipedia does it too. --Mgrinshpon 06:47, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

That's a pretty poor example since searching for that will return IW as the first result. A search using MW will always search the current database and will never be out of date. I could add searching through Google as an option if people want. --Fyren 06:56, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

Regarding Mgrinshpon's suggestion, searching for "troll ungent" on Google does not produce better results [1]. I don't think we need Google as a search option, personally.

I understand your point, Fyren. Having a red link makes a contributor's job easier; they can spot the error if they preview their edit. But I think that this is at the expense of ease of use for readers -- we should cater to readers first and contributors second. The advantage a contributor gains from a red link is in my opinion less valuable than the advantage a reader gets from a redirect. <LordBiro>/<Talk> 08:35, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

@ Tanaric - thanks for restoring the redirects mentioned on this thread!

@Xas - I had thought this was resolved too; but the redirects I mentioned were deleted as recently as March of this year, some of them twice. To me, these fall under the abbreviation allowance. But even if others see it differently, we shouldn't need to give examples of every situation where a redirect should be used, the list is long enough already. On the other-hand, we only have two situations listed where not to use redirects - as long as those two situations are avoided, I have no problem with redirects (noting that nonsense redirects are already prevented as they would be vandalism).

@all - My comment to Xas is relevant to my opinion on Ungent vs. Unguent. But for those who don't follow the same opinion as me and who do want to see allowed situations specifically spelled out - the current policy already has a line specifically allowing for common misnomers using Silver vs Sliver as an example. I believe that Ungent would be allowed under that same line. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 10:10, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

Silver vs Sliver is not a redirect though. It uses a disambig page to highlight the fact that it is a common misspelling. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 18:16, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Fyren, is it possible for you to see what people search for? If so, we should be able to provide redirects for commonly-used misspellings based upon such a list. —Tanaric 18:44, 21 May 2007 (CDT)

Probably. I'll look into it. --Fyren 04:13, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

Logging searches now. Do we care about any privacy-related aspect of making the search info public? --Fyren 13:43, 23 May 2007 (CDT)

No other search tool seems to. —Tanaric 14:09, 23 May 2007 (CDT)

Well, we're GuildWiki so people aren't going to be putting anything sensitive into the search box, I guess. If we were Google, listing all the searches made by one user would give quite a lot of info in some cases (remember the AOL search fiasco?). --Fyren 14:12, 23 May 2007 (CDT)

What shall we do with the armor pages?

With the update allowing all campaigns to use insignia, what should we do with the armor pages? Currently there are three sections to each page. 1) Functions. 2) Art. 3) Pictures of Art. With this latest update I think 1) is redundant as all the info is available in the insignia article, 2) is redundant as now the art has been standardised all the information is show in part 3. I propose just removing the two tables and having a short description linking to the insignia article, followed by the gallery of each art type (current part 3). Biscuits 12:47, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

What was the "standardization" made to art that makes it unneeded now? -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 18:14, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

PanSola, art is divorced from attribute; any art can have any armour stats now.

Biscuits, I suggest we do the following:

Armor summary pages:

Before: Mesmer armour types

After: Monk armour types

Armor type pages:

Before: Lieutenant's armor

After: Survivor armor

I submitted a bot proposal to this effect, which can be found here. Also contains more details of this suggestion.

--BlueNovember 18:30, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

I did something similar to Necromancer armor, but I edited the second table too. I really think both tables are just unneeded bloat now though because any armour can take any insignia - so there is no need to have tables describing the functionals (already in the insignia article), and no need to have a table mapping art to function, as all art can have all functions. Biscuits 19:54, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

While the armor stuff are getting reformatted anyways, how about changing the gallery layout to group all female armors together, and then group all male armors together, so they are in different sections? I'm personally interested in looking at only one of the two at a time, especially if I'm picking what armor art to craft for my already-created characters. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 01:26, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Oh nice idea. I could care less what male armor looks like but love to browse female armor. Not mention that for the most part the female galleries are more complete. Hmmm... I doubt that there are more male players... And I don't there are more male toons... anywho, just make sure all the armor pages are the same. Without this final divorce of form and function, all we really have now is documentation of insignia/runes and the armor art (& where to get it and how much it costs in usage and materials). Finally, what the heck do we really need to write in the description of the armor. If its only a look, don't the galleries do all the talking? I find the need for such a section rather confusing. — JediRogue 01:46, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

My thoughts exactly. :) Re: arranging by gender. The current gallery system seems pretty compact and clean to me as it is. Both genders are easily assessable without one getting in the way of another. The structure of that layout also easily identified all off the armor types available at a glance. It would be hard to change it without listing everything twice. If we did that, maybe it could be in two columns? It may get a bit messy. Biscuits 04:25, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Oh and I just found another place that talks about armor that needs to be fixed. Pages for specific damage types have a section on equipment that protects from it. EX: Fire damage references Drakescale and Pyromancer's. At the moment, these seem to redirect to insignia but I think they are going to need rewriting entirely. — JediRogue

for the most part, armor is fine. we have insignias to cover functions, and galeries to cover art. most of the function pages have been repalced with insigna redirects, and many of the art pages are being moved around to fit various conventions/policies. a male armor/female armor section might be useful, but it adds some pretty massive administrative overhead to operations like this. consider, perhaps, a QR linking to galleries? that would be a bit simpler then a seperate photo reference like the profession pages. --Honorable Sarah 03:35, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Here is what I propose the main armor pages should look like now: User:Biscuits/Necromancer armor. Biscuits 09:18, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

OK I'm going to remove those tables tomorrow if there are no objections. Biscuits 05:19, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

Hurry up yo! lol — JediRogue 00:40, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Pft! Getting started now. ;-) Biscuits 06:51, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

I shouldve read this before starting to edit table 2 :( --Buzzer 01:04, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Sorry! Yeah it was editing the tables that made me realise they were now redundant. Biscuits 06:51, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

New project

After the insignia update, alot of armor crafting information (almost all of it) needs to be updated. I started to work on this will elementalist armor and soon realized the enormity of this task. Therefore I have started GuildWiki:Armor crafting project. I am currently working on a plan to accomplish the goals of this but I've laid out the main issue there. — JediRogue 19:21, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

GFDL Violation

where are in violation of the GFDL on policies? is that possible? --Honorable Sarah 20:54, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

What? --Fyren 20:57, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

F: She's talking about GW:AGF and GW:IMAGE.

HS: GuildWiki doesn't use GFDL, we're using the CreativeCommons "Hi, I'm incompatible with GFDL" by-nc-sa license. So yeah, if those policies were indeed just copy/pasted from WP, they'll have to be rewritten (or just nuke them; AGF blows anyways). --Dirigible 22:41, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

I suppose it was the "where" that threw me off. --Fyren 22:49, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

looks like my wiki droped a "we". should have read "where are WE in vio...". reguards to this edit by Tanaric. i'll look at AGf and see what i can do about it. --Honorable Sarah 23:13, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Trivia Section

Is it possible to have a page containing all the trivia from the various wiki pages? It's like to be able to search for movie, gaming and literature references as well as other kind of trivia. Can this be created automatically by consolidating all the "Trivia" tags in one page?

No. If you have the technical knowledge, you can pull it out of the database dumps, but that's not something that can be done in a dynamic fashion. --Fyren 22:42, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

And our last attempt at doing it manually failed miserably, nobody agrees on what exactly belongs or what is a reference to what movie etc. Unfettered, the section grew fast and lost quality almost immediately. Instead of re-writing, the community decided on wiping it entirely. -Auron 22:44, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Can we move it to talk pages perhaps? I personally find it very interesting. However I quite agree that there is plenty of trivia that is quite a stretch and can see why it might be a good idea to do away with it. — JediRogue 23:21, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the quick reply. What I've been doing is type "Trivia" on the search box, it's the next best thing.

Trick messages

I request here that these messages at the very least are given an id other than "stub". If I used CSS to hide that div, I wouldn't see stubs either. So, any opposing forces to this?

By the way, the CSS would be :

#trick {
display:none
}

72.192.54.23 15:10, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

What are you talking about? What messages? --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 22:22, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

I believe he's talking about this?

 You have new messages (last change).

I rarely see this any more, I only know one/two users with it. But I know that a few users are rather annoyed by running into it... -- Jioruji Derako.> 23:36, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

There's no "standard" way of doing those trick messages, since they're by definition non-standard. For example, your code wouldn't work on Jioruji's example above, as it doesn't have a class or id tag at all. If you see somebody doing this to you, ask them to knock it off -- I consider it disruptive behavior and have no problem getting administratively involved. —Tanaric 23:40, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

I changed it so I know when I'm seeing a real one. unless they add the right div for it, (which I've not run into), mine is the only one with hot pink letters. Then its real. — JediRogue 00:00, 6 June 2007 (CDT)

maybe we should just abuse the people who do this till they stop? --Honorable Sarah 23:05, 6 June 2007 (CDT)

Keeping in mind, if they're using this in the first place, they most likely already have a sense of humor and can deal with abuse. (although this would weed out the ones who aren't dedicated to the joke.) -- Jioruji Derako.> 23:53, 6 June 2007 (CDT)

As Tanaric said - I also view "jokes" that attempt to impersonate legitimate system messages to be disruptive, and therefore a reason for administrative involvement to either remove or to modify the message so that it's more clearly not a legitimate system message. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:58, 6 June 2007 (CDT)

so... barek... what your saying is.... abuse them till they stop? --Honorable Sarah 00:58, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

Jedi, how DO I change it? >.> 72.192.54.23 16:15, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

Each user has a custom style sheet that is loaded after the pages style sheet. You add new additions which will overwrite elements of the existing style sheet. The "trick messages" do not use the div class that the real messages do. Real messages are of class "usermessage". Add the following to your style sheet: <!--div.usermessage { color:#105ABF; font-style: italic; background: #B3FFAD }--> by going to User:Name/monobook.css (assuming that's the skin you're using). This will show real messages with italic font, and different colors. You can change those colors to whatever you want. HOWEVER, anyone using the same class in their div instead of manually setting the code for a trick message will be able to get around this (by using <div class=usermessage>). I have yet to come across any pages that do that. You can test it works with a glance at the test message in my slide User:JediRogue/Slide. You'll have to hard refresh a page (ctrl+f5). Hope that helps. — Rogue 18:49, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

And I'm sure anyone using the "usermessage" class wouldn't go long without a warning and/or a edit by someone else. I personally don't view the messages as disruptive; they're funny the first time off, and you're aware of it from then on. But I wouldn't argue that matching the div class would push it over the fine line of "funny"/"just being an ass".

Thanks for the notes by the way, Rogue... I'll have to track down some CSS coding and fiddle around with my styles a bit as well. Looks like fun. -- Jioruji Derako.> 23:38, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

Sorry - but it is being disruptive. The solution that is being proposed here is to do a user-by-user css workaround to make the real message look different. That's just wrong. The fake messages should be noticeably different in appearance from the start. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:45, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

pending someone admitting the solution is "abuse them till they stop", i'm going to go ahead and start abusing people who do this till they stop. --Honorable Sarah 19:51, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Supported. Feel free to request abuse from my ban hammer if you find a particularly troubling case. —Tanaric 21:06, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

MW 1.10.0

Tomorrow around this time I'll probably upgrade us to MW 1.10.0 finally. Assuming things go smoothly, all the wikis will be set to read only for a little while as I upgrade each. --Fyren 03:37, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Upgraded. Users may have seen errors at various points while the upgrade was in progress. Let me know if anything seems wrong. --Fyren 03:12, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Aside from every page showing up as a blank white screen, I didn't run into any errors during the upgrade. :P

So far, so good... everything seems to be just as it was before the upgrade. -- Jioruji Derako.> 03:27, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Seems to be running a little sluggish. Is that just me? —Tanaric 07:46, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

A little slow on my end, but that might just be me as well. Can't vouch for my own internet's reliability. -- Jioruji Derako.> 08:00, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Woot! Auto-expiry on page protections, and cascading protection of inclusions ... ooo, drop down selection on ban reasons too ... gotta' search for what else is new ... --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 10:44, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Overwriting an image when you do a new one shows the current one in a thumb!...not that exciting but its what I noticed. — Rogue 13:31, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Here's a copy of the release notes, but it's a lot to read through. --Fyren 18:51, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

the slow is painful when checking diffs, and seems to be highly variable. --Honorable Sarah 18:11, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

and submitting edits is incredibly slow. these two edits were applied in the space it takes me to type this (at 35 WPM) --Honorable Sarah 18:14, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Diffs have always been slow based on how much changed between the two revisions. Submitting edits does seem particularly slow. --Fyren 18:51, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Build "Archtypes" Category?

With the removal of the builds section, articles such as 55 Monk, Touch ranger, and Trapper are the step-up now for documenting the popular/famous build types. At this point though, unless someone looks for a particular build article by name, there's no other way to find it. I was thinking it might be useful to add a Category for these articles, to make them easier to find (I'm personally curious to see how many big Archtypes there are out there). What would be a good title for this category? I was thinking an "Archtype" category tag would work. I'm a little hesitant to give anything a name like "Archtype" though, if perhaps that's not the best name for it (best I can think of, but that's just me).

Any suggestions or complaints? I'm more then happy to go right ahead and create this on my own, I just want to make sure it's all green to go before I do. And of course, I'll need help tracking down the rest of the articles to actually add the tags... -- Jioruji Derako.> 02:25, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

The correct spelling is "archetype," but beyond that, I think such a category is a fine idea. —Tanaric 07:45, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

That would explain my Firefox getting ticked-off at me every time I typed it. I just assumed it wasn't in Firefox's spellcheck dictionary and ignored it. :P

Anyway, I'll probably get right on making such a category in a little while (need sleep first). Providing there aren't any big objections when I get up, I should have all the archetype articles tagged as soon as I make the category. We've got a "Metagame" article out there somewhere most likely, or something of the sort... linking to the category from there is also a good idea, I would think. -- Jioruji Derako.> 07:53, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

On that subject; there is a Metagame article, and it just happens to have an excess of red links. (surprisingly, only two of those links are actually from the Build: section.) "Minion Factory" is/was considered an Archetype at one point, correct? Perhaps someone with either a good understanding of the setup could write up that article, it seems to be non-existent. -- Jioruji Derako.> 07:58, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Alright; so far, I've got the category page up, it's called "Build archetypes" (I'm not sure how to link to it without adding the page to the category itself). The system I'm using is [[category:Build archetype|{{profession}}]]... that way, all the build articles are sorted by profession.

Currently, I've added 55 Monk, Trapper, Bunny Thumper, and MM. That's all I could find, sadly. (There's B/P as well, but that article needs some rewriting before it's actually a Barrage/Pet article.)

If anyone else knows other articles, go right ahead and start adding the category tag. Someone needs to actually write the category page as well; it shows up as a red link at the moment, because there's nothing there other then the article links. Who feels like adding an explanation of what "archetype" actually means? (dictionary's a good place to start). -- Jioruji Derako.> 21:29, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Currently going through the Glossary category to find archetypes; many of the more popular ones are there as well, but not all of them. I've given up on the idea of sorting articles in the category by profession, as there are a few archetypes that span multiple professions (such as Bonder, which can be a Monk with Life Bond, or a Paragon with Angelic Bond). -- Jioruji Derako.> 22:04, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

[[:Category:Build archetypes]] gives Category:Build archetypes. —Tanaric 23:06, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Awesome, thanks. -- Jioruji Derako.> 23:09, 9 June 2007 (CDT)

Recruiting? (Or looking to be recruited.)

Is there some sort of place here for people to recruit for their guilds or advertise themselves as available for recruitment? I'm in the market for a new guild (see my userpage for details), and I was just wondering. This environment does seem ideal for it, since there is ample space for you to give your reasons, experience, builds (in really pretty visual form), all that sort of thing. Rather like a résumé :D ~Nahka~ 09:59, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

Not really a place for looking for a guild or advertising a guild, this place archives guild wars and that stuff is better done in a forum or some other communication interface. Feel free to do what you want in your user page (within reason) but as far as the main space supporting guilds, i dont see that happening. -- Xeon 10:15, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

It doesn't seem to be part of the direction this wiki is going in. I don't think a wiki is the best format for that, anyway- you would want something with a format more similar to Facebook or Myspace or something, where everyone has their own page they can edit, and the system enforces the editing policy rather than patrolling admins.—Aranth 10:18, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

Fair points. Thanks for the input, gentlemen (or ladies, where appropriate). Guess I'll just leave the notes in my profile and hope someone spots them. On that note, if either of you could direct me towards a good HA/GvG/otherwise co-operative guild who are looking for some new blood, that would kick major amounts of ass. I want to move up in the world of GW. :D ~Nahka~ 10:27, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

On that note, what might be a good option is to post in one of the forums on GuildWarsGuru.com, or GuildWars.incgamers.com... I'm pretty sure they have guild recruitment forums there. And if you need to, you could always leave a link to your wiki userpage there for additional reference, or anything you can't fit in a single thread. -- Jioruji Derako.> 22:51, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

Nahka, check out the Recruiting PvE guilds, Recruiting PvX guilds and Recruiting PvP guilds categories at the official Guild Wars Wiki, maybe those will help. You can browse through the different recruiting guilds there, see if there's any that you might be interested in. --Dirigible 00:28, 15 June 2007 (CDT)

Server

I'm probably going to tinker with things on the server tonight. Things may break, though if all goes well, it won't be for more than a couple seconds. Everyone will probably have to log in again afterwards even if they have login info stored in a cookie. --Fyren 07:37, 25 June 2007 (CDT)

Well, that was longer than a few seconds, but less than a few minutes. We'll see if anything's improved. --Fyren 04:23, 26 June 2007 (CDT)

Trivia

I would like to state my opinion which is allowed on the wiki and no one has to right to lynch me for saying so. I think that nearly all of the trivia on GuildWiki is a load of crap. The Notes on GuildWiki aren't perfect either. True "notes" are ones like how Holy Wrath splits energy penalty among the maintainers. Other notes (this is just a made up example) like the ones saying Lightning Hammer and Lightning Orb are good with Dual Attunes are not notes, they are advice. I wouldn't mind a seperate section on advice only to clarify this. While some of the advice on GuildWiki is unfounded, biased to one style of play, or simply does not work, most of it is viable, with some help from editors with proper game experience to weed out the bad advice.

Trivia is a different story. I removed the Trivia from "Shields Up!" which was promptly readded. Whether "Shields Up!" really is a common reference to Star Trek can be argued somewhere else. Looking at Talk:Ryoko awhile back and my continuous peeving with seeing unnecessary Trivia on skill pages added by fans of the respective trivia, I thought maybe the rest of the wiki has something to say about this. Maybe this has been brought up before, and if there is such precedent, please link to it and I will see where to go from there.

My main point is that there is no point to trivia. Notes are definetely needed and should be included. Most of the advice is very good and currently it is working. However, the trivia has been riddled with addings, removings, and their reverts. Apparently a lot of the paragon shouts are refering to Monty Python. Some people think only a few of them are. But besides the childish gratification of seeing their favorite piece of media connected to Guild Wars through this wiki's trivia system, what point is there? Sure there are some people that first visit an article and go, "Oh..that does make sense". I'll admit it's happened to me before. But just skimming through Shout's trivia section, I've never seen the said To the Limit video. If the wiki is trying to teach me popular culture, that's something disagreeable, but acceptable. I can choose if I want to listen to it or not. What really bothers me is that the trivia asserts itself as true or is clutter. There is trivia that says "this may be a reference to -insert media here-" which is stupid. Far-fetched trivia that requires a stretch is obviously unneeded, and pointless. The "their names do sound kinda similar" is not needed to be replicated every time someone visits an article. Other trivia asserts itself as true. Like Victory is Mine's trivia states "Stewie from Family Guy says "Victory is Mine" quite often, usually whilst trying to assassinate his mother, Lois." Some people, especially the ones that don't know what Family Guy is, don't think this is true. Who is GuildWiki to say that it is.

You can tell me "just ignore the trivia if you have such a big problem with it". Well I can add a joke about how funny Echo Menders are, but we don't have that. Sure, it is foolish, but who's to judge that it is more foolish then where to cap the skill? Common sense is usually the judge. While more people will benefit from where Mending's skill trainer is than how funny my joke is, I could argue that at least one person will laugh at my joke. I'm taking it to an extreme example to clearly illustrate how pointless Trivia is. While common sense and the general standard for the wiki is to not have mending jokes but to have skill trainer locations and trivia, how is the mending joke, in principal, different from trivia? Neither contribute to the gameplay of Guild Wars, unlike the skill trainer location.

My proposition: Remove all the trivia. All of it. I haven't looked through all of the Trivia in the wiki, but I'm pretty sure that some could be interpreted as a note rather than a pop culture reference (which is pretty much the vast majority of trivia) and could be added as such. Some trivia is so blindingly obvious, such as "Can't Touch This" is a reference to MC Hammer's song Cant Touch This. But, indeed, you really can't touch the shouter of that shout. If trivia really is blindingly obvious, then it is. The wiki doesn't need to say so; everyone will think of that song when they see this skill. If trivia is obscure, then it is as well. Fans of that skill, boss, or place will think of whatever it is supposedly referencing it to. When someone unlocks "I Will Survive!", they can think of the song if they want. They can think that they will survive in game if they want. It's their decision. It's not a sentence on a section of a skill page that decides for them. GuildWiki is not the place to exchange popular culture. Well. At least not in the mainspace. You can do whatever you please in userspace. Trivia was invented by fans. It's main contributers today still are fans of specific media. It clutters the wiki. It makes the wiki less authoritative.

Exception: Some trivia is genuine Guild Wars trivia and not connected to an outside, non-Guild Wars Source. Take example Jamei's Gaze is definitely referring to Jamei. "This does not effect Guild Wars gameplay, so you are contradicting yourself" you may say. Well then Lore doesn't effect Guild Wars gameplay. Hell, let's get rid of all the spoiler warnings then, eh? By keeping these types of trivia, I'm not being a purist to a Guild Wars based Guild Wiki.

Even though it would be a lie to say that I have no personal feelings against trivia and this is truly nothing more than an opinion, consider as one. I have only contributed to the wiki a small amount and I am just an anonymous user. I fully understand this is not my call to make. I just am trying to shed some light onto the situation. Biased? I did my best to present both sides of the argument but surely every singly written argument exceeding ~1000 words has some (maybe a lot if you can point it out, which if you can please do) bias in it. There maybe points I have missed, or some possibly fatal flaws in my argument, which I am willing to hear to if you choose to respond. Most importantly, if you disagree, there's no need to flame me. Remember, I'm not demanding anything at all, only proposing. This is just an opinion.

I forgot to sign, excuse me 67.162.10.70 22:52, 1 July 2007 (CDT)

Guild Wars is full of obvious intentional pop culture references, and I think we should aknowledge that fact and include plausible trivia. When something implausible ends up in the trivia section, such as the dubious Ryoko trivia, it generally gets removed, generally leading to a discussion on the talk page, which usually reaches concensus soon after someone points out how implausible or tenuous the alledged trivia really is. Anyway, I think this discussion belongs on GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting. -- Gordon Ecker 23:33, 1 July 2007 (CDT)

I agree that a lot of the trivia in the wiki are very difficult to believe. You are entitled to your opinion, however biased or unbiased you may think it is. Here are some thoughts of mine after I read your comments:

What I would like to ask is why do you think that a trivia section equals "an exchange of popular culture"? How is one section with a header title that means "insignificant or something of little importance" affect GuildWiki's credibility? You mean you actually became distrustful of the contents of a skill page because someone added a crap trivia at the bottom? I'm not convinced of your "less authoritative" argument. I think you're just bugged by stupid trivia. If you think they're stupid, put a message in the respective talk page and garner support for their removal.

And on the side, yes, if you propose to get rid of all trivia, then Jamei's Gaze trivia goes too. Your argument applies here (I see Jamei's Gaze, I think of Jamei, no need to mention Jamei, people can make whatever connection they want). Another thing about the Echo Mender joke, if you look at Mending, you'll find it there. You can even provide links to any relevant forum posts if you want. The thing I find strange about the skill pages is why the trivia section is not right at the bottom. --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 03:09, 2 July 2007 (CDT)

Personally, I support Wikipedia's stance on Trivia's section - but I've never proposed it here as I've seen such major support for the sections here. Basically, WP's stance is that trivia sections are useful when an article is first being built; but trivia sections over there do get tagged as non-encyclopedic. They view the trivia sections as a collection of facts that are either yet to be incorporated into the text of the article - or if they can't be incorporated, then they are too loosly related to the core subject to merit remaining and are purged from the article after a period of time. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 08:34, 2 July 2007 (CDT)

GameWikis - FuryWiki and meta again

One new wiki and one not-so-new wiki: FuryWiki and the return of meta, the GameWikisWiki. As with the older wikis, account info is shared among Fury and meta, so you don't need to make a new account if you have one already (and of course, you can edit anonymously if you like).

Not much to say about FuryWiki; it's a wiki for Fury. If you're in the beta, head over and write some stuff up. It's essentially empty right now, but I'm adding my feeble knowledge to try to seed it. If you're not in the beta, the signup page is here. I have no clue how often they accept new testers.

Meta's actually even emptier, but I'm trying to address how to get new wikis going. There's a very barebones policy there for what to do if you want us to host a wiki for something (that policy being essentially "write some content for it"). --Fyren 04:43, 7 July 2007 (CDT)

A few questions...

How do you add sections to pages? I need to add sections to MY page. Please and thank you. :) -- MiniKold 15:13, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

See GuildWiki:Editing_guide. You add sections with ==, which is the same as hitting the "+" tab next to the Edit button. (T/C) 15:16, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Bullseye.com ad...

Anyway to block the Bullseye.com ads? I don't even know what the ads are for exactly (tried going to bullseye.com and bulls-eye.com and found no sites) but there are a lot of scantily dressed ladies in the ads. Which is not the kind of ad I would like us to host. --Karlos 00:33, 10 July 2007 (CDT)

It is not that bad tbh. Just a gossip site if anything. You know, the stars, celebs, controversies, and all that jazz. Readem (talk*contribs) 00:36, 10 July 2007 (CDT)

Seems to have something to do with games as well, which explains why it's even here. The site's called "BullzEye" btw, with a Z instead of an S. Makes it cooler! =P -- Jioruji Derako.> 00:38, 10 July 2007 (CDT)

Fine and dandy but there may be young children around the computers (as was in my case). The last thing I want is to introduce my very young brother and very bewildered grandfather to the internet's scantly-clad ladies. —ǥȓɩηɔɧ〚^₮/_ḉ〛 00:43, 10 July 2007 (CDT)

They need to learn sometime!

...but on a more serious note, I do agree, it doesn't seem like the best ad for this site. -- Jioruji Derako.> 00:53, 10 July 2007 (CDT)

If you're running a version of Windows prior to Vista, you should be able to deny them by h4X0ring your hosts file. Though if the site gets revenue based on page loads, that might be you stealing money from the site. No!!!

DaveK 06:04, 10 July 2007 (GMT)

I often read Guild Wiki pages durring lunch at work, as a harmless passtime. I was recently given a warning by my supervisor as a result of the Bullz-eye content in the sponsors column. I tried to add www.adbrite.com to my blocked internet lists, but that didn't seem to stop the ads. Also - The sponsor column runs ads for buying gold for real world cash - which is a "terms and conditions" violation. The sponsors need to be reviewed more closely. - Lefick

Best way to block them is with Firefox and the AdBlock plugin. Adbrite is a particularly annoying one and not one I was ever able to fully block via the hosts file. --Rainith 12:26, 10 July 2007 (CDT)

It's Google Ads. The sponsors can't really be "reviewed" as they're just loaded based on keywords. What the wiki admin can do is to block them, so please do post the urls of offending ads. --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 19:33, 10 July 2007 (CDT)

It isn't just Google Ads (at least it wasn't a while back). Adbrite was added a while back (I don't know if they have since been removed as I block them) and they were not able to be blocked (in any way that I could figure out) using the hosts file "hack." Google Ads are easily blocked with the hosts file though. --Rainith 20:21, 10 July 2007 (CDT)

You can disable them in your css settings. You can copy mine as a template to block it on your account. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:26, 10 July 2007 (CDT)

There's no reason why it wouldn't work on Vista. DeepSearch 10:06, 14 July 2007 (CDT)

I've been relaying complaints over the last few days to Gravewit as people have been making them. --Fyren 21:44, 10 July 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the css hack, Barek :)--Snograt 16:49, 14 July 2007 (CDT)

Running Guild Wars Under an OS other than Windows

I propose, as someone who is very, very sick of his terribly slow windows install that there should be a comprehensive section of the wiki devoted to helping those who wish to run Guild Wars on a non-windows operating system. I apologise if this is an old concept or that I haven't looked hard enough for an existing page (I have looked fairly hard though), but there needs to be an easy to understand, stress free guide to installing Guild Wars on a non-windows OS; this just simply isn't provided immediately elsewhere and hence, as a source of all things Guild Wars, we should definitely provide it. I'm posting this here to see some thoughts on the topic; if there is enough interest I would certainly consider fronting a project to bring it into being.

Cheers, --Vagabond 05:05, 16 July 2007 (CDT)

I know at least a couple people here run it under various *nixy OSes. I don't remember who, off the top of my head, besides Tanaric. --Fyren 05:28, 16 July 2007 (CDT)

Well, given that you're only complaining about the install part, and since you only really need to install once (for each computer you're using), I don't see why a slow install would warrant a switch of the OS itself. But if you're interested, the official wiki has a page on it: [2]. I tried finding a similar page here, but I'm not sure if anybody did. --Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 20:08, 16 July 2007 (CDT)

Instructions on Linux:

1. Install current version of wine, not the outdated one in your distro's repository
2. Download gwsetup.exe from guildwars.com
3. run gwsetup via wine.
4. run Guild Wars via wine.

Runs pretty well, actually.

—Tanaric 19:13, 17 July 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, I had a look at the Official Wiki one. For a casual nerd who has just begun the arduous path to become a fully baptised member of the freakish society that is Linux 0(ie. me), the first glance of this page caused me to wet my pants and order an exorcism. Its a heap of terminal commands, command line switches and other horrors. I know that many would argue that a true Linux nerd revels in that sort of situation, however for someone like me, who is simply a casual "Oh I'll see what something that isn't windows is like, what a delightful trifle (guffaw)" after reading in their PC Magazine that Ubuntu is "Linux for the folks", and that it is really easy to use (what a larf), a huge jumble of code in a not very easy to read format is hardly appreciatable. I'm proposing a really dumbed down version, not patronising but easy to understand, that can help someone who just wants Linux because they don't want to pay for XP Profession 64x, or because they're cheap, to run their favourite game, and currently this simplicity is not on offer. Oh and what switches do you use Tanaric lol, mine keeps randomly closing :P Cheers. Oh and I didn't mean the installation process, I meant the installed version on Windows. Vagabond 05:12, 19 July 2007 (CDT)

I just tried restructuring the "Guild Wars on Wine" article on the official wiki, hopefully making it less intimidating. Let us know how that looks. --Dirigible 12:57, 20 July 2007 (CDT)

GW:EN Skills...

Not sure if anyone posted this elsewher, but peering into gw.dat, some people have seen the following skill names: read here Should we bother add them now? --Karlos 03:25, 19 July 2007 (CDT)

Nvm. I found the discussion. Please ignore. --Karlos 03:46, 19 July 2007 (CDT)

Why speculate about those skills, the description of what the skills do is in the gw.dat file as well, lol. -- Xeon 06:38, 19 July 2007 (CDT)

Sponsors

Players Take Note As a reminder, if you purchase in game gold, your account is subject to suspension and possible termination.

How come GuildWiki has RandyRan.com as its sponsor? Does GuildWiki support gold trade that can eventually terminate account? 80.89.53.119 14:35, 19 July 2007 (CDT)

GuildWiki itself has not very much control over what shows up in the Sponsors, and we don't necessarily promote or endorse any of them either. There are a few reasons...one is that they are randomly chosen by Google ads based on keywords. Another is that certain unscrupulous companies somehow manage to avoid having their ads blocked by normal means, such that removing them can only be done with haxxor-type code changes to your Wiki files or Internet program itself. Then of course there is the issue that these types of services (runners, online gold, etc) continually change their websites all the time to avoid being shot down by ANet/NCsoft or whoever. If you notice, the ads change all the time, even if the actual people behind them are the same. This makes blocking them difficult since your target keeps changing. Finally...there's only like one or two people on GWiki staff that actually have control over these kinds of things, and they're not usually very active. So the whole process is kind of convoluted. (T/C) 15:30, 19 July 2007 (CDT)

Actually we add them to the blacklist of ads. Search thru the site, there's lots of references to this. The most recent version is always here (http://gamewikis.org/blog/2006/04/17/current-google-adsense-blacklist/). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gravewit (contribs) .