Talk: Dr ishmael/Archive 8

Archives

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1. Dawn of Time – May 2008
2. May – July 2008
3. July – August 2008
4. August – October 2008
5. October – November 2008
6. November 2008 – February 2009
7. February 2009 – March 2010
8. March – November 2010
9. December 2010 – July 2011
10. August 2011 – December 2012

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This page: 133,445 bytes

Archive Much?

Been a while since I've posted around here lol. Just glanced at RC and seen this, just wondering if it's an attempt to prevent people from uploading generic name images. Other than that, how have things been around here? -- Isk8 (T/C) 20:39, March 9, 2010 (UTC)

Yep, that is indeed the motivation there. RT actually did the first one, for Gw012.jpg. I considered writing a bot script that would pre-prot all Gw###.jpg filenames, but decided that would be too much work (it's not a bad idea, I just don't feel like doing it right now). I will continue protting them whenever they get uploaded, though, so the user doesn't try re-uploading after it gets deleted. —Dr Ishmael 20:47, March 9, 2010 (UTC)

I'm currently on gw856.jpg. You have some work ahead. :] RoseOfKali 23:04, March 9, 2010 (UTC)

Widgets

Do you, or do you know anyone who uses the "Wiki page in a widget" widget? Mostly, because I'd like to play around with MediaWiki:Widgetwikipage to add some things like purge and difflast. --JonTheMon 17:50, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Nope, sorry. I haven't done anything at all with the wiki widgets. —Dr Ishmael 17:59, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Well, then I'll probably go ahead and tweak that. What kind of power functions would you want besides Purge and DiffLast? --JonTheMon 18:03, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

I don't use Monaco, so what I want would be irrelevant (unless support for widgets was added to Monobook while I wasn't looking?) —Dr Ishmael 19:04, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, i didn't mean you specifically, but like what sort of power functions would a user like you want (like, what extra tabs have you added to your interface)? -JonTheMon

All I've got is purge and GWW-switch. —Dr Ishmael 20:17, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Isn't purge standard for Sysops?

I've a box with Del/Ban cats, prefixindex and some other less clicked stuff. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 20:23, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm dis-inclined to add in del/ban b/c I want it to be usable by most members of the community. And I'm not sure about PrefixIndex, but it might be a good idea. --JonTheMon 20:49, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Hm, so it is. And apparently it happened over a year ago. —Dr Ishmael 21:13, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

I'm planning on leaving for good soon.

There's a lot I could say here but it'd make my comment degenerate into off-topic waffle.

All I'll say is that I for one will honestly be sorry to see you go, and thank you for all the thankless work you've put into GuildWiki.

Strange that the most necessary work (e.g., coding - stuff not just anyone can do) is the work that's appreciated the least. A F K When Needed 20:51, March 19, 2010 (UTC)

I've always considered you to be one of the backbones of Gwiki. It'll be strange to see you go. :/ --El_Nazgir 21:24, March 19, 2010 (UTC)

I was, admittedly, a bit concise there, but it seemed like going into detail on that point would take away from the rest of the comment. What I mean is that I'm going to step back from RC patrol, admin duties, and big projects - other people can take care of those, and I need to stop wasting time that I should be spending doing my job or being with my family (or playing Rock Band, my new gaming drug :D (yes, I know I'm a couple years late :P)).

On the other hand, I am going to continue documenting Nick's visits, as well as parsing Gw.dat after updates to make sure our skill descriptions remain accurate. And of course I'll respond to any comments on my talk page. —Dr Ishmael 21:55, March 19, 2010 (UTC)

Ah goodie.

tbh... the day you and Felix are gone is the day I finally accept GuildWiki has died :( A F K When Needed 22:08, March 19, 2010 (UTC)

Shame to see you go, and I hope you will be back soon. Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 12:30, March 21, 2010 (UTC)

*sigh of relief* Okay, so you're still going to update skill descriptions. Doing that is such a tedious job without the gw.dat --Gimmethegepgun 14:58, March 21, 2010 (UTC)

hey, Doc

Even though you're not leaving for permanently, I feel like this is as good an occasion as any to say this.

I know that we've fought a lot over the history of the wiki (especially when it comes to certain temperamental mutual acquaintances); especially ever since I forced your RfA through way back when, I always had this feeling, "Dear God, what have I unleashed?" While I didn't exactly expect you to be "my personal wiki janitor" of sorts, I never anticipated you blossoming into the headman and, in many ways, community leader that you are today. Always, you have given things 110% of your best effort, going way above and beyond the call of duty as "just an admin" to bring us all sorts of wonderful things...javascript, anti-Wikia fixes, Zaishen and Nicholas data, .dat combings, and on and on. Like Rose of Kali has been to the images/armor sections of the wiki, you have been to ... most everything else, almost.

And you know what? I never got a real chance to honestly thank you for all of your hard work and effort.

I greatly value and appreciate everything you've done for the wiki. Please don't ever forget that. Not checking back here frequently, I can't speak to any undercurrent factions of "Mendel vs. Ishmael". Still, no matter what perceptions it may cause, I want to reassure you that your work is not thankless... there are many of us who appreciate you. I do every time I view the recent changes. I do not mean to make it an excuse, but I have always been somewhat reluctant to approach you with such words since you have self-confessed on more than one occasion that eloquent words are not your forte. I did not want to embarrass you unduly. :)

So, once again, thank you for your service. You are definitely one of the cornerstones of GuildWiki as I see it today. No matter how small we may be compared to GWW, I still believe that is something to be proud of. (It worked on my college applications, at any rate. Extracurricular leadership activities ftw.)

(T/C) 04:26, March 20, 2010 (UTC)

P.S. And lest I forget, I also have to thank you for introducing me to m.o.v.e. I still listen to them every day. ;)

I really didn't mean to leave you unanswered for so long, but at first I wanted to take the time to come up with a proper response, and after a time I did just forget. But like you said, I'm not much for eloquent words, so I should've just said something. I'll say it now.

Thank you for believing in me. pop culture may have blessed that phrase with a tinge of corn, but I use it sincerely

More than likely, I would've continued being a strong contributor, but without the sysop status, my sense of commitment would've been nowhere near the level I've given, that has earned me the respect of enough people to be called a "cornerstone" or "backbone" of the wiki. In my RfA acceptance, I said, "if I am given admin status, it would give me a very strong incentive to devote more time to this community, which I would gladly do." I think I've more than lived up to that. The lack of immediate thanks or appreciation never really bothered me, simply knowing that I was improving the wiki was enough.

Overall, I have truly enjoyed all the time that I've put in here, and being part of this community. —Dr Ishmael 03:45, March 31, 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Awesome. ^_^d In the final tally, I'd say that is worth more than the sum of everything else I've done on this wiki.

P.P.S How typical. When I'm trying to not be eloquent, I turn out a masterpiece. XD

materials

Hey, you've been updating material pages, so I figured I'd ask you here. In the example of the Glass Vial, it's also used to make Vials of Ink. So would it be worthwhile to include the craftable rare materials along with armor and other items in the "requires xxx" section? Like Leather requires Hide, Steel requires Iron, etc. What do you think? It's just the matter of adding the appropriate categories to those pages, right? RoseOfKali 17:59, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I'd intended to do that originally, but I forgot to account for it in my bot procedure - instead, because all materials link to each other through the navbox, I did a blanket removal of all materials from the article list. And yep, just add the categories. You can do it if you want, or I'll do it tonight.

We might still want to make a special note for that, though, since the rare materials don't really stand out from the Requires list otherwise. Heck, all of the drops, salvage, and requires notes should really be fine-tuned for each material, I just didn't feel like modifying the generic phrasing during my copy/paste spree last night. Like for wood, you could have, "Drops primarily from plant creatures; a complete list is given below." or something like that. —Dr Ishmael 18:15, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Cool. I won't get around to it tonight, planning to play some D2 after the last patch. :P But you've done a lot of work on this already, so if you just don't feel like it, that's fine, I'll get around to it soon.

As far as the phrasing, I dunno if all mats can be generalized into what drops them most (though I did get plenty of the "fancy" wood from the plants in Pongmei, never ever seen anything else drop it so much :P). You could make a sandbox of those for each mat, and we can all discuss it and see what fits best. RoseOfKali 18:34, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

It's not necessary or, as you point out, feasible to customize each note for every material like that. If there's nothing notable about items that salvage into linen, for example, then just leave the generic salvage note there. I simply wanted to make it clear that the generic notes aren't untouchable. —Dr Ishmael 18:58, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Hey, doc. I have a few concerns. One, it seems kind of ridiculous that anyone can go in and edit your page... For two, I'm assuming that you were the one who made the changes to the Guild Wars items lists?

(((Plant Fiber-Plant Fibers are a common crafting material.-Acquisition...)))

Can't the creatures also be categorized by location? Just a straight list isn't exactly the most convenient thing, even if you can find their individual locations by going to their links. You don't want to go to every creatures page just to compile a list of creatures in an area that you can get to. This would help a bunch! Thank you!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.6.41.181 (contribs) .

Firstly - it's a wiki, the whole "editing the page" is kinda the point.

Secondly, that'd probably take some doing (it means someone has go go in manually and find out who goes where, I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying there's no easy way for it to happen, it just is a lot of work to update every page. RandomTime 00:04, April 3, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I rather realize that. But people's own pages really shouldn't be. Second off, yes, I realize this. If it were not for that fact and the fact that I do not know how to work the drop down, I would edit it myself. I'd be happy to help do that, though, if I knew how to work editing things in the drop downs. Help, though. I really couldn't do it all. lol. not enough time. so if you could perhaps contact me on my wiki and tell me how to do that, I'd be glad to help, though you would have to tell me exactly how you wanted it formatted and presented. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by CrucialRaven (contribs) .

Vandalism is easily reversible, and a lot of editors can put in constructive edits to userspace pages, if it's a serious problem, a page can be protected. I'm not sure what your third sentence is saying, but that's probably because it's 3AM here. The way "drops by the following creatures" works is that there's a category tree, so anything that drops plant fibers must be in Category:Drops fiber. To have it sorted by location would mean that someone would have to edit every monster page, and put in new categories which contain the location, monsters are in lots of locations, which means this would be an overcategoried mess, and not really help. You can tell with most of the monsters where they'll be anyway (charr in post-searing, stone summit in the shiverpeaks, etc), so the extra work and mess wouldn't be very helpful anyway. RandomTime 02:38, April 9, 2010 (UTC)

Huh? How many wikis have you edited on? Every page on a wiki is editable by everyone, unless it's been protected. And a page usually have to be the subject of some very serious and recurrent vandalism for protection to be invoked. Out of over 18,000 mainspace articles on this wiki, only 15 pages are protected. User pages normally never get protected.

And no, that's a stupid idea. Categorizing creatures by location is a good idea. Categorizing creatures by the materials they drop is a good idea. Categorizing creatures by location and by the materials they drop, not so much. That's getting to the point where the cost/benefit ratio of the idea is way too low to be worthwhile. It's an overuse of the categorization function to the point that the results are meaningless except in extremely specific situations.

If you really have to have lists of creatures that drop a material sorted by the area they appear in, go learn how to do category intersections with DPL or SMW and make your own lists. Here's an example to get you started:

<dpl>
  category = Drops bone
  cateogry = North Kryta Province
</dpl>

There's probably a way to make DPL generate a full list of everything that drops bone and sort it by area, but I don't know enough DPL to do that. —Dr Ishmael 03:26, April 9, 2010 (UTC)

So I herd

You're one cool dude. Talk to your good old friend Rasky every now and again QQ Docta Jenkins 06:37, April 9, 2010 (UTC)

If you stopped acting like a moron around the wiki, I might. —Dr Ishmael 14:36, April 11, 2010 (UTC)

So cold QQ. I thought our game and wiki relationships were exclusive of one another. Docta Jenkins 00:02, April 14, 2010 (UTC)

"Wiki is not IRC is not in-game is not etc..." only applies to administrators taking action against users on the wiki - i.e. I can't, for example, ban Felix from the wiki for calling me names in-game. It does not have to apply to anyone's personal relationships with anyone else. So yes, if you do nothing but troll around on the wiki, I'll simply ignore you everywhere. —Dr Ishmael 01:12, April 14, 2010 (UTC)

-edit- I've thought over how this went down over and over again throughout the weeks that followed, here is my conclusion: I made one single troll edit(Lich king iirc) which I was banned for. Couple weeks go by, I go to pm my good friend ish(whom I have had a few decent conversations with), only to find that there is no reply. I try again several times over a few days. Still no reply. I jump on gwiki figuring you're just busy with stuff and decide to leave you a friendly message, and I get this shit. I can honestly say out of all the times you've been a major faggot, this is pretty high on the list. Fuck you and your shitty logic. 75.142.10.108 04:41, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

Re White Mantle Disguise vs Robes

→ Moved to Talk:Costume#Re White Mantle Disguise vs Robes

Costume Makers

→ Moved to Talk:Costume Maker#Consolidation

Help with drop-rate Summary lines?

So first thanks for help with formatting on my new page!!! Second, so that it can be maintained easier/better, who would be the best person for me to speak with about auto-total & percent options? Also is the feature of "lines" (see http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gift_of_the_Traveler/Drop_rate/line") available on this Wiki? Appreciate your assistance in order that I may better support the unofficial effort!!!
--

AFAIK, there's no way to do auto-tallies here, Wikia just doesn't have the required MediaWiki extensions installed.

You can do the /line thing, sure. We've just never bothered with it before. —Dr Ishmael 18:12, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

What about the code in Drop rate/To Dye For? It does some kind of auto-tallying, albeit it's a custom written template, but maybe it can be changed to accommodate the needs here? RoseOfKali 18:37, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

That's a bit of a kludge, and all it does is calculate the percentages using the totals as input. It could be adapted for use on the Parcel table, but it would be messy to expand it from 10 to 21 items. —Dr Ishmael 18:48, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I've made a table that utilizes a /line template and auto-sums. Haven't gotten around to making it do fancy stuff like percentages, but that'd just be the next step. Be forewarned, the template isn't that pretty right now. --JonTheMon 20:31, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Well I appreciate everyone's time on this subject and do see the example on Jon's page. So have a few questions and will follow-up with him directly at his talk page. Thanks for let me have a space to ask and getting started! --

After looking at it, and thinking about the code, i'm just not comfortable automating that without the proper tools (wiki extensions). --JonTheMon 20:26, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Well, it does work (assuming the /line template was always used correctly), and it's certainly a novel use for DPL, although I'd still have to call it a kludge. The biggest problem would be the percentages - you can't calculate percentages until you know the total, and since you're calculating the total on-the-fly... I don't think it would be possible. So you could do either totals or percentages for drop rate tables, but either way it would be kludgy. —Dr Ishmael 20:33, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, it'd be kludgy as hell. And the only way to get it to work would be to have the base data on a different page than the totals. And the percentages could be done, but it'd require a manual adding of each category, and using those values divide by a manual adding of all values. Not very pretty. --JonTheMon 20:42, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

my purge button

I miss it ever since I switched to monaco (and we don't have one of those fancy running clocks like GWW). And apparently it doesn't work the same, so copying my User:RoseOfKali/monobook.js to my User:RoseOfKali/monaco.js didn't just somehow magically work. Is it possible to add that button to monaco, can you help me please? Thanks! RoseOfKali 11:14, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Um, isn't there a monaco button to the far right of the tabs that says "refresh"? That should be your new purge button. --JonTheMon 13:02, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Only admins get that tab by default, everyone else has to add it with JS. —Dr Ishmael 13:57, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, righto. --JonTheMon 14:00, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Try this: in your monaco.js, where it says 'p-cactions', replace that with 'page_bar'. The addPortletLink function takes that as the id of the <div> in which to create the tab, and Monaco has different ids for everything. —Dr Ishmael 14:11, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, you have to do that AND replace a couple of the 'if' lines as I have noted here. —Dr Ishmael 15:13, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! :D RoseOfKali 18:31, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

The reason we don't have the cool clock thing here is because it doesn't work anymore... I used to put the code in my own .js so it would show up for me. I'm not really sure why it stopped working. It must be because of differences between the two sites. (T/C) 16:45, April 21, 2010 (UTC)

It works for me on Monobook. The line "var timerParent = " would probably only need one minor change to work for Monaco. —Dr Ishmael 19:26, April 21, 2010 (UTC)

And what kind of change would that be? RoseOfKali 02:52, April 22, 2010 (UTC)

Very similar to what I had to do for your purge button. Check out User:Bot_ishmael/monaco.js. You'll probably want to play around with the "timerObj.style..." lines, it looks somewhat huge with the current settings. —Dr Ishmael 03:10, April 22, 2010 (UTC)

Costume template

You need to disable the [edit] links like was done in other templates, currently they take you to edit the template itself. Thanks. RoseOfKali 14:48, April 21, 2010 (UTC)

Oops. Fixed. —Dr Ishmael 15:33, April 21, 2010 (UTC)

Characters

How did you setup your character panel on your profile?

Dragon Cupcakes

The Cupcakes were handed out in the 2009 Dragon Festival (coding error; see Dragon Festival 2009#Notes). Wet Wet Wetter added the cat "Dragon Festival 2009 items" back then. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 15:58, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I'd forgotten about that. Anyway, my policy has always been that if it's a bug, it doesn't count. —Dr Ishmael 19:11, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be completely reasonable to remove them from the category, since they're not intended to be Dragon Festival items. On the other hand, Dragoncakes sound epic and delicious. 20:37, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

O.O Oh my God :P

Thank you!

I was going to revert my edit since consensus went against me, but after all that work you did... as Viper said, it's a cool pic. A F K When Needed 11:37, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

"...all the work you did..." o.O Turn on WikiEd -> find/replace all "Guild Wars 2 Assassin.jpg"/"Guild Wars 2 Assassin?.jpg" -> save. I mean, yeah, I spent 2 hours doing that, man does my right pinky hurt from hitting the '?' key so many times. I may have to sue you for the cost of my carpal tunnel treatments. —Dr Ishmael 15:23, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

Course Correction

I'm sorry it's taken me 5 days to at least formally accept the apology you posted on my talkpage, but there's been so much more in your post that I didn't yet have an answer to (I do now). Late as it may be, I thank you.

You wrote, "you need to take responsibility for gaining full (or at least better) understanding of a situation before you directly overrule any administrative action", and I agree; I would ask you that if I do fail at this, please shout at me on my talkpage instead of duking it out in mainspace or project space, it'd be much appreciated. (Not that directly overruling you will be possible in the near future, what with me not having sysop, but things may change yet again - hopefully, of course, I'll not need to. ;)

Since y'all convinced me to keep having a go at being a bureaucrat, if I wanted to have a quiet word with you about that May 3rd block, preferably without re-raising the spectre of me having an issue with you personally, how would you suggest I best go about it? Talkpage, email, IM/chat, phone call, not at all? I'm still going to want to address the wiki at large, but I'd rather avoid you getting the impression I'm putting you up on the pillory or some such. --◄mendel► 08:46, May 10, 2010 (UTC)

Talk page is fine. I don't mind having someone bring up an issue for discussion, it just seems like it would be more productive to hold said discussion before anyone takes any further action on the issue. [Action - discussion - final action] seems more efficient than [action - reaction - (possible re-reactions) - discussion - final action].

Since I'm already typing, I'll go ahead and try to explain that block. The user had made a very crude vandalism edit. In my experience, users like that A) have a tendency to vandalize again, including re-vandalizing after they get reverted, and B) have a 99% chance of never making a constructive contribution to the wiki. Thus, blocking a vandal like that has no negative consequences, but has a good chance of preventing further disruption from the same vandal. What's wrong with that? —Dr Ishmael 14:25, May 10, 2010 (UTC)

And if you want to discuss the block I made just now... I did not block for the first vandalism, since it was minor and of a style that I don't usually see lead to additional vandalism. I only blocked after they vandalized a second time. —Dr Ishmael 15:14, May 11, 2010 (UTC)

I do look at the vandals' contribs, so if I had examined that block before you mentioned it, I'd have noticed that. I agree that the 4th edit by itself would have been minor, but the first edit today was "obvious vandalism", and the two edits of the day before qualify this IP as a repeat offender.

I have thought much about my next step in our discussion, but I don't feel collected enough now to put it to paper bits (1 a.m.), so I beg your leave to hand it to you tomorrow. --◄mendel► 23:02, May 11, 2010 (UTC)

Amalek

i uploaded a map to Amalek and made the article, since you're the big wiki pro i was hoping you would edit the page a bit better since im just a wiki noob Pryon 17:07, May 22, 2010 (UTC)

Krytan Brandy

same story Pryon 17:07, May 22, 2010 (UTC)

Goth --> gift of the traveler

Surely it should be Gift of the Huntsman? RandomTime 22:31, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I blame it on the very cute and very distracting baby behind me. —Dr Ishmael 22:35, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

Math templates - Zaishen Forecasts broken ?

While reviewing the Mission schedule page for this week, I noticed all the entries in "Date" Column where displaying an error. So then checked out the underlying Templates and all (Bounty, Mission, and Combat) seem to be producing the same error message:

   * Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "]" 
   * Expression error: Unexpected < operator
   * Error: invalid time 

Since you appear to be the author and I was unaware how to fix myself, just wanted to bring to your attention. Thanks! -- 6:24, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

Looks like you didn't manage to merge the /data template into all the needed templates. --JonTheMon 13:14, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

I've updated the /next templates, checked that nothing links/includes the /data templates anymore, and re-deleted them. —Dr Ishmael 14:47, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

According to your user page, you can now walk on water.

Hai Jeebus! A F K When Needed 09:18, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

o_O Do we need to get you a padded room? ...or do I need to get a clue? Cuz I don't get it. —Dr Ishmael 12:50, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

The photo of the ship from the first Nightfall mission. A F K When Needed 13:24, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

....... /facepalm I think I'll take the padded room then, thank you very much. —Dr Ishmael 16:43, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

Eep.

But we needz you... A F K When Needed 17:23, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

Dude, thats my line! Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 15:05, May 30, 2010 (UTC)

Dude that's not how you make use of the past tense. A F K When Needed 15:14, May 30, 2010 (UTC)

Greetings

Also salutations. Guess I missed out on all the fun?  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 07:51, June 13, 2010 (UTC)

I completely forgot...

But since your spawn is still too young to say it, happy mildly belated Father's Day. 23:49, June 22, 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Hey! Happy (late) Poppa's day and gz on the spawning! (much more belatedly)  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:18, June 23, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! —Dr Ishmael 14:57, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Bot Offer

Does it still stand concerning this? bottle might have to walk away from this 1. Sorry for the trouble and thanks in advance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bottle130 (contribs) .

Sure. It'll probably be a couple days before I can get to it, but I'll do it. —Dr Ishmael 12:33, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

I'm free - and it looks like a task that I can do using AWB. Should I run the task? RandomTime 13:36, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Go ahead. —Dr Ishmael 14:56, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, the bot should remove from all the templates RandomTime 15:16, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Complete RandomTime 15:35, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Oh... uh, yeah, that needed to be done, but what Bottle was doing was moving the gold value out of the article text and into the template in the first place. Example. —Dr Ishmael 16:01, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Darn, I'd try and sort that one out, but I don't have time right now. If I can fiddle with my little knowledge of RegEx and AWB, I'll try and run it tomorrow. RandomTime 16:17, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Found at least one you missed: Enslavement Stone. It has "Gold" capitalized, did you use a case-sensitive find&replace? —Dr Ishmael 21:29, June 25, 2010 (UTC)

SoC revert

On SoC, you reverted a user who had deleted a colon. I'd like to re-revert you, as the colon breaks the enumeration of the two quests grammatically, and the text seems to flow better without it. I wasn't able to figure out why you did that revert. --◄mendel► 05:32, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

Considering that it was a rollback, I suspect this was an accidental recentchanges click. The colon definitely doesn't belong. 12:22, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the benefit of the doubt, Felix. Yes, that was a misclick when I was trying to do this. When I looked back through the SoC edit, I couldn't see what had actually been changed (punctuation doesn't stand out very well, so I assumed it had been a simple whitespace edit), thus I didn't see the harm in leaving my revert in place. I've corrected it now. [edit] I swear I did. I went there, clicked "undo", entered "misclick in RC" as my summary, and clicked "Save." Apparently Wikia decided to completely ignore me, since the page history now shows mendel as fixing it almost hour after I thought I had. Bah. —Dr Ishmael 15:23, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

Nick's Template

When you said the "default place holder", I'm a little confused. If I understand it correctly if there is no update to the template then it continues to show the previous weeks location and collectible. While I agree it's not critical to update the page, I've seen it go several hours before the location is found and updated. In the meantime if you are using the template or look at the main page you might be working toward the wrong goal. It's an interesting point though so I'll move this to the discussion page on the Nicholas the Traveler article. -- Glamtre (Contribs) 00:02, June 29, 2010 (UTC)

Since it's basically the same question, I'll just put my response on Nick's talk page. —Dr Ishmael 00:27, June 29, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

I knew I forgot something when I posted. Thanks for adding the link to the minimum client.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:29, July 2, 2010 (UTC)

Just curious

If I were to make a random edit to a random page, would you also edit that page? ;o --- -- (contribs) (talk) 13:58, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

If the page required additional edits, yes. :D —Dr Ishmael 14:09, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Also, got you. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 15:02, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Is it really a "gotcha" if I was a knowledgeable and willing participant? :P —Dr Ishmael 15:05, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Somewhat, I think. You still edited the page I edited, after all :> --- -- (contribs) (talk) 15:13, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

And now, you've edited the edit of a non-random trolling about editing the edit on a page randomly edited by Viper. :P

 —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:09, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Brain hurts (edited the edit wha?) + "July 8, 2010 votes since 16:08". --- -- (contribs) (talk) 16:16, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

/doubletake Where the bloody H did you get "trolling" from? o__O —Dr Ishmael 16:57, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps, it would have been more technically correct to ask "is this a case of a target so expertly baited that he himself thinks he was a willing participant?"  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:06, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Ah. To me, "trolling" is much more negative and malicious. —Dr Ishmael 17:17, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

My apologies: I absolutely meant to compliment both of you (albeit one very backhandedly); no negative or malicious aspersions were meant to be cast.

Yeah, it's one of those words still searching for its ultimate connotation and denotation. It's true that friends shouldn't let friends troll strangers; I also find that friends like to bait each other (see: above) and I've seen that referred to as trolling and being trolled, although the perpetrator isn't considered a troll.

Similar to signifying (e.g. Bo Diddley's Say Man), which is PA among strangers but required behavior among friends (in the relevant circles).  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:35, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

My brain can't even turn that article into words. 19:18, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how it counts if it's the user's talk page. :P Jink 17:11, July 10, 2010 (UTC)

A random page includes any and all pages that currently exist on the wiki. :> --- -- (contribs) (talk) 18:31, July 10, 2010 (UTC)

Hurf durf. Like he's not going to respond to something on his talk page. Jink 18:30, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

He doesn't always. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 21:54, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

Diablo the Chicken

Found him. That's a pretty neat chicken. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 10:08, July 10, 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. It's been a while since I've read through the archives, but he's been beheaded (and resurrected) at least twice, and experienced all sorts of dismemberings in between, one of which he is currently riding out on the lower body of a robot. In the beginning of the strip, he served as the "evil (pseudo-)villain," but most of his evilness has gradually rubbed off onto other characters, primarily on his genetically-engineered son, Oliver. —Dr Ishmael 13:57, July 10, 2010 (UTC)

The Battle for Lion's Arch info

Ok I re-posted the more detailed info for The Battle for Lion's Arch. There was no need to take it down and just post up the Objectives. That isn't helpful to the players. The Walkthrough part will help them prepare for the mission! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Josh5813 (contribs) 03:20, July 11, 2010.

The problem is that the article is word for word, section for section, the same as what's on the official wiki. My take on the GFDL is that it allows copying, as long as (a) it's acknowledged and the same licensing appears on each doc. Unfortunately, the official wiki and this one use two different copyright protocols, so it's a problem. You are welcome to paraphrase or restate the material in your own words.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:54, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

Exactly - this wiki and the official one use incompatible licenses, so you can't just copy articles directly. —Dr Ishmael 03:58, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

And copying a template that doesn't work here is bad. Still, couldn't it have been tagged somehow as needing a rewrite? Much of the actual info we can re-use. --◄mendel► 22:25, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

I'm with Ish that the full-on pasta shouldn't remain, even though GWW used to do it from GWiki a bunch. (Of course, I thought commenting the pasta out should have been okay for the 72 hours it would have taken someone to rewrite; would have saved whoever was doing our first draft a lot of time.)  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 00:33, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if all I was trying to do was help people try to beat the mission Battle for Lion's Arch by posting a more detailed walkthrough of it. You said more or less "Don't post stuff from the official wiki if you didn't write it" Um... can I see the proof you have that I didn't write it. Like I said to others "Just because you say it's true doesn't make it so."

No posting up a detail layout of the mission to help people expect whats to come is wrong of me but one user posted something so helpful to aid others in the mission "expect to have 90 drops for your character, merchant summoning stones would come in handy." THANK YOU GOD! I know now what I was doing wrong in the mission, I didn't bring merchant summoning stones and I was thinking about all the fucking drops that would happen for me.

If you don't want people to post truthful answers for a walkthrough post it up at the main screen "Please don't post correct information to this site or you will be kick off and banned. Just post up stupid shit that won't aid other players in any way and you'll be fine." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by John7777 (contribs) 23:54, July 14, 2010.

"can I see the proof" -- don't be silly when you don't have a leg to stand on, look at the history of the page on gww.

We agree with you that a walkthrough would be helpful (and we're getting there), but unfortunately we are bound by law and cannot copy the GWW content over, or our site will be taken down. --◄mendel► 08:12, July 15, 2010 (UTC)

block explanation

Are you going to post one? --◄mendel► 01:46, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

Isn't it obvious? —Dr Ishmael 01:50, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it was obvious to the IP. --◄mendel► 02:14, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

*sigh* Whatever. You have to remember I'm not a carebear admin like you. —Dr Ishmael 02:56, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

Just popping in to say this was a reasonable exchange. 04:51, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

I remember that you're a software developer, and writing stuff like that is like writing documentation, so it's no wonder that you don't like to. ;-P --◄mendel► 08:15, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

If it's hard to write, it should be hard to read! 21:40, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

Remember: When writing software documentation, you have to assume that the user has already read and understood the compiled machine language code, and just needs help with the details. -- RandomTime 22:14, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

Book

It's just introducing you to the characters as you'd expect. I'll buy it when I can, but being a sucker for lore that's not much of an achievement by the first chapter.

Don't want to ruin it for you (or anyone else) but... yeah, definitely a Necro in that book. A F K When Needed 18:37, July 16, 2010 (UTC)

I was just trying to be clear that I haven't personally read it yet. Seems like people are taking it to mean that I was being skeptical of the claim, but that wasn't my intent. —Dr Ishmael 18:41, July 16, 2010 (UTC)

The War of 1812?

Wikpedia also confirms the Howitzer as cannon. ^-^ (Alas, no fixes to summary typos.)  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:46, July 18, 2010 (UTC)

Dohohoho 06:36, July 18, 2010 (UTC)

FYI: Error added by your bot

Just now, a user switched the tooltips of 2 images around, rank 2 and 3 of the Maxed Titles track were accidentally switched - the tooltips were previously added (in their incorrect form) by your bot. The edit is here. Just thought you should be aware of this issue. -- RandomTime 15:44, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

That was me going semi-auto in AWB to update links to Kind Of A Big Deal. When I got to that page, I figured I could make the alt-text better by inserting the actual rank titles, and I just got those two mixed up. —Dr Ishmael 15:48, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

Aah, you're here - you probably saw the edit, then. Just wanted to make sure you knew about it - as if it was automated it could have been a widespread problem -- RandomTime 15:49, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

scum

I'm sorry if I wrote something down badly; I had had my head deep into the code, then tried to answer all of the talkpages where the topic had come up — there are 4, and I apologize if the inevitable duplication grated. That done, I checked into an online game for some relaxation before going to RecentChanges later.

I do realize now that my criticism was quite unbalanced; I didn't mention any advantages of the variables approach, nor did I look for them much. I do appreciate the effort you've invested to demonstrate this extension to us; that's been very valuable to me. The idea of using single data points flexibly hadn't occurred to me until I saw it on your demo page.

I don't think myself a wiki-god. I write my thoughts down as clearly as I can so that people can discuss them, and that I might learn by this discussion; I am happy when someone manages to show me something that I failed to see.

I do hope that you'll reconsider your wikibreak; I'm certain we all would miss you if you really left.

Also, thanks for catching my numbering error in Nicholas the Traveler/Past Dialogues/tmp‎‎. --◄mendel► 04:19, July 20, 2010 (UTC)

back... for a little while -- I think everyone is relieved. I sure am! --◄mendel► 13:07, July 20, 2010 (UTC)

Grated? You might say that. Unbalanced criticism? You might say that too. (I like to think that) I can handle constructive criticism well, but your criticism in this case was almost entirely destructive. It's not that you criticized my solution, it's that your arguments were so vehemently against it and seemed to completely obviate the possibility of counter-argument. You hadn't even bothered to look at what I had done (made obvious by your confusion here) or to ask what else I planned to do, yet you still felt wholly qualified to slap a "FAIL" tag on the entire idea simply because you think you know best.

I think my wife summarized the situation pretty well, and I can't think of much to add to that. —Dr Ishmael 18:45, July 20, 2010 (UTC)

Edit Summary of the day!

• Doc Ish: +1
• TEF: 0
• Readers: +0.5
• Previous editors: -0.1

 —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:02, July 21, 2010 (UTC)

Body blocking is good on melee

→ Moved to Talk:Fenrir

SMW properties

Maybe they only are pulled from mainspace? --JonTheMon 16:30, July 26, 2010 (UTC)

Yep, that was my next idea. —Dr Ishmael 16:31, July 26, 2010 (UTC)

mendel didn't bother

Mendel would have bothered had he had the time to spend on it. Sorry. --◄mendel► 00:34, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I wish you'd said something, then. When you posted another WoT lambasting the extension but ignored my question there, it felt like you were blowing me off. And that's a big reason I blew up like I did. —Dr Ishmael 00:44, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

You and Jon opened up a lot of different "demo" areas, and I can't work on them all at once. I worked on one (the title bars) for a few hours, gained some understanding of why people wikicode the way they do, and added that to the discussion. Should I feel you were blowing off here because you didn't add the running number to the header, like I had suggested? I can't explain it, but rather than think you intended to offend me, I prefer to believe I don't know. --◄mendel► 08:34, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

I did that because it's a simpler solution that doesn't require a CSS hack, and thus an improvement on your version. —Dr Ishmael 12:52, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

My solution requires a css hack? --◄mendel► 15:45, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Shame on you mendel, cheating at Counterstrike Source. 15:46, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

"For the TOC to be numberless, would some admin please install the .css suggested in Template:TOCright into MediaWiki:common.css?" If you have to modify the ToC's appearance due to a limitation of your solution, I consider that a hack. —Dr Ishmael 16:01, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

That wasn't part of the solution. It'd have been easier to slap NOTOC on it and keep the previous appearance; I opted for a TOCright , and since the actual headers had been nested 3 levels deep, the dialogue entries had triple number numbering, which was detracting from the numbers that mattered. You simply cut those "legacy" headers and didn't care about the long TOC atop the article, that's why you didn't run into this. --◄mendel► 20:58, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Why are you even complaining about this? It was still your idea that got implemented, with only a slight variation (letting the sections be numbered automatically instead of supplying it explicitly). —Dr Ishmael 22:21, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't complaining, I said I didn't know why you implemented your solution while not discussing mine. Could you please explain to me why implicit section numbering is superior to explicit numbering? Did you do that so your "edit this week's dialogue" is easier to use? --◄mendel► 06:21, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Why are you even complaining about this? -- I brought this up because you see something I do as blowing you off which can be explained as "wanted to provide a demo, but didn't get around to it because it takes a while to get back up to speed on SMW and set something up" (which you've no doubt discovered by now); while on the other hand you don't realize that your own actions could be seen the same if somebody wanted to see you the way you see me. tl;dr you get angry at others doing something that's similar to what you do yourself. Be more tolerant! --◄mendel► 06:47, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

I didn't couple that with a gigantic diatribe to plow your idea into the ground. It's not the same situation at all. —Dr Ishmael 12:24, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I didn't, either. --◄mendel► 18:51, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

WUT —Dr Ishmael 18:55, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

dictionary:diatribe --◄mendel► 22:39, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Your link doesn't work. Also, you damn well know what I mean. —Dr Ishmael 22:48, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, you mean you#re not taking it seriously. --◄mendel► 00:04, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Howzabout we rejoice in (a) having some new templates that are kinda cool and (b) having a (debatably) cool new extension (that might/not serve some cool wiki purpose)? (I wouldn't be upset either if some peeps could apologize for accidentally stepping on each other's toes in an effort to make the wiki mo' bettah.)  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 21:56, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Hah, fat chance. Mendel will never admit that the variables extension has any purpose at all. —Dr Ishmael 00:00, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

I've described the purpose it has. --◄mendel► 00:04, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, that's right: contributing to the delinquency of wiki-coders everywhere.

Where have you done this? Not on my talkpage, and not on the Wikia board. I honestly can't find it. —Dr Ishmael 01:10, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

You've been slighting me 4 out of your past 5 lines. With your leave, I've lost the desire to continue this pastime. --◄mendel► 01:31, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

You know, I realize you guys probably graduated in 1850 or so, but at USF we really emphasize teamwork, communication, and cooperation in programming scenarios, often over the quality of the actual code. Instead of slaying each other over whose approach is superior, I suggest that you work together for a short period of time on one approach, and then the other. That way you'll both objectively see the pros and cons of each method, and then we'll have two robust options to choose from in the end. Plus you'll both be personally invested in either option so it won't lead to any hard feelings. Best case scenario, you'll learn to see past your differences and develop a nice healthy bromance.

If that idea is too carebear for you, then just shut the fuck up before I start vomiting fire. 06:23, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

User:John7777

As per User_talk:Josh5813#Blocked for 1 day, it seems that John7777 is the same person as Josh5813. Since Josh5813 has already been blocked once for vandalizing your userpage, I'd like to increase the block duration to 3 days, or a week at most, and extend it to the other account as well. Would you like to do the honors? 17:00, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Sure. I had wanted to do that myself, but I wasn't sure if other admins would see it the same way, so I took the conservative route. —Dr Ishmael 17:01, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think it's helpful if another admin helps with this to show that (1) it's not personal between Ish & not-quite-anon; (2) there are helpful ways to contribute (and this ain't one of 'em).  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:22, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Fellblade diff

Yes. --Vipermagi 13:05, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

Aha, I thought so. It would be useful if we had a central location to list that bug so we don't have to list it on every individual animated item, but I can't think of a suitable location for it. —Dr Ishmael 13:14, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

Hey ish

Don't take this personally, I'm sheerly posting on your page because it happens to be the one I'm on currently.

You and mendel need to stop bitchfighting with each other about menial things. You and I have never particularly seen eye to eye on many subjects, but both of you are acting like a bunch of six-year-old highly advanced programmers.

I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is about mendel that so aggravates you, nor what it is about you that so aggravates mendel, but I'm reasonably sure if someone -probably anyone- else had referred to what you said as "I insulted myself, now we're even", you wouldn't have gotten quite as irritated.

As many are aware, perhaps you're not, I don't often agree with mendel, but I think that this situation is ridiculous. You got annoyed because mendel recoded some of your work, stuff ended, you apologised and made a comment, mendel took it the wrong way and you got irritated again.

Now that said I'm not entirely sure whether or not you were joking about the whole matter, which you may well have been, in which case disregard me. Again, I have no real idea precisely what is going on and reading every article is too much effort since they're pretty scattered from what I can see.

Also, to quote Felix, "If that idea is too carebear for you, then just shut the fuck up before I start vomiting fire."

That line amused me a lot more than it should have done.

Oh on a totally different note, how have things been going? I've talked variously to almost everyone I knew before I went on hiatus for about 2 years, apart from you. So yeah, I heard you had a baby and stuff, so how have stuff been? Jink, other stuff like that and common pleasantries blargle blargle blargle.

Anyway, I hope you won't take this as a chastisement, and I hope I'm not posting into an argument that has already been resolved.

I dunno maybe my entire argument is a bunch of irrelevancies, but hey, what you gonna do? :) — Warw/Wick 22:24, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I realize mendel irritates me more simply because he's mendel. I wish I knew why. If he had just left out that little comment, it would've been fine. Anyway, I ignored his snide response to my irritation ("you're welcome"? srsly???), and things are going okay for now. The next time he irritates me, I'll run my response through Google Translator a few times before posting it.

We're all doing fine here. The BabyZilla is 14 months old now, toddling all over the place, and babbling a constant torrent of gibberish. She finally called me "dada" last night, though, so we're making progress on that whole vocabulary thing. —Dr Ishmael 00:40, August 11, 2010 (UTC)

Might I recommend the excellent Funny Translator? 04:16, August 11, 2010 (UTC)

"Christ on a cracker" became "Microwave catalytic Mr. Kirk." Jink 06:13, August 11, 2010 (UTC)

Just for fun, I ran mendel's userpage:

"Hi Mendel. Take 1-4 pieces of the company is struggling and cartographers (= loss), so that all your friends the story of how the structure and the consumer. short time of war = Wiki. I play a rare species. Supports the truth, I had many opportunities to Guild Wiki system, or provide a symbol of bureaucratic authority. All rights reserved. Who am I?"

How very insightful: short time of war = wiki. Indeed. —Dr Ishmael 12:56, August 11, 2010 (UTC)

About my image...

Please look at my talk page. I messed up big-time... I probibly need to stop edidting things and leave this wiki alone...

you have a bad habit of omitting tiny but important bits when you rewrite notes like this...

Isn't having 600 gold the same as having a key worth 600 ? (i.e. thanks for catching it — I missed that in preview, review, and half-an-hour later when I triple-checked)  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 15:20, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

Eh, that comment sounds pretty harsh now that I re-read it. That was really only the second time that I've had to make a minor correction after your edits recently, so I shouldn't say you have a habit, but rather that you might be starting a habit. I think it just caught my attention and seemed a bigger deal than it was because it was you, and you're usually not that lazy with proofreading your edits. —Dr Ishmael 15:35, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

Well, it only looks harsh b/c the implied emoticon was, erm, implied. I assumed good faith and looked to what you were trying to tell me.

In this case, I can't claim laziness or not enough time — I spent the right amount of time. The problem is that I intended to type in the missing key, so I kept seeing it there when I proofread. Which is why wikis are much better than the static walkthrough published on "cheat" sites: almost any good contribution can be gooder with good editing.

In any case, I appreciate you catching the gap. Thanks!  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 15:56, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

Headers are part of a comment

Which we never change. --Vipermagi 16:30, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

I've changed quite a few headers on talk pages in order to better describe the contents of that section. And no one's complained before. —Dr Ishmael 16:32, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

You changed one of my headers once, it was on F1's page. I didn't complain because you were right I broke the page. Maybe he should have turned gay into ****, but I support him. It was a offence, and it should be fixed, or removed. Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 16:39, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

short version: I think Ishy was right to change the header.

Mostly, headers are part of the comment. Sometimes ppls leave them out and I doubt that any of us see anything wrong with adding one in, e.g. to separate the flow of two discussions.

On other rare occasions, people introduce a topic with a misleading or gratuitous header. In which case, I will change the header, (a) noting so on the relevant talk page and (b) offering an explanation on the original contributors page. That extra work makes me hesitate before taking the drastic step, but shouldn't stop me if there's a true problem with the original. The other option I've used (for veterans) is to post a note on their talk asking them to change the header themselves.

In this case, I think there is/was/is/was a gratuitous header and that it's appropriate to do something. I also think that a lot of people use gay as an epithet without intending to be hostile to people who prefer snuggling with members of the same gender — while I'm willing to cut folks some slack, I'm not willing to see the term used here as a put down. After all, we wouldn't allow people to say, "he jewed me down" instead of "he negotiated me into a bad deal" nor "she gyped me" instead of "she scammed me."  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:56, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

I personally couldn't care less what happened to the header, nor what it contains. --Vipermagi 16:58, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

This is not the place to discuss the header - that place is User talk:Nikaido25‎‎, it's linked from Talk:Necromancer Elite Cultist armor‎‎ , and Dr Ishmael has clearly read it, or he wouldn't be changing that header now. This is the place to discuss whether it is right to act against the majority view in an open debate and against Wiki custom. Arnout's and TEF's comments adress the former, and should really be moved to Nikaido's talk. --◄mendel► 17:13, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

How is it "against wiki custom"? Like I said, I've changed headers before without anyone complaining that I was "breaking custom" or anything like that. Seems to me like it's more of an undocumented assumption that's been floating around some people's minds until the current drama drew attention to it and caused it to coalesce like this. —Dr Ishmael 17:57, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

@Mendel: actually, all my comments were directed to supporting Ishy's specific edit. If I wished to review the wiki policy, I would post at the policy page or the community forum. I wouldn't, myself, look for the topic on a user's talk page.

@Ish: wiki custom and policy is to preserve talk comments. Viper says that the header is part of the comment — that's a fair interpretation of custom/policy, even though I disagree.

@topic. Personally, I don't think headers deserve the same level of protection — their attribution is more ambiguous than the signed comments and they hold a prominent place on the talk page (via ToC etc). I think they deserve protection, but not if their use of a pejorative is both gratuitous and extreme. I think that was the case in this particular edit.

So, short story: I support Ish's edit although I can see why other people might have a hard time with it.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:30, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

Right, and I'm arguing against that interpretation. I'll restate my point again: if we accept my past experiences as "customary," then the wiki "custom" is that headers are not covered by the "comments are sacred" axiom, otherwise someone should have mentioned it to me a long time ago. —Dr Ishmael 19:35, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

Could you link to occurrences when you (or, preferably, sombody else) did that? It would help if it was discussed then. --◄mendel► 20:02, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

No, because I'm pretty sure it never was discussed, and because I don't feel like wasting time digging through my 2k+ talk page edits. —Dr Ishmael 20:23, August 21, 2010 (UTC)

I've done it as well (although, with the provisos noted above) and never had any comments about the change. I wouldn't begin to know how to find those contributions, though. More reasonably, we could all keep an eye out for candidates for needing a header change and discuss them as they show up.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:30, August 22, 2010 (UTC)

users and SMW

Here's what happens: w:Forum:Modifying/Using_Templates. --◄mendel► 06:33, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so? How is that any different from DPL? I can't really tell what point you're trying to make here. —Dr Ishmael 13:00, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

DPL is simpler because you can go to the Manual and then look up every keyword in the DPL query and figure out how it works, and how to adapt existing code. I think SMW has a considerably steeper learning curve before you can start harnessing it yourself, and people who see it used have a harder time figuring out where the data really comes from. --◄mendel► 17:33, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

I already figure the data comes from magical wiki fairies! Jink 17:37, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

I still don't get it. Yes, SMW is difficult to learn - did you think I hadn't already realized that? Why are you bringing this up now after I've been working on it for a whole month already? —Dr Ishmael 18:19, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

I am bringing that up now because that forum post happened just now. I think it's good to be aware of this issue.

Old SMW-related stuff: CP, WSN, GW:SMW (should the latter be updated?) --◄mendel► 19:52, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

Geh, sorry for being dense, I just figured this had already been discussed enough (like on the CP) that I was like, why is he bringing it up again? —Dr Ishmael 20:20, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

I actually find having to decode DPL to be nearly as difficult as trying to decode SMW. If we want to use either here in areas that we want the casual wikian to be able to contribute, we're going to have to include comments that clarify what to change. I can't help much with the actual coding (I can help a little with looking at the results); I will help with ensuring both DPL and SMW stuff can be edited by anyone.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 21:34, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

dungeon chests

Please see sections 6 and 7 on Template talk:Dungeon chest contents. --◄mendel► 08:43, September 6, 2010 (UTC)

Traveler verbatim

So, why do we need that? Or is this a proof of concept project? --JonTheMon 15:53, September 9, 2010 (UTC)

It's to replace the default text in Template:Nicholas the Traveler, which is going to be getting an overhaul now that we are storing the data on the items' articles instead of within that template. The "click here to add info" link has to be able to work within that new framework, and with the recent "discovery" of the verbatim tag, I knew I could use JS to make it all dynamic and spiffy. I'll be putting some more thorough documentation on the talk page shortly. —Dr Ishmael 16:06, September 9, 2010 (UTC)

24h notation

I disagree. My computer, alarm, and every other digital clock I can find reads 16:45 at the time of writing (+- 10 minutes). Military time doesn't use colons, but they are there in almost any other circumstance (often blinking as well, which is as annoying as mosquitos, and I hate mosquitos. Flies are more annoying, though, because they always float around your head and don't give a poo about your hand almost crushing them against the wall full-force. God damned little shits. Get out of my personal space, and preferrably out of earshot as well). --Vipermagi 14:49, September 10, 2010 (UTC)

I used to work for a medical research facility and we recorded time using the 24hr notation, and we did not use colons. Jink 15:25, September 10, 2010 (UTC)

Bah. —Dr Ishmael 15:52, September 10, 2010 (UTC)

I believe either usage is proper; this wiki just needs to decide which to use. I would go with a colon because I think more people will be more comfortable with it. Of course, if more people seem to prefer a colonectomy, then that should be fine, too.

• The 24 hour clock (colon) isn't exactly the same as military time (no colon).
• Many businesses use the colon for 24 hour time, including Eurostar.
• As noted other businesses do not.
• True, lots of electronic equipment uses the colon, but I'm not persuaded that the great minds behind my portable alarm clock have a command of standards and conventions, at least not if their documentation is anything to go by.

 —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:37, September 10, 2010 (UTC)

ISO 8601 specifies the format with the colon as "extended" format (i.e. both are ok); I assume this format is intended to be read by humans, and the ISO FAQ mentions only the colon format. I am in favor of the extended ("colon") format because I find it easier to read and it makes data entry errors more noticeable. --◄mendel► 09:18, September 11, 2010 (UTC)

Hmm

Did you revert this image? File:Nicholas_the_Traveler_location_20100920.jpg It's giving me a headache to look at traveler and Yakkington on the image (when we all know what the image is for - seems redundant)... riyen 05:36, September 21, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, but Wikia's image servers are still in fail-mode and screwed up the thumbnails. Unfortunately, I don't know how to fix that - even deleting and re-uploading the image won't work. —Dr Ishmael 13:01, September 21, 2010 (UTC)

Can you be helped?

Do you want to give me a list of items so that you don't have to do all the converting? Or I can do the editing after you take care of the info boxes, so you don't have to do both? Let me know.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:25, September 21, 2010 (UTC)

If you really want to, pick a type/subtype and go ahead. I've exhausted the lists that I had already compiled data for, so there's nothing that I can continue machine-gunning right now anyway. The last few items I did were simply to get all of the Traveler items complete so I could finally convert Nicholas Sandford/Past Collections to SMW. —Dr Ishmael 21:29, September 21, 2010 (UTC)

Generally speaking, all that's left are Quest items, Upgrade components, Books, and Consumables; we don't have individual articles for Keys or most Miniatures (yet - but I think we should). Upgrade components and Books should be simple (the icon parameter is freeform, so it's possible to include both icons for the books).

The big categories are Quest items and Consumables, and of the two, I think I'd like to do Consumables, if you don't mind. They'd benefit the most from having the data compiled in my spreadsheet, where I can generate the template automatically. For quest items, the only parameters that differ between items are plural, quest, and campaign, since they (should) all have rarity = common, value = 0, and stackable = Yes. If you follow the categories and do them by campaign, then it's only plural and quest that have to be changed.

My goal tonight will be to upload the quest item .png icons so you can convert directly to ItemInfo without having to use the icon parameter for the interim. —Dr Ishmael 22:03, September 21, 2010 (UTC)

Erm, that sounds like I should look at Category:Quest items and related and convert them, watching out for those that have .jpg instead of .png? Then look at Books, and upgrade components?  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 23:15, September 21, 2010 (UTC)

I guess I got a little too expository there, but that's a good summary. And you don't even have to worry about the .jpg icons - I'm going to start uploading the .png's right now, and they'll be done before I go to bed. —Dr Ishmael 02:09, September 22, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, expository is one way to describe it ;-) (I understand though: you were concentrating on editing, not talking about editing). In any case, I'll try to finish Quest items today (depending on the size).  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:33, September 22, 2010 (UTC)

I counted them up before, I think it was around 180 with nearly half of them in Prophecies. Of course, as I'm uploading icons, I'm discovering a few that aren't quest items at all - Gwen's Broken Flute is actually an offhand, for example.

I'm going to keep a checklist of all items that we currently have listed as "quest items" and mark them off once I've verified their in-game description. This may take a while. Would you want to help with that? I could share it as a Google doc like before. —Dr Ishmael 02:42, September 22, 2010 (UTC)

Sure. I probably have a few of them stored for one reason or another, which might speed up the checking. (e.g. I keep the Juni etc for my toons/friends' toons that might want to go on a scavenger hunt for a certain miniature).  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:54, September 22, 2010 (UTC)

Should also check on stackability - I know a lot of them are (anything that you have to collect >1 for the quest, also Silver Ring, Beautiful Pearl/Pendant/Feather, ...), but GWW has some listed as non-stackable. I should be able to put that together tomorrow. —Dr Ishmael 03:58, September 22, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that ANet has a default for quest item stackability — in a lot of cases, it's sort of moot (how often are people going to find out that they can stack fake plague cures, for example). Most of them are stackable, near as I can tell. Maybe we can assume they stack and spot check GWW's work?  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 05:23, September 22, 2010 (UTC)

That sounds fine to me. —Dr Ishmael 13:35, September 22, 2010 (UTC)

Video - carapace farming

You probably noticed my earlier reversion of the same link. Might it be something other than a farming vid?  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:58, September 24, 2010 (UTC)

That was my suspicion, but I'm not gonna watch it to find out. —Dr Ishmael 02:01, September 24, 2010 (UTC)

Me neither, even if I have the browser setup not to load the vids.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:39, September 24, 2010 (UTC)

People, we're leaving some old Wiki ethics by teh wayside as is, but GW:AGF should still apply as far as verfying the content of a youtube video. Ask yourself: is it inappropriate? GW:AR states that "we retain all content that documents or describes current [...] strategy", and I don't really think we should be discouraging farming strategy videos unseen just because the first episode is "easy" (if you don't need the video, don't watch it - but the editor apparently thought it was worth including).

P.S.: I would have thought it sensible to communicate with a new user via their talkpage, not just by edit summary; and putting the video on the article talkpage avoids sending the message "we don't want your stuff". --◄mendel► 08:40, September 24, 2010 (UTC) & 08:47, September 24, 2010 (UTC)

I have always agreed with you about encouraging potential contributors. I don't here. The problem with external links is that there's no way to verify the utility without following the link...and consequently I think

• External links aren't appropriate without context;
• Video links are not appropriate unless they provide something that the text cannot.

In other words, such links must be relevant and notable; this link hadn't (yet) met that criteria. It's not a case of discouraging a farming video simply b/c the farm is trivial. Removing this link, in my opinion, is no different from moving specious trivia.

However, I agree that I could have (and should have) dropped a note explaining why I removed the link.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 09:47, September 24, 2010 (UTC)

It's a case of "delete or improve" -- if you felt the placement of the link was not enough context to hint at its content, you could have added some text instead of removing the link. A link to Youtube is usually not dangerous; the worst that can await you is a Rickroll or some shock video that hasn't been blocked yet, and in the latter case the admins ought to be alerted so that it is purged from the hstory, and the user blocked.

The video is definitely "relevant"; whether it is "notable" might be a matter for discussion, so the discussion page is ok for it. ;) --◄mendel► 17:39, September 24, 2010 (UTC)

But that's my point: it is not a case of delete or remove. I do not welcome any external link that requires the reader to vet it without context because readers have no way of determining relevance without following the link outside the wiki. That requires an extra burden on those who want to contribute something that cannot be replicated inside the wiki. I do not think it is reasonable to ask admins/users to follow the link to vet it; I do think it reasonable to ask the contributor to provide a context — if they have the best intentions, it should be easy to provide something.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 23:11, September 24, 2010 (UTC)

I do not welcome people using wrong grammar or spelling. It is reasonable to ask contributors to make sure their writing is correct. However, there's no "burden" on them to do that -- I don't delete contributions if they're grammatically wrong, I correct them; rephrase as needed. Yes, the reader shouldn't be required to; yet, if it makes the wiki better, I don't want to delete.

We do not welcome people uploading unaliased armor images. Yet, if the image is better than we had (or if we had none), we keep it anyway. We do point the uploader to our guide; it is reasonable to explain to them how to improve their picture, and to ask them to upload a better one because it makes the wiki even better.

So, barring malicious or spam links, if we think the wiki is better off with the link but for some meta-info about where it leads, I'd rather provide that for the editor than delete it. Yes, do ask him politely. But deleting says "do not want"; if that's what I wanted to say, I'd try to do better than tell them "you neglected to add a sentence here".

Above, you posed the question "Might it be something other than a farming vid?" It was a youtube link, so the hint of malicious intent that resonates with your question is unfounded; it takes 20 seconds to verify that it is a GW in-game sequence. You didn't actually know anything about the video you were deleting, though that knowledge was easy to come by. GW:AGF asks us to assume that the contributors want to make the wiki better, and that places a burden on those who want to delete: to assure that what you deleted did make the wiki worse. --◄mendel► 11:48, September 25, 2010 (UTC)

This farm is too damned simple to need any video at all - that's why I was convinced that the video wasn't worth keeping even without watching it. However, I've gone and watched it now, and I can confirm that it adds absolutely nothing to the guide. He's using a build tailored for high-end areas, which makes it very inefficient at farming low-end areas. From the standpoint of a "noob," to whom that guide is supposedly focused, this video tells me that I need a LOT of healing/armor (Mending + Healing Breeze + Armor of Earth + Stoneflesh Aura) in order to survive against these foes, and I have to wait around and make them ball up so that I can kill them all in one big burst, none of which is true. He could have swapped most of the heal/armor skills with more damage skills in order to farm faster. From starting the mission, it took him 1:30 to kill off the first two groups of devourers; I threw together a fire build and was able to kill them in half that time.

The only way this video *might* be useful is in showing where all the popups are located, but you can do that much more easily with a map. —Dr Ishmael 14:20, September 25, 2010 (UTC)

Good job! I've copied your comment to the guide talk page where I dumped the video. --◄mendel► 00:27, September 26, 2010 (UTC)

@Mendel: no, I still disagree — an external link is not the same as a textual issue. Any external link requires a burden on readers (and an even higher burden on editors seeking to assist). It's obvious if text is meant-to-improve the wiki or vandalistic; it is almost never obvious for an external link (and even less so when it points to a popular site). Assuming good faith for text and for links is completely different and all I am asking is that the poster provide context for including a link.

And, actually, we do welcome people adding unaliased armor images — as you suggest, we make use of it in one way or another. We similarly welcome textual edits that have editing needs; we also make use of these.

Look, at this point, I'm not sure that you and I will agree about the philosophical point, but I am not 100% sure you accept that I see things differently. So, checking for understanding, do you see how I can believe that external links are different and therefore require a different standard? Yes, they are of the same kind but of very different degrees.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 15:39, September 25, 2010 (UTC)

I see how you can believe that, but I think it's irrational. Much new info that makes its way onto the wiki needs to be vetted (or rephrased for accuracy and usefulness); we're trusting that our user base will figure out if something is true or useful and fix any errors or inaccuracies; some few and far between entries that are quite hard to verify require screenshots. If you don't like to vet external links, don't do it; leave it to other readers/editors who don't feel burdened by it.

I have mentioned that external links need to checked for malware, which is not the case for text uploaded to the wiki (and checking graphics is easy); but that didn't apply in this case, and you weren't talking about that anyway. --◄mendel► 00:27, September 26, 2010 (UTC)

move bot task

A pre-move bot task could be to change all [{{fullurl:XXX|whatever}} text] links to [{{fullurl:XXX|whatever}} text]. That way, we wouldn't have any Wikia links on the wiki afer importing our database. The same might be done for the gamewikis domain and whatever others exist. --◄mendel► 07:36, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Yep, I've already been considering stuff like that. Besides running a bot on it now, there's two other ways to do it: 1) run a perl script against the XML dump, or 2) insert code into MW's import process to perform in-stream replacements. 1 might be impractical, considering the size of the dump, and 2 would mean modifying core MW files. So neither one is really optimal.

If you still want me to do it pre-move instead of 1 or 2, would you mind parsing the current dump to compile a list of pages? AWB's text search option doesn't work (dunno if it's due to Wikia or AWB), and you're more familiar with the dump (thus can do this faster than I could).

And just to clear everything up - I apologize again for everything that we fracassed about this year (I'm makin' up words!), just in case there was anything left unfinished. We need to be unified right now, and I want to make sure I haven't left anything simmering under the surface that might disrupt the move. —Dr Ishmael 13:19, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Go, go, go! Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 15:23, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Holy crap, I just now discovered AWB's Database Scanner. Geez, sometimes I really feel like a dork. ^^; —Dr Ishmael 03:44, October 2, 2010 (UTC)

TFWiki info

I'm not Derik, but, I happen to know he already wrote about/documented a lot of Moving-From-Wikia stuff (including the username export code) on his Livejournal: http://deriksmith.livejournal.com/tag/wikia Just in case he takes a while to respond. --96.240.210.150 18:13, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Very helpful, thanks! —Dr Ishmael 18:17, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that's perfect. This post documents the cross-authentication, and this one has pointers for on-the-fly text replacement during import (cf. previous section). Shiny. —Dr Ishmael 19:14, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Contact?!

If you've got an MSN messenger account, please add me- felix6melix at hotmail.com. Alternatively, start coming on IRC again. 21:33, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

why not show it as a thumbnail?

Because I am (profoundly) embarrassed by how ugly and unprofessional it looks. :-/  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:25, October 3, 2010 (UTC)

It provides no real information in thumbnail form to me; I can't make out nine out of ten routes there, and the odd ones out are because I know the place by heart I think. Then again, to my knowledge we always thumb maps, whether they look good/are useful as a thumbnail or otherwise. --Vipermagi 20:26, October 3, 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of whether you actually get any info from the thumbnail or not, you're much more likely to notice it compared to a simple text link (that wasn't even in the relevant section). To make it more "informative" as a thumbnail, we could display it in-line (instead of floated) underneath the table at a much larger size, like we do on the mission overview pages. —Dr Ishmael 20:56, October 3, 2010 (UTC)

Viper, thumbnail size depends on your preferences ("file" tab); with a 300px thumbnail, it seems to me you can see quite a bit. What size are you using? And how can we tell people that they can change it? I just noticed that Dr Ishmael set a fixed size at 300px anyway. --◄mendel► 22:33, October 3, 2010 (UTC) & 22:35, October 3, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I did that so you could at least recognize it as a map, even if you couldn't really read any specifics. The default thumbnail preference is 180px (I've never changed mine), and 400px collided with the table at 1024x768 resolution, so I figured 300px should look good for most people. —Dr Ishmael 22:43, October 3, 2010 (UTC)

Just one question

What are you doing?--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ is hosting a Card Creation Contest! 03:10, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

He's listing every image on the wiki so we can move them to a new location with a bot. 03:13, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

Yep. Mendel pointed out that using Media: wikilinks generates a URL to Wikia's "nocookie" servers, which is more efficient than using the URL generated by Special:Filepath. —Dr Ishmael 03:18, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

Since ANet is obviously not going to create NPCs to honor GWiki contributors for their important and copious efforts, I might have to name one of my GW2 toons, "The Doctor is Ish" or some such. Thanks!  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:20, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

My original method only took me 5 minutes to code, but because it used the non-cached image servers, I was playing it safe and throttling 5s between images. That would've taken 2 days to get all 35k images. Doing it this way took a LOT more setup time, but I can use a much smaller throttle, so it'll be done by the time I wake up in the morning. —Dr Ishmael 03:23, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

Everyone can use a download manager (e.g. fdm) that can grab links from webpages to easily add all GuildWiki images to their "pull" list and make a copy of the GuildWiki image database, along with the article text dump that is available from Special:Statistics. (list of image link pages) The links go directly into Wikia's CDN (content delivery network) which is set up to handle Wikia's worldwide load, so it shouldn't be a problem to have more than one user do this. --◄mendel► 07:46, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

I'm still using a Perl script rather than a download manager because it's less overhead on my system. Ran into an error halfway through because an image didn't exist, but it exists enough that the Media: link is blue. Strange. I left it commented out on page 6 in case anyone wanted to look at it. —Dr Ishmael 12:35, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

[[:File:LoveToMesmerIze_character.jpg]] is called by User:Middleschoo2/LoveToMesmerIze. There's no actual image there. I have (or I will have) added a delete tag and dropped a note on the user's page.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:56, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

You notice that I just moved an image to its lower case equivalent. I commented it out on the relevant image page and put the new name in its place. Let me know if that was good/bad/indifferent to your efforts and I'll behave accordingly if it comes up again.  —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:17, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

Short answer: bad. I can handle it this time, but I would prefer if there was minimal image modification going on right now. —Dr Ishmael 18:22, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

Complete, with errors

Archival is complete - 35,004 files, 1.97 GB (as reported by Jink@home). There should have been 35,101 files, so I'll have to check on why 97 of them didn't save properly tonight. —Dr Ishmael 18:15, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

Oh joy, thank you Microsoft for doing your best to break every computing standard there is. Even though Windows remembers the case when you give it a filename, its duplicate-file detection ignores case. And of course there are plenty of images that were uploaded as both *.jpg and *.JPG or with other case variations. Whee. I didn't bother to put any error-checking around the final file-writing code, because I figured if I got to that point (successfully downloaded the file), just writing it to disk would be trivial. Boy was I wrong. —Dr Ishmael 23:51, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

Resolved. —Dr Ishmael 01:17, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

Another error

Oh flibbertygibbet. I just now discovered that AWB doesn't bother to list *redirect* pages in the database scanner results. If I'd spot-checked for a couple skill icons, I would've noticed this immediately. Graagh. Now I will have to resort to a Perl script to scan the XML dump and get the titles of all File: pages. —Dr Ishmael 19:36, October 16, 2010 (UTC)

I decided to solve the Windows-duplication error permanently by moving or deleting one out of each pair of files. Unfortunately, the method I used to find said dupes (sort the full list of files, then compare each line to the following one) didn't find all of them because I forgot to tell the application to ignore case when it sorted the list initially. So if anyone was planning on making their own file archive, don't use the current versions of my /images pages.

Another thing my preperation script does is it checks each filename against the wiki to make sure it still exists/hasn't been deleted. This takes about 3 hours, then the dup-check happens, then I'll fix the dupes, then I'll rebuild the /images pages. Whee. —Dr Ishmael 23:08, October 17, 2010 (UTC)

Final results

• All File: namespace pages that do not contain an actual file have been eliminated. Most of these were leftover redirects from moves.
• All filenames are case-insensitive unique, to prevent issues with building a file archive on a Windows-based system. I plan to implement a system on the new wiki that will enforce this constraint, as it will make file management easier in general.
• All filenames that contained slashes (/) have been renamed with a dash (-) instead. This is an obvious issue from a standard filesystem standpoint, but it was also causing an issue on the wiki by preventing the images from displaying as thumbnails.

I will now post the final (as of 22:17, October 19, 2010 (UTC)) file list of 38,711 files to the file link "database", split at 3000 files per page. —Dr Ishmael 22:17, October 19, 2010 (UTC)

My archive is complete - 1.95 GB. —Dr Ishmael 04:31, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Well done, old chap. I raise a flagon of mead in your name. 05:06, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

ping

Oasis should have notified you of this in the lower left corner. --◄mendel► 01:48, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

Whee. I just love this new skin. Don't you? It is totally awesome. Whoo. —Dr Ishmael 02:03, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

Thank you!

As AFK User_talk:Felix_Omni#Much_wub. pointed out, nobody has thanked you yet for all your trouble and time. As I support the move, I would like the thank you. Thank you!one1 Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 16:55, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

Aw, shucks. I'm just doing what I can so that the community can make the best decision, and then educating myself as much as I can about MW so that the transition can be as smooth as possible. —Dr Ishmael 00:43, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

Dreamhost, etc.

Thankies much.

I thought doing Computer Science in college would let me help with this sorta thing more, but I'm still a dead-weight. Thank God we have you.

Is there a page where people who can contribute with donations should ~~~~? If money's the only way I can help, at least it's something. While I like the idea of Curse, I want us to go with the right option, and not rule anything out just because it requires donations. Mendel liked the offer here (bottom) what do you think? I'm not sure on it, but not educated enough to comment on it. A F K is pro-AWA! 00:02, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

If we do donations at all, it would only be after we decided against going to Curse. And we have to wait for Donovan to reply to Felix (should be tomorrow) before we can make that decision.

Mendel is planning to use that server as a testbed, where he and I can do trial runs of setting up the wiki and stuff. He probably knows more about it, since he's been in contact with the guy, but I'm not expecting it to be powerful enough to run the wiki fulltime. —Dr Ishmael 00:43, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

What we're getting for free (thanks, Dmitri) is a virtual rootserver on a server like this (i7-920 Quadcore, 8GB RAM, 2x750 GB HD). We'll find out how well that works for us, or whether we'd have to rent more. I hope that we can get GuildWiki set up there by the end of next week, which would still leave us some time before Wikia switches guildwars.wikia over to the new skin for everybody. --◄mendel► 06:14, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

Point being it's not only commercial wikifarms being considered - even by Bureaucrats.

I think it'd be worth having a page with signatures organized just in case, but if you're sure it won't be needed, then fair enough. A F K is pro-AWA! 14:04, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

Template

I would love to use something like this on guildwars2.wikia. Thank you. riyen 03:20, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

Feel free, everything here is CC licensed. —Dr Ishmael 03:32, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, the difference is that here it's with NC and there it's without, so technically your permission was needed. --◄mendel► 06:22, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

I thought all wikia wikis were with nc... *confused* riyen 08:32, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

You can find the license in the page footer. Wikis that were created on Wikia (as opposed to moved there, as was GuildWiki) are always CC BY-SA only (and so is Guild Wars Wiki). --◄mendel► 07:38, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, okay... Just, would it be cool for me to use that delete template? (like what's on my user page) Or how do I go about all this... I'm still a *bit* lost... riyen 08:32, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

Wikia.css

I had planned to leave the skin in its default state as much as possible so as to cut down on future maintenance. We want to make sure any changes that Wikia makes to the skin copy to the wiki directly; if they adjust the font size again and work on the headers to match that, then any formatting we might have made could lead to "improper" display of these headers (-> ToU). --◄mendel► 17:28, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

I made that change because of this. We don't need well-intentioned editors running around and adding unnecessary wiki-formatting to all the headers. —Dr Ishmael 17:45, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

And we should care why? --JonTheMon 18:12, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

Because we haven't moved yet, and when we do, we'll try to get the most recent XML dump possible. After we move, I won't care. —Dr Ishmael 18:19, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

Oh. My. God. That edit exemplifies in the shortest possible space why this skin should never have made it out of alpha. (Centauri, that is. It can't be from this Earth.) I understand completely. --◄mendel► 21:06, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I very rarely LOL, but I did for that. At work. Yes, I got a couple strange looks. —Dr Ishmael 21:09, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

--◄mendel► 21:30, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

Hey..sorry to keep bothering you..but I need advice on how to add a small icon to my signature and the formating guide did not help. Can you help?

I figured out how to do it..sorry for the bother..code stuff is hard :-P

Random Q for a random admin

If I were seeking to discuss something with an admin offline, where would I go to do that. I see PVX wiki has a handy PvX:Admin page, I've been unable to locate the guildwikia version of same.. Yamagawa 01:08, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

GuildWiki:Administrator information--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ is hosting a Card Creation Contest! 01:13, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

PvX is their shortcut prefix for their "project" namespace, so anything starting with PvX: is actually a redirect to something in the PvXwiki: namespace; our shortcut prefix is GW. PvX:ADMIN actually redirects to PvXwiki:Administrators. Similarly, GW:ADMIN redirects to GuildWiki:Administrators, and there's a link at the top of the page to GuildWiki:Administrator information (PvX has the two pages merged together).

Also, you can usually go to any admin's userpage, and look for the "E-mail this user" link in the sidebar (on Monobook/Monaco anyway, dunno where it shows up on Oasis). Or just go to "Special:EmailUser/<username>". —Dr Ishmael 01:42, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, GW:AI. See also GW:IRC. --◄mendel► 01:56, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Aha, assuming you arent too busy with "THA MOVE" or I am not to busy cracking my head over my Physics homework, or Mass Effect 2, or GW,

It's your BIRTHDAY!!!!111!one CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!111 Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 07:49, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Happy birthday, Ish :> --Vipermagi 09:36, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Seriously? It took you a whole damn year to have one birthday? I thought more of your Doctor, what a disappointment.--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ is hosting a Card Creation Contest! 09:49, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Happy birthday doc! Hope you'll celebrate well with the family. :-) (better than me I hope! Mine had an accident involved, but everyone was alright and it still did alright in the end.) riyen 11:22, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Happy existence anniversary! 13:10, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

{{#widget:YouTube|id=V8G2_l1WP1E|width=120|height=140}}{{#widget:YouTube|id=V2kppRVNGeM|width=190|height=140}}{{#widget:YouTube|id=NtkyFo7Urtk|width=140|height=140}}

Happy birthday! --◄mendel► 17:11, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Whoo, birthday! Took the day off from work, spent most of it running the new Halloween quests with Jink, now I have another 2 stacks of Pumpkin Cookies to use up. —Dr Ishmael 15:34, October 27, 2010 (UTC)

"Watch Yourself!"

I wondered if the counter goes down even when it doesn't really do anything, ex. would life steal count as an attack? Damage from Life Bond? Totallynotarequest. --Vipermagi 15:12, October 27, 2010 (UTC)

That would indeed be a good thing to test. Too bad I'm at work for the next 7 hours. If I had to guess, I'd say that life steal/drain and health loss do not count, since those aren't damage at all. Should also be sure to check armor-ignoring damage - since the extra armor doesn't come into play, does it still reduce the counter? —Dr Ishmael 15:20, October 27, 2010 (UTC)

What I'd expect; Life steal/loss don't count, but armor ignoring does. So anyways, *ding* you've earned a Procrastination level! It's on my to-do list now. --Vipermagi 15:31, October 27, 2010 (UTC)

Attemping to help out...

Hey Doc...as you can tell I'm attemping to update some of the armor gallaries in the "needs_updating" armor gallary page. Can you please tell me how to correctly "untag" and remove the updated pages from the "need_updating" page list, so that they only show in the armor gallaries. Thanks!----BladeHanover2 18:45, October 27, 2010 (UTC)

What is the actual page you're referring to as "needs_updating"? Give me that link then I can tell you.

Also, there's no need to completely remove your comment if you want to modify it - just edit it in-place and save again. —Dr Ishmael 18:49, October 27, 2010 (UTC)

I talking about any page that I update in the " Gallary Completion Project"...after you load the correct style and formatted pictures...they still have "tags" that say they need to be updated.

Category:Armor_galleries_needing_update

Ranger_Drakescale_armor/Male

--BladeHanover2 19:06, October 27, 2010 (UTC)

Ah, okay. For the individual galleries, edit the gallery, and within the template will be a line that starts with either | Needs-gray = or | Update-reason = . Delete that line, enter something like "images updated, removing update tag" in the edit summary box, and save the page. That will remove the tag and the category from that gallery.

Then, you should go to GuildWiki:Armor galleries project, edit the profession's section, find the armor that you updated, and change the relevant tickmark image from "Nope.png" or "Maybe.png" to "Yes.png". (Each armor will have a pair of images under it, the first one is for the female gallery, the second is for the male gallery.) If the tickmark is followed by a "Vial of Dye Grey.png" image or an HTML comment, remove the image/comment. This diff demonstrates what I'm talking about. —Dr Ishmael 19:21, October 27, 2010 (UTC)

Great! Thanks!----BladeHanover2 19:39, October 27, 2010 (UTC)

Me....again....

Hey Doc...ok...I have done everything in my noob arsenal(cleared cache,delete cookies, etc) to upload updated pictures for the Gallaries...THEY JUST WONT STICK!! Very fustrating. What am I doing wrong? Does the cache take eons (more than a week) to update..cuz it just aint doing it. Please help!!!----BladeHanover2 19:25, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

It's Wikia. They suck. My only advice is to give up for now, and wait until after we move. —Dr Ishmael 19:26, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

Ok. I'll just sit tight, hold my horses and pump da brakes. ETA on move?----BladeHanover2 19:52, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

Doc...you seem like a nice guy. When do you play gw? I would like to meet you in game. I tried that IRC chat thing...no one was really on... most were Zzzzing or afk. I'm really bored with GW, but severely addicted to it, so I'm turing my efforts to helping sites like this. Cheers!----BladeHanover2 20:04, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's how IRC usually is. Every so often there'll be a burst of conversation for 10-15 minutes.

I don't play GW very much anymore, having completed most of what I want to do. I still join in for guild/alliance stuff and for holidays, but that's about it. —Dr Ishmael 20:12, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

Liar, I see you on every day. 21:56, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

That's probably me, turning on Ish's comp and helping him with his Kurzick title while he's at work. Jink 22:47, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

Reported for account sharing. Enjoy your banz. 23:00, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

Pffft. Jink 23:31, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

DPL kind of strange result

Hello,

I really try to figure things out on my own so I don't bother people as much, but I just become stumped. The DPL is work alright, but for some reason the months of "June / November / December" have linked into the Years/Split category. It is not bothersome but it is odd and I wanted to know if there was something I did wrong. I did copy the code page for page. It seems that Nov / Dec would be there due to them not being finished, but the June one is just strange. -- Bunai82 ^(talk) 19:03, November 12, 2010 (UTC)

Oops, that's another thing I hadn't thought of. Those categories are getting included from the split pages as part of the June or December sections, since those are the last sections on the page and the category tag is at the bottom of the page. (November is also getting it since November is currently the last section on the 2010 page.)

Luckily, there's a simple way to fix this: add the line reset = categories to the DPL. This tells DPL to ignore any category assignments from the included pages. —Dr Ishmael 19:21, November 12, 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, it worked ^_^

Is there a site where I can study DPL or similar coding? -- Bunai82 ^(talk) 01:21, November 13, 2010 (UTC)

The main site for DPL is here. There's a LOT of options, and not all of them are very well documented, unfortunately, but that should help. Also, Wikia is only on version 1.6.4, while the current version is 1.9.0, so there are a few features that we can't use here (yet). —Dr Ishmael 01:58, November 13, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I will try to absorb this information ^_^. Sorry I keep buggy ya -- Bunai82 ^(talk) 19:25, November 13, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! 2

For doing the round up on my new created pages. Just one thing: Rain of Arrows features the wrong icon. Thanks Kaede 23:59, November 19, 2010 (UTC)

Doh, thanks for pointing that out. —Dr Ishmael 00:05, November 20, 2010 (UTC)

No problem. Sorry for making so many mistakes you had to correct (went through my watchlist). It's hard to create wiki pages no one seems to really care about "on the fly"...

Oh, and one last thing: "Find Their Weakness!" is a skill in the Keiran Thackeray (Disguise)'s bar. It's just not everywhere available. I don't know if you removed it or if it got lost while moving the page. I corrected it again. Kaede 00:15, November 20, 2010 (UTC)

target="_parent"

I'd like some Javascript to be verbatim'd onto the ?action=rendered sitenotice that adds target="_parent" to all <a> tags. Since there is no site javascript loaded in this mode, the javascript would have to make do without any frameworks (though you could perhaps check if the page has a parent, and if it has, there should be jQuery on it you can use). I lack the experience to do it, but would probably try to figure it out if you (or someone else) didn't rise to the challenge.

The purpose is, of course, to have the links on the sitenotice open in the wiki window instead of inside the dropdown. --◄mendel► 22:04, November 21, 2010 (UTC)