Talk: Village pump/Archive22

Revision as of 22:20, 9 March 2008

Need Some Help (Im New)

Hi im new here and i need some help. I have been a member on several sites, including Heroescommunity.com where i created "factions" for that game. People thougt i was creative and im a huge fan of the Warcraft universe. Recenlty i started to create an Emerald Dream expansion. But when i search for it i get no results :S And if no one sees it then its not fun to create the expansion. Its called "The Emerald Corruption" (i suck at names) and adds the Priest (ess) of the Moon hero class along with the first "neutral race" in World of Warcraft. Maybe this is spam so i will just link it, http://www.wowwiki.com/User:Nerox/Expansion_Idea:_The_Emerald_Corruption

Anyway, the question was: Why doesnt my idea/speculation show up when i search for it?

-- Nerox 02:04, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The search needs time to update, if it is a new page. I can put it on the Expansion ideas page to show it to people. --SWM24 48 02:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Okey thanks, thats what i wanted to know. Yes, you can put my expansion pack there. Im really exicited about it. -- Nerox 04:03, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm... we should put Special:Search on the sidebar for everyone. I found Emerald Dream Expansion Ideas right away. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:45 PM PST 6 Jan 2008

should wow end?

does anyone think wow should end, i mean they cant keep it goin forever right?

-- douglas rosen 06:39, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course WoW will end one day. ONE day. It could last another 20years (doubt that long), but everything comes to an end.

(^Sssss/_Slithered) 06:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I played Asheron's Call for years before WoW came out, and surprisingly enough, that's still around. Actually logged back into it recently to see the changes. Yes, they are still adding patches and new content too. If that's any indication, then WoW will be around for a very long time. Mordsith - (talk|contr) 13:48, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Use of apostraphes in links

Which is preferred:

Jaina Proudmoore's book or

Jaina Proudmoore's book?

I personally find the latter more aesthetically pleasing. -- Tyrsenus t c 04:22, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

"Jaina Proudmoore's book" would be correct both technically and as expected link behaviour, aesthetics shouldn't come into it. Including a "'s" in the link would only make sense for "Jaina Proudmoore's" or "Jaina Proudmoore's book" -- Zeal ^(T/C) 04:33, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I prefer the second, so as not to make part of the word a link and part not. FWIW, from [1]: "Keeping possessive apostrophes inside the link, where possible, makes for more readable text and source, though either form is acceptable for possessive forms of links such as [[George Washington]]'s or [[George Washington|George Washington's]]." -- Har vey drone 00:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I was looking for that on Wikipedia. --Tyrsenus t c 03:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Server upgrade

We just got moved to a new, better server! Apparently we've got lots of room to grow, so ... use it up ;) No code changes (yet), but if anyone spots any problems, say so here, and I'll pass them on! Kirkburn talk contr 18:31, 9 January 2008 (EST)

How many megs of RAM, Carmine? --Tyrsenus t c 19:47, 9 January 2008 (EST)

A lot :) Kirkburn talk contr 04:32, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Surely over nine thousand. -- Foxlit 02:57, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Things you stumble across...

...when you click the wrong diff link in Recent Changes:

Currently researching if there are any {{fair use}} violations on this one. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:12 PM PST 9 Jan 2008

Its the same image on Wikipedia.Baggins 20:15, 9 January 2008 (EST)

Did you say that with a straight face? I couldn't tell.

--

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:40 PM PST 9 Jan 2008

Unresolved Item Links

I recently came to contribute to a page and add some Item Links that would be relevant and found that 2 of the 3 items did not resolve. The Items are "Vindicator's Chain Sabatons", "Vindicator's Chain Bracers", and "Vindicator's Chain Girdle".

As you can see the first resolves just fine [Vindicator's Chain Sabatons]. The other two items definitely exist in the game with those names and are referenced on certain other well-known websites (eg. thottbot).

How can this be amended? I'm happy to do the work if shown how.

-- Wyntermute 17:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

They're relatively new items, that's probably why. Apparently no one's been interested in them really. I'd never even heard of new level 70 epic PvP gear introduced with season 3, just the Arena season 1 becoming PvP gear. Seems odd to have both, but then i don't exactly follow PvP closely so i might be mising out as to why exactly what purpose their addition is supposed to fulfill.

Anyways, you can create a basic item page by clicking the "This article is for: ... an item" link, which preloads the boilerplate for item pages, and just fill out the info listed in the edit box. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 20:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks like Foxbot updated [Vindicator's Chain Bracers] and [Vindicator's Chain Girdle]. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:30 AM PST 12 Jan 2008

Chinese hax

File:WTF Chinese.jpg

Chinese haxx

Ok, this is insanely annoying... a bar full of chinese crap that moves my summary and submit buttons way down... is wowwiki haxxed, or is it just me?? ---- Varghedin talk / contribs 20:56, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I suspect this is just the effect a of a huge wad of characters without any spaces or breaks. Not a hack specifically. Maybe trying to take advantage of a buffer overrun or something, though. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:53 PM PST 12 Jan 2008

It's the standard summaries drop down bugging in a craptacular way for some weird reason. Should put wikia on it. ;) -- Zeal ^(T/C) 23:12, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Do you guys have it too? Or is it my PC? ---- Varghedin talk / contribs 23:54, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't happen to me. --Pcj (T•C) 00:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Same, fine for me. A possible idea is to check what encoding you've got set for the page. Should be unicode, but may have accidentally switched it to an chinese encoding. :S -- Zeal ^(T/C) 00:16, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I have no idea why it was there, but it's gone now. I hope it stays gone. I didn't touch the encoding but I'll check that if it reappars. ---- Varghedin talk / contribs 17:00, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Be careful, some chinese hacker may have gotten access to your machine and changed something. Make sure your anti-virus, malware detection is up-to-date. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:33 AM PST 13 Jan 2008

Quest Start / Finish templates

Isn't it kind of redundant to place and , in front of the quests, on the NPC's page that starts the quest, when also if you hover over the quest it gives a small info box on who starts it and where it ends... a few examples of pages already done on are Maggran Earthbinder and Tsunaman . Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! (^Sssss/_Slithered) 22:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds more like quest hover tooltips shouldn't be displaying only the same info already there. Gotta think about those who don't use the tooltips first, then just add extra info, not the same info, in a hover tooltip. If there's nothing else to display than that info, then no point in having the hover tooltip. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 23:34, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Quest tooltips still show more data than what is just seen on a given NPC page; for instance, if the same NPC does not start and end the quest, the tooltip still shows both. The tooltip also shows XP gained and any monetary or item rewards. --Pcj (T•C) 23:37, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Then theres no issue here as far as i'm concerned. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 00:12, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The templates, in addition, were added today. Not several weeks ago. --Sky (talk | con | wh) 01:02, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Added RRQ versions:

{{Queststart}} ⇒
{{Questfinish}} ⇒
{{Queststartrrq}} ⇒
{{Questfinishrrq}} ⇒

--

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:48 PM PST 30 Dec 2007

Since I'm seeing these added to NPC pages anyway... how about we make a standard place for them. Lets say at the end of the questline, instead of the front. Looks better that way.

Example:

[32] Leads to Example
[34] Just an Example
- [36] Just an Example (2)

That doesn't look nice at all, where as:

[32] Leads to Example
[34] Just an Example
- [36] Just an Example (2)

does look good. Hmm... maybe I should have used real quests for examples... Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 06:35, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Top level categories

I've been meaning to bring this up for a while, but our root categories need a bit of work. You should be able to browse from one part of the wiki to any other via categories, but this isn't really possible atm.

If you take a look at Category:Browse on the Wikia Starter wiki, you can see what I am roughly suggesting. Category:Organisation would correspond to our Category:WoWWiki, but the Content (or Browse) category doesn't really exist.

Anyone got suggestions for names, or want to have a fiddle? It should mainly be a case of recategorising categories, so not taxing on the wiki (or user ;) ) in any way. Kirkburn talk contr 04:04, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes please ;) Personaly i think it makes more sense for Category:WoWWiki to be the top level, don't particularly like the name "Organization" either for the non-content parts, perhaps something more like "Meta" or "Meta-Pages"?. *shrug* -- Zeal ^(T/C) 14:49, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem with meta is that few people really understand it - it came up during the Starter change, and the general view there was that it will probably confuse more than help. I do agree WoWWiki could make sense as a top-level category, but the articles within it would have to be better organised - can't have the main content hidden in a single category, swamped by the organisation categories. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kirkburn (talk · contr).

Certainly, does need to be cleaned up first. And while you're probably right about "Meta", "Organization" still doesn't seem fitting to me. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 16:18, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

That's why I used "Organisation" ;) Kirkburn talk contr 16:21, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not American, honest ;) Point still stands :p -- Zeal ^(T/C) 17:06, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

If you're going to use that category name, I suggest using the American spelling, since the majority of the site's visitors are American according to Alexa. --Pcj (T•C) 17:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Nah, I think WoWWiki suffices as that category name. Kirkburn talk contr 17:16, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I prefer it to vague alternatives. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:21 PM PST 5 Jan 2008

Ok, so seeing as i was extremely bored and had plenty better to do (:p), i decided to start work on this, quickly running into naming issues and messes of cats criss crossing and doubling up all over the place. With wikia going down, i decided to hit notepad and write up a tree to help myself visualize it better and get some feedback on the direction it's going and the naming.

So, here's a very rough idea User:Zeal/Sandbox/WoWWiki:Category_Tree. Some of you who know of my push for how cats should be done might easily notice how much restraint that idea shows ;). As i said, very rough, the names are not set in stone, but i alot of disambig was needed. For the most part, cat's should not be double cat'd unless it's to provide an alternative entry point, it provides no benefit for the article and creates confusing navigation otherswise.

Would love some feedback, here or there, before i take it any further. Cat's are stupidly annoying to rename once made : / -- Zeal ^(T/C) 00:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

"Rumours" should be "Rumors". --Pcj (T•C) 01:27, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Fixed -- Zeal ^(T/C) 02:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

"Manhwa" is misspelled...and you may want to use "Manga" instead. --Pcj (T•C) 01:28, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Manhwa is the correct term here. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 02:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

"World of Warcraft Terminology" is misspelled. --Pcj (T•C) 01:30, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Fixed -- Zeal ^(T/C) 02:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

And "Terminology". --Pcj (T•C) 01:33, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

"World of Warcraft Recipes" is misspelled. --Pcj (T•C) 01:33, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Fixed -- Zeal ^(T/C) 02:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

"Speculation" is misspelled. --Pcj (T•C) 01:33, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Huh? Spelt correctly :S -- Zeal ^(T/C) 02:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Er, under Category:Root > Category:Content > Category:Community > Category:Original. Which also points out you've duplicated a category name. --Pcj (T•C) 02:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Supposed to be duplicated, multiple entry points. But yeah, somehow my find didn't find that typo, ty, fixed. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 02:38, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

"MOBs" should be title case, not upper. --Pcj (T•C) 01:33, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

To save any argument, seeing as the true etymology will never be known, changed to title case to match WW's usage. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 02:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I've made some initial changes. For reference, i'm moving existing cats to where they are in the proposed structure, irregardless of how they're currently being used, simply because moving cats frustratiningly isn't possible. After they're in place, i can go through and restablish their purpose and move out the contents of them that no longer fit, and create their new cats and place them in the structure. This will screw up the cats for now, but considering they couldn't be navigated properly and many screw ups already when i started, no problem.

I don't want to leave it in this state, but i'm shattered. So i'll face the music tomorrow and get back to work on it then.

To add soem extra reasoning before i go. Double categorizing cats easily becomes overkill when using them uneccessarily. They will cause user confusion, bloat (and because of how MW splits cat lists) make cats difficult to navigate, ultimately causing users to loose their way and not find the article they need, i've used them sparingly so far, in places where there is good logical reason for them to exist in multiple cats. The worst case of this was with Category:Lore, which i've undone now, but the second problem is with the abuse of the cat's purpose, creating a difficult cat to navigate with a huge list of articles in it, which belong elsewhere.

Other aspects were more simply things, like consistant and instantly obvious cat naming. I do need to switch to sentance case for them, but it'll do that as i go, much easier. Things like WoW spells and Spells, so that non-wow people are not forced to understand the mechanics and terminology of WoW in order to find and access the generic and source-neutral information. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 04:20, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, for those who wish to help out with this in regards to the wow item restructing may do so via Cat/wow item. Simply provide it with a quality, slot name (though often uneccessary) and a type as listed on the linked pages, and the cats will be filled out the best they can. Any extra cats you believe are needed can be added manually for now. You can overide the sorting of all cats by providing the first unamed parameter, and you can also specify the category to be used for the item's own category (for relationship catting, eg. related quests, npcs, items, zones etc.) I've quickly done the first random item,

[Crul'shorukh, Edge of Chaos], as an example. I'll be adding the missing pieces of the structure as articles get catted, to find out what still needs to be done, so no worries about dead cats. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 18:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

That template, is, quite simply, gross. I view the mixing of templates, with the express purposed of categorizing, to be mildly retarded and obviously unneeded; it also prevents ease of category sort-keys. And why on earth is it in every category under category items? The idea was to subdivide categories so far that navigating to a specific item through the use of categorization would be made easy, not difficult. The template, while promoting navigation by the fact that all the parent cats are there, also makes it difficult to find the most pertinent categories. If this is where every item page was going, I must disagree with the style implemented and, in general, with the number of categories found on the page. It overly bloats the parent cats at all levels; I was under the presumption that Template:C and other such categories would be a category only-categories, thus enhancing navigation, not detracting from it. --Sky (t | c | w) 22:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The template is a tempoary measure to be implemented better and differently in other templates later. It is very much needed and it allows a single custom category key.

Not having the item's categorised in all their correct categories actually makes it so you can't navigate, as you have to dig down through several categories just to get what you want. Without it, navigation of the cat tree would be extremely long winded and pointless for users, as doing so would be faster by simply searching or even trying multiple guesses at the names. Finding at which point you wish to re-enter the category tree from an article is as easy as any other navigation method that's been in used on here. There is no such thing as "most pepertinent" categories, they all existing as equal. Why the user is browsing that page and where the user wishes to continue browsing via the categories is completely unknown and up to them, thats why all possible ones are there. If you think sifting through roughly 10 empty categories to find an article and then continue browsing by going into a cat that is extremely removed from why you and how you arrived at the article just to browse back up and around another 10 empty cats, is good navigation then i'm extremely concerned.

If this is the concensus, then i'm not going to bother continuing with anything, as a navigational cat tree is impossible to implement any other way than this. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 22:20, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not consensus (yet! :P). It's a general concern, part of which stems from the fact that we then have more templates which need protecting, because of transclusion to over half the wiki (or more). I'm fine with "temporary," but such a template could turn into not so temporary quite quickly, based partially on concerns I listed last night on IRC (that we'd end up having to edit tooltip to change the categories, and then every category would have to be refreshed every time tooltip was edited, etc.)

"A single custom category key" is what I was concerned with, as well. Certain categories (Ie, c:wow engineering schematics items) should have their items sorted by what comes after "Schematic:". To force this category choice on the other categories would be inappropriate in context; they are, after all, just more items. Part of this, is again, the fact that the template includes the items into every "correct" category, and which I view as incorrect and unnecessarily including items in the category.

I would disagree that it makes navigation useless not to include the categories. It merely takes more time, as all the user must do is click on the category button, then click on parent category (and or child) buttons to move around the main super category. It surely takes longer, but also decreases the chance that the user misclicks, or can't find the category that they want (on the item's page) without taking 20 minutes (hyperbole). Think also on maintenance of this navigation system of yours, and specifically on changing the categories in some way or form; it would quite literally require the bot that you detest (or, the template I detest) to eradicate any vestiges of this issue. Perhaps this is really just a call for something other than the category system, such as DPL or perhaps SemanticWiki. --Sky (t | c | w) 22:42, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Bloody edit conflicts..

It's supposed to become permenant, and as i said in reply to you on IRC, it would no be implemented on a large scale until the structure and categories are completely. Don't confuse the silly constant creation of new categories and new naming with a need for categories to change often, they're not supposed to. When it's complete, it can be implemented on a large scale. Then only if the structure/policy is rewritten would there need to be a change. If you're not satisfied with that, {{subst:}} is your friend.

The single category key is a concern, one which i too have considered, but it's one without a plausable work around until we get string functions for example.

It is useless, i don't understand how you can think otherwise. If it takes more time, it becomes an non-desirable browsing method, no one uses it, it's pointless. Part of the reason why the previous structure was useless. I don't think anyone is stupid enough to misclick. A user will be looking for the key words that they are browsing by and relvent to their browsing history. Having to navigate through multiple empty categories is a series flaw and will take alot longer and loose users in the process.

I don't know why you think maintenance of the category structure will be harder with this, it's a hell of alot easier. No one will ever have to go through this all again once it's finished. A search and replace on the relevent templates, create the new cats, delete the old ones, done.

Just to further add something for visualization. It's basically a cross section of the category tree.

Article
Category
Category Link
Article Link
<imagelink>http://www.zealvurte.co.uk/temp/cat_nav.gif%7Chttp://www.zealvurte.co.uk/temp/cat_nav.gif</imagelink>

As you can see, articles are linked at more each level of accurancy until the category tree reachs the conclusion of the article itself (at which point relationships to other articles are direct, not shown here though.), and there are also links out back to the category at the levle of accuracy the user was browsing by, so that they can continue navigating with the same critera without being forced to take long routes back to where they started. Only the very top level cats, which are that far removed and obscure contain categories links only (and the few very specific related articles eg. Lore for Category:Lore). If Category:Items becomes overloaded, it would be sensible to remove articles from that level and change the category description to reflect the new restriction, rather than to leave it to the auto-page splitting of the wiki, which annoying effects cats too, preventing easy navigation. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 23:05, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, just reporting on some IRC convo. Basically what's being said is this..

The categories are bloating article pages.
The categories on articles are hard to read and find the one you want.
Self catting and relationship catting is redundant.

My replies to this is..

They're at the bottom of the article, it doesn't harm anyone who isn't using them to navigate, and those who do will be forgiving.
The display is ugly, yes. Finding the one you want is more difficult yes. But people can find them, and those who use it will appreciate that.
I've created a basic example, with awful naming (simply because the naming that would work well that i proposed never got anywhere). Category:Primal Might

Because of MW being it's awful self, this is how it must be. Yes it's far from perfect, but it's acceptable, simply because the alternative is a category namespace that can't be navigated completely.

A little theoretical walkthrough of how this works out, is that people may choose to browse the cat tree, simply because there's less info to process for the user, no images and potentionally unwated content to load and it's more direct while allowing a complete picture of the wiki's content.

Let's say i wanted to find what items i can make with Primal Might, avoding articles a much as possible.

Category:Root>Category:Content>Category:World of Warcraft>Category:World of Warcraft items>

At this point, i could jump into primal might directly at any stage if i browse the cat's pages or if there's few enough for me to quickly scan, or i can choose to dig further and further, following any number of paths. Without the multi catting, i wouldn be able to do this. I'll pick path to traverse at random.

Category:World of Warcraft profession items>Category:World of Warcraft ingredient items>Category:World of Warcraft elemental items

Now depending on how accurate we wish to take the wiki, Category:Primal Might could be placed here, but it's not for now, as it's a bit of a leap. The article is, so lets click it now it's obvious enough.

The article could easily contain a list of related links to follow, one of them being Category:Primal Might World of Warcraft created items, to allow me immediately jump into a dynamic list of all the items i can create from Primal Mights, but once again it's not (yet another reference to my failed proposal). So instead, for now, it'll mean jumping into the most specific category for this article, it's self. So next step..

Category:Primal Might>Category:Primal Might World of Warcraft created items

And i'm there. I've just successfully found the information i want, in a slimmed down and dynamic version, and can then just off link and view the items i want. I've minimized myself to one article load (which is purely by current nessecity) and i also have access to get back any point along my path which had specific enough criteria from the article.

Now ofc, i could have gone simply typed Primal Might into the WW search or url, and skipped out all this, but the point was i wanted to view everything along the way without the load, and possibly divert to something else for viewing later, along similar lines as Primal Might, it could have been as simply as Primal Nether. I can't get there easily via any article links, it would require typing in, but with the cat structure i've implemented, it's a two click job.

So to summaries once again, it's not pretty, it's not perfect, but it's functional, it works, and it's helpful. The alternative is to not offer fully browsable nav tree, in which case i should have stayed in bed ;)

Oh, and with the introduction of the cat tree exenstion, things will get even easier and faster for cat navigation. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 04:09, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Converting vertical templates to horizontal templates

I'd like to propose converting most of the vertical templates which link to related pages (not the Infobox templates which provide a succinct summary of the current article) to horizontal templates and move them to the bottom of the page, where most of the "See also" content already is (or should be). I know Foxlit and Baggins both have mentioned this in the IRC channel, and wanted more input. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 19:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Amen to this idea, it definitely needs to happen. I've looked at various pages from different monitor sizes and found that at some resolutions too many template at the top of the page squish the actual article content. Page related infoboxes are awesome but anything more than that just looks cluttered.Baggins 19:08, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd have to agree too, the verticals ones always look out of place...

(^Sssss/_Slithered) 19:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

How would we deal with instances? Kirkburn talk contr 20:15, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you talking about templates like {{Blackrock Depths}}? I don't see what would be wrong with putting them at the bottom as horizontal templates... --Pcj (T•C) 20:21, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed.Baggins 20:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I also agree that it can get pretty squashed, and the templates should be moved to the bottom. That said, I'd also like to get a new type of bottom-box implemented, that I'd be stealing from wp. I think I might have a go at it in monobook tonight. --Sky (t | c | w) 03:04, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. I hate having to scroll to the bottom of the page for navigation aids. For some cases, horizontal navigation templates work, but not universally. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:23 PM PST 5 Jan 2008

...If you're reading the page for content as most people are, you don't need navigation until you're done with the page. Which means you're at the end of the page already and it's scrolling back up that's the chore. --Pcj (T•C) 22:33, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Ya. People generally go to a page to read the page not to instantly navigate to another. If there was something truly important that directly had something to do with the topic they were reading beyond six degrees of seperation its going to be linked within the text rather than just the navbox, so they click on those instead. Most stuff stuff in navboxes have little to do with each other beyond some extremely limited connection generally.Baggins 22:41, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I must be unusual, in that I fairly often go to a page (eg, category, zone, instance) specifically to navigate to another; often for spelling/capitalization reasons, often simply for association reasons. Admittedly, this is still a small portion of my total page views, but a nontrivial portion of my use of the wiki. --Eirik Ratcatcher 21:13, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think scrolling is a chore either way, thats why theres a Home and End key on the keyboard...But perhaps for the instances, a horizontal top bar. A bar that contains the instances' bosses at the top of the page rather than the side or bottom, that way it doesn't squash the page, and still remains at the top for better access.

(^Sssss/_Slithered) 22:45, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

As an almost exclusive laptop user, expecting people to have Home/End buttons with a single press is just presumption. However, modest horizontal navigation aids at the top might not be so bad. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:07 PM PST 5 Jan 2008

To be honest I'm not into top bars either, especially thick ones. They can dominate shorter articles even more so than if put at the bottom. Most people go into a page to see what's in that page, not to see links to what's on other pages.Baggins 00:48, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, vertical templates close together with other templates such as npcbox makes some pages look unprofessional. Example [2]--g0urra[T҂C] 00:50, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I definitely agree that two or more vertical boxes on the right side generally look bad, so one or more of the navigation boxes could be made horizontal. I just don't want everything to go to the bottom of the page. There are a few situation I can think of where people do not intend to read through the whole page before moving on to related information. Class, profession, and zone pages are places where I often find myself jumping around for info and not wanting to scroll or jump to the bottom of the page to look for navigation aids. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:16 PM PST 5 Jan 2008

Point of note zone navigation boxes are generally found at the bottom and middle (geography section) of zone pages already. Not at the top (I haven't seen any other complaints). We have been trying to avoid too many class navigation type templates, but the one that exists is for WoW content only. It is usually at the bottom of the page, with the exception for the square infobox at the top. Profession already has the nav bar at the bottom rather than the top (and I haven't heard any complaints).Baggins 01:29, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding professions, I think Fandyllic was referring to {{Blacksmithing}}, which is at the top, and I agree that it's much more useful at the top than at the bottom.

I don't think all nav bars should be at the bottom, but I do agree that some pages get cluttered. -- Mordsith - (talk|contr) 01:47, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I thought he meant the general professions template at the bottom. That one would be too much for the top. The little tiny boxtype profession at the top isn't too bad. Since its into being forced next to any other templates, its by itself.Baggins 02:15, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I support this proposal. Anything else i have to say in regard to this would require a reworking/removal or all nav boxes or redesign of all pages, all ideas to solve a multitude of issues you guys keep complaing about but have been/will be shot down. So i won't bother -- Zeal ^(T/C) 02:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe because they wouldn't solve them? Kirkburn talk contr 02:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

No need to respond to the bait. In the same way, no need to bait. In either case, wrong topic to be doing so in. Be nice, gentlemen. --Sky (t | c | w) 03:01, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

My apologies :) Anyway, I do agree more standardisation is useful, but recall why people visit instance pages in the first place - as a guide. Think of them as pages of a strategy guide, and it becomes apparent the navigation is very important, and especially that it is in order of appearance - which works better as a list. Kirkburn talk contr 03:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm working on converting vertical templates to horizontal, starting with the category Instance Navigation Templates, you can see my work here. Feedback would be appreciated.g0urra[T҂C] 03:48, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

They look fine, but the appearance of the template isn't the issue; it's how the page looks and the position of the template on the page which is in question. What I think we should do is either:

Integrate the vertical templates into an existing infobox on the page, or
Make the vertical templates as minimalistic as possible, and maybe link to an anchor at the bottom of the page with more detail. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 05:42, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

2. Make the vertical templates as minimalistic... Which would look something like this.--g0urra[T҂C] 06:32, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

That would work, but why not incorporate it into the navboxes we already have? eg, {{infobox instance}} and the like? --Sky (t | c | w) 07:10, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Could work if two templates in an article merge into one, for example boss and NPC list together with instance information (see Razorfen Downs). I am not sure though how it's possible to do that and at the same time keep it minimalistic. (or I might be completely off the hook here)--g0urra[T҂C] 07:41, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Gourra, the work you've done is appreciated, but the Razorfen Downs example still makes it so I have to scroll to the bottom to get to the navigation aid and having to navigate to a navigation aid seems like it defeats some of the purpose. The top navbox is pretty much pointless, might as well just use the TOC. I don't want to see WoWWiki re-designed to suit one small group of vocal and influential people who use the site. Everyone needs to be patient. There are many holes in WoWWiki that would be better filled than re-organized. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:42 AM PST 6 Jan 2008

Remember, please do not start changing stuff except as examples (sandboxing preferred) before a consensus has been made. Merging into infobxoes is a problem because it is not consistent between the main instance page and the individual boss pages. Kirkburn talk contr 15:24, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

That didn't come out quite correctly when I typed it. Give me a second to sandbox it up. --Sky (t | c | w) 17:37, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at the template on the right. It would mean a change or two two to instance infobox, but it's the concept of what I meant. --Sky (t | c | w) 17:45, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Btw, the WW:MOS already states how to use templates at the top of the page. The infobox is rightmost, then templates are further in. If that was stuck to, I don't really see a problem with how the instance pages are already set up. The instance page itself will have an instance infobox, whilst the bosses with have an NPC infobox - thus the navigation template should be in the same position. They should, however, be thin. Edit: updated the relevant MoS info Kirkburn talk contr 18:04, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

You should have at the very least a more precise definition of "thin" because of the various screen resolutions people have. --Pcj (T•C) 18:56, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Being precise is difficult, but how about less than half the width of an infobox (i.e. < 10em)? Kirkburn talk contr 19:24, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Er, make that "about 10em", wider if required. Kirkburn talk contr 23:00, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

For reference

This box is 10 em wide.

Seems a little narrow to me. Perhaps 12em:

This box is 12 em wide.

--

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:43 PM PST 6 Jan 2008

For purposes of the MOS, do {{tooltip}}s qualify as infoboxes? --Pcj (T•C) 16:24, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Following Sky's example, I made a suggestion to how a combination of instance infobox and navigation aid could look here. I'm not entirely sure that's what he meant, but that's my interpretation.--g0urra[T҂C] 17:42, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Not having read this discussion, I edited a few dungeon templates to be 15em wide in order to not make the names squeezed over too many lines. If we're trying to make the templates take less room, may I suggest at least keeping them at about 12em? The thinner a bar is, the longer it is, which in a sense actually makes it take up MORE room than if it were slightly fatter. Not to mention that reading names that span two or three lines can be annoying at length. ---- Varghedin talk / contribs 00:41, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Aye, when I suggested 10em, it was a rough guess - bigger is indeed better. I wasn't expecting someone to change the templates immediately :P Kirkburn talk contr 18:14, 9 January 2008 (EST)

Agreed, I'd like to see "fatter" instance templates, or have them replaced with horizontal templates (at the top of the page). Around 12em at least. I don't mind two vertical templates so much as the huge "empty space" that long thin templates cause when a thumbnail image is placed on the page. For example see Four_Dragons, or Archimonde (tactics), or Coilfang Reservoir, or Ysondre, or Prince Thunderaan, or ... -- Adonran 04:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Vote?

Are we holding off or rescinding a vote on this while we define the issues and solutions, then? --Eirik Ratcatcher 21:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I thought the decision was already made...

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 06:23, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

What was the decision? -- Adonran 15:21, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, just re-read all of it...a decision as to turning vertical templates to horizontal never occurred. But The vertical templates were decided to be skinner...as they were supposed to be already (according to policy) me thinks.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 21:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Redirecting quests

Well, here's a curious question, that I'm sure would leave an interesting answer from everyone else.

Recently, we have had people working on quest pages (there's a project floating around here somewhere), as well as "parent" quest chain pages. Would it not be prudent for the individual pages to be redirected to the quest chain pages? I realize, we lose the quest text in the process, as well as the direct elinks-quest, but I was just wondering. What would everyone think of this? This eliminates a little of the overgrowth we've seen with the bots chewing at the bits, and centralizes the information to be centralized. Thoughts? --Sky (t | c | w) 07:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll give you some reasons not to make quests redirects:

It will break toolips.
It will make some chain articles gigantic and unwieldy. Missing Diplomat, for example.
All the notes about individual quests will have to be migrated, otherwise the whole point of quests in WoWWiki will be lost.

Also, I'm not sure why concern for overgrowth is a compelling reason to make quests redirects. It also smacks of the horrible Warcraft and WoW situation at Wikipedia which is insanely confusing because alot of the redirects have become nonsensical. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:30 AM PST 6 Jan 2008

See, this is why I ask people about it. =) --Sky (t | c | w) 08:39, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

... I miss the whole "Warcraft" vs "World of Warcraft" distinction". Could someone explain? It seems to be the root of Zeal's category renaming effort.

That having been said, I agree with the "making chain articles unwieldy". The "breaks tooltips", and "migrate data" arguments, while valid practically, are things that could be worked around.

OTOH, the mind boggles at trying to keep individual quest notes on such a page both associated with the individual quest and not breaking up the description of the chain itself. Perhaps you've something in mind?

I will add, though, that the point of the chain articles (that I created) is mostly to provide a narrative for the series, not serve as a replacement for the individual pages. Not every series of quests has an interesting narrative, and only a sub-set of the remainder have any need for a page describing the link between quests. Thus, I expect many series of quests to remain with the simple quest chain transclusion page, without having an overarching chain page. ... or at least I will be unlikely to add them myself. (Boooo-ring.) :)--Eirik Ratcatcher 23:13, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Image dimensions?

I am currently occasionally going through img requests. Question: Look at this page: Enraged Crusher. If you click on the image to go to the Image:Enraged crusher.jpg page, you will see that the image is in very decent quality. The thumbed version however, which you see in the article, looks very crappy. What would be the best choice here? I assume, if I uploaded smaller images instead, they would not be "destroyed" like that in the process of making thumbnails, but that would also mean no good-quality picture when you click on it to see the larger version. Opinions plz! · tws T C · 17:39, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Refer to WoWWiki:Image guidelines. --Pcj (T•C) 17:43, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Can you describe how the image got destroyed, other than it just being resized? --Piu ^(?!) 19:15, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Can I also note that I think the empty image requests category is a very bad idea? Because things in there get image requests added to them, and don't get moved. Any other thoughts? --Jiyambi t || c 18:59, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean. Why wouldn't they get moved? When the image desired is added, the editor should remove the {{screenshot}} and the request should go away. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:45 PM PST 7 Jan 2008

What I mean is this: someone created Category:Empty image requests categories and put all the image request categories which were empty at the time into that category. This is a very bad idea because people have added new image requests using the {{screenshot}} tag, and suddenly these "empty" categories are no longer empty. However, they are still in Category:Empty image requests categories. So in fact this subcategory does not simplify things, it simply creates more work, causing people to constantly look through these "empty" categories anyway to check if new image requests have been added, and move them back and forth from the main image request category. Unless there is a good reason to keep it, I would like to get rid of it and just put all the image request categories back in the main Category:Image requests. --Jiyambi t || c 05:32, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds logical to me to get rid of them. I don't really see any point to categorize like that. --Pcj (T•C) 05:51, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, that makes sense. Having subcategories helps make the lists look less daunting, but extra work to navigate through. Go ahead and nuke them, but make the {{screenshot}} template stop pointing to the sub-categories first. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:22 PM PST 7 Jan 2008

Wait wait wait. That's not quite what I meant. I meant to simply get rid of Category:Empty image requests categories and put those categories back in the main image request category. There was a specific reason I went through and categorized all those images by zone - it was so people who were in a specific zone could fill image requests for that zone. Unless you have a good counter-argument to that, *please* don't undue that hour or more of work. --Jiyambi t || c 08:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I followed what you said Jiyambi, and i'm in agreement with you. The empty cat should be removed, and keep all the region subcats in the main category for the requests. Slap Kirochi for making it ;) -- Zeal ^(T/C) 14:29, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

<outdent> How about subcategories based on continent, then? It makes the category a little less clustered. --Sky (t | c | w) 15:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't have a problem with that. And thanks, Zeal :) I apparently fail at explaining things this week :P --Jiyambi t || c 18:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I took everything out of the Category:Empty image requests categories category and sorted them by continent. I also put instance image requests in a separate subcategory for now, since their parent zone is sometimes confusing (Old Hillsbrad Foothills, for example). Any comments on this? --Jiyambi t || c 21:01, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair-use Redux

Although there is another issue no one has brought up... Fair use. We really probably shouldn't be hosting these verbatim.Baggins 02:27, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

With respect to fair use, the pages from these imaginary books are no different than the game text that goes with every single quest and item in this site. If one did claim that one of these imaginary books was somehow its own separate work, than we are still only quoting the select pages shown in game. So either way, a small part of the whole, germane to our discussion of the game, —MJBurrage^(T•C) 03:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Thats what I was about to say...

(^Sssss/_Slithered) 03:24, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh I agree, all the quest pages if they are verbatim copy and pastes, are of questionable as standards of fair use goes. ...and there have been complaints and several discussions on what we should do to rectify that problem, and how to paraphrase things so they aren't direct quotes. As for the arguement, "a small part of the whole" while I think that's a logical way to look at it (and the way I practiced things in the past), however some people don't buy that explanation (seeing that if its illegal, then it simply shouldn't be done at all). They would also say that, sure you are only copying a page here and a page there, but they'd then point out that once you have copied all the the pages, you have copied the entire book. I've said it before and I'll say it again "fair use" is a tricky subject. Sometimes 1% of the original source will be viewed as breaking the law, and sometimes 100% will be allowed to be copied (usually fiction vs. factual sources however). See previous discussion in village pump history on fair use, WoWWiki_talk:Village_pump/Archive20#Fair_Use_Issues. So the trick comes down how do we balance between content and keeping to fair use, that people want us to stick to? ...and if we are going to enforce the fair use, it needs to be used across all materials, no mater its type, otherwise we might as well not have the clause at all.Baggins 03:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

While one could argue that quoting on-line game text verbatim on a site for players of said game is borderline, I would conclude that it is fair use in that context. (The published RPG books are a whole different issue unrelated to the topic at hand.) Regardless, as was discussed the last time fair-use came up here, Blizzard has specifically given permission to quote any and all game text shown on screen, which includes all of the "books" this would be used for. —MJBurrage^(T•C) 03:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Our policy as it is currently written and was intended to be enforced, is that its for all sources, not the game alone, This policy covers all articles which describe or discuss the content of Blizzard's computer games, novels, RPG books, manga, and other works. While articles containing direct quotes and images are obviously included, all articles which describe Blizzard's storylines, characters, and other creative expressions are also covered by Blizzard's copyright, despite being written in our own words.) You may have also missed the website's mission (in that its to cover all sources);

WoWWiki is a wiki dedicated to cataloguing Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft Universe (with a focus, though not priority, on World of Warcraft), covering the entire Warcraft series of games, RPG reference books, strategy guides, novels and other sources. However, this is not Wikipedia, and we have slightly different ways of doing things.

Its a bit unclear from the statement but the point of that statement is that WoWWiki is going to contain alot of strategy content for the MMO (we allow less of the previous games game strategy content, and do not allow RPG statistics information). However, for lore matters, lore falls under another policy all together, in which we give all sources equal merit.

Also as far as the law is concerned if a source is copyrighted it doesn't matter if its a game, a novel, a movie, a cartoon, a song, or even architecture, whatever the medium. The law sees them all as the same thing, an "intellectual property"[3]. Again we either enforce the policy, or we don't at all (I.E. strike it from the policies altogether). As for the RPG, to quote your idea above, you said, "if you seperate them into different pages" then you aren't copying the "entire work". I can guerentee no one has copied an entire rpg book in wiki, even if one takes the individual pages together. Nor has anyone copied the entire articles from books either (as there are alot of rpg game rules/statistics sections that are simply not permitted). It is entirely analogous to copying individual portions of the various computer games onto various pages. So if that is the policy you think we should follow, I suggest you bring it up as its own village discussion, and see what others think. I'm going to have to remain neutral on this issue however, and abstain from voting, because as an admin I have to hear the complaints from both viewpoints...

Finally let it be noted that whatever policy the editors choose to implement, as far as concerning lore material, its going to be enforced across all forms of intellectual property, no source will be given special treatment over other kinds. Baggins 03:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I think copying quest text and/or in game books verbatim here on wowwiki falls under fair use. They are such a small part of the whole game, and I don't think anyone could ever argue that having the text here could impact the sale of the game (which is basically what copyright comes down to, isn't it?) As MJBurrage said, the RL books are another story. Copying those here could impact the book sales since a book mostly consists of text. Besides, if you're going to argue fair use about this, what about the tooltips for every item? Blizzard allows those aspects of the game to be reproduced here because it enhances gameplay - it doesn't replace it.

From another perspective, Blizzard allows screenshots, and as far as I know, they don't limit what can be in those screenshots. We could host a screenshot of each page of the in game books/quest text. But typing the text into wowwiki would be more practical.

I hope that all made sense... I've never been very good at debating, and copyright law can get pretty blurry when you get down to the details. But it seems to me that quest text and in game book text falls within fair use on this site dedicated to the game, when the game itself is so much more than text. Mordsith - (talk|contr) 04:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

First off no one has actually copied the entire books (or copied anything that is the main reason for owning the books). Its not likely to hurt the book sells because they are already out of print, usually going out of print a month or two after being released. The company sells out their entire stock, and then don't even bother to make reprints. Even if they had plenty of stock (so that used books didn't sell for a hundred dollers or more), the portions that we have given access too would probably lead people to want to read the original source.

What has been copied from the book has only been a "small part of the whole source". Also I'm no lawyer, but there are aspects of the terms of service in the RPG books that mirror the terms of service in WoW although just like WoW's TOS its sort of nebulous as well. But seems to give some permissions to distribute portions of the whole as long as the entire work isn't distributed (although there is some lawyer speak loopholes that I'm still trying to figure out).

As for screenshots being allowed, then we should probably host the screenshot rather than "copy and pasting" the work, if that how Blizzard has allowed things.

In anycase i'm not a lawyer, but the point of our policy as far as lore material is concerned to treat all things equally. I won't go into mechanics stuff like tootips as that's not a part of the policy that I have any part of enforcing and barely understand it. But as a book keeper and admin my work is more in the lore department issues.Baggins 04:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

In anycase, whatever policy is in effect. Its the duty of the admin staff to enforce it. Even if that steps on the toes of others, on how they want to do things.Baggins 04:56, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Blizzard has different policies for how their intellectual property may be quoted based on the source. They treat the paper RPG differently than the MMORPG, and as a result there is no question that we may reproduce an in-game "book", shown on-screen verbatim if we choose to. Published (paper, PDF, what have you) books are treated differently by Blizzard, and so we cannot copy significant sections from those books. So while you could argue whether quoting these in-game "books" is clearly fair-use or borderline fair-use, we do not have to since Blizzard has given permission to quote any in-game text (which includes these "books".

Since the in-game "books" are text we may quote them without needing to use screen shots, which are harder to read and waste resources compared to text.

Of course what we choose to do within those legal limits, would be based on our own usage policy, but I do not see anything there that would prohibit quoting an in-game "book". —MJBurrage^(T•C) 04:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I've read blizzard's terms of use, and while it has permissions, it also has listed 'restrictions' and 'limits' written into it as well. Although they way they word things makes it unclear what is restricted exactly. The only way to know for sure is to ask blizzard what they mean exactly. Until permission is given, we will be enforcing WoWWiki's policy to the letter. We won't be taking fan interpretations of the laws, and will only accept an explananation by Blizzard themselves. The staff is currently working on a letter asking for permissions, and clarifications on what is permitted. Thank you.Baggins 05:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

As was said on IRC previously when this was brought up, an open dialog with Blizzard maintained through the fan site program, so we can be informed if/when we step over any line is really all that is needed. Other copyright holders should be treated differently. Logos, fan art, fan fiction from other sites etc. Should all require permission and meet fair use requirements. Currently this really isn't done as far as i can see. My personal views on copyright differ completely, but that's irrelevent. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 10:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Server article cleanup

It would be nice to have a standard layout for all of our server pages. Anyone agree? --Tyrsenus t c 00:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Talk to Kasyx. He is working on it as per here.--SWM24 48 20:57, 9 January 2008 (EST)

Well, Kasyx was planning to work on it. No activity since 28 Nov 2007, so you could take it over, if you like. Start with Help:Server articles/Preload and then transclude ({{:Help:Server articles/Preload}}) it into Help:Server articles. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:02 PM PST 9 Jan 2008

The two largest sections of most realm articles seem to be guild progression and rare craftables. Creating a standard layout for those would be a good place to start. We should probably discuss making those two subpages as some articles become overly long. --Tyrsenus t c 16:15, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

True, subpages would be the best way to do it. Perhaps, Help:Server progression subpages/Preload, Help:Server craftables subpages/Preload, Help:Server progression subpages, and Help:Server craftables subpages? --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:50 AM PST 10 Jan 2008

Winged instances

Winged isntances exist purely in name, they're no different from any other instances that shares the same parent zone and in later use Blizzard have decided to name then to include the zone or relavent place name too.

The current practice has been to have the parental zone or place name be regarded as a winged instance page, listed in {{Dungeons}} on its own, and then off link to each seperate wing from there. This has not been done properly for Scarlet Monastery (in terms of it's page), Dire Maul (in terms of it's page), Ahn'Qiraj (all of it), Sunwell (template listing, but it's still rather speculative in nature), and when you get down to it, Blackrock Mountain for Upper Blackrock Spire, Lower Blackrock Spire ,Blackwing lair, Blackrock Depths, and Molten Core.

Can we either have a consistant policy of how to we deal with instances sharing the same parent zone (without exceptions), or abolish the practice and list them seperately. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 11:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

If you want a policy, propose it. That's what we have WoWWiki:Policy status phases for. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:07 PM PST 14 Jan 2008

If i was proposing a policy i might, but i'm not. Opening up discussion on how it needs to be handled. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 23:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree we should reduce the emphasis on winged dungeons, especially as they relate to the navboxes for instances. The navbox for Blackrock Depths is an example of how long (and ridiculous) this can get. More importantly though, they're not related in a way that's relevant to the reader. When they're looking for tactics on Lurker, they're quite likely to also be interested in

[Tidewalker], but not at all in bosses in Underbog.

For one thing, they instances are separate, and for another one is a 25-man raid and the other is a 5-man dungeon. I use the instance navboxes *all* the time, but never cross-instances. Long navboxes expose too much content, make it hard to find what you really want, cause you to scroll, and actually cause severe layout problems (see "empty" space issue I mentioned above).

My recommendation would be to create navboxes per-instance, and just mention the other "linked" winged instances in each instance's navbox, but not list all the bosses in the other instances. -- Adonran 15:30, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Collaborative video editing

Wikia has a demo of Kaltura's collaborative video editing tool here. Kaltura's MediaWiki extension allows you to collaboratively create and edit videos, music, images, and animations directly on the wiki.

Please try it out and let us know what you think of it. We are very open to bug reports and suggested improvements and I will make sure any comments get passed on to Kaltura. See the help page for more details on how to use this.

If you can think of some cool uses for this tool on your wiki, please let us know. This will also help in the development since we need to know how people are most likely to use collaborative video.

I feel this has a lot of potential to enrich the content of many different wikis, so please give it some time and see how you could use it.

WikiAngela 19:48, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Looked good, but honestly seemed to be a bit buggy (transitions to next clip wasn't working at certain times, sound/video playing even when paused, effects happening on the wrong transition). Seemed a simple enough UI, but unless that's wrong and it's more complicated, it wasn't functiontioning as expected. Also the UI extended beyond it's frame, cutting it off slightly on the right.

Over looking all that, of course it has potentional, but personally i've never considered a wiki being a collaboration website. There's far better systems for that usage, so i can't see a video editing collaboration tool being of much use to wikis. :/ -- Zeal ^(T/C) 20:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Does this stuff have any particular hardware or software requirements? I couldn't find anything listed on the web site, but I'm sure there are some. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:11 PM PST 11 Jan 2008

Still haven't found any requirements, but it appears to work using a platform agnostic technology, although it may use flash or something like that. The tool basically doesn't create content per se, but allows you to manage and organize uploaded content as far as I can tell. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:58 AM PST 13 Jan 2008

The only requirement at the moment is that you have Flash installed. However, we're working on having it work on totally open source software, so even that won't be a requirement in the next release. It should work with pretty much any browser or platform. Angela

Thanks for all the feedback so far. One of the main issues seemed to be that there wasn't much in the way of help. There is now a video tutorial and some help pages on wikieducator. There are also some Halo 3 and Star Wars examples to show how this can be used in an article. If you have any feedback, questions, or bug reports, please add those here, or send them to me by email. Angela 03:34, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Kaltura in action

Check out http://www.kaltura.com/devwiki/index.php/World_of_Warcraft - this a (very) basic example of what it can do. I'm sure we can find uses for it - one example I thought was quite good was having video clips of each zone and mob. Sort of like using youtube clips, but without the awful music and more "neutral" (i.e. not people trying to show off how cool their guild is). Kirkburn talk contr 11:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Nice ideas, but i don't see Kultura being what's needed for this.

Collaboration doesn't lend itself to this. The examples above were pretty messy and inconsistantly done/styled because of it.
It shouldn't replace images and other content, just be an alternative or add further features. Once again, the examples above used are devoid of images and replaced with the videos and they offer nothing new, and are just there for the sake of it.
Only use them in places where other options aren't a better alternative. Using videos for a slideshow to list features is stupid and amatuer, the examples made me think i'd gone back to early days of the net. Use gifs for simple character/mob animations, javascript or flash for slideshows if needed.
Didn't look closely, but as far as i can tell, there's no audio descriptions or support for web readers, so accesibility is a problem.
Kultura honestly seems to be a rather bulky player for sticking into a wiki. Would prefer to see soemthing more streamlined, don't want to see the "edting and history" like features on the player when viewing only, perhaps different view modes should be implemented?

Using them as a fly-by tour of zones isn't a bad idea though, but still because of 1, i don't see Kultura being the answer to that. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 18:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, don't assume that what we create has to look anything like their examples :P Simple flybys and such would work best here, plus I'd imagine we'd have the stuff in their own video section. Kirkburn talk contr 18:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Mob/NPC box autocat?

Is there any reason why we don't have the mob and npc boxes auto-categorize their pages based on what's entered in their fields? I'm thinking location, race, quest giver, merchant, etc. --Jiyambi t || c 06:26, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

No one's done it yet?

--

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:59 PM PST 14 Jan 2008

No, and there are a few reasons I can see. First, we need to make sure that if it does get done, each article uses {{DEFAULTSORT}} in order to properly sort the article in its categories. Secondly, for things like the location field, the entry often includes both zone and subzone, which may make auto-categorization a problem. However, with a little restructuring this could certainly be a viable option (IMO). --Jiyambi t || c 23:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Manual of Style: navigation bars

pcj, following the WW:MOS guideline on navigation bars, moved the {{bars}} template to the left of the tooltip box. Because the bars navbar is quite tall compared to the tooltip, this leaves a great deal of space below the tooltip, looking quite bad. I find this quite irritating. I could live with the navbar to the right of the tooltip, or below the tooltip, but not to the left.

However, it has been requested that this be discussed before the MOS is changed. Thus, this topic.

If the navbar is smaller than the infobox, I have no objection to it being to the left of, said infobox, as text to the left of the navbar will flow below it. This is not the case if the navbar is longer than the infobox.

Nor can a hard-and-fast rule be made saying "must go below, above, or to the right of" either. "to the right of" fails when the reverse is true, a smaller navbar than infobox. "Above" fails by potentially pushing the infobox off the first viewable page (making it almost valueless); "below" potentially can do the opposite, pushing the navbar too low to be valuable.

To some extent, this is a failing of the vertical navbar format, something that "bottom of the page 'see also'" templates avoid.

Another alternative is the somebody-elses-problem-alternative... doing away with vertical navbars altogether. I mention it, but am not in favor of it personally. --Eirik Ratcatcher 20:39, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

It looks better to put the bigger & bulkier things at the right. Zurr T ∙ C 20:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Hence the discussion further up to convert all the navs to horizontal. It's uglier having the bigger one to the left, but either way having them along side each other is ugly anyway. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 20:48, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I actually agree with Zeal on this one. --Pcj (T•C) 20:51, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Which is why I recommend, for this case, that the navbar be put below the relatively short tooltip 'infobox'. And similarly request that the MOS guidelines remain guidelines, rather than legislating a standard that cannot possibly work in all cases (as shown by the vert/horiz discussion). --Eirik Ratcatcher 21:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I also think they should be completely converted to use horizontal navboxes.
Eirik, unfortunately, with the way tooltip floats (don't ask me how it floats...), it is extremely difficult to place the vert. navboxes correctly on the page without breaking bigger-that-normal resolutions (it's hard enough to not break it on standard reses). Which honestly means they should be placed where they don't become an issue, either by not-breaking the page and to the right of the smaller infoboxes, or complete conversion. I'd like to use {{navbox}} for conversion purposes, but it's not quite ready to be skinned in wowwiki (conversely, it's properly skinned in monobook). Will work on it some more this weekend. --Sky (t | c | w) 03:15, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding placement - reason it's a bad idea to have them on the right of the navbox is that it's inconsistent (which makes it harder to enforce) and confusing to users. However, I do not deny it makes certain pages look bad - but we should primarily be fixing that length issue, not the placement issue. There's few templates that need to be vertical other than instance navigation. Certainly I think {{bars}} and others should be horizontal. Kirkburn talk contr 07:20, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Changing something in the name of consistency; when WW:MOS is also a guideline; and when, it makes the wiki look borken, is, for lack of a better term, stupid. I realize the navboxes need fixing, but deliberately changing the guidelines to get them fixed, and then having someone go about fixing them in the manner done, is awfully pretentious. Gross, even. These templates have been like this for some time; not one complaint until now about consistency. /me goes off in a huff. Of course these need proper navboxes, which we can get them, if you just hold up a second. I'm going to bed now. Apologies for disturbing those with my very opinionated views on this particular matter. --Sky (t | c | w) 08:48, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Please look at

[Iron Bar] and tell me if it is broken on a larger-than-normal display, as I do not have one to test it on.

On the other issues, the hot button that was pressed for me was the breaking of pages that had previously worked. Akin to pushing a glass off a table, then declaring loudly that it should not have been placed so close to the edge. And yes, I've got relatives that DO that. *grumble* --Eirik Ratcatcher 19:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

A much secondary and aesthetic matter...

How about we rename the "Village pump archives" pages into "Village dump"? Shorter, funnier, easier to remember I guess.--K ) (talk) 18:49, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

No. --Pcj (T•C) 18:51, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 19:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Thirded. --SWM24 48 21:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

um...fourthed. sry, how to keep up with the -eds --

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 21:17, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should put requests like this in a "Village dump" page?

--

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:01 PM PST 14 Jan 2008

Also a resounding no. Much as it might seem funny, it has repercussions on appearance (it also makes us look like we're jacking Uncyclopedia's village dump. While not exactly the same, uncyc isn't exactly the epitome of human achievement. --Sky (t | c | w) 22:59, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I find more honesty in the Uncyclopedia than Wikipedia sometimes. The whole idea of a "village pump" as the gathering place for meaningful discussion is archaic and provinicial. WoWWiki is probably more deserving of a at least a "town square" by now. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:33 PM PST 15 Jan 2008

Granted. Some of the stuff is pretty funny on Uncyclopedia (especially regarding wikipedia itself). =) What does the name of "Village pump" have anything to do with this particular discussion though?... --Sky (t | c | w) 04:25, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I second the motion to renaming Village Pump to Town Square...

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 04:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Everything Sky, the name of it is what this particular discussion is about. I think is should be more Warcraft related if it gets renamed. Warcraft is somewhat archaic (but with a lot of anachronisms), so it may fit. What about a gathering spot in one of the capitals? Alliance or Horde?--SWM24 48 21:16, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't Town Hall be more prudent? -- Zeal ^(T/C) 21:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Um, no Sandwich. The original question was "Should we rename the archives to "Village dump". I said no, we shouldn't. I don't know how renaming this page came up. :/ --Sky (t | c | w) 04:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Account name change

Would it be possible for a bureaucrat to actually change my account name from Apollozeus to Amberrock? I know it should be possible for the Mediawiki software, since I got my name changed on Wikipedia as well.AMBER^(RΘCK) 22:43, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

It's a specific extension that does it. Thankfully, it was installed after joining wikia. Um... we can always poke Kirkburn. =) --Sky (t | c | w) 22:46, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I can do this, but I'm not sure what the repercussions will be. Let's discuss it further on your current talk page. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:55 PM PST 14 Jan 2008

Okay, the guinea pig that was "Apollozeus" has been polymorphed (

) into Amberrock. I hope this doesn't start an avalanche of requests. We might want to see if Amberrock has green ichor oozing from the ears before all taking the rename leap. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:40 PM PST 14 Jan 2008

Oink, oink. The test seems to have been completed successfully :). Thanks a lot Fandyllic!AMBER^(RΘCK) 22:47, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Oooh! oooh! can I try my Poultryizer on Amberrock next?! Can I? Huh? --Eirik Ratcatcher 19:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation: Mainly for storyline or for game mechanics?

I ran across a problem when trying to add external links to Corki. Quite logically, there is a different ID for each of the three locations he spawns, but in the storyline he's the same character... So, should all the external links and whatever other information is dependent on the location he is be on one page or disambiguated between 3 different pages? --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 20:51, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

How about something like this? --k_d³ 21:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I would say to keep all three Corkis on the same page, with the information (i.e. links) split into three sections. Kirkburn talk contr 21:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Clean it up to like this.--SWM24 48 21:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Check for too big images

A few weeks back I went through a bunch uploaded images and added them to the Category:Big Images, if they were over 200KB. For a subset of those images, I tagged with the {{cleanup}} template as a warning to re-upload smaller versions. As a rule, I generally only marked images that were used for personal purposes (character images, guild screenshots, etc.).

I left messages on user talk pages requesting re-upload of smaller versions and some people responded. This message is basically a warning to people who I left a message, that 1 month after the talk page message, I'm going to start re-uploading smaller versions myself or marking them for speedy deletion based on the WoWWiki:Wikisquatting part of the WW:DNP policy (Do Not Post). -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:05 PM PST 17 Jan 2008

I had to laugh at and add reasoning to the ones which are really bitmaps just renamed to JPEGS, they're about 500KB+.

Tbh, i think 300KB should be your cut off for this. That is, if you plan to use WoWWiki as a gallery for viewing fan and official artwork (which is going to be at large resolutions) and image resource as it currrently is. If not, then some changes and clairfications need to be made in policy and guidelines to make a 200KB cut off sensible.

Right now, theres a good deal of official and unofficial artwork on here at their original resolutions. The guideline says about encouraging sizes for viewing only (which typically would only be about 200x200px), yet it also says to keep artwork local and reduce offlinking.

So make up your minds, either have a lower resolution locally and offlink to the original full resolution image, or keep original full resolutions locally. Can't have ti both ways. Personally i favour the former. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 21:46, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

How much of the problem can be solved by converting (eg) BMPs to PNGs/JPG? Any? --Eirik Ratcatcher 22:59, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

JPG, will drop file sizes around 60-80%, but there was only about 4-5 BMPs in that cat. Don't recall any being worth converting to PNG. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 23:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I only recommend PNG for those images which need transparency, but can't deal with the low color count of GIF. I tend to upload as PNG, tho out of habit unless they get too big. I made the cutoff 200KB for personal stuff that doesn't have a general use. I could have picked 300KB, but then people would be loading up tons of 299KB images which are really rather large. At 200KB you have to try a little to make it smaller (cropping, more, compression, etc.). Overall, WoWWiki is quite generous to wikisquatters. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:46 PM PST 17 Jan 2008

Fandy, you've got lots of official artwork and fan art in that cat too, so it's not just wikisquatters you're dealing with. That's why i pointed out the conflict in the current guidelines which needs to be resolved for to the cut off size to be so low, esepcially for things like official artwork, wallpapers and fanart wallpapers, ui screenshots etc, which don't themselves fall into the realm of using WW as a image host or wikisquatting. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 12:05, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering if this was really an issue anymore, especially since we just got a lot more space on the server, and will continue to get more yearly. Screen resolutions (and screen monitors) seem to be exploding in size, and two years from now we make think of 200kb as quaint. I would personally prefer to keep some of the WoW official artwork/sreenshots such as Daggercap Bay and Grizzly Hills, as well as some of the maps like Baron 45-min and Outland map, as I wouldn't want to see compressed lower-quality images of them. I saw a few exceed 300kb, so I'd recommend setting the new limit to 400kb. -- User:Adonran/Sig1 23:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

People don't read anymore: "As a rule, I generally only marked images that were used for personal purposes (character images, guild screenshots, etc.)." So the images you mentioned don't count. As I also mentioned, the limit is intentionally low so people would try a bit to reduce the size of their images. Everyone alwyas thinks its okay to use up resources they think are free. Space is free, because we aren't using it with some consideration. When just upload whatever we feel like, space won't seem so available. You should have been here before Wikia took over WoWWiki. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:55 PM PST 18 Jan 2008

Why read when you can just respond? .... I know when I respond to comments I only glance at the title.... Where was I going with this... *walks away mumbling to self*

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 02:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Fandy, apparently you don't even check your own work. I read what you said, the problem is what you said isn't what you did. You've marked lots of fan artwork and official artwork, images being used and other images that do not fall into the categories or reasoning you mentioned. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 12:59, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I marked fan artwork and official fan art for {{cleanup}} or just put them in the Category:Big Images? They are diferent things. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 7:38 PM PST 19 Jan 2008

Trainer vs Pattern

I was suprised to find that several of the (tailoring) patterns I'd squirreled away had become redundant... According to comments on Thottbot, the trainers have been teaching that particular recipe for better than a year now. (I can only verify that it is so today. No time machine, sorry.)

Yet... Armory (as near as I can tell) and Thottbot list it as "recipe", not "trainer". Neither Wowhead nor Allakhazam seems to list that particular distinction (as far as I can tell). Yes, the 'pattern' items still exist, but the fact that the recipe is taught by trainers now is valuable.

[Ghostweave Belt], [Frostweave Gloves] are the ones I stumbled upon just today. We can assume there are others, and probably not simply in Tailoring.

If we only scrape other data sites, the information we present will be misleading. Anyone want to take on as a project, verifying the lists of trainer-taught recipes? --Eirik Ratcatcher 22:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, the two in particular that you mentioned... On Wowhead, it does list both trainers and the recipe when you click on the "spell" to make the item. http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=18410#taught-by-item for example. -- Mordsith - (talk|contr) 12:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not so very familiar with Wowhead, and my systems tend to be idiosyncratic. --Eirik Ratcatcher 19:38, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Template:Loot?

Is there a problem with Template:Loot? Take a look at Jewelcrafting recipes and scroll down to the bottom. Everything turns into Template:Loot and none of the items are displayed. It wasn't like this a few days ago, and no history of the Jewelcrafting recipes page has changed recently. -- Divisortheory 17:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The template is fine, the problem is how many times it is being used on the same page. Wiki pages aren't designed to use that many templates or get that large. Zurr T ∙ C 19:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Should prolly make links to the separate types of recipes (master, artisan, expert, etc) instead of having them all on one page.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 19:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Nope, it's because someone converted {{loot}}s to {{item}}s in Jewelcrafting/RecipeTable/Journeyman, which has completely bloated all pages that are including it with each item's page and they're tooltips, and they're links, and their icons and their.. so on and so on. It's not ever to be used on lists.

I'm just glad this happened, it should be deleted anyway. the list of recipies is fine as a category, doesn't need a page doing nothing mroe than repeating tons and tons of info without making use of it. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 19:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Template problem on that page is fixed, though I don't believe the wiki should repeat all that information. --Pcj (T•C) 19:27, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Something wrong with Special:Search

When I use Special:Search to search for "TCG", I get nothing. But, with the Google search, it finds alot. Any ideas? -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:15 PM PST 19 Jan 2008

It seems that 3 letter words and below will procude no results, even if a page exists, proven by searching for something as simple as "lol" and seeing the article link in small at the top. Never did like the 3 letter limit, should be 2. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 13:24, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe* again it's the old issue with mysql indices only working with strings >3 out of the box - very common in php applications if the creators don't think about that Armagon (<imagelink>http://www.wowwiki.com/images/c/cb/GossipGossipIcon.png%7CUser_talk:Armagon</imagelink> <imagelink>http://www.wowwiki.com/images/5/51/BinderGossipIcon.png|Special:Contributions/Armagon</imagelink>) 17:45, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Wowstreet images

My site, wowstreet.ajs.com now produces on-the-fly pricing history charts. They're licensed under CC-By-SA-3.0 and available via the following URL:

http://wowstreet.ajs.com/wowstreet.png?i=ITEMID;plot=1;w=200;h=125

Where you should replace "ITEMID" with the itemid from Wowhead or Thottbot, e.g. Silk cloth's chart would be:

<imagelink>http://wowstreet.ajs.com/wowstreet.png?i=4306;plot=1;w=200;h=125%7Chttp://wowstreet.ajs.com/wowstreet.png?i=4306;plot=1;w=200;h=125</imagelink>

I know that Wowwiki doesn't currently have the external image link feature turned on (it's a core MediaWiki feature), but I thought this might help anyway. All I as in the way of attribution is a link to:

http://wowstreet.ajs.com/wowstreet?i=ITEMID

again, with silk cloth that would be:

http://wowstreet.ajs.com/wowstreet?i=4306

either from the image itself (usually not possible with MediaWiki... grumble) or on the image description page if you upload the image. While it's possible to request larger images, I ask that people not place these large images on their sites, as the bandwidth hit to me would be substantial. -Deepone 16:38, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

External images are supported with the use of imagelink:

<imagelink>http://wowstreet.ajs.com/wowstreet.png?i=4306;plot=1;w=200;h=125%7CSilk Cloth</imagelink>

--Pcj (T•C) 03:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm curious as to how you're getting the information. Manually scanning the prices on each (every?) server? :/ --Sky (t | c | w) 10:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Use <imagelink> this way for external images: <imagelink>image_URL|image_URL_again</imagelink>

For internal images: <imagelink>image_name|local_link_or_external_URL</imagelink>

In the internal case, image_name is just the name of the uploaded image that would normally be viewed at [[Image:image_name]]. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:55 AM PST 21 Jan 2008

Very impressive, by the way. It appears that Wowstreet is only scanning a subset of the servers from a visit to http://wowstreet.ajs.com/wowstreet and looking at the left sidebar. I'm assuming these are all US realms.

Wowstreet realms/factions scanned as of 20:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Realm/Faction	Realm/Faction	Realm/Faction
Aerie Peak/Horde Aerie Peak/Alliance Aggramar/Horde Aggramar/Alliance Area 52/Horde Area 52/Alliance Argent Dawn/Neutral Argent Dawn/Horde Argent Dawn/Alliance	Coilfang/Alliance Dentarg/Horde Jaedenar/Alliance Korialstrasz/Horde Korialstrasz/Alliance Laughing Skull/Horde Maiev/Alliance Nazjatar/Horde	Norgannon/Horde Norgannon/Alliance Proudmoore/Horde Proudmoore/Alliance Thorium Brotherhood/Neutral Thorium Brotherhood/Horde Thorium Brotherhood/Alliance Uldaman/Horde Uldaman/Alliance

--

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:14 PM PST 21 Jan 2008

Wow, I don't think I posted this comment here (think it was on the discussion page for the main page), but thanks to whoever replicated it here. So, in answer to the questions: I scan a few realms (someone kindly listed them above) and plan to add functionality to accept other users' Auc-ScanData.lua files for upload. The only catch for that is coming up with how I want to protect against abuse (e.g. uploading subtly incorrect data). I'll also be adding the ability to DOWNLOAD Auctioneer configs so that people transferring to new realms or just starting out with Auctioneer can get a jump-start.

As to imagelink: I'll play with it. Again, some form of attribution is required. I don't care (nor have any say, really) over whether that's making the image a link to my page for the item or adding textual attribution. Either way, CC-By-SA is pretty clear on the need for something. I may go ahead and create a template if I can get imagelink to do the right thing.. that way others can just use that if they want to. -Deepone 20:32, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I tried to come up with a template so that {{price graph|4306}} would work, but it fails to replace the template parameter number 1 with the item id.... Any ideas? -Deepone 20:42, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Because the wiki's parser doesn't like parameters within parser tags. :[ --Sky (t | c | w) 20:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's certainly how it seems to be. I keep running into this on my own Wiki and and the various WikiMedia sites (e.g. Wikipedia). Why, at this late date, MediaWiki doesn't have a real parser is beyond me. None the less, does anyone have a suggestion for solving this? It would be awfully nice if {{price graph|xxxx}} could work. -Deepone 22:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

PvP item conflicts

I've discovered an interesting bug: some items has the same name but have different levels, which leads to possible disambiguations. Take for example [General's Dragonhide Boots]: there's a level 60 [4] and level 70 [5] version of it, but right now it's the level 70 version in the article. There's possibly more items that has this problem too. How should this matter be handled? Make a (60) / (70) after the article name?--g0urra[T҂C] 12:24, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

They should be disambiguated, with " (level 60)" and " (level 70)" appended to the item name. --Pcj (T•C) 13:58, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Got love that foxlit and pcj have indirectly forced a rule to change to how i wanted it but was denied previously. Technical limitations ftw :P -- Zeal ^(T/C) 15:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, be quiet. You forgot to design tooltip to deal with disambigs. Since it's been fixed, disambigs such as this are how items work. --Sky (t | c | w) 03:26, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Huh? I intentionally didn't support them, and still don't, to make a point about their abuse. The fact it does now has nothing to do with why the pages are done like that. Get facts straight please. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 15:39, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Recipe Hunting

I looked for, and did not find, guides to finding recipes for each of the tradeskills. Found pages that listed (baldly) every recipe known to man or orc. But to discover which recipes I should lurk on the auction house for, which I should quest for, and which I could simply go to <vendor in unlikely location> to find, I would have to look at each recipe individually.

So, being the lazy sod that I am, I took the Engineering Recipes page, and distilled it into something more like what I wanted. The question is, would anyone else find that page of use to them? The other question is, have I just duplicated work someone else, somewhere, had already done? I am reluctant to move this out of my user space without some indication that other people would find it of use. --Eirik Ratcatcher 19:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Down with lists, up with comparisions and guides. Sick of those useless list articles and would love to see more usefull ones like the one you've made.

As to if it's a duplication, i've no idea, sorry. Such articles tend to be rather obscurely named and left to their own devices : / -- Zeal ^(T/C) 19:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Your version looks to be just a good version of an engineering guide. So, I would move your page to the main namespace and link it under Engineering#Engineering Guides. The problem is many of our local profession guides are out of date, because we don't necessarily have a conscientious maintainer like most of the ones in the official forums. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:04 PM PST 21 Jan 2008

I really think those guides should be merged into one. --Pcj (T•C) 20:05, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Currently my OCD is fixed on a Compleat series, but when I can get a wedge under my fixation, sure. --Eirik Ratcatcher 19:25, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Gold selling ads

Seeing gold selling site ads on the left side... WoW for mac, WoW:BC for PC, WC3: frozen throne, "Cheap world of warcraft gold wow gold". Ads from Shopzilla, according to the bottom link. --Azaram 04:31, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Me too, and so did Kirk. He's going to poke Wikia about them in the near future. --Sky (t | c | w) 19:49, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I remember a minor uproar about them a while back, which is why I mentioned them. Me, I don't really care. --Azaram 01:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Good you noticed them. I've so trained myself to tune out the ads, I don't notice when they are bad stuff. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:06 PM PST 24 Jan 2008

Poke done. Basically we now need to start filtering based on URL, so if and when people see them, please pass them on. Probably posting them on my talk page works well. Kirkburn talk contr 23:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Zonename_quest articles

First of all, I could not find any 'official' template/boilerplate for this kind of article. Neither a discussion or vote about them. So I hope for now this is the right place to discuss this.
Currently there are at least three different styles in use:
Feralas_quests
Ghostlands_quests
Teldrassil_quests
Generally speaking I prefer the layout of the Teldrassil page, but I love the map at the end of the Ghostlands article, and also the "Quests by level" table contains some useful information that the table on the Teldrassil page does not have.
So I wondered if somebody could make an enhanced version of the Teldrassil_quests and we can finally have it in Category:Boilerplates? And here is my personal wish-list:

The and icons do not appear in row, but below each other, which blows up the page and disrupts the design.
The Icon itself should be clickable (and not an arrow next to it).
I'd like to have prerequisite quests included in the table

(Reeina 20:23, 23 January 2008 (UTC))

Aye, Teldrassil quests is how they should look. Just haven't gotten around to it. I too like the map, as it helps consolidate questing stuffs. Um... Check out WoWWiki:Quest list project and it's talk page either way, as I'm sure some of that has been suggested. =)

IIRC, we couldn't make the image clickable, but I'll poke around with the template. It might be wise just to move the arrow next to it. --Sky (t | c | w) 20:28, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Huh, I never saw that map before, it is awesome. We are currently trying to get input on the quest list "boilerplate", please see the WoWWiki:Quest list project talk page and add your input there. Hopefully before to long we will have a standard to apply everywhere. Thanks :) --Jiyambi t || c 20:50, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

That's the page I was looking for and could not find, thanks a million ;-) (Reeina 21:27, 23 January 2008 (UTC))

You can make images clickable (link to a page or URL).

Use <imagelink> this way for external images: <imagelink>image_URL|image_URL_again</imagelink>

–OR–

For internal images: <imagelink>image_name|local_link_or_external_URL</imagelink>

In the internal case, image_name is just the name of the uploaded image that would normally be viewed at [[Image:image_name]].

Also, don't forget about

. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:57 PM PST 23 Jan 2008

You can't use imagelink in a template. Trust me, I have tried with {{chain}}, to much despair. If there is some other way to do it, linking from the chain would be wonderful. --Jiyambi t || c 01:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, you can use <imagelink> in templates (see {{Alliance Linked Icon Small}} and {{Horde Linked Icon Small}}), but the reverse is not true, and that is probably the problem. I've put a request in for the ImageLink extension at WoWWiki:Server requests which should work much better. This is an actual wiki extension rather than just a parser extension (although, I'm not sure what that means exactly) and will hopefully support templates and other extensions inside it. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:54 PM PST 25 Jan 2008

Windows Script Errors

I'm using IE 7 and every time I drag the mouse around on the wowwiki page I get a Windows Internet Explorer popup that says absolutely nothing. It's completely empty with only an OK button and a title of "Windows Internet Explorer". It makes wowwiki unusable for me because I can't use the mouse at all. I've been using it fine for quite some time, this only started today. Is this a known issue?

-- Divisortheory 22:08, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that, purge your cache and refresh. I was testing something earlier. --Pcj (T•C) 22:09, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Whew. Honestly for a second there I thought the site had been compromised with some sort of malicious script code or something, lol. --Divisortheory 02:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Where is DuTempete to crack the whip when you need it?

--

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:01 PM PST 23 Jan 2008

Kirkburn relieved me from whip-cracking when he arrived. Admittedly, though, we've both been a tad unavailable...

However, if you would feel comforted by it, Fandy: Bad Pcj, bad!

Better? --DuTempete talk|contr 19:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Much, thanks!

--

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:48 PM PST 25 Jan 2008

User template color problems.

Several of the user templates have a background that either blends into the links, making them unreadable or contrasts painfully, like the Molten Core one. The Gnome Engineering {{User GnoEng}}, and Blackwing Lair {{User BWL}}are worst about it, but others like nether drake mount and brewfest ram are hard to read with the color combinations as well. I was updating my user page, where I use a bunch of them just for the amusement value, and noticed them... Dunno how to fix them, and don't have the best color sense myself, being partially colorblind...--Azaram 01:50, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I will fix {{User GnoEng}} and {{User BWL}}, but I will also show how you can fix link coloring here.

With a link like [[Gnome Engineering|device]]
- Put a span tag with a nice color around the second item ("device") also known as the link label:

[[Gnome Engineering|<span style="color:#4422aa;">device<span>]]

With a link like [[Blackwing Lair]]
- You need to add a label and add a span tag with a nice color:

[[Blackwing Lair|<span style="color:#402089;">Blackwing Lair<span>]]

I hope that helps. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:04 PM PST 24 Jan 2008

Cool... I'll try them next time... Thanks. --Azaram 11:43, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Profession Trainer Pages

I was looking at the Profession Trainer entries on the wiki and noticed that few of them have a list of what they train and when they do have a list it usually starts at skill of 80. I would like to update the pages, but would like to know what the standard is before I do so to avoid unnecessary edits. So the real question is what skill level should trainer lists begin at?-- Shanoaravendare 19:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Skills start at one, so that sounds like a good place to start to me. --User:Mucke/sig 19:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Sandboxes

How do you start a personal sandbox? -- Shanoaravendare 20:08, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

For yourself, just create a new article at User:Shanoaravendare/Sandbox -- Zeal ^(T/C) 20:32, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks!--Shanoaravendare 20:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Category/infobox change article requested

As per my comment in another thread...

I would like to see an individual page dedicated to the work Zeal is doing, recategorizing things, the plans for info boxes...

... and a transition plan.

The tides of archiving will sweep away all discussion of the plan made here, eliminating any rationales, examples, etcetera. As well, the 'here's the article, here's the discussion' method works well for proposals, standards, and pretty much any other topic. And this is a topic, not simply a discussion. Witness that talk about it spans several conversation threads here.

I do not feel my understanding is up to this task, or I would do it myself. --Eirik Ratcatcher 01:24, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

The originally linked cat tree was the example of how to implement the "plan", showing naming conventions and structuring the categories with the discussion and reasoning spanning VP and IRC. The "plan" was suggested by Kirkburn to offer something similr to what he had started on the starter wiki at wikia. The catting template was the original showcase of how the catting would then work.

Kirkburn has suggested the possibility of turning this into a projects, for the most part i'm happy to do the structure myself and prefer to do so, but the catting does require alot of collaboration, yes, so it's an idea.

That's about all you're getting from me. If you don't like the structure, then you're against existing policy and you're against the idea that the category should be able to serve a function other than sit there and look ugly. If you don't like the article catting, then show a consensus (or admin tell me to stop) and i'll stop everything, as without it this is futile. simple.

Honestly i don't get why people are so up in arms over something that has never served a purpose beyond organizing content with templates, despite a clear intent to be more. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 02:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Should we accept WoWWiki interwiki links from Wikipedia without comment?

I've noticed the World of Warcraft article at Wikipedia has interwiki links to WoWWiki ([[wowwiki:...]]), but only seems list WoWWiki at Wikipedia:interwiki map. This really annoys me because they deleted the article on WoWWiki, but have the gall to interwiki link to it. I hope they remove the interwiki linking... someone already requested it: More requested to be removed -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:51 PM PST 24 Jan 2008

After some research, it looks like CyberSkull got WoWWiki added to the

Interwiki map and Wikipedia inherited it. Does Wikipedia just take meta.wikimedia.org stuff without filtering? That seems odd. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:03 PM PST 24 Jan 2008

For the purpose of the map, yes. That said, it's used in a few articles (wikipedia:, to good effect, seeing as all the articles are gone. What we need to do is fine good page (or two or three!) which talk about wowwiki; I know there's a news report of some sort where Jim Wales talks about WoWWiki. --Sky (t | c | w) 02:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Good citations aren't necessarily good enough. The original WoWWiki article on Wikipedia had more citations than many articles of a similar sort that did not get deleted (aka wikipedia:WikiFur). You can't fight bureaucratic zealots on Wikipedia if they have admin powers and are willing to use them to an indiscriminate and bad end. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:38 PM PST 25 Jan 2008

Then you report the acting-in-bad-faith administrators. If you end up bringing up that point on wikipedia:articles for deletion, odds are, wikifur will subsequently be nominated as well. --Sky (t | c | w) 22:32, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Aaah, history :) We're much bigger and more notable than we were first time around on Wikipedia, but I think it might be best to wait until the upgrades are done to push for an article again. Better impression and all that. Kirkburn talk contr 23:27, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Sadly, I think our being under the Wikia umbrella will do more to get us an article than any rational event within Wikipedia. Even if we do get an article, I want it to say, "Nothing to see here, just go to WoWWiki itself." Okay, it should have a fancy infobox too, I guess

. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:31 PM PST 25 Jan 2008

That is, unless the anti-Wikia people notice, shouting their nonsensical Conflict of Interest stuff :) Kirkburn talk contr 01:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Well i've always thought WP should be all inclusive and any removal of content for reasons opposing that just makes me think worse and worse of WP. There's no good reason and notability isn't a question. WP's more or less turn into a string of "hey, i don't like this, let's get rid of it", completely ignoring the fact people actually expect them to have all the info and that not including it promotes skewed and biased view of everything else, all the while new articles are being created or recreated. Lovely cycle of getting nowhere fast while failing at it's task, failing it's visitors, and alienating everyone and everything. End rant. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 03:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's basically how I see it also. Wikipedia is a great resource for a starting point of generic information, but is definitely getting rough around the edges. I've seen quite a few deletions that have no respect for policies or editors in general. There are just too many admins with very little oversight. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:25 AM PST 26 Jan 2008

Beware of Wrath of the Lich King beta phishing sites!

Beware of Wrath of the Lich King beta phishing sites or e-mails! Some of them, like http://www.wow–europe.uni.cc/ (you can look, but don't enter anything; also make sure you know how to avoid virus injection), are very well done to look like a real signup. THEY ARE NOT REAL! Blizzard has stated repeatedly that they are not running a Wrath of the Lich King beta program and even if they were, they would never ever have you sign up somewhere other than the official site (www.worldofwarcraft.com or www.wow-europe.com). So don't try any promising e-mails or web sites.

We might want to make a list of phishing attempts somehow, but probably not until we talk to Blizzard and get the okay. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:25 AM PST 25 Jan 2008

http://wowwiki.uni.cc. :p uni.cc is just a site that allows you to regsiter free sub-domains btw. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 18:46, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Regardless, the one above is a phishing site. You can enter anything in the first screen and then it tries to get even more information on the second screen (name, address, etc.). Many people have already fallen for some of these phishing attempts. We don't want WoWWiki users to be among the victims, if we can help it. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:06 AM PST 25 Jan 2008

Should have made the purpose of my post clear, sorry. Basically just showing that uni.cc is the immediate parent domain, and that the phising site is a user created child domain of it. It's something to take note of when checking if a site is official. If it has a domain above it that has nothing to do with it, then it's fake, unlike something like teaser.wow-europe.com for example. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 19:20, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming your general point was to somehow separate uni.cc from the phishing site, but uni.cc shares some of the blame for allowing what amounts to illegal behavior just because they're probably thinking, "we just take the money and set up the redirect... whatever anyone does with it is their business." Sorry, uni.cc derserves the bad press for their lack of enforcement of their Terms & Conditions of Service. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:38 PM PST 25 Jan 2008

No, not trying to shift blame. I was just explaining the situation as an advisory of what sort of things to look out for with phishing sites. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 03:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Is this a good rogue masher-macro?

Moved to Warcraft pump --DuTempete talk|contr 05:02, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Headline tags

In trying to brainstorm a way to get a project link at the top of main articles, I've put together this headline tag:

In the wowwiki skin, it looks like this:

The Warlock Project

In the monobook skin, it looks like this:

The Warlock Project

The tag is floated at the upper right corner of the page, hanging from the end of the article's main headline. To see it in use, go to User:DuTempete/sandbox.

I've created a CSS class for the tag because of skin differences.If you use the wowwiki skin, put this into your User:<username>/wowwiki.css file:

/*article headline tags*/
 
 .headlinetag {
  font-size: 95%;
  border-collapse: collapse;
  border: 1px #888 solid;
  background-color: #404040;
 }

If you use the monobook skin, use this in your User:<username>/monobook.css file:

/*article headline tags*/
 
 .headlinetag {
  font-size: 95%;
  border-collapse: collapse;
  border: 1px #A6A6A6 solid;
  background-color: #EEE;
 }

--DuTempete talk|contr 05:35, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Feedback

Are there any issues with this tag going where I've placed it, and would it be appropriate to have it on the main article and have the larger Template:Warlock project tag in the talk page in order to advertise this project? --DuTempete talk|contr 05:35, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Headline tag use elsewhere

If others seem to want to use this type of tag, I would be happy to create a generic template for it. However, this does bring up some style issues, as there is really only room for one headline tag in any article. So, my thoughts are that if this is going to get used elsewhere, oughtn't we devise an MoS guideline for it? -- DuTempete talk|contr 05:35, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Bad place to put it, as {{wikipedia}}, {{lang}} already go there (off the top of my head), as well as (in the near future, and possibly) a Star Wars wiki type Template:Eras. Probably best to place it in the "External links" sections (See also, if the article has them), but I'm just not sure. Either way, I disagree with adding meta-type information of such a sort to the article's page, as the information will already be on the talk page.

That said, the monobook colors don't look half bad in wowwiki skin (without the class). --Sky (t | c | w) 06:35, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Using lang in that fashion is hoped to be deprecated soon...and Wikipedia links could be better placed in the See also section. If we're going to put anything in that area, I'd prefer if it was an internal link as opposed to an external one. --Pcj (T•C) 17:03, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I've edited it to be out of the way of those templates. What do you think, now? And why do you disagree with adding community information to the main article in this way? I'm trying to boost the community interaction with these, and those who look at the talk pages are a smaaaaaaaaall fraction of the users, even among editors. --DuTempete talk|contr 17:37, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

{{wikipedia}} and {{lang}} are pretty much pointless templates these days btw. Kirkburn talk contr 17:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't use a table
While i prefer the idea of the AMBox version you have already, it seesm to be something that is going to exist rather permenantly and push down the content, when it's relatively unimportant. Having it on the talk page only sounds like an idea, or perhaps at the bottom of the page, but not the top, and not sitting on the article header as an icon imo. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 18:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Please, people, explain your reasoning for your opinions. Just saying "no" or "yes" is extremely unhelpful.

Zeal: why not a table? The ambox tag IS supposed to go on the talk page, and only the talk page. Putting it anywhere other than the top of the page is not going to serve the purpose of the tag. Why not the icon on the article header on the main article? --DuTempete talk|contr 00:02, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not tabular data, the design doesn't require a table. Standards and semantics.
Article message boxes go in articles. I've never heard of or read a policy specific to project ones that says differently. :s
I'm putting it to you, that the importance you're trying to give projects is too much, and that you're vying for what little sensible pre-content space there is, when there's better and more important things to have before content.
It shouldn't be located inline with the header for the same reasons as above and what i said in regard to placing icons up there in the Non-WoW Content topic.

Amusing how here i was the focus, but on IRC i got a "that also goes for you" :p I explained as much as i thought was neccessary and it wasn't a simple "yes" or "no". No need to be like that when you want further explanation for things that apparently weren't as obvious as i thought. Personal preference is usually reason enough for some things ;) -- Zeal ^(T/C) 03:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

It'd be better to add project tags to the relevant Talk: pages (similar to what goes on at Wikipedia), not add more clutter to the main articles themselves. -- Foxlit 10:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

That's what Template:Warlock project is for. Both templates would be used. I do agree that we want to add as little clutter to the pages as possible; that's why I've made it so small. However, I think trying to sell more people on to community projects is a valid reason to add this tag. I don't think the talk page template will reach enough people, and we want to make sure we make editing as open to everyone as possible, don't we? I think this will cause more readers to become editors in the long run. Don't we want that? --DuTempete talk|contr 20:32, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Need help

I recently registered an account here after browsing the site for months. I registered because I wanted to add my guild "Synergy" to the guild list for the Tanaris server's page, but I don't know how. I looked at the code and came up with this

Server:Tanaris US/Guilds

with the apropriate markings surrounding it. My question is this, is there a page that will allow me to add my guild or am I just overlooking something simple. I am not asking you to tell me if you would rather give me links to how to do it, but I am unable to find out how to.

My guild is the second-third most progressed Horde Guild on the server, so I am not doing this to some unknown guild. Thanks

-- Iwishiknew 13:30, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, guilds have their own namespace (the word before the colon). A link to a guild would look something like Guild:guildName (Tanaris US). What you need to do, using that format, is type it into your browser like this: http://www.wowwiki.com/Guild:guildName_(Tanaris_US) (obviously replacing "guildName" with the name of your guild). --DuTempete talk|contr 16:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I am infomed that there is some distinction between a true namespace and a page that simply has a colon after the first word. I do not, however, know the specifics. Perhaps some other enlightened editor or admin can illuminate us. --Eirik Ratcatcher 01:23, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The difference between the two is that a real namespace allows one to filter searches via namespaces. A pseudo namespace is only considered by the server as another part of the article's name. However, articles within namespaces are created in the same manner as articles with pseudo namespaces. The difference is that the pseudo namespace isn't recognised. --DuTempete talk|contr 04:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Yet another vote

I beg your indulgence, gentles. Coobra suggested, and I have constructed, an actual vote on External links for quests. If you've been wanting to have them disappear, or if you want them to stay where they are, vote!

We've discussed it before, perhaps even voted on it in the past. However, it has been long enough that it is time again... --Eirik Ratcatcher 19:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Template of the week award goes to...!

{{User:Kirkburn/Dev4|Fandyllic}}

User:Kirkburn/Dev4

...okay it's not a real template yet, but it should be! -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:44 PM PST 30 Jan 2008

mmm...cookie *drools* Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 02:50, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

@@ Line 171: / Line 171: @@
 :::Other aspects were more simply things, like consistant and instantly obvious cat naming. I do need to switch to sentance case for them, but it'll do that as i go, much easier. Things like WoW spells and Spells, so that non-wow people are not forced to understand the mechanics and terminology of WoW in order to find and access the generic and source-neutral information. --{{User:Zeal/Sig2}} 04:20, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
-:::Ok, for those who wish to help out with this in regards to the wow item restructing may do so via {{t|Cat/wow item}}. Simply provide it with a quality, slot name (though often uneccessary) and a type as listed on the linked pages, and the cats will be filled out the best they can. Any extra cats you believe are needed can be added manually for now. You can overide the sorting of all cats by providing the first unamed parameter, and you can also specify the category to be used for the item's own category (for relationship catting, eg. related quests, npcs, items, zones etc.) I've quickly done the first random item, [[Crul'shorukh, Edge of Chaos]], as an example. I'll be adding the missing pieces of the structure as articles get catted, to find out what still needs to be done, so no worries about dead cats. --{{User:Zeal/Sig2}} 18:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
+:::Ok, for those who wish to help out with this in regards to the wow item restructing may do so via Cat/wow item. Simply provide it with a quality, slot name (though often uneccessary) and a type as listed on the linked pages, and the cats will be filled out the best they can. Any extra cats you believe are needed can be added manually for now. You can overide the sorting of all cats by providing the first unamed parameter, and you can also specify the category to be used for the item's own category (for relationship catting, eg. related quests, npcs, items, zones etc.) I've quickly done the first random item, [[Crul'shorukh, Edge of Chaos]], as an example. I'll be adding the missing pieces of the structure as articles get catted, to find out what still needs to be done, so no worries about dead cats. --{{User:Zeal/Sig2}} 18:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
 ::::That template, is, quite simply, gross. I view the mixing of templates, with the express purposed of categorizing, to be mildly retarded and obviously unneeded; it also prevents ease of category sort-keys. And why on earth is it in every category under category items? The idea was to subdivide categories so far that navigating to a specific item through the use of categorization would be made easy, not difficult. The template, while promoting navigation by the fact that '''all''' the parent cats are there, also makes it difficult to find the most pertinent categories. If this is where every item page was going, I ''must'' disagree with the style implemented and, in general, with the number of categories found on the page. It overly bloats the parent cats at ''all'' levels; I was under the presumption that {{c|Items}} and other such categories would be a category only-categories, thus enhancing navigation, not detracting from it. --[[User:Sky2042|Sky]] ([[User talk:Sky2042|t]] | [[Special:Contributions/Sky2042|c]] |<span class="plainlinks"> [http://www.wowhead.com/?user=Skyfire w]</span>) 22:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)