Talk: Village pump

Revision as of 22:36, 25 January 2008

Template:WoWWiki:Village pump/Intro

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)

Requests for adminship

Check out the new Requests for adminship page, and nominate someone you think qualifies for administrator or support/oppose one of the existing nominees. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 16:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

In the past becoming an admin was much more informal, so I hope this process doesn't get too political... Let me see, who's been nominated to possibly be an admin? Oh look the first one is Pcj! ;-) --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:40 AM PST 2 Jan 2008

Indeed. Down with politics! Kirkburn talk contr 18:01, 2 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 [1]--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)

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)

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)

Criticism of WoWWiki

I created WoWWiki:Criticism, because I figure we should have a place for people just to vent, if nothing else. If we're really doing a good job, the page will be short. Hopefully things will be added, but also disappear for good reasons. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:30 PM PST 6 Jan 2008

People will vent just to vent... There are always people that hate some aspect of wowwiki. Be it because it has material from some source they don't like, or doesn't have enough material form a source they do like.Baggins 23:51, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

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

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)

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 [2]: "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)

First Raid

Moved to the Warcraft pump --k_d³ 21:51, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

WoWWiki:RC broken?

Does this need to be re-implemented after the switch? -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:09 AM PST 9 Jan 2008

In-game books and styling

Coobra and I were discussing how in-game book text should be displayed (such as on [Legacy of the Aspects]). Should they be shown with a table using 'class="darktable"', 'bgcolor="black"', or in some other way? WW:MOS suggests using darktable as much as possible for tables, and I tend to agree. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 23:03, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Where I think how darktable is for in-game books does not look good. Compared to how it currently is. Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! (^Sssss/_Slithered) 23:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Coobra, note that we have to develop for MonoBook skinning as well, which is the coloring that wikipedia uses. Meaning, black text on a black bg doesn't work real well.
For others just joining conversation, see also User talk:Pcj. --Sky (t | c | w) 18:16, 9 January 2008 (EST)

Setting the bg to black is pretty bad, but I agree darktable may not be perfect for that. Perhaps a new CSS class? Kirkburn talk contr 23:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Possibly...depending on what it is, of course. :P --Pcj (T•C) 23:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

All I know is that its been black since 10-03-2006. I wouldn't have choose black either, but I didn't want to change it too dramatically. But yea what Pcj said, depending on what it is

(^Sssss/_Slithered) 18:36, 9 January 2008 (EST)

Should have left a comment: Personally, using darktable looks fine, though it might be prudent just to change it to .darktable in the css from table.darktable. --Sky (t | c | w) 23:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not tabular data, don't use a table. Simple divs with border and background colours will suffice and require less code. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 07:16, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Except, we can't use bgcolors (unless you wanna find a color that shows up on this Grey and Monobook's white and also displays legible text...) --Sky (t | c | w) 08:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Hence the "new CSS class" idea earlier ;) Kirkburn talk contr 08:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

There's seperate skin css files for a reason.. change the colour to something appropriate for each skin, same as with anything. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 09:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I would sugest a parchment coloured background, with black text, for all skins (to make it look like the in game pages). I would also suggest a common but less modern looking font for the text. —MJBurrage^(T•C) 10:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Sort of like this.

How about this:

I have done a great deal of research about the Aspects and their titan creators--as much as any human could in a lifetime. There were five Aspects when the titans left this world; they were mighty dragons tasked with protecting the world of Azeroth. Their tales are vast and varied, and even now, in spite of all the information I have fathered, I know that there is much more to be learned of these magnificent creatures.

Much of the knowledge I have now I could not have possibly learned on my own. Because of this, I am extremely grateful to the night elves. It was only with their help that I have as many details as I do. As a result of our interactions, I am under the impression that their beginnings are much more closely tied to the Aspects than I had first thought. However, they guard their secrets far too closely for even me to know for certain.

The information I learned of the Aspects I put here for others to reference in the future. I know it will prove useful, as I feel that these dragons will have a much greater effect on our world as time goes on.

Alexstrasza:

Alexstrasza, the ancient and powerful Queen of the Dragons, was named the Life-Binder by the titans. She was first to be created by the titans to protect the world after they left. It is said that she witnessed the birth of all modern races upon the face of Azeroth. Her red dragonflight, known for their proud demeanor, once ruled over all over dragonkind.

...

For some reason "brown" renders very red on my version of FireFox (2.0.0.11), so I'm using #382800 for the text and #684800 for the border (with #C8B088 as the background color, since "tan" is a little to reddish to me also). We also see in my example the problem with link coloring which we'll have to find a clever way of making not look so bad. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:44 AM PST 10 Jan 2008

Very nice...and once the link situation is complete, this will make the in-game books/letter/etc look very professional.

(^Sssss/_Slithered) 20:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

By the link situation do you mean the colours? As I cannot read the links in the scrolling box. (the light blue is too close to the background.) Having said that, I love the scrolling box, although it would look better without the unneeded horizontal scroll bar. Also I would increase the height to 180px, and add an inverted (italic bold tan font on a dark brown background) title bar for the name of the book. (see below, note I am not sure how to change link colour within a division without adding a class to the overall style sheet.)—MJBurrage^(T•C) 23:22, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Book Title

I have done a great deal of research about the Aspects and their titan creators--as much as any Human could in a lifetime. There were five Aspects when the titans left this world; they were mighty dragons tasked with protecting the world of Azeroth. Their tales are vast and varied, and even now, in spite of all the information I have fathered, I know that there is much more to be learned of these magnificent creatures.

Much of the knowledge I have now I could not have possibly learned on my own. Because of this, I am extremely grateful to the night elves. It was only with their help that I have as many details as I do. As a result of our interactions, I am under the impression that their beginnings are much more closely tied to the Aspects than I had first thought. However, they guard their secrets far too closely for even me to know for certain.

The information I learned of the Aspects I put here for others to reference in the future. I know it will prove useful, as I feel that these dragons will have a much greater effect on our world as time goes on.

Alexstrasza:

Alexstrasza, the ancient and powerful Queen of the Dragons, was named the Life-Binder by the titans. She was first to be created by the titans to protect the world after they left. It is said that she witnessed the birth of all modern races upon the face of Azeroth. Her red dragonflight, known for their proud demeanor, once ruled over all over dragonkind.

...

I like MJBurrage's version the best, granted additional work for link color changes. --Pcj (T•C) 23:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

My eyes hurt... the brown doesn't work on the grey as expected, :p. ...and no I won't change my skin.Baggins 23:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I have checked this against each of the skins listed under User Preferences, and it works fine with all of them. I would suggest bold black for the links (see Human above), since a third colour would look busy even if readable. (I also restored Fandyllic's example to the way he posted it for comparison. —MJBurrage^(T•C) 23:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I also just fixed the borders on my example (I had left out a key word. —MJBurrage^(T•C) 23:54, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Awesome work MJBurrage, and I'd have to agree using the bold black for links...it looks nice, and it works.

(^Sssss/_Slithered) 00:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

So is there a proper way to change the default link color from within a division? or does the WoWwiki CSS file have to be changed? (either way, how does one do it?) —MJBurrage^(T•C) 02:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I have to say the worst bit is the links, the light blue is blinding. But I don't much like the brown on grey either.Baggins 02:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Could always do something unqiue for them. Like how I did the Kodo Skin Scroll =) What do you think about that? Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 05:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I put the scroll bars in just to make the box smaller, not as an example to use in an article. I wanted my example to have a substantial amount of text to see how it looks, but not fill up the Village pump. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:53 PM PST 10 Jan 2008

While the desire to replciate parchment is well intended, it looks awful and ugly on the wowwiki skin. Just keep it matching the skin colour please, grey. Shouldn't be changing the expected link colours on users for special cases either, bad design practice.

As with {{tooltip}}, it wasn't designed to look like a the in-game tooltip, it was designed to be simple and fit with the default skin, just so happens the in-game tooltip did that anyway. Same goes for the infoxboxes, especially since the removal of the horrible border design which had no place on the wiki realy. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 08:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ignore the coding, as i'm simply using my existing template to show examples of styling atm, but how about one of the ones on http://www.wowwiki.com/User:Zeal/Sandbox#Book. And before some misguided person comments that they don't look good on other skins, they're not meant to, do it differently on other skins, merely proposing a wowwiki skin design atm. If any of those are liked, i'll do a template with greatly reduced coding (and change away from a <h2> for the title). Personally i prefer the 4th then 3rd. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 09:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

those look much better than tacky colors above.Baggins 09:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, probably the fourth one. --Pcj (T•C) 14:02, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I would still suggest using a serif font for the text, and italics for the title. With the colours this subtle—which I don't dislike by the way—the font change would help clearly distinguish the quoted "book" from the rest of the text on the page.
I would also have the height be dependent on the content (so usually there would be no scroll bar), but with an optional parameter that would allow setting a height so that longer texts could use a scrolling box. (This would improve layout of already long pages.) —MJBurrage^(T•C) 16:13, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I'll give it a go a bit later then. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 16:39, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Is anyone a CSS expert who can recommend a way of changing our MediaWiki:Common.css to only color links in book <div>s? --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:19 PM PST 11 Jan 2008

You mean "div.book a.link { color: rainbowtechnicolourfunkyness; }" (and then the various dynamic pseudo-classes too)? -- Zeal ^(T/C) 09:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

A sneak peak User:Zeal/Sandbox/Templates/book. Let me know what you think, things that need changing etc. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 12:28, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks great, and I like all of the optional parameters you added, they will make it easy to fit on a variety of page layouts. I added italics to the title (hope you don't mind). If it were me, I would also put the title in a serif font, but that's pretty minor. As is, I would think this could be implemented now since no CSS changes are needed for this color scheme. —MJBurrage^(T•C) 17:30, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

The CSS would still need to be implemented, there's some extra bits with can only be added via a CSS, and it's not going to display on all skins right now (unless i force a text colour, but it still won't be as nice). Plus i'd like to remove most of the style declarations in the code. Also like a few more people to throw their opinions at it.

As to the title being serif, i did initially try it, and being bold (and probably even worse now italic too) it wasn't as easy to read, so i left it as normal. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 18:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not have any of your suggested CSS rules loaded in my preferences, and the template still looks great in the skins I checked (dark and light), so unlike the tan version were the links are unreadable, your colors work well (as blue links are readable on very light or very dark backgrounds (all of the WoWwiki skins).
Having quickly looked over your CSS suggestions there was nothing I saw–and I could be mistaken—that could not be done within a template. Of course a CSS class would allow for a light colored version that better matches the light skins, but a template would work as is.
With respect to the title, have you tried the Georgia Font, as you may know it was designed specifically to be a more on-screen-legible version of TNR, and is preinstalled in both Windows and Mac.—MJBurrage^(T•C) 20:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

You apparently missed the :first-child::first-letter selector then. Such things can't be done from within the style attribute.

I'll give Geogria a try. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 23:16, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that when you added Georgia (looks great), you also removed the italics (which I prefer). Did you try Georgia each way? —MJBurrage^(T•C) 19:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, i did. There's enough visual off setting styles applied to the title already (bold, background, colour, border) that there was no need to add yet another one, plus it didn't really do much to make it look any nicer or anything imo. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 19:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Well its look good to me, when can we expect to start using this? or does it have to be voted on first?

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 08:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Dunno if people want to vote, doesn't bother me either way. I'm just waiting on the CSS being implemented, which is up to an admin to do. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 12:19, 15 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 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)

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

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

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)

Unicode characters and their use

Computers have pretty much destroyed the correct usage of certain symbols and characters because they've typically been harder and slower to work with due to a lack of support by software and/or hardware.

Now i'd love to see correct usage of things such as dashes used, but alot of people don't know when and where to use them, and inputting the smybols or knowing the character references to use is difficult and slows down the editing process. Seeing such symbols used often confuses other editors too, so it's practice has clearly been avoided.

Therefore we could use a policy to either eliminate their use, or help in their use. I recently commented on User talk:Markkawika#dashes and asked him to stop, as if we're going to support these unicode characters, we should be consistant as not to confuse people.

WoWWiki is served as unicode, so straight away, there shouldn't be any XHTML character references in pages, but there are, and we should start converting them to unicode when seen or run a bot to do so.

As i said, i support their use and would like to see them used, but we need to both educate editors and provide methods to allow them to use them more easily. To solve the first problem, i suggest for a short guideline or more extensive help page that is linked to on the edit page, explaining their uses in regard to WoWWiki. As to the second, a cheat sheet that appears next to the edit box (as WP uses) to provide these symbols, either with javascript input, or simple copy&paste. As i'm sure there will still be confusion, a bot could auto-replace much of the previous and future incorrect usages, but it is a delicate process and not all symbols could be checked from a bot as they're context sensitive.

Thoughts? -- Zeal ^(T/C) 11:53, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I am a big fan of the proper use of hyphens (-), en dashes (–), em dashes (—), ellipsis (…), daggers (†,‡), and fractions (2¹⁄₃). I also like more obscure typography like the numero sign (№) and typographic quotes (‘,’,“,”), although I understand that a number of common fonts render those last ones poorly at small sizes. I also wish that convention still supported typographic spacing—before typewriters full stops used to have 1¹⁄₂ spaces after them, which became two spaces in monospaced typing, and than only one space under HTML.

Wikipedia has clickable symbols under the edit window for the common but hard to type symbols, and a simple fraction template. They also add common, but often misused bits of typing to the edit bar (like includeonly, nowiki, and ~~~~). —MJBurrage^(T•C) 16:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree, except for typographic spacing. It's an archaic practice born out of technical neccessity rather than styling conception. Today it's distracting rather than pleasing to the eye when reading. Hopefully when Kirikburn gets back this will get some more active discussion :p -- Zeal ^(T/C) 17:16, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it the 1¹⁄₂ spaces was by choice, and two-spaces was the typewriter approximation favoured by Americans. In some fonts two spaces is too much, and in other fonts one space is not enough. What I want is a half-space, but that's not happening anytime soon.

Along these lines, I wish CSS had a good way to align whole columns (center or right), rather than having to do it cell-by-cell. —MJBurrage^(T•C) 18:25, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Should have clarified myself. What i was mostly refering to was the practice of two spaces. The 1.5 spacing can still be emulated through an en space, but the idea is fonts now days are supposed to provide a space character than is the optimal width for inter-word spacing and after a full stop, which is typically smaller than a monospace at roughly 1/3 of an en space. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 19:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Use of unicode and special characters (I prefer using HTML entities when possible, &code;) is fine, but we should be careful when using them in links. I'm not sure the linking mechanism handles unicode very well, but I haven't see many examples. I also highly discourage using copy/pasted or inserted characters when entities are available. Not everyone lives in the MS Windows encoding world and some of us actively resist. At minimum people should test their unicode with Arial or Helvetica fonts. --

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

The XHTMl character references exist as a means to insert unicode characters into more limited encoding XHTML documents. When already served as unicode, they only provide a means of easy insertion because keyboards can only provide a limited set of characters. But they look a mess when editing, there's no need to do so. It also has nothing to do with MS Windows encoding, it's unicode, windows just happens to use UTF-8 unicode by default, which is good. Ultimately if you're serving your site in unicode (which WW is), you should use a unicode font (which we don't). Shouldn't need to test for limited character support with fonts that aren't unicode when serving unicode, that's just bad practice, so it's probably a great idea WW switch to a unicode font where available (Arial Unicode MS is a likely candidate with Windows and OSX support and a large character set). It's a case of standards pushing forward when the reality is still far behind (no font supports the full unicode character set and the ones that do still aren't readily available for free). Either way, most browsers support font substitution in varying levels of ability so many issues can go unnoticed. Read Wikipedia:Help:Multilingual support for more. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 23:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

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

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

Excessive category renaming

Renaming all the cats to begin with World of Warcraft, isn't that a bit excessive? Who made that decision? Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 01:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Me. This is WoWWiki, but the name changes were required to ensure they're differntiated from non-wow items and lore from a game neutral view point. Also worth noting is that fact the vast majority of those categories needed to be renamed anyways, as they were against the naming policy (they were title case, which is wrong) and were inconsistant and had doubled up in places. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 01:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

But couldn't we just use WoW instead of World of Warcraft for the categories. Like Category:WoW in-game books, rather than Category:World of Warcraft in-game books.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 02:41, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Just don't forget to update the item boilerplate for the new categories. Zurr T ∙ C 02:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Well the plan is people shouldn't have to categorize manually once {{tooltip}} and other templates can provide auto-catting based on the already provided info. But yes, i'll make sure the appropriate boilerplates and guides are updated once done. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 03:24, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah, well it we get it to do it all automatically, that would make it a lot nicer.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 04:56, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I did originally plan to use WoW to save on typing and being lazy, but Sky said not to, so i changed to World of Warcraft :p I do agree that the full game title is probably best now though. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 03:24, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes laziness is good...but yea...full title would be best...I guess

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 04:56, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Zeal: Please! Tooltip changes FIRST! Please don't be breaking the wiki before you have the replacement solution in place! I'm seeing category changes, but I'd like to see a proof-of-concept on the auto-catting first. --Eirik Ratcatcher 01:32, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It was already broken. I'm creating something that never existed properly in the first, and what existed wasn't/couldn't be used.
The changes do not require auto-catting, that's merely to ease the proccess so such changes and extensive catting will never have to be done again.
You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. You can not build a house upon poor foundations. Basically... not many major changes get done around here because of scale, and it just gets worse and worse the more it's left in the state it is, facing worsening problems and challanges later on. I detest the reliance upon bots to implement change, this is a wiki, it can always be done in by contributers collaborting, but a standard must be set first. That's what this is all about, getting everything in place for a framework so that even without full knowledge or understanding, anyone and everyone can help or have bots do.
I don't want to have this same conversation yet again.

-- Zeal ^(T/C) 02:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

What I see is that this has been less than a week from proposal to execution, meaning that by the time I noticed it and started asking questions, it was already under way - 'so sad, you are too late'. I see the proposal itself splayed across several topics on Village Pump, instead of being given a page of its own - 'find out what is going on under your own power, we're busy doing '. I see a plan being floated without concrete examples of the problem, and without concrete examples of the solution. I see things being broken with the attitude "it'll be broken until someone else fixes it", when even pedestrian-I can see that the means to shorten the cooking time, to work with your on analogy, could have been prepared - but weren't.

You don't want to have this same conversation yet again? Then collect the problem, the solution, and the transition plan in one place, that isn't going to get swept away with the archive tides, and point us to it. --Eirik Ratcatcher 01:15, 25 January 2008 (UTC) --- Edit: Made a separate topic. --Eirik Ratcatcher 01:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

There was no proposal, and i see no reason for there to be a proposal. Everything was already in place, just never implemented correctly or fully
The problem was self evident, the solution was first proposed by Kirkburn. I implemented it in seeing that nothing was being done when it's soemthing i brought up before so long ago and knowing anything i did could only actually be an improvement. The state the categories was already, and always has been, unusable and inconsistant. Everything i've done has been by policy and by example, the rest was common sense which apparently people never thought far enough ahead about. It's fixing the fact that barely any existing categories followed policy, it's fixing the fact that the category tree could not be used for browsing the wiki.
Will you please stop claiming that i'm breaking things and letting other people do the work to fix what i've done. It was broken already, it was never implemented fully. I've fixed it, it needs further implementation to be completed and is something i am contributing towards, but it's already well beyond where it was. Getting sick of you constantly commenting on my contributions with this same sentiment and attitude.

If anything i'm simply forcing WoWWikians to take notice and address something that has never reached conclusion and avoided. After than is a new policy is going to need to be decided upon. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 01:32, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Non WoW content

This is coincidentally related to the above topic - we don't really support non-WoW content well enough. Renaming categories as Zeal has done is actually quite a good idea as it makes everything much more specific to WoW (as these things are). It is quite feasible for us to carry information for every Warcraft game, but organising and advertising it is something to work on. For one, we're stuck with the name WoWWiki, so I think I still need to make some tweaks to the Main Page to make it more obvious we're not just WoW. Kirkburn talk contr 02:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Put a little banner with every game's logo at the top of the page?--SWM24 48 02:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

There's one excellent method Halopedia uses - a little icon at the top right signifying where this stuff appears (multiple icons for multiple games, etc). Example - http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Master_Chief ... The reason this came up is because someone requested a Warcraft wiki on Wikia (again). Kirkburn talk contr 02:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The Master Chief page renders totally horribly on my FireFox browser (2.0.0.11). Is anyone else seeing this? The Eras template seems to be broken for me, but only in normal view. It works when I edit and preview. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:41 PM PST 23 Jan 2008

Okay, today it looks fine. My browser must have been munged by something else. However, the eras icons cover some wiki message:

Community links: Usergroup elections; Video editing for Halopedia? John-117

So we should make sure any thing we have that's similar doesn't conflict with other messages that might show up in the upper area.--

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:40 AM PST 24 Jan 2008

Well the idea i mentioned to kirkburn, was that we should have an expandable area, like a bar, directly below amboxes, that would contain these icons. Alternatively it, at the very bottom of the article so as not to push down content with something which isn't of extreme importance. Having them in some sort of sidebar would be ideal (perhaps even at the bottom of the summary templates?), but that's not really plausible with our current skin and manual of style. I just believe with more and more wow sources being released, we're going to see it overloaded quickly and is unfair on those with smaller screens.. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 19:49, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Had a chat with Kirkburn about this implementation and how we could change a few details and implement it here. Very promising and i'm throwing my full support and help behind it. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 03:29, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Crazy idea, but http://www.warcraftwiki.com/ seems to be untaken (or at least doesn't seem to be taken by some ad spammer) :P ~

ŋ ɑ ϑ 19:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

You're wrong, warcraftwiki.com is taken, see: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=warcraftwiki.com

It does appear to be just a GoDaddy domain squat, though. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:50 PM PST 23 Jan 2008

Not sure what the name of the template is on halo (Template:Era?), but I know that this is also implemented on Wookiepedia at T:Eras. I personally like the look, so it could definitely be interesting. We even have the mini-icons which we use for -inline and -section templates. --Sky (t | c | w) 19:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Our version of Template:Era could replace the templates like {{novel}}, leaving just the -section and -inline versions. As for clashing with wikipedia and language links - the wikipedia template links are mostly pointless now they deleted most Warcraft stuff, whilst the language links should mostly be interwikis now (e.g. [[fr:Tyrande]]). Kirkburn talk contr 20:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Strange, but I really did think that wowwiki WAS World of Warcraft (the game)-centric. And from that viewpoint, I don't find the category name changes helpful at all. Could it not be a separate namespace, or something?

Assuming I'm shouted down, shouldn't the category changes be implemented by bot? (Or are they being so handled?) Further, perhaps I've simply caught Zeal mid-process, but I went from Category:Blacksmith (no name change signed) to Category:Blacksmithing Products (name change signed). Yet, almost all of the pages in both categories would fall under the new naming scheme. ... and I say 'almost' only because I haven't viewed every last one of the blacksmithing pages.

What I'm saying is, you're changing the names of categories, and moving their entire contents... so why did you change the name in the first place? Thus the "WoW-centric"... --Eirik Ratcatcher 00:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It's WoW centric, but it's not only WoW content. There needs to be generic names to encompass all sources. Items are a clear candidate for that, so "World of Warcraft" prefix is needed to make the source clearer and disambiguate for all of the previous item cat names. There are no seperate namespaces or such things within a namespace, and the name would still be just as long. My original proposal i made so long ago, further placed more restrictions and accuracy in naming, but it never got anywhere, so this is pretty much the same thing but a level below in strictness.

This is a big undertaking, and will take several days (perhaps weeks) to get everything working properly. Right now, the closest one to being completely finished is Category:Books. What you've described is a case of where i've tried to find (extremely hard due to all the problems with the previous structure) all the existing cats, mark them as incorrect, pointing to new cats, then going through to create the new cats, then again going through to recat all the articles.

The plan is, to have the summary templates ({{tooltip}} and infoboxes) to categorize pages based on their type (books, games, series, items, quests, servers, etc.) and the information they're already provided about it (sub-types and such), so eventually we won't have to rely on users knowing, remembering, typing and sticking to an existing structure, and only expanding upon it after some discussion. The second part would be the introduction of the templates discussed above, replacing some of our existing templates. This way pages are then further categorized by relationship to sources. beyond that, when you get down to the highly accurate and deep categories, manual cating will be needed or yet another template, as it gets too specific to automate (well, foxbot could probably handle alot of it based on info from the armory along side it's current information). -- Zeal ^(T/C) 01:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm somewhat concerned about this unilateral move to rename all the item categories with the World of Warcraft prefix. Although I understand the intention, it seems like a cumbersome solution and a way to make WoWWiki not really focused on World of Warcraft, but more of a general Warcraft wiki, which in my mind is only a secondary purpose and should not not guide the structure of the wiki. Zeal, you might be taking, be bold, a little too seriously and verging on reckless. Do other warcraft games have enough similar item categories to justify prefixing all the World of Warcraft item categories? I don't see why we can't just prefix the non-WoW item categories. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:51 AM PST 24 Jan 2008

Seperating wow and other source items is a secondary concern, the primary one is so that there is a generic structure. Otherwise all items, including non-wow items would be under the wow items strcuture, and how messy would that be. Theres also the matter of the fact the previous one had long fallen into disarray because no one had ever agreed on a standard or gone the whole way with ideas for restructing/renaming. I don't think there was a single item category other than "Items" itself that followed policy, and the same can be said for pretty much all other categories too. The reason why the prefix remains is so that there is no confusion and that there's an obvious consistancy in place for people. You don't go changing the wording all of a sudden on a user, just because you fancied something shorter and could get away with it in a few case.

Servers don't need a prefix, as there's no other kind except WoW. Same goes for quests, it's something that only applies to WoW. The WoW prefix is implied there. Its not the same case with items, spells, books, characters etc. Zones is a nice case of a term that applies to wow only, but can still fit into a generic structure for everything else as cartography, regions, towns, cities etc. I probably could have gotten away with "Loot" for items in wow, but really it's too obscure a term to use for people who might not understand it's relevance.

The focus is still and will always be on WoW, it's just these changes were needed so everything else can co-exist with WoW.

As to being "bold". I think this the first time i've done something so "bold", and while it might be seen as reckless right now, i think it'd be worse if i was to stop half way through. Besides, it's the categories i'm having a major impact on. No ones navigates them or categorize consistantly, so i can only improve things. - Zeal ^(T/C) 20:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Something i want to point out, is that as i discussed on IRC and Kirkburn hinted at, is that these templates should replace the existing templates for this sort of thing, eg. {{Novel}}, {{RPG}}. That means they should be seperate templates for each one. They should not be in a single template as the other wikis have done. This is a large array of sources that are going to be ever growing as Blizzard release products, and if it's in a single template, it will be on pretty much all pages, so updating it that often isn't feasible -- Zeal ^(T/C) 03:08, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Predicted icons needed

Per the above dicussion, if we list all the ones we're likely to require here, we can see how much space we'll need. Add more if you know of any. I don't feel the icons don't have to be that specific, the citations and -section and -inline templates can cover that better. Kirkburn talk contr 22:21, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Warcraft I
Warcraft II
- Expansion
Warcraft III
- Expansion
WoW
- BC
- WotLK
Novels (one icon?)
Manhwa
Graphic novels (and comics)
RPG books (one icon?)
Artwork books

Is there anything unique to WC2 Battle.net edition that would merit an icon? Also, how is Manhwa distinct from Manga and do Manga get lumped into Graphic novels? --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:13 PM PST 24 Jan 2008

Not as far as i know.

As to manga and manhwa, i clarified the issue about the naming on it's page. Manga, and manhwa, as with pretty much all comics are originaly released in a comic format, which may be a stand alone issue or in a compilation comic/magazine. Graphics novel is only applied to books, which is why i made the distinction in the category structure. Its not a standardized term, though does apply to pretty much any story book that makes use of images to tell the story. It's more marketing than anything, but it's been previously popular for comic and manga publishers to market volumes in various trade paperback formats as graphic novels. Now, they've started to move away from the term, and usually just using TPB manga/comic or manga/comic book. So the key terms device up a bit like this.

Book
- Graphic Novel
  - Comic Book/Volume
Comic
- Comic Issue/Magazine

As to icons, we should use actual products, not series or groupings mainly as grouping into series is something that can change and requires made up naming, it's better to be more specific for accuracy and the purpose of catting. No point in me listing here, as the list is fairly long. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 03:03, 25 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

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

@@ Line 820: / Line 820: @@
 ::Because the wiki's parser doesn't like parameters within parser tags. :[ --[[User:Sky2042|Sky]] ([[User talk:Sky2042|t]] | [[Special:Contributions/Sky2042|c]] |<span class="plainlinks"> [http://www.wowhead.com/?user=Skyfire w]</span>) 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 <code><nowiki>{{</nowiki>[[:Template:graph price|graph price]]<nowiki>|xxxx}}</nowiki></code> could work. -[[User:Deepone|Deepone]] 22:35, 25 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 <code><nowiki>{{</nowiki>[[:Template:price graph|price graph]]<nowiki>|xxxx}}</nowiki></code> could work. -[[User:Deepone|Deepone]] 22:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
 == PvP item conflicts ==