Talk: Village pump

Template:WoWWiki:Village pump/Intro

Shout-out to the maintainers of WoW Wiki

For those of you who don't know me, I was one of the first Admins of WoW Wiki back when Rustak started this crazy project.

I've been lurking in the shadows for several years. I want to thank everyone who has contributed to making WoW Wiki the amazing site it has become. The pages are well formatted, the WoW UI API is beyond compare, the content is improved on a regular basis and you're all doing an amazing job. I'm proud to come back and see this website in fantastic shape.

Great job, guys.

-- AlexanderYoshi 09:55, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Cheers :D User:Adys/Sig 10:47, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Beatings should be handed out to admins who don't use the "+" to add comments. ;P --Sky (t · c · w) 20:07, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

He actually did, but for some reason put it at the top of the page afterwards. --g0urra[T҂C] 20:12, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Let us honor his return by not caring about the placement, but to him let it be known that this will be archived before its time.--SWM24 48 00:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Hahah, this is the kind of thing that should be quickly seen, with a short life. --AlexanderYoshi 20:22, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Server pages

Having looked around at a lot of the server pages on WoWWiki, i've noticed that almost every server has a different kind of layout on their page. Some follow a special layout (Server:Garithos US as an example), some are just stubs (Server:Die ewige Wacht Europe), some have lots of info (Server:Moonglade Europe), some barely have any info, just links (Server:Agamaggan US). What I propose is trying to create a standard layout for these pages, with an easy way to add information, like realm history, naming background, major server events and an easy way for not very wiki-experienced user to add guilds to a detailed list (for example something looking like the guild list on Server:Moonglade Europe). Any ideas/comments? -- Ose (c / t) 14:54, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Don't get complicated. The people who edit the servers don't need a lot of code sticking up and at them in the face. I made Server:Shadowmoon US relatively simplistic. --Sky (t | c | w) 19:10, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a part of my point. Some of these pages have some cool looking, but over-complicated designs. Others have simple designs, but get messy. I want (us) to create something which is user-friendly, but gives a good looking result. -- Ose (c / t) 21:57, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

You didn't state that explicitly, and so I was basically looking for what your stance was. --Sky (t | c | w) 00:22, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

It'd be nice to have a link to the page about the server's namesake at the top of each page. -Cowlinator 20:52, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

People, I want your thoughts! Being bold is one thing, but I don't want to go through with such a big revamp without your opinions and ideas. --Ose^{Talkz / Contribz} 18:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I am very fond of the layouts of Grim Batol, Skullcrusher, and Warsong. They provide a very informative and pleasant experience for viewers, and can be made user-friendly for new editors through included explanations (comments) in the code, as well as additional help pages which further elaborate. Seriously, take a look at the code on those three pages. They're very well made. But in order to mainstream a design such as this across WoWWiki, the templates would need to be slightly rewritten so that they could be controlled by one set of central templates. Perhaps a bit of tweaking to how they handle the Battlegroup template as well. --MaTrIx 04:02, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I started some work on ~~User:Ose/Sandbox/Server~~ WoWWiki:Server project. Everyone, feel free to discuss, change and give advice. --Ose^{Talkz / Contribz} 14:03, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, hey, Ose, that looks pretty darn spiffy. Really nice work on the progression chart, IMHO. I also like the idea of a bit of background on the server name, the "important" server info (ie: timezone, online date, realm type, battlegroup, etc). Looks good. Question: What do Location and Races mean with regards to the types of guilds? I mean, this may work well on a European realm, but on the US realms, we can have really diverse groups of people; in my guild alone, we represent five different timezones. :) Looks like a very complete, accessible, nice-looking layout, though, on the whole. Kurnmogh 19:40, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

World of Warcraft category proliferation re-think needed

Moved to WoWWiki talk:Policy/Category/Names.

Datamining policy changes

Moved to WoWWiki talk:Policy/DNP#Change to the image DNP policy.

Zone levels

We need to decide if we want the level shown in the zonebox for each zone to reflect the Blizzard recommended level for the zone, or to reflect the mobs in that zone. I just went through a week or so ago and changed them to the official Blizzard levels, but someone just came through today and changed them to "reflect the mob levels" in the zone. I personally think they should they should be the recommended levels, but regardless we need to make a decision so people don't keep changing it back and forth. --Jiyambi t || c 20:05, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps have both, the mob levels and recommended levels. That way no one can decide to change them on ya.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 22:39, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Meh, looks like the person has changed almost all the zones to mob level range. I don't have the energy to change them again or add another parameter, so unless someone else cares I'm just going to leave it be. --Jiyambi t || c 22:22, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Laurlybot (Recoded) Npc module

I am in the process of recoding the bot. User:Laurlybot/npc_bot before i start generating pages i thought it might be a good idea to address some of the issues people had with the old bot and get some kind of consensus on how the new one should work.

Npc pages use the {{Zone Map}} to display where the npc is found in a zone. Note: For NPC's found in more then one zone only one map will be shown. More then likely the first.
The bot is still unable to get race and gender for an npc. Human editors will still have to add that.
I am not riping pictures so Humans will have to add them.
1. I'm going to try and code the bot to check the page if there is a picture there it will use it rather then just clobbering the page.
2. Humans will have to check that this image is right. (I will probably tag pages like this for bot help)

The dreaded transcluded pages.

The old bot had separate pages for drops/teaches/skins/mines .... yes lots of them.
- The comment i got was: Get rid of the subpages, as it bloats the article count of the wiki.
Using templates in these pages. A lot of people didnt like the templates the old bot used due to the fact that
- A comment i got was:Use wiki-table markup, as opposed to templates. Templates are just adding a (possibly) confusing step

What i would like to do is the following.

Only have one subpage. npcname/data This page would contain.

Info on drops, teaches, skins, mines, herbs, pickpocketing...... <and anything else i might be forgetting>

There are several reasons for this.

There will be a lot of data there. this could confuse anyone trying to edit the page as to what it was.
I always intended that the bot be run regularly to update the information on this page. If we have it in the main page even if i code a very careful check to only replace the table data there is still a chance that something could go wrong and the main page data would be over writen.

Templates would be easer to change on a wide scale. If we leave them on a second page then there really isnt anything confusing as the bot is the only one reading it. But if we don't use templates it shouldn't matter if we need to change the format then i can just rerun the bot and all the pages will be updated.

The parser is mostly written so i have all the data. The only thing i need to know is how we want the pages to look and how we want them to work. So i'm going on vacation for a few days. So i figured i would post this here give you guys time to chat about it and check with you when i get back. :) Laurly 08:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if there's anything we can do to keep the subpages out of the article count. Put them in another namespace perhaps? --Pcj (T•C) 12:46, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I did some checking, and yes, if the data is outside the main namespace it won't add to article count [1]. Therefore, I propose a new namespace be created, possibly called "Data". This would also provide a namespace for Adys's OpenWDB project. --Pcj (T•C) 14:14, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

We honestly don't need transcluded pages. Nor do we need templates. To respond to the points:

Yes, there will be a lot of data. However, keeping it all in one place is both easier to edit while simultaneously inviting users to edit it themselves. Requiring them to go the extra step invariably produces bias toward the effect that people aren't going to edit them. And being one of those users which has been not-so-systematically removing the current subpages, I have to say they are quite simply a !@#$% to edit. Consolidation of information in this matter is not a bad thing.
Yes, there is that chance. But that's double standard: people have previously used the bot to overwrite decent-looking pages; while that won't be so easy now with some of the plans you have for the bot, it is still possible. Invariably, the bot will produce errors (unless you release the code to open-source, which, even then...). As to catching them, leave that to the wiki-goers. :) If you catch flak for killed-pages, then send em our way. Even with the occasional error, the net positive to editing the main pages will be higher than any risk of error.
The latter is exactly the point. Who needs templates when you have a bot that can do it? :)

As for Adys's proposal, let's cross that bridge when we come to it. He's had more than a few suggestions, and I'm positive he's wrangling with head-Wikia over it. --Sky (t · c · w) 21:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It really doesn't matter to me how we do it. TBH its a little easer for me to put it all in one page. As for the templates the bot has a template it uses so that matters even less. Make up a template that we can all agree on and the bot can use it. I just want to have some kinda agreement on how we do this this time rather then getting issues with it after the bot processes 1500 NPC's. This is an example of one the bot ran Amani_Crocolisk Laurly talk|contr|bot 21:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

OpenWDB

Here is an early look to a long-discussed project, OpenWDB. For the TLDR guys, it's the standardization and expansion of WoWWiki's WoW database and the idealistic end to a lot of troubles. It's a draft, still, and if you want to know more about it, you'll have to ask me on IRC. This project itself is hard to maintain as a single person, and since I'm doing other work on the sides I don't always have time to edit the wiki itself. I understand there may be some unhappy people about this, but please understand that I really am doing my best to keep in touch on the wiki. Otherwise, your best shot is my User page. I will, however, update it with more infos as I think them through.

Also, be warned. A lot of people "just dont care" about this, but the modifications involved are absolutely huge. They'll be taken care of, but it means a lot for the wiki "database" pages themselves. User:Adys/Sig 23:23, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Not liking IRC = unhappy apparently. However, I'm not among the Too Long Didn't Read folks and I think it sounds like a fine idea for the future of WoWWiki (which seems to be unhappy, at the moment). --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:28 PM PST 24 Mar 2008

Possible violation in Blizzard Downloader article...

Please see Talk:Blizzard_Downloader. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:20 PM PST 25 Mar 2008

Kirkburn made the argument that even though some of the stuff on this page mines data, it probably wouldn't be harmful to Blizzard. I cleared the {{violation}} tag, but feel free to comment on Talk:Blizzard_Downloader. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:47 PM PST 25 Mar 2008

BG and flight maps needed for Maps article

A lot of the maps in the Maps article were linked from Atlas, and a bunch of them are broken, specifically the ones for battlegrounds and flight paths. If someone could find or otherwise construct some maps to replace these, it'd be a great addition to the article.

// User:Montag/sig1 21:49, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

On my site I have both the ingame map and a minimap export available. For example AV: Normal Map and Minimap Export. Just let me know if your interested and we can work it all out. I hang around on IRC. // User:WyriHaximus 15:2, 1 April 2008 (GMT+1)

Just noticed something funny about some "Starting a XX" pages

Browsing some random articles today, I came across the "Starting a Paladin" page. At the end of the page were two links, none of them I had heard before: http://www.bestlevelingguide.com/paladin_leveling_guide/ and http://www.almostgaming.com/wowguides/paladin-leveling-guide. Basically the first one links to a site that ask you to pay $35 for a mod that helps you to level up faster. The second links to a short so-call leveling guide, but gives you some other links that eventually leads you back to that page of the first links.

I then browsed other "Starting a XX" pages. All of them except druid's are infested by the above two links! Besides, hunter page has one more: http://www.thewowauthority.com/hunter-leveling-guide/, which gives you one page of hunter guide, then again ask you to pay for a full leveling guide. Reading back the history of paladin page, this link was there too, but only replaced by the first link recently.

This is ridiculous! I have never imagine paying real money to buy a mod for leveling or a leveling guide! They are basically using WoWWiki for free advertisement, probably for a long time already. I'm not sure if such act is against the policy of the site. At least, from the point of view of usefulness of those links, they should all be removed.

So, what do you think? -- WakemanCK 03:41, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like something that needs to be killed, and if they do it again, banned... --Azaram 10:03, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Delete the offending links. No links to leveling services and gold selling services User:Sharlin/Sig 11:44, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, done! Though I'm wondering if there are other pages still have those kind of links. Are there any methods to check? WakemanCK 12:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I did a bit of investigation, and found out that these links were added mainly by

Slyfong (talk · contr) around 4 September 2007
Vanman (talk · contr) and Jamo (talk · contr) around 5 June 2007

Have a look on their other contributions, and you will find many more pages on which they were "active" --Tharbur 16:07, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, sites that promote or link to gold selling services or power leveling services should be banned.

However, I did some research on unofficial World of Warcraft guides. Most of them see to be under the Killerguides (http://www.killerguides.com) network or the Spugnort (http://www.spugnort.com) network, these are pretty big MMORPG guide networks, and they seem legit enough. These guides don't seem to be violating any of Blizzard's Terms of Services or the EULA. To tell the truth, if a casual player with a full time job wants to spend some of his real life money buying these unofficial guides to help himself out, I see nothing wrong with that, its too bad they can only play an hour a day, they probably need all the help they can get anyway. The majority of WoWWiki users are probably casual players, and we all are already paying $15 a month for their WoW subscription. As for advertising, well 99% of fansites out there have advertising of some sort, even WoWWiki does the occasional google box thing and has advertising links now, webmasters need a way to support the upkeep of their site, hosting is expensive especially those with higher bandwidth usage.

Did some further research, there was actually a case way back in March 2006 where an author of one of these guides sued Blizzard for stopping him from selling his guide (http://www.news.com/2100-1043_3-6053716.html), the case was settled out of court, as the courts would have ruled against Blizzard. Maihime 12:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.12 is live!

WoWWiki is now running on 1.12 :) There may be some teething problems, so please do report anything odd you come across. I currently know of a couple of issues:

~~Monobook skin has a js problem that blanks the page once loaded. Appears to be related to pcj tooltips. I have little js experience and pcj is asleep, so any help is appreciated.~~
~~Patrollers group may not have their permissions - this is being investigated.~~
Unrelated to 1.12, but some users may have lost the ability to log into their accounts yesterday - if you have been affected, please either drop by the IRC channel, or drop me a mail at <myusername>@gmail.com (replace <myusername>). I'll see what I can do.
Special:Brokenredirects is showing old cached data, should be updated within two days.

So, what's new? Well, Special:Version should give a fairly good overview. Also, the new skins are available, though we do not have a Monaco WoWWiki theme yet.

Any feedback? Kirkburn talk contr 12:15, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Patrollers - done. In most cases you'll need to relogin.

There are quite a few extensions which are not listed on Special:Version page because they aren't enabled by default. Stuff like calendars, ogg player, SemanticMediaWiki etc. Look around Wikia for more inspiration. (-; -- Nef (talk) 12:40, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Rather than correcting the Patroller permissions error, i seem to have simply lost my status as patroller after a relog :/ -- Zeal ^(T/C) 12:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. Kirkburn talk contr 14:44, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

If you want to see WoWWiki running on the new Monaco skin, see http://www.wowwiki.com/Main_Page?useskin=monaco&usetheme=slate ... no, the WoWWiki colour theme is not done yet. Kirkburn talk contr 14:02, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Oooh. That looks nice. User:Kochira/Sig 16:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I personally do not like the new default layout at all. Many people hate reading on white and I don't foresee all users of the Wiki to get an account just to pick a customized layout. Just a thought. User:Lorekin

And I just said that the WoWWiki colour theme is not ready yet. Kirkburn talk contr 19:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I assumed the main page was at least a decent example of what is to come. I practically live on this site, I love it here so drastic changes really affect me. On that note, I can't get the search to work at all. No matter what I type in it thinks I'm looking for a "Special Page"... User:Lorekin

Well, the design and layout are what is to come, but the colour scheme will be similar to the current default :) Thanks for the search bug report! Kirkburn talk contr 19:45, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

The error is referring to Special:Search being missing, which is apparently the case (and thus makes non-Google searching impossible). Sure would be nice to have it back. :-) User:DarkRyder/Sig 20:01, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Correct. It should be back later. Kirkburn talk contr 20:04, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Couple of notices:

We just took down Wikia. Ouch.
WoWWiki:Server requests is updated for 1.12. Bug reports can go there - please be concise and use your judgement on the priority of the item. Emergency items, bring to IRC or post here.
WoWWiki:MediaWiki 1.12 changes is a list of 1.12 changes. If you know of / find more please add them! Note that some of the new extensions are currently disabled for load testing purposes.

Kirkburn talk contr 19:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Where do we put problems with skins? I'm gonna try to live with the Monaco - Gaming skin for awhile just to see how it works, but I want to know where i can complain...

--

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:48 AM PST 26 Mar 2008

Ignore problems with it loading the light (monobook) skin colour scheme for templates and other stuff for now, that'll be worked on. General skin issues should come to me. If they're WoWWiki specific, WoWWiki:Server requests. I wouldn't call the Gaming skin representative, fortunately. Kirkburn talk contr 19:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I personally am browsing the site with Monaco slate, and enjoying it :) Kirkburn talk contr 20:04, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I picked the Monaco gaming because it is a dark skin more similar to the old WoWWiki skin. Perhaps we should make some subpages under WoWWiki:Server requests for particular areas like skins and templates. Also, do widgets work? They were working in the beta awhile ago, but not now (for me at least). --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:07 PM PST 26 Mar 2008

Widgets should indeed be working - they're fine for me atm. Anything specific? I don't really want to put too much stuff on WW:SR as the techs need a clear list of what they need to deal with. Skins and template issues aren't their domain. Kirkburn talk contr 20:12, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Widgets are working for me now. I upgraded to FireFox 2.0.0.13, but I don't know why that would make a difference. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:41 PM PST 26 Mar 2008

AJAX was turned off for a short while, likely caused. Kirkburn talk contr 22:52, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Cool, from Washington DC =). --Sky (t · c · w) 12:11, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Did the maximum page size change? The bottom of the BC Caster DPS cloth isn't being transcluded or expanded any more. Before the upgrade, I had to split the page into 3 pieces. I'm suprised it could get too large again, this quickly, if the maximum page size hasn't decreased. Also, previous to the upgrade, it actually told me what the maximum size was in the error message (2 mb). Tbannister 18:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

"Coming Soon" and "Future Zones" on 2.4 Patch Content

I hope I'm using the village pump correctly...I just wanted to ask someone to review what I had done, considering it's probably the most I've done so far, and I wanted to make sure what I did was right. In a few pages related to the 2.4 patch content (Isle of Quel'Danas, Magister's Terrace, Sunwell Plateau, etc), the categories "Future Zones" and "Coming Soon" were still present. I removed them. Was this done correctly? Thanks! --Lywellyn 22:16, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Yup, you did the right thing. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:20 PM PST 26 Mar 2008

I'd say so long as the article is converted from future tense to present tense (if it was created in future tense), then its safe to remove the upcoming Categories and stubs.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 04:28, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Where do we report skin problems and who fixes skins?

According to an earlier comment, skin problems shouldn't be put under WoWWiki:Server requests. So, where do they go? If we report skin problems, who fixes them? -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:34 PM PST 26 Mar 2008

To me. I am the skin contact. :) I collate and pass them on to the designer guy. Kirkburn talk contr 22:41, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Learning some more

Two questions: One, is there a way to view all subpages of a user page (say, my own)? And secondly, is there a reason this page is marked 'stub/mob'? Thanks again! :) --User:Lywellyn/Sig 02:38, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Special:Prefixindex, type in your username in the box, choose "User" from the dropdown. So, for you: [2]. This page is marked {{Stub/Mob}} as an example... Take a look at the text near the message box at #Stubs and reasons. --k_d³ 02:43, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh wow, I searched everywhere and couldn't find that. Thanks! --User:Lywellyn/Sig 03:46, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Image locator sadness

Special:Imagelist no longer has a search bar to find images, which I loved. Made finding images very easy for possible needs. Is it possible to put one up there again? Or is there a different way to find images? Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 05:32, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Trying my hand at being helpful. Special:Search has a checkbox for images, maybe that's how you can search for images now? Hope that's helpful... --User:Lywellyn/Sig 05:58, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not as good as the image search bar that was on the page. Try searching "elf" under that, with only image checkmarked, you get no results, where as the old way you'd get a few pages of results.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 06:25, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Item floats incorrect

I'm having trouble with the item tooltips floating on the wrong side of the page, as you can see here. It can be corrected by adding a |disambigpage={{SUBST:PAGENAME}}, but since I've seen it affects pages with a ' symbol it should be a general Wiki problem. Compare this and this.--g0urra[T҂C] 06:46, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the code on those two pages, the Fury page had one bit of code that the Field Marshal's Plate Helm did not. When added, as you can now see, it fixed it. The code? Simply |float=right. :) --User:Lywellyn/Sig 07:00, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

*sigh* No that's not the problem - the thing is that items with a ' in it floats incorrectly (at least for me). It's not only that one item that is wrong, take for example

[Scout's Tabard] and

[Sergeant's Heavy Cloak], compared to Medallion of the Horde. Using a |float=right doesn't fix the problem, see here.--g0urra[T҂C] 15:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

This may be a new bug introduced by the MediaWiki 1.12 upgrade. I did a search for "Scout's" and all the item tooltips have this float problem. It could be a bug in the {{tooltip}}, though. Looking at the tooltip float code, maybe the way {{FULLPAGENAME}} works changed. Usign disambigpage= with a ' instead of an ' seems to work as a workaround. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:53 AM PST 27 Mar 2008

I found an easier workaround is to just use ' instead of an ' in the actual item name=. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:54 AM PST 27 Mar 2008

I added this problem to WoWWiki:Server requests. Maybe we can get a bot to implement the simplest workaround until it gets fixed. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:06 AM PST 27 Mar 2008

Thank you Fandyllic.--g0urra[T҂C] 20:17, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

OpenWDB again

And I need some testers. I released there the first XML. If you don't know what OpenWDB is, please check this page. User:Adys/Sig 07:01, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Uber n00b Question

How do i make the funky Signiture things? like everyone else -- KingStoph 11:24, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

See WW:SIG :) Kirkburn talk contr 13:55, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Firefox search plugin

I just reinstalled my Firefox, and I tried to get the search engine installed automatically again in my Firefox search box, but only got errors when trying to do so. -- Cipri 15:24, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Odd timing! I just added this to the tech team's todo list :) Kirkburn talk contr 15:51, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Anything yet? It still won't work for me here, figured it should start working again after the upgrade... WoWWiki-Cipri 10:29, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Guild site issue

First time posting here, so if I screw up let me know. I tried to update a website link for a guild today and each time the page wouldn't save because of other guilds websites getting caught in the spam filter of the Wiki. I maintain the guild info here and on our Official WoW forums so I know the infomation is correct. This wasn't an issue last week. Is there a work around or are certain guild websites not postable anymore?--Seth 15:31, 27 March 2008 (UTC) Saltydog 17 (working on my sig shortly.)

Okay, I ran into this spam filter thing editing Guild:Legion of Chaos (Shattered Halls US) (their guild URL was caught by spam filter). I will investigate. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:26 PM PST 27 Mar 2008

It looks like the MediaWiki 1.12 upgrade brought with it a spam filtering mechanism. The "black list" appears to live at w:Spam_Blacklist (Wikia Central). WoWWiki may have a local one, but it sounds like Kirburn or one of the Wikia folks could explain the mechanism in more detail. The Guild:Legion of Chaos (Shattered Halls US) URL is from the cjb.net domain which is on the black list. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:34 PM PST 27 Mar 2008

I can, it was on our guild page that wowwiki was broke.

See, many users won't and that is the point

It is obviously more important to act like you know humor while completely missing the point, a real April Fool's prank would speculate about all sorts of WOTLK features as if they were real

Please put a disclaimer link AT TOP User:Sharlin/Sig 15:38, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Sharlin, please take your rants elsewhere, especially if they aren't conducive to the discussion. Spam filter problems noted. cjb.net should now be unblocked. Kirkburn talk contr 17:26, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should unblock cjb.net based sites on a case-by-case basis (like legionofchaos.cjb.net for the above guild)? It was blocked for a reason. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:48 PM PST 18 Apr 2008

Counter-vandalism IRC channel

WoWWiki has a counter-vandalism IRC channel! It picks up recent changes that are may be vandalism and posts them on the channel.

Join the channel at chat.freenode.net, #cvn-wikia-wowwiki!

It is fairly low traffic. Which is a good sign. Kirkburn talk contr 22:12, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Slightly related to this, we have a strengthened spam blocker now - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist

However, it /may/ block valid urls - if you see this occur, we can whitelist them via MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist.

Tell an admin if you see it happen, and we'll come to the rescue :) Kirkburn talk contr 12:28, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Does the spam blocker use http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Spam_Blacklist to determine what to block? --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:28 PM PST 29 Mar 2008

Tbh, I'm not sure, but I will try to find out. Kirkburn talk contr 02:29, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Firefox Problems? (Mac)

Just out of curiosity, is anyone else having problems with WoWWiki on Firefox on their Macs? My PC seems to be fine, and Safari on my Mac seems to access it fine. But Firefox keeps trying and trying and trying to load the page and never makes it. Blank page. =( Any ideas? --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 21:55, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I use Firefox on my MacBook Pro and am having no problems... What skin are you using? --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:30 PM PST 29 Mar 2008

No clue, I'll look at that when I'm back on the Mac. --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 03:21, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, apparently my Firefox got updated and is working fine. Not sure if that'll help, but for now I'll take it. =) --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 22:02, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

On rare occasions I've seen corrupted files in the cache do this kind of thing. Emptying your browser cache, or sometimes just hitting the reload button while holding the shift key, can fix it. No idea if that was causing your issue, though. -W.woods 12:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Stubs 2.4?

I remember someone mentioning in an earlier post that they were removing the stubs from patch 2.4. Category:Stubs/Upcoming_Patch There's still a lot of stuff in there. Can we go through them and remove them (and if they're still stubs, make them non-2.4's)? Or is there a process that needs to be done, like, check to see if they actually made the live release? --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 22:02, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Well some of the stubbed ones are for the midsummer festival as well. Since it's technically not live for those yet, I'd say keep the stubs how they are. And only remove the stubs on pages that are complete with all necessary info... otherwise it will just get lost in the normal stubs that are rarely looked at (unless on the page itself).

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 02:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

if you can figure out a way to decide which ones to remove and which ones to leave i can have the replace bot go remove the tags. Laurly talk|contr|bot 17:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you can remove the stub/2.4, if the information seems relatively complete and does not apply to holiday events that haven't happened (like Midsummer Fire Festival). Make sure to replace the stub/2.4 with a regular stub (stub/Item, stub/NPC, stub/Quest, etc.) if the info is not complete (i.e. no source, no tooltip, no external links). --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:05 PM PST 31 Mar 2008

Or NYI, for items like Midsummer. --Sky (t · c · w) 22:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It's that time of year again....

Main Page ... we do love to mess with people's heads. Kirkburn talk contr 01:32, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Nedz moar kittehs. It is still funny.--SWM24 48 01:35, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Meowwiki was better ;) -- Zeal ^(T/C) 01:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was another vandalism again and was about to revert it, then realised that it was Kirkburn's work..... Ban Kirkburn!!! ;) WakemanCK 01:42, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

MeoWWiki only affected one site ... visited GuildWiki yet? :) Kirkburn talk contr 01:45, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Their pages URL has the words April Fools 2008 in it though so it won't fool them as well :p Leviathon 02:56, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

It's not even the 1st here yet, you bums! I was so confused >_< --Jiyambi t || c 03:24, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Gah, dammit Adys! Nearly had a freaking heart attack after refreshing RC and seeing a page full of redlinks. --k_d³ 03:49, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Me too XD I saw a page full of red links, figured it was because they temporarily disabled those pages for GuildWiki. Then I saw that my own talk page is a blue link. I think to myself "Who said something in my talk page?" and it's still empty...that's when I realized the colors were switched. Very nice. :p --User:Lywellyn/Sig 04:39, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I think by affecting the sidebar and functional tab links also, it spoils the prank too early )-: I mean, if a link to Special:Recentchanges on the sidebar is red, that's a big clue. (of course I'm just being picky d-: ) -Pan Sola 05:14, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I still misclick the links by accident, while I already know that it is just a fake. On the April Fool's subject... Shouldn't we add the bard and Molten Core jokes from the WoW webpage? (or maybe even the Tauren Marine from the Starcraft II webpage) --Kulsprutejojjo 11:26, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Its stupid. User:Sharlin/Sig 12:27, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Follow up, it is very stupid. Put a link at the top that very obviously goes to the real main page otherwise just shut the site down. I don't mind April Fools jokes but only a fool thinks this one is funny, its annoying and will put people off because face it, a lot of people will be more annoyed than anything User:Sharlin/Sig 12:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Or you could scroll to the bottom of said page, and see the link ... Kirkburn talk contr 13:15, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I've been going through a lot of websites, and it's disgusting to see all those people loathing April's fools' 24 hours jokes. If we lose millions of users today because of the main page being different, big deal, but heck, just skip it if you don't like it honestly. I personally preferred meowwiki aswell, just like I preferred the two-headed ogre april's fools to the tinfoil hat one. Do I pop and whine about it? No. User:Adys/Sig 13:21, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

There may be an important difference: some jokes are non-disruptive (not affecting user experience with non-April 1st content; see all of Blizzard's April's Fools). Most of what's going on around here this year is, however, in-your-face annoying :( -- foxlit 16:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

OK I GET IT - IT'S APRIL 1ST. Now PLEASE fix the damned site. I am an add-on developer and I am sick of not being able to tell which links are not complete and sick of being sent to that stupid home page when I click the WoWWiki home link. Please, don't disrupt the work of others with these stupid attempts at humor. If you want to prank your friends, fine but don't force this shit on everyone else.

Looks like some people need to take a chill pill, lighten up and walk away from the computer if they cannot take jokes and are so uptight that they cannot take a single ounce of humor. Leviathon 17:07, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I don't get to use the computer today on my day off, because website owners feel that they have to force their annoyance on everyone else. Great. Why don't you tell me where you will be spending your day today, and I will come and disrupt you all day so that you can't accomplish anything that you wanted to accomplish today. How's that sound? Not fun? I see.

First sign your posts with 4 tildes and second I am spending my day today looking at sites while between my classes then later on heading home and playing WoW once the servers are back up. Trust me you can't disrupt my day or life more than it already has been between work, class and other life problems. So what if you can't work on your little addon today its not the end of the world and maybe you try doing something else if you can't handle little harmless jokes. Leviathon 17:23, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

>> So what if you can't work on your little addon today << Well thanks for your condescending tone and dismissiveness. Just what I expect from most people. Yarko 17:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Portal:World of Warcraft, and probably even better Portal:Interface customization. The red links switch won't go on for much longer. Kirkburn talk contr 17:25, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, K. As someone mentioned above, there is funny, and there is disruptive. I don't find the solution of "take a chill pill and just go do something else with your time" at all satisfactory. Not knowing which links are busted is frustrating. Sorry, I forgot to sign. Yarko 17:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

rofl, took me a while to get it that it was just switched colors. Actually it's brilliant - only now you notice how you adjust to one particular design :)

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>) 17:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Some people do indeed need to take chill pills here. Sharlin, talking to you - but also stands to anyone in the same position. Yes, the red links are annoying, even I say that and I've been the one to put them up. Yes, the main page is ugly at the moment, yet I still supported the idea. Hey guys, look at WoWinsider, they haven't posted a single news item yet today and are getting cried and yelled at since hours. Look at YouTube, and all the whiners saying they are "losing so much revenue" because they are pissed that they've been rickrolled by the company. Look at all those websites, I can't even think of how many are getting spat on because they are pissing off their users.

You people who can't take a joke correctly, who can't bear having one disrupted day in the year, should try preparing April 2009 right now, because it's going to be the same. Websites will be disrupted, and you'll probably whine the same way if you don't take action now.

Getting a sense of humor is the first step into being less of a disruption to the others - the others will soon be less disruptive towards you. User:Adys/Sig 17:43, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

=D Linked a page to someone earlier this morning and it didn't even occur to me that the colors were switched. I just thought, my god the Lockpicking page needs to be worked on some. ;) Cute! Wish I had been awake enough to appreciate it! --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 20:21, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyone who complains about the switch in link colours being in any way disruptive or having lost functionality of the site from needs to remove themselves from the gene pool. They're switched, not all changed to the same. It was amusing, and complete undisruptive to the site, and if you couldn't see that or have no tolerance for april fools, then that's you're own problem you'll just have to learn to deal with. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 07:15, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Seriously. A moment of confusion, a moment of thought, and all the 'disruption' goes away. Just for one day notice that good links are red and blank links are blue. Reminds me of when I worked for AOhelL and we'd have people call in screaming because they couldn't get to Ebay and were 'losing thousands of dollars'. --Azaram 14:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry Zeal, but this site represents itself of a place of information, not for some twits to get their jollies. I don't give a jack what other sites did. But if you do, then ask yourself - what did wikipedia do? It wasn't the links colors that were disruptive; though the choice to reverse them was ignorant too; it was the fact that visitors could not even get the real main page by clicking the navigation frame on the side.

Next time ya'll want to be cute go make your own web site, if anything wiki's belong to no one and everyone so don't go messing with the functionality or usability. If it had been humorous I am and many others would have laughed, the whole event was disruptive User:Sharlin/Sig 15:22, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

No offense but, seriously, cry us a river. Azaram summed it up pretty well, if you can't get past the fact the wiki has been less functional for a day we'll miss you. User:Adys/Sig 18:14, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Collapsed objects without autoloaded data?

If I had a page with an object that was initially collapsed (say, a hidden table), and which contained transcluded data, is there any way I could contrive it so that the transcluded data weren't downloaded until the containing object was un-collapsed?

The application I was thinking of was for pages that contain multiple large tables of data, such as a craft recipes page. Some users may not want to view all the tables, and so they'd pull an enormous amount of data for no reason. But other users may find it very useful to have all the tables on the one page, as they are currently, rather than chaotically split across a bunch of pages. Splitting the data into several hidden / collapsed tables that weren't downloaded until the user chooses to reveal them seems to me to be a solution. But then, I have no idea if this is possible.

Thanks :)

-- W.woods 12:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Not possible without use of JavaScript, which is unavailable to you on the wiki. --Pcj (T•C) 13:17, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Wait, don't all our tooltips use Javascript? I thought the tooltip contents only download when you mouse over. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:27 AM PST 1 Apr 2008

They do, but then someone has to write and maintain the JavaScript and it has to be called from Common.js to run for everyone. --Pcj (T•C) 00:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks :) I'll just forget about it, then. I can definitely see places where it could help with reducing downloads and taxing the server, without having to split up pages. But it sounds like it can't happen any time soon. --W.woods 03:00, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh it could, you just need to find someone willing to write it and get support for admins to include it. PCJ could, but i'm going to assume he doesn't want to. Not that i'm trying to say in anyway he should have to either. I'd like to see it as a expansion of the existing hide/show script we have already, i'd imagine Sky might be interested in it too. I do question however it's usage with the (imo) uneccessary proliferation of the hide/show on tables (give support for divs while you're at it). -- Zeal ^(T/C) 07:05, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Delaying download of data would require splitting the data off into another page anyway, which is apparently not what you want. --Pcj (T•C) 21:14, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, splitting the data into separate files would be fine. It was more the option of effectively transcluding the data into an aggregate page (like a recipes page) without burdening the size of the main page when it first loads. So you'd still set up separate pages for Journeyman, Artisan, Master etc. recipes, but transclude them into the main page in such a way that the tables remain collapsed and the data unloaded until the viewer decides they want to see them. But I'm not experienced enough to judge whether that would be worthwhile enough to be implemented on a site-wide scale. (Sorry to go off-topic, but another table-related script that occurred to me as useful when I was working on the LW recipes page was one that automatically zebra-striped tables if a "striped" or "zebra" class was set on the table. I've seen such scripts on the web. If you think that's a worthwhile topic to discuss, I'll start a new topic for it!) --W.woods 04:19, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'll think about it, then. --Pcj (T•C) 05:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Can you give an example of the type of table you're talking about? --Pcj (T•C) 05:39, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Tables such as those in Leatherworking patterns. Of course those ones are all written directly into that page at the moment, but they could easily be split into separate pages. The page could be reduced in size by simply making the tables collapsed, if it was possible to delay the loading of their data --W.woods 14:22, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, got a test case working; perform a cache refresh, then see User:Pcj/AJAX test, which includes User:Pcj/AJAX test include. I may yet create a template to help creation of such tables and maybe in the future support DIV and SPAN AJAX retrieval. But let me know what you think. --Pcj (T•C) 16:46, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Created {{ajax}} to aid in AJAX table generation. --Pcj (T•C) 16:54, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

On the target page, be sure to wrap the table cells in <table></table> or {| |} ~~(with no parameters - do all your table formatting on the calling page)~~ so that the wiki parser doesn't screw the code up majorly. --Pcj (T•C) 16:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

This is not working for IE atm, trying to debug it. --Pcj (T•C) 17:07, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Should now be working (hopefully) with IE. --Pcj (T•C) 18:51, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Added option for auto-load text and fixed various bugs. --Pcj (T•C) 19:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Correct me if i'm wrong, or if somethings screwing up just for me, but isn't the data link merely a link the data, no ajax loading in the current page going on? :S -- Zeal ^(T/C) 07:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, probably because you have my tooltips turned off. You'd have to enable them to see it. --Pcj (T•C) 12:06, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Made the tables deprecate to non-script versions with more explanation. --Pcj (T•C) 22:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Pcj, that's quite impressive! It worked well for me. The only thing that occurs to me immediately is that users will probably anticipate that they can hide the table body again, much like a normal collapsible table. But I suppose that could be achievable with the current code if the table was simply set as hidden (I haven't had a chance to play with it yet).

That feature is now added. --Pcj (T•C) 01:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Nice depreciation. Any chance you could not make it dependent on the core of your tooltips and having to enable it? ;p -- Zeal ^(T/C) 11:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

This looks fantastic. I've made a test aggregate page of the recipe tables and placed it in User:W.woods/Sandbox1. In doing so, I discovered a few minor issues:

If "head" isn't defined, it gives each object a default header of "{{{header}}}", rather than leaving it blank. For the inclusion of these tables, having a header name comes across as repetitive, since I need to give each table a section heading anyway (so the table of contents will work... unless there's a way of flagging object headers as section markers, or perhaps just make the regular section markers invisible?)
Each table has its own title in its original file, purely in case someone views those files directly. For example "Apprentice Leatherworking Patterns (1 - 75)". However I didn't want those shown in the aggregate document, again for reasons of redundancy. If I was using transclusion, the noinclude tags would prevent this happening, but the ajax ignores them and loads the title anyway. Is there another way I could hide them, or maybe the ajax code should respect noinclude, or maybe I have to leave them out?
I don't know if this is even possible, but can you trigger a "busy mouse" icon while the data are loading? If you click on the link to reveal the data, and it takes a while, then it simply looks like nothing is happening and the page is broken. Even when I should have known better, I found this caught me out to begin with.

--W.woods 05:39, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Forgot to point out, when having them disabled, the links show as "[link]Click here to display the blah.[/link]", which i imagine is not the intended result. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 12:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Head was originally intended to be required, as otherwise the JS would have nowhere to put the load data link. Now that I added body loading capability, I'll look into removing that requirement. AJAX can't respect noinclude, it's loading the page directly and so the wiki software doesn't really know what's going on. JS disabled should leave the section with [link] as invisible via CSS; if the user has CSS disabled too then he's got other problems. I'll look into the mouse cursor. --Pcj (T•C) 12:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, yes, without head, the JS will have nowhere to put the [edit] [hide] links. --12:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have worded that better.. it's not the header object that is the problem, it's the header title. If you want it blank, it shows up as "{{{header}}}" on the page instead :)

It should allow blank header now. --Pcj (T•C) 01:15, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Erm.. CSS is enabled, no question about that. It's still displaying what i quoted. It should be either hidden, or preferably a proper link (ie. [[blah|Click here to display the blah]].) so it can still be accessed. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 12:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

What browser are you using? --Pcj (T•C) 12:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Wrapping the title in <div class="ajaxHide"></div> should hide it when it is called through the AJAX method. --Pcj (T•C) 15:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Avant w/ IE7 as always. It's the bodyload text that's showing and shouldn't be (both default and custom). I see you're using visibility:collapse on that table row, which naturally doesn't work in IE7 and is handled incorrectly by all but firefox anyway (opera works by using display: hidden instead). As the table you're using is 100% width, one column, and you're removing a row, there's no need to use visibility: collapse, and display: none would be a better option. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 13:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You're right, visibility:collapse doesn't work on IE. Unfortunately, when I tried it, messing with element.style.display in JS seemed to confuse IE (specifically, switching to display = "table-row"; though it of course worked fine with Fx). I'll play with it a bit more. --Pcj (T•C) 22:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, should now be IE-friendly. --Pcj (T•C) 22:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks good now, ty. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 07:25, 14 April 2008 (EDT)

OK, I've used Pcj's awesome AJAX code to create a more lightweight (but still complete) recipes page for Leatherworking. The draft version is in User:W.woods/Sandbox1. Do you think this is a suitable format? :) If people reading this like it (which I accept they may not), I'll start a new section on the pump to get more views, so as to not spring it on anyone by surprise. --W.woods 10:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

At a brief glance, as someone having it disabled, i like it. Gets round include limits too, so less people whining about templates in their lists. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 13:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The recent historical figure Mother Theresa is ....

The recent historical figure Mother Theresa is a possible archetypical image for WoW's Holy specialised Priest.

Sorry, but I couldn't help and LOLed when I read this line on the Choosing a class page. Checking back the history, the same guy added this line also added a lot of funny "archetypical image" for several more classes. Another guy already questioned the appropriateness of such examples on its discussion page. What do you guys think? I prefer to cross those silly sentences out all together.

WakemanCK 02:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Remove them. Make sure to leave an edit summary saying something like "inappropriate class flavor text/image." --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:47 PM PST 1 Apr 2008

Indeed. Even if we were creating a specific guide to all the inspirations the designers had when creating a class; we'd never, ever even come close to finishing it. Why should this out-of-context reference (or two) make the exception? Melaisis 22:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

WoWWiki:RC broken?

Last update was 2008-03-25. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:47 PM PST 1 Apr 2008

Mikk has been notified on his talk page. Kirkburn talk contr 01:16, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Addition to Reagentbox

Ok, I am not any kind of a programmers, so I have no idea how difficult this would be. I like to see the raw materials for an item as well as the 'finished' ones... like [Surestrike Goggles v2.0] needs two Hardened Adamantite Tubes, which equals three Hardened Adamantite Bars, which equals 30 Adamantite Bars, which is 60 [Adamantite Ore]. It would be nice to have a link in the box that would switch it from just the one line to frex:

2 Hardened Adamantite Tube
- 3 Hardened Adamantite Bar
  - 30 Admantite Bar

for each item. I know this could get a bit unwieldy, but it makes it a lot easier to plan farming / shopping to know what exactly you're going to have to chase up. --Azaram 14:59, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

That would require an extensive and unnecessary amount of programming, just go to the respective item pages and look up the mats. Shouldn't be that hard to calculate the amounts of raw materials needed.--g0urra[T҂C] 15:04, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I could see how it would be very useful to see the raw materials needed, but I don't think this kind of reprogramming is necessary. Rather, under the normal materials box, just include a second one that lists only raw materials needed. Would this solve the problem satisfactorily? --Jiyambi t || c 21:10, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I made this. It's not a template, but is it sort of what you had in mind? I don't know if there is a way to hide the raw materials without using the show/hide tables, but I might try doing that as well. --Jiyambi t || c 00:36, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

UPDATE: I now made it function as a template, but it's rather bulky and unwieldy. However, if you like to use it or move it to the main namespace (or improve it!) feel free. --Jiyambi t || c 01:17, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Cool! I don't currently make any pages that would need said template, but it certainly does look useful. =) Good job. --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 08:35, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm perfectly happy to have just a list of the raw materials on the page a la

[Imbued Netherweave Bag], but someone went to the trouble to code the box, so rather than clutter the page with loose text (which doesn't bother me) I figured I'd ask. (looks at Jiyambi's page) That would work but looks a little busy... I'd prefer one show link to show all the materials at once. That would be kind of hard tho, I guess.. Thanks for trying tho. :-). --Azaram 10:04, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Apparently not thinking incredibly clearly, either; not surprising since I was at work. :-p Would it be possible to just extend the box to add a 'raw materials' section? Would still have to be filled out manually, but if it was there, it'd be easier. --Azaram 12:22, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

So you're looking for something like this?--g0urra[T҂C] 15:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I like that much better, Gourra! Much less busy than mine, and simpler too. --Jiyambi t || c 21:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I actually liked yours, Jiy. I agree that the other one is simpler, but I liked the fact that you could tell on yours which raw mats went to what. So say I gathered all those raw mats, now I have to do an additional look up to see which ones pertained to what. Know what I mean? --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 00:41, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess that is true. I will leave mine where it is, and people can feel free to change it around as they wish and use it as they wish. --Jiyambi t || c 05:09, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Gourra, please don't use T:Item in such a case. :X --Sky (t · c · w) 05:26, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I have to use T:Item to make the icon show automatically, unlike {{reagentbox}} where you have to specify it. Unless there's a way to show the icon in some other magical way, of course, without having to look it up (it becomes very time-consuming if you have, say, 8 items).--g0urra[T҂C] 14:20, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Not much of a reason not to; the section isn't likely to be transcluded, and isn't likely to be repeated a lot of times on the same page; might as well use {{item}}. -- foxlit 21:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

The transclusion nightmare: the list of templates used becomes ineffective if browsing what's on the page, for one reason. There's absolutely no reason to use them, other than we like automatic pictures (man, which I could cite "ILIKEIT" from WP...). Using the argument "Not much of a reason not to" is a strawman. --Sky (t · c · w) 22:20, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe the reason for it was mentioned by Gourra above: if {{item}} is not used, it is simply not time/labor efficient to use the reagentbox to make icons. In this case "not much of a reason not to" combined with "it's a complete pain in the butt not to" = (imo) a good reason to use it. --Jiyambi t || c 22:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Gourra's is what I had in mind for what I last mentioned... I didn't think of the which goes to what; I use a mod called Advanced Tradeskill Window that automatically queues things... like if I want to make a Foo, and the materials are a Bar, Bel and Qux, I hit 'queue Foo' and Bar, Bel, Qux and Foo appear in the list. The pictures I don't care much about, but it doesn't hurt (me) to have them there... Thanks for the work, Jiyambi and Gourra...--Azaram 00:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Talent Points

If I unlearn my talent points will I have to earn them again or can I keep the talent points I have and reassign them? -- Jsigman79 20:58, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

You gain talent points as you level up. You can only level up once, so there would be no way to re-earn them. To answer your question, you reassign them. For future reference questions involving the game itself should be asked in the Warcraft pump

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 21:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Beta test the new skin!

For anyone who wants to test the upcoming new skin for WoWWiki, please visit User talk:Kirkburn#Monaco skin preview. I want to check there are no issues with it before it goes live. Any issues you do find, please leave them on my talk page under that topic :) Kirkburn talk contr 22:26, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Uh, is the new skin supposed to be live now? When I'm not logged in, I'm seeing a white-background skin, I presume it's the new one? Majromax 20:14, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Right, my [Special:Preferences] page is saying that "The admins for this wiki have chosen: Monaco Sapphire as the default skin." I don't think this is supposed to be live yet, correct? The 'Monaco Sapphire' skin without your custom changes looks rather... bad, what with a white background. Majromax 20:27, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

You need to go to the page Kirkburn linked above and follow the instructions there to set up the custom skin. The skin he is talking about is not live just yet, hence the extra steps to see it. Once we have done the beta testing, it will be edited to become the default skin. --Jiyambi t || c 23:00, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

The skin accidentally got set as Monaco Sapphire (blue and white) earlier today for about 2-3 hours, which has since been reverted. When the final skin goes live - likely on Monday, it will be the fully WoWWiki-themed version. Kirkburn talk contr 00:05, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Note that whilst testing the skin, please check Portal:World of Warcraft and the other portals, as I plan for them to go live with the skin. Kirkburn talk contr 00:14, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Portal namespace redux

Since I have had questions over the new namespace, previously discussed here and elsewhere, I shall make a post on the subject:

Why have a portal namespace?: As contents articles do not belong in the article namespace (something Main Page rather violates), they should go elsewhere. I do not believe WoWWiki: is the place for this, because it is for articles primarily related to the running of the wiki. To put articles primarily intended for viewers of the wiki in there makes little sense to me. Contents pages are essentially a third type of content.; It also made it easier to create Portal:Warcraft universe, something WoWWiki has rather neglected so far.; I expect portals to be a page people bookmark in their browser. People who don't play WoW would probably bookmark Portal:Warcraft universe, for example.

But it only has four portals!: This is true, but the intention is to expand this over time. I want users to come with their own portals for the different subjects on the wiki. One for Warcraft, one for Warlocks (which could tie in well with the projects), whatever deserves one. It's all about organising content and making it accessible.; I see little downside to having a small namespace (which has precedent, see memory-alpha.org for example). Apart from creating two more options on drop downs, it adds no load or particular complexity.

What does this mean for the Main Page: The intention is, on Monday (assuming the skin goes live), for Portal:World of Warcraft to become the main page of the wiki. This is easily done by one code tweak and a redirect. It is almost identical to the current main page (since that is already WoW-centric), but has a different name to be consistent with the other portals.

Why now?: With the new skin comes new opportunities. The sidebar can list many more items and can be organised much better by type. It also allows listing several different portals. I wanted to get this done early so we don't have more trouble at a later time when we decide we do need a portal namespace - e.g. mass page moving, breaking people's bookmarks. By starting it now, we set a precedent and a clear sense of purpose for articles in that namespace. Create something there, and you're making a contents page for the wiki. It can run on different rules to WoWWiki type pages which are normally static (and something normal users shouldn't really normally touch).; The current portals, with the exception of the WoW one due to its primary position, are open to be edited by anyone. For this to work properly, the design will probably have to be reworked a bit, but the philosophy I want is that it's a more open way of users organising content, and not relying on an admin to "fix it".

So why do I think this is important going into the future and what next?: The change is so we don't have to deal with it later, especially at the inevitable point that WoW becomes less of a focus in the Warcraft series. Assuming portals are created one change to come later (much later, probably) is that the WoW portal stops being the main page and instead that becomes Portal:Main which links to all the different portals. I'm not advocating that we go that far in moving away from a WoW focus at the moment, but it will probably become an issue in the future.; Now, having written this, I have had a thought - should Portal:Main be the main page to switch to on Monday (with the WoW portal moved there), or does it make sense as it stands? The current way around it will mean probably changing the main page again at some point in the future, whereas this way means moving the WoW content off it at some point.

Benefits of Portal:WoW - more accurate name, better search ranking

Disadvantages - not a "main page" style name, won't always be the main page.

Benefits of Portal:Main - more forward looking, permanent name

Disadvantages - will probably mean WoW content moves to a different location in the future, could confuse.

Remember, launch of the skin (and portal system) should be Monday. I did not intend to post this so late, but .. well, I didn't realise I needed to post this stuff. Kirkburn talk contr 02:41, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Unless you're running into a double redirect with how you're planning to make the main page switch, i makes most sense to me for Portal:Main to be setup as the main page, but redirect to Portal:WoW for now. Failing that, a transclude into Portal:Main? *shrug*. You know i'm all for this namespace and it's expansion anyway. Now you're thinking with portals ;) -- Zeal ^(T/C) 11:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

That's pretty sensible. Transclude P:WoW into P:Main. That way P:Main can stay locked, but we can unlock P:WoW, even though it'll still be the primary page. Kirkburn talk contr 15:34, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. Kirkburn talk contr 15:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I suggest you create WoWWiki:Portal project or something to organize the creation of new portals and stuff. Also, how about a "tab tree"? Clicking on the wow tab would reveal a new row of tabs with classes, quests, instances and so on. And when youy clicked the classes tab, another row of tabs would appear with each of the classes. May sound a bit complicated, but I think it could work if it was done in a clever way. --Ose^{Talkz / Contribz} 20:07, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

The point of policy

Would like someone who makes policy for this wiki to review the page Talk:Your_mom please. I've made my views clear on the bottom of that page, but it boils down to people trying to enforce the letter of the law to conclude an outcome to a deletion vote (wether you think the article should be deleted or not is irrelevant), while my view is that the deletion policy is there to set a framework people must follow to avoid abuse and random opinionated delete markers, that is the principle of the policy, and the policy shouldn't be used to 'selectively ignore' certain votes to favour an outcome (the voting score is clearly 4 keep 3 delete before the "vote in progress" tags were removed and a delete rule was applied). Thanks

Nuts looks like the page got removed in the last 5 minutes while i was writing this :P is there any way to view the history for a deleted page or are they actually truely deleted from the wiki db rather than just marked as such? :| See i'd say since the 3 votes were in before the vote was closed they still count, the policy just says you can move from a vote to deletion tag within X days, not that you can historically discount votes based on this policy?

Iprice 14:31, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Can you give a summary of what was on that page? Based on the title, it doesn't sound good. --Piu ^(?!) 17:20, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

It was a silly page, that mainly delt with Barrens chat. Do not deletion votes need to win by three? --SWM24 48 18:53, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

It's merely for consensus, not binding. I think the implication here is someone changed it to a deletion vote (which seems to be the correct choice) but removed the previous voting (wrong afaik, but there could be cause to remove defunct votes). Since then, it seems like an admin just deleted it anyways for w/e reason they believed to be valid. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 19:03, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Aye the page wasn't particularly important or necessary, the vote centered around wether there was a place on the wiki for an explanation of what "Your mom" stuff is about, regardless I am not here to defend or attack the relevance of the page, mearly the way the person set up the vote used the policy to selectively ignore vote that were outside the "5 day" time frame but were still in before the vote was actually closed. The page history made that very clear. At the point in the history log at which the vote was changed to closed there was not a sufficient majority to warrent a delete result (4-3 in favour of delete). Iprice 16:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

SVG icons

See Category:SVG icons - the goal is to replace the current png icons in Category:WoWWiki Icons - does not include the third party website icons ofc. The ones I've uploaded now are from the Tango iconset, and of course I'm not done. Thoughts? User:Adys/Sig 21:00, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Looking good to me!--g0urra[T҂C] 21:03, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

All hail SVG! --k_d³ 21:03, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Great looking stuff! Kirkburn talk contr 17:08, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Article of the Day?

Just a small comment, but does anyone else agree that the "Featured Article" on the main page is very repetitive and hardly ever shows different content between common articles? -- TheAdamant 03:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

That's because all we're using is a small rotation. WW:FA. Chime in for articles you want to see in the list. It could use an updating. --k_d³ 04:59, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, it needs new articles, I've just been caught up with site upgrade stuff at the moment. Kirkburn talk contr 17:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Skin and portals are live!

The new skin and main page portals are live! Check WoWWiki:Upgrade early 2008 for more info. Kirkburn talk contr 09:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Since this new skin going live, all the monaco skins on ww are causing problems for me. I get wgPrivateTracker undefined when trying to use the user link drop down, and in ie7 (and my avant which i use) the cpu usage constantly sits around 20% per open wowwiki tab, and climbs up when moving the mouse around or doing things in a tab. As a side issue, heavy full cpu like this causes known problems with logitech drivers, so middle mouse stops working as intended and "Ctrl+Shift" becomes locked on until pressed again, ultimately making the site unusable.

I've dsiabled all js that i run on my browser, i've also diabled my user js. So the problem lies outside my control. Monaco works perfectly fine on other wikia wikis, so i'm inclineded to beleive it's an error caused by a modifaction on ww, or the javascript we're running conflicting. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 09:39, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Possibly it's some conflict, I've not run across any problems on Fx2, Fx3 or IE7. I'll report the missing vars. Kirkburn talk contr 09:54, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I use the "wowwiki" skin listed under Old Skins. This won't be removed will it?--Rockfang 23:38, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Nope. It won't be actively supported, but then, it isn't disappearing. --Sky (t · c · w) 23:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Complaint! The "Wiki page in widget" seems to put it's pages in the Mediawiki namespace... since these are going to be per-use things, would it not be better to use the user's namespace? Also, there is no edit link in the widget, which could make this hard for people to change around. I think the most common use is going to be bookmarks, so fast editing is a must. User:Tekkub/Sig 02:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I can't even figure out how to USE the "Wiki page in widget". I can change the title of that widget just fine, but no matter what page I put in, it always comes back "Special:Mypage/bookmarks". What gives? -User:Lywellyn/Sig 09:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Concern: The Search box is unusable when browsing WoWWiki from a cell phone using Opera Mini. The arrow-shaped submit button doesn't appear. —I laugh ... to disguise the tears. 17:49, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

What level of CSS support does Opera Mini have? The search button appears to be setup as a CSS background-image. I will have to try this new Monaco skin on my iPod Touch and see how Safari handles it. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:24 PM PST 9 Apr 2008

Search button works fine on Safari iPod Touch, but I can't edit sections. Also, there are lots of reported HTML errors (some legit and some not). Safari is pretty strict, so it complains about <style> tags inside <body> tags. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:58 PM PST 11 Apr 2008

Sorry, no idea what CSS support Opera Mini has. Moreover, my cell phone died (Yay! I have an iPhone now!) so I can no longer test this. Thanks anyway! Maeilynel 12:47, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The 16x16 icons

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here but... how do I make the 16x16 kind of icons? I mean, look at [Gauntlets of the Ancient Frostwolf] for example - in the "Vendor" section of the tooltip there are two small icons for the items needed to obtain them.
Now when I tried to do the same with [Felstrength Legplates] I saw that the smallest kind of INV_Pants_Plate_24 icon is missing - there are only the 64x64 and the 32x32 ones. How to fix that? -- Vysogota T / C

Don't forget the extension. [3] --k_d³ 03:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Nah, stupid me... I knew I was missing something obvious, but I didn't suspect it could be that trivial. Thanks. -- Vysogota T / C

Missing faction / tabard icons on user templates

Fooling around with the user templates, I noticed that a lot of the faction tags have broken pictures on them. A load of them can be seen at Template_talk:User_exalted in the Burning Crusade factions section. I went to the page they seemed to be pulling from and the tabard pics were there, but I wasn't able to figure out how they were broken in the templates. My wiki-fu is weak. Can't even figure out how to get to the template... :-p Example: --Azaram 04:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

To get to the template, you'd just use Template:User_exalted and edit it from there. The code that shows the image s simply Template:Tabard where you can supply two arguments: Which tabard, and what size. I simply can't see anything wrong with the code though. As you say: The image exists, but I guess the thumbnail (48x48) image does not? --User:Lywellyn/Sig 09:52, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Mmm, "Wiki-fu". I like that word. I must find a reason to use. --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 19:34, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I looked at this and tried to fix it by using the 47px thumbnail, but a bunch of other names picked up the image, so I reverted it all. It looks like some Wikia person may have to regenerate or flush the [[Image:Skyguard Tabard.jpg|48px]] by hand some way.

[[Image:Skyguard Tabard.jpg|48px]] should show up here:

But you can see it doesn't. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 7:35 PM PST 11 Apr 2008

~~Fandyllic fixed it~~, it is weird, I had the same problem about a month ago with the unnamed ships under the boat article and to fix it, all I did was change the px size by one, just like fandyllic did. Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 03:31, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I (and others) created that template, and the image thumbnail bug was a wikiawide problem at that time, but it was fixed everywhere, except on this particular template. I told Kirburn, I told wikia, but nothing has happened. And user templates are not supposed to be more than 50px high, which means that with a 1px border, the max image height must be 48px. --Ose^{Talkz / Contribz} 20:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Old Version?

Is it possible to view Wowwiki in its older version? coz im getting lots of issues veiwing this on my phone, and i tend to read up on lore whenever i get a chance too. Main issue i get is the page is too large, and thus wont load. any ideas? -- KingStoph 14:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, see WoWWiki:Upgrade early 2008#New_.22Monaco.22_skin for alternatives. Kirkburn talk contr 16:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Issues with new skin

I'm having serious problems with the new skin. Under no circumstances at all will any images load up with it, and the section to log in is invisible. I went to the log in page and the area where you type in your username and password aparently loads up but is invisible, and i had to slowly move my mouse over the fields and click around the page to find the entery fields so i could type in my name and password. This plus other issues have made this site almost unusable, and after i got logged in i immediately went to preferences and changed back to the old skin. Dantheman102100 17:24, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Sounds bad. Please give some information about your browser and maybe OS. Which skin did you pick exactly (Monaco Sapphire?)? --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:44 AM PST 10 Apr 2008

Search engine?

Hi, since the new skin became public I can't add the WW Opensearch plugin using firefox. It appears in the searchbox to be added but fails with an error msg. I'll post a screenshot if requested to.--Nesukun 08:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

It's always been that way, unfortunately - I have requested work on it, however. For now I think you'll have to add it manually. Kirkburn talk contr 11:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

"Edit this" box.

I just edited a page and got the helpful box linking to other things that might need editing... The three links it gave me were Other|Stubs/Other, Stubs/Strategy, UI|Stubs/UI. The first and third are bad links because they have | in them, the second just doesn't exist. I have no idea where this box pulls from, but it may need some tweaking... -- Bobson 15:48, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I am wondering where that green box came from too. I am scared of it.--SWM24 48 21:51, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. It's a new feature, called EditSimilar (a misnomer) - find out more on w:c:inside:EditSimilar.

It gets links via MediaWiki:EditSimilar-Categories, which could probably be customized further. Kirkburn talk contr 22:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

It has not been fixed. I received links to [[Deteriorating Plate Belt|Deteriorating Plate Belt]], [[Double Mail Shoulderpads|Double Mail Shoulderpads]], and [[Frayed Shoes|Frayed Shoes]] (all of which are broken because of the pipe). Clearly the extension is displaying the pipe via html rather than setting it to be parsed in the wikiformatting (notice the difference between [[Deteriorating Plate Belt|Deteriorating Plate Belt]] and Deteriorating Plate Belt). --Notmyhandle 11:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Apologies - I fixed one issue, but not the other. Apparently there was some weirdness with our stubs, which should now be fixed. The techs are also doing something server-side which should also fix the issue. Kirkburn talk contr 16:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Last time I checked it wasn't fixed (3 seconds ago) - after editing Tari'qa I received the following, "Thanks for your edit. Check out these related articles: Recipe: Discolored Healing Potion|Recipe: Discolored Healing Potion, Formula: Enchant Chest - Lesser Mana|Formula: Enchant Chest - Lesser Mana, Beast Slaying|:Beast Slaying." With all of the "Recipe: NAME|Recipe: NAME" entries being links - everything works except you have it set to list it twice... you don't need the pipe in the wikimarkup for it to display correctly, because you're duplicating the name anyways and the pipe is for displaying a link title other than the destination... --Notmyhandle 04:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Auto-refreshing (AJAX) recent changes

If you're an avid recent changes refresher like myself, you'd probably like something which does it for you. I've developed some JS which will do just that; to use the functionality yourself, add the following lines to your monaco.js or wowwiki.js (or other, depending on your selected skin):

function ajaxRC() {
if (wgPageName == "Special:Recentchanges") loadJS("User:Pcj/ajaxrc.js", 0);
}
addOnloadHook(ajaxRC);

Recent changes will quietly update once a minute with this enabled. Please let me know if you have any problems. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 16:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't work for me. I imported the js at 18:32, did two changes at 18:34 and 18:38, but neither of them showed on recent changes at 18:40.--g0urra[T҂C] 16:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

You probably have to clear your cache. --Pcj (T•C) 16:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I cleared it and tried again, doesn't work.--g0urra[T҂C] 17:02, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, what browser are you using? Does it throw an error? --Pcj (T•C) 17:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I am using Firefox 2.0.0.13. It gives no error or anything, it's just that nothing is refreshing.--g0urra[T҂C] 17:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Doesen't work for me neither. I'm on firefox 2.something too. -Ose^{Talkz / Contribz} 17:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Purge your cache and reload RC again. Does it show (AJAX) after Recent changes? --Pcj (T•C) 17:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, try again if you just did it, this test wasn't working for Monaco. --Pcj (T•C) 17:30, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Now it shows (AJAX) after Recent changes, but doesn't refresh.--g0urra[T҂C] 17:37, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Works like a charm now. Thanks!--g0urra[T҂C] 18:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

WoWWiki Bots

I'm not going to give up on casually helping to edit WoWWiki, and I am by no means a power user around here, but I cannot tell you how much I loathe seeing a blue link, clicking on it, and nothing being on the page but "This page has been marked for insertion via suchandsuch bot." It's a useless page with no content whatsoever, which is annoying enough in itself to me, but the message about the bot also normally states "Anything added/edited in this page will be overwritten," (once the bot adds its data). This means there is a page which I would like to view that doesn't exist, and I'm being told that it will be added at some point in the future, and that if I choose to add the page myself, the effort will be in vain.

While I agree that bots which gather data can be useful, and would help to fill WoWWiki with a large amount of data which would otherwise either never be added, or added very slowly over time... I have always seen wikis as not being just plain "editable by anyone", but more "edited by humans". In such situations, I think that while the bot's output will have more technical data about the item/quest/npc - a lot of human-contributed data is often as or more important.

In the interest of fairness to our artificially intelligent friends, I would not go so far as you suggest that bots not be allowed, but that if a page is "marked" by a bot, and a human edits it before the bot uploads its data, the bot should ignore the upload, cache the bot's data for human-intervened inclusion, or perhaps merge the data with what is on the page (following a boilerplate for reference?). I might be the only one who encounters such pages on a regular basis, but it seems to happen so often, there is little reason for me to bother adding new pages at all these days. I have to sit around and wait for the bot to finish its cycle and upload the data before I can view the item, add additional information and so on. It's far too much of a hassle when I'm already at the website, ready to edit the page several days before.
User:Recluse/Sig18:12, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

There are times when I feel that I too can make some contributions to a page that are marked by some of the bots, and so I asked the one that is (to me) the most prominent here about removing the tag. http://www.wowwiki.com/User_talk:Laurly#Bot_Q . Essentially if you want to rework a page that has that flag, go for it, but then the bot won't. So yes, perhaps like you said, there might be a way to merge both efforts, but for now if you really want to update that page, go for it. But even if not, hitting a dead blue page, users will still know that eventually a page will exist with information on it. =D --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 20:15, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, so we can just remove the tag (if we're going to edit the page by hand), and the bot will ignore importing data to that place? That would do the trick, but the only other problem I have with it is the blue link to an empty page (which also makes the page not appear in the "Wanted" section), which can be misleading. Without internal MediaWiki editing, though, I am sure that it would not be possible to have links to bot-queued pages appear in another color, or with an icon, etc. thus allowing people to know that the page is 'forthcoming'. Even to have the edit page perform a check of the bot-queue's pages to provide a notice when adding a new page. The tag is certainly the best method for informing the user, even though it causes disillusion as to a page's existence, when it does not in fact exist. Perhaps there should be a link on the Wanted page to the different bot-queue pages as an alternative/additional source for pages which are needed? User:Recluse/Sig20:47, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if you're going to edit the page by hand, just remove the tag and edit. The blue link is misleading, but they should start being filled in relatively soon.

I believe that all articles which are tagged with a bot-fill tag are in a subcategory of Category:Stubs. If not, I can add them, as there's only two bots that I know of. And then of course there's also a couple other pages... however, there is no way of editing what is displayed on Special:Wantedpages. --Sky (t · c · w) 03:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I assumed that page would not be editable without admin intervention, which is why I doubted it was a good course of action at all. I did browse over the Category:Stubs, but was unable to locate any of the bot tags there. I could be blind, though. User:Recluse/Sig10:56, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

User:(Laurlybot/Donpc, Laurlybot/Doquests, Laurlybot/FixPlease, Laurlybot/FixPlease/NPCs, Laurlybot/FixPlease/Quests), as well as User:Foxbot/UpdateItem and User:Foxbot/FixPlease. I haven't checked to see which categories they put the articles in, but the what links here should provide that information. --Sky (t · c · w) 04:14, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Northrend fan maps

In a severe attack of the awesome, Kanaru has been busy making some fan maps - check his user page for some links. Apparently WOW Insider and other sites got wind of it earlier today but did not know it was fan created. There's some talented fan artists out there...

(Of course, note that these kind of maps are allowed on articles only when they stick very closely to Blizzard's preliminary maps, are high quality, and are marked as fan creations.) Kirkburn talk contr 21:43, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Duplicate Categories?

So, what's the difference between Category:World of Warcraft neck items and Category:Necklaces? Are there non-necklace items that can be worn on the neck (like a scarf or something?)? --Notmyhandle 12:45, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Because someone thought it was a good idea to create categories exclusive to World of Warcraft content under Category:World of Warcraft items. Pretty much useless if you ask me...--g0urra[T҂C] 14:28, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the snide comment. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 12:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

By definition, yes there are non-necklaces worn on the neck, but that's rather irrelevent. It's named in full to be consistant with all the others and to specificy it's for wow only, and it used in the neck slot. The other one does neither of those. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 12:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Quest description pop-up blocking quest link in Firefox

I just noticed that with the new skin if any line of the quest description pop-up is too large, then the pop-up will overlay the mouse pointer preventing the user from clicking on the actual quest link. This will be especially visible if the user has increased the default font size for readability purposes. Note that the bug only shows up clearly when the quest link is on the left side of the page.

[70 Daily] Ata'mal Armaments is one of the examples here. -- Aigarius 16:20, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I need to figure out a max width for the tooltips, but the example you cited is fixed. --Pcj (T•C) 16:25, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

mobbbox -> npcbox

Since the mobbox template now has been called deprecated, I've noticed that some people has started converting articles to npcbox instead. There's a few things I'd like to remind you of first:

"type" in mobbox isn't the same as "type" in npcbox. "type" in mobbox is the same as "creature" in npcbox (Humanoid, Beast, Demon etc), while "type" in npcbox has the "rare" and "elite" equivalent in mobbox.
"faction" in mobbox always default to combat, while "faction" in npxboc default to neutral. Note that this only counts when there is no faction statement given, writing "faction=" at all gives an error.

--g0urra[T҂C] 09:21, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Addendum: So when using {{npcbox}} for a mob, use | faction=Combat --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 8:10 PM PST 13 Apr 2008

Added the faction note onto the fixing solution of the mobbox template. Only thing now is getting everyone to actually change the parameters and not just change mobbox to npcbox... maybe if we could make the solution to stand out... even more than it already does...

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 06:20, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Post edit note problems

After an edit I got this:

I don't know how these notes get constructed, but the link generator is obviously screwed up somehow. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:21 AM PST 14 Apr 2008

See also #.22Edit_this.22_box.. It should be fixed now, but some serverside tweaks are also being made. Kirkburn talk contr 20:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

So is the Village pump a good place to report if we see further problems? I noticed most of the links are good now, but there are a few stragglers. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 8:15 AM PST 15 Apr 2008

I'm guessing it's the wiki cache being updated. I saw it again earlier, and it appeared fixed. Kirkburn talk contr 16:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Any estimate as to how long it will take for the wiki cache to finish updating most of the bad links? Says, weeks, months? The problem seems exceptionally bad for edits where templates were added or edited. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:42 PM PST 15 Apr 2008

On an almost entirely dissimilar line, how are "similar links" calculated? I edited a quest page, and got 'suggested' 3 links that were at least superficially unrelated to the page I was editing. (After which, I turned the busybody off...) --Eirik Ratcatcher 00:03, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it grabs pages from categories that it shares... not sure though, considering I got an item link after editing an NPC. --Notmyhandle 00:24, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

See w:c:help:Help:EditSimilar. It uses the list of categories on MediaWiki:EditSimilar-Categories. I've narrowed down the choices again. Kirkburn talk contr 11:52, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

The links work now, but on the new Wikia skin (I just turned it on, seems great) the text is dark blue on black and hard to read.--SWM24 48 22:07, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Should be fixed. Editsimilar has also been updated to give much more relevant results. Kirkburn talk contr 13:32, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Hunter pets category

The category Hunter Pets is in need of new naming. But I'm not sure which sounds better.

Hunter tamable beasts or just Tamable beasts

Cause if it's tamable it goes without saying that its hunter tamable, but on the other hand having hunter tamable beasts is very descriptive. Also with the category Warlock Pets, being changed to Warlock minions and not just minions... maybe that should be enslavable demons... Any opinions? Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 03:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Tamable beasts, in my opinion, though that leaves it open to interpretation for those who can be Demon-enslaved per Warlocks. As for the other category, I think Warlock minions sounds fine, but also leaves that interpretation open. --Sky (t · c · w) 04:16, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I vote Tamable beasts, Enslavable demons. Warlocks can't use beasts, hunters can't use demons, that should be fairly obvious to most. --Jiyambi t || c 04:20, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I vote to put an E in Tameable. Looks nicer. =/ They're both technically a correct spelling. Perhaps redirect one to the other? And I like the "Tameable/Tamable Beasts & Enslavable Demons" duo. Both nice and concise. Although to be fair, Hunter/Warlock Pets... are pretty damn clear as well. I always refer to my demons as my "pets." ;) --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 09:54, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, after some thought I have decided to go with Tamable beasts, Warlock minions, and Enslavable demons.
I decided to go with both the minions and enslaved because the minions can be for what the warlock summons, and the enslaved can be for all the demons that a warlock can enslave. Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 21:09, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks good, but I think the Enslavable demons category should be a subcat of Warlock minions. --Jiyambi t || c 21:45, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps...

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 03:58, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be the other way around, since a Warlock minion is an Enslaveable demon? ;) --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 06:18, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I would say that the normal minions aren't enslaved, they are summoned. Ensaveable demons are, however, warlock minions. But I don't really care if it is changed or not. Really, linked together as they are now, they are probably fine. --Jiyambi t || c 06:59, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Also (I may be wrong here), unlike beasts which are not all tameable, I think all demons can be enslaved. If so, "Enslavable demons" is redundant -- the Demons category would suffice. -- Har vey drone 15:05, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Guys, this idea is all fine and dandy for the enslaved demon category, but it states specificly on that page that "Articles related to demons that are summoned by warlocks should not be in this category." and I agree with that. However, by that standard, none of the pages that are currently in the category are valid. Felguard and Voidwalker are lore pages about the species, and felhunter and imp are primarily about the summoned minion. What pages should go in there, IMO, are articles about specific mobs, i.e. Sister of Torment in Magisters' Terrace.

The second issue I have with this category is that discluding the pages that are already in it, it has NO content. Category policy clearly states there needs to be a reasonable number of articles available for the category to be worth creating (the recommended number being 8, I believe). I will agree there are plenty of articles that can be put in here, but I don't see anyone doing the work. Iirc, there has been at least one other person interested in putting together a list of enslavable demons. I suggest that one of the instigators of this thing (*ahem* Coobra...) go back and add what demons he or she knows are enslavable, otherwise delete the category and add the idea to the Warlock project to do list. -- DuTempete talk | contr 15:42, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Link Generated Tooltips

On the Aldric Moore article the link for [Chainmail Armor] is generating the tooltip for [Chainmail Boots]. I'm not sure if this is happening elsewhere in the wiki and I can't figure out how to fix it myself. Shanoaravendare 16:02, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

This happens when the incorrect tooltip data is saved in your page cache. Refresh the page and it should work. --Pcj (T•C) 16:08, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! That fixed it right up.Shanoaravendare 16:16, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

TVC server page - adding new guild

Tried to add a new guild to The Venture Co sever page (English RP-PVP) and got a message saying it had been blocked by the spam filter and should the link be valid to post about it here....well here I am. What can be done?

The following text is what triggered our spam filter: ht tp://republika.pl (had to break http up in order to post*)

A-- Atian 13:06, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, for one, that domain is on the Wikia Spam Blacklist and for another it doesn't appear to be a guild web site at all. So You're just out of luck. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:01 PM PST 18 Apr 2008

It appears to be a webhost - do you have a direct link to the guild site (break it to post, we'll check it)? Kirkburn talk contr 21:47, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Sure, this is the full address ht tp://republika.pl/lordaeron/index.html, it checks out fine as I have been there before, but it is stopping me from adding the new guild to the list. A-- Atian

Updated The Venture Co. Europe: [4]. That specific URL has been added to our whitelist, so feel free to link it elsewhere on the wiki. --k_d³ 22:37, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Help with Userpage

I tried using an npc box on my user page (trying to make page for my char.) and it won;t work. The page is here: http://www.wowwiki.com/User:Paschal

If someone could tell me whats wrong, that'd be great. Thank you in advance Paschal 06:55, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

You were missing one ] after priest, thus breaking the box. You had [[Priest] .

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 07:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Paschal 13:02, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Warcraft III spells

Why isn't there very much information on Warcraft III spells? Mind if I add some? Smiddle 09:36, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

What spells and information were you thinking of?--g0urra[T҂C] 10:31, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Unit and hero spells... for example the crypt fiend article has a Warcraft III section, but it has only lore information, no stats or spells or anything. We could perhaps make a template on Warcraft III spells, for example, the crypt fiend's web ability:

Range	Cooldown	Duration (Hero)	Effect
40	12 seconds	12 seconds (7 seconds)	Forces an air unit to the ground, making it unable to move. Air units are attacked like ground units.

or something like that. Smiddle 09:55, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

We did once have that information, but it disappeared over time (it was pretty badly presented). I have no objections - indeed, I absolutely recommend it :) Kirkburn talk contr 11:26, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

OK. I'll add some information. Smiddle 14:10, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I've tweaked the table in the way it should be presented - add such info as a new section near the end of the page. Kirkburn talk contr 15:16, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be a little problem; see Template talk:WC3 spell. Smiddle 17:26, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Problem fixed. Is it useable? Smiddle 19:32, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Notable members

I've been noticing M1330 doing this to many of the lore pages, changing the table of notable/famous ones of that race/class to just a list of them with no further information. And I was just wondering what is preferred... just a list, at which M1330 has done (see here) or a table which could be updated using the {{mob}} rather than just links (see here). Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 22:20, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I like the use of {{mob}} or {{NPC}} for in-game lore characters, but M1330 went a little overboard and actually removed some info. The best compromise would be to use the templates, but keep a table format (class="darktable" is nice looking) with as much relevant info as possible. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:11 AM PST 21 Apr 2008

I redid the Famous Doomguard list with a fancy table... take a look. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:42 AM PST 21 Apr 2008

Purdy. Now if I could remember what other lore pages he did this to.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 20:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Legendary Items Progression

Similar to how we support raid progression data for guilds that have downed certain bosses, should we not also have a progression for Characters/Guilds that have managed to farm/craft a Legendary Quality item? If there is such a progression already listed ignore me, but considering the enormous amount of dedication required to collect these items (even from 60 endgame raids) it would be interesting to have it listed.

-- Vicera 13:03, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Progression data is pretty much added by enthusiastic individuals from various guilds and servers. We don't have a policy about whether or not to have that info, so if you want to add legendary item progression info to your server page, you are free to. If you want help making a table or something, people here at the Village pump should be able to help with that too. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:05 AM PST 21 Apr 2008

I most submitted the idea as while I consider myself fairly well versed in lore, and good at presentation of unbiased information as such a site as this requires, I do not have the knowledge base to edit and create Wiki pages, perhaps if someone would be nice enough to refer me to a guide that would help me learn the basics in the creation and editing of Wiki pages, I might be of more benefit to the community? - Vicera 03:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe you'd be looking for this: Help:Contents/Editing_WoWWiki. Enjoy :) -User:Lywellyn/Sig 06:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Check out WoWWiki:Server project. This could possibly be incorporated in the project. --Ose^{Talkz / Contribz} 13:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

unveiwable in hand held devices

i dont know about the psp, but my archos 604 wifi, and my DS are unable to load the new page skin and keep it loaded, for instance, my archos 604 is able to load the page, but all the media takes up nearly 83% of the available ram for the web browser witch is an opera based program developed for the custom Linux OS on the hand held device, i often use this archos to see pages when im in game, since the new page layout, i has become unavailable to navigate the pages, especially the home page, in both the desktop layout (as a normal desktop would see it) and int eh smart layout( witch re arranges the pages in a similar fashion a PSP does), i would like to post a vote to either keep the old style available, or at the least, start a petition to have a mobile based reconstruction or translation that has minimal media to make it easier for hand held pc's and pc's with limited ram to be able to view this site, and navigate it with the same ease as before teh new layout. but then again, i am just one voice in the sea of white noise.

[EDIT]-- never mind i figured out that if i make a login on my pc, change the page, save, then login using the device, i can load the old (ram friendly) wowwiki page setup, i just hope that they dont remove it before making a ram friendly version -- AU518987077 03:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The old style'll always be available. We're probably not going to be updating it much. --k_d³ 03:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm passing on the concerns regarding site usability on handhelds and IE6. We do not wish to cut them out of the loop, so as a workaround by all means switch back to the old skin until performance improves for you. Kirkburn talk contr 14:48, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.12 FINAL is live

Another day, another upgrade :)

We've moved from 1.12 alpha to 1.12 final now - a difference of I think about 4 months, codewise. You can find out more about the changes on WoWWiki:Upgrade early 2008#1.12 final.

Importantly, the upgrade brings with it the option to use the new, faster preprocessor/parser. This will need to be tested on different templates and page types before it can go live - it may affect complex templates especially. Please check the above link for info on how. If people could list what they've checked and what they've noticed below, it would be appreciated. From my checks I've not noticed major changes, except redirects are marked with their own class now (useful for personal css). Kirkburn talk contr 14:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Another note - a JS-related extension has been enabled that should fix some errors that users got. If it improves site performance as a result, yay :) Kirkburn talk contr 14:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

No more recommending __NOEDITSECTION__ for my templates, woot. Seems alot faster for most pages, but only slightly slower on complex templates. I'll look at some more involved templates when i get some more time. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 17:07, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Side note, the enabling of that extension should have cleared up the errors you had. I think not all of our global vars were being defined. Also, we've now got the AJAX login screen - there may be a bunch of other stuff (how long has AJAX watchlist adding been working?). Kirkburn talk contr 17:58, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Errors gone, so yay for that. CPU usage isnt as high as it was, and so can actually use the pages, but it's stacking up quickly just as before. Depending on the page, it's around 60-80% (constant, not spiked) with 4 tabs open, clearly some small amount of js constantly running in the background of the pages that's adding up fast. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 00:22, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

When the new parser is active, links that are redirects will have a new class, "mw-redirect". For anyone who likes fixing redirects, I'd suggest doing something in your personal css to highlight them (e.g. bold, underline), so they stand out. Kirkburn talk contr 13:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The new parser is live! Test for parser version: new pp. Kirkburn talk contr 14:54, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Page Load Frustrations

Hey all, Just want to start off by saying, Wowwiki is an amazing resource for looking things up. but one of the things that has been bugging me since the wikia update is the search bar is the last thing to load. this probably sounds like a bit of QQing, but one of the reasons that Google became a popular search engine was the quick load time of its simple search page. heck, even wikipedia has a landing page for searching. So my question to all of you is, is there a way that you can make the search column the first thing to load? if not, Is there a page i can land on that takes me straight to searching rather than having the Portal:Main take it's sweet time to load?

More insight: it seems for me the reason that the search column doesn't load very fast is because it's waiting for the ad server (which looks like it's the slowest to load if at all) -- JetwingX 09:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Is it even possible to do that? I think it is... but even if you do do it, the loading lag probably would incapacitate its functionality (however, it's not like its already functional so why not try). Workaround - why not just favorite the direct link to the search instead? Much faster. Plus, if you need to get to a page you can just enter the title in the URL... --Notmyhandle 10:20, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I will pass this on. Kirkburn talk contr 14:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Search Problem?

Whenever I try to search Wowwiki, I need to delete the automatic text 'Search Wowwiki...' Is there some way that that could be changed? It's rather a pain to do it each and every time. -- Aevylmar 21:18, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

It should clear automatically - what browser/OS? Kirkburn talk contr 21:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Firefox (The latest version, I think), Macintosh OSX. -- Aevylmar 18:33, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Related note, I've added a link to "Google search" in the sidebar for those wishing to use the old style search method. Kirkburn talk contr 21:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Can't replace logo -_-

So after messing around with templates and css for a bit I found it is impossible to cover up the wowwiki logo in a template.Arcanedeath 04:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Which logo? Image:Wiki wide.png or Image:Wiki.png? --Sky (t · c · w) 03:16, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The one at the top left of every page. Because whatever inline styles I add appear later in the html they will appear under the logo. It turns out the css attribute for manipulating layers, z-index, only works if both tags have either a relative or absolute position set.Arcanedeath 04:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Huh... I'm not seeing anything in your monaco css or WoWWiki css. I presume you're using the default skin, which means you'd have to edit the first to see any css changes made. ;) --Sky (t · c · w) 04:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

No, I was trying to use inline css in a template with negative margins to do it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Arcanedeath (talk · contr).

You can replace it with user css fairly easily (dependent on which skin you're changing it for) User:WoWWiki-Zeal/wowwiki.css -- Zeal ^(T/C) 16:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Is there any way to include a css file within a template instead of a skin?Arcanedeath 17:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

You won't be able to replace the image with css in a template, as mediawiki restricts the use of images outside css and js pages. You can do what you were attempting by creating an element over it though. The problem is, you're creating an the element inside a relative positioned element, so positioning it absolutely will position it in relation to that element rather than the page (where the logo is). You can compensate for that, but it will not scale well at all, as you're spanning different multiple size units (em, px) which css can not calculate alone. Why you want to use a template for it, i don't know, but the only way to achieve it would be if the admins agreed to include js/css to generate the element in place/modify the css based on your template's existance in the page. -- Zeal ^(T/C) 17:15, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'll go do something more productive. Update: Woot I just made my first productive edits. Arcanedeath 17:31, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Landmarks and places of interest

(Sorry for my English.)

People, I've searched a little in the Net and did not found this anywhere. So-- Would it be good idea to add another section to articles about WOW's cities and zones, which would list the things worth to see in this location. I mean, unique monsters, notable NPC's, easter eggs, unique design elements (such as huge plate armor in Valley of Wisdom in Orgrimar), and so on.

Yes, I know, there are a lot of info on this in the WoWWiki, but one need to search all over the site, and sometimes doesn't even sure what he need to search for.

Anyway, I would appreciate such a 'tourist guide' for World of Warcraft, as would many who mainly plays PvE.-- 141815 14:28, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

There is an article for low level players on how to get around, although I know thats not exactly what you are describing. It is the Travel guide. Arcanedeath 16:04, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I think he wants info on interesting things in the zones. I do not know what you mean by 'unique monsters', but there is a 'Notable Characters' section on each zone page, we have plenty easter egg pages, the 'unique design elements' may or may not be noted upon (The armor is on the Mannoroth page). Simpler navigation may be good. What would this guide entail?--SWM24 48 17:34, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

And that's exactly what I mean. The article on the armor is-- where should newbies search it? Especially if you keep in mind that there's plenty of interesting stuff in WOW which is not such easily foundable as huge armor. There's a lot of info here and there, on different pages not linked together, but it's separated and in most cases you simply don't know where to look. And I do not know any page or article where you could read what you can find in a location, not what you have found. At least I did not found any.-- 141815 18:28, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Interesting idea! Someone can create a page containing all the interesting site-seeing stuff, make it likes a tour guide! Many long-time Warcraft series fans would like to meet the famous people in the Third War, such as Thrall, Jaina, or visit the Tomb of Uther, Monument of Grom Hellscream. There are also a lot of interesting eye-candy things in game. The Deeprun Tram is one that I suggest Horde players should try to take a ride. Make sure to look for the Nessy during the ride! I'm sure there are more interesting places here and there. Such information currently scatters all over different pages, so it would be a good idea to put all of them into one place. WakemanCK 02:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Should it be one long tour guide or a section on each zone and city pages?--141815 07:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd say section it off, otherwise it would be a pain to find a certain place if it was just a run on tour.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 22:23, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Tourist guides to the different zones of azeroth (like where the King is in Ironforge, or the head Druid is) is a bad idea IMO. What would it entail? A tourist guide seems editorial, and not factual. What is cool/not cool is open to baseless debate. What would be included in such a thing is surely open ended, and what one may want to know is not what another wants to know. Do not you think that finding the things for yourself are more interesting? Such information currently scatters all over different pages yes, but WoWWiki already contains much of the information, you just need to look.--SWM24 48 22:43, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it is a great idea! Just because it is of editorial nature does not mean it shouldn't be included - else why would we include all the guides that we do? If that is a concern, the "main" author can simply keep the guide in his/her namespace, have it be "So-and-so's Guide to Azeroth and Outland". Honestly I think this would be a great contribution to the wiki - yes, some people may like to discover these things themselves, but some may have explored a lot and just wonder what else is out there! It's very limiting to say "don't include it because people obviously want to discover these things themselves". I do agree that what is cool/not cool is open to speculation - the grounds for what is included needs to be discussed on the talk page, but controversial pages about on the wiki - it just happens, it doesn't mean we shouldn't include anything that may be controversial. --Jiyambi t || c 00:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Exactly what Jiyambi said. Probably better to add a "funny article" tag as well.

Right now most of the information are scattered all over the WoWWiki, so it is difficult for everyone to find all the interesting things by themselves. In fact, people may not even know what are the "keywords" to search for. I'm sure many players who haven't set foot in Ashenvale during low level don't even know there is a Monument of Grom. He was one of the most famous heroes in Warcraft 3. I'm sure many people would like to visit it. Also, many alliance players won't ever heard of the long Nagrand questline with Thrall visiting the Mag'har at the end, replaying the ending movie of War3 orc campaign. Grouping all these in the same page probably helps a lot. WakemanCK 04:02, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Problem with "Search for this page title" link

When you type the URL for a nonexistant page, WoWWiki says, "WoWWiki does not have a page with this exact name!" and helpfully offers a link with the text "You might want to search for this page title in other pages." The problem is, if the page title contained spaces (which are translated to underscores in the URL), when you click the link, the spaces are replaced by underscores in the search, often resulting in zero results when the page name the user was looking for does indeed exist somewhere on another page.

-- Tuhljin 20:52, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a mediawiki problem and not a wowwiki issue - the problem is that there is no way (that I know of) to search for exact strings (such as google's use of quotation marks around strings). --Notmyhandle 22:53, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Not getting this problem exactly as you describe it. The search will not translate underscores to spaces unlike the rest of the wiki, but if the page with the name the user was looking for as you said (which would be an exact match) exists, it will work fine, as the wiki sees it as having an underscore in the title anyway. But that's clearly not what you meant, as you wouldn't have been given a wiki 404 in the first place.

To have spaces work in the a search link, you have to use "+"'s instead of "_"'s. This should be a behaviour that's correctable, so the 404 correctly builds a link with "+"'s instead of "_"'s, either by parser functions, javascript or MW as is.

Searching for exact strings isn't the problem here, and isn't completely required. If you have a list of words, MW will just give you the one that matches the most descending. --User:WoWWiki-Zeal/Sig2 03:28, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you've understood me correctly. Here, let me illustrate the problem. Go to a page like [The Burning Legion]. You get:

WoWWiki does not have a page with this exact name!

You might want to search for this page title in other pages.

Click the search link, and you find zero results. No page match. No article title matches. No page text matches. Scroll down and look at the edit box next to the Search button and you'll see that the wiki is searching for "The_Burning_Legion," not "The Burning Legion." Swap out the underscores for spaces, and the search results are very different.

- Tuhljin 06:01, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the issue was correctly understood - I think Zeal means that he thinks we can correct this by changing the way the error message feeds the search into the search engine, using "+" instead of "_" to make it search in the manner it should. This is definitely something that should be looked into, thanks for bringing it to everyone's attention. --Jiyambi t || c 06:25, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Understood you perfectly, that's why i was able to tell what you said in your original post wasn't what you meant to say and explained it to clarify. :/ But yeah, as Jiyambi said, thanks for pointing it out and hopefully it can be addressed (possibly for all wikia wikis). --User:WoWWiki-Zeal/Sig2 11:55, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, whatever. You know what I mean. Being told I didn't mean it as I phrased it when, re-reading it, I see no error there, irked me a bit. It makes perfect sense as is to me and I think any casual site user, technicalities about underscores and spaces notwithstanding. It doesn't matter, though. Thanks for looking into it. -- Tuhljin 19:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

(Unindent) Wikipedia has the same issue I notice. I've updated the page that displays for incorrect titles to help. There's a new search page in the works that looks like it'll help. Kirkburn talk contr 19:55, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Quest Category Automation

So as I was editing quests I noticed that they require Category:Quests to be manually placed on the page - rather than having it automated by namespace (pages with Quest: in their title). If there's a way to implement this it would be very useful - if not, we could also embed it Template:questbox. -- Notmyhandle 22:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Then you didn't notice all the parameters on the {{questbox}} template. There is one called "category=" and thats where you type the category of the quest, be it the <zone>, <class>, special, etc. This will automatically place the quests category onto the page under the correct name.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 23:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Two points to be made here: Quest: is not a true namespace, and two: Category:Quests shouldn't be on any quests, instead being a meta category for other categories. --Sky (t · c · w) 00:42, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

That doesn't make sense, there's over 100 quests in the quests category - time to clean them up? --Notmyhandle 01:33, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Essentially. --Sky (t · c · w) 01:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikibot owners help

To any current (and prospective) wikibot owners, this thread (currently going on on the wikia-l mailing list) may be of interest. Title is "[Wikia-l] New Repo - Wikia-Pywikibot": http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/2008-April/002990.html Kirkburn talk contr 15:17, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Option extracting regex

I need a regex to extract "|" delimited options from a template. I can write one myself but checking for templates imbedded in templates imbedded in templates etc. is annoying. Does anyone know where I can get one or have one I can use. Otherwise I'll just get around to it next weekend. -- Arcanedeath 18:28, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I looked at your contributions to see if i could see what you're attempting to do, no luck :S Any chance you could explain further/give an example, as you shouldn't need to do this. --User:WoWWiki-Zeal/Sig2 06:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

If you look at my userpage it would explain it. I have an almost-completed bot to turn all the {mobbox}s into {npcbox}s. The prbomlem I'm having is the complexity of trying to figure out where the template and options start and end.

For Example:

{{mobbox | name = Goblin | aggro = {{aggro|-1|-1}} }}

The problem is that a simple regex to extract the options will stop at the first }}. I developed two more complex ones to first extract the box and then extract the options but I realized they will still fail on multiple embbeded templates within each-other.

My codez:

//The variable "$edit" contains the contents of the page.
$edit1 = '/{{mobbox((?:(?:{.*?})|(?:{{.*?}})|(?:{{{.*?}}})|[^}])*)}}(.*)/s'; //Cut out the mobbox section.
$edit2 = '/\s*([^\|]*?)\s*=\s*((?:(?:{.*?})|(?:{{.*?}})|(?:{{{.*?}}})|[^\|]*)*?)\s*(?:\||$)/s'; //Extract options.
if(preg_match($edit1, $edit, $matches)) {
	$box = $matches[1];
	$extra = $matches[2];
	unset($edit);
	unset($matches);
	echo $box;
	$edit = ''; //Going to be filled with finished code.
	if(preg_match_all($edit2, $box, $options)) {
		//This is where the bot will modify all the options to what they are supposed to be.
		print_r($options);
	}
}

-- Arcanedeath 14:36, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it'll fail on embedded templates unless you know the number of templates inside. --Pcj (T•C) 14:30, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

It works on embedded templates, just not templates imbedded twice. So... how do other bots do it? I don't think this is even possible since regex's can only have a finite number of states. I guess my options are to make the regex fail and not edit the page, have the regex support a large number of embedded templates so it is less likely to fail (does the wiki itself have a maximum?), or go through the page source character-by-character without a regex.Arcanedeath 14:36, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

A healthy dose of magic usually does the trick! -- foxlit 20:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

wut? -- Arcanedeath 01:37, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not good with regex's (usually get adys to do mine :p), but i'm guessing foxlit was refering to the use of back refrences in the pattern, so it runs through constantly to an infinite depth. How exactly you build such a pattern is beyond my understanding. Alternatively, you could make multiple passes of the the page within your code, modifying your temp output one template at a time before finally submitting i'd imagine, but it's probavbly not ideal. :S --User:WoWWiki-Zeal/Sig2 09:28, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Huh? I tried it but don't backrefrences remember what was actually matched taking out wildcards and the like? -- Arcanedeath 15:14, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Pages with too many ifexist calls

I found this category attached to Artisan tailoring patterns. Following the link to the nonexistant category, I did NOT find the page in the category.

Also, I did not find text in the page that would add this category.

I have to presume that this is a complaint by the underlying wiki engine about the vast number of {{Icon}} instances. They can be unwound, sure, but I was wondering what was going on. --Eirik Ratcatcher 19:50, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

It's actually {{loot}} that's doing that - it checks if a page exists to determine whether or not it should display links to database sites. The simple solution is probably to axe that functionality from the template - or move it to CSS classes. -- foxlit 20:13, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Created Category:Pages with too many ifexist calls properly. Contents are automatically generated. Kirkburn talk contr 22:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

This has come up in the quest lists being made by the WoWWiki:Quest list project. See Barrens quests for an example. One suggestion was that we take out the prerequisite column, which is causing more instances of ifexist... but some pages have enough quests that this would not help (Hellfire Peninsula quests is one example of this). Since this is cropping up in more than one instance, it appears to be something that needs to be looked into, and just not including that many ifexists isn't really an option with the quest lists. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the code behind such things to do this. foxlit, you mentioned this may be fixed with CSS? --Jiyambi t || c 22:28, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Aye, it can be done with css, just as the styling of links based on the existant page was moved to css and away from ifexists ages ago. The bigger problem here though, is that conditional templates should not be used multiple times in a page. Make new templates for those pages/delete those pages/reformat those pages, but don't remove functionality from conditional templates that are being missused. I'm probably beating a dead horse with that though, as still nothing has ever been done one way or the other. --User:WoWWiki-Zeal/Sig2 06:22, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, making templates specifically for the quest lists is a possibility I hadn't considered. If we do that, I would a appreciate the help of a bot in fixing all the ones I already made, though - that is a lot of stuff to replace! --Jiyambi t || c 06:33, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Is this somehow related to the fact that large list pages are suddenly showing the "ℜ ω τ α" superscripts next to a lot of loot items even though they actually have valid pages and tooltips associated with them? There are pages that were fine when I left on holidays two weeks ago, and are now displaying this for a lot of their items further along in the tables, for example: Leatherworking recipes and Jewelcrafting recipes. Both phenomena seem to have appeared around the same time, and it seemed like they might be linked --W.woods 03:01, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

That is exactly the reason - the template usually checks to see if the page exists and only displays those superscripts (links to offsite databases) if it does not exist. However, because there are more ifexist calls than the new mediawiki can support, the superscripts default as shown. --Jiyambi t || c 03:12, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

You have new messages

I keep getting the message, even if I've visited my user page ten times by now. And the weirdest thing is that it was me myself who edited my own user page, so why does it keeping nagging at me that I have new messages? It won't go away. Please help. -- 15:51, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Reporting it, thanks. Kirkburn talk contr 16:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Add-on required files and folders not there..

Moved to Warcraft pump at Add-on required files and folders not there.. section. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:56 AM PST 29 Apr 2008

mobbox bot

I have created a bot to convert the mobbox's and posted the ugly source code for everyone to look at and edit. I haven't tested it yet so I don't know if it works. Source code here: User:Arcanedeath/bot Discuss here: User_talk:Arcanedeath/bot

-- Arcanedeath 00:53, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I am the bot. Could I please be put in the bots group? I have decided to run the bot after some testing if I have not received any feedback by thursday afternoon. EDIT: I will run it as soon as my user gets bot status. After testing it appears to work fine. -- User:Arcanebot 02:00, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Should probably add that if elite=elite and rare=rare that type should = Rare Elite. Otherwise I guess you'll end up with 2 type= parameters with one voiding out the other.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 02:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. As far as I can tell it's ready for use.

Example:

http://www.wowwiki.com/index.php?title=User%3AArcanebot%2Ftest&diff=1337532&oldid=1337530

Looks good to me. Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 03:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, now it's up to the admins to give me bot status. -- arcanedeath 04:02, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

gah one of the regex's crashed... arcanedeath 13:34, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks like Wikia changed the permissions of bureaucrats

, so I can't give Arcanebot its bot status. Hopefully Kirkburn can do it. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:44 PM PST 1 May 2008

He did : ). -- arcanedeath 22:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, about setting permissions (excluding sysop/bureaucrat) - we won't get the ability to set them up back until we cannot alter the permissions of Wikia staff. I've requested bot and patroller setting as a matter of fair urgency - lest I have to keep pestering other people to do it :P Kirkburn talk contr 22:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Er... KB, can you clairfy that first sentence? I read it a couple times and it didn't make sense... --Sky (t · c · w) 02:08, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

What WoWWiki is not

I created a What WoWWiki is not page, modeled off Wikipedia's page (and the WotLK joke). I have found several pages that say what WoWWiki is, but I have a lack of information on what it isn't. Does anyone have more things to add? It at least saves Ragestorm from yelling his unofficial catchphrase. I think it needs more citation too.--Sandwichman2449 01:16, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

One of the sections said that WoW is not a priority of WoWWiki. I changed it to say it is not the only priority. Other than that I think you can nove it to the WoWWiki: namespace (WoWWiki:What WoWWiki is not). --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:34 PM PST 1 May 2008

That comment was based on the wording of the About page, which I changed to match your edit. EDIT:Kirkburn changed it back!?--Sandwichman2449 20:42, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

It's a different sentence. The phrase "with a focus, though not [only] priority, on World of Warcraft" doesn't flow as well with the "only". I had no idea about this discussion, and it wasn't related. Rewording the entire sentence on the About page is possible, assuming it makes sense :) Kirkburn talk contr 21:07, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to write an edit summary.--Sandwichman2449 21:13, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not your local takeaway. Oh wait.. this one isn't a joke page :p --

<imagelink>http://www.zealvurte.co.uk/temp/sig-av/wiki_zeal.png%7CUser:Zealvurte</imagelink>
<imagelink>http://www.zealvurte.co.uk/temp/sig-av/wiki_talk.png%7CUser talk:Zealvurte</imagelink>
<imagelink>http://www.zealvurte.co.uk/temp/sig-av/wiki_contribs.png%7CSpecial:Contributions/Zealvurte</imagelink>
<imagelink>http://www.zealvurte.co.uk/temp/sig-av/wiki_end.png%7CUser:Zealvurte</imagelink>

07:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

New nopic images

I went ahead and created some new place holder images. Such as the male blood/high elf, female night elf, and male naga... I have a female naga made, though it doesn't look great, but I'll add it if requested to. Enjoy. Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! ^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 04:11, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The new ones look good. I'm sure your female naga is good enough for a start. They're only placholder images and you or someone else can upload a better one later. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:37 PM PST 1 May 2008

Very well, I added the female naga version... If anyone wants anymore just ask... since Weremagnus seems to have disappeared.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 21:04, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

What is Category:Employees exactly for?

I was looking at Category:Employees and it only contains the subcategory Category:Most Valuable Posters. I think this is pointless and probably misleading. What company are the people in the Employees category employees of? I believe MVPs are volunteers and not technically employees and also they should probably just fall under Category:Blizzard Entertainment directly and not Category:Blizzard Entertainment employees.

Unless someone has a good counter-argument, I'm going to nuke Category:Employees and move Category:Most Valuable Posters under Category:Blizzard Entertainment. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:24 PM PST 1 May 2008

*Static* You are go for launch, T-minus 10...

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 20:30, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. MVPs are indeed not employees of any kind. Kirkburn talk contr 21:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

See the first few branches of User:Zeal/Sandbox/WoWWiki:Category Tree. That was the plan. They're not employees in the most strict sense, but it still makes the most sense imo, and other people's (otherwise i wouldn't have done so). Also find it amusing how the desire to favour the full name here is in stark contrast to the argument against my naming in other areas, further proving my point as to why both need to exist. --

<imagelink>http://www.zealvurte.co.uk/temp/sig-av/wiki_zeal.png%7CUser:Zealvurte</imagelink>
<imagelink>http://www.zealvurte.co.uk/temp/sig-av/wiki_talk.png%7CUser talk:Zealvurte</imagelink>
<imagelink>http://www.zealvurte.co.uk/temp/sig-av/wiki_contribs.png%7CSpecial:Contributions/Zealvurte</imagelink>
<imagelink>http://www.zealvurte.co.uk/temp/sig-av/wiki_end.png%7CUser:Zealvurte</imagelink>

07:19, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

While I recognise the intention, it is hugely misleading to call MVPs employees of any kind. They are not employed, but are volunteers. MVPs should be a subcategory of Category:Blizzard forum posters, as they are not company related. Kirkburn talk contr 07:39, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I deleted the Employees category. Unless we have a a structure with Companies→Employees→<Company> employees, it doesn't make any sense and it is vague. Repeating <Company> employees under Employees seems redundant anyway. Also, as discussed above Zeal's category tree incorrectly placed Most Valuable Posters under Employees when they are not employees in any sense of the word. Without the MVP category or redundant <Company> employees categories, there really isn't much to put in Employees, so I can't see a reason for it to come back.

As for the full name issue, this is WoWWiki and not BlizzWiki or WarcraftWiki, so there is no furthering of your naming point. Sorry. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:04 AM PST 2 May 2008

Change to npcbox

The template itself says to use sex= but the description says to use gender=. I believe this is a typo? -- Arcanedeath 23:34, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Most likely, but it's ok, both work.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 03:14, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I fixed the template example to use gender=. --

Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:39 AM PST 2 May 2008

I read it is supposed to be converted to {{itembox}}. Should the icons just be lost? -- Arcanedeath 04:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks as though the {{loot|<quality>|<item>}} needs to be turned into just <item> as well. These are all I see needing changes.

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 04:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... The hard part will be that 1x thing.I hope it's consistent. -- Arcanedeath 04:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

For the most part it might be... though I doubt it, since it's for reagents, you'll be seeing 2x, 6x, 16x, 99x, etc...

^{{TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.)} 04:30, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I would hold up on the loot --> item thing. I know several people have expressed a dislike for {{item}} due to transclusion issues. --Jiyambi t || c 04:36, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Will do. -- Arcanedeath 04:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

{{itembox}} works in the way that it uses {{item}}, which means there is no use of icon names in the templates. That's why I made the template after all.--g0urra[T҂C] 09:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there's a need to actively change the existing reagentbox usage to itembox - the advantage itembox brings is easier creation of those boxes for human editors, which doesn't really apply to boxes already created. -- foxlit 12:01, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I am kind of confused since Gourra requested it in the first place though.

http://www.wowwiki.com/index.php?title=WoWWiki:Bot_requests&diff=1334164&oldid=1310820

Scratch it, then.--g0urra[T҂C] 15:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Since I don't want to get WoWWiki sued.....

I'll leave this for the admins to decide on:

However, I did some research on unofficial World of Warcraft guides. Most of them see to be under the Killerguides (http://www.killerguides.com) network or the Spugnort (http://www.spugnort.com) network, these are pretty big MMORPG guide networks, and they seem legit enough. These guides don't seem to be violating any of Blizzard's Terms of Services or the EULA. To tell the truth, if a casual player with a full time job wants to spend some of his real life money buying these unofficial guides to help himself out, I see nothing wrong with that, its too bad they can only play an hour a day, they probably need all the help they can get anyway. The majority of WoWWiki users are probably casual players, and we all are already paying $15 a month for their WoW subscription. As for advertising, well 99% of fansites out there have advertising of some sort, even WoWWiki does the occasional google box thing and has advertising links now, webmasters need a way to support the upkeep of their site, hosting is expensive especially those with higher bandwidth usage.

Did some further research, there was actually a case way back in March 2006 where an author of one of these guides sued Blizzard for stopping him from selling his guide (http://www.news.com/2100-1043_3-6053716.html), the case was settled out of court, as the courts would have ruled against Blizzard. Maihime 12:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

which was posted up here by a recently created account. The same account also undid most of my recent deletion of some links to a site that at first shows you some substandard level 1-40 leveling guides, then followed by some leveling guides that you need to paid for. (Checked back some of his earlier edit, he also deleted some valid fan sites, maybe to minimize their rival?) And read his last paragraph-----threatening to sue WoWWiki like the case he quoted?

Also, another guy from that site had already sent me a message before, pretending to invite me to help improve his site, maybe in the hope that I'd shut up.

By now, I'm probably already on their blacklist, so I won't bother to linger with them any further in case they may send some hackers to blow up my computers. So, is it ok to let those sites to have free commercial on WoWWiki? If yes, I will stop right here. Otherwise, someone else please take over and handle this mess. WakemanCK 15:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

It is not ok unless it adds value to the article and I cannot see any way it would. There is no basis for suing wowwiki, the case would be thrown out of court. -- Arcanedeath 15:53, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

It is okay to link the guides so long, as Arcanedeath says, it adds value to the article. There is no problem with people asking money for guides - we only have a problem with cheats, and gold and account selling (anything that violates the EULA). We have a fuller rundown on external link policy on WoWWiki:External links. Kirkburn talk contr 17:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

We cannot know that "the courts would have ruled". To my knowledge, currently there is no case law which legitimises any guide or reference work to any video game. Blizzard et al vs Brian Kopp would have been the test case, but did not go to court. By all accounts it back-fired on Blizzard, because it turned one guy selling a few guides on eBay into a million dollar affiliate business. In other media we can create derivative works, and it is likely this would be extended to games. In gaming, there is a 20+ year history of distributing guides via the internet/usenet, albeit mostly for free. Most game operators welcome it as a mix of free publicity and free out-sourcing of documentation writing. The official game book-writing business is worth $100+ million a year, much of that in books where the game developer/publisher gets a cut of the money. That official business has historically stayed off the internet.

WoW has created a new source of tension, because of its scale. People like Thott, Wowhead, Curse, IncGamers, even Wowwiki, are all building commercial empires on the back of what were traditionally hobby fansites. Let's be clear here: This isn't a case of a little bit of advertising to cover server costs - professional developers and writers are increasingly looking to earn a living from this. That isn't a bad thing IMHO, because it fosters competition and hence innovation and quality. It also means there is enough money floating around to defend a case in court, should it come to that. The only slight problem with competition is that some of it is not pleasant. WoWWiki is at risk here, because a lot of contributors probably aren't very savy as to how people generate income from WoW.

Blizzard have always come out strongly against the use of WoW for commercial purposes (most clearly in their Machinima policy), but I think they getting increasingly confused about what's OK and what is not. WoW-related websites that are advertising funded seem to be fine, while the same material on a subscription basis seems to raise questions. There is some evidence that Blizzard have cooled their position towards Kopp: Mentor Media's Azeroth Advisor was supposed to be agreed with Blizzard before launch. It uses a very high proportion of WoW game assets for direct commercial purposes, and is logically the first port of call of Blizzard's lawyers. They're also tackling the demand for these guides at source: 2.3 leveling got easier, 2.4 gold much easier to make from dailies. Both measures have put a huge dent in the subscription guide business. Blizzard tried to compete with the database sites with the Armory, but failed horribly: No comments, poor drop details, and disastrous technical implementation. They could destroy ZAM (Thott/Wowhead/Alla) quite happily is the same way by allowing in-game addons to make queries to the internet, but not allow traffic to flow out of the game. That would cripple legitimate advertising revenue on those sites (you'd have to advertise in-game things... RMT and power-leveling), without appearing hostile to fans. So my guess is that Blizzard have mellowed there too.

On the wider issue of why people buy game guides and not just use WoWWiki, I would humbly suggest the original poster (original comment on this page) is not the target audience. WoWWiki is an excellent reference resource if you already know what you are looking for, and are capable to filtering information. There is a tendency to write close to the level of contributors, which is generally literate and veteran. That's just the way wikis are, not a criticism. But there is a demand for very basic, very accessible content... which transpires to be very hard to structure and produce. To know everything is a lot easier than to digest it all down into just what the clueness newbie with a 2 minute attention span (but a $50K+ salary) needs to learn. Having said that, I can't comment on the quality of any of the linked material. --Timski 18:38, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

WoWWiki is a private organization and is not required to advertise for a gold site. A good precedent would be the cases where people tried to sue google for bad rankings or not being in results at all. These cases got nowhere. -- Arcanedeath 19:12, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

My comments relate to guides that teach players to play, not RMT or gold selling. The issue seems to be whether you are advertising or linking to useful content. The Open Directory Project used to deal with paid content by requesting a free review account, which would be used to determine whether the content was suitable. Accounts were restricted to a small group of people, so the abuse potential was minimal. If the request was refused, the links would be blocked. ODP was (more or less) a non-commercial project.

You could formalise the "advertising" and link using affiliate links tracked to WoWWiki. This has (not sure currently) been happening via Google Adwords, except with more middlemen, and clear division of content and advertising. I applaud the ethics of that split, however, if you're "advertising" these sites anyway, you're missing a revenue opportunity. (Apologies for throwing the cat in with the pigeons, and generally causing the topic to drift.) --Timski 20:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Census data

There is a request to add data from warcraftrealms.com to server pages. Their policy states that "Census data provided by WarcraftRealms.com." must be included on the page. Is this compatible with WoWwiki's policies? -- Arcanedeath 00:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Deprecate "Quest:"

I was talking to Sky2042 in irc. He had the idea of moving every page starting with "Quest:<questname>" to "<questname>". He also suggested we "Take /every/ instance of [[Quest:<questname>|<questname>]] and convert it to {{quest|<questname>}}". This would mean parsing every single article in WoWWiki. Thoughts? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Arcanedeath (talk · contr).

My first reaction to this would be a NO - what would you do with the quests that has the same name as a location, NPC or an item? I say keep the "Quest:".--g0urra[T҂C] 09:19, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Gourra. See The Dead Scar and Quest:The Dead Scar. Perhaps this is a bad example, as the first is a redirect...--Sandwichman2449 15:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Just as a note, I think I remember this was discussed on IRC and they talked about using The Dead Scar (Quest) for these cases. Personally I don't have any strong opinion in this discuccion. --Ose^{Talkz / Contribz} 15:35, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Gourra, we'd handle it the same as with any other disambiguation. Of course, the quest would be the one to have the disambig in it's title, as those are usually derivative of the item/npc/zone name, rather than the other way around. And Ose, it would be

[1-30] The Dead Scar. --Sky (t · c · w) 19:55, 3 May 2008 (UTC)