Guild Wars Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 3

Protection of templates
Vandalism on Guild caused a big problem today, I think we should start protecting templates that are very frequently used. The following templates are candidates IMO: Any others? -- (CoRrRan / talk) 14:39, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Skill infobox
 * Skill progression (and related templates)
 * NPC infobox
 * Weapon infobox
 * gr
 * Guild
 * Alliance nav
 * Quest infobox
 * Item infobox
 * And yeah, supported. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 14:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * support, too. i thought those were already protected. o.O - Y0_ ich_halt  [[Image:User Y0_ich_halt_sig.jpg|16px]] 15:08, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That would make it difficult for non-admins to help with maintaining those infoboxes. Is that such a good idea? Changes and refinements are still being periodically proposed to improve the infoboxes. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 16:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, it would become difficult to contribute to certain templates, but most of them have been quite settled as of late. And as was noticed by the vandalism on Guild, the wiki just becomes overloaded for close to 15~20minutes with each edit. (At least, that's how it looked when the vandalism occurred, and the subsequent change by Anja to protect it.) Having these templates, which aren't fluctuating that much anymore, protected will do more to this wiki than allowing all people to modify them and causing the lag. And after all, people can really easy created a copy of the template in their user namespace and discuss their proposed change on the template's talk page by linking to their proposal. -- [[Image:User Corrran sig.png|CoRrRan]] (CoRrRan / talk) 17:08, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Even if they aren't necessarily the problem I don't see any problem protecting them against the chance of vandalim, any changes now are normally subject to a discussion. We could always start a page, requests for changes to protected templates for the admins to watch. -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 19:53, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh and also there is Location infobox -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 19:55, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * If we could avoid protecting that just yet, since the formatting isn't finished we need people to polish the infobox too. - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 20:02, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * (Just a note, I've protected all of the above except location for now, as I agree that any modifications should generally be subject to a discussion anyways, or at the very least testing.) [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 20:07, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I added Guild infobox as that is on as many pages as the guild notice is, until we can come up with a better solution. -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 23:41, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Is there a better technical solution to this? Reducing job rate, etc? &mdash;Tanaric 20:04, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, protecting should really be a temporary last resort, definitely not a knee-jerk reaction or any kind of long-term solution. Looking for other ways to maintain said templates is the way to go. - Auron 22:01, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Purely out of interest, why should it not be a long term solution for templates that are about as complete as they will get, (assuming there is no other technical solution), future game changes not included. That is what wikipedia does with a lot of their major templates, not that that is necessarily a reason to advocate doing it, but just an observation. I was just wondering what the major argument against it is, besides not being able to edit it without proposing the change in advance. -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 23:32, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia does that because Wikipedia has a lot more articles than we're ever going to get. Plus they get alot more traffic, and that's Wikipedia, this is GWW. From my previous comment, I still do not see why all of them must be protected from one isolated incident. Crippling the servers for a couple of minutes won't kill anybody and vandalism are easy to revert. There are enough concerned and active users to notice such vandalisms. As for your questions Lemming, I have some counter questions. Why should a "complete" or "near complete" template be protected from edits? Preventing that small chance of vandalism by preventing that small chance of a helpful edit? Sure, people can discuss a possible change. But won't that make it into a sort of "approval stage"? Non-admin users need to get "approval" to apply the change and only the admin get to make the edit, even if the edit was only to modify the "noinclude" portions. Do we want to set a precedent whereby the way to deal with vandals is to protect pages permanently? If those goes through, I'd not be surprised to see requests to protect the skill bar template, the skil progression template, the profession colors template, the npc location template, etc... -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 02:34, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Editing those templates shouldn't be done without testing first anyway. The other day you edited one and reverted and the wiki was unavailable for more than 5 minutes. Something that could have been avoided. I can see either view on the protection issue, but no edits should be made to widely used templates without testing first! - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 02:38, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * (Edit Conflict x2) Quite simply Lemming, it goes against the spirit of the wiki - we should always attempt to minimize the roadblocks to editing content, because our goal is to encourage anyone to contribute and improve things. Sure, one can request changes and whatnot, but if there's a way that prevents the problems (in this case the primary problem really is server load - vandalism is easy enough to deal with) without nearly as many downsides (and putting up the roadblock of protecting a page is indeed a fairly large downside), we should most certainly pursue such an option.
 * I should note here that I protected the templates now only in lieu of a better solution and hopes that we can devise one fairly soon, and if we can't devise one within a reasonable amount of time I'm going to remove those protections, as in the long run the benefits of having them unprotected outweighs the costs. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 02:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with temporary blocks, but I'm thinking protecting the whole slew of them because one got vandalised is probably unnecessary. And you are correct Bex, I made the mistake of saving a template that the NPC infobox template used. I apologise if I caused grief to you or another else. I was actually making edits and planning to save both until I realised the auto-cat thingy on it won't properly support my change, so I reverted. And yes, it stopped responding for a while. And like I said, it won't kill anyone. While discussion is a fairly accepted norm before changing a widely used template, it should remain at that, a norm, a convention, a tradition, not a protection-enforced situation. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 02:49, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I understand what you are saying, but supposing there is no other solution to the slow down. I do not feel that having the templates unprotected is an acceptable situation on the balance of things, the wiki locking up for 5-10 minutes is more detrimental in my opinion. I understand what you are saying about the spirit of the wiki, to encourage people to contribute, but I do not feel that protection of a page, that gets very few edits anyway, is a huge roadblock. There is also the semi-protection option, where unregistered users are not able to make edits. Please do not feel the need to bite my head off, I just want us to consider both sides of this discussion :) -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 06:27, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Not your head, a finger will do fine :P I do understand the point about protecting them not that big an obstacle to editing. And since you also agree that it gets very few edits anyway, why go to the extent of protecting all of them? Shouldn't protection be restricted to pages that are getting too many edits (e.g. revert wars)? I can understand temporary protection if a template is getting vandalised, but permanent protection in anticipation of vandalism? It feel that it is too strong a reaction. Like I said, I just don't want it to become a precedent to applying protection to more templates and even articles once we get used to the idea of using page protection to pre-emptively stop vandalism. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 07:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * What are your feelings on semi-protection? where only registered users may edit, as 99% (made up on the spot statistic) of vandalism seems to come from IP addresses. -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 16:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I repeat, is there a better, technical solution to this problem? Reducing job rate, etc? &mdash;Tanaric 16:22, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * GWW:TECH may have an answer? That or I guess we ask Emily who seems to be the Liason to IT -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 16:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Another technical solution would involve a worse / not working caching system.. poke | talk 16:41, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Tanaric, seems there is. See Job queue, and more specifically, mw:Manual:$wgJobRunRate. The default for $wgJobRunRate is 1 (meaning that every request results in one item in the queue being processed). According to that manual, if we lower it somewhat it'll help the burden (e.g. 0.05 will mean that a new item will only be processed once every 20 requests). Worth a try, I'd say. --Dirigible 16:58, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Just been reading up around that, and it would seem to make sense, wikipedia's job que is several hundred thousand, whenever I look at ours it seems to be ... 0... so I don't think it would cause much of a problem to cut the processing back a bit. -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 17:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok as per policy I have created a discussion here as well as a draft of a proposed change to the run rate. -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 17:20, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Assume good faith. Protecting the templates directly contradicts that policy. —ǥrɩɳsɧ ƿoɲ  16:46, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, the problem is that Guild Wars Wiki:Assume good faith is a rejected policy. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 16:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, it would still be a great guideline : D Erasculio 17:40, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * If we'd ever get around to accepting Guild Wars Wiki:Guidelines first. ;-) Which is actually rather high on my wanted list. --Xeeron 17:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Wait wait, WHAT!!? I'm sorry, how the fuck did AGF become a failed proposal? —ǥrɩɳsɧ  ƿoɲ  22:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * For the exact same reason that Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith is classified as a guideline: it's not a policy, you can't legislate peoples' thought. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * But we have legislated what they express and, in the end, that's what they think too.[[Image:User Ereanor sig.jpg]]reanor 16:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with you completely. (note: this disproves your statement) - Tanetris 17:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I think we have agreed to follow the job queue root for the most part, as long as everyone is happy with the draft I have made we can put it up to go live, as soon as it does we can unprotect all of those templates :) -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 17:19, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed. -- Gordon Ecker 02:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Job queue change has been implemented. I suggest we unprotect the templates and see how the wiki will hold up. I guess we might have to do a test to see how this job queue change affects the wiki's performance. -- (CoRrRan / talk) 07:27, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I tested with skill infobox, there still seems to be a slight delay (30 seconds or less) after editing the template, most likely as the jobs are initially queued, but after that the wiki runs extremely smoothly, none of the previous problems (so far). Edit: the job queue does seem to be going down rather slowly, but I'm chalking that up to the time of night. We'll see what it's like tomorrow during prime time. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 10:28, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
 * As I said, the job queue does not change the fact, that all pages that use the template have to be marked as uncached; at least that is, what I believe. poke | talk 11:47, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I never believed otherwise, poke. But the time it takes to mark them as uncached is bearable, the time it was taking for the wiki to recover to normal speed due to extra processing of the job queue was not. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:56, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I suggest we stagger deprotecting them so as to not overwhelm the queue. But I agree they can now be deprotected safely hopefully :) -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 14:25, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I highly recommend protecting templates that should not be changed, ever, and are used very commonly - such as Template:Clear, Template:Purge, etc. Normally I wouldn't, but PvX had a vandal that made a single character change to one of the vetting templates (quickly reverted), and because it was used so commonly, the entire start started getting SQL errors. (At least, that's what I was told; amazingly, my laptop seemed to be the only computer that could establish a clear and uninterfered connection to the servers.) Those templates, along with the two I mentioned earlier, are now protected on PvX. Armond 19:14, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Sidebar proposed change
The post over there appears to get very little traffic ... so I'll ask it here ... does anyone have an opinion on this proposal to the sidebar? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Shesh that is truely hidden away. I guess I have to watch all 13 entries in that namespace now, lol. --Xeeron 19:32, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Template:Skill list item
Could someone familiar with DPL update this template to use it? Template:Skill table can only filter skills by category. -- Gordon Ecker 08:04, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Name-based filtration capabilities have been added to Template:Skill table. Thanks again Poke. -- Gordon Ecker 02:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

My account dissapeared!
I was logged out of the wiki and tried to log back into it again today. I am confident the username was right, but my account had dissapeared from the wiki. I've made a new one now, the exact same name being allowed, but did this happen to anyone else? Leeroythefeared 11:52, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Accounts can't be deleted, only banned. Are you sure you're using the right password, or adding a space in the username when there shouldn't be one?  Calor  - talk 14:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Accounts can't be deleted. You can do a search using Special:Listusers. Type in the first few letters of your old username and look for it. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 17:23, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Or check a talk page or the history of an article which you're sure you edited while logged in to your old account. -- Gordon Ecker 02:28, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Protect?
Would it be worth protecting this page (at least to unregsistered users)? as it does seem to get its fair share of vandalism, and there should be no real need for an unregistered user to want to edit it (unless its very minor)... -- The Great Tomato 22:59, 14 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Disagreed. It's no hassle to revert the small amount of vandalism this article gets. A better solution would be to not use the standard MediaWiki article name. &mdash;Tanaric 02:44, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Most of the recent vandalisms are all spam bots. If you protect this one, they'll just go vandalize another page. Vandalism on a highly watched page is better than vandalism on obscure page. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 07:58, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * This is probably a request because I temporarily semi-protected the News page, but that was due to different non-registered accounts blanking it about 10 times in the space of 5 minutes. -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 13:19, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Revert policy
It's on RFC, but I'd like to make sure it's noticed so that we can get a clear community view rather than only a few people's input - Guild Wars Wiki:One-revert rule has been formally proposed for a month and a half now, and is a hopefully an acceptable policy to prevent revert wars. If people could look it over and decide whether or not we can accept it as policy. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 20:32, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Special:Wantedpages
Do you think it is possible to get a version of the wanted pages list without the guild namespace? I could use it as a tool for finding stuff to do but I see it as a bit broken because I couldn't care less about the guild space. --Aspectacle 00:54, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * grep -i "Guild:" Special:Wantedpages No? LoL - elviondale  (tahlk) 06:06, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * You could probably do it with a dpl but actually Elviondale's suggestion is probably the fastest way to go. Here's the grep result on the 500 first Wantedpages. Chriskang 09:58, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * That was meant as more of a joke.. and if I'm correct, doesn't making that page add 1 to all the link counts? - elviondale  (tahlk) 14:25, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed it does. I blanked the page to avoid that. Look at the page history if you want to get the list. Chriskang 17:00, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * And I incorrectly used -i (ignore case) instead of -v (inverse) - elviondale  (tahlk) 17:14, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That solution sort of works - I do like the links link thou because you can see that English (for instance) is only used by links in the Guild: space which kinda means it doesn't need work.  Perhaps I need to do some PHP. :)  --Aspectacle 23:06, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * OR we could get all those lazy users to make at least a stub guildpage.[[Image:User Ereanor sig.jpg]]reanor 21:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Trouble being that within 6 months or something they'll all be deleted due to inactivity and we'd be back to square one. Changing the template such that you only link if the guild wiki page exists would also solve the problem, but I'm not sure that it is worth the effort. --Aspectacle 23:07, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * That could work, although it might make it difficult for those unfamiliar with how it works. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 02:48, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I've looked into this further and there is an elegant, permanent solution to it. It involves changing the sql in the includes/SpecialWantedpages.php file which generates the wanted pages list. Assuming the wiki uses the standard php and the Guild namespace has an id of 100, a change like the one indicated below can be implemented. WHERE pg1.page_namespace IS NULL AND pg2.page_namespace != 8 GROUP BY pl_namespace, pl_title And change it to: WHERE pg1.page_namespace IS NULL AND pg2.page_namespace != 8 AND pl_namespace != 100 GROUP BY pl_namespace, pl_title --Aspectacle 01:34, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


 * If that works, It'll be great.[[Image:User Ereanor sig.jpg]]reanor 16:32, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Archiving Bot
I didn't know if this was the right place for this, but this page is mentioned with regards to bots on the bot policy page so I put it here. Feel free to move.

I currently run quite a powerful automatic, talk page archiving bot on a few other wikis, and I was wondering if, in general, people thought it worthwhile running here (i.e. is it busy enough to warrant it). I have been messing around with the configuration to make sure it would work with this particular wiki (hence any odd edits in my recent contribs) and now believe it is working as intended; it is not worth creating an account and instruction page for it, however, if it is not going to be used (or allowed). Further to this, unlike (I believe) all the other bots currently enabled on this wiki, this bot would run on 'full automatic' - that is, it doesn't even need an operator to start or stop it, it runs itself, every 24 hours (or more often, depending on setup and requirements).

Archiving bots are generally considered useful on wikis, because they take the strain off of users and handle everything for them - they are especially useful on very busy pages. However, whether people like bots like this depends on the community in question, so I'm checking in advance.

(Anyone interested can see the bot's setup page for this wiki at (help page) or (settings page). Its options are set up to demonstrate features, as things like the category it would actually use are missing, so ignore it totally if anything looks wrong.)

Comments, queries, questions, criticisms? Ale_Jrb ( talk ) 21:39, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I think this would be useful for pages that get a lot of attention like: Help:Ask_a_wiki_question and Help:Ask_a_game_question, and probably the talk page for the Main page as well as a few others, plus any users that would want to utilise it. -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 21:49, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: As an example, you can see the action it would take on my talk page by running the bot in guest mode. Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 21:50, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Kinda would be nice imho. I spent a while arching Talk:Hall of Monuments the other day.  I really have better things to do, but the page was 200kb - elviondale  (tahlk) 22:04, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm going to sleep now :). I'll check this page tomorrow, and if people seem to want it, I'll set up an account for it. Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 22:13, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

In general, this would be nice to have. Just a few questions from the non-bot expert:
 * Would this bot run on all wiki pages, or only those specified?
 * Does it automatically ignore recent posts (even when the page is very long)?
 * Can it be set to ignore pages?
 * Can it be set to ignore certain headers? --Xeeron 22:20, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Echoing Xeeron, an archiving bot would be great, but some users have their own method of archiving their talk pages. Would it only edit the mainspace and help pages? Can it divide a talk page into sections based on headers? Also, is there a certain period of time that the section would have to be unedited to be considered closed and archiveable?  Calor  - talk 22:41, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I will only support this if it only archives pages that it are specifically assigned to it. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 22:54, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Do we even need it? We only have a small number of pages that would need a periodical archiving. Most everything else grows too slowly. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 00:57, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Well...we don't need it, but do you need everything you have? No. Creature Comforts. Pleasures. No money spent, just some time spent by Ale_Jrb, and we're indebted to him for that. An archiving bot, you may say, takes five minutes of archiving off our workload. But five minutes is five minutes now spent unstubbing, tagging, uploading, genrally improving the wik, instead of archiving. Just as long as the bot has its restrictions, like Xeeron, Gem and I said above, on what talk pages it archives.  Calor  - talk 03:12, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I bet you Gaile Gray would pay money to have a bot archive a good deal of her page on command. My only concern is: does it leave sections alone that may have been started a while ago but have been updated recently? Like maybe the first line in the heading is from August, but some people have commented along the line up until yesterday? This way a specific topic within a talk page doesn't have 1/2 its discussion disappear - elviondale  (tahlk) 03:22, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * As the help page Ale_jrb linked mentions, it only archives top level sections at a time (two ='s on each side), and it only archives the section if there hasn't been a recent post to it. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 03:39, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Jimbo Wales' talk page on Wikipedia is automatically archived by a bot. I can't say I'm a huge fan of it myself but I expect it would be useful in certain situations. In honesty, though, even Gaile's talk page doesn't get as much activity as Jimbo Wales', so I'm not going to outright support this at present. LordBiro 07:20, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I think this would be good to run on specific pages, like HELP:GAME and HELP:WIKI and other quite busy pages, but not automatic on the whole main space, simply because some old discussions might be valuable to keep on the main talk if the discussion page isn't long. And, Gaile and Izzy might love this xD - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 07:27, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * There seems to be a little confusion on what it actually does, so I'll try and explain.
 * * The bot will only archive pages that are expressly put into its category (usually something like ).
 * * It is set by default to automatically filter non-talk pages from its category, to avoid malicious use on mainspace/GWW space pages.
 * * Tags are available to: tell it how old sections must be to be archived, tell it where to put pages when it archives them, a per-section override of where to archive the section to, and a do-not-archive tag that will prevent it from archiving the section at all. It has defaults for all of these, so no tags are needed, but if you want them, they're there.
 * As for how it actually chooses what to archive on a certain page. Basically, it runs down a page, splitting into valid wiki-sections. It then checks each section for the timedate stamp that appears after your signature. It gets the most recent one of these, and compares its time to the current time, and whether enough time has passed for the section to need archiving. If it does, it will, and if not, it won't. When it's done that for all the sections, it rewrites the page minus the sections it has archived. Because it does each section individually, it doesn't matter where on the page the section is or where in the section that latest edit is, it will still find them. Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 07:31, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * That sounds good. The only option missing is a check for total page length. It should not archive even old topics from small talk pages. --Xeeron 09:25, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see the purpose of that, personally. It's unlikely that someone with a talk page that always stays that short would want it archived by a bot, but if they do, I see no reason why it should refuse to archive it because it isn't long enough...


 * As for the actual bot, it appears to me that most people either want it, or have decided it doesn't really bother them either way. If this is the case, I'll go ahead and make an account for it (and trial it/whatever). Unless (Biro or Ab.er.rant?) anyone has a serious reason why it shouldn't run (or even if they just have a feeling, and not much of a reason, for really not wanting it)..? Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 10:45, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I've seen some of these on Wikipedia before.-- §  Eloc   §  14:04, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * So have I. Was it meant to be relevant to the discussion, or just an idle curiosity? Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 14:09, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I just joined in on the discussion at this moment so I didn't have enough time to read all of this, so I just posted that I've seen them before and understand the general concept of them-- §  Eloc   §  14:15, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Is there a way to set different archive settings for different pages? For example some pages could be archived so that each months topics receive their own archive page, while another page might just need to archived when the page gets too large. -- (gem / talk) 15:02, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Looking at the help and settings pages linked above, it seems this is possible. Every page has individual settings and is added individually to the category, if I read it right. - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 15:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * It's possible for each page to be archived according to its own settings, but it can't archive if a page gets to long - it archives based on how old a section is. If it archived based on length, then if someone had loads they wanted to say, the page might be archived in the middle of a discussion. The feature could be added (it doesn't currently exist), but it doesn't strike me as a good idea.  Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 15:54, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Why not archive it every 32kb?-- §  Eloc   §  16:07, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean that the archiving process should be done according to length but according to the headings ofcourse. What I mean is that the archiving process should on some pages start when the page reaches a certain length, not when the messages have been there for x days or weeks. This would be very helpful on pages that get large quickly most of the time, for example the wiki and game question pages. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 16:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * So according to the number of section? I could add that, I guess. Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 17:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course, it might be easier if you just set it so that it archives any section less than 3 hours old or something, otherwise you still run the risk of archiving a discussion that is still in progress. Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 17:21, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think we got any pages here that need to be archived every 3 hours. Our most popular page for archiving might be Help:GAME and this page second maybe.-- §  Eloc   §  21:51, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Personally I don't see a particular need for this account to have a bot flag. As Eloc said, there are no pages on this wiki that require archiving every 3 hours; 1 day should be fine for most cases, and 3 days would be even more sensible. Since the frequency of these archivals is low, and the number of pages which will be using the bot is probably also going to be comparatively low, I'd prefer if the bot's edits remained viewable to RecentChanges watchers. --Dirigible 00:13, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I wasn't suggesting that it did - I was responding to Gem's comment. Anyway, I am going to run a full test on my user talk page to check if it's working. This will also show what it will look like to RC, and give an idea of how it works to others. It doesn't bother me if it has a flag or not. ArchiveBot 00:17, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, it does what it is supposed to at any rate :D. Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 00:27, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I think 3 days is still pretty fast.-- §  Eloc   §  06:13, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
 * By default, it will run every 24 hours (check if pages need archiving) and archive sections over 3 days old. Is it the archiving part that you don't like?
 * Also, if it does run without a flag, it will ping talk pages when it archives them (the 'You have new messages' will be displayed, even if they don't). Is that an issue? (Test results found at Special:Contributions/ArchiveBot) Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 09:32, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I can set the default archive time to anything, if people would prefer, and of course it can always be overridden on a per-page basis. Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 09:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I think three days is a bit short as default. Discussions generally span over at least one week, since not everyone is online every day. One month or 15 days sounds more suitable as a default, and as you say it can easily be overridden if needed. I'm also thinking maybe we should move this discussion to community portal, as it concerns the whole community, not just admins? :) - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 10:35, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Go for it - I didn't know where it was meant to go. Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 12:00, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd say at least a week as default for archiving. It isn't short, but it doesn't let discussion build up into a massive wall of text either. - Auron 12:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
 * That sounds fine to me. Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 15:23, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see any disadvantage to large discussion pages (as long as they aren't approaching 32k) or any advantage to auto-archiving slow discussions on low-traffic talk pages. -- Gordon Ecker 05:34, 21 October 2007 (UTC)


 * What are people's thoughts on auto archiving the admin noticeboard? LordBiro 08:40, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes please. :) Something 3-7 days old can go away, not likely to get more posts, I think. - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 09:00, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to run it if it is wanted, but as no consensus was really reached in the previous discussion, I thought it inappropriate for it to be running up till now. And, duly, it hasn't been. Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 21:38, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Resolved, unresolved and stale templates
I recently copied these three templates over from Wikipedia:

What does everyone think of them? Which icon set should we use, BeXoR's logo circles (, and ), User:Pullus' tick and cross icons (Yes and No) plus a question mark icon in the same style or something else? Are the templates a convenience or an eyesore? Are they too big, too small, is the border too thick? Would they simplify bot archiving? Manual archiving? Should they be stripped out when a page is archived? Should this be discussed here or at Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/Talk pages? -- Gordon Ecker 00:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * To me, they're more of an inconvenience than a convenience. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 00:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't like the idea of having those templates be always added to discussions. If someone adds the unresolved template with a comment in the template and the whole topic resolves, the comment has to be kept, so the template cannot be removed (as it's part of a comment); by this we would have two templates displayed.. The stale template is rather unuseful as it requires an additional edit (which would ping on watchlists) but describes the topic in the same way as unresolved (as it is unresolved, when it's stale).
 * I would agree on having only resolved, but 3 of them are not really useful.. poke | talk 13:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * We could include something in talk page formatting about the three templates never counting as part of comments. I think unresolved is more useful than resolved or stale, as, IMO, the general assumption is that older topics are resolved or dead and new topics are ongoing, making the tagging of old but unresolved issues more useful (IMO talk pages for game mechanics, policy and guidelines are the most likely locations for these kinds of topics). It would also be useful for marking topics which explain why specific articles are in the research needed category. -- Gordon Ecker 07:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Even when they are no comments, they need to be added so they ping the watchlists.. And what about topics where the unresolved template was forgotten? Then it looks as if it was resolved - but when using the resolved template only, you can clearly see the resolved topics and all without that template need to be checked. poke | talk 11:19, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Switch NoNo to Redred &mdash;  ク  Eloc  貢  02:45, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

GWW:ADMIN talk
Can I add Guild Wars Wiki talk:Adminship to Hot discussions?reanor 15:08, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure, anyone can add and remove hot discussions, so go ahead and edit it in (of course you should take care only to add discussions that are of interest to the wiki community as a whole, but I feel this passes that test easily). --Xeeron 15:51, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. It's done now. If anyone asks, I'll say the b-crat said so :D[[Image:User Ereanor sig.jpg]]reanor 16:08, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

BMP release date
Guild Wars Bonus Mission Pack. Gaile just added the release date!!! Someone who knows what she/he's doing should put it in the News or something.reanor 22:17, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
 * About time they added a release date. They also couldn't have picked a longer date, lol. &mdash;  ク  Eloc  貢  03:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
 * BTW after seeing the editing of the issue in the mainpage. What's the difference between "Current wiki news" and "Announcements"? Do we really need both?[[Image:User Ereanor sig.jpg]]reanor 03:49, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I was the one who started the "Announcements" section some time ago. I feel that "wiki news" should be for things related to the wiki or wiki community in general. So "Announcements" would be for something more general in nature, kinda like for things that don't seem to fit well into the other sections :) But you're right, given that it seems to be not-so-clear-cut, better to just have one. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 05:39, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Wanted pages
The Wanted pages section is FULL of links to Guild Pages which do not exist. This makes this section difficult to sort through. Druid 09:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * See talk page of GWW:RFTA - a request has been made to filter guild pages out of wanted pages. - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 09:53, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Recent Changes = User Space
Has anyone else noticed 95% of recent changes are in people's user space? I wonder how much work on articles actually takes place on the wiki. Druid 12:40, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You know, I was thinking the same thing yesterday when I was editing all day long without getting messages on my talk page every 5 minutes :p Felt...strange actually, in comparison to 'the old' wiki-days. Erszebet 13:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It actually depends on when you look at it. Right now, it's only about 15%. Guess you haven't seen 95% changes from one person before :D somethings it's a whole bunch of "User:", sometimes it's a whole bunch of "Guild:", sometimes a lot of talk pages, etc. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 13:57, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yer I was just looking at Guild Wiki's recent changes and it seems a lot more edits are made on actual content instead of user space compared to here. [[Image:Four-Leaf Clover.png|15px]] Druid 13:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * True. I would venture to guess that's mostly because there are much more new users here than GuildWiki. -- ab.er. rant [[Image:User Ab.er.rant Sig.png|sig]] 14:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * That's most likely the reason. People tend to start with their user pages and guild pages and move to main name space after getting the touch for editing. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 15:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * and i think that's not very bad. this means in the long run we should have many contributors who know the formatting guidelines and everything. - Y0_ ich_halt  [[Image:User Y0_ich_halt_sig.jpg|16px|Have a look at my page]] 16:30, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The linkage from Guild Wars will contribute to the amount of new users too. New GW players would use the /help or F10 functions, then want to make their own account. --[[Image:User-brains12-sigicon5.png|Talk|14px]] br12  • (talk) • 16:34, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Ya...damn userpages and stuff..XD &mdash;  ク  Eloc  貢  00:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Subst:User page? - Y0_ ich_halt  [[Image:User Y0_ich_halt_sig.jpg|16px|Have a look at my page]] 12:50, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The link is red. &mdash;  ク  Eloc  貢  16:57, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * maybe because Template:Subst:User page doesn't exist? - Y0_ ich_halt  [[Image:User Y0_ich_halt_sig.jpg|16px|Have a look at my page]] 17:06, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I think Eloc's point was to ask, what was your point? :P - anja  [[Image:User Anja Astor sig icon.png|talk]] 17:07, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * complaining about user page helping and stuff, i had the idea to make a user page template for noobs :P but i afaik someone even has one of those in their userspace... - Y0_ ich_halt </tt> [[Image:User Y0_ich_halt_sig.jpg|16px|Have a look at my page]] 18:10, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Is there a media wiki extension where we can make it so you can hide all edits to the User or Guild namespace, similar to the hide bot edits? &mdash;  ク  Eloc  <font color="Black">貢  20:09, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * but then your contribs page is near-empty XDD - Y0_ ich_halt </tt> [[Image:User Y0_ich_halt_sig.jpg|16px|Have a look at my page]] 21:01, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * No, like hide them from Recent Changes. &mdash;  ク  Eloc  <font color="Black">貢  21:56, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You can filter one out at a time by selecting a namespace in that drop down and clicking the invert selection box. I don't know how to do it permanently or for more than one. - B e X  [[Image:User BeXoR sig.gif|iawtc]] 07:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Weapon Aquisition Info
I tried to look up where I could get a nice Fire Staff for Zhed today, and discovered the documentation of Collectors and Weaponsmiths to be completely lacking here in comparison to GuildWiki. With us, you have to go through each collector and weaponsmith article until you find something that you like. I think we should try to set up reverse-links from each weapon/offhand page would be very useful. Also, a quick reference like they have at GuildWiki  would be excellent too. I don't have time to do all of this myself, but it seems worthy of a project. Biscuits 19:20, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You were looking for something like this?  Calor  &mdash;  talk  19:50, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, except for all weapons, not just unique. Like this and this. Biscuits [[Image:User Biscuits sig.png]] 19:20, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've actually been thinking of doing just that, I've got a few ideas on how it would be set up already but haven't saved anything as of yet mainly due to how large a project it would actually be. I'll probably be starting on Elementalist and will hopefully have something saved in the next few days, maybe longer depending on how much time I have on my computer. -- Kakarot  [[Image:User_Kakarot_Sig.gif|Talk]] 21:17, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind Guidwiki was formed like 3 years before us. &mdash;  ク  Eloc  <font color="Black">貢  21:53, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok I've got a possible list here of all Elementalist collector weapons for Ascalon. I plan on having  a list for each profession but haven't decided on whether to have a page for each region or one for each game. -- Kakarot  [[Image:User_Kakarot_Sig.gif|Talk]] 22:38, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The collector lists have been worked on. See List of elementalist collector weapons, etc. --Valshia 23:15, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Looks like a good start. Assuming the Weaponsmith and Collector data is complete, we could get this done by going through those articles and compiling the new pages from the information contained in them. So it doesn't require any original research except for data that may be missing. Biscuits [[Image:User Biscuits sig.png]] 23:16, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * @Valshia - Those list appear to be only for max stats weapons; at the top of each section it states "All items listed require 9 Air Magic"; whereas mine are for all weapons. Until I get one complete page that everyone is happy with I will keep it in my user space, that is unless people think I should move it now. -- Kakarot  [[Image:User_Kakarot_Sig.gif|Talk]] 23:50, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Denravi Sword
Do I fail at searching, or does the wiki have no mention of the "Denravi Sword"? Foo 12:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * After a brief look, I didn't spot such an article - feel free to create it. [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 12:32, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * sure. anyone who knows the proper tags and categories is kindly asked to add them. Foo 12:44, 13 December 2007 (UTC)