User talk:Greener/Sandbox/Animals and Beasts

Races
In attempting to clean-up1 Race, I noticed that (a) most of the articles on each race were relatively sparse on interesting background (e.g. they were almost entirely quotes from the manual); (b) that (for multi-campaign races), they offered misleading or contradictory info (e.g. Centaurs had info about elonian prides, but the body of the article implies that they only appear in Proph); and (c) it seems to me that some races are missing (e.g. Wardens). I don't see them on your to-do list and perhaps you might want to get to them (some day...or perhaps not).

1 And, of course, please take a look at Races &mdash; I'm not entirely convinced that my most recent edit is the best way to address the topic. (Well, except for removing 80% of the comments about what Race means outside of GW; that's stuff that can easily be found (and handled better) in Wikipedia, among other places.)

— Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 19:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


 * PS no offense taken from your edit summary; as implied above, I agree that it could be a lot better. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 20:10, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Arrrgh, you edit conflicted me!
 * I was going to get to that... eventually. And I was intending to model it after gw2:Bestiary, since I personally find that set up quite nice - gives names, a brief description of the race, and it gives an image of a typical member of the race. I just saw the rework and was literally looking over it when I saw a "you have a new message" :P
 * I made a few changes and will rework the table later. But it is 500 times better than before.
 * Regarding races articles, as you can see here (and its history), I have/had a good number, including centaurs, intended to be worked on/that having been worked on - feel free to edit that page to improve articles, btw, and do bring up specific articles that needs improvement. Unfortunately, many race articles which are given quotations - for instance, djinn and skree harpy - lack a good amount of in-game lore. There's a few tidbits, but not much. I think wardens is another one. I've looked through all races articles to see which are easily able to be expanded upon and have either worked on them or they're still listed there. -- Konig / talk 20:13, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Ach so! I was looking at the wrong to-do list. Cool. (And yeah, I realize any number of these races lack any hard or soft data in-game...so, some of the details will remain clouded by the mists of insufficient money for developers to write local color commentary.)


 * BTW: I like the Bestiary as an alternative to a standard Gallery, but I don't love it as a main article (or a transclusion; images and boxes are too big for my taste). I could easily see replacing the existing ugly table with a link to a bestiary-like article... or making a smaller version of that to fit in 50-60% width.


 * Anyhow, my main intent was to move the article from the wtf?!? to the no longer embarrassing level. And I think we have succeeded in that. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 20:22, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm open to suggestions. Feel free, btw, to take one of the articles in this hidden list and start a section between (atm) User:Konig Des Todes/Remake and User:Konig Des Todes/Remake - I say between those because Druid and under are "ready to go" for the most part, (and haven't been replaced yet due to the split tag - it's a "ready to go" if it's split). -- Konig / talk 20:38, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Other (potential) races
A laundry list of potential races that you might want to include on the to-do list:
 * Wardens (mentioned in Naga as a race that was affected by the jading of the sea).

(All I can remember noticing recently. I'll update above as I come across stuff.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 20:27, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Moving this to my main talk for centralizing comments. I know I already took a look at the Wardens and couldn't recall anything that isn't really mentioned in the manual one. I'll give another look through for them though. -- Konig / talk 20:38, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Categories

 * I see you're juggling a lot in reorganizing the categories. A couple of standouts confuse me. Kidnapped Reindeer and Red frog are defined as Animals, which claims that they are then charmable. Should I go over them and tag them as Beasts? G R E E N E R  23:09, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Not entirely accurate there. There's Category:Animals and then there's Category:Charmable animals. Big difference. ;)
 * Personally, I'm not fond of the Beast categorization for certain NPCs. Is there a way to test if things are documented in the game as "Beast" or is some of this just wiki'er guessing/unofficial-naming like Nightmare, Cobalt, Berserker, Simian, Abomination, and so forth? I know there's a "Beast" bounty, but outside said bounty, is there a way to test this? -- Konig / talk 00:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I already found "beast" to be a pain, and you nailed the reason on the head with the sunspear bounty conflict. My issue above seems to be redirect based, as clicking on the "Animal" link in the infobox of the Kidnapped Reindeer lead to me to the charmable page.
 * How about this. You finish your reorganizing of Race, and I'll try to parse the SS bounty beasts from the pretenders afterwards, so that we're not being counter-productive. G R E E N E R  00:11, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Just a bit of mulling on my part. I was thinking of moving all of the animals affected by Monster Hunt to the category "Great beast", which seems to be the term the bounty uses. With them being clearly defined, I'll move all the remaining Category:Beasts to Category:Animals (or vice versa?), and make sure that the Animal redirect gets fixed appropriately.
 * Ultimately, this again depends on how you're planning on treating "Race", and which categories you keep/axe. G R E E N E R  00:36, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * My goal, regarding the Category:Species (though more specifically in this case, Category:Animals) was to remove as much unofficial and unneeed over-categorization (for instance, the Category:Bear/Tusked/Ape and so forth I tagged for speedy deletion, others will include the Moas, Hippopotamuses, Phoenixes, and so forth - it's contents will all be moved into either Beast of Animal); with Race, I was merely going to put the various official race/species names down.
 * But regarding the animal/charmable animal/beast situation, I think the best coarse of action would be a 3 step bit:
 * 1. Find applicable ways to test what is a beast and what isn't
 * 2a. If there's an applicable way to test, then test.
 * 2b. If there isn't an applicable way to test, find a better way to categorize the creature types of those under "beast" (see 3).
 * 3. Following from 2b, and if the NPC form of charmable animals are tested to not be beasts, then put those under "Animal." Mark these as unofficial terms.
 * 3.5. Figure a new way to organize/categorize the creature types of those neither beasts nor a non-charmable version of charmable animal. Mark these as unofficial terms.
 * 4. Create a page over the redirect of Animal so that there will be no confusion. Shape said article in the format of a typical creature type article (e.g., Insect).
 * Of course, for all we know, normal charmable animals may have the creature type of "beast" which would make all of this, and the current organization of the NPCs, moot. -- Konig / talk 00:46, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding your edit conflicting post: "Great Beast" redirects to "Beast" so that probably wouldn't do much. I'm attempting to separate Animal and Beast from each other, unless they actually are mechanically the same, in which case I'd be making unofficial "splits" into it since it's so freaking huge. One split, already around, would be Category:Sickened animals and Cobalts. The splits would be only via the category, though. And when reasonable (i.e., if it's possible to have the creature only in the sub-category - which due to the NPC infobox, I do not think is possible). -- Konig / talk 00:46, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Since the above may be confusing, a tl;dr simplification would be this: I want to separate "Beast" from "Animal" where applicable, and I want to make Category:Species reasonable to navigate and into a lore-based form of Category:Creature types. However, the end outcome of the Species category may end up being so bloody close to the Creature types category that it may not be worth having two. We'll see. -- Konig / talk 00:48, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, and I'm done with the SPecies category cleaning until the empty and unneeded categories get deleted. It's too much to keep track of everything without a cleaning every other step. -- Konig / talk 00:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * All of the above makes sense. I'll help when/where I can. Cleaned up empty categories. Obviously, your judgment in making unofficial terms when needed is appreciated (just wading through some of those category trees scares me). I'll hop onto the game later tonight at kill some lions etc. while under Monster Hunt, though I'm pretty sure of the result. G R E E N E R  01:16, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Just to note, I'm going to create a consistency among the non-charmable version of the charmable animals (outside "Sickened") and like-named NPCs (e.g., Arctic Wolf) by changing their creature type to Animal from Beast - this is just to make it easier to locate them all when we can figure out whether they're all beasts, animals, or something else by coding. -- Konig / talk 02:09, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, so aside from Category:Turtles, that should be all the category cleanups outside of the deletion step in the Animals category. Now to go through Beast and Animals and create consistencies, then to create a non-redirect "Animal" article. Joy. -- Konig / talk 02:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Categories, Part 2
Since the above got lengthy fast, and I'm too lazy to scroll down upon commenting, it seems to me that Category:Beasts is... lacking. Makes cleaning it out for "Animals" better, at least. But it looks like there's another thing to work on. :/ -- Konig / talk 02:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I have decided that the best coarse of action in regards to the Beast thing is to stop, take a break, and come back tomorrow. I'll work on things other than Category:Species/Animals/Beasts for a bit. -- Konig / talk 02:32, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Breaks are always good. My two-cents so far on the easier format (categories, not articles).
 * Animals: Category:Species, All animal-like creatures with no known social structure
 * Charmable animals: Category:Animals
 * Sickened animals: Category:Animals, Category:Sickened
 * Beasts: Category:Animals, All creatures affected by Monster Hunt
 * ? Cobalt: Category:Beasts (I'd rather these be tagged as type = Beast with Cobalt tagged at end of article)
 * ? Ntouka: Category:Beasts (I'd rather these be tagged as type = Beast with Ntouka tagged at end of article)
 * ? Vabbian behemoths: Category:Beasts (I'd rather these be tagged as type = Beast with Behemoth tagged at end of article)
 * Articles can come later. G R E E N E R  03:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What I want to remove is the "necessity" to manually add in a creature type/species category. No creature has two types, just 1 affiliation and 1 type. This has been stated (somewhere I cannot recall) by an Anet employee (Kimmes?) in the past. No creature can be of two species either (except for sterile hybrids...). So doing such just shouldn't be necessary.
 * Course, Beast could be a unique situation where lore and mechanics don't match, which I wouldn't doubt. But in such a scenario, I'd rather see Category:Beasts to never be within Category:Species (and thus, animals).
 * Also don't think Beasts would fit into animals, but that's up to debate entirely. -- Konig / talk 03:16, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm also questioning the need for the Sickened animals and sickened humans categories. They're nice, but necessary? Not really. *shrug* -- Konig / talk 03:18, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, you beat me to the punch. I was in the middle of deleting all of the above because I don't even like how "Animal" fits into "Species"... At least I'm used to scribbling all over small pieces of paper... I'll hit this again later when I want to spend the energy. EDIT: Found the itch I couldn't scratch. I hate how Category:Species and Category:NPCs by type are set up. We don't need Species, do we? G R E E N E R  03:20, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes and no. On one hand, it's a lore-based categorization of things whereas NPCs by type is mechanic based; it was debated prior and consensus said "keep but fix Species." As I said in the above section: "I want to make Category:Species reasonable to navigate and into a lore-based form of Category:Creature types. However, the end outcome of the Species category may end up being so bloody close to the Creature types category that it may not be worth having two." Just change "Creature types" to "NPCs by type" as that's what I meant. :) They're going to be similar, maybe so similar there's no need for both, but articles like snow beast, Giganticus Lupicus, Elder Dragon fit into Species, but not into NPCs by type... because they aren't NPCs. And of course, on the other hand, they may end up being so similar we could just go "screw specifics of the name" and put the non-NPCs species (or "types") into the NPCs by type. Like I said above: We'll see. I'd like to organize Species first to see if it's reasonable to have for those who don't give a flying opossum's rear-side for mechanics. -- Konig / talk 03:29, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * k. So NPCs by type is mechanics based.
 * Species (NPCs by lore?) are lore based. Lore based tags will go at the bottom of relevant articles. Lore gives people their ability to sort things such as "These are Ntouka! Not just beasts." G R E E N E R  03:38, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well the thing is, are they more than beasts? Maybe it's just a shared naming thing - i.e., Vaettir are merely Nightmares with some unique-to-them naming. Same thing goes for many other "unofficial" names (Berserker, Cobalt, Vaettir, Ntouka, and so forth). Which is why I'm wondering if there'll be such a huge difference... because for those which we don't know the creature type (which is a lot), we just use their lore species. -- Konig / talk 03:41, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Feel very free to add to the table here, or create your own on that page. I'm just much more of a visual person than a reader, and I really want to get a handle on what you're aiming for (yes, I know we don't even know what we have atm). I'm heading off for a couple of hours. G R E E N E R  19:32, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Will do. -- Konig / talk 19:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems you and I only really differ on using either animal or beast (my Great beast would reduce itself appropriately), and frankly the "honour" of making the choice should go to the poor sap that wants to do the reorganizing. Point out other groups/individuals that may challenge the categories as you find them. G R E E N E R  22:23, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * k, going to sort through and try some examples from what you posted. G R E E N E R  22:45, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

"It should be kept in mind that not everything may have a type or affiliation. I think you're trying to put one of each with them all, or over-generalize things." Ugh, that I was. Feel free to smack me with a message next time. Anyways, my brain is fried from staring at the screen, and I've got a lot of other things to do tonight. I'll look at the rest of your comments later, which may be Monday. G R E E N E R 01:33, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm honestly not in a hurry about the categories. I'd rather not rush it since it's such a large and important thing, and most things have either been tested or figured via process of elimination, so most things are probably right or "as best we can tell" at the moment. I'm mainly just trying to organize it better and before doing much of anything else, I'd like to see if I can find the research people had for determining the creature types. -- Konig / talk 01:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Categories (food for thought)
I strongly dislike arbitrary classifications for the sake of shrinking a category into bite-sized chunks (probably why I failed the taxonomy parts of my biology classes).

It seems to me that, for the first level of clean-up, we should stick to categories that are testable, for example:
 * has the name of a RL&trade; animal, appears as L5 in explorables &rarr; Category:Animals
 * can also be selected, targeted, and Charm Animaled &rarr; Category:Charmable animals
 * appears as a pet of NPCs, but cannot be charmed by players/heroes &rarr; Category:Charmed animals
 * gives a bonus for Monster Hunt &rarr; Category:Great beasts
 * Doesn't fit into any neat category &rarr; Category:Other species
 * shares a name with a Wikipedia being described as not available in RL&trade; &rarr; Category:Mythological beasts

I don't mean to suggest that these are the right cat names or the only possibilities, just that these are objective classifications. So that, long after Greener, Konig, TEF, et al leave the wiki, these cats will remain the same (barring changes by ANet).

Then, if we still have huge cats of unsorted NPCs, we can worry about adding subjective groupings that would be subject to argument, but are still useful in understanding the Tyrian continent. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 02:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree wit the bit-size bits, but that's what I was told was what to do. But in some cases, like how Category:Species was, and how Category:Occupations is, it's just bloody stupid.
 * I disagree with the charmed animals - those are clearly already charmed and thus are charmable and that's where they should go. Charmable animals should be a sub-category of animals.
 * I don't see the need for a Great beasts category - those are merely Beasts - they're the same thing. Less splitting to keep them the same. It's a similar situation with the Harpies - with always being called Skree harpy they're really merely harpy with Skree being like Losaru for centaurs or Angchu for tengu.
 * The idea of "other species" also irks me, but I had a similar one. Most of them already have a wiki'er-given name, so I was thinking of making a "Unofficial creature type" category and slapping them all in there. Perhaps the same with affiliations.
 * Mythological beasts is definably not something to do either, imo. We don't categorize things based on rl standings, but based on game standings.
 * I understand the idea of wanting objective - that's what I'm wanting too, tbh - but going by Anet terms and easy-to-understand terms is better, imo. And they're likely something to be kept too, so long as they aren't terribly disorganized like how Species (or hell, even Category:Lore) was before I started organizing it. -- Konig / talk 03:02, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh, soz, Konig &mdash; I really didn't mean for us to get caught in a discussion of my specific suggestions. What I'm saying is: let's start with completely objective classifications and get those sorted out. Then, let's look at what's left and decide on some decent strategies for making it more manageable (of course, if Stumme responds to your query, that would provide us with better objective classes).


 * I don't think there's any reason at all to follow the wiki's current classification; it was setup arbitrarily in response to the best information available at the time. The game has evolved, grown, and is more stable now...so we can do better...and I believe we should.


 * I have my preferences, but I'm extremely likely to support any sorting system that you propose that maintains standards that will be easy to maintain 2 years from now when most of us are more interested in GW2. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 03:20, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * We as players don't decide the races and afiliations. Those are set. The problem is that there's no way to check most of them for sure. But that doesn't mean we can make them up to fit lore. All I know for sure about how races are set from what I've heard in dev talks in wiki, in-game, forums and such is that each creature may or many not have a race set, or an affiliation set, but they only have one of each. For example, charr in Ascalon are part of the 'charr army', but they don't have the 'char race' set, and djinns are elementals, djinn is not a race by itself. Ettins, yetis and jotuns are all ogres, not races, charm animal can be used ONLY in animals that are not charmed, and has a mesaage 'already charmed' for charmed animals and 'not an animal' for those that are not animals at all. That's for mechanics, though. Outside of those mechanics, any other classification is purely lore-based. As long as the mechanic ones are kept in the info boxes, other classifications should be fine. But players need the mechanic ones for bounties, slaying mods, skill and title effects, etc. So those two can't be touched, and any extra lore classifications should be put somewhat separately. It would be nice to have two extra sections in the infoboxes to autocategorize additional races and affiliations in lore. Mith[[Image:User MithranArkanere Star.png]]Talk 17:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Would you mind digging up any and all of the dev comments? If you could, since you reference them a lot more than anyone else I'd assume you'd know where they are more than anyone else, and then store them all into one place with link referencing, we can help prevent going through this time and time again. And if what you say is right, then the ettin, yeti, jotun, and Ascalonian charr NPC articles need fixing.
 * Hopefully, Kimmes could give us some aid on this matter. -- Konig / talk 19:29, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * And my line of thought for the charmed thing has been that it's possible that certain NPCs get some sort of "CHARM" or the like extension in the coding, which allowed it to be charmed. Figured this due to the Drakes and Devourer pets. -- Konig / talk 19:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Categories, Part 3
(seemed as if there's enough progress to start a new section)



I think this will work...and be something that will work 2 years from now. Nice job, Konig + Greener. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 00:48, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm only doing this 'cause I believe Konig knows what he's doing. Please don't point out any flaws in my strategy. G R E E N E R  01:40, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Your strategy? It's perfect! If I understand it correctly, it is:


 * Now, Konig's strategy? ;-) (Not too shabby neither: it's extensible, sustainable, and comprehensible...the only three things we should ask of any classification system.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 01:45, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm literally making things up as I move along... Which is how large projects should be done - look at things in a case by case situation, when a contradicting situation appears, go back to what's being contradict and look at the new and old together. Rinse repeat -- Konig / talk 02:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Erm, I have to disagree with your parenthetical: large projects almost always fail if they are solely about making things up as you move along (they also fail if you never make things up and you try to stick too closely to the original plan). And, in fact, in this case, I believe you have a fairly substantial plan that includes not having everything decided when you start; I think that's also a winner for this particular effort.


 * In any case, carry on; it's good work. I'm not stepping in now in order to avoid making things more confused, but I can be persuaded to help with some of the tedium. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 02:39, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * There's not much to "carry on" for now. I need to see if Kimmes can give a way to help and then just research to see if there's a better way to find out what's a "beast" and what isn't. There's another thing I want to do, but it might be worth bringing up in a more general-discussion area. That is, I'd like to delete the following pages: Berserker, Vaettir, Cobalt, and Awakened - and their respective categories - because they're fan-made categorizations of already existing, types and affiliations, with no lore basing, unlike Skeletal Army, Shadow Army, and Nightmare Horde, and they are not unofficial type names either. No need for sub-division of these things. Though I suppose Cobalt has some merit. -- Konig / talk 02:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Hmmn. Vaettir? It's a player term (e.g. Vaettir farming), but could be redirect. The others? Yeah, I support your plans for cleaning those up. (And you can talk me out of Vaettir, too.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 03:19, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Species, Army, Family
Is there much need to keep those three articles as they are? It seems to me they're better off as redirects, since they all say the same thing of "these were terms once used by the wiki, but now we have official terms" so they seem pointless. Seems like the only reason for keeping them as is would be the "what links here" bit... Think we could get a bot or something to alter those links and turn those into redirects (if not outright delete them)? Edit while making this: Looking through, it seems as though the official term for creature type is "family" and the official term for affiliation is "army" - why do we use unofficial terms? Well, either way, imo there's little to no need for these silly pages (or, alternatively, we should switch the unofficial for official and then there'd be no need for the currently used terms' pages). -- Konig / talk 22:25, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The articles have confused me from the first time I saw of them. I do have some ideas about it, including how to handle the (un)official issue. I'll type more tomorrow. G R E E N E R  06:05, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Here are my basic thoughts on the articles/categories for Species, Army, Family etc.
 * Family may be the internal gw variable, but it is lacking in descriptiveness when it comes to documenting it here on this wiki. I feel that Type should be kept as the mechanics name on both the infobox and article, while the article can note that the game variable is family (preferably in the first line of the description).
 * Species is the player-made organization which plays off the notion of type (aka family). This lets the users of the wiki find all the dwarves and griffons they wish in the game. I don't think we need to keep it as an article, as a redirect to the category should give the relevant info.
 * Army also seems like an antiquated naming convention, though I do see why Undead was coded as an army instead of a family, now. This is where you and I may differ a fair bit on how to proceed.
 * Where assigning a type (family) to NPCs was useful for mechanics such as Edge of Extinction and Of Slaying mods, Army seems less prominent and probably less used in later campaigns.
 * Affiliation can still be used to document the known mechanic Armies, but many NPCs are not testable or are lacking in this variable. I feel that using lore where mechanics may not exist would beef up the descriptiveness of the NPCs (such as Enslaved Frost Giants retaining their affiliation to the Stone Summit) at no true loss to documentation.
 * from Joe Kimmes is another interesting aspect. It seems that charmable is treated in a similar manner to Fleshy, and Undead sensitivity to Light, though it may not be a passive skill like the latter. This would explain the two different mechanics of the Phoenix (pet) in the Divine Path. G R E E N E R  02:13, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * My opinion for those three articles would be to turn them into redirects, rather than disambig pages, in such a fashion as to get Family to redirect to Creature Type, Species to Race, and Army to Affiliation. Which I think can be easily agreed upon.
 * For the lore-affiliation. I am not opposed, as I've done it a few times in the past myself (a specific example being Category:Nightmare Horde), but in some cases, this then causes a "two affiliation error" due to the lore affiliation (what was linked) being different from the mechanic affiliation (according to Affiliation, all elite areas have the affiliation set to the elite area, and UW/FoW have 2 affiliations - one for allies, one for enemies). This is the main reason why I remain on the fence for this. It works in most cases, but not every. And in those cases where it doesn't work, do we favor mechanic, which tends to be wider/generic, or lore, which is specific and clean?
 * Thanks for bringing up Joe's comment, I almost overlooked it when going through my watchlist today. It's likely a coding extension, rather than a skill. -- Konig / talk 05:53, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * So as not to leave you with bated breath, I'll quickly type here that mechanics should over-ride lore. For the two shadow armies, we can address this with Shadow army (UW) and Shadow army as separate affiliations in the infobox (and categories), the former is an infobox redirect to the latter's article which defines the difference. I'll read your notes again tomorrow to see if I currently am mis-reading it, so no need to correct me yet ; )
 * EDIT: Ugh... k, I see the problem. This is what I get for not doing UW etc. for some time. Same NPC name, different NPC skills, same NPC article, different affiliation... Keep the clean, concise organization that is already on the NPC pages, and we'll just note the different affiliations which are possible on the Shadow Army page. G R E E N E R  08:33, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Going back to the Species/Family/Army thing for a bit: It might be easiest to merely reword Species while making the other two redirects due to how those looking up species could either be meaning the lore definition or the mechanical definition. But for the other two, it's without a doubt mechanical. -- Konig / talk 02:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Edit: An alternative would be to move Race over Species and have race as a redirect to species and use a otheruses tag on Species. -- Konig / talk 02:39, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was just piddling away to see if I could make "Army" or "Family" into anything but redirects, and I couldn't. Besides, very little links to them at the moment, and the text on them right now is inaccurate. So Family --> Creature type and Army --> Affiliation? The actual articles will need some rewriting later.
 * Race? Dear lord, these pages have more unsubstantiated fluff than that nomenclature page! Species will hold the lore, both as an article and as category. Bye-bye race. You're a redirect now. G R E E N E R  02:43, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Not surprised with moving race - it was a wip page anyways, gone from nothing to something-but-not-finished. Also, I found this and this and am looking for more things. May be helpful in organizing this ancient stuff. -- Konig / talk 02:47, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Too much info to scroll through right now, but I'll come back to that tomorrow. Fending off random telephone-campaigning while trying to get out the door. G R E E N E R  02:53, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah... Apparently this stuff was discussed (in circles at points) extensively back in... 08. Apparently it ended up being a "screw this, we've been at it for too long" so it was dropped in the middle of an argument whether to use official terms (army/family) or unofficial terms (creature type/affiliation). This is not a good time to look into it all and continue on the path of the later, since that seems to have been what we've turned to (and it makes more sense damn it!). -- Konig / talk 02:58, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Species, Army, Family part duo
You can move this to the bottom if you want and archive the bigger part, I just wanted to clean things up since the section is begginning to get long. Feel free to move them to my talk page if you want as well to keep things centralized. Anyways, I figured this should be the "course of action" for this: I'm going to finish watching a 1925 silent film from Netflix and then rest my aching head and deal with class tomorrow... And when I get home, I'll start on number 3. Luckily we won't have to go through the whole "which terms shall we use?!?" since it just simply doesn't matter. ^^ -- Konig / talk 03:20, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Race, Family, and Army turned into redirects to Species, Creature type, and Affiliation (respectively).
 * 2) Check the "what links here" for them and clear up links/remove any double redirects (only think that'll be an issue with race). Go to the new redirected-to pages (the latter three) and remove any mention of the three new redirected pages. Also go over Creature since this page is a part of the system.
 * 3) Go through all old information (1, 2, 3, and 4 are what I can find - basic summary of Talk:Creature type, Talk:Army, Talk:Family, Talk:Affiliation, and Talk:Creature can be summarized as "how should we organize?" arguments or "that's not right!" statements) and organize existing things accordingly.
 * 4) Clean up the category equivalents where necessary (should only be necessary for Category:Species).
 * 5) Go over the four pages and clean up the lists so that they match their category equivalent(s) (this is an issue with creature types, affiliations, and species - the former two thanks to User:Falconeye who tried to reshape the organizational system to merge mechanic and lore).
 * 6) Take care of Category:The Fierce while we're at it (exists due to User:Backsword putting silly affiliation of "The Fierce" for the fierce warband charr - I'm unsure if they have their own affiliation or is shared with other charr tbh).

Thanks for giving this some structure! G R E E N E R 09:41, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Response
 * 1) Yep.
 * 2) Yep.
 * 3) Can be work done over time. Yes, easier now, though a fair bit of data to rummage through.
 * 4) Work that can be done over time.
 * 5) I'll see if getting a master-list from #3 would speed up this and #4.
 * 6) I'll review how/when they appear in conjunction with other charr. Lore-wise, we seem to only have one warband known. Fierce should be an article, as for a category *shrug*
 * If the Fierce is kept, it should be "Fierce warband" not "The Fierce" - that's the proper terminology. And currently "The Fierce" redirects to a portion on the Charr page which I always found to be unnecessary. -- Konig / talk 14:22, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry
I have NOT forgotten about this page. I've just been brought on as an ad-hoc filing clerk at my brothers office, which is currently being audited and is two months behind in their invoices. With this on the side of my actual set of clients, I haven't even had time to play GW for well over a week. I have every intention of coming back here ; ) G R E E N E R  06:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

A game with inferior races?
Is it biological, religious, or political? --Kram 13:21, 11 March 2011 (UTC) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfDEj5feOUU&feature=related ( Catholic divine hierarchy and order ) 1: Origin of all, God ( an entity of all fullness and love, or less than void ) - 2: Angels ( denied to do evil ) - 3: Saints - 4: Blessed... Humans & animals... Demons... ( Biological ) rough: rock, plants, animals / ( determination of life after Linnaeus ) Life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order ( with suborders ) etc. .... example: (II) Domain: Invertebrates (III) Kingdom: Arthropods... (V) Class: ? (VI) Order: Redlichiida (VII) Family: ? (VIII) Genus*: Paradoxides - (IX) Species: Paradoximus. --Kram 13:21, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Any "inferior" races in fact in GW is via how cultured the race is. Can they communicate? Talk and write? Do they have a faith? structures? how sophisticated are they? etc. Though GW2 splits "major" and "lesser" races via "playable or not." -- Konig / talk 19:39, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess one must define their loyalty, low as bright, if they are holding to genuine good, friendly or most inner evil. --Kram 22:52, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Re-ignition
Using this page since it's here. Within the next week, I'll be doing the following things if no objections: On top of this, considering the statement here stating that default affiliations are of the region's army, and that every region has 2 armies (hostile and allied), I suggest two things:
 * 1) Making Race a redirect to Species; replace Species with User:Konig Des Todes/Remake. Also will alter links that go to Race to Species.
 * 2) Removing sub-categories of Category:Species. Replace categories with the species' actual pages. Exception: Category:Animals (for the time being).
 * 3) *Uncertain of whether things like Construct, Spirit, Undead and so forth are considered a "species." In one way, yes, in another no. If no for Construct, where would that be placed as it's a lore term, not a mechanical term.
 * 4) Figure out the situation behind the NPCs listed in Category:Animals; are they beasts? Untyped?
 * 5) Fix Titan and related articles as Titan is an affiliation, not a type (stated by dev). This I may do immediately.
 * 6) Fix Turtle to match other like-minded articles.
 * 7) Tag any uncertain creature types/affiliations as unofficial terms (e.g., Drinker, Incubus, Gaki, etc.); fix creature type and affiliation lists appropriately.
 * 8) Fixing the individual charr pages (only for Prophecies-original charr) as they incorrectly state the type is "charr" when they are typeless. Will be testing type of those that appear in both EN and Proph at some point, to be safe.
 * 9) Furthermore, I'll be going through Andrew's comments more thoroughly in the next week to try to clarify more in my mind.
 * 1) We alter the NPC infobox to have empty affiliation tags show as  wildlife. Most allied NPCs are given some affiliation in one form or another (most often just something like "Ascalonian" or "Krytan"), so not many of them would be influenced by this.
 * 2) Anything set to unaffiliated or we're uncertain of their affiliation (and likewise are not tied to obvious groups) should be given the generic armies rather than guessing or leaving blank.  Konig / talk 20:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm also curious as to how we want to differentiate the NPCs of elite areas, which have their own armies completely, and non-elite NPCs of the same group from a lore standpoint. E.g., Stone Summit in Sorrow's Furnace and Grenth's Footprint aren't of Stone Summit but actually of "Sorrow's Furnace's army." Do we want to bother differenciating this? If so, do we remove the NPCs from the existing pages to create new ones?  Konig / talk 21:25, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * A new thing: I'd like to also clear up the sub-categories of Category:Plants and fix the affiliations on Plant (as those are merely naming systems, not affiliations; their affiliations are far more likely to be wildlife of the areas).  Konig / talk 22:57, 22 June 2011 (UTC)