Guild Wars Wiki talk:Community portal

Skill info box
I'm not sure if this has been discussed anywhere else or not, but I figured I would bring it up for discussion. I was surfing builds on PvX wiki and I noticed how when you hover over a skill name/image that an info box pops up telling you the specifics of the skill, which is very convenient. Is something similar to that system possible for GWW? -- hnzdvn 22:31, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Discussed or not... meh. I don't see it that useful. - J.P.[[Image:User J.P. sigicon.png| ]] Talk  22:40, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I think Galil made a user tool that did this, but he's been afk for a while and I can't find it. I remember using it ages ago and finding that it slowed pages down and wasn't very nice to use. Anja tried it too. (I know this information isn't exactly super-useful, but it at least proves it's possible... and that someone else can back up this story :P) -- pling User Pling sig.png 23:03, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * By the way, Anja is afk too, so don't ask her. -- pling User Pling sig.png 23:05, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Now i remember i've tried that Galil's tool. It didn't work at all though.
 * It's was designed for an older Mediawiki version. And Galil dropped the support on it some time ago. - J.P.[[Image:User J.P. sigicon.png| ]] Talk  23:11, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Partly wrong Pling, Anja didn't anything like that, she just used it; Galil did the GWW Ajaxifier; and Ale jrb created the SkillCheck script. It should still work, but the skill list might be a bit outdated.. poke | talk 23:14, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I meant Anja tried using the tool. And yeah, it was Ale. Ale, Galil, AT, poke - they're all the same person, really. -- pling User Pling sig.png 23:17, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * lol, at least we all inspired and motivated each other of us.. poke | talk 23:20, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Points out that it doesn't slow down pages at all for me, and it's lovely to use. Oh yeah. Ale_Jrb ( talk ) 01:36, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Did you just go through all pages and search for your name to find this topic? poke | talk 01:42, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * No, I checked what links here for the script page and wondered why it had been 'recently' (as in, not in an archive) discussed on the community portal. :P Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 01:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Just checked it out and installed it as well, works great. No slowdown and only a half second load time for skills. Finally won't need to load up a skill's page when I only want a reminder on what the skill does anymore.--Neithan Diniem User Neithan Diniem Sig.png]] 02:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow, Ale Jrb, that's still crazy enough xD I don't remember ever checking what links here for any of my pages <_< poke | talk 14:04, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's a bit of a habit because of wikipedia, where I do it all the time, soooo... :P :D Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 14:46, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hehe, good to see that you are still around though :) poke | talk 14:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * :D yeah, I was on the GW2 hall of momuments thing, and I was like, "Shiiiiiiiit, I've had this game since a month after it was released... how do I have so few points?". Thus there was a wiki visit. :) Ale_Jrb  ( talk ) 20:58, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Unofficially titled articles and their capitalization
I'm just going to be centralizing the discussions on various move-tagged articles which have this shared theme. -- Konig / talk 18:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Gwen's Garden
Secret Garden is a proper name, so that both Secret and Garden are capitalized. Since this article also uses a community-given proper name, shouldn't it be Gwen's Garden? (Alternatively, shouldn't we make garden lower case for the other article?) &mdash; Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 19:44, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, either both uppercase or both lowercase. &rarr; balistic &larr; 19:48, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not a proper term, as it isn't an official term - it's a description, not a name for a place, only "Gwen" is proper. Typically, fan named articles are lowercase - except when containing proper nouns. I don't know why "The Secret Garden" is. If anything, that should be moved to "The secret garden." -- Konig / talk 03:02, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Place names are proper nouns, regardless of whether they are official or not, regardless of whether they originated as descriptions. ANet never named these two landmarks, but these names are now in wider usage than many official terms. Outside of GW, in many college towns across the world, there is a coffee house so dark and dingy, it's known to generations of students as, "Cafe Depresso," and never, "cafe depresso." It's a name and a title, despite it being inventive and fictive.

True, but this isn't a name, it's a description used as an article heading. ^^ That was my point, it doesn't even have a name, official or not. -- Konig / talk 13:54, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * That said, I agree with you that we should be consistent across the wiki: the articles should be either and  or  and .  — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 03:34, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * "Place names are proper nouns"


 * This is very much a name; it's what everyone uses to identify a specific location. (Or how else do "unofficial names" come into being, except through usage?)


 * That said, I don't think that anyone should prematurely change the article. At the moment, there's no consensus; opinions are strong and divided. There's no particular urgency to clarifying the article naming convention for unofficial proper nouns, so I hope that people will be patient. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:42, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * There's a difference betweeen an unofficial name and a common description. If I have a friend named Mike, I would almost certainly refer to his home as "Mike's house" (or "Mike's apartment" if it was an apartment, or possibly just "Mike's place"), and it is entirely likely that a shared circle of friends would also call it the same thing. That isn't the same as unofficially naming the place, say, "Mike Stadium" because that group of friends gathers there to watch sporting events together. The Secret Garden could probably go either way (I'd personally lean toward name, but I can see the argument otherwise), while I'd say Gwen's garden pretty clearly falls into common description (it's a garden which belongs to Gwen, she even refers to it as her garden in dialogue). - Tanetris 18:38, 25 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The Mike's apartment vs Mike's Stadium comparison is helpful; that clarifies (for me) the just a description argument. I still think that player usage has elevated GG to a name, but I can see why others disagree. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 18:51, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * This "Mike" must have very low standards, considering his apartment is a "stadium" to him.-- Neil • User Neil2250 sig icon6.png 19:38, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

The Secret Garden
Opposed to the move, since Secret Garden is treated as a name just as much as Fort Ranik is. 69.182.147.69 08:32, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Difference is that the name Fort Ranik is in the game. The name "Secret Garden" is not. -- Konig / talk 08:35, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it should be kept. Or ask someone at A.NET and see their response. -- 'Mai Yi ' talk  23:20, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * As I've suggested elsewhere, I think it's distracting to use a different naming convention for official vs unofficial proper nouns. (Particularly since The Secret Garden is a more noteworthy location than many officially named landmarks.) Since this is more about individual preferences than a strict rule (grammar or GWW style), I think we should establish a wiki consensus rather than discussing each article one-at-a-time. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 02:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think we should keep consistency in style. If we use lower case to refer to unofficial names and upper case to refer to official names then I think this should be lower case. If you want all names, official or otherwise, to be in upper case that is a separate issue to be discussed elsewhere. We should maintain the same standard and style throughout the entire wiki, which I believe in this case means moving to the lower case title for this article. I don't believe in arguing for a percieved significance in whether or not this landmark or location is special compared to other landmarks, we should keep the definitions simple, does the landmark have an official name or is this a player name? If it's given a name by players the convention for unofficial names should apply. Grmatically, the lower case name is the correct one, we only give official names capitals because that's how it's done in game. That reality does not exist for player given names thus the default to proper grammar for unofficial names. Again, if your issue is with the convention, that is a different discussion to be had elsewhere. 110.32.0.67 05:09, 21 January 2011 (UTC)


 * As of this post, there are 169 articles tagged as unofficial terms. Of these, 12 use Upper Case, 62 use Lower case, 3 are mixed case, and 92 are single words or numbers (so the convention doesn't affect them). (I am ignoring small words, such as the and of.) So, at least 15 articles have to be fixed. If the only argument for using upper case is the effort involved in renaming 65 articles, then I am happy to volunteer to do it (and the redirect follow-ups).


 * As I've remarked, there is no grammatical or current wiki rule that says unofficial terms must use lower case; it's a convention and therefore a stylistic preference. GWW:NAMING suggests that and proper nouns are almost always capitalized. The lower case convention sets up some weird article names, imo: Away from keyboard (when the acronym is AFK, not Afk) and Guide to the Beacon's Perch to Droknar's Forge run (with run being the only lower case word).


 * I think we should decide what we want the convention to be before deciding whether we want to move 15 or 65 articles. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 06:08, 21 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Like the Gwen's garden, which is already a good example IMO, this landmark can be renamed to "Secret garden" or "Regent Valley garden", as for me, the last is better. Redirection never was a problem in Wiki. --Slavic 13:16, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's a proper noun, thus it should be in upper case. I am also really against a complete rename as suggested by Slavic above. It is well known as The Secret Garden in game and always has been. The only other name I've seen it called (before the intro of Nick) was Melandru's Garden. Either way, proper nouns are upper case. EDIT: also if you look above to 2009 you will see this exact same thing was debated then. -- Salome   [[Image:User_salome_sig2.png|19px]] 13:35, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * @TEF: For the two examples you gave which makes weird article names: Beacon's Perch and Droknar's Forge are meant to be uppercase as they're official terms used within the title, and Away from keyboard is right as it would technically be "away from keyboard" (the acronym doesn't care about upper or lowercase, in fact, no acronym except for company/copyrighted acronyms do), but the auto-capitalization of the first word ruins this. And yes, there is no rule on the wiki stating that they must be, but this is for consistency with things that were done long prior to this. And there are far more articles needing fixing than just your 62 linked articles (that category isn't complete, I just found and added two which currently use lowercasing) if we decide to go the other way around.
 * @Slavic: I like "Regent Valley garden" myself too, as it is more specific to what the garden is (the garden isn't an allusion to the movie, nor is it a really a secret... it's just bloody hard to find, so by the current name "Bloody Hard to Find Garden" is just as proper of a name).
 * @Salome: Actually, outside of this wiki page, I have never heard of any "widely used name" for the garden. Before this wiki page was called "The Secret Garden" it was "Melandru's Garden" (which I actually have seen used in game, The Secret Garden I haven't). But either way, imo, it is not a proper name. No more proper than Am Fah's guild hall, Xunlai headquarters, Gwen's garden, or any of the unofficial terms that TEF linked. And a majority of them are lowercased. -- Konig / talk 14:06, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, and for reference, I have heard Melandru's Garden (either cap and lower) in game once, and secret garden never. In over 4.5 years of playing. And Salome, the discussion above isn't of any use because that's discussing what to call it, this discussion is more for whether to capitalize it or not. Though this discussion should probably be taken to some more generic page since it covers the whole of Category:Unofficial terms. -- Konig / talk 14:14, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry Konig, you must have read the wrong move article, i was referencing this. Also I personally have only ever heard it called The Secret Garden, in game. That however is just my experience. --  Salome   [[Image:User_salome_sig2.png|19px]] 11:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)


 * (1) Prior to Nick, everyone I met who knew about the area called it the Secret Garden. Upon Nick's introduction, people receiving directions and who said they hadn't heard the name before, said, oh! that hidden garden? or oh, you mean that secret garden. Since Nick's intro, I have heard Secret Garden a bit less and where Nick is more.


 * (2) @Konig (mostly): you missed my point about the Drok's run guide. It isn't whether it's correctly capitalized or not, it's the fact that it looks like a typo. Similarly Afk looks wrong for AFK, since acronyms are either always capitalized or all lower cased, never mixed case. It's not 10 Pm; it's 10 PM. It's not Snafu; it's SNAFU. (And, though we don't have to follow their rule, it's how Wikipedia handles acronyms.)


 * (3) After reviewing the list of unofficial terms, it turns out to be more complicated and not as easy to categorize; I'll run the metrics again when I have a chance (it's, as you can imagine a PITA, but not a Pita, to collate).


 * (4) And I cannot accept the argument that we follow the majority of articles because (a) I've volunteered to fix them if need be (eliminating the effort part of the argument) and (b) unofficial names can be and are proper nouns. For example, most of New York's neighborhoods are unofficial names without any more official status than Gwen's Garden: NoHo, West Village, TriBeCa, and Lower West Side.


 * (5) However, I agree strongly with Konig that we need to move this to a generic talk page, probably for GWW:GENFORM or something in that part of the wiki. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 11:55, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree this should be on a generic talk page and not here. On the subject, I think only the Wiki whores (or is that Wiki Whores?) among us really give a **** if it is upper, lower or somewhere-in-between case. The average GW player (and Wiki user) doesn't even have the faintest clue what is player established and what is game terms or what is canon or not. With that said ... I don't see any reason to distinguish player established terms and game terms by means of grammar. --Manassas  [[File: User Manassas Mannysig.png]] 12:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Zinn's Laboratory
I disagree with moving to Zinn's laboratory. It's a proper name, official or unofficial; proper names should be capitalized.

I also think we should have the discussion generally somewhere else, because this issue applies to other unofficially named landmarks, e.g. Gwen's garden, The Secret Garden, and Rabbit hole. Real life examples include The West Coast, The Mall That Time Forgot, and, on numerous campuses miles from any bodies of water, [Placename] Beach (the default sunbathing location) &mdash; each of these locations are unofficial, proper names; they are capitalized in print.

In other words, let's reach consensus on how to name articles about unofficial places before we move/change any. (Of the list of four, currently there are two that follow each rule.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 20:02, 23 December 2010 (UTC)


 * If Zinn had camped in the area for any great length of time, I'd agree that the location would be known as "Zinn's Laboratory". A parallel would be using "Oola's Lab" had it not already been called such in game. But Zinn seems to have used the hideout for a short amount of time, and not long enough to warrant a proper noun for the place.
 * I think we should maintain the use of proper English, which to me says that The Secret Garden should lose it's capitals (I think the player-made reference to the book has led to the current capitalization). G R E E N E R  20:22, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with the later half of what greener said. Also, I think that, whether or not it's "proper" (which I still disagree with it being proper as this name is a descriptive name), for ease of realizing whether a name is official or not, we use a different form of article naming. Easiest to do would be lowercasing all but the undeniably proper nouns (e.g., Zinn, Gwen, Tomb\Primeval Kings, etc.). Alternatively, we could put quotation marks around the said (such as how gw2:"Deep Sea dragon" is done). But imo, we should not name unofficial term articles the same as we name official term articles. As such, it would be easiest to merely go with lowercasing the article names as move unofficial term articles are either one word or already lowercase with the exception noted above in my post.
 * And if we start capitalizing some articles, then we'd have a lot of work... there's 170 articles in the unofficial term category, I for one am not going through them all and moving the articles and bypassing created redirects. -- Konig / talk 22:59, 23 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I suspect that this really comes down to a community preference; there usually isn't any rational argument that can persuade people to change a preference. From my point of view, we already tag and cat articles as unofficial; I don't see why we need to further differentiate official from unofficial terms (whether through caps, italics, quotes, or something else). I find it distracting &mdash; Gwen's garden is a more important landmark than Kei Beach; why distinguish them at all? (It also sometimes creates odd titles, e.g. Guide to the Beacon's Perch to Droknar's Forge run, where only run is lower case (to/the not usually being subject to the rule).)


 * Incidentally, I don't think "having a lot of work" is a sufficient argument for deciding. If that's the only thing in the way, then I'm happy to move 170 articles for consistency. (I think it's going to turn out that we will need to adjust a bunch of articles either way...and add some to category:unofficial terms, too.)


 * I'm happy to concede to a community preference; I would like to see us have that discussion before deciding on individual articles. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 09:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Combined discussion
Please place new comments here so it's not messy. My opinion has been stated above in each place, but for easy reference: I believe that, to differenciate between official and unofficial terms, the later (unofficial) should be lowercased with the exception of where the article utilizes official terms in it (see, currently, Ruins of the Tomb of the Primeval Kings, Am Fah's guild hall, and Xunlai headquarters and Guide to the Beacon's Perch to Droknar's Forge run). -- Konig / talk 18:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)


 * In contrast, I believe we should, as our policy suggests, capitalize proper names, whether they are official or unofficial. In particular: Gwen's Garden is the name that (nearly) everyone uses to refer to a certain unofficial landmark, making it a proper name. I feel strongly enough about this that I am willing to rename and move any/all articles that need to be capitalized.


 * There are some metrics above which I think are misleading; I'll re-review the current list of unofficial names and publish an analysis of how many articles might need to be adjusted. In the meantime, the short story is that some articles will need to be moved regardless of the standard we choose, however would be far fewer moves required if we follow Konig's suggestion (unofficial names get lower case; official names get upper). — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 20:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I can only tell again that I'm against capitalisation of unofficial terms: while Gwen's garden is unofficial and everybody can understand this looking only at the lack of capitalisation, Gwen's Garden is looked like an official term and many people would mistakenly count it official. In other words, capitalisation has a semantic meaning in GW world. Why do we need to differentiate them? Because the official terms are "carved in stone", while unofficial can come and go... --Slavic 18:01, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Firstly, using "proper" English in any context, is preferable to not doing so.

Second, in parsing "Gwen's Garden" - "Gwen" is an ADJECTIVE describing the NOUN "Garden". Since Gwen is a proper name, it is appropriate to capitalize both "Gwen" and "Garden" in this context, since the phrase is defining a SPECIFIC, defined location, which is immovable. (Unlike "Mike's apartment" which could change daily, weekly, monthly or yearly.) (depending on his relationship with the landlord!)Undouble 16:13, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

hero's recommendations on mission pages
I've played for some time now and can easily do most missions with my hero's. But I remember I used the wiki a lot on my first time through in normal mode and took the skill advise at heart on the mission pages. I think for new players seeking help it would be a good addition to have advise on hero's/henchman (specially in Nightfall and EOTN missions). e.g. in Chahbek Village The advise would be like this: "As Koss being a melee character, it is advised to bring an healing henchman/hero and a caster. When doing this solo with a new character you are forced to bring Kihm and Sogolon cause you don't have any other hero's yet and they are the only henchman available for this mission". This would be a big project. I am willing to put time in it, but as I'm still figuring out how a wiki works I might need some help organising the project. But first my main question, do we desire this? Rumian 15:38, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It's an interesting idea. Why don't you toss up one or two in your user space, and put a link to it here for us once you think the basics are in place. If you have questions about formatting, always feel free to ask. If you're not sure how to create a page in your user-space, just click on this link, and type away: User:Rumian/Hero recommendations. G R E E N E R  16:57, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't it be like, Feedback:User/Rumian/Hero_recommendations? Or did I miss something? Probably best to just go to Feedback:Main to start a new feedback for Anet. --Lania  [[Image:User Lania Elderfire pinkribbon.jpg]]23:16, 09 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Theres no reason to make a feedback for it, this is a minor page edit. It would just add a new section to mission pages suggesting which heroes to use for that mission. I doubt it would require a major community project, let alone Anet's involvement.--Neithan Diniem User Neithan Diniem Sig.png]] 00:57, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Lol, I mis-read what Rumian was saying. For some odd reason I thought he was wanting to add feedback to add a new feature into the game. Yeah, I really did miss something. --Lania  [[Image:User Lania Elderfire pinkribbon.jpg]]02:06, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for helping to set a demo-page up. I made two rough examples to show what I am talking about. So please comment on them and on the idea User:Rumian/Hero recommendations Rumian 10:01, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

April Fools' Day 2011 info - should it be in main articles?
I don't think we should include any of the info that relates to April Fools' Day 2011 in the main body of most articles:
 * The quest is a one-time festival event.
 * It's clearly part of ANet's yearly prank and is not cannon.

I think it's misleading to clutter up e.g. Ascalonian Warrior with location and images for NPCs that are unlikely to appear outside of Annihilator (which, itself, is hardly likely to appear again outside of April Fools). I think, instead, we should be consistent and create separate articles for the 1059 AE versions and include a disambig note on their pages (pointing to the canonical versions). On the original versions of the articles, the most we should do is add a trivia note stating that the character/location/etc has a prank version that appeared briefly for April Fools' 2011. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC) - unfortunately that's not confirmation the battle in Regent Valley (the only possible canonocity other than the "asura have time travel" thing) is canon. Besides, who says it won't return next year? The quests/gw1 NPCs may return... Otherwise, we'd have to expand the historical content stuff quite a bit (we have 13 NPCs (Bane + golem + Moahawk + the 6 Krytan guys + Ascalonian Mesmer, Necro, Monk, and Elementalist), 2 instances and 1 quest). On the topic of the four NPCs which are both in and out of the quest - Sarah, Hamnet, the Ascalonian War/Ranger - for the War and Ranger, I have no issue with combining, for Sarah and Hamnet, a mention that they're in the quest is perfectly fine, imo.
 * Only as trivia. There may be some canonocity to be found in it per Stumme's comment: "[[Feedback talk:John Stumme#Question, Mark II|It's not out of line to believe that battle took place.|undefined"
 * In essence, the only issue comes from Ascalonian Warrior and Ascalonian Ranger. Things like the mention on the Guild Wars is fine, imo. -- Konig / talk 18:19, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * i think just adding a note to trivia would be fine who knows if we will see that quest again next year.-[[Image:User_Zesbeer_sig.png|link=User talk:Zesbeer‎]] Zesbeer 22:15, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

keep gw and gw2 wiki separate
Due to GW beyond and the fact more and more info bout GW2 is being released, I see more and more links to GW2 pop up. Though these are valuable links, they look the same as normal internal wiki links. When GW2 goes live, people can get confused cause the links between gwwiki and gw2wiki are tying them together. I have been several times on the gw2 wiki without realising it. As an example look at the Logan thackeray link on Keiran Thackeray page. Though the text explains it is a character in GW2, I dont get any warning that the actual page is on a different wiki. This could be solved imo in two ways. 1: make links to gw2 recognisable (eg. by a small gw2 icon). 2: put a redirect message above the page after you clicked it to return where you where. Other idea's are welcome as well. Please comment if you agree with me we should find a solution and on posibble solutions. Rumian 11:28, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * As long as interwiki links do not appear in actual content sections, that means outside of trivia or notes, I don't see a problem with using interwiki links to GW2W. After all, if you look at that trivia section on the page, you'll notice that there are actually a lot interwiki links, not only to GW2W, but also to wikipedia. Unless we want to add an icon to every single interwiki link (which I would oppose), the first suggestion won't work, and the second suggestion doesn't work technically.
 * And as I've said, I don't see a problem with this. People can easily look where the link goes, and the browser's history and controls (back button!) are there for a reason. poke | talk 12:09, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * If there's a GW1 article, we should link internally to GWW. If there isn't, I do think we should link to GW2W; that's where the GW2-relevant info is fleshed out. If you have a logon on both, you can change your style sheet on either so that it's more visual obvious if/when you are switched (leave a note on my page if you want some specific instructions on how to do that).


 * As Poke notes, we link to a lot of places this way: Wikipedia being the most noteworthy (we will also return to using the same types of links for PvX and Guild Wiki...as soon as the interwiki table gets fixed). — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 16:16, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see an issue with the interwiki links at all. It's very easy to go back, and pages are set up differently between the two wikis (which will become more apparent as we get more GW2 information). I don't see an issue providing them in content sections either. As TEF said, if they have a page on the current wiki, link that; if not, link the other wiki. -- Konig / talk 21:25, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

E3 preview info
This holds some outpost descriptions (name, text, an image) along with a simple in-game map (click the icons). It's effectively a series of screenshots. I am unsure if this is beta or alpha (thinking beta because of a youtube video has more WoW like graphics while the images are more like released-Prophecies). I'd make historical content pages for them all except that I am unsure of how to work some things in - half of them are just pre-release names of modern content (the 5 missions are the first five post-Searing Prophecies missions but with different names - e.g., The Great Northern Wall is called "The Perilous North" there). For those which exist currently in GW, should they be notes/trivia or should there be historical pages made for them since they've been changed? Likewise, there's "The Siege of Fort Koga" - unsure if this should be added to Fort Koga as a note, or made its own since in this form, from what I recall hearing, it was more like GvG and more of the map was usable. And since "Town of Khylo" was Ascalon City (and we have Khylo as well), unsure if a third page is necessary. Just wanting opinions, personally I'd at least create redirects for the above mentions along with notes and documenting the text in said note section (with the exception of the two Drascir towns which are completely different from Drascir and Stone Summit (mission)). -- Konig / talk 03:30, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Commando Berserker
Commando was fun. How about a Beserker? Adrenline based, double claw weapons froma Norn backstory.
 * Firstly, there's a feedback portal for game suggestions. Second, what? --ஸ Kyoshi [[Image:User_Kyoshi_sig2.png|19px]] 05:28, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Skill acquisition: the constant (but unintended) edit wars
Every skill's acquisition section is the target of frequent, well-intentioned, but misleading changes: people add a skill trainer to the list after they have unlocked the skill (so other characters can acquire it at multiple trainers). This has been going on for years. I wonder if we can reduce the chance that it happens by re-labeling the subsection on skill trainers from Skill trainer to perhaps Skill trainers (that can unlock the skill) or something along those lines.

In addition to reducing the frequency of these changes, it also makes it easier for the well-intentioned contributor to understand the reason why their change gets reverted. (This is a good thing since these types of edits are the first edits by potential future contributors.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * This seems like a reasonable change. Perhaps we could also add a comment to the wiki source with a more extensive note that only trainers which can unlock the skill should be added, and that people should be careful to make sure that such is the case before editing? [[Image:User Aiiane-a.gif|Go to Aiiane's Talk page]] (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 17:43, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm against changing the header to include something in parentheses, but all for making it less ambiguous. poke | talk 17:47, 17 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps a note underneath the existing header. Or, perhaps adding a bullet under every Skill trainer subsection that says, e.g.
 * • After unlocking: any skill trainer in this campaign will offer this skill to your other characters.
 * Well, that's waaaaay to long, but the idea is to make it clear that there's a difference in availability for locked and unlocked skills. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 18:20, 17 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Another option would be to add commented-out notices above and below the list of skill trainers in that section which states the above. Not everyone reads them, unfortunately, but it will limit the number of mis-edits without adding confusion directly to the article. G R E E N E R  19:14, 18 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Hidden comments are useful. Still, I'd like to see the skill articles themselves comment on the difference between acquiring locked and unlocked skills; even veterans still get confused by this. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 19:36, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) How about this alternative suggestion:
 * On all skill pages, rename Acquisition to NPCs that can unlock the skill (which better reflects what we record).
 * Add a note in italics below, These NPCs will teach the skill to your current character, which will also unlock the skill for your entire account and allow characters to learn the skill at any trainer in the same campaign.

— Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 04:30, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Quests that offer the skill as a reward are also listed in the "Acquisition" section. The "Skill trainers" heading is what should be changed. --Silver Edge 07:16, 11 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah, good point. (I knew I was forgetting something obvious.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 07:39, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

GWW:GUILD and guild page inactivity.
We currently have over 1400 untagged 'inactive' guilds. These guilds started going 'inactive' circa March 2010. On top of that, we have another 473 guilds tagged as inactive, but needing to be moved. To give an idea on the length of time since anyone has done anything, the first one I clicked on, A Fistfull of Charms, was tagged as inactive back in March 2010.

I think we can safely say that the Historical content section has run its course. Anymore, no one cares to go through those lists and do the guild namespace maintenance. We've had at least two discussions regarding tagging guilds as historical, but both got hamstrung on the second condition for tagging a page as inactive, "Inactivity outside of Wiki - Any listed forum and/or website has not received any GW-related edits for 3 months." The idea behind that condition was a sound one&mdash;to discourage false positives for inactivity&mdash;but ultimately, it has discouraged any tagging, especially as the list grows larger. Nobody wants to visit 1400+ websites to check if a guild is active or not.

Outside of hoping for a messianic power-editor, that list will continue to grow and people will continue to shy away from it. This leaves us with a few options:
 * 1) Scrap the second condition entirely.
 * 2) Scrap the historical content section entirely.
 * 3) Hope that User:Jesus decides to work on that list.

The first option was practiced in the earlier wiki days until Lensor's guild was unwittingly tagged as inactive. I know I kept tagging guilds as inactive by wiki-activity until Wyn (I think) told me to stop. Wandering Traveler brought up the idea of removing this clause, but that was as far as the idea got. The pitfall with this is that someone would still have to tag 1400+ guilds as inactive, and then move 1400+ guilds three months down the line, but I suppose wikichu could do that.

The second option is meant to work around the lack of editors willing to work on the last. We scrap the Historical content section entire and just leave guild pages alone in their state of inactivity. Of course, there might be a few exceptions we should allow, but we basically get rid of the (historical) suffix on Guild Names, old and new.

The third option will never happen, if the past 15 months are any indication.

Of course, these aren't the only ideas to be had. I posted this here instead of GWWT:GUILD because I want plenty of input from the community (as opposed to just input from the occasional RC stalker and people who have that policy page in their watchlist.) -- R i ddle 17:35, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not one of the most prevalent people on the Wiki, but I think the better answer would be to scrap the Historical section. I never really understood why there had to be a separate section for something like that, just tag the page as inactive and let it gather dust, or even make a "disbanded" tag to replace the whole moving thing.  I'm not sure if one of the sysops has the power/tools to, but if they could look at the edit histories en-masse and tag as inactive/historical/disbanded, and then shouldn't a bot or sysops be able to move all the pages labelled historical/disbanded to their new names pretty quickly?  I'm not sure what tools the higher-ups have access to, but it doesn't seem like it'd be too complicated even if we kept the current system.
 * I don't really think that condition is entirely necessary either. If they were active, they'd at least come and un-tag themselves.  But even if we only decide on one, I vote for removing the historical section and maybe even putting a note like "This guild may be disbanded or just inactive" on the inactive tag to cover all the bases. My cluttered two cents, dissect it as you will. ~FarloUser Farlo Triad.png Talk 18:29, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I personally would say to go with option 2. Like Farlo, I never understood the point of marking guilds as historical. I can tell you that my guild is active, but there's little to no changes in things (no recruitment due to a lot of folks having guilds), so there's never a need to edit it for months at a time. It isn't historical, it's not inactive, there's just no need to edit it which by the rules of moving and historicalizing, marks it as a historical guild... despite the fact that it isn't. So I'd say that there's no need to move. Just tag if it hasn't been edited for a while, and as Farlo said: If the guild is active, they can untag themselves. I don't see a need for the condition either, tbh.  Konig / talk 18:35, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I would like to point out that Wynthyst resigned from her sysop position in mid-February 2010. As you can see, she handled a lot of guild cleanup. It seems that the current sysops either weren't aware there was a growing pile of guild work to do because Wyn always took care of it, or they aren't particularly willing to do it. Regardless, I don't see a need to tag and delete 1700 guild pages when the last 15 months of neglect haven't done much harm. I say drop the requirement and let old guild pages chill. [[Image:User_Felix_Omni_Signature.png]]elix Omni 20:56, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't mind replacing the historical-move completely and replace it with an appropriate tag, that informs visitors that the guild might be inactive/disbanded; and informs actual members of the guild, that they may edit the guild page. I've always though that the moving was quite messy, and apart from a very few cases, mostly unnecessary, especially with the average content amount of those pages.
 * This might also be a good idea to revise the requirements for an accepted guild page (i.e. when the page should be tagged for guild cleanup instead). Whenever I was going through the lists, I've always thought that most of the pages didn't really qualify for having a permanent, archived guild page on the wiki, while the policy accepted them just fine. Very often, guild pages just consist of the basic infobox data, nothing else. Sometimes they also have some more information like recruitment information (which does not apply for archived/disbanded guilds anyway), but all in all there is no real reason to keep those pages here.
 * So I would like to propose that we make the rules for guilds stricter, while making it easier for us to work with it (i.e. no archiving, just tagging; less caring about pages). poke | talk 21:12, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I think we should end the policy on renaming historical guilds and we should tag as inactive guild any article that hasn't been edited within X months, without regard for what's happening in-game or on another website. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 21:21, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * We create more problems than we solve by distinguishing historical guilds (more work, moves/renames, people can't find their archived page, ...). In fact, I'm not clear on the advantage of archiving guilds: as long as they remain in the Guild space, we haven't reduced the clutter.
 * We create more problems than we solve by requiring any research before tagging guilds as inactive.
 * The inactive guild text already says, in the first line, that the label is due to wiki inactivity.
 * The guild should be responsible for maintenance; the wiki should not worry about what happens (or does not happen) offsite.
 * As noted above, it's trivial to remove the tag.
 * If it's really critical to save space by deleting guild articles that haven't been edited for 2-3 years, we can create a project to address that, rather than require ongoing maintenance. (i.e. at best, it's only worth purging every 18-24 months, not every month)
 * I use to tag a bunch of these guilds, but it got ridiculous as Tef said, It shouldn't be our place to worry about the guild, but their own place. If it gets disbanded, they should tag it to delete. Once a guild is gone, it's gone. It'd save the room here for any other guild that wants to use the name, to use the name. If all those guilds in historical are gone, remove them. Why are they still here? Collecting dust - in my opinion. I think they should be removed. They're removed in game, right? I do think that the 14 day clean up should still be done. After all, a guild should be able to fill in all information, not just very little as so many try to do. I am wondering though if we should do a warning or something on the talk of the guild that if the wiki page isn't edited so much. It'll be tagged inactive and if no updates in so long - deleted. It'd reduce a lot of "wasted" space, in my opinion.  Kaisha  User Kaisha Sig.png 21:31, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * i agree with what TEF said...-[[Image:User_Zesbeer_sig.png|link=User talk:Zesbeer‎]] Zesbeer 21:43, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds like my general idea was liked, and I'd have to agree with TEF (as usual). If I had the ability, I'd gladly sort out the guild stuff once we know what we're doing.  I have a few seasons of shows to watch, and the other half of my screen is essentially empty ;).  ~FarloUser Farlo Triad.png Talk 03:03, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I like TEF's idea, and given that the current consensus seems to be favoring something like that, we could probably start ironing out the details on GWWT:GUILD fairly soon. Poke brings up an excellent point, and I figure we can discuss it while we are already on the subject. Occasionally, we'll find a guild page like this that has basically no information. Should we even keep guild pages that are as uninformative as that or should we just tag them for clean up? And should we change the minimum amount of content needed for a guild page? (i.e. require more content) One more minor detail: I made a mistake in my original post. I linked to Guild:Dark Alley (historical) when I meant to link to Guild:Delta Formation (historical). I was hoping to illustrate an exception; Delta Formation is the only guild (as far as I know) that has a historical page and a current page. Due to the nature of that guild's history, I am in favor of keeping Delta Formation (historical) and any other cases like it (though I think it is the only one). -- R i ddle 06:28, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm all for requiring more content; a much better example is this guild btw (there are hundreds of pages like that in the archive). And tagging for cleanup would be enough, given that those qualify for deletion after a given period anyway. I think requiring some kind of content, that is “independent from the guild status” and still applies after a possible disbanding (i.e. not just contact or recruitment data), would be fine. poke | talk 07:44, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I definitely agree as well. In my few dozen edits last night, I'd say at least half were mostly or entirely blank, sometimes just the templates and even without a guild name added. ~FarloUser Farlo Triad.png Talk 16:40, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I fully agree with TEF's idea. Trying to foster-parent all the inactive guild pages on a month-to-month basis was a ridiculous feat, to say the least. --User Wandering Traveler Sig2.png <font color="#D2691E">Traveler (<font color="#D2691E">talk ) 17:36, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Summary of conversation
I think this is what we have been saying:


 * Guild article policy should be updated to clarify that the guild has the full responsibility for keeping their page accurate & current.
 * Untouched articles should automatically be tagged with inactive guild after 3 months.
 * Once every so often, we should run a project to purge the Guild Space of guild articles that have been dormant for ages (e.g. 12 months or perhaps more).
 * We might want to rename dormant notable guilds rather than purge them.
 * We should consider whether we make any exceptions outside of notable guilds.
 * We should stop using historical guild except for those tiny number of dormant guild articles that we wish to preserve.
 * GWW should require more substantive content for Guild articles
 * We could decide the details later; it's not the direct focus of the original thread.
 * We would need to define what substantive means and what consequences there are for only partially meeting the requirements.

I think that covers the tentative consensus towards which we have been building. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 18:06, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree that we should remove the historical content rules.


 * Please don't replace them with a giant refactoring effort. Don't automatically tag guild articles as inactive. Don't purge dormant guilds. Don't have special rules for "notable guilds". Don't make extra rules about content that somebody has to enforce.


 * Leave old (historical) guilds right where they are. Any guild that cares can move its article. Any guild that actually wants a (historical) article can make one or keep the one they have.


 * I am in favor of removing all rules that require maintenance from editors. I am against making the rules for the namespace stricter, as it's not clear what we gain. Anything that requires policing or work from other editors is generally a bad idea, as the existing GW:GUILD policy has shown.


 * &mdash;Tanaric 18:21, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * (We are using GWW as the project prefix here *coughcough*) poke | talk 18:44, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm more for what TEF said than Tanaric. Some historical guilds as shown here. Don't have much of any information. Why keep that? We purge other guilds for clean-up after 14 days. Why are they any different? Notable, I'd say leave alone and do what TEF suggested to them. Kaisha  User Kaisha Sig.png 18:51, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it might be worth to note that tagging guilds for cleanup and/or deleting them was never really an issue, but rather the requirements for both cleanup and historical. poke | talk 19:12, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I should point out the Farlo had powered through most of the A's before I told him to wait. If a user isn't up for tagging inactive guild pages, we always have Wikichu. Though, in spirit of what Tanaric was saying, let's try to keep this simple. I'll bring up Delta Formation again because it is the only guild I know that has two pages. If there are other guilds that have a similar history (i.e. two points where they are drastically different) and have two pages on the wiki, I wouldn't mind keeping both. However, I figure that Delta Formation is the only exception, so we shouldn't have to worry too much about the (historical) suffix. Other notable guilds&mdash;which, I guess, are guilds with gold-trims or that have won Guild of the Week&mdash;should just keep their notable tag.
 * Going back to whether or not we should fiddle with the (historical) suffix: More often than not, the people that made the guild page do not know the wiki enough to move their guild out of the archive; they often ask for our help instead. Should we avoid doing anything to the (historical) tag and move guilds on an as-requested basis, or should we pull all of the guilds out of the archive in one grand manuever?-- <font color="#ef8f50">R <font color="#916142">i <font color="#333333">ddle 00:23, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * While my personal opinion is probably the exact opposite of Tanaric's (I think we should wipe the whole guild namespace), I'd suggest we move all the historical guilds out of the archive in one fell swoop. That way everything can start from a set point, the date of the move, and if after 3 months they haven't been touched, then we can tag them with inactive guild or whatever is decided upon.  --Rainith 00:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * For me, TEF's summary nailed it on the head. As for what content is needed, basically fill out the templates provided (at least), and have the motivation to put up a cape image. ~FarloUser Farlo Triad.png Talk 01:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Right, so I probably over stepped the mark by doing this, but i'm currently in the process of going through this list of inactive guilds and adding inactive guild to all those still inactive (which is pretty much all of them). Currently I'm down at 2010-04-16 02:58:34 and I would plow on into the night if it wasn't 3am. If it's desired for these guilds to have the Inactivity template added to them I will continue in the morning, unless any further discussion decides that it's clogging up the recent changes list too bad.--Wingsy 02:06, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think your idea falls under the same heading that Riddle gave to me, that Wikichu can handle the mass tagging when we figure out what we're doing, so I think you can stop and let it be automated :P ~FarloUser Farlo Triad.png Talk 03:39, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * ^ that. Deciding first saves double trouble :P poke | talk 16:43, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Changes, Phase 1

 * Guild Wars Wiki talk:Guild pages
 * Template talk:Inactive guild

I would like this section to be specifically for discussing the changes on a more broad level rather than a change to any of the aforelinked pages. For example: If a guild page is tagged Inactive guild, is 12 months a good duration before the guild is deleted? Also, should we modify GWW:DP to include a Gu1: Inactive Guild reason? (Note: We'll probably bring up modifying GWW:DP later when we discuss the minimum content threshold.) -- <font color="#ef8f50">R <font color="#916142">i <font color="#333333">ddle 22:22, 23 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Why bother with any of it? It's become pretty clear that I was the only one that gave a shit about the guild space in the first place. As has been pointed out, there has been no visible harm to the wiki with the complete and utter abandonment of any maintenance of the space since I resigned, so why go to any effort at all regarding guild pages? Simply remove the dpl list page of currently tagged pages, and no one would even be the wiser, and allow things to just remain status quo. I see any change at all at this point to be totally wasted effort. -- Wyn [[Image:User Wynthyst sig icon2.png|19px ]] talk  12:22, 3 July 2011 (UTC)


 * The changes proposed reconcile wiki policy with the status quo. Currently, policy requires maintenance; the suggestion is to return the burden of effort to the guilds and allow anyone who (as Wyn so quaintly puts it) gives a shit to tag articles. Going forward, it won't matter if articles aren't tagged or aren't deleted. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 16:46, 3 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm just saying that it really doesn't matter now if they are or not. -- Wyn [[Image:User Wynthyst sig icon2.png|19px ]] talk  18:39, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Time stamps vs manual time notes
re - it's easier to simply put 5 tildes instead of writing out dates when adding a new notice; this also gives the date a uniform format. Also, it's better to have the timestamp at the end of each notice rather than sometimes at the beginning or in the middle or at the end, just like with talk page comments, as it helps when reading or seeing if old notices need to be removed. pling  16:43, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I disagree that it's better. The time stamp is unconnected to the news; it's just the date when we happened to post it. In particular, it's confusing for learning when the software was updated or when ANet is hosting fanday.


 * Maybe we should use both, depending on the context. And put the time stamp in smaller font, to make it clear it's just a time stamp. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:03, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I prefer the timestamps too.. poke | talk 17:45, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with TEF. I think we should put in the actual date of the content, like the news, software updates, etc. Not the date that we put it up, because that's all the does.  Kaisha  User Kaisha Sig.png 17:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, as long as the date is uniformly presented, I guess I can make do with having to type out dates manually. pling  User Pling sig.png 18:26, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * It's the context: time stamps only tell us when we posted; some of the events also have a meaningful time of their own. → I don't see why we can't use both. Maybe, e.g.
 * The wiki software will be updated at 11:01 on 31 June 2015. (Posted on: ~ ) 
 * It might be overkill, but we can create a substitutable template to take out some of the tedium, e.g. [news] that would automatically stamp the date of posting. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 18:33, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It definitely is overkill to do both and have a template. Just doing one is fine. It's really not that important - as long as there's some kind of date to use as a reference, it'll do. pling  User Pling sig.png 20:07, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Documenting Guild Wars Beyond
This was originally discussed, partially, here a long time ago, but it died. Even putting it as a request for comment didn't help finish it. It needs to be decided how to document Beyond content, hopefully before Winds of Change which is reported to have 3 portions and the first having 42 quests (including Hard Mode Only quests) - we can assume it'll have around 126 quests including HM quests (42*8). At the moment, some things are documented like Beyond doesn't exist (claiming things are part of one of the campaigns or EN, and the regions) or that Beyond is its own campaign. It's inconsistent and a consensus needs to be reached. I'm re-starting this discussion here in hopes that more people will join and a consensus can be reached. The previous discussion was primarily debating whether Beyond should be considered like Prophecies, Eye of the North, and the rest, or if it shouldn't be considered in documenting. The primary arguments led to documenting NPCs like Evennia and how to do such. However, quests, missions, and unique explorables were completely ignored. Personally, I think that Beyond content is so radically different from the campaigns because of how it functions that it isn't, by definition, similar to them - this is mainly due to it not having its own unique-to-itself places; it borrows places of older content, and remakes them. However, it is also most certainly not merely new content added to Prophecies, Eye of the North, and soon Factions. So what I suggest is to merely document it as the same, using the following formula: The region is done that way because WiK, HotN currently span 3 regions (kryta and Far Shiverpeaks for both, Ascalon for WiK, and Maguuma Jungle for HotN). We know that WoC will be in Kaineng (deals with the empire), and I bet it's safe to assume that since it deals with the tengu, that Shing Jea is also part of it. Currently, most WiK and HotN quests are labeled as "Kryta" or "Far Shiverpeak" quests. For instance A Vengeance of Blades is placed as a Far Shiverpeaks quest, despite taking place in the Maguuma Jungle (even with a Maguuma Jungle loading screen). This creates a confusion easily avoided. No chapter is limited to a single region, so in order to properly organize quests - especially quests in say, List of Prophecies quests - it would be easiest to replace region with the chapters. It'll also ease the confusion when documenting NPCs' locations and involvement with Beyond, since its size may end up being particularly large (we know of 4 chapters already - WiK, HotN, WoC, and something in Elona - and there's a chance of a chapter taking place in Ascalon as well; that may end up being pretty large, especially if they make it bigger). One last thing: I'd like to call for the deletion of the four redirects: Watchtower Coast (Auspicious Beginnings), Majesty's Rest (A Vengeance of Blades), Aurora Glade (Shadows in the Jungle), and Beetletun (Rise). They're unnecessary and are in fact against consistency with how missions in EN work. I'd also like to call for changing the actual mission articles from "mini-mission" to "mission" just like the EN missions, which are in fact less of missions than the HotN missions (which were stated to be missions by John Stumme). On a side note, why are the EN missions given the quest infobox when they're missions (they're missions which have resurrection shrines and all missions are given an entry in the quest logbook, EN missions are just done differently). So, what are your thoughts/opinions?  Konig / talk 00:53, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Campaign=Beyond
 * Region=the chapter (War in Kryta, Hearts of the North, Winds of Change)


 * I'd like to narrow the discussion to just Beyond; we can separately revisit how we classify EotN missions/quests (as well as other things referenced above). (If I understood correctly), Konig has proposed the following:
 * Classify the campaign of any Beyond quest/mission as Beyond.
 * Classify the region with the name of the beyond chapater (e.g. WiK, HotN, and WoC).
 * Re-align HotN so that it specifies quests (looking for the clues) and missions (when we play the Thackmeister).
 * Remove re-directs that are based on a previous organizational scheme.

It's been my understanding that has merely been acting as where it is located/a part of. Of course, until Zinn's Task (which is incorrect), it has been telling us what we need, but now that the situation has changed, and it still fits the whole "what over-arching group of quests/missions/locations it's a part of" ideal. I am not against proper template-fu and documenting chapters as campaigns, though those templates confuse the living heck out of me, specifically the #if settings which would be required for such.  Konig / talk 17:35, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I support those four principles (which I have numbered to make them easier to discuss). I can think of several other useful ways of organizing the articles, but I think Konig has hit on one that will (a) be easy to follow as new GWB content is released and (b) be worth the effort/reward ratio for the current articles that have to be adjusted. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 01:10, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with marking "Campaign" with Beyond. I disagree with marking regions with chapters. I see that text in the infobox as more of the location of where it's obtained, it is shown in the "Given by" section. But that could easily be replaced by making use of the "Part of" section instead. And removing unnecessary redirects is always fine. • • • Mora  01:48, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * TEF took the words out of my hands (get it i am typing...) so agreed about what he said.-[[Image:User_Zesbeer_sig.png|link=User talk:Zesbeer‎]] Zesbeer 02:31, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer this format: Beyond->Winds of Change->Kaineng City->Bukdek Byway, since multiple parts of beyond could take place in the same regions or areas. The HotN redirects were finished by me, since no one seemed to want to make separate location pages for them, like we did for WiK (Watchtower Coast (War in Kryta)), I think the consensus was for the redirect-to-the-quest way we have going, which I never liked. <font color="#008800">Manifold [[Image:User_Manifold_Neptune.jpg|19px]] 02:38, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * @Mora: Normally, I'd agree with that. However, because of how the infobox is set up, doing such would place the Beyond quests under List of Prophecies quests, List of Eye of the North quests and so forth, underneath the particular campaign. Also, it would place them in the category of the region, which are all within the campaign's place. If one were to search via category, then they would find Beyond quests in the subcategories of Category:Prophecies quests (and other campaign/EN categories), which merely adds to the confusion. To remedy your solution, we have the "Given at" parameter, which shows the exact location (outpost/explorable) in which the questgiver is found - this is, in fact, more precise than region due to how NPCs can be in multiple locations.
 * As such, there is no loss while a good portion gain. Mind you, a solution to the lists issue would be to add a "no category=Beyond quests" or w/e parameter to the listings, and imo we should do that in case of future incorrect documentations (upon whatever's agreed upon here).
 * Also, in regards to NPCs, marking the chapter instead of region, such as what's done here, makes it less confusing as we won't be seeing two "Kryta"s or there won't be the question of "why is it not under Prophecies if it's listed as Kryta" (one of the reasons, I believe, for the current inconsistency in current documentation).
 * @Manifold: I do remember that consensus for the redirects, and I was supporting it as a compromise though I didn't like it. Personally, I dislike articles like Olafstead (explorable area) and The Underworld (Don't Fear the Reapers) because 90% of the articles are the same as the quest articles, but hold less info. So I'd like to see all of those deleted, personally. But that extends into another topic. The reason why the HotN articles were done differently was because WiK articles were explorables, while HotN were missions - two separate things. The loading screen even explicitly states "Rise" or "Auspicious Beginnings" if I recall correctly - much like the situation for The Battle for Lion's Arch.  Konig / talk 02:49, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It's my understanding that the Campaign-value should tell you which campaigns you need to have added to your account to access that piece of content. Just filling in "Beyond" doesn't help in that regard. We could use some template-fu to specify "campaign=War in Kryta" and have the template say "Campaign: Beyond - requires Prophecies, EoTN, Chapter: War in Kryta" automagically.
 * Overloading the Region specifier for Chapter seems like a kludge, same for overloading the "Part of" value. IMHO we should either add a new parameter to the infobox for that, or have it automagically added when specifying the campaign as WiK/HotN/WoC. Again, the proper template-fu could help avoiding unwanted categorization. Tub 12:22, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * "It's my understanding that the Campaign-value should tell you which campaigns you need to have added to your account to access that piece of content."
 * I would like to explain why I'm against the word Region for Beyond campaigns. Using it will create the ambiguity, when reader will try to understand it in geographical meaning like a separate part of Tyria world. But even the existing Hearts... eventually do belong to all Tyria world, it becomes obvious when we need to do a Norn Catering quest. So, Region: Hearts of the North in geographical meaning is all the Tyria (= 4 existing GW campaigns). The word Gampaign is much better because it doesn't have the strict geographical meaning. In fact, the parts of Beyond are separated not primarily by areas/regions/original GW campaigns, but by the time passed after EotN. From this point, the word Story can even better reflect the essence of the particular part. This word is already used in BMP where it means an event or series of events limited in time, no matter where this event has a place geographically. --Slavic 17:31, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Marking beyond as a campaign is imo wrong. Campaings you have to buy, and marking free content as a campaign would confuse people. Specially cause, when it comes to buying, something like WoC is part of the game factions i bought long ago (it requies me to have finnished it, so I have to buy that part to play WoC) My suggestion would be to add to all content exclusive to beyond an extra category, called Beyond: Winds of change (or Wik, or HotN). This would mean we can uphold the current way we have been doing things, and still mark out the difference. Beyond isn't a campaign, it isn't a region, it is extra content to what we already bought (or part of it). so if something has the extra category beyond it is part of beyond, and after that we show what part of beyond.
 * Just to clarify, in the right column something like lion's arch keep would read : Region: Kryta, Beyond: War in kryta. Rumian 17:52, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * By your argument, Rumian, then Sorrow's Furnace, the titan quests, the new Tomb of the Primeval Kings, and Domain of Anguish are not part of Prophecies/Nightfall, as they were free content given after the release. But they are labeled as part of their respective campaigns because they're part of the same story and content (just released later and individually).
 * Until now, excluding the above free content additions, campaign has thus far only meant content that we have to buy, but Beyond changes this. It is its own story. It is not part of Factions because it takes place 7 years after Factions, just as Eye of the North, while still dealing with old things (Charr/Ascalonian war, Deldrimor, Stone Summit), it's its own story. Simply put, Winds of Change isn't part of Factions, it follows Factions; likewise, War in Kryta and Hearts of the North both follows Prophecies and Eye of the North - neither is part of Eye of the North nor Prophecies, they merely require it. There's a huge difference between "requires" and "is part of" - Eye of the North requires any one campaign, as does the Bonus Mission Pack, but they are not part of those campaigns. They are their own entity, they are their own story, their own content. The only thing that separates Beyond from the BMP or EotN is that Beyond is free, just like Sorrow's Furnace or the Domain of Anguish updates were.
 * Your argument can be seen as working with Winds of Change, but it fails with War in Kryta and moreso with Hearts of the North, as they require both. By your argument, they are part of both Prophecies and Eye of the North, and marking it as such would imply that you can't do anything without both (not true as you can do some of the War in Kryta, but not the whole, with just Prophecies). This fallicy in your argument is the largest issue for our documentation - some WiK/HotN content is marked as Prophecies, others is marked as Eye of the North, (and others marked as Beyond) when both Prophecies and Eye of the North are required.
 * You say that campaign=what you need to buy, but that just does not work.  Konig / talk 18:59, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Who says we can't adjust the template to allow multiple campaigns? Zinn's Task: "Campaign: Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall", WiK: "Campaign: Prophecies, Eye of the North". It'd make some quest infoboxes a bit more verbose, but it can *work* if we desire to have said information somewhere. Tub 20:53, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

While I agree with doing that for Zinn's Task, I still think it's easiest and cleanest to document the others as Beyond. If we really want to define what "campaign" is, it's been out of date since Eye of the North as there are only 3 campaigns. Unless one looks at it from a "story progression" viewpoint, in which Beyond is very clearly not part of Prophecies, Factions, or Eye of the North (nor is Zinn's Task, for that matter). Point being: The biggest issue has been people's opinions of what "campaign" means, as pointed out by TEF below. Some say that it's what one purchases, others say it's a storyline. In effect, it's really just a stand-alone game of Guild Wars in the context of the game - e.g., Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall. Eye of the North, Bonus Mission Pack, "Core", and Beyond are not of this. Since the first three of those four are already documented, unarguably, in that parameter, it makes no sense not to mark Beyond as such. If you consider it to be a parameter for what you need to buy, then you must remove Core and replace it with the 3 actual campaigns, and you must add "Prophecies, Factions, or Nightfall" to everything in Eye of the North and the BMP stuff, as they are without a doubt requiring one of those three. If it were to cover storyline, like how we list Storyline, Quest by <game/core>, or Mission's areas, which is how we have been doing, then Beyond is on its own, and thus deserves to be noted on par to the other 6. In short: The argument that campaign="what you buy" is fallible and if that's the situation then a hell of a lot of articles are improperly documented. It may be easier to just rename the campaign parameter because it's obviously causing different opinions when it shouldn't.  Konig / talk 21:22, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I can see how "what you buy" is a definition that doesn't fit the original meaning of the word. But if you're treating campaign as "storyline", then I don't understand how Beyond is a campaign - the storylines are WiK, HotN, WoC, .. Sure, there's the official quote, but that quote wasn't written with wiki categorization in mind, and I feel that we should use what's useful for the reader.
 * Of course we could rename and/or split the parameter into "what you need to buy" and "part of which storyline", though I can't think of concise names for those right now. Any ideas? Tub 23:39, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * When I say storyline, I mean "overarching series of connected stories in the same timeframe" - with the exception of Prophecies and Factions, every "campaign" is set in a different year. Beyond is split into chapters, but it's still the same storyline - just a different "main focus" - WiK to HotN's is the same story, but the focus goes from the civil war to finding Keiran. HotN and WoC is the "same" story with the focus going from Keiran to Miku (and the Ministry of Purity). There's thus far always been a connection - even if the connection hasn't been there from start to finish. This transition of focus is also seen in Prophecies and, to a lesser degree, in Nightfall. Prophecies' focus goes from "Defend Ascalon" to "Travel to Kryta" to "the White Mantle/Shining Blade business" to "the Flameseeker Prophecies which are the cause of everything" - Nightfall is "training as a Sunspear" to "Fighting Varesh" (which is the largest and can be divided into portions as well) to "Fighting Abaddon."
 * I fail to see a need to document a "what you need to buy" personally, as one can figure that out by looking at the storyline (or in Beyond's case, the chapter).  Konig / talk 23:57, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Summary
So, it seems that there is no consensus for using Region in lieu of GWB Chapters. There is also confusion about what Campaign means as we use it in infoboxes (does it mean which Campaign must be owned? or does it refer to the storyline?). That leaves us with at least two choices:
 * 1) Least work: add a story or storyline parameter to the infoboxes (and leave it blank for non-GWB content...for now).
 * 2) * We use Campaign: Beyond; Region: geo-location; and Storyline=Chapter.
 * 3) * Pros: only work required is for GWB articles and adding the story parm. We can postpone indefinitely re-normalizing article names or categorization. Cons: Punts a thorough standardization of the terms, articles, categories, etc.
 * 4) Greatest overall benefit: re-work our definitions of Campaign, Region, and Story. Start a project to update relevant articles and naming conventions.
 * 5) * We decide whether Campaign=what you need to own (or something else).
 * 6) * Pros: resolves most of these issues (and ones to come) for the foreseeable future. Cons: big effort (and, perhaps unnecessary except for us OCD-types who prefer everything to be a nice, neat box).

I would love to see us go with #2, but I don't think there's an appetite right now for that much effort. So, I think we should aim to update the infobox to include a storyline parameter and make it clear that this is only relevant (for now) to GWB. We have just enough time to pull this off before the first likely date for WoC (including more discussion). It also gives us freedom to implement some form of #2 down the road (in particular: it doesn't make that effort more complicated).

We can actually just add Story = [Chapter] to infoboxes starting ASAP and retroactively adjust the infobox to auto-cat and properly display the info. (Assuming that everyone agrees.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:55, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * A story parameter isn't necessary as there's already a "Part Of" which is currently being used to denote HotN missions. But this I find unnecessary and without a lot of code changes, doesn't fix the category issue.  Konig / talk 18:59, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * "Part of" is for being part of another quest and we shouldn't semantically overload it. A Good Deed is part of Ebon Vanguard Allies is part of the quest The War in Kryta is part of the storyline War in Kryta. Adding a "Storyline = War in Kryta" or something allows us to:
 * display the storyline even on quests that are subquests themselves.
 * add template-magic for auto-categorization. e.g. if the storyline parameter is set, we categorize as " quests" instead of " quests".
 * Don't worry about the template-fu. If we each suggest a random kludge we perceive to be necessary, we're not getting anywhere. Make a wish-list, free puppies for everyone, let's figure out how we want it to be, without being restricted by real or imagined technical limitations. If it turns out to be impossible to support, we can still figure out kludges to get close to our goal, but first we need to agree on a goal. So far, there seem to be a few desired features:
 * Provide information about the required campaigns (i.e. what you need to buy)
 * Provide information about the associated storyline if different from the campaign
 * Provide information about geographical location (i.e. region)
 * Separate Beyond-Quests from the Campaign-categories
 * No invasive changes that require adjusting pre-beyond-pages
 * The ability to start with WoC *now* and adjust existing beyond-content gradually as time permits
 * Re-reading the topic, I sense that a lot of disagreement here is not because someone disagrees with a certain feature, but because certain features are perceived to be incompatible with other features that are deemed more important. So far, I'm convinced we can have all of them, in a clean way, by adding a proper amount of template magic. If anyone wants some more puppies, or disagrees with existing puppies, please make your wish now. ;)
 * As it turns out, I can't waste time playing guild wars this weekend because someone glued my main char to some corner ring. If we can agree on a wish-list (or simply merge everyone's list), I'll get some example-templates going on my sandbox. Tub 20:53, 1 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Awesome! Thanks for the offer.


 * I support Tubs idea that we should, for discussion purposes, ignore what is/isn't possible, difficult/not, and focus on what we want to see. Let's figure out how much (if anything) we have to compromise later. (I've taken the liberty of numbering Tub's list, to make it easier to refer to.)

To me, it seems more of a disagreement on terminology. Specifically what a campaign is, and in turn whether Beyond counts as such. Other than that, the only disagreement I've seen is on "beyond chapter=region." Don't matter much to me, but feels an unnecessary over-organization to include the region for the Beyond content, since those which are outside of the main region are thus far so very very few.
 * For (2), I would rephrase that to: "info about the associated storyline (esp. if it is not one of the four primary campaign/expansion storylines)."
 * I would rephrase (5) to say, "Template changes should not require retrofitting existing pre-GWB articles unless we decide to change categorization for other reasons."
 * And I would add (7): "changes to template (and styles) should be updated to clearly indicate the intended purpose of each of the relevant parameters." (So a year from now, people won't wonder what and why and so GW2W can learn from our successes/mistakes.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 21:09, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * "I sense that a lot of disagreement here is not because someone disagrees with a certain feature, but because certain features are perceived to be incompatible with other features that are deemed more important."
 * I don't care how it's done so long as:
 * It separates Beyond from non-Beyond content (this is easiestly done by putting Beyond as the campaign...).
 * It separates the Beyond content into their chapters.
 * It doesn't overcategorize (e.g., no categories with only a couple things in it - like what would happen if we categorize a "Hearts of the North quests in Maguuma Jungle" which would only include The Tarnished Emblem).
 * It's clean and easy to use.  Konig / talk 21:22, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * @TEF: I don't understand your rewording for (2). Can you provide an example where it'd make a difference?
 * @everyone: can you suggest some "difficult" quests I'd have to test my template against? One or two old quests, zinns, a WiK-quest, a HotN-quest, maybe a fictional WoC-quest - anything else? Tub 23:39, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The HotN missions are, to my immediate recollection, the most tedious to organize as you receive them in the Far Shiverpeaks but they take place in Prophecies areas. To note: Those should be using the mission infobox, not the quest one (and are the only ones among the Beyond content for such).  Konig / talk 23:57, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

work in progress

 * See: User:Tub/Sandbox

Note: the examples on my sandbox were stripped of images. Categories are displayed rather than set. This makes testing easier. Changes so far: What's left to do:
 * added new parameters to cleanly supply the required information:
 * campaign2, campaign3: if multiple campaigns are required
 * campaign_all = y/n, whether you need all listed campaigns (AND) or just one of them (OR)
 * storyline: set if different from the campaign
 * beyond = y/n: set to y if part of beyond
 * reworked display logic to display both "storyline" and "required campaigns" where both are different; otherwise it keeps the old "Campaign: X"
 * Note that we can also use Storyline field to automatically categorize festival quests, just set storyline=Dragon Festival etc.
 * Maybe "Storyline" isn't the proper term here, since festivals aren't proper storylines. Any better ideas from a native speaker?
 * reordered the display: Where it belongs -> how to get it/requirements -> related quests -> everything else
 * rework the categorization logic. The new parameters provide all the information that's needed, I just need to throw a bunch of #if's in there. Will do that later, time to do some real life-stuff and give you a chance to provide feedback. Tub 16:13, 2 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I like what I see so far. Good stuff; thanks for putting it together so quickly (even if your toons are spending the weekend on the Boardwalk). — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 18:04, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Storyline -> Event (see here). • • • Mora   18:10, 2 July 2011 (UTC)


 * ANet and GWW use event to include festivals; I think storyline is a less ambiguous name for that subset of events that are relevant to quest and mission infoboxes. i.e. I strongly prefer Storyline (however, if even 50% of ppls prefer Event, I can live with that, too). — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 18:23, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe we'll simply display "Event: X" when festival=y is set, otherwise "Storyline: X"? Tub 19:04, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed with TEF regarding event or storyline. For the festival quests, I don't think it matters, since we mark Eye of the North and the Bonus Mission Pack as a "campaign" when they're expansions/dlc. I think the categorization may need fixing - and this is in regards to the original (read: curent) format of the actual template - it puts quests under both "Category:Prophecies quests" and "Category:Prophecies <primary/secondary/festival quests" - the Proph quests category becomes redundant and overcategorizes the quests, since the latter categories are sub-categories of Prophecies quests. Same goes with the region quests (being a sub-category of the campaign's).
 * Because of the sub-categorization of the region quests, putting them in Category:Beyond quests instead of Prophecies quests is redundant, as they'll still be in Kryta quests which is in Prophecies quests. This was the main reason why I suggested putting the chapter in the region section of the template... Lastly, I would suggest for when multiple campaigns are placed that they are put into Category:Multi campaign quests rather than the campaign quests' category, but we still have the region issue.  Konig / talk 19:11, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Auto-categorization is done. Categories for old, single-campaign quests should be unchanged. We can fix those later if (and only if) there's a consensus and someone willing to clean up any fallout of the changes (not me :p).
 * For any beyond-, multi-campaign or festival-quest, categories are added as needed, both "<storyline/festival> quests" and "Beyond quests". I did not add " <primary/secondary> quests", though that could trivially be changed if desired.
 * For all non-campaign quests (beyond, multi campaign, festival, ..), I've skipped the " quests" category. It should be remembered though that these categories are inherently messy, because there's always a category for the corresponding section of the quest log - which is "Kryta quests" for most WiK stuff, thus they will be put into the category "Kryta quests" regardless of region. I currently don't know how to fix that, short of removing or renaming all categories based on section. Unfortunately, I don't know much about the current quest categories and their uses. Which of those are actually needed, useful or actively used in this wiki, anyway? Which could/should be removed without problems?
 * I think this provides all ponies mentioned before, except my number (4)/konigs number (1) due to the Questlog section issues mentioned in the last paragraph. Tub 00:03, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Sleeping over it, I have a suggestion how to do proper categorization, most importantly how to deal with the " quests" categories. Currently, they contain every quest that is somehow related to the region, including festival- and beyond-quests. This will leave all quests in three kinds of categories: I'll ask again: since these changes are a bit invasive, does anyone see any problems with the changes? Even if you are as clueless as me, please do post here, even if it's just a simple "I don't know about problems, but it looks reasonable" or "I don't know, but the old categorization looks more useful", or even "I don't know and I don't care". Tub 11:00, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The first thing to do would be to remove parentization, i.e. "Kryta quests" will not be a subcategory of "Prophecies quests" any more. All quests with campaign=prophecies will be in the latter category, anyway.
 * We define those categories by quest log headings. Not a muddled definition of "everything somehow related to the region", but strictly those quests that appear under the quest log heading. No more categorization by " quests", so the region parameter will immediately be less controversial.
 * "Prophecies quests" will only contain quests related to prophecies' storyline. (it currently isn't useful as "all quests I can do when I buy prophecies", so IMHO categorization by storyline is the only one without ambiguity.) Like konig suggested, we'll either directly categorize to "Prophecies <primary/secondary/..> quests" XOR "Prophecies quests", due to the first being subcategories of the latter.
 * either "<Campaign> <primary/secondary/..> quests" or "<Storyline> quests" (and their respective parent categories)
 * "<Quest log section> quests"
 * generic categories for quests with special attributes, like "mini-mission", "hard mode quests", "festival quests", "Beyond quests" etc.

. At the same time, this term is often used in lore and geographical meanings instead of technical (EotN is not a campaign from technical point and all subsequent expansions too). This was discussed above in "Summary" by TEF etc. (unfortunately for me, discussion is developing too quickly and maybe I write this in not the most appropriate place). is definitely right, but please note that the word campaign has a strictly technical meaning here; I suggest to replace it in the infobox with appropriate technical term as synonym. For example, Required installations or Installed components. It's exactly what need to tell: which GW components has to be installed on player's PC as prerequisite for this quest or storyline. This term is also good for BMP.
 * Please think again about usage of the word Campaign. Currently it's defined in Wiki as a "stand-alone component of Guild Wars that can be played immediately upon creating an account with the relevant access key"
 * Instead of increasing the ambiguity, it would be better to resolve it somehow. Of course, many existing (not-Beyond) articles should be fixed too, maybe later... The desire to "Provide information about the required campaigns (i.e. what you need to buy)"
 * I would add, another prerequisite is Completed storylines (maybe a campaign in traditional meaning or not). It would be also nice to show it in the infobox; if no anything is required, no need to show. You can imagine the quest which requires to have installed Prophecies, Factions and EotN (playable campaigns), to have completed War in Kryta and Factions (storylines) [and, obviously, Prophecies or EotN storyline as the prerequisite for WiK] and which has a place somewhere on Cantha territory (geographically in Factions). So, subsequent replacement of the word campaign with more appropriate terms will greatly prevent the possible ambiguity and allow to reduce the overuse of this word and make its usage more certain. --Slavic 12:30, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

, and we wiki-editors certainly aren't better. There's no official definition and all inofficial definitions I encountered are different. We cannot vote the "correct" meaning and try to enforce it on everyone else, we can only try to document the ambiguity. And look at that, I've tried to do exactly that on the long-neglected article called Campaign, citing official usage of the word where possible.
 * *sigh* @ Slavic and Konig below. If it makes you happy, I've reworded "required Campaigns" to "required account upgrades".
 * But let's talk a bit about the large grey animal in this room: We will never, ever agree on a definition of "Campaign". "You get three Asura together, you get four opinions."
 * So I've done the work according to the wishes you posted before I started, now I want feedback on the technical aspects and categorization, and the replies I get are "Man, categories are hard.. can we please go back to square 0 and do some more bikeshedding about the definition of campaign?". While I agree that the situation about the ambiguous term sucks, this isn't getting results.
 * Here's two pieces of information about my work:
 * The template parameters I added will encode all the information we currently need. Unless ANet releases new pay-for-content or delivers a new project name after beyond ("GuildWars: even further"?), the information will suffice for all eternity. Of course there's a bazillion different ways to encode said information, but since nobody even commented on the technical details, the way I chose appears to be as good as any. The internal names of the parameters don't matter much, and we cannot change them anyway, because then we'd have to adjust all existing quests in this wiki.
 * I have avoided using the term campaign in any sense that wasn't used before, so my changes certainly haven't made anything worse in that regard. And the changes to Campaign should ensure that nobody's head explodes when reading "Campaign: Eye of the North".
 * The results may not be perfect, but they will never be, and the two points I just made strongly suggest that it is an improvement over the status quo (and I haven't seen anyone voice concerns that say otherwise).
 * As such I will merge the changes before WoC starts, so we can at least have a good solution, while you keep figuring out the perfect one. Tub 13:03, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
 * As such I will merge the changes before WoC starts, so we can at least have a good solution, while you keep figuring out the perfect one. Tub 13:03, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

On a more constructive note: which other infoboxes would need to be adjusted? And for which of those is it useful to state the required campaigns/account upgrades? So far I can think of these: Any disagreement on my assessment of "useful" information? Any infoboxes I missed? Tub 20:59, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Template:Item infobox: it would be nice to be able to say "Candy Corn belongs to Halloween" and "Shining Blade Ration belongs to Beyond: War in Kryta" instead of listing everything as Core, but due to trading the campaign requirements aren't interesting for most items. Quite often, the requirements are different for different acquisition methods, and we can't cover that in the infobox.
 * Template:NPC infobox: same as items, need a way to classify Peacekeepers as WiK, but I don't see a real need for campaign requirements.
 * Template:Location infobox: difficult one. I don't like listing locations as "Beyond: The Jade Sea", since that loses the location information. Do we add a "continent" parameter, to have "Beyond: Winds of Change -> Cantha -> The Jade Sea" or something? And do we care about campaign requirements for locations? Note that it's very unlikely that new locations are added to the game, we'll mostly see reuses of existing locations with new spawns. As such, we could decide to document the campaign of the original location. Of course this will affect categorization, so I'm tempted to postpone this one until consensus on categories is reached.
 * Template:Mission infobox: not an issue until missions pop up in beyond.
 * Template:Skill infobox: not an issue unless learnable skills are added to beyond. I'm not aware of any skill-lists for monster skills, so categorization isn't too important.
 * @Your commentary: True, a definition of the term will never truly be decided upon, but a majority may be made. Point is - if we don't at least try to solve the issue than we'll just get this very same issue again and again. And truth be told your attempts only look more confusing with all the additional parameters which could easily be avoided. That's why I wanted to take a step back, that and that this has been taking too long and now it feels like we're trying to rush to re-make the infobox without even fully discussing what we want. As it stands, I think we should keep the old campaign parameter, but use it not in the context of campaign but in the context of campaign, which would allow the placement of EN, BMP, and Beyond without any issues - merely unlinking "campaign" may be enough of a change from how it is to warrant it. But I digress.
 * @The infobox: The first thing that comes out is that WiK/HotN quests are placed under Multi campaign quests and Beyond quests, which imo they shouldn't. There's other issues, but not relevant to documenting Beyond appropriately and can be clarified at a later point in time (e.g., how to organize the categories and the categories that the infobox puts them in).
 * @"other infoboxes": NPCs, imo, needs to list Beyond rather than Prophecies/Eye of the North. I don't think the "campaigns needed" thing like the quest is really important here. I honestly think that Evennia and Salma, outside the infobox, are perfect for how they should be. They just need |campaign2=Beyond added in, imo.
 * I don't think region needs a change, personally. Some regions are influenced by Beyond, but they're not Beyond content - the zones, however, are. It would be Location template that needs to show this, not region. As for missions they have popped up, there's four of them. The Keiran missions (they're called missions by Stumme, they act like missions (die with no rez skill, you get kicked), etc. - they're missions).
 * But like I said, most of the issue for non-quest infoboxes just comes down to the whole campaign issue, hence why I wanted to try to get a consensus on what can be considered a "campaign."  Konig / talk 21:47, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I meant location, not region, edited that above. Tub 22:25, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
 * In the case of Talmark Wilderness (War in Kryta) and Lion's Arch Keep, I consider them not part of Prophecies but part of Beyond. Like other War in Kryta stuff, they require Prophecies, but they are not Prophecies itself.  Konig / talk 22:30, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Alternative summary of issues to resolve
If the comment of WoC coming prior to 7/9 is correct - meaning that 7/7 is the most likely date of release for WoC - then we won't get this done prior to WoC's release. So let's take our time in it. It seems to me that we need to decide on the following before we can make actual changes: Without answering these questions in a definitive stance, we'll only end up with arguments later on. We didn't need to have such questions (except the second one) because it was simply a non-existent issue (until EotN, there were no non-campaigns, and EotN and BMP was treated the same as it was "something we had to buy" - but Beyond changes this further). Before we answer anything, I'd like to point out: "someone willing to clean up any fallout of the changes" what isn't reasonable to put for a bot to do I'll be willing to do. I don't think we should allow the amount of fallout to influence our discussion. What should influence our discussion is how efficient the changes will be. Once we come to a consensus on those three, then we can start re-working the infobox clearly (atm, it's really just hit and miss with the changes, less work will be done if we clarify on what those are and stop rushing to get this done prior to WoC's release). To give my answers (for clarity's sake):
 * 1) What is a campaign? Should it be used in a different context in the infobox, or the same? If the same, how do we document non-campaign content (EotN, BMP, Beyond)?
 * 2) How do we categorize quests? Should it be changed or kept the same? How do Beyond quests differ from normal quests?
 * 3) What is Beyond, in an organizational sense?
 * I consider there to be two "campaign" definitions to the GW franchise. One being the stand-alone games (Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall); the other using the more traditional meaning of campaign (a (series of related) tale(s)/action(s)/adventure(s) - in the case of the game, ). For the use of the infobox, I'd use the latter (thus marking as Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North, Bonus Mission Pack, Beyond (or alternatively to Beyond, War in Kryta/Hearts of the North/Winds of Change) - adding in the six events is debatable). Alternatively, removing the campaign parameter and replacing with Slavic's suggested Required installation would work, so long as we add a second parameter to tell the storyline it is of (and not what's needed to complete, as that's not very helpful to the infobox; such should be documented on the storyline's article).
 * Rather than Tub's suggestion of removing region quests categories from the campaign quests categories, I'd say we remove the categorization of the campaign quests on the infobox. When it comes to Beyond/festival quests, either add a #if string to prevent use of the region and have it replaced with whatever parameter that Halloween/WiK/etc. will be of.
 * My stance on what beyond should be clear by now - it's an equivalent of an expansion broken up into sections and as such, in my opinion, it should be classified as the same as Eye of the North/Bonus Mission Pack.  Konig / talk 18:57, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I can agree on your conclusion, also reading an re-reading the additional things people say that the most logic way is to categorise Beyond as a campaign. The different parts can be put in as in eotn with part off. I do say that Guild Wars Beyond would need some rewriting if we go this line. So when people click it the page focusses more on what we already have in beyond and less on what is expected. It's also a good place to say what campaigns are needed for the individual parts of beyond. possible example User:Rumian/Guild Wars Beyond. It should also has a more prominent place on the front page (not in the future content section). Rumian 11:16, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

hopefully final design

 * See: User:Tub/Sandbox, User:Tub/Sandbox/Infobox campaign row

Based on the other infoboxes I mentioned two sections above, I've reworked the design to fit the other infoboxes better. The new or changed parameters are now: Both the display logic and the categorization into "Beyond quests" is done by a helper template which is meant to be reusable by all the other infoboxes.
 * campaign : The campaign, special event or storyline where this quest is offered. Defaults to "Core". For a list of possible parameters, see User:Tub/Sandbox/Infobox campaign row. Note: this parameter is named campaign for backwards compatibility.
 * required
 * required2
 * required3 : If campaign is not an actual campaign or expansion, set this to whatever campaigns or expansions need to be bought to access this quest. If any campaign is sufficient, set required=Core.
 * required_all : Specify "n" if either of the listed campaign is sufficient for the quest. Defaults to "y", all listed campaigns are required.

As a result, there is a slight difference in categorization for beyond quests now, but since we haven't agreed on the proper way yet, one way is as good as the other. The plain old simple single-campaign quests are unchanged category-wise, except for removing them from "<Campaign> quests" when they're already in "<Campaign> <primary/secondary/..> quests". In any case, please review the information in the infoboxes and the categories currently assigned in my sandbox and report anything that seems wrong.

Note that Category:Multi campaign quests must contain all WiK and some Festival quests to be correct. We'd have to create List of multi campaign quests and apply proper filters there. Luckily, dpl makes that easy.

The HotN missions are currently treated as mini-missions, which is correct. The game is pretty clear that these are not missions: missions don't have quest-ids and they forward to different wiki-pages. They're quests.

Are there any technical issues that prevent this from going live tomorrow? Any more changes I should make that are not related to the definition of "campaign"? Tub 12:37, 5 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I've added User:Tub/Sandbox/Infobox requirements row for autodetection of requirements. This should prevent the need to spell out required=Factions for every single WoC quest. Barring further comments, I'll merge everything sometime this evening (UTC time). Tub 12:23, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I still think that it's becoming overly complicated, by which I mean there's so many parameters now for something so simple, and I'm certainly not the only one.  Konig / talk 15:56, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * With the autodetection I added today, the majority of all articles will simply set "campaign=whatever fits" and leave the rest to the template logic. That's hardly complicated; in fact it makes writing articles easier, since you don't have to manually set certain categories any more.
 * The four "required" parameters are only needed for the multi-campaign quests with more complicated requirements, and it's difficult to express complicated issues with simple parameters. We could replace the four parameters with a simple required=, but then we'll lose semantic information which is currently used for autocategorization (and might be needed later, depending on the categories we want).
 * Can you provide tangible solutions for improvement, or suggest an alternate approach that is less complicated, but yields the same features? Tub 16:29, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I support Tub's current design. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:21, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * With how you're organizing, then that's the most tangible, however, how I see it there is no need to alter the infobox, just how we fill it out. But I digress - it seems the more popular solution is to add more parameters and larger coding, so I shall not disagree so long as it accurately documents and can feasibly be used by the average wiki'er.  Konig / talk 17:50, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * So, after seeing all the changes, I don't like A) the extra spacing that you inadvertently introduced and B) "required account upgrades" since it isn't properly capitalized and it's an overly long and bulky name. --JonTheMon 19:52, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey Jon. There was some extra spacing which I didn't catch on my sandbox, I fixed it as soon as I found the source. If there's any remaining spacing that shouldn't be there, please link an article so I can reproduce the problem. About B), do you have an idea for a more concise name? If not, what's the proper capitalization? Tub 20:12, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * If you want to stay away from "Required campaigns" I might go with "Required content" --JonTheMon 20:18, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * hmm.. the article that best explains the issue is actually campaign, and we (and every other wiki) still use it for EotN and BMP. So I'll revert to "required campaigns" for now until we have a consensus on the proper terminology (and good articles explaining each term). Tub 20:43, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * If we were to go with "required content" then there'd be no reason, imo, to split Beyond from the campaigns and expansions, and there'd be no reason for "required" - it could merely be "content." But that's ambiguous by nature, and may lead to people putting content down as, say, the Underworld.  Konig / talk 20:58, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Is there any intention to alter the NPC and location infoboxes?  Konig / talk 08:23, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Location infobox has been altered already, see for example Lion's Arch Keep.
 * I'm not sure how to proceed on the NPC infobox. When an NPC is given as campaign=prophecies,campaign2=Hearts of the North,campaign3=Halloween, what's the correct way to display it?

Campaign(s): Prophecies, Beyond: HotN, Halloween
 * or

Campaign: Prophecies Storyline: Beyond: HotN Event: Halloween
 * Fixing it up to auto-categorize into "Beyond NPCs" and prefixing HotN with Beyond: shouldn't be the problem. Going the second route is a 1-minute-fix, going the first is a bit more involved. Opinions? Tub 10:12, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I thought events were going to be considered the same as storyline. I'll take this stance: I want proper documentation and consistency among infoboxes. So I'm guessing route 2. The issue, however, comes when they're in, say, both Prophecies and Beyond - another reason why I wanted to simply mark Beyond as a campaign. Overall, no one seems opposed to how the new WoC NPCs are being placed.  Konig / talk 10:30, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

NPC Location
Currently, there seem to be several ways in use to handle locations:
 * 1) Prophecies
 * 2) *Kryta
 * 3) **The Black Curtain (War in Kryta)
 * 4) Beyond
 * 5) *Kryta
 * 6) **The Black Curtain (War in Kryta)
 * 7) Beyond
 * 8) *War in Kryta
 * 9) **Kryta
 * 10) ***The Black Curtain
 * 11) Prophecies
 * 12) *Kryta
 * 13) **The Black Curtain (during War in Kryta)
 * 14) Prophecies
 * 15) *Kryta
 * 16) **The Black Curtain (during Beyond: War in Kryta)

Any opinions on a good, standardized format? I like 1, 4 or 5, because it keeps the general "Continent -> Region -> Location" format. Prefixing with "Beyond" doesn't tell us where it is, just when during the story they appear - and that information has historically been given as (during <Quest>).

Note that this also affects categories (again). Do we want those in "Black Curtain NPCs", in "War in Kryta NPCs", in "Beyond NPCs", in all of them, in some of them? Tub 10:12, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I like how most are being done - as all new WoC NPCs are being done - which is #3 - almost; direct linking would be replaced with NPC location, and there'd be no need to remove the (War in Kryta) from the list, tbh.
 * It's different than the quest situation as they can appear indefinably - for instance, Initiate Zei Ri is in an outpost and thus seen by everyone, so there is no "only during Beyond" - he's always there.
 * In regards to category - it should only be the explorable's location (for the example: Category:The Black Curtain (War in Kryta) NPCs - which they're in), and War in Kryta NPCs, imo. Beyond NPCs is unnecessary (as would any <Campaign> NPCs be - same goes for quests and locations; this is due to the sub-categories). Placing them in Kryta NPCs is both accurate but misleading as that category is under Prophecies NPCs, and they're not part of Prophecies. (echo) Overall, no one seems opposed to how the new WoC NPCs are being placed.  Konig / talk 10:30, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * 3 makes the most sense to me. I'd like to make sure everyone's on the same page about not specifying the "campaign" (Beyond) for NPCs that are only in Beyond. NPCs that are only in one of the four games don't have the campaign listed under locations (If an enemy only appears in Old Ascalon, then it's Ascalon -> Old Ascalon, not Prophecies -> Ascalon -> Old Ascalon) it should be the same for Beyond-only NPCs (Winds of Change -> Kaineng Center -> Bukdek Byway instead of Beyond -> Winds of Change -> Kaineng Center -> Bukdek Byway). I haven't been worrying about this too much for the NPC pages I've made (understatement), as this doesn't seem to be too nailed down yet, but it'd be nice to standardize them soon. <font color="#008800">Manifold [[Image:User_Manifold_Neptune.jpg|19px]] 19:59, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm probably the one you're referring to, Mani, as when I edit I tend to add campaigns. I figured this: While overall, most places are clear what campaign they're in because there are no alternatives, with Beyond increasingly large (currently goes into 8 regions out of 21, with Elona coming after WoC), soon enough it'll be odd to see say "Kaineng City->Kaineng Center" rather than "Factions->Kaineng City->Kaineng Center" or "Beyond->Winds of Change->Kaineng Center->Kaineng City." Just my personal opinion - doesn't do any harm, and makes things clear(er).  Konig / talk 20:53, 9 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I prefer a different alternative; I think mentioning the campaign is redundant. I'd rather see simply: Continent → Region → Zone (notes) (and perhaps even skip the continent). It's a lot simpler for the vast majority of NPCs that only appear in a single campaign and in only 2-3 spots; the infobox already tells us which campaign, too.


 * For those, like Mhenlo, that are ubiquitous, I'd rather see some sort of table with columns for campaigns. I like seeing all the locations at-a-glance, without having to use show/hide or scroll a lot.


 * On a related note, shouldn't we consider updating the NPC infobox to align better with the changes to the quest info box? e.g. Campaign should mean the same for all infoboxes (and affiliation probably shouldn't change for most foes, even as they are added to more of Beyond). — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 00:19, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
 * What about the NPCs which are a part of both Prophecies and War in Kryta? For instance, Salma. Without denoting which is which, you can't tell such. While to a degree the campaign/continent may be redundant, it's also very minor and very helpful for those in multiple campaigns.
 * In regards to the table idea - I disagree; it would feel very out of place compared to the rest and I would not have a doubt in my mind that it wouldn't look as clean. Especially the prime 5 (Mhenlo, Devona, and co.) and the Zaishen Scout - whom are the biggest concerns here - as they are in 5 (and 4 for the scout) campaigns - that may easily end up being far too big to fit cleanly with the NPC infobox.
 * Also, for NPC infobox changes - see the couple comments before this section.  Konig / talk 01:53, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguating
The disambig paragraph on top of several pages is becoming increasingly unwieldy. There's missions, outposts, up to 3 explorables, quests, vanquishes, and more. I wonder why we don't use separate disambiguation pages like Wikipedia does -- ie, you link to that page instead of listing every alternative. -- Hong 17:53, 9 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has to deal with a lot more variety than we do here. In particular, we have a repeated problem with ambiguity that has an identical solution. Rather than creating hundreds of new disambigs (and therefore requiring more clicking), how about if we simplify the current common one. Instead of the current text that uses the form, for the [blah blah], see [article (blah blah)], how about if we use (for example):
 * This article is about the mission. This wiki also has similarly named articles for the: explorable area, its Zaishen vanquish quest, and its associated Zaishen mission, ...
 * That leaves everything linked between articles (less work for the reader) and avoids forcing folks to parse which is which. We don't have to link to the generic articles on mish, ZVQ, ZM, etc on every page (if people cannot distinguish which article they want, those links aren't going to help them quickly in any case). — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 19:46, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
 * With TEF's idea, remove the "zaishen" in the quests - as there are only Zaishen quests named after locations. Add in, for required locations, "War in Kryta version" or "Winds of Chanve version" - or "regular explorable."  Konig / talk 20:56, 9 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Konig's specifics work for me (I offered one example of to-the-point phrasing; I'm not particularly tied to the exact wording above). — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 21:11, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Let's discuss a few wikipage changes
You may have noticed that I posted a message about changing a few wikipages following the creation of the Guild Wars Support Forums: User:Stephane_Lo_Presti/News/2011-06-20

I'd like to take bearings and discuss the above points with the wiki community. So, in reference to my original post:
 * 1) The Feedback rules page still needs to be changed: "Bug reports and Localization" should be renamed "Localization Bugs" . (1)
 * 2) The Feedback portal was changed with a link to the Guild Wars Support Forums. However I noticed that there's been recent updates to three Bug Report pages: AI bugs, Skill bugs and Text bugs. Shall we add a mention that the Guild Wars Support Forums are where the bug reports should be written? (2) A similar notice may need to be added to the pages Bug reports and Bug reports and Localization. (3)
 * 3) Game Suggestions and Localization bugs: no action needed here.
 * 4) Support FAQ and Support issues: no action needed here.
 * 5) Ask an account question and Game-content questions: what do people think on these two? (4)
 * 6) GWW Bugs and GW2W Bugs: no action needed.
 * 7) We currently think that it makes more sense for the bugs related to the Guild Wars Support Forums to be reported on these forums, so there's no need for these wikipages anymore.

Let me know what you think about these action points (1) to (4). I can modify these pages but would rather be clear about this with the community.


 * I expect to attend to these soon; I think it's more appropriate to wait, since, for the wiki there are other issues than just updating the pages. I have posted a note proposing a change to the Bug Reports pages (basically: archive, repoint the subpages to the main one, and formally link the main bug page to Localization and the forums only). I was waiting to see if there were any substantive objections or alternatives before starting to do anything; as you can imagine, ensuring that we don't lose any current reports is time consuming and once started, the work is not easily undone.


 * I think it's important to ensure that we don't lose any of the previously reported issues until they have been added to the forums, noted by the QA team that they are ANet's list of bugs, or noted as being resolved through updates in the game. I have been hoping to hear back from ANet about which items the QA team has on their list, which would affect how items get archived.


 * It's time consuming drudgery to make these updates and the bug pages haven't been exceptional active for ages, so I haven't felt the need to rush things. I hope that's okay. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 21:47, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
 * on your first point i whent ahead and changed the header to the one you requested. i dont think there will be any issues there. as to your second point i think the best corse of action would be to lock the pages and add a notice at the top of the page that new bug reports should be posted on the support forums.-[[Image:User_Zesbeer_sig.png|link=User talk:Zesbeer‎]] Zesbeer 21:48, 14 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot TEF and Zesbeer. I talked to the QA team and they're fine with whatever we're going to do with the Bug Report pages. They also expressed the preference that the Guild Wars Support Forums be used, so a notice at the top of each page is probably a good idea, but they don't need bugs to be transferred from the wiki to the Forums. Oh and TEF, there's absolutely no problem with this taking time (and thanks for the time put into it), but I'd rather minimize the amount of work on the wiki community. So archiving (with added link to the Guild Wars Support Forums) seems like an optimal solution? Regarding locking, I4d take a softer approach if you agree, to let people who go direct to the bug pages the time to get used to the new system. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 23:06, 14 July 2011 (UTC)