Guild Wars Wiki talk:Policy/Guilds

It's already started. We need a policy on this reaaal bad. IMO, GOTW or Championship Ladders should be documented. Perhaps a page dedicated to each. But under no circumstances should references to builds be placed in other articles, nor should there be articles created about certain guilds. - BeXoR 19:49, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * Drafting it now, mostly because I'm already tired of deleting them. &mdash;Tanaric 19:50, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * I don't understand how a page about a guild is detrimental to the entire wiki concept. Is there something I'm missing? --Narcism 19:52, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * A discussion about it on GuildWiki can be found here, this is where most of us are coming from. --Rainith 19:54, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * What is Guild Wars Wiki, or ArenaNet losing, by hosting a page, that will likely never be linked to by another page? Only accessible by the Search bar? If you can't add a factual blurb about a guild, at the expense of 1kb of server space, I don't know. --Narcism 19:56, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * By a page for each, I mean a page with a list of the announced GOTW and a page for each season ladder with the names of the guilds that won or came second. Anything further than that is narcisism. - BeXoR 19:57, 7 February 2007 (PST)

At a minimum, any guild mentioned on Guildwars.com should be included, using the material from guildwars.com. There is no reason not to do this. &mdash;Trevor Reznik


 * Listings of guilds within articles on ladders or an article on GOTWs, seems reasonable - but more than that is impossible to keep validated and prone to vandalism. --Barek 19:58, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * We can't do that. The Guild Wars website and the fansites on which GOTWs are posted are not free content, in general. &mdash;Tanaric 20:02, 7 February 2007 (PST)

I dont see whats wrong with people posting about themselves or their guilds if its only accessible from searching.


 * This is a wiki, not a free webhost. - BeXoR 19:59, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * Because somebody who doesn't like your guild will come in and edit it, and then there's a revert war, and then I have to waste time protecting pages. The overwhelming opinion on the GuildWiki was that guild pages are more trouble than they're worth. &mdash;Tanaric 20:02, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * Individual guild articles are the exact same as build articles. Too much emotion and opinion, not enough logic and fact. &mdash; Gares 20:04, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * And that opinion is wrong. Guilds are the single most important part of Guild Wars, and for GW to succeed in the long term easier methods to find/learn about guilds are needed.  This wiki should be one of them.  If the problem is that you're incapable of managing revert wars, perhaps you should let someone else do it, not claim this site as your own. Trevor Reznik


 * Opinion is wrong? lol. This is a wiki, not a recruitment forum. It is for documenting the game, not the players. - BeXoR 20:07, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * Nobody disagrees that guilds are important. The wiki simply isn't the best medium for them. There are plenty of other sites on the web much better built for that sort of thing. We're aiming to document the game, not document the community. &mdash;Tanaric 20:08, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * The charter for this wiki is that we "document the game". There are other sites, such as fansites, where you may document the players. S 20:10, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * Understood. I trust that you will include absolutely no content on this site relating in any manner to user created content (builds, etc).  And in that case, what's the point-to document monsters and zones only? Trevor Reznik 20:14 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * What's the difference between the Zaishen and Nerf Herders? Both are in the game, both will always be in the game. One has NPC's, one was players? Also, should Trevor and I even bother discussing this? Since obviously there was an extensive discussion between the people at guild-wiki. HAve you considered copying and pasting the policies? much easier. --Narcism 20:18, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * A lot more than just monsters and zones. If you look at GWiki's article count you can see how much there is to document (although some of that is builds). Think of it like a game manual, kind of. There are game mechanics, items, locations, missions, quests, etc, etc. - BeXoR 20:19, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * PvP is alot more then just, this is how you cap an altar, and this is how many people play, and "Make a new character, pick some skills, off you go". It's about community, guilds, builds, etc.--Narcism 20:40, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * It's been said before: The wiki is meant to document the game, not the community. If you have a practical example that proves otherwise, then it would be a different matter. - BeXoR 20:43, 7 February 2007 (PST)
 * For what it's worth, I agree with you, Narc, that the decisions here are being rushed by those that just moved over from GuildWiki, who seem to be forgetting one very important fact: This is not GuildWiki anymore. Simply moving everything (policies, ideals, "what this is about" included) wholesale from there to here will result with a new wiki that's exactly like the old one. And that is definitely not always a good thing. Seriously, take this a bit more slowly.
 * The old discussion on whether guild information should be included on the wiki or not is far from conclusive. Simply look at the votes, 5 Yes (We want information about guilds), 12 No (we don't want information about guilds) and 11 are Maybe (with different conditions applied). Which means that the majority of the voters didn't agree with the final result. That is far from being a unanimous vote. I'd much rather the policy was discussed and revoted on here again, since this is a) a new wiki with, b) new members, in addition to the old ones, with, c) Many more resources available to us. If it'd be that much work keeping the guild articles clean, assign a new sysop to that or two, what's the big deal? If there'll be really a new influx of viewers and editors, manpower should really be the least of our worries.
 * To end this before it becomes too much of a rant, this is directed to fellow old GuildWikians: Please, be more considerate towards these new users. Both Trevor Reznik and Narcism are members of the Guild Wars pvp community, that same community which for a long while now has refused to consider GuildWiki as a site worth using outside checking for how much Gift of Health heals at 9 HP. They felt alienated from the old wiki, for one reason or another. Now, I'm not saying to give in to their requests blindly, since simply being pvpers does not give them that right. Simply saying, give them a chance. As I said up there, and as has been said by others over the course of today (soon to be yesterday), Guild Wars Wiki is not GuildWiki. Don't rush to make them clones, let it walk its own path. Let these new members at least TRY to share their views on what the new wiki should be about, so we don't lose this very important and large part of the GuildWars community right off the bat once again. What happened to learning from the past and our mistakes? --Dirigible 20:48, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * I agree with you Dirigible, which is why I suggesting that some policy proposals be hashed out below. Posting build and guild information today, on the first day this wiki is out, is irresponsible since we have enough on our hands just keeping license violations manageable. However, posting an idea on how to gracefully integrate this sort of content would be a Good Thing.


 * Slightly on topic, the guild pages we've deleted today were short, fan pages by members. Because nearly all the maybes from the old discussion prohibited such guild pages, the numbers are mostly like 5 Yes to 23 No. I'd also like to note that of the five that did vote yes, I was one of them! I'm really not trying to be draconian in this instance; I'm just trying to slow our scope expansion to something over the next couple weeks instead of over the next couple hours. &mdash;Tanaric 21:03, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * There are permanent objects in the public space of the game that uniquely belong to certain guilds ... the championship trophies. In order to properly document the game, at very least these guilds and any future guilds that make permanent marks on the game should have articles.  Further, I believe it would be a huge boon to the PvP community and greater Guild Wars community to document select prominent guilds.  The problem would be expressing criteria for inclusion and defining what sort of information is appropriate.  As Dirigible stated, this is not GuildWiki.  The issue deserves reexamination. --Drekmonger 21:05, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * The danger is with introducing articles like that, is that they become outdated, innaccurate, etc. At this point all the guild articles that have been created were biased and opinionative. If someone can show an example that isn't like what we've experienced in the past, then that would be great. But deciding what information is relevant is the most important thing of all. I am totally for documenting certain things, and the championship trophies is definitely behind that motivation, but using this place as a recruitment forum, that is something I will fight against. - BeXoR 21:11, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * EDIT conflict ...
 * To play devils advocate for a moment - the objects you mention can just as easilly have the guild name mentioned within the article of that object, with no need for a specific article about the guild.
 * I'm not rejecting the idea of guild articles, and I think that we should look at proposed guidelines and proposed policies to handle this sort of content. But, until such guidelines and policies exist, it's not unreasonable to pace the influx of new content by not including it yet.  If you have an idea for how to define qualifying criteria, feel free to propose guidelines for that content.  Also needed should be guidelines on what content about the guild to include, and most certainly spell out the the wiki will not be the hosting site for a guild's home page. --Barek 21:15, 7 February 2007 (PST)

Let's talk shop
Voting is evil. Voting on policy as controversial as a guilds inclusion/exclusion policy will solve nothing.

With that dogma out of the way, let's look at the evidence. Do we have clear evidence that guild pages are worth it. So far the evidence suggests that it isn't, but this evidence was collected on an unofficial wiki with an active player community that is very different from what exists now. As a compromise, we can document the past GW*C winning guilds, sourcing all the information about them from their GotW articles. This will address the problem of having nothing to link to when writing the article about their trophies.

Then, after sufficient time has passed and these articles are not simply trolling magnets, we can start a pilot program to document prominent guilds. This can be done with: The benefit of this is that the good names of guilds will not be tarnished by anonymous nobodies on the internet, and it will further prevent the wiki from being used as an advertisement platform.
 * Deciding what guilds to allow articles for,
 * Requiring a member of officer rank or higher to submit via email an article to one of the admins,
 * Having the admins vet this article (off-wiki) for verifiability, for example, by comparing with a GotW page, and
 * Creating that article page fully protected from the get-go.

The next stage of the program should be to unprotect these guild articles.

In the final stage, we will open the floodgates and allow guild articles to be created, perhaps in their own namespace.

This discussion should continue on a policy proposal page. S 21:25, 7 February 2007 (PST)


 * Please continue all discussions on Project talk:Guild pages pilot program. Thanks. S 21:31, 7 February 2007 (PST)