Guild Wars Wiki talk:Guild pages

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Contents 1 Guild page turning into a homepage? 2 Category:Inactive guilds 3 What's our stand on alliance pages again? 3.1 Guild:The_Imperium_Of_Lazy_Nation 4 Rosters 5 Proposed change 6 Guild-Stub Spam 7 Deletion of capitalization redirects 8 Sub pages 9 English only? 10 Naming conflicts 11 Creation of Guild Pages--why? 12 Proposition 13 Inactive Guilds 14 Minor edit idea 15 disambiguation and link 16 Video 17 Some concerns 18 Change proposal survey 19 Suggestion for a change in tagging 20 Changes made 21 Inactive/historical guilds 22 Language: avoiding cleanup-deletion 23 Formating policy

[edit] Guild page turning into a homepage?

This guild, Guild:La Legion De Tocqueville, is turning more and more into a guild homepage rather than just documenting the guild, and I don't know where we should draw the line. I was about to inform the user and restructure it into a single page, but realised I wasn't really confindent in my understanding of the policy. Would this be classified as violating some of the points under "strongly discouraged"? - anja 18:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Our guild policy doesn't read much like a policy, so I'm going to ignore it and simply ask: what harm is this guild causing? —Tanaric 18:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I think we have to distinguish between what is harm and what is standardisation. Otherwise I could start applying that argument to everything, what harm is there in my user page images not having User at the start....? What harm is there in my user page being huge....? and so on. --Lemming 19:58, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't recall standardization being a part of our foundational policy. In fact, I don't recall having a foundational policy at all. If we'd like to establish standardization as a goal of the wiki, let us devise a process by which such a goal can be ratified and accepted by all.

Having "User" at the start of a user image is a great boon in categorization and management of our image library. I'm not sure there is any harm in having a large user page, which is why I (and most everybody else) is advocating removing those absurd limits -- but that's another issue and I don't think it's appropriate to discuss it here. In any case, I believe that, in general, "What's the harm?" is significantly closer to culturally accepted that "standardization," in my biased opinion.

Since we've gotten into it, Anja's point about mere documentation also goes against culturally accepted ideals here. Again, we don't have a charter, so I'm dredging this up from common practice. Every mission article worth its salt here has tips on how to successfully complete that mission. I suggest that mere documentation is not anywhere near our goal here. However, even if mere documentation were our primary purpose, I don't see how this guild is abusing that. It documents itself more fully than most guilds, including a variety of information that's exceptionally relevant, especially for guild members. We have functionally infinite resources here -- I don't see any harm in allowing guild members the freedom of coordinating builds in their guild space -- especially since it doesn't violate policy.

—Tanaric 20:20, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

"especially since it doesn't violate policy." - Hm, all images this guild uses are tagged for deletion because of random image names.. poke | talk 20:25, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Then delete the images. The guild page itself isn't in violation. I imagine this issue is probably due to the language barrier -- anyone bilingual willing to step up to assist? —Tanaric 20:29, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Or, even better, why doesn't somebody step up and rename the images for them at the same time? I'd do it myself, but I have to finish a paper within the next 90 minutes or I won't pass this course. —Tanaric 20:31, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

(massive edit conflict) These are the points in the policy that I am mainly referring to:

Categorically disallowed:

• Guild pages, which include their talk pages, shall not be used as a chat forum, recruitment board or guild roster. Guild pages shall not be used to contact the guild members.

Strongly discouraged:

• Guild pages should not use large or large numbers of images. A single image of your guild members striking a pose or a guild cape is allowed. Profiles of every character of every player in the guild is not.

I'm not saying these points apply directly (only parts, or my interpretations) to this guild, my intent was to bring this up for discussion as I didn't feel either yay or nay about this way of organising the guild's page. I also want to point out this part in the guild formatting

• All guild articles should try to conform and adhere to the guidelines presented here, to maintain consistency in all guild pages. Please bear in mind that your guild page is not your guild's homepage. It is only to document your guild.

as the policy says all guild pages should follow the formatting guide unless they have very good reasons not to. I understand the formatting guide is just a formatting guide, but the line still is there.

I don't see any harm, but I simply don't see the benefit (for the community) either. - anja 20:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

As I implied before, I'm not particularly interested in arguing apocryphal lines in a vaguely-written "policy." There are enough of you who enjoy that kind of thing that I don't feel bad ignoring it. :)

That said, I will respond to your last line. I have two problems with "I simply don't see the benefit (for the community)." First, how much of the community must benefit before an article is considered beneficial to the community? Let's say only 40% of the wiki users PvP. Only 40% of the community benefits from PvP oriented articles. Should we remove them? Perhaps only 20% of wiki users play mesmers. Should mesmer articles be removed because they don't benefit most of the community? Where do we draw the line? Now, I grant that no appreciable percentage of the community will benefit from that particular guild page. However, that's not really a fair question -- what's more important is how much of the community benefits from guild pages in general. That number is pretty high, I think, and will only rise as our wiki becomes more language-neutral / alternate language wikis are opened. Case in point, over the last couple hours, more articles about guilds were edited than articles about mesmers.

There's clearly a desire for this sort of guild space, it doesn't cause any harm, we have the capability to provide it, and, depending on your interpretation, it might not even be against policy! I strongly support the type of space this guild is trying to create, and I oppose efforts to curb this sort of guild space usage.

—Tanaric 20:47, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

As we are arguing from totally different standpoints and on different premises, I think I'll leave it for the night, Tanaric. We'll see if I'm any wiser in the morning. :) - anja 20:55, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan to me -- I've made my point and I'll leave it to everyone else to do what they will with it. :) —Tanaric 21:39, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I suppose this makes it a prime candidate for Guild Wars Wiki:Projects/Policy Cleanup then. Some of the stuff on the guidelines page should ideally be moved into policy. -- ab.er.rant 03:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Inactive guilds

Just want to say that I added a DPL list there so untagged inactive guild pages can be found without searching for them (and there are quite a lot of them..). The list only shows (it should) not already tagged Guild pages which have not received any edit for one month (of course this will be changed to six months when the proposal is accepted). poke | talk 21:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

And here, I made a list about Guild pages which do not use the {{guild}} template but are not tagged with guild cleanup either. poke | talk 21:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Smurf has something similar User:Smurf/Invalid guild names --Lemming 21:54, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, then I will delete my sandbox list as Smurf's is more detailed ;) poke | talk 21:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I thought we wanted to increase the inactivity period to 6 months? Let me go bump the old section above. -- ab.er.rant 02:25, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What's our stand on alliance pages again?

I can't remember (and can't seem to find) the previous discussion on alliance pages like this: Guild:Chip Alliance. What's our stand on these? IIRC, it's that we don't allow them and should move it as the leading guild's subpage. -- ab.er.rant 04:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

No opinions? Then I propose we specifically disallow alliance pages and request all those guilds who want alliance pages to put them as a subpage in one of their member guilds. -- ab.er.rant 01:42, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Subpage of alliance leader page - otherwise naming conflicts may occur. - BeX 05:34, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

There was this big alliance. We allowed it because the alliance name was a by the alliance leader additionally registered guild. I can't find the discussion but as long as the Alliance name is registered for them (so that no naming conflicts can occur) it should be ok. poke | talk 05:43, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

(edit) Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/Guilds#Large Guilds - sub pages poke | talk 05:48, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

What about if the alliance page title is over 31 characters long? (as that is the limit in game), because while they technically do not own it ingame, no-one can challenge them because they do instead. (Or will this cause problems if there are two alliances by the same name and they both want it?) -- The Great Tomato 09:12, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Should we not also put it in the rules - as people who see Guild:The Imperial Guards Alliance page, and don't see that guild name as being a member of the alliance, will automatically assume that it must be okay and proceed to make something like Guild:Chip Alliance -- The Great Tomato 09:29, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

What about adding an optional parameter "title" to the alliance navigation to change the title, so it could be "The Imperial Guards Alliance" instead of "The Imperial Guards Elite Alliance"? poke | talk 13:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Guild:The_Imperium_Of_Lazy_Nation

(Reset indent) We've got another one: User:Scroz contribs in Guild: namespace. Personally I don't want to keep those redirects he made, and would like for this policy to be updated with respect to alliances. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 19:14, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the problem. He's doing it exactly as the formatting guide tells him to? - anja 19:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

You're right and I'm wrong. Disregard my comment pls. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 19:38, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rosters

I'm not mantaining a guild page anymore, but anyway I think we should allow rosters in guild pages. Even Arenanet employees think so: look here. The main argument opposing rosters is that keeping them updated would generate too much edits: well, I don't agree.. on the italian wiki they are permitted and really we didn't see so much edits for that. --Lumenil 04:24, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I would just like to clarify the idea of it. Perhaps the wording was not the most appropriate, but the idea is neither to prevent people from using the word "roster", nor to prevent people from listing more than a handful of members. The idea was to discourage people from treating guild pages as if they're user pages. In short, guild pages are kinda like a brochure or flyer that gives you enough details for you to go and find out more about it if you want. -- ab.er.rant 07:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, reading this page I understand that most users consider rosters completely disallowed, someone is even against listing all officers. I don't agree with this limitation, and I ask for a rewording of the policy. --Lumenil 11:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Imo, rosters should be allowed as long as they are kept up to date. Maybe rosters must be updated once every week, or something like that. I know I am more then happy to keep my guilds roster up to date, as it takes a wopping 30 secs to edit the Wiki to input new members, or leavers. Lυмιиαяυs 12:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

"should be allowed as long as they are kept up to date" - that's exactly why they are not allowed. The thing we want to avoid is updating the guild page each day. In my opinion rosters should be allowed, as long as they do not list every user detail which need to be updated often (for example: only leader/officers and core members; but not new member who leaves after two days..) poke | talk 12:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Interesting problem... I see why the decision was made. Its either rarely changed and therefore outdated, or its changed often and there are 2 many edits. My bad =( Lυмιиαяυs 12:44, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I think people don't live to update a roster on a wiki. A normal person just forgets to do such things every single day. In my opinion Luminarus' scenario of these pages updated weekly is far more realistic. --Lumenil 13:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

This is still more often than we would like. The simple answer is have a link to the roster on your guilds website if you really want one. --Lemming 13:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

As the rationale for not allowing complete guild rosters at present is to avoid having guild pages updated too often, is there a view at all as to what 'too often' actually is? Is it once a day, once a week, once a month or something else? Would it not therefore be possible to include guild rosters but to have a guideline or policy suggesting rosters are not updated 'too often', as per what the definition of too often is? Or on another line of approach, is having a guild sub-page with a roster permissible, thereby leaving the main guild page full of mainly static information about the guild? --Winters Blessing 14:26, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Would guild sub-pages provide a viable solution to hosting rosters? WarBlade 21:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem is the possible recent changes flood. Moving the flood to a sub page doesn't help. -- (gem / talk) 05:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, recent changes is already flooded by edits in user namespace, especially since Galie's and Izzy's userspaces have become like a forum. I really dont think roster edits could do any worse. --Lumenil 12:07, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but you can exclude one name space from the recent changes by selecting the name space and then checking the 'inverse selection'. Having 2 spam name spaces makes it impossible to exclude all spam. -- (gem / talk) 20:10, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

"Updated too often" means that guild page edits show up a lot in recent changes. If just half of all the guild pages update their guild page (or any of their subpages) once a day, that's already too many changes that most of the community don't care about. It reduces the usefulness of "recent changes", which is something a lot users rely on to catch vandals and see changes. How much is too often? Given our current definition of what a guild page is supposed to be and what is an inactive guild, I'd say once a week is more than enough, once a month is even better. A guideline like that is not necessary. It'll just get disputed. And since most editors of guild pages don't bother reading the guidelines and policy, it's not going to be effective. -- ab.er.rant 06:48, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed change

Can we change "unlike other guilds, Zealots of Shiverpeaks has only friendly members" to "unlike other guilds, Example Guild has only friendly members". It seems strange to name drop in a policy and a bit odd to draft a proposal to change 3 words.

On a side note, does Example Guild exist in the game? Has someone here reserved the name? - BeX 02:23, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Good change imho. I think someone reserved the name. -- (gem / talk) 05:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd just like to say I don't think anyone from ZoS actually wrote that so it wasn't being devious or anything. --Lemming 20:42, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Ya, but it's still advertising. :P - BeX 03:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Guild-Stub Spam

Not sure if this is the right place or not. I was wondering if there is any feasible way to make it so that the Wanted pages isn`t spammed with Guild: pages. Is there an easy way to exclude this, and would it be as useful as I feel it would be? I`m still starting to learn this whole wiki thing, so please pardon any obvious moronism. Freya 23:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

You mean Special:Wantedpages :) No, not really, without some scripting involved, but if you want to ignore guild-stubs, you can try going to Category:Stubs and navigating from there. -- ab.er.rant 02:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of capitalization redirects

The deletions of these redirects is really.. counterproductive. In the last weeks I have seen several cases of where a guild page was first created with wrong capitalization, moved and redirect deleted. Then, weeks later, a new guild page is created with the wrong capitalization, which cannot be moved since the guild already exists on wiki. I would prefer if we made a clear point that these redirects should stay, to avoid confusion and double guild pages. - anja 08:20, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The one problem with this is double guild names (are these still possible?), but given how rare these should be, letting the redirects stay seems to be a good solution. --Xeeron 21:59, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Guilds can only exist with the correct capitalisation, so I would say that there is no reason to ever remove these redirects. I don't keep up with the guild namespace as much as other namespaces, are there any sysops in particular that regularly delete these redirects? LordBiro 22:07, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

All I know is that they are being deleted, and I'm not doing it. I don't think there is anyone going around deleting these specifically, but they get caught in recent as "bad redirects" and get tagged by various users. As we have no specific guideline on it, they get deleted after three days have passed. - anja 22:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I've been searching through the logs, and not seeing much of those kind of deletions... in fact (and I'm not meaning to take a jab at you, Anja, it's just odd), the only one I found in the first 1000 or so entries of the deletion log was one that you had tagged for deletion (although it wasn't a redirect, but it was something that probably should have been made a redirect instead, along these lines). (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yea, I tend to delete tag duplicates instead of immediately turning them into a redirect, if I'm not sure which version contains the most up to date info. Maybe not the best way to go about it. I guess I have been a bit confused then, but I still stand by my point :P - anja 22:33, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I deleted a couple some time ago as unnecessary after moving an article to the correct capitalisation, but your reasoning is sound, so I see no reason to continue deleting them. --Lemming 22:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sub pages

I guess sub-pages are allowed, but shouldn't they follow most of the rules for guild pages, like no regularily chaning info etc? This guild has sub pages which have such info and I think it should be discouraged. I'm not sure if it's a trend or a singular case, but I'm bringing it up just in case. -- (gem / talk) 14:17, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

It's a bad trend. I've already seen and warned several about our policy of not allowing regularly changing information and for them to treat it like guild homepage. -- ab.er.rant 14:37, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I think we need to make this rule more visible on the policy page. Yeah, not everyone reads the policy, but it might help a bit. -- (gem / talk) 14:52, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I brought something similar up in the first section on this talk page. Apparently the policy is badly worded which made me and Tanaric (for example) read it in different ways. I think the policy needs a general cleanup and we need to make it even more clear what the purpose of guild pages are on the wiki. I always had the impression it was for presenting your guild to the users, not to keep it as a guild portal (with photo galleries, event schedules etc), but obviously not everyone shares this view. - anja 15:20, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I thought that we all agreed (those who took part in the discussion anyway) that it should be for presenting your guild, not to use it as a guild website/forum. That's why we had the 'no regular edits' rule. I support rewriting the policy to make this clear, but I don't have the time to do it myself. -- (gem / talk) 15:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English only?

Seeing as this is an English only wiki, shouldn't you make Guild pages English only? Randomtime 09:59, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

See the previous sections regarding this in the archive:

• Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Guild_pages/Archive_2#Guild_pages_in_a_non-English_language
• Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Guild_pages/Archive_2#foreign_language

(Aiiane - talk - contribs) 10:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming conflicts

"In the presence of naming conflicts try the following disambiguation attempts in order."

Is a naming conflict even possible? I thought guild names had to be unique, so there cannot be two guilds with the same name. -- Brains12 • Talk • 22:46, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

You're right, this is simply unneeded :P poke | talk 22:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

And btw, it's Guild:Zealots Of Shiverpeak, not Guild:Zealots Of Shiverpeaks (although that probably will be taken out as it's not needed in context :P) -- Brains12 • Talk • 23:00, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually naming conflicts can happen if we preserve a page for a historical guild that has disanded and someone then creates a new guild with that name. -- (gem / talk) 00:09, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe move then to Guild:Name (historical) ? poke | talk 13:32, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't have a problem with that. Although, the newer guild with that name would need some sort of disambig link to the historical one, just in case someone searches for the old one. And maybe vice versa.-- Brains12 • Talk • 13:54, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Do we even have historical guild pages? Backsword 22:57, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

not yet afaik :P poke | talk 23:01, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Creation of Guild Pages--why?

I've noticed someone making pages for guilds that do not have them, due to the fact that they are linked to other pages. Maybe there is another way we can deal with this problem? It seems kinda pointless to make a bunch of pages the members of the guilds are not maintaining, therefore requiring deletion down the road...only for someone to come along and make a new placeholder page, and so on. Maybe redirecting the ugly red guild name to link to the category "guilds" is a viable solution? Example: random named guild here which is redirected to category "guilds" kinda thing?

I have an Alliance page for use on my user pages, and guild page. There are only two guilds in the alliance that have legit wiki pages. Although the other guilds are active, I can only assume they do not wish to have pages here, but they are linked due to their membership in (in my case) the alliance. Although I could populate these pages with some data that would be accurate, I am not a member of these guilds and feel doing so is inappropriate. Thoughts? Lady Chevon 18:51, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I would rather the unmade guild pages stay unmade. As you said, it requires more deletion down the road. Also, if they are redirected to another page, someone new to wiki-ing will not know how to make their page 'un-redirected' and so either just choose not to make a page, or edit the page it redirects to. I agree to what you say about making a page for other people. If they want to make one, they can and it's pretty easy too - just hit F10 in-game or follow the guidelines on the wiki. -- Brains12 \ Talk 19:21, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Just leave the link red I suppose. Editing a redirect is likely beyond the understanding of most new editors. They'll likely end up editing the redirect target instead. One better solution I can think of is to remove the auto-link from the alliance nav. -- ab.er.rant 00:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

There is a user making pages, which prompted this discussion. Shall I tag those I know of for deletion? I'm happy to do so (tomorrow).  :D Lady Chevon 00:56, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

If they don't meet policy requirements, sure. -- ab.er.rant 00:59, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I do like the idea of removing the autolink from the alliance nav, although then when that template is used it will require more effort to determine if an ally has a wiki page. Maybe it could be removed and a hidden note inserted to clue folks in? Lady Chevon 17:07, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I think removing autolinking is definitely the way to do it. It will cause some extra editing at the start, but then you can also choose to name the links in the nav as you want them, but still link to the correct page. - anja 20:49, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Didn't a command exist (an IF statement) that allowed pages to be linked or not depending on if the articles existed? I think adding that piece of coding to the navbar could help. It wouldn't remove the red-link guilds from the wanted pages (unless we are using the last wiki version, not sure) but it could be useful i guess.--Fighterdoken 20:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, tried to change the alliance navbar with the if statement. Left it at User:Fighterdoken/Sandbox2 in case anyone wants to check it.--Fighterdoken 21:47, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice, it works :) -- Brains12 \ Talk 21:51, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

<3 You've almost entirely fixed Special:Wantedpages. :) --Aspectacle 22:04, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah - nope. At first glance it looked like it'd been implemented. But someone must have been making all those guild pages. Well as you see I'm hoping this is also going to fix the wanted pages. :D --Aspectacle 22:11, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Just remember that the if exists statement, as of november last year, still created an entry in the wanted pages (see Wikimedia). Not sure if it has been fixed.--Fighterdoken 22:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Fighterdoken. The bug sure doesn't read like it's been fixed. I guess that wanted pages is just going to stay broken. The modification to the nav is a great idea btw. --Aspectacle 02:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Ok, i borrowed (stoled) an Exist template from mediawiki and used it instead of the ifexist in the navbar. Now it looks like it will no longer place pages on the special:wantedpages list, removing at last the spam from it. The new navbar is at User:Fighterdoken/Sandbox/Nav2 and the required template is at User:Fighterdoken/Sandbox/exists or at the mediawiki site.--Fighterdoken 23:08, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Xeeron changed the nav months and months ago! He switched it back though. It's probably still in the history. :P - BeX 00:05, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean the same nav? Xeeron did not change anything there :P poke | talk 18:33, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, it was Rezyk :P - But as Fighterdoken already explained, the pages won't be shown on WantedPages. poke | talk 18:35, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Woops. :P - BeX 00:57, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposition

Due to discussion at User talk:Anja Astor/Archive_7#moonlight crusaders, I'd like this line to be changed:

• No guild page shall redirect to or from a page outside the Guild: namespace. No guild article may transclude a page outside the Guild: or Template: namespaces.

Into something like this:

• No page on the wiki should redirect to any page in the Guild: namespace unless used in the wiki's best interest. No guild article may transclude a page outside the Guild: or Template: namespaces.

— Galil 02:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with it. -- ab.er.rant 18:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I assume that includes guild tags or incorrectly named guild pages? If so, I agree. -- Brains12 \ Talk 18:44, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Agree, assuming Brains is right. Calor 18:45, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I suppose so. — ク Eloc 貢 22:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by that, Brains. If you mean that it would still be allowed to include Guild tags in guild pages, then yes. The tranclusion part of the line hasn't been changed, only the redirection part. The guild tags aren't redirects. ;) If by incorrectly named guild pages you refer to pages that aren't in the Guild namespace, they would be moved there as usual, and the redirect would be deleted since it would violate this rule (same as the old one). — Galil 11:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

No, sorry, I meant some guilds may have tags, e.g. Guild:ZoS that would redirect to Guild:Zealots Of Shiverpeak; alternatively, some may have Guild:Zealots of Shiverpeak redirecting to Guild:Zealots Of Shiverpeak. That shouldn't be allowed imo. -- Brains12 \ Talk 14:29, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

That's the sole reason for my change. With this, no page on the entire wiki may redirect to any page in the Guild namespace. That would include those pages. ;) — Galil 14:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

And that's what I assumed ;) -- Brains12 \ Talk 14:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Why is a redirect from Zealots of Shiverpeak to Zealots Of Shiverpeak bad? I specifically brought this up earlier since that exact thing causes alot of confusion and duplicate pages being made. - anja 17:10, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

As all words in guild names are upper case a redirect from the lower case version of that name should not be a problem.. poke | talk 17:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

If guild names should be exactly as they are in-game, why is a lowercase name valid here? To me, it should be exactly. There are enough guild pages as it is without redirect pages to an uppercase guild page. -- Brains12 \ Talk 17:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

How does the redirect page do any harm? I've had to merge, delete, explain etc so many times (and several times for the same guild) that guild pages are kept at the exact name. A redirect save alot of trouble and still makes it more convenient for the guild page editors. They just help imo, it's not like we have a lack of space and redirects take up alot of that. "There are enough guild pages as it is".. you do realise probably not even half of the guilds in game has a guild page here? And they are all allowed to come here still. - anja 17:33, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, if you think they are worth keeping, go ahead. -- Brains12 \ Talk 17:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Actually, Zealots of Shiverpeak is less accessible than Zealots Of Shiverpeak. Reason being that when "searching" on MediaWiki it only checks for articles with the exact same casing you wrote, or camel casing (every word's first letter is capitalized). In other words, "zealots of shiverpeak" would find "Zealots Of Shiverpeak", but not "Zealots of Shiverpeak". The only time the latter would even be used would be if someone wrote "Zealots of Shiverpeaks" just like that.

I'm not arguing against you though, cause I honestly don't care as long as the names they redirect from are unique to the guilds as well (which they would be in this case). The only problem I see is wording that for the policy ("No page on the wiki should redirect to any page in the Guild: namespace unless used in the wiki's best interest, or if redirecting from a differently cased version of the same guild name"?), and if a guild page gets deleted for inactivity it would require extra work to get rid of the redirects before deleting the page. But since that's none of my concern, it would be up to the sysops to decide on. ;) — Galil 22:29, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

According to the last point: Special:Brokenredirects ;) poke | talk 22:39, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Bah, forgot about that one. -_- — Galil 02:17, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Galil asked me to restate my opinions on this, so I will. I don't think this change is necessary, to me it's obvious that tag redirects should not be allowed simply because they are (can be) shared. If you all think a note on this would be necessary though, I would prefer something along the line: "Please remember that guild tags can be shared among several guilds. Thus, GWW keeps no articles on guild tags, since no single guild can claim ownership of a tag." - anja 19:18, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

That does indeed sound better. Mine was just a suggestion after all and I was hoping for someone to state something better. :P — Galil 05:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

My biggest problem with this is that it includes redirects into the wiki itself (which are not in the Guild: namespace), which I find very annoying. Technically, the guild template itself violates its own policy. I'd also like to be able to refer an external link to our official guild page to remove clutter from our login announcements, but I can live without that. --Falseprophet 15:52, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

There is no problem with linking to your guild website or any other page; it's just the redirecting that's the problem (a redirect is something like this page, not just a link). Seeing as the guild policy requires all guild pages to have the guild template, it's not breaking the other-namespaces rule. The problem with allowing redirect pages to the Guild namespace is because there's a guild namespace for guild pages, they don't belong in the mainspace. -- Brains12 \ Talk 19:48, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with Brains (nearly 3 months later, this thing has stagnated!). Plus, I think Tomato's GPP page would cry if we tried to do something like this. --People of Antioch 09:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Inactive Guilds

Currently we say this about inactive guilds:

Guild pages of guilds that are not certifiably important will be tagged as {{inactive guild}} if both of the following two conditions are met:

• Condition 1: Wiki inactivity - The guild page has not received any edits for 6 months.
• Condition 2: In-game inactivity - The listed contact (forum, website, guild leader, etc) is inactive or the guild article doesn't list a contact.

Now as I said here: Guild Wars Wiki:Projects/Editing bots#Periodic tasks, its very difficult with some guild pages that do specify an in game character but when you add them they are not on-line so you cant ask them about their guild (and you don't know if they do even play any more). Then forums... its not uncommon for a guild to require that you must register in order to view the full forum otherwise you will only be able to view something that was first written when the website was created.

How are we meant to notify the guild that their page is inactive easily? Forums? Personally i have better things to do than registering on a dozen every day just to say; 'Hi, your guild page on the GWW has not been edited within 6 months, if it is not updated with the relevant changes that have occurred since then or you remove the tag and place a comment in the talk page/edit summary then it will be deleted in 1 month time'. In game contacts are much the same again - going through the list of contacts to find one who is on-line and then whispering them to find out they are not even in the guild any more, but they think its still active but not sure isn't good.

This may sound a wee bit harsh but in my opinion I feel that if they are active and are watching the page because they took the 5mins to register and set it up so they get the email in their inbox telling them its been edited because its been marked as inactive 'wooh' good on them - now they can change it accordingly. But for those who didn't bother to register on here because they just couldn't be bothered (and they think that much of their guild) why should I spend 5 minutes finding someone to notify about it, only to have it happen in another 6 months? And its not like we don't give them time... 6 months since there last edit and then 1 month since we tagged it or around 306810 minutes since the last edit before tagging and then deleting... that's quite a while for them to do something about it

So I'm suggesting that do we need condition 2?:

Guild pages of guilds that are not certifiably important will be tagged as {{inactive guild}} when the guild page has not received any edits for 6 months.

On a similar note can we change the template where it says "or restore the old template with a note on the talk page or in the edit summary." to 'remove this template with a note on the talk....' -- The Great Tomato 15:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I need to throw my 2 cents in about the inactivity of a guild page. I feel that because of the restrictions policy has placed on what can and cannot be included in a Guild page, it really doesn't lend itself to a lot of activity anyway. I haven't touched mine in weeks, because my guild/alliance has been relatively stable, hasn't done anything fabulous, but is still very much an active guild. It would disturb me to find my guild page tagged as an inactive guild. I do have some sympathy for wanting to remove guild pages where guilds have been disbanded, etc, but to do it in a way that harms active guilds just doesn't sit right with me. -- Wynthyst 03:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

If it's tagged, just remove the tag. I kinda agree with what Tomato says too, but I don't feel too strongly about it. Some forums show forum activity on the front page despite not being able to see inside it. I think the better option would be to change that auto guild page template to put in a very noticeable statement that their guild page may be deleted in 7 months if there is no noticeable activity. If you can't be quite sure about a guild's inactivity, then don't waste time on it. Much better things to improve on in this wiki. If you tagged it anyway, and they get deleted, well, personally, if someone creates a page in a fire-and-forget manner, I tend to delete in a fire-and-forget manner too. I just feel that if you create something that's personal to you, it's your responsibility to at least glance at it once in a while. -- ab.er.rant 03:43, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I see where your coming from Wynthyst about how they shouldn't change information regularly, but most guilds will have something to change every month or so. I admit the guild pages for my alliance aren't brimming with information and things but as they say - i've still got to do them at some point when I get the opportunity to speak to the relevant people. But I manage to change the officer list, or number of members every once in a while just to show that I haven't abandoned it completely.

And yes Aberrant, I always look at the page history for a little bit to see how much effort they put in, how long they maintained it for, quickly skim the text to see if there is anything relevant, and then do the usual - quickly check a forum/website if there is one, and then usually tag it, no questions asked, no moment of regret and no looking back just to check something later on.

And I think your idea of making the fact that if you show no activity on your page in 6 months then it will be tagged and then deleted more obvious is a great idea. Currently all we have is the little bit in the bottom section of GWW:GUILD here: Guild Wars Wiki:Guild pages#Deletion. But it would be great if it could be put into {{Guild}} so it says something along the lines of:

"The contents of this page are player-managed and do not represent official Guild Wars lore. Any roleplaying, fictional, speculative, or opinionated claims on this page apply solely to the players in the guild, not to the Guild Wars canon. Guild pages must comply with the guild pages policy and if the article is not edited within 6 months then it will be tagged as being an {{inactive guild}} and automatically marked for deletion after 1 month of being tagged. -- The Great Tomato 19:33, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Bump. Is this going anywhere? I'm on the side of Tomato and Ab.er.rant, it's up to users and players to maintain their guild page, not sysops or taggers. Remove condition 2 and add something along those lines on the guild template. -- Brains12 \ Talk 21:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I do NOT agree taking away condition 2. The reason for this is that Guild pages are supposed to be "Static" (frequent updates are actively discouraged). A stable Guild can very easily make a Guild page, include a link to their Guild forum, and never look back unless they do something major like changing leader or something. Nor should they have to. Unless the guidelines are changed to encourage Guild Page activity, I don't see how one could remove condition 2. And it is not like the wiki has storage space problems that would warrant such an aggressive stance on Guild page removal. --Lensor (talk) 09:20, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I am with Lensor here. Guilds should not be forced to regularly change their guild page. --Xeeron 10:44, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Whilst this is true, any mistakenly deleted guild page can always be recovered, the only thing lost would be a cape image which is a minor inconvenience. Have we had anyone complain that their guild page got deleted due to inactivity yet? --Lemming 17:27, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I know only one case where the deletion was about 2 hours ago (so the contributor itself was very active in the wiki) and even the images still existed. Apart from that I don't think there was anybody who had a problem with it.

Another thing is that with a maybe soon coming MediaWiki upgrade to 1.11 or newer, we have #1 the ability to see the reason why a page is deleted on that page so that we maybe could add something like "If you want this guild page to be restored contact an administrator" and #2 there will be a file undelete so that we even can restore deleted images so the guild pages can be fully restored. poke | talk 19:27, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Still, we had this discussion before when including condition 2 in the first place. There is just no real reason to be that aggressive deleting Guild pages for inactivity, especially when the Guild guidelines actively discourage putting changeable information on it. An acceptable compromise (to me) would be to remove condition 2, but at the same time significantly increase the length of time the {{inactive guild}} would stand before deleting. To something like 3-6 months. I just feel that 1 month is way to short a time span to expect people to notice they have been tagged. --Lensor (talk) 08:16, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

 :/ The category already contains more that 500 guild pages.. When we now change the time from 1 to 2 months, there will be 1000 guild pages in it :/ poke | talk 12:06, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Does it matter how many guilds sit in the "inactive " category? The number of guilds tagged each month and the number of guilds deleted each month would remain the same, just the "buffer" number would be bigger. I fail to see how this would mean more work. I thought you could auto-sort the Guilds who have been tagged a certain lenght of time, so it would make no difference to input "Tag time = more than 1 month" and "Tag time = more than 3 months". Unless you actually have to sort though the Guilds to be deleted manually, in which case I can see how the work load might become too much. --Lensor (talk) 15:28, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Add: At the moment all daughter Guilds in the Guild of the Week guild Guild:Brotherhood Of Veterans alliance, has been tagged for deletion for Wiki inactivity. The only reason the mother guild was not tagged is that they made an update to the alliance navbar a month or so ago but forgot to update the navbars of the daughter guilds at the same time. A quick visit to their listed web-page show that they are very much active, with regular "member of the week" announcements etc. So here we have a a huge multi-game guild with hundreds of very active members, over 200 of which are active in the GW guilds (as of January 2008) and they have been tagged for not updating their Wiki page. I frankly find it quite ridiculous. It puts a very telling light on why "wiki inactivity" is not valid grounds for the inactive guild tag though.--Lensor (talk) 16:19, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Minor edit idea

All guild namespace edits are required to be minor edits. Discuss. Antiarchangel NO U 00:39, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

No way to really enforce this as a ban for someone not using the minor edit button is pretty stupid. Also, IP accounts can't use the minor edit button. — ク Eloc 貢 06:16, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Why? -- ab.er.rant 06:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

If you want to get rid of guild pages from your recent changes list then choose the Guild namespace in the drop down box and before you hit go, tick invert which will take all of them out - problem solved if you don't want to have to see it and then you can still see minor edits in the other namespaces (well at least that's what I presume you are trying to do). -- The Great Tomato 08:35, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] disambiguation and link

I attempted to make a few minor disambiguation/clarifications and not a change to actual policy, but Kakarot rolled it back and said I need to post it here first, so here it is:

Change the wording of "No guild page shall redirect to or from a page outside the Guild: namespace."

to something like

"No guild page shall use a redirect to or from a page outside the Guild: namespace."

or even better, if specific and concise enough (not sure if there is more than one way to do it), "...shall #redirect..." or "...shall use a #redirect..."

In verb form it is ambiguous to what redirect means - I read it as "redirect the user," which would include links. It is actually referring to the redirect wiki command, which is why I propose using the noun form (the wiki command) instead of the verb form (the action).

Further disambiguation may be needed, since I am still not sure what is intended by this statement. A 'redirect' is equivalent to a refresh in html (e.g. <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://redirect_me_to_this_url> ) with a bit of extra information for the "redirected" page (it may even be in the browser itself - I don't remember), so external links into the Guild page may not be blocked legitimately if that is what is intended. If that is desired, verbage like "automatically followed links/redirects..." probably should be used. My belief is this is actually intended to keep players from from using #redirect pages from, say, a user page into their guild page, so it may be fine, but I thought it was worth a warning.

additional proposition: add a link to wikipedia for transclusion - it is a programmer term and NOT an English word. I didn't even know it and I have a degree in Software Engineer (though I correctly guessed the meaning). "No guild article may transclude a page outside the Guild: or Template: namespaces." If external links are forbidden (for some reason), create a transclude wiki page here and explain what it means.

finally, There is no link for guild rating, only guild rank - either create a stub, fix the link or remove it. Red links are fine for new pages, user pages, and other non-professionally maintained pages, but they should never exist on a strictly moderated official policy page. --Falseprophet 20:52, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed on pretty much all of these points, but I'll add comments in turn.

1. Redirects - I believe this issue has come up before, so I'd agree that a slight bit of clarification would be useful. As I understand it, external links are fine as long as they abide by other policies, but automatic redirects (using the #redirect command) are not. Perhaps link to the wikipedia help page on redirects? (Found here).
2. Transclusion - again, a link would be great, but perhaps, again, the help page would be more appropriate.
3. Guild Rating - if you notice a link that needs filling, be bold! Don't hesitate to create it yourself! I would disagree on a stub being better than a red link, however. A red-link shows that the page needs work, and draws editors attention. A blank stub is great for showing a blue link, but it's less noticeable when looking for things to improve. Finally, I saw you mentioned "non-professionally maintained pages". No pages on the wiki are professionally maintained, everyone is a volunteer (Except perhaps for the Dev teams userspaces, but I digress). It's a common misonception.

Apart from those points, good ideas. I'd be happy with the changes. -- AT(talk | contribs) 00:59, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Technically speaking what you did was changing the policy since you added a link, removed a link and changed the wording. My revert didn't mean I disagreed with the change, it's just that I feel any change to a policy; except in the case of spelling mistakes; should first be discussed on the respective talk page as mentioned on the link I gave in the revert summary.

Regarding the removal of the link, yes it was a broken link but a better action would of been to discuss on this talk page the removal of it or maybe simply changing the ratings page to redirect to rank; if they now refer to the same thing that is; as well as discussing the links removal. In relation to the added link, other people might of had a better page in mind to link to like the help page that AT suggested. I haven't read what you mentioned above in it's entirety as of yet but I thought it would be best to explain why I reverted. --Kakarot 12:48, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Help:Redirect and Help:Templates maybe? :P poke | talk 19:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

this is a matter of opinion, I think, my personal belief is (or at least was) a change in policy alters the intention of any part of the page, but that wasn't my intention with clarification and cleanup. In response to AT, I beg to differ - A-net has several liaisons that are involved in the wiki (Emily and Regina to name two) and I figured (perhaps incorrectly) most policies are set by such liaisons (I even recall A-Net looking for a wiki liaison - not sure how that panned out). What I really meant was important pages like the main page, policy pages, code of conduct, rules, etc. reflect on the wiki owner and should look and read professionally even if they aren't maintained professionally. --Falseprophet 21:27, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that is slightly incorrect. If you read Guild Wars Wiki:General disclaimer, it pretty much says that ArenaNet aren't responsible for anything on this wiki, so nothing has to be maintained professionally specifically for them. ArenaNet are not officially and formally involved in any policy discussion, although Gaile, and I think Emily, have responded as they see things occasionally. -- Brains12 \ Talk 21:35, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Falseprophet - I did mention Regina etc, although not explicitly - "(Except perhaps for the Dev teams userspaces, but I digress)". Apologies if I wasn't clear enough.

Poke - I can't believe I didn't know those existed here. I guess I should pay more attention to Help:Contents huh. :( -- AT(talk | contribs) 23:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Video

Do (or shall) we allow people to have youtube videos on there guild pages? It doesn't take up space, but seriously a link to the video rather then the video is good enough. So allow or disallow them from guild pages (maybe even users...)? Dominator Matrix 17:31, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

You cannot include videos. poke | talk 18:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The wiki system won't even allow it. See Guild_Wars_Wiki:Reporting_wiki_bugs#Content_that_causes_issues_on_the_wiki for more info. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 20:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Some concerns

I have some concerns regarding guild pages, and I know that most of these have been considered in the past, but I feel some may need to be revisited. The Guild policy reads more like a guideline and I'm wondering if in some areas it doesn't need to be strengthened. The Strongly discouraged section says "Guild pages should not use large or large numbers of images. A single image of your guild members striking a pose or a guild cape is allowed. Profiles of every character of every player in the guild is not." Yet I see more and more guild pages that are covered in images Example: Guild:Dark Icy Pandas. Also, page sizes are addressed in GWW:USER but not in GWW:GUILD and I wonder when enough is enough? Example: Guild:Guild Of Russian Pathfinders size on disk at the time I'm posting this 1.07 MB (mostly due the the absolutely HUGE image on the page).

I know the question of language has been discussed repeatedly, however since this IS the English language wiki, do we actually have sysops who can read all the languages that guild pages are being created in to monitor that they are not violating policy? Also possibly just requiring an introductory paragraph in English about the guild so that the English speaking visitors can actually get some information about the guild by visiting their guild page.

My understanding is that the guild pages are not intended to function as a guild website, if I am mistaken, please let me know, and if that is no longer the case, I'd be happy to know about it so I can expand mine. But I am seeing more and more guild pages that are functioning as guild rosters and websites. Example: Guild:Bones Of Vengeance Since it is in Danish, I can't actually read it, but it is multiple pages that appear to cover more than just basic guild information.-- Wynthyst 08:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

(separate rant, same topic, but not really responding to Wyn specifically, so I moved it down a bit)
All guild namespace articles need to be written in English, from beginning to end. Why, you ask? This is an English language wiki. The entire goal and purpose of the wiki is to document the game - in English. The specific purpose of the Guild: namespace is to document player guilds, but they still must conform to the overall ideal that we are documenting the game in English. If a guild member is dead set on typing his guild page up in Spanish or German or Dutch or whatever, he should make a subpage that mirrors the base-level Guild: article, but is in a different language. The pre-req for that, however, is a guild article written in English.
Anyone who wants to write a guild article in another language must be bi-lingual, or close to it. They must be able to read and understand our policies for Guild: namespace articles. Since those policies confuse even English-speaking-only people, someone who isn't good at English will have an even tougher time understanding it. There's an upside to this requirement; if they can speak English well enough to read our policies, they should have no trouble writing the Guild article in English as well as whatever other language they speak.
Guild: namespace articles are not guild webpages; they are not to host information about upcoming events or similar. We don't have too much of a problem with that, although as Wyn said, if the page isn't in English, we can't keep tabs on it.
Contact information sections shouldn't host anything past the IGN of the leader and possibly officers; not even images should be allowed next to the IGNs. The point of listing IGNs is to give a point of contact, not to show off anyone's favorite profession or skill. Images just clutter up that section, and are not necessary in the least; creative license doesn't make the section any more efficient. Any personal information (ranging from multiple character names, pictures of characters, favorite builds, etc) belongs in userspace, not guild space.
Information about the guild hall (including gigantic images and the NPC list) should be on a subpage. Only the name of the hall should be listed on the base guild page.
All builds should exist entirely on subpages. I don't see a point in allowing anything except for team builds (as favorite standalone builds really belong in userspace), but since builds would be on a subpage, I don't see a point in disallowing them.
Once we move the non-essential information from guild pages to the appropriate subpages, we'd have much less of a problem with page size. We should try to implement stuff like that before throwing specific size restrictions around. -Auron 09:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

General data point: we have asize limit on userpagers as people often pass through on their way elsewhere in that userspace. This is not true for guilds, thus no limit. That said, we are nota hosting service, and I wouldn't mind a cap on total resources used. Backsword 09:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I too have noticed recently more guild pages including more images than is really neccessary as well as some that are excessively long; partly due to images and partly due to extra content that doesn't belong on the main page. As to the question about language, Auron's suggestion of having the main page entirely in English and then a subpage of it in whatever language the guild speaks is preferable since at the moment having any of the main page in another language makes it more difficult to monitor or even impossible if we have no sysop that speaks the language. On to the size limit, while I wouldn't mind a cap on size for guild articles, again Auron's suggestion regarding subpages is preferable since it would address this size issue both in kb/mb and also in length although there should still be a limit on what these subpages can contain since they could end up making people think it's ok to change Guild articles into Guild webpages as long as it's on subpages (if they get too much content). --Kakarot 13:41, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem with the English main page/Foreign language subpage idea. In the case of the guild page that both Auron and I noted, I think it would be more appropriate if the character info for each member that has been put on the guild page be put on appropriate user pages, and then linked to on the the guild page. Would make it much more consistent with how the wiki is generally set up. I understand that not all members are wiki editors, so even if just one person (the person creating the page, made the member pages subpages of his own user namespace would be much more preferable in my opinion than having it all in Guild namespace.

@Backsword, I do understand the reasoning behind the size limit on User mainpages, but I don't see that adding a size limit to Guild page mainpages (doesn't have to be the 300k that it is with Users) is a bad thing.-- Wynthyst 15:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed on the character pages being in the userspace of the respective user, if they don't have an account they can either sign up or include it on the primary editors userpage although the first option would be preferable. The Guild article can then include a small table listing the Guild Leader/Officers with the name linking to the respective users character page, that way they can still have the info it just isn't on the main page and doesn't make the page excessively long or add extra images. --Kakarot 16:26, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Another guild page where character images cause a problem: Guild:Guardians Of Dhuum. I'm on 1280x1024 and the character images cover over half the Guild infobox. --Kakarot 00:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I fixed that little issue :P-- Wynthyst 04:48, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Wyn,. although it still goes off the side of the page at least it doesn't cover up the infobox :) --Kakarot 14:17, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Change proposal survey

Ok, in light of concerns being raised more and more frequently (many of which I agree), it's obvious a revision to the policy is now mandatory. Before I (or someone else) proceed to draft it, let's agree on the purpose of guild pages:

1. Guild pages are not for personal guild use. Its sole purpose is to document an existing guild.
2. Guild pages are expected to post guild details (as per our infobox) and should contain some brief introductory text on the nature or history of the guild, as well as their recruitment status.
3. Guild pages are allowed to list contact details (such as in-game names or wiki users), restricted to around a half-dozen, since too many contacts is pointless.

The above three points should sufficiently summarise the key points being raised in the previous section. Is that what we want to move towards? It's gonna get rather unfriendly. We can discuss what we allow in subpages later. I do admit that it would make guild pages all look clean and consistent, since we probably won't allow any decoration on it. -- ab.er.rant 03:18, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

While I have no interest in directly disagreeing with anything that has been said, I am curious as to the motivation of those commenting. Rather then stop here and wait, I'll elaborate. I started my road to being an editor with a guild page...that led to a user page (although I created a user account before the guild page)...and after "practicing" on both of those it was on to editing pages and becoming involved in policy. So are guild and user pages not the best method of encouraging additional editors to become involved in the wiki. And if so, is this not something to be encouraged?

Finally, so many arguments seem to be made as if there is some inherent reason for their basis, when it is hard if not impossible to actually find. For example, size whether discussed in terms of guild or user pages...why? I just checked the www.guildwars.com home page and it exceeds out very apparently arbitrary size restriction which is stated as necessary because it may prevent some people from loading it, yet ArenaNet apparently could care less if that same user has a problem. So, I ask everyone here to ask themselves: apart from documenting this game in the best way possible, what are the goals of this wiki, and what is the intent and results of any policy change contemplated. -- Inspired to ____ 03:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

@ab.er.rant, the other main issues you have failed to address are language and overall page size. While I know that Emily has responded a year ago on the language issue, I believe (though I wasn't around at that time) that her response was based more on the tone of some the warnings or notices that were being placed at that time, than on actually dictating that foreign language pages be allowed. I don't see asking foreign language guilds in a respectful manner to post their mainpages in English with a linked foreign language subpage (as per Auron's suggestion), or have dual language on the mainpage if the content is short, as being objectionable. I have seen that being done and it addresses my language concerns adequately. As has been pointed out by several people this IS the English language wiki. I think any new policy should be worded as a policy, i.e. This is allowed and This isn't, to make enforcement possible. The term Strongly Discouraged is too ambiguous to allow adequate enforcement, especially for someone who may have English as a second language. As for the page size, again, it doesn't need to be as strict as the User page restrictions, but should be included imo.

@Inspired to, the size limit on user mainpages is to facilitate access to their talk pages. Slow connections make loading large pages difficult if all you want to do is post on a talk page.(edit) My motivation for my concerns are two fold, the foreign language pages are difficult to verify for policy violations if there is no sysop/admin that speaks that language, as well as being useless to the majority of wiki users who may wish to find out about that guild. The content restrictions that have been places are being stretched to the absolute limit, and in some cases being outrightly ignored by more and more guild pages, and the worst of the violators are foreign language pages which lead me to believe that their creators either don't understand the policy due to language barriers or have not bothered to read the policy in the first place.-- Wynthyst 04:12, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Wynthyst on this. This is the English langauge Guild Wars Wiki, and Guild pages should be only in english. Why? Because of what Wynthyst said, allot wiki users do not speak any langauge other than english and Guild Pages like this are essentially useless for ppl trying to find more information about that guild, etc. I also have no problems with the "Mainpage English" and "Subpage Other Langauge"; as that would not be much of a problem. As for size, I also do think the userpage limit size needs to be increased; but with that said, if we are going to have rules on Userpage size then the same needs to be done with Guild page size (for the reasons stated above). We are not a fourm service or a website service for guilds; the purpose (from my understanding) of guild pages, is to help players get in contact with a guild they would like to join and get certain contact info, etc. for the guild. It needs to be made clearer that we are not these things.

On a completely almost unrelated side note; we would not have to worry about this if ArenaNet would have opened up the wikis in other langauges. This is an international game, so they should provide equal resources for others. That is one of the reasons we have these non-english guild pages. --Shadowphoenix 05:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

About the first statements, i agree that we could try to enforce a "guild pages are for reference, they are not Guild homepages" statement if we want (would need some fighting with some neat-looking guild pages, but could be done). About the second statement by other users regarding language... not sure you, but if i see a guild whose primary language is set as "zwahili", sure as hell i am not going to be interested in what they have to say in their guildpage because i just woulnd't see reasonable to join a guild where i wouldn't understand a word of what is said. I could agree with enforcing a "infobox with english information only" proposal, but i think forcing all the content from guild pages to be english-only, or english required would be impractical at this point, unless you were actually willing to rewrite all the non-english guild pages to a grammatically correct english (something google doesn't do, by the way, SP).--Fighterdoken 05:20, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Not all visitors to guild pages are looking to be recruited, they may have played with a member, or seen an edit on RC, and just wish to check out the guild. As for the translations, as Auron pointed out, if they don't have a member with sufficient English to create a guild page in English, they most certainly aren't going to be able to understand the policy governing the guild pages which means they are more than likely going to violate. This is a discussion about proposed policy changes, if the policy is changed, then all guild pages will be expected to comply with the changes, just as every user is expected to comply with policy changes that happen anywhere else on the wiki. It may take some time, possibly tagging guild pages that need to be changed with a 'policy change notice' or something similar. -- Wynthyst 05:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, under the asumption that ìt is understood what the change on the policy would meant, and that people is willing to carry on with the work involved after it (in case it is changed), i i think that for now it would be better to wait for the proper draft. As was said above, in order to avoid "optionals" same as with the current one, maybe it would be a good idea to try and merge some points from the guideline also, so this policy leaves fewer areas to the user's will (and i agree in that is a lot easier to do things when the policy tells to "do" or "do not" instead of "discurage" things).

To add a few more things, probably besides size of the page and images we could add restrictions to content same as with gww:user, in order to prevent things as the "web page hosting for in game cash" that happened some time ago, npa breaches over non-wiki users, etc. And just for the sake of uniformity, maybe enforcing color patters/guild page design same as it's done with main page articles?.--Fighterdoken 05:54, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Let me clarify and bring the spotlight back to my original question. My bad that I didn't phrase it more prominently:

Do we want to move towards such a direction?

By direction, I mean the unfriendliness and elitism that is being pushed for. I deliberately listed only the three points above because they are the core of the issue - the very gist of what what defines the purpose of guild pages. I deliberately avoided mentioning language and size because they are contentious. I avoided it because I know they're easily debatable. Let's ignore them for now. The core of the issue is not language and size - it's how we treat "ownership" of a guild page.

At present, guild pages are more or less created and maintained by members of that guild. That's why there's customisation and personalisation here and there. Some subtle, and some over-the-top. By redefining the scope using the three points I listed above, we are essentially changing guild pages into something that is created and maintained by the community,