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Proposal to lock down the Guild namespace

Guild Wars and the competitive GvG scene have been dead for a number of years, and yet the guild namespace continues to be an area of conflict between users arguing over gold trim capes, received by potentially sub-par guild teams (that may, for example, have untaken botting activities or cheated). I propose that we remove the edit ability of all regular and anonymous users for this namespace and the talkpages (namespaces 100 and 101), similar in practise to that used in the ArenaNet namespace which was formerly editable and accessible by all users. This would mean all guild pages and their talk pages would be read only, except to sysops and ArenaNet staff.

This change will require a technical request on GWW:TECH that will require ArenaNet in order to enact the change.

Propose we discuss this now and review the outcome in November. --Chieftain Alex 21:53, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. I think we should do a once over first, to remove notability from guild that only have it self-assigned from gold trims, and combine/reword the pending-historical/historical templates. horrible | contribs 22:17, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Agree. The purpose of the guild namespace has been rather questionable for years now and this part of the wiki is more effort to maintain than it should be. Placing the responsibility in the users' hands was a pipedream for the vast majority of the pages, not to mention the policy on inactive guild pages being excessive in practise. I would even go as far as say the namespace could be removed entirely, since there are no discussions worth keeping within it that come to mind and there are no notable guilds still being maintained. I personally don't see any reason to not restrict currently active guild pages to userspace instead, though that's a different discussion entirely. Game development guilds like The Spearmen can be moved to the main space and adjusted to function as encyclopaedic pages, so their objective information can still be edited by anyone whenever necessary. - Infinite - talk 22:47, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Could we not prevent people without a wiki account from editing the pages? I'm not sure how big of an issue this is, but I think with the small number of users on this wiki, it would be fairly "easy" to moderate trolling on guild pages. Despite the game being fairly dead, I don't think we should remove a core functionality. 76.181.56.126 14:11, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

The Guild namespace is not being actively used by the community, and when it is used it is either not maintained or a target of contention and dispute. The namespace is also not a core part of the wiki; it is an additional nicety which not too many took advantage of early on, and little to none use now.

As for the moderation of trolling, it should be easy because it should be non-existent. Unfortunately, not all in the Guild Wars community understand the nature of the Guild namespace despite many attempts to educate them. If no one is using the namespace, and it acts as a focal point for non-wiki issues, it's time to lock it down. Greener (talk) 14:39, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

I do not claim to know much on that matter, but here are my few ideas. In favor of blocking anonymous edit: anonymous are potentially more harmful than registered users, so they should not have the ability to edit guild pages. Against blocking all users: it makes sense to have editable group spaces (we already have user spaces). It should however be limited to trusted users, if that's feasible, ideally officer or leader of the guild. It seems that user pages are editable by other users, so we could just block the guild namespace for now, and people wanting to have their guild info on the wiki could just do it on a userpage (from an indiviudal recognized as leader or officer).--Ruine Eternelle 18:16, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

I would totally be in favor of locking down the guild namespace, effectively making it an archive of the past. When the game was still active, the guild namespace had a promise that it could be used to document guilds; but even back then people have been misusing it a lot, and thinking back, the namespace was always trouble (with all those inactivity deletion rules we had etc.). Since it now continues to be a source of frustration for some even though activity on both the wiki and in the game has been heavily reduced, then that’s a clear sign that we should no longer support edits in that namespace.

I could also see us go a middle-route and create a new user group that has write access to the namespace, similar to the API namespace on GW2W where only a small set of trusted users are allowed to maintain the content. That way we could keep the guild content completely where it is while still having some way (outside of sysops) to fix minor issues. poke | talk 18:57, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm fine with it in principle. just a few questions first though:

Since this won't affect the famous gold trim list page, people will continue adding guilds. New ones would show up with either no link or a red one. Would those guild pages be created? Regardless how notable a 2019 gold trim might be.

Taking Guild:Vent Rage as an example: last accomplishment is from 2010. Yet there are still IPs playing around w/ the roster. Will those pages be rolled back to some earlier stage? WHo decides what stage that should be? Otherwise we have people on those rosters who never played when those guilds actually were successful. For a gold trim example take Guild:Inadequately Equipped (historical). Steve1 (talk) 21:05, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm advocating just locking the guild namespace and leaving the current revision standing on all guild articles.

Gold trim guilds is probably an oddity since its about specific guilds but not in the guild namespace. I would pick a date, say gw2 release in August 2012, revert the list to that date, and protect that article vs all edits. -Chieftain Alex 22:05, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't see why it would need to be reverted? If there's an interest in documenting who has the trim, that could be done whilst still locking down the Guild namespace. Since the gold trim list is outside the namespace, why not keep the list editable, but leave any new entries as just a name rather than a link to a namespace that could not be created or edited. Thus avoiding red links. ShadowRunner 07:50, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

+1

Letting new gold trim guilds create their guild pages would also be fine, but I guess technically prohibitive. Steve1 (talk) 19:06, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

To be sure we understand, the guild space would be frozen, but the user space would still be available, and enterprising people could use that space to brag about their gold trim guild, and others could continue flaming there? If that is the case, it seems to me the guild space should be locked down to prevent anonymous edits, and wiki accounts or ip addresses should be temporarily muted or even locked if they continue to abuse the area? Darius Shalnin (talk) 12:52, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

The User namespace has its own guidelines, and if a person wishes to write that they know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, they may. Personal attacks and vandalism of pages are not permitted on this wiki. Greener (talk) 15:25, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Isn't that exactly why they are talking about shutting down the guild space, personal attacks and vandalism? If so, that feels like overkill for people who use it correctly so as not to have to deal with people abusing the wiki. Darius Shalnin (talk) 19:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Well, I don't see how locking down an entire namespace benefits the informativeness of the Wiki. There recently have been a few minor namespace-related issues which involved justified accusations of cheating, however, these occurred on at most 3 pages and it's not like they've disrupted the other regular editing activities. The problem is that most of what's been written from random IPs indicated the truth, thus, I'm questioning myself what exactly might be achieved with restriction of guild pages editing to only those who have registered on the Wiki. The source of the problem consisted in the fact we've got exactly 0 governed courses of action in case a guild has been noted and publicly confirmed of cheating. In my opinion, the following activities should lead to automatical loss of the privilege of being able to host / feature a guild page, regardless the amount of tournaments won. On the other hand, restricting redaction of namespace to only registered users is likely to reduce the unnecessary, tedious involvement of Sysops into disputable cases. Thus, despite the above-mentioned factor, I still would be up for editable-by-only-registered-users restriction. As for locking down the entire namespace, it seems like an over-measure to me, considering the leaders of many still-active PvE-oriented guilds such as this will lose the opportunity to update their already-provided submissions. On the notable guild tag and templates: I think it would make perfect sense to adjust both {{guild}} and {{historical guild}} templates to be rendering notable guild notice only if destination page where it's being invoked from was created prior year 2020. In this way the administration of the Wiki will have the opportunity to rewrite a part of guild pages-maintaining rules to explicate most of active editors have agreed on the fact that achievements such as further victories in the Automated GvG Tournaments are no longer deemed as notable. Dmitri Fatkin (talk) 12:24, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Dinosaur opinion: totally agreed. The section had only limited usefulness even when that shit was current, and it's just a pissing match between dupers and buyers at this point. Add in the fact that most original gold trim guilds actually got compromised in 2016 (by the guy who also took Gaile's account, and others using similar social engineering), there's very little reason to continue to allow edit wars, and the section has no other particular reason to exist. -Auron 10:56, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

The more I worked with the Guilds section during my time here, the more frustrating it became, to be honest. Nowadays the issues of the past (tagging inactivity, gold-trims, mandatory updates) are not near as much of an issue, but the section is, ironically, both stagnant *and* a right pain to maintain. Given the age of the game and how the guildspace has been used lately (as per Auron's notes) I think it's for the best. The section was infuriating to maintain at its peak, and that was when legitimate edits were being made. Given that it sounds like those honest folks are now replaced by dupers and buyers, there's just no point.

Userspace guild things sound okay; it's a userspace. Hell, I'm all for even just semi-protecting everything so that IP's can't edit-war the hell out of the pages. At this point, however, I just don't see any benefit to leaving things as they are. Time to let sleeping dogs lie. -- Traveler (talk) 18:35, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

I've reviewed the discussion above and still believe this is the right course of action. I have now raised the technical support request: see here.

The other plausible option would have been for me to apply cascading sysop-only edit protection to anything with the Guild/Guild infobox template.

Also thanks to all the oldies who we've wheeled out to give their 2 cents. <3 -Chieftain Alex 23:59, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Speaking of the guild template, it will have to be updated to state that if people wish for personally identifying information to be removed, they should swing by the admin page. That's in line with our general policy for such things, anyways. Greener (talk) 00:47, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Question(s)

My apologies, I don't know if it's the right way to leave a comment. Is this actually a major issue? Couldn't we get ANet to improve some known bugs instead? --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 2.26.209.164 (talk).

Wiki matters tend to be a department separated from game development and maintenance, so this request should not interfere with the game and the pace of its updates. As for leaving comments, in the future please sign your comments with four tildes (~), or by pressing the signature button above the editing field (second from the right). - Infinite - talk 12:07, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Will I still be allowed to edit Guild:HRK; we use it when recruiting members. --Falconeye (talk) 22:39, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

If the agreed move was to lock the namespace to all users, then no, you wouldn't be able to edit the page going forward. ShadowRunner 07:50, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

(Reset indent) On a slightly alarming note; most of the old tournament results on guild pages link to the old gw-memorial website. This site is no longer online and instead taken over by potentially dangerous websites (I just checked one, but my anti-virus software has not notified me of any changes yet). There is a new, online version of memorial we could link to, but obviously this begs the question; should we unlink all external links throughout the entirety of the guild space prior to locking it and is this a feasible endeavour to begin with? - Infinite - talk 17:14, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

That's a very good question. Once we've come to a consensus over what the future of the Guild namespace looks like, we'll want to have a checklist of what needs to be done. Cleanup of dead links to websites which have been taken over seems like a high priority. Greener (talk) 21:38, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Infinite, do you happen to know what the new memorial site address is, and if so, do you want me to find+replace the old links? (87 pages link to gw-memorial.net 508 times). -Chieftain Alex 22:50, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

I believe it is https://memorial.redeemer.biz/memorial/all/ with its certificate having been renewed in September. That appears to me to be the current 'memorial' website. - Infinite - talk 13:03, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately the new site does not have the structure of the old. (1) Guilds are now found by some kind of search form on the frontpage (no special subpages), (2) Match ids are now different, (3) Some of the special events got deleted, (4) mAT line-ups are missing for many of the linked months. I'd be tempted to change the links to web.archive.org instead in most cases (e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20150211092954/http://www.gw-memorial.net/results/mAT/2010/August/) -Chieftain Alex 22:31, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I've got a suggestion to run an automated task which will insert http://web.archive.org/web/*/ reference before every http://www.gw-memorial.net link. That should solve the problem with minimal required effort. Dmitri Fatkin (talk) 06:03, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'll suggest one better - https://web.archive.org/web/2013*/ such that it doesn't default to the 2016 blank versions or the 2014 php error versions. -Chieftain Alex 00:32, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

I'll run the bot with your suggestion I think. -Chieftain Alex 14:21, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Tasks before Lockdown?

I'm thinking we want to do the following before locking down the namespace:

• Remove (historical) from all guild pages that have it (or add it to all pages that don't)
• Clean {{guild|notable}} and {{Historical guild|reason=inactive|notable=yes}} from guilds that shouldn't have it
• Alter the {{guild}} and {{Historical guild}} templates (and any others) to mention that the namespace is locked down, and requests for information removal should go to sysops. (this has already been done partially)

Most of these can probably be done automatically, but I'd like to get opinions before moving forward. horrible | contribs 02:49, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm happy to carry out the following with a bot:

• Move all guilds from "<guildname>_(historical)" to "<guildname>" (4998 pages) - depends on whether this gets agreement, I would be equally happy leaving them as they were before locking the namespace.
• Change the notable guild templates - depends on whether you guys can furnish me with a list of "real" notable guilds.
• Remove the {{Inactive guild}} template from all guilds (1680 pages) (now done)

-Chieftain Alex 21:07, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

In the last 3 years, guilds have been manually sorted & updated according to existing archival pattern, especially the ones mentioned on the Gold trim guilds list. Thus, the most desirable way of fulfilling the first suggested option consists of adding "(historical)" part to all pages currently without it. However, like I said on the GW2W Discord, an action such as this requires a sophisticated pattern of the following compounds:

1) Check if guild's cape is uploaded under File:Guild {{PAGENAME}} cape.jpg. If so, perform task 2.

2) Move the cape to File:Guild {{PAGENAME}} (historical) cape.jpg without leaving a redirect. If such file already exists, don't exercise this action & not overwrite it.

3) Move the main page to Guild:{{PAGENAME}} (historical) with creation of redirect.

4) Move the talk page to Guild talk:{{PAGENAME}} (historical) also with redirect creation.

5) If there are any subpages associated with the guild, move them to Guild:{{PAGENAME}} (historical) with a redirect.

6) Include the guild's name in {{Guild infobox}} as name=%Guild name% (historical) by obtaining it from {{PAGENAME}}.

7) Check if {{inactive guild}} tag exists on the page, if yes - remove it. This step has already been performed.

8) Substitute the beginning of {{guild| template invocation on the page with {{historical guild|, if there's |notable| or |notable}} switch in it, change it to |notable=yes| or |notable=yes}} accordingly.

If Alex is sure not many things are going to stumble in the process, then, I'll be in favor of such cleanup finalization.

As for reassessing guild notability marks utilization requirements of {{guild}} and {{historical guild}} templates, in order to implement something like this we'll have to find a way to disable the usage of certain (notable) switch in these, by checking if destination page's creation date is below assigned limit. As far as I was able to research the issue, there's unfortunately no {{PAGECREATIONDATE}} variable or parser function embedded in MediaWiki. Accounting these technical difficulties, it might be much more easier to simply remove notable tag from year 2019 MAT winners. That should affect at maximum 10 pages. As for years 2018 and earlier, I can easily point out numerous MAT finals (of the said and previous years) where utilized team setups were creative, the matches were interesting to watch and obviously had certain value for both viewers and the winners. Based on this, I don't think a majority of legitimate MAT winners from years 2013-2018 didn't deserve their right to be considered notable simply because in the last half a year cheating guilds have started to disrupt the tournament. Dmitri Fatkin (talk) 23:23, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

https://wiki.guildwars.com/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvlimit=1&rvprop=timestamp   &rvdir=newer   &titles=Guild:Abbadons Erben

I can write a script to pull the revisions of a page + can then process that to get the earliest date. This isn't so bad for just notable guilds. -Chieftain Alex 13:29, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Music change within a zone

I recall on reddit one of the devs said that making the score change within a zone from region to region is quite a challenge and it's only been done in one place (or few, can't remember). Is there a wiki page for these places? Think I've found another in pre. Or is it even rare? Maybe I'm wrong. --MostDefinitelyNotHanz (talk) 14:14, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Revisiting the guild namespace for notable/tournament winners

As a result of a recent bout of drama regarding the gold trim page, I was made aware of a PvP/GvG-focused Discord server where most of the competitive players hang out. A frustration voiced there was the inability to create guild pages for tournament winners. Reading up to last year's discussion (from almost exactly a year ago, oddly enough), even I was in favor of locking the namespace - but I didn't realize how much it still meant to the remaining PvP players. Considering Guild Wars was designed as a PvP game, GvG is the "top" arena for PvP content, and the game still awards gold trims for tournament victories, I posit we should revisit the idea of allowing guild pages created specifically for tournament winners, to aid in the process of documenting those winning guilds. Any guild that gets linked to from the "list of gold trim guilds" page should have an article about them, even if it's just a roster of players with them at the time of the win.
Even if the creation of new pages has to be vetted through a sysop (and require documentation such as a screenshot or redeemer memorial link), it would allow documentation of something we've been ignoring for quite some time now.
To head off a potential source of drama, a fair compromise would be that any guild recognized with a gold trim will get a page, regardless of allegations of cheats, hacks, or third-party programs. I realize ANet is pretty hands-off with that stuff, but the goal of the wiki is to document the game, not play moral police with who "deserves" to be on the list. -Auron 20:47, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I would be in favor of adding a right/permission to edit the guild namespace, and then granting that to users who want to document guilds there. The nature of the namespace itself makes me wary of re-opening it up completely. horrible | contribs 21:32, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

If a guild is cheating to win, it should be noted. I don't see an issue with players creating guilds to list the players associated with them. However I still believe either refer 2013+ gold winners to the GW Memorial site or a second page entirely notating the player maintained part. Gladiator Motoko (talk) 21:39, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it's fine. I still support the lockdown of the general guild namespace, but logging high-profile tournament wins sounds reasonable.

Forgive an old fool's questions, but just one clarification: Are these pages solely for reference, or will they be open to edits? I doubt we'd have any high-traffic shenanigans, but this feels like exactly the kind of page people are going to want to mess with. I'm a moron. It's figuratively a list. Yikes. -- Traveler (talk) 23:12, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Clear the entire Guild namespace with the exception of GvG winners, only create new guild pages for any missing GvG winners, include the builds they used to win (and perhaps the builds of those they won against), link to them in the respective list. ???? Profit. - Infinite - talk 10:32, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Humor doesn't come across well in text. There's plenty of notable guilds in the guild namespace that were never a part of GvG, and I don't see any pressing need or desire to repurpose an entire namespace just to please a handful of people. horrible | contribs 14:37, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Let the gold trim guilds have their page. No need to artificially kill off the last signs of life in the game. --Xeeron (talk) 13:30, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Dark mode

So awhile back on GW2W, Alex implemented a Dark Mode for the wiki by making some changes to the Vector skin. Some people on Discord asked if the same could be done with GW1W. Alas, Alex is done with GW1W after many long years of service, but I said I'd take a look on if the same .css could work here. A quick preview looks alright to me with nothing obviously broken, though it's not exactly pretty (lacks a header background image, and the logo's obviously designed for a light background). So my question to the wiki: is it going to screw with anyone if I go ahead with making this change? Anyone who's on Vector normally for whom it being dark would ruin their wiki experience? In the meantime, I'll take a deeper look on if there are any gaps on gww-specific templates or things. And maybe think about effective ways to pretty it up. - Tanetris (talk) 23:26, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Today I've learned that GW1W infoboxes do not use handy div classes for their styling the way GW2W infoboxes do. This is a notable hurdle. - Tanetris (talk) 02:13, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it's worthwhile to replace an existing skin with a dark version. If you want to add an additional skin with that purpose, I don't see an issue with it. Personally, I just invert the entire site and then re-invert anything with important colors. There's also wikipedia themes (1, 2) that users can use with Stylus to style the wiki very easily. horrible | contribs 02:37, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

confusion on boss images

pictures for boss npcs are very inconsistent on this wiki. some use generic render images like normal mobs (example File:Skale brown.jpg), while others use unique images despite sharing same model/coloring as others (example Category:Nightmare bosses), and others use one image/render image for same model/color-effect (example File:Elemental stone martial warrior aura.jpg). which of these is the correct method to use? Senti (talk) 18:47, 15 February 2023 (UTC)