Guild Wars Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 8

Section removal template

Recently, people have been using {{delete}} on pages to propose the removal of individual sections. Should we create a template similar to Wikipedia's remove-section or Delete Section templates for this purpose or incorporate a section parameter into the current deletion template? -- Gordon Ecker 01:02, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I've also noticed this, and it confused me until I realised what was going on. A section removing template would make it clearer, or alternatively an optional "section" flag for the delete template.- TheRave 01:06, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't much care one way or the other, but it might be nice to have. To be fair, the only place I've seen it being used is the central Suggestions page, and, frankly, I'm not sure how much help a remove-section tag would be, but I don't really see how it could hurt to have such a template lying around for if/when we need it. *Defiant Elements* +talk 02:25, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

There is a big difference between "deletion" and "removal of a section". The first requires admin attention, and once deleted, only admins can restore the content. The latter however could be done by anyone and others disagreeing can revert; if that happens they can discuss it on the talk page and remove or keep the section then in the end.

So in short: I don't see a need for something like that. poke | talk 05:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

True, but a "delete-section" template would give an alternative method of proposing section deletion. Perhaps a user is not comfortable with removing it outright, and would first like to gather some opinions? This template would facilitate that. It'll be something like {{disputed}}. -- ab.er.rant 08:32, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing that I'm the man gordon is talking about. Tbh, I'm just flat out wiping things when I need to clear a section, so I for one echo poke. -- NUKLEAR IIV 14:54, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

IMO a tag for specific sections would be a good idea. On the Escape suggestions page, for example, there are at least 3 suggestions which say "There's no problem here" or "Stop saying this is OP" and stuff. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:81.105.50.128 (talk).

Which I wipe on a regular basis. -- NUKLEAR IIV 10:52, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Aber, that true. But. As you say, it would be something like. Very much so. Sooo use the existing one. Backsword 14:18, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Skill Feedback

Isaiah (Arena Net's main skill balancer and the guy from balance who reads the wiki, if someone didn't know that) has proposed a system in which the community makes a list of subjects for he to address, given how the skill feedback pages have too many items for Isaiah to reply one by one. Given how this discussion is likely going to be incredibly huge, I would rather have it here between everyone and then propose something to Isaiah than do all of it on his talk page. The first ideas I have are:

• Try to make a list of which issues are more urgent and/or more important, and present that (small) list with a few comments for Isaiah to talk about. This could be achieved by the entire community working together on said list.
• The idea above would take an eternity; I would not be surprised if by the time a list is actually agreed by everyone, a skill update would have already changed most of its content. We could get a few individuals to take the issues already on the Skill Feedback section (in which everyone may contribute), see what they believe is more important/urgent, compile them into a list and present it to Isaiah. Pretty much like the Suggestion Masters position I defended some sections above (and also rejected some sections above).
• Ignore what Isaiah said, since that's not really fitting for a wiki. That's an option, but one I'm not fond of, for obvious reasons : P

Thoughts? Ideas? IMO, this may be a good opportunity if managed well. Erasculio 01:55, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Anything to streamline the system and make it more effective and efficient. I like the general idea presented in your first bullet, but tragically, you raise valid concerns in your second bullet. We would need some sort of upper group to decide on issues to present to Izzy, obviously going by general community, screaming-anon consensus. Now, true consensus would never be reached, so we would simply have to accept the most popular idea. Not everyone would be skipping down the street in happiness at the end of the day, but oh well, we'll deal with it, things got done. A "Suggestion Master" position has its merits and drawbacks, but in this case, I don't really see any other way to moderate this if we want it implemented. calor (talk) 02:00, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, my idea is to enlist poke to make a mini version of GWWT for Anet folks that they could just tag the suggestion/feedback pages as read, even if they don't have time to actually comment/respond. I think it would give people the sense that what they are saying IS being heard (even if not listened to). For those of you who don't know what GWWT is/does, it is a script added to a user's monobook.js that gives them extra tools in the nav bar to the left that allows you to place tags (image tags, guild tags, delete tags, etc) with 2 clicks of your mouse without having to go into edit or anything. -- Wyn 02:05, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

IMO, the easiest (and maybe best) way to do this would be to merge the GWWT functionality with the icons used by the Bug Report team here on the wiki (, , etc) so Isaiah would easily mark what has been read and what hasn't. But Isaiah spoke against this system in his talk page, and I do see one advantage on his idea of making a list: while making sure he has read is a great way to get our feedback to him, giving him a list of things to reply about is a better way to get feedback from him to us. Erasculio 02:10, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

You're always going to have people who say "X needs to be fixed/buffed" and a sizeable amount of people who disagree. Many players, especially people who haven't played before nightfall was introduced, have a more shallow concept of how balance in this game should be. Many people honestly believe thumpers and assassacasters are balanced. How do you plan to make a solid list of things that need to be changed? ~Shard 02:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe a couple people who seem to have decent sense of balance who can vote on whether or not something is too strong/weak. There's still the problem of who to pick, and who has the authority to pick. ~Shard 02:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the "best" solution is, nor the "easiest" (though I suppose the marking system would be the simplest to agree upon...), but I'm inclined to think that, assuming, for a moment, that we want to make this happen in some fashion, the solution most likely to have the most overall impact would be the second one proposed by Erasculio. The first solution, I'm afraid I have to rule out altogether; it's impractical. As to the marking system, even if we're only interested in Izzy reading the suggestions (and not receiving feedback), at the rate we receive suggestions, I'm not sure how effective it would be. In my mind, the first solution has two key merits: (1) it dramatically increases the likelihood that the more "well-thought out" or, for lack of a better term, "better" solutions will be considered and (2) Izzy may actually have time to respond in some fashion -- which has a number of rather obvious benefits. *Defiant Elements* +talk 02:23, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not against continuing to sort through, I just think people need to see some evidence that their suggestions are being at least seen. That was the big argument when we took everything off Izzy's page... that no one at Anet looked at the suggestion/feedback pages.... -- Wyn 02:29, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

All ANet feedback pages (Izzy, Gaile, etc, I'll just write Izzy from now on, but this goes for all of them) have suffered from one major drawback right from the start: An implicit assumption/guarantee that everyone should have a chance to be heard by Izzy. That has lead to too many people demanding attention from Izzy and in turn, Izzy not paying any attention at all anymore.

How to solve that? There needs to be some sort of mechanism that reduces the amount of info getting through to him. Why can the community not maintain one page (or a small amount of pages) that summarizes all current suggestions. Just as with other controversial topics, there might be disagreement over what to put onto that pages, but after all that is the business wikis are in: Getting many editors, even some who might disagree, to come up with one readable article in the end. --Xeeron 15:10, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I see your point Xeeron, the only problem is as you say, the sheer volume of stuff. Currently the community is stepping up and helping clean some of those areas of things that don't belong/don't make sense, however, trying to maintain a single page would mean, imo some sort of vetting/voting system where only those suggestions/ideas that passed would be listed, and we have already gone over why that would just be a bad idea... Everyone submitting ideas believes their idea is 'good' and deserves a chance to be seen by Anet and would be trying to add their idea to the 'list'. -- Wyn 15:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I am not thinking about a bullet point list, but rather formulated text including reasoning in whole sentences. It is much easier to come to some common ground if you put more than simply "*Shadow Stepping needs to be nerfed". --Xeeron 15:30, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Some people do that. The problem is that 90% of the fanbois do not. They say "OMG WOUNDING STRIE IS 2 GUD NERF PL0X" and don't say why. I can see how izzy could be suffering trying to read those pages. Most of them are copies of already mentioned suggestions, some don't make any sense at all or aren't explained, and some make you want to bang your head against a wall because no mentally competent human being would ever come up with ideas so stupid (anyone read the thing about giving bows and daggers more damage to counter scythes?)

I wouldn't mind a voting system, but again, I doubt it would work too well. Maybe restrict voting to people who have a certain edit count, to prevent anons and new accounts from adding error. We could always see what happens, and if it sucks, get rid of it. ~Shard 04:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the vetting/voting option has already been discussed and discarded as just repeating history (build section on GWiki) I think what Nuklear is doing, going through and delete tagging those suggestions that just don't make sense, archiving those issues that have already been resolved, and allowing 3 days of discussion is working, but could be stepped up a bit. -- Wyn 04:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

IMO, we could ask Nuklear (who is reading/has read all those articles anyway) to take the 10 best/most urgent suggestions there and present them to Isaiah. Erasculio 04:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

But how would he choose from the 20 equally game-breaking things in the game 0_o ~Shard 05:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Help him : D We also don't have to do everything at the same time. The idea would not be to take a single list with ten items, present it to Isaiah and never do it again, rather to make a small list, give it to him so he replies, and after some time (a week? That's IMO up to him) give him another list, with other issues. Hopefully we would be able to discuss at least the most broken aspects of the game, given enough time. Erasculio 12:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

What happens if someone adds "OMG RURIKS SORD IS AWSOME" to the Prince Rurik page? It gets reverted right away, with out any procedural ado. The same could happen to such suggestions once we combine them on one page. The work involved in keeping one page clean is MUCH easier than keeping 1000s of subpages clean. --Xeeron 08:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we should merge the suggestion pages. ArenaNet:Guild Wars suggestions and ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions are unwieldy messes, and skill feedback pages were nearly as bad before they got split. Most of the skill feedback pages and suggestion pages are fairly clean and concise, and IMO the skill feedback pages will improve further if we implement one of the proposed formatting guidelines (both of which explicitly state that it's okay to remove bad or non-serious suggestions). On the other hand, being able to see feedback for multiple skills together on one page could also be useful. We could use DPL to gain the advantages of centralized skill feedback pages while avoiding their drawbacks and keeping the advantages of feedback pages for individual skills. -- Gordon Ecker 09:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, it's late and I probably misinterpreted your suggestion. We could create a project, perhaps at Guild Wars Wiki:Projects/Skill feedback summaries, to create reports. Although I think we should focus our coverage on the more urgent issues, I think we should try to cover overpowered and underpowered skills for all professions in PvE and all PvP formats over time. -- Gordon Ecker 10:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

IMO, the problem with that is how it would be too massive, which translates to too time consuming, especially given how subjective some of those concerns are (like Shard said above, some people do think that assacasters are balanced, for example). That idea could be useful for a long range project not linked to Isaiah's talk page, but as far as presenting stuff for Isaiah so he talks about it, a more dynamic, concise and selective system would be better, I think. Erasculio 12:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

A summary of all suggestions for GW2 can be found here, just to provide a little clarity to the discussion. (Terra Xin 23:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC))

Guys, I've been trying to stay out of this, but it seems to me that the time has come for me take a more direct approach in this section.

As many of you know, I've been cleaning out the skill feedback pages. Now, suprisingly, the flame I've recieved has been minimum. I have the sysops to thank for this outcome, and already (if I may say so myself) I can see the fruits of my labors - Izzy has been more active in the wiki of late.

However, erascullio is right that the suggestion pages are not helping anyone atm. They are just too big for anyone with a life (Re: not a GW player) to totally encompress. Therefore, it is unreasonable to assume that izzy has been reading those pages, and quite frankly, he doesn't need to.

I fully oppose the "read - not read" system above. It is completely irrelevant to the purpose of the suggestion pages. They are not about making a few anons or users feel good about themselves - yay I mades a suggestion - they are about making the game better. Can anyone here honestly say that a system that will only complicate matters for izzy only for our own sakes will make the game better, by any measure? I didn't think so.

A while ago, Grinch has said "Spoonfeed information whereever possible, because people are lazy by nature" on a build discussion. Cynicism aside, I think this completely applies to izzy. We, as the wiki community, should strive to spoonfeed good suggestion to Izzy. Not because he is lazy, but because it's going to make life a lot less miserable for everyone (Myself included).

How are we to do this? Goddamn suggestion masters. There are a handful (roughly 10 people) of peeps here who are active and knowledgable about game balance. Let them form a list of 10 viable suggetions every week, and let them post on Izzy's page. All our problems are instantly solved.

Finally, I would like to remind people again: The suggestion pages are not rant pages. They are not "lol izzy fails" pages. They are not bug noticeboards. They are not "this is how u balance nub" pages. They are not "Hey check me out - I mades a post" pages (on this vein, I propose all suggestions be made without any signatures or usernames). They are skill feedback and balance pages. They are meant to improve the game directly. Anything that doesn't belong in that category is second priority and has probably recieved a delete tag from Me. -- NUKLEAR IIV 09:10, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

A bit redudantly, but I agree with Nuklear. Erasculio 20:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

→ moved from User talk:Isaiah Cartwright

I might have an idea.Every X days you take 5 skills you think are a problem and ppl suggest on them.And say why they think its a problem and why they dont think its a problem.Another few ppl (for example auron,ensign and chop chop the panda (the last one because i just love the name again its an EXAMPLE)) add another 5 suggestions.For example you say :
WoD is a problem
Wounding strike is a problem
Wastrels collapse is a problem
Searing flames is a problem and
reversal of fortune is a problem.
Ppl will agree on the first 4 but will say god izzy no remember you once said RoF is the keystone skill of the monks its balanced and good (i know you would never say reversal of fortune is imba again an example).Then for example the ilikepandas2 club adds :
Weapon of warding shouldnt exist BECAUSE
Save yourselves shouldnt exist BECAUSE
pls bring skill X back into the meta BECAUSE
can you fix the format of GvG BEcause this this and this.
Its just a suggestions i'm just saying that even with many articles deleted (before i couldnt even blame you if you didnt read them) its still impossible to read them all.Lilondra *poke* 18:36, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Or, we could post the top 10 most important suggestion here for you to easily access. -- NUKLEAR IIV 10:58, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Nuke the problem is that if we let the whole community make a top 10 then we would get eviscerate as overpowered bull strike as underpowered ,etc ... I think its best that a small group izzy chooses on this wiki gets rights to vote for a top 5 and izzy himself makes a top 5 Lilondra *poke* 12:09, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. Let me make the top ten (j/k, but you get the idea.) -- NUKLEAR IIV 15:02, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

If you would make the top 10 gw would survive (if you would balance the top 10 half of gw would survive ).We need to ask the person who has his own shrine (ensign) Lilondra [Image:User Lilondra Eviscerate.jpg|19x19px]]*poke* 16:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't believe balance has gotten so bad that lots of players are willing to help him for free. ~Shard 06:38, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

If we didn't have a wiki then we wouldn't have this problem. But nooooo, Anet wanted to improve player-to-developer relations... About the idea, the worst thing that could happen is that the wiki comes to a consensus towards how to list a top 10... and then every forum will be watching this space - because if Anet agree to our proposal, then the word will get out. There's a good chance that users will register here and spam their idea until it makes the list. Overall, its: Are we trying to tidy the pages so that we have room for more useless info to fall in? (Terra Xin 09:03, 21 September 2008 (UTC))

Actually i'm not helping him for free if we help him we get a better game ( or thats the idea) win-win.And thats why i say SOME people should choose the skills and not the community as we would get reapers sweep with 1/4th second cast time and buffed damage :p Lilondra [Image:User_Lilondra_Eviscerate.jpg|19x19px]]*poke* 09:35, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe someone could just pick the skill suggestions with the most posts or the strongest agreement or whatever on them (e.g. Escape, Rending Touch, et.c.) and forward them. Aside from anything, one of the worst things about these is that the most broken or contentious skills get the most suggestions made on them (some people actually post suggestions which have already been suggested) and get realy clogged up so it's hard for Izzy to read them. Synopsisising (is that even a word?) them could really help. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.105.50.128 (talk • contribs) at 14:49, 21 September 2008 (UTC).

Wait, so some of you want it so only a few people get to pick what skills are shown to Izzy and what arguements are shown? Talk about a one sided supposed balance. Thats worse than the current system since it'll end with personal bias against skills. You'll have people who think Class-X shouldn't have access to Skill-A's functions because they don't believe that class should do that. We'd have even less versatility in the professions than we currently do. It would be idiotic to assume the people choosing the skills to be shown to Izzy wouldn't be based on what they want, so trying to claim having good faith in them is simply absurd. The whole premise of voting for certian skills by the whole community or letting a select few decide is a completly flawed concept begging for disaster. So instead of continuing to debate on how you can set up a flawed voting system or a biased person or group to select the skills, why not work on comming up with another means that isn't a guaranteed falure? 67.159.44.138 20:20, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Such as? calor (talk) 20:23, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

67.159 has a point, voting system won't help, because then have people posting topics that doesn't make sense or help the situation , while a group of few would have a bias idea on how to balance, plus just because izzy reads a suggestion, doesn't mean it would get picked, both ideas have merit thought, but i think the group idea can be worked around so it would be a fair way for the wiki comunity to have there ideas seen,

• 5 people are pick (how they are pick is up for some debate, but the people picked should have a open-minded view of the game while understanding the complexity of it)
• they can't make suggestion only read them and bring them to izzy's attention
• they go through the pages reading suggestion made,
• they pick the ideas they think should be presented.
• then they post those ideas on a page for everyone to see, the general wiki can discuss there opinion and suggestion any idea on the talk page ( but the idea won't be change on the main page unless one of the 5 has done it)
• izzy can look at this page and discuss his opinion of them
• after awhile those 5 would get replace so there a fresh view.

this would give user feedback without i hope too much clutter. and i know this would be hard to do, but i just thik 5 people looking at a page is better then one--Metal Sazz 23:40, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Another point to consider is how the issues would be chosen. The obvious way is the highest priority ones, such as the most OP or broken or the ones being most abused. However, this way only those skills will get improved and poor, forgotten ones will stay poor and forgotten since they're not really high priority. IMO at least one or two skills submitted each time should be underpowered skills so that the meta doesn't get too stagnant - perhaps those with the most innovative suggestions et.c. on them? I know that's pretty subjective (which brings us back to the problem of the people doing the choosing in the first place) but surely it's obvious to see on a skill suggestion's talk page whether the community here approve of it or not at least (i.e. if there're a lot of people saying "Yes, cool idea" et.c. then it's probably worth considering at least).81.105.50.128 16:18, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

IMO, we could ask four contributors to talk among themselves and then select the issues to be presented each month (or each 15 days, depending of what Isaiah thinks), so they complement each other and thus avoid a single person's bias. I vote for (if they want to do it, of course) Nuklear, Auron, Shard and Armond. Most of those have been concerned about buffing underpowered skills in the past, so I'm not worried that they would only pick ideas to nerf skills. Erasculio 16:37, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

A comittee is problably the most practical and politicaly correct way to go. -- NUKLEAR IIV 17:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

i just want to say that the best way this could work is have a committee that comes up with a list of 10 issues and posts them the first week of the month. the next week the community comments posts and points out issues they have with that list apropet changes are made and then the last week it would be submitted to izzy, he would in turn respond. rinse repeat and over a long enough time line huge things would get fixed and under powered things would get buffed and so on. the list could also be posted on some of the fame sites but that might be going into stuff we don't want to weed though. switching out who makes the list would be key to keeping it far. i think this way of a list could be done for suggestions to guild was 1 so we as a community can see changes we actually want. put into the game.75.172.44.33 17:36, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess to try and put my point into math terms which my brain understands better. I can only answer X questions per week, the community creates Y questions per week. If Y > X which is likely as there are more of you then me, and my time is limited, then not everyone will be answered. So either I pick which X questions get answered, or the community does. If the community gets to pick it could create some more involvement, if not we need to create a better system to set up some expectations because in the end X is only going to stay the same or get smaller, and Y is only going to get bigger. Which leads to either people stopping to make suggestions or frustrated people. The system we have is fine as long as Y < X, but as that is not very practical and doesn't scale well it stops working. Izzy @-'---- 18:02, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

So what the comittee will do is x-n-1 where n is y-x. -- NUKLEAR IIV 18:09, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

"I vote for (if they want to do it, of course) Nuklear, Auron, Shard and Armond." You are joking right? Armond would not do since he has shown multiple times that he is more than biased, particually to only having warriors as the damage dealers and wants anything destroyed that can actually hender tham. Shard has shown quite a bit that he is biased against anything that does not fit his personal idea of a balanced team build. He has also shown that he greatly favors limiting classes rather than keeping them versital. Auron is a Bueracrat so some people would be afraid to question his choices. Nuklear has also shown to be personally biased based upon what he considers to be a balanced team build. Shard, Armond, and Nuklear are all buddies so if any of them get it the others have a lot of pull when they should not and if all of them get it then well the only things presented will be what they want even more so. Also, it's easy to make dummy accounts for posting ideas and some of them may already have dummy accounts, so even more of fixing ideas presented if a person cannot select their own ideas. 67.159.44.138 18:36, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Izzy, the community can't pick as this topic has shown that greatly. Personal biased comes into far to much and you would have people voting for their buddies to be the ones picking and so forth. About the only way is to scrap all the current skill pages and make them anew. Then you select one skill from each profession, totalling ten skills in all, to address each week. This way it stays the least unbiased. 67.159.44.138 18:36, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

What you consider to be the "bias" is the reason why we're not asking a single person, rather a group of individuals to pick what to present to Isaiah. Armond, Shard and Nuklear have already shown a good grasp of balance in the game (regardless if someone disagrees with them and tries to dismiss their opinions as just bias); the same applies to Auron, as seen in how some users ask their opinions about balance suggestions, and since a bureaucrat is not expected to have greater say in content matters than anyone else, people are not expected, or supposed to, be afraid of disagreeing with him. And while some of the individuals I suggested are friends, all of them have disagreed with each other regarding balance issues.

That system could work, IMO. Asking people to limit their feedback to only ten skills (unlike the proposed system, in which there's no limit) and keeping a system in which there's no limit to how many suggestions Isaiah would have to read (because reading ten skills with ten suggestions each isn't much different from reading one hundred skills with one suggestion each) would, in other hand, not work. Erasculio 18:47, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not test it yourselves ? Each person who proposed skill balances study all other people propositions. Let see how much time it will take and let see if someone will get pissed of before the end. Yseron - 90.9.252.190 18:57, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

(EC)You're joking, aren't you? Seriously, I could write a 10 page essay on how and why you fail, but a single quote will do the trick:

"Nuklear has also shown to be personally biased based upon what he considers to be a balanced team build."

Pure brilliance, right there. I mean, yeah, guilty-as-charged I guess, ZOMG I'm biased towards balance. Sorry, I'll try to be better.

Also, you other remarks and assumptions in bad faith are laughable. I have yet to see Armond act in any biased way, nor have I seen shard be biased when it comes to balance. Really, stop making baseless accusations, you are not helping.

Want the best comittee? Ensign, Readem and Auron. All the problems instantly go away. Ensign doesn't bother with this wiki these days (gee, wonder why) and Readem is also very infrequent. So you are not going to ge them. Fine, Time, tank, Skakid, grinch, me, auron, Shard, Armond. Choose among these people, I don't think you'll be able to come up with a better roster. If you can, please be my guest. Oh, I forgot, you didn't actually contribute consturctively here, did you?

Furthermore, I have a sockpuppet. Yes, I accept that. Her name is Gaile. That holds about the same force as you accuse random people of already having socks. Geniously persuasive, but, again, you're not helping.

Finanlly, and I'll say this as nicely as possible, Whoru? What have you done to make the balance pages better? What gives you the right to make baseless accusations on well-estabished users that work for the good of this wiki? -- NUKLEAR IIV 19:03, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

That doesn't help the situation at all. Focus on the issue, and don't demean other people contributing to the discussion -- argue against their argument, not their person.

I agree in part on the accusations of bias, in that it doesn't exist (or isn't a negative issue). Skill balance is quite subjective, and the quality of each person's grasp on skill balance will ultimately differ. That is not bias; that is a difference of opinion. Appealing to fear in the sense that "these people will ultimately be biased and passed-on issues will be corrupt" is false; there hasn't been any evidence to show that these people, i.e. the people that are chosen, are indeed biased; if they are biased, and that bias is towards balancing the game, we have no problem. We don't even know who they'll be. Each person may have a different take on which issues are more important, but, as I said, that's not bias. In an ideal situation, if are to take the suggestion-master route, we are to have a number of people who will consider each issue brought up, responses to issues, the actual validity of each issue, and how that issue ranks in the overall scheme of things. With a group of people, it's likely we'll reach a fair, well-thought-out, and relatively quickly-produced list of issues which will be passed to Izzy; at least, more likely than just having one person or everyone. -- Brains12 \ talk 19:15, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

1. what about me :p (:') ) 2.nuklear and shard say WHY they want to buff or nerf something they dont do it at random 3.you dont have to worry about being afraid of auron if hes mad at you chances are youre wrong :p Lilondra *poke* 19:27, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Saying this quickly; I think that the suggestion-master route is the best way to go. As long as we have people who are willing to do this and commit the time to it, as well as having a pretty good idea of game balance. A small exclusive group that could change every few months or something would be fine with me (and even if it stayed the same people all the time I wouldn't mind it). --Shadowphoenix 19:34, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Also dont forget that Izzy is testing your ability to cooperate in a "professional" way. Should our favorite heros fail to come up with an acceptable solution, he will have made a point that balancing is not for everyone. We count on you for this might well be a unique opportunity! Yseron - 90.9.252.190 19:43, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

It's also a relatively simple way of doing this. Choosing a single person would likely lead to a very long discussion trying to find the perfect candidate for the job; and in the end, I doubt such person exists. Trying to use everyone would take far too much time and add far too much complexity just to get people to agree on a single list. Using a small committee to gather filter everyone's opinions and add their own would still give us some discussion while allowing the lists to be created within a reasonable amount of time. Erasculio 19:41, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I wasn't trying to imply that a single person would do the job, actually I think that would be counter productive to the process, the goal is to come up with a system that makes everyone feel more involved as I think the problem is I can't answer all the questions and thus we need a system to solve that. Let me explain a bit more as to clear up confusion. (Keep in mind I understand no technical limitations so my concept is completely blue sky)

• I basically refer to suggestions as questions, because as I read through them, most of the time they are questions. Often in form of statements like "this is too strong or too weak" but in the end what someone is saying is "this is too strong or too weak, why don't you change it? Here is a suggestion!"
• We continue to have someone keep the Suggestions clean and orderly, removing misformated, and rude statements.
• We set up some sort of vote system, that allowed anyone to vote for questions they through where interesting, and they would like to hear answer's too.
• We then have some stack ranking system that then lists all the suggestions in order by vote.

The goal here is to allow everyone to be involved in the process, sure some questions are just going to become super popular because they are a hot topic, but it seems like hot topic questions are the ones you would want to answer first anyway so this seems good. In general the goal is to allow everyone to throw their 2 cents in, and if you gave everyone say like 5 votes per week, anyone could slowly stack up a question and one day their question would get to the top, and get answered. Anyway just my random wiki noob idea. :) Also keep in mind even through I read the suggestions, 99% of them is going to be responses about why we can't change it, or just explaining why we did stuff, but I think information flow is important and fun. I just want people to feel involved not frustrated. Izzy @-'---- 22:13, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary header/segue

Erasculio's logic is flawless. Advancing the discussion, what amount of time are we going to allot for various steps in the process? calor (talk) 19:46, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Unless there is any other significant and meaningful opposition, I volunteer to be a member of this community. -- NUKLEAR IIV 19:51, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Whoa, hold your horses buddy lol. We need to discuss this a bit more; there are a few questions I want to ask. If we do this, will this be a postion similar to the "Build Master" postion on PvX wiki, meaning that it is an actual "admin-like" postion (in the admin policy and having bcrats give the right etc.); or are we going to just have a group? How are we going to go about recuriting members for this? How many members should we have in this group? Should these members have a term, or just serve for life (or w/e)? Just wanted to get a few questions out that might be asked about this. --Shadowphoenix 19:58, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) nuclear, dont you mean you volunteer to be a member of this committee you already are a member of the community. the only problem i have with this idea is not having expiration dates for the committee members. so as long as we switch them out every 3 months or so i would be happy.75.172.44.33 20:01, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Have we even decided how many suggestions to give izzy? or would that be decided by this committee? --JonTheMon 20:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

i think that would be decided by izzy. i think there should be 5 people on the committee. so there is always a tie breaker. and that they aren't admin like but more of a group. so we don't have to write new policy for this.75.172.44.33 20:11, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

IMO, the committee could use between 3 to 5 people (I favor 4 myself; it does not have tie breakers, but hopefully nothing will be a matter of voting), and present ten issues at any given time to Isaiah, leaving him as long as he needs to address everything. Once he has replied, the committee prepares itself to submit more stuff (taking in consideration what Isaiah has just said), and so on. How long the committee would have to make their list depends, for example of how many members it has and how many issues are going to presented, but IMO fifteen days is enough (hopefully we would be able to have 15 days for the committee to ask stuff, and 15 more days for Isaiah to reply, but it depends on his workload).

Given how the users in question won't really be given any admin powers (in other words, no extra technical power than what the average user has), I don't think we need proper elections and etc. IMO, choosing them through simple consensus (as in, the result of this discussion) would be enough. Erasculio 22:18, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Three seems too small to me; I would prefer four or five, preferably five because of the tiebreak reason (even if votes rarely/never occur, having a "majority" in any sort of debate is nice). Fifteen and fifteen seems nice. If that was implemented (or any month-based system), we should start it on the 1st and present on the 15th, purely for orderliness. As for the rotation of the committee, I would prefer the same group stays so an efficient system and line of communication can be developed. There's practically no way to "abuse" these powers, as there are no powers. If we saw a committee member was acting in an unbiased manner, then some sort of discussion for potential replacement could occur. calor (talk) 22:24, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think we should take it out a bit more as what ever we come up with is going to take a lot of time, and thus anytime we spend before hand saves us lots of time later, so id rather spend a few extra days thinking and talking now, to make sure we have a super strong system before jumping into anything. Also just brain storm some ideas, nothing says my idea is even a good one trust me I come up with a lot of random ideas every day. : ) Izzy @-'---- 22:27, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

great izzy, now we know who's fault Wastrels Collapse is. --Cursed Angel 23:07, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this should we well thought out before it's properly implemented, and I also agree that the "suggestion master" route is a good way to go. On that note, if I've read this right, I do not favor the 15/15 suggestion (fifteen days of gathering suggestions, fifteen days of responses) because that would have a tendency to make a lot of suggestions (and there will be more during the fifteen days Izzy is supposed to be responding, even if they don't get to him), and, quite frankly, walls of text do not turn Izzy on. It would be far too simple for him to see, realistically, 25 or 30 suggestions (quite frankly, that's one suggestion per day - a bit low, if you ask me) and procrastinate the whole thing off. A better solution, I think, would be to gather ten proposals over the course of the week and present them on a weekly basis (say, every Friday). Izzy, your opinion?

I think the number of questions and how often the questions get answered are pretty easy things to solve, and probably change as time goes on so they are less important things to debate over, and are more small details to figure out once we agree on the higher level system. Izzy @-'---- 23:23, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

As for the committee size: I have nothing against five people on the team, but I see no problems with four. Given that everything should be decided with consensus instead of voting, and how if someone like Auron or Ensign were on the team a majority would become meaningless, I don't see any reason to upgrade to five unless we can find a fifth person.

As for swapping people out, I... don't really see why we should have to do that. But, if it makes people feel better, I would support a reconfirmation type thing every... say, month? It would depend on how often the suggestions go to Izzy, but I think a month sounds like a good base.

I want to thank Erasculio for putting my name out there, but for now I think I'm going to say I don't think I would be a good candidate for the position (if that's what we end up agreeing to do) unless someone not a close friend of mine nominates me. (Specifically, that would mean someone not Auron, Nuke, Shard, or Erasculio, I suppose.)

Also, just to throw it out there: For those of you who think Auron, Nuke, Shard, and I would make an awful team because I'm friends with all the others and Nuke, Shard, and I are a sort of little circle, frankly, that's not relevant. A lot of the time we agree, but certainly not all of the time - as an example, I think Shard's superfettish against rits is unjustified, and Nuke's suggestion for Searing Flames is wonky and bad. Just two examples here.

In b4 EC. -- Armond Warblade 23:01, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I managed to not get an edit conflict there. Alright, here's another thing I just thought up.

Just as Izzy can't be expected to read through the entire section of the wiki devoted to skill suggestions, I don't think we can fairly expect the committee to do so - if only because there's no realistic way to add new pages to your watchlist as they're created. Likewise, trying to confine all the suggestions that are up for consideration by the committee to one page - or even ten pages - is going to be a failure, if only because the wiki is not designed to cope with such a massive influx of information. (The ideal solution to this problem would be an official skill balance forum, but as I recall, there's some corporate issues standing in the way there.)

Therefore, I propose a "theme" for the chunk of time that suggestions are being accepted - be it a theme for the week so suggestions are ready Friday, as per my idea, or a theme for the "fifteen" days that was mentioned above. This theme could be as simple as "itt paragons", or something more complex such as "this week, our focus is going to be on the way spells and signets interact with Fast Casting and what effect that has in common team builds". Other ideas might be a melee damage theme, a "gimmicky builds" theme - though I doubt that one would be very popular - or a Team Arenas focus. I think you get the idea.

-- Armond Warblade 23:11, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

What if the theme(s?) itself was to be voted by all users during the first week or the first few days ? Or if the theme for the next session was to be voted during a current session ? Yseron - 90.9.252.190 23:21, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

What about my suggestion above? It's a bit left field from a "committee " type system, I really worry about a committee type of system, because the main goal in my mind is to allow more people to be involved and adding 5 more people isn't really all that many, where as a system that allowed near infinite number of people to be involved scaled better, and solves the problem in a more realistic manor. Izzy @-'---- 23:35, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The idea with a committee is that they would take the feedback everyone makes at the Skill Feedback section and pick what to show you; so in some way everyone would be involved, as everyone would be able to propose something. However, if you would like a voting system more, I guess we could try to think about one... Erasculio 23:40, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey I'll go make 10 socks in about 30 sec, owell... --Cursed Angel 23:55, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

@Izzy: The thing about a voting system is that there will be people who suggest things like "make Eviscerate only one adrenaline and beef up its bonus damage because Wounding Strike is more spammable and does more damage, and blockweb and blind make it take as long to get that one adrenaline as the recharge on WS" because they truly believe it, and then there will be people who vote for that suggestion to be presented to you "for the lulz". Right there, that's one of our ten suggestions that's essentially a waste, because you and I both know that's not a realistic possibility for the game. A committee lets someone else, someone more used to the wiki and more willing to dig through huge messes, deal with the harder job of telling people "no, I'm sorry, we can't do that" - similar to PvX:WELL, if you will.

People will still have input in that they can make suggestions. The only change the committee will make is that those suggestions are filtered before they find you - which is a lot better than their suggestions being, in their eyes, completely ignored by you.

-- Armond Warblade 00:10, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Someone making a bad suggestion is just not going to get a whole lot of votes, and thus is going to get lost in the list and likely never answered. I mean it's just as likely that a committee doesn't have too many good questions to choose from one week, or something. Something about a Voting system allows that person who makes the 1 adrenaline suggestion to go vote on questions he really likes and makes him keep coming back just to read the answers and other peoples questions that I really like. Something about being part of the process really keeps people interested, where as a committee, can easily make someone feel like their answers are being ignored, or that the system is unfair. Izzy @-'---- 01:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Would the themes also be put at risk with a voting system ? Yseron - 90.9.252.190 00:14, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Only if it obstructed important issues getting fixed. I suppose they could be put to vote if the options were all relatively important issues, but... I honestly don't like votes, and I think it would be better if the committee took the week or so they had to look into people's opinions and what's going on with the game at the time. Really, while I'm not fond of votes, a poll is fine - I could see a poll about "these are some of the bigger issues; what do you guys feel like dealing with?" and then the results of that poll could be used to influence the next theme. -- Armond Warblade 01:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

brain has a point about the bias issue, we have our own opinions on certain subjects which comes from our own experiences. Some one who mainly does one part of the game like random arena, will have a different view then some one who does alots of farming. It's just that some people's opinion will hit you like a ton of bricks, and others would view that as bias. And really, it would be. Its hard not to favour your own ideas over another, human nature if you will. But that why switching the 5 people often will help that situation. i was thinking every skill update or month which ever comes first. Also having only 25-30/month is not a bad idea, ideas that where view by this group would be put on a different page then the general suggestion pages, where everyone and izzy would see and discuss about it, i think this could work. I also like the theme concept, where a large amount of Class A skills are look at instead of a small amount of skills from class A-J.

also to izzy's point, i think that what this group would be for, any suggestion made by the general wiki show have a informed discussion about the skill involved if it was to be considered, and this group would help maintain this board help keep it organized, while present the idea that while informative. the voting system imo i don't think would work out too well, because then you would have many people voting for suggestions like to revert ursan or the many QQ'er that make a suggestion over a certain skill after an update. the group would just at like a filter more or less( like armond had posted while i was typeing this up), cause what would be better? Pages and pages of "This skill Over/Under powered, do this, this and this"; or one page that has all skills that was viewed by the wiki comunity (who want to see a better game) as a problem--Metal Sazz 00:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Who's actually qualified for a committee seat? How does one make that determination? Someone who plays a couple characters on occasion but spends more time creating page after page of skill balances... or someone who doesn't or hasn't ever posted balance suggestions on the wiki before because they felt it pointless as there was no official format to submit them and as such they felt the only reason to create such lists was to seek approval from their wiki-pears, which ultimately doesn't server much purpose. Is someone like myself with multiple accounts and who plays all the classes constantly and has hands-on experience with all the skills, and yet still isn't biased towards one or class or another, a better choice than someone who seldom if ever plays Guild wars, but spends a lot of time discussing the game with others or watching other's play it via observer mode? Do you give one person better credentials over another simply because they spend more of their free time on the wiki than others do, and do you value more time spent socializing on the wiki over actual hours spent in the game?

I know that sounds like an argument for why I'd be a good choice for the committee, but it's not. While obviously qualified enough, I doubt that I'd be willing to dedicate enough time to the wiki to fill the roll... but there are others, like myself, who play excessive amounts of time and who not only have experience with all the classes, but also no bias or preference over one or another... and I think it would be equally important to have an even mixture of both those kinds of people, and those who theorize about the skills and the balance from their observations and the observations of others, instead of their own personal in-game experience. I just don't see an equal and balanced group being chosen for such a committee, and in the worse case scenario a group of friends being placed on the committee, who all think along the same line but don't always consider the bigger picture, would be ultimately more destructive to the game, and introduce more limitations on play than already exist. I'm just not sure that a fair and impartial group of individuals who all have unique ideas and information to bring into consideration is what we would end up with an elected committee. I'm going to have to agree with Izzy on this one, a committee doesn't seem to be the way to go. ~ J.Kougar 00:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe something ingame so the people who play the game can decide there, if that not too hard to program :\, just throwing taht out there--Metal Sazz 00:54, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

We'd like to get this going by 2010, so that's out of the question. calor (talk) 01:03, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Who's qualified for the committee? People who know how to balance the game, obviously. That makes your points about "not favoring one class over the others" invalid, as it would mean giving Assassins and Dervishes the same amount of favor as Warriors, despite their inherent benefits over warriors (AoE huge crits and immunity to positioning). There are definitely problems with the game that came about as a result of the introduction of new classes; new mechanics were introduced, but in many cases viable counters weren't, and in no cases were additional skill slots introduced to make the counters introduced usable.

The other thing is, having played the game for over nine thousand hours over fifty accounts doesn't necessarily make you insanely knowledgeable about it. Brains are required for this position, and spending six hours a day saying "LOL IM HITTIN MAH FRENZY AND MAH MENDIN NOW" doesn't qualify you for the position (and there are people who do that; not necessarily you, but there are people who do that).

The other thing is that just ripping stats from the database only tells us about the accounts, not the players - outside of J.Kougar's word, for example, we have little solid proof that he does indeed own all the accounts he says he does - though I suppose IP logging and tracing would help that - and he's already admitted that his fiance spends a good chunk of time on his account. Now, let's take some random dude who's spent as much or more time in game as he has... Now we have no reliable way to prove that he does indeed own all the accounts, nor that he's not sharing them... At least with Mr. Kougar we know him enough to trust him. ;)

Your comment about "a bunch of friends agreeing but missing important points" worries me. Do you really think we'd put a bunch of people on a committee as important as this if they weren't able to see a lot of issues at once? If we were to not allow people onto the council on the basis that they're friends - just for the sake of looking into extremes - we could never have Auron, Ensign, JR, and Red on the council, and I honestly have a lot of trouble figuring out a better committee. (Out of curiosity, was that a thinly veiled zing at what you think would happen if Shard, Nuke, Auron, and I were the committee? If so, please say so so I can address it properly; if not, well, not.)

-- Armond Warblade 01:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

It just seems to be like the committee really pulls the power away from the common user, and gives it to the people involved in the committee. The goal is to make a system where a million people could feel like felt involved, and having some committee handle that will just become a legalistic nightmare where you spend more time managing the act of picking questions then it would take me to actually do it. This is so a P=NP problem :P gotta solve this assuming there is an infinite number of people or we are going to be back here having this same talk in a few months. Izzy @-'---- 01:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I hate to burst your bathtub bubbles, but both can't happen in perfect harmony. If we let every single user add to the list, then you'd see some 500 suggestions a week. If we let a small committee make the decisions based on suggestions by everyone, then you see a very limited number of suggestions a week/2 weeks/month/your set interval. The committee option at least allows people to make suggestions. If they make good, well-thought out suggestions, it will be seen by the committee. calor (talk) 01:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The concept was let ever user add to the list, and ever user vote on the list, then I answer the top 10 or so (10 was a random number). Each week, this mean no matter if there are 5 million users or 20 users the list is just a stack ranked list that sorts itself based on votes, so the top 10 voted questions get answered. So even if 500 suggestions come in those 500 people can vote on 10 questions they really like, and the top 10 get answered. Izzy @-'---- 01:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't really think we have that many options. This isn't really a project to be added to the wiki main space, or even to the Arena Net Portal; rather, it's something to be added to Isaiah's talk page, and if he does not want it to go in one direction, he has the right to make it go in the direction he wants it to have. I don't think a voting system is going to work - with something of this size and visibility (the only thing in the wiki in which voting decides the outcome without anyone else's supervision), I believe we will have users making fake accounts just to disrupt the procedures. But if we need to build the system in order to be sure if it works or not, IMO let's do it. Erasculio 01:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

That's fair like I said I don't fully understand the systems or it's limitations I'm just trying to solve the problem assuming there an infinite number of people posting, because if we don't we are only bandaiding the problem. Either way, think on it some no need to jump to anything was just an idea to start some discussion :). Izzy @-'---- 01:47, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually Armond, I never said that not favoring one class over another or not having a bias opinion about which class should get better skills, equated to giving all the classes the same amount of damage with each skill. That's not balance. Balance is taking into consideration the inherent properties of a class and the class's primary attribute abilities and still balancing them out so that they are neither more or less powerful than another class. A Warrior should be able to do just as much damage as a Dervish or an Assassin... just in different ways, with different play styles. That way it's more about the skill instead of the skills, and each person can chose a class that fits their play style, or what play style they wish to play at the time, and be on par with other similar classes... at least on the bottom line, but tactics and skill (as well as choice of complementing skills), would ultimately decide the winner.

Having a committee of like-minded people who happen to all think that ProfessionX is the best and should be better than all the others, would only be counter productive... as would an entire committee who all believe that ProfessionY should only be able to do this one function, and ProfessionZ should be the only class capable of this or that.

Izzy is correct, it's would be neigh impossible to form a committee that would allow for the opinions and feedback from everything from casual players, to elite players, and even non-players to be heard. I think focusing more on his ideas for another system are going to be more productive in accomplishing what he's wanting. ~ J.Kougar 02:17, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

i would just like to point out that everything is biased regardless of what people say.75.172.44.33 02:23, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The obvious solution is to simply not appoint a committee biased like that, as I said. -- Armond Warblade 02:35, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

This all comes back to where we are now. If Izzy is determined that everyone is going to have a say in suggestions, then just leave it the way it is now. Let those who wish to continue doing a routine base level purge of suggestions that just have no merit (as Nuklear has been doing) and then let Izzy look through the rest, and decide which ones he wants to respond to. There is no way to please everyone here, and as has been brought up, this is for Izzy to decide in the long run. He won't get his 'list' because voting on the wiki is just nonsense. I personally think that a committee of Suggestion Masters would be the better route, but Izzy seems adamant that he wants more people involved than could be comfortably handled in that way. -- Wyn 02:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

@ 75.172. - To a large degree that's correct. There aren't many people, who for example, don't have a favorite profession on Guild Wars and who can offer up suggestions that both help and hinder each and every class. Typically people end up with a hidden or even subconscious desire to give a specific profession or build a little bit more power than the others, so that they can take advantage of that aspect in their own game play. Some people are more honest about it, clearly offering up suggestions for one or more professions that greatly overpowers them in comparison to other classes, but given you have all types that's why it's important to get feedback from as many people as possible, to attempt to please the majority of the users, but in ways that keeps skills and professions balanced.

That's what makes a system like what Izzy is suggesting, a better one... as if only registered users can add a suggestion, and only X amount of suggestions per week/month but each registered person is given X amount of votes to place for suggestions they approve of, then determining what issues need Izzy's attention the most should be far easier. Sure, limitations on the amount of suggestions you can make in a given amount of time would have to be put in place, as likely would requirements of a specific number of wiki contributions (similar to how they do the Bureaucrat elections) before you could vote or offer suggestions, to try and keep people from making excessive amounts of sock-puppet accounts just to fuel their own favorite suggestions. Still, I can see it being workable. ~ J.Kougar 02:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't, really, because that assumes the majority of people know what's good for the game. Ever been to AB? One of the guys in my group just said he couldn't spec into soul reaping because he didn't know how to use it. No joke. -- Armond Warblade 02:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Hence why a requirement of registration, a specific number of edits, and a limited number of suggestions per person, would help to filter out that sort of thing, assuming someone with that limited of knowledge of the game even comes to the wiki in the first place. Not to mention that if someone were to post the suggestion that Soul Reaping be changed to offer ten points of energy per rank you have in Soul Reaping, for every enemy, creature, spirit, and summons that dies anywhere on the map, then obviously the majority of intelligent people here aren't going to vote for it as a good suggestion, and even if they were to do so, Izzy would throw it out upon seeing it. ~ J.Kougar 02:54, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

True, that does make it possible for people to vote for a stupid idea just for laughs, or to get it seen by Izzy... but if the majority of users that edit enough to have a say, were willing to waste the number of votes it would take to get something like that pushed to the top, then I think that would go to show that Izzy would need to avoid the advice coming from this wiki, and look to other sources.  ;) ~ J.Kougar 03:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

See, I was kinda hoping to not waste Izzy's time with really stupid ideas. The problem is the smart people you think of are in the minority. -- Armond Warblade 03:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, it seems like Izzy wants the best of both worlds. Well, let's give it to him. We could implement a poll for suggestions and just present the top 5 of that in addition to having some "featured suggestions". So, half of what he would be formally presented with would be vetted, and half would be community generated. Another option in lieu of a poll would be number of edits in a period of time/text added to a suggestion. Dunno, just throwing things into the ring. --JonTheMon 03:38, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

As for limiting votes to registered users with X contributions, or limiting the number of suggestions anyone can make in a period of time, who do you propose is going to enforce those limits? Voting for Bcrat elections is one thing, you have a very limited number of options, so checking everyone's contributions is not that difficult, but the sheer volume of suggestions that come in DAILY would make this nearly impossible. Same with limiting the number of suggestions any one user can create in a given time period. It's not like there is a script that will stop them once they have reached their 'quota'. -- Wyn 03:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I suppose for the votes/person, you could just make 5 consecutive polls, and those are their 5 votes? And couldn't you tie in the poll to the contribs count to make sure they've contributed enough? And I don't think they're limiting suggestions, rather suggestions voted on. --JonTheMon 03:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

"That's what makes a system like what Izzy is suggesting, a better one... as if only registered users can add a suggestion, and only X amount of suggestions per week/month but each registered person is given X amount of votes to place for suggestions they approve of, then determining what issues need Izzy's attention the most should be far easier. Sure, limitations on the amount of suggestions you can make in a given amount of time would have to be put in place, as likely would requirements of a specific number of wiki contributions (similar to how they do the Bureaucrat elections) before you could vote or offer suggestions, to try and keep people from making excessive amounts of sock-puppet accounts just to fuel their own favorite suggestions." "Hence why a requirement of registration, a specific number of edits, and a limited number of suggestions per person"-- Wyn 04:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Once again however I think you are missing a big point here. By limiting who can create suggestions and how many they can create, and how many times they can vote, you will be eliminating a LARGE portion of the people who have been contributing suggestions. I think Izzy's whole point is that he doesn't want limits on who has a say or who can suggest. It is also a very large violation of the community spirit that makes up a wiki. It's one thing to limit who can vote for the users who will have final say in disputes to those users who understand how the wiki works as shown by their contributions. It's something totally different to put limitations on the Guild Wars community in general as to who might have a valid suggestion to offer to the development team. Oftentimes some of the best ideas come from people with a fresh perspective. -- Wyn 04:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

new section cuz wtf this is flooded

imo we could fuse both systems everyone can suggest everything and how many times they want however a commitee can choose some of these suggestions and send them to izzy or add 1 ? (hey can not take skills that do not have suggestions) dunno about trusting the mob some people do not know the difrence between broken and fun.Some people thing we should buff things to a WoD,WS or even a SOGM level :/ imo ppl that have real GvG experience (top players).that may mean shard and I wont be able to try to get in a the commitee (besides the fact that i would get voted out in the first round) but this way we got people that KNOW what they are doing and everyone can still suggest .Lilondra *poke* 10:24, 23 September 2008 (UTC)so the committee would become some kind of filter Lilondra *poke* 10:24, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I like Jon's idea. Let's have both systems - a committee that submits half of the questions/issues/suggestions, and a voting system that submits the other half. I also agree with Wyn - allow anything that can breath to vote. The purpose of that voting is to allow the entire community to be a part of the process, isn't it? So let's just allow everyone to be a part of it. Erasculio 10:57, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

If we are going for voting, things are going to be destroyed. Bureaucrat elections produce enough entries when one person votes (and that's with restrictions on who can vote, and only a few pages), so imagine how that would be when tens (hundreds?) of people are voting each day for a higher number of issues on a higher number of pages. Voting on this large a scale doesn't work on a wiki, at least not as the wiki is now. To solve this aspect of the problem, we could install a poll extension which wouldn't add entries to the page history or recent changes. On the flip side, that'd mean there's no way of knowing who has voted, so we wouldn't be able to chase up voters for concerns or have any idea whether proxies are being used to increase the count; very bad. A very good upside (no RC spam), but a very large downside. (GuildWiki/Wikia has this installed, so you can test it there.)

If we don't go for that extension (and I don't suppose we will), I'd rather move all this off to another wiki/website than have it on GWW; an official ArenaNet feedback wiki, perhaps (which would also suit nicely with the remove-all-suggestions proposal :P). Unless, of course, we get something like PvXWiki which inserts votes along with the voter's details, and enters each rating into a list (similar to recentchanges); as far as I know, though, that was custom-created for PvX and would be very hard to maintain when updating the wiki software. -- Brains12 \ talk 11:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, above i gave a random suggestion that the "voting" is based on number of contributors/word count. Also, I could see suggestion masters being used to make sure suggestions are fleshed out enough to be worth izzy's time. More than the simple "OMG NURF WS TO 90S RECHARGE" --JonTheMon 13:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

A voting system as Izzy asked for is very simple to establish: Add a "support" and "oppose" section each proposal subpage and let people sign. Create a page where the top X proposals are linked to. --Xeeron 14:12, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

there is a big difrence between letting the community VOTE and letting the community SUGGEST THINGS.Imo some guys choose out of the suggestions of others cuz if you let them vote we get BUFF WS DW IS A WEAK CONDITION and BUFF WOD 4 seconds isnet long enough and NERF WOH I CANT KILL THIS WAY.Lilondra *poke* 15:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

That brings up a good question: do we want the public to vote, give suggestions, or both? and do these options coincide with Izzy's "get everyone involved"? --JonTheMon 15:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Let people do everything. Let them make suggestions, like they do today, and let them vote, regardless of edit count or registration or whatever - that's IMO the only way to get the "get everyone involved" idea Isaiah has. I agree with Brains, though - that kind of voting would flood Recent Changes and make it somewhat unuseable, even for those using its java version.

I would be satisfied if we could get that system (which IMO is not going to work) together with the committee idea (each system picking half the suggestions). Erasculio 16:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You guys are overengineering this

I'm truly amazed to see all the misconceptions in this page:

1) We don't need a goddamn poll system

Guys, izzy, everyone, you are all missing the point of the balance pages. I'm going to bold it and then allcap it so that there is no doubt anymore:

THE BALANCE PAGES ARE NOT MEANT TO INFLATE THE EGO'S OF ANY USERBASE. THEY ARE MEANT TO IMPROVE THE GAME. ANYTHING THAT IMPEDES THIS IS BAD FOR THOSE PAGES.

After reading the wall of text above me and seeing the result as "okay, let's make a poll system so that every user feels involved", all I have to wsays is GODDAMN. Izzy, you are getting sidetracked. Your job is not Public Reletions. Your job is Balance. You don't need every people trying to get involved. I know this sounds elitist, but those balance pages will be much more when they are filtered unquestioningly by a group of people who know what they are doing. You want to please people? Make the game better. Don't try to derail balance pages by making them "Democratic". Brains has said it nicely - make this a poll system, and you get a new wiki. That would be pure lol material, except no one goes to a goddamn wiki to poll on suggestions made by other random people. Get real. Polls have never worked in wikis, and this would be no exception.

2) Any claims to bias is pure horseshit.

I would like to ask all the nay-sayers this: What have you done for the good of the suggestion pages (apart from suggeting suggestions to make suggestion submiting even more suggestively difficult)?

Everyone is forgetting the basic concept here: Wikis are based on TRUST. The naysayers are hellbent on turning this wiki into a senate, bogged down (as calor said, this project isn't going anywhere is if we keep this "democratic") by red tape.

Why can't you trust us? Why can't you trust anyone? If we do a bad job (We won't), you can revert the shit, ban us, get new people. Stop treating the wiki like a fucking parlament. It's not like one mistake or mispromotion costs people's lives. Again, get real. If you cannot trust, this wiki isn't going anywhere.

Furthermore, is there anyone who can say that the proposed team (me, auron, armond, shard) is going to do a bad job? Can you say that ithout bias? Can you? Then where the fuck where you when I began deleting suggestions outright? Last I checked, we were the most promisng roster possible.

3) There is way too much over-engineering going on here

The current format we have is pretty decent when it comes to organise suggestions. Everything is under neat categories. It just fails in one aspect: It is eye-gouging to go through all of them.

This is purpose of suggestion masters. To filter. That's it. Every x time intervals, we bring 10 of the most important suggestions to izzy. That's it. We're not going to ban people, we're not going to organise a rebellion. We are going to bring important suggestions to Izzy. And he is going to act on it. That simple.

I, For one, won't suffer for this. I vaule the balance pages. I spent a lot of time improving those pages. I'm not going to let it be bogged down with goddamn polls. Here is a very easy solution, one that I've been screaming for months now: ELECT US OFFICIALLY AS A COMITTEE, AND SET US LOOSE. We are not going to break anything. We have proven ourselves to be competent in game balance. Trust us, you will not be dissapointed. -- NUKLEAR IIV 17:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

@Nuklear, if it's any consolation, I think you have been doing a fine job, and I for one appreciate the time you have put into this. I think part of the problem is Izzy's misconceptions about what is really feasible on the scale that the suggestion/feedback pages represent. I would happily agree to a limited group of Suggestion Masters that do the initial cull of suggestions as you have been doing, and then based on discussion with the community (on the discussion pages) and discussion amongst the SMs, a list of the top 10 can be compiled for Izzy's review. Everyone needs to remember that this is a wiki, and NOTHING is permanent, if it doesn't work out, we revisit it, and change it. Nothing we do here is going to please everyone.

@Izzy, while I give you the benefit of the doubt in knowing your job, you should in turn give us that same benefit in knowing how best to run this wiki. I understand your want to have everyone feel involved, but at the scale you are talking, it really IS NOT feasible. Allowing everyone unlimited input is what has lead to the chaos that your talk page became, and the chaos that the suggestion/feedback pages have become. -- Wyn 17:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Sadly that's just your opinion. Some have already pointed out why your team would suck in the section above and also you group have spent more time trolling anf flaming on Izzy's page than anyone else and your buttkissing lets you guys get away with it. Leave it to Armond and Warriors can hit through anything even when blind and kill anyone in 2 hits and no other class will be able to do even a half the damage they will. Shard don't know much about the skills and wants classes like the Rit removed from the game and usually for reasons that they are overpowered because they can do stuff he thinks they can't do to begin with. Auron is a Admin and that won't work at all. Your people want to change the game to make it how they want they don't care anything about Balance. If any of you actually knew anything about Balance or were any good at it then Izzy would have already noticed this and put you on his little balancing team. You don't so he didn't. Now you are posting all this crap because you want power over other users on this wiki and not because you can balance. You want your friends and you to have power because you've never had it or some of you did on PvX wiki till they got canned for abuse of power.

"I, For one, won't suffer for this." yea? who the fuck are you to think you are in charge? Some loser who would rather post balance ideas then play the game. Why is some attention whore's opinion gonna matter here? You post above already shows why you should never have the kind of power you want over everyone else. 67.159.44.138 17:53, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Nuklear and Wynthyst. I don't think the wiki has even the technical resources to make something like Isaiah is suggesting without breaking something. IMO, the compromise of allowing everyone to post their ideas while a small group filters them is the best. Erasculio 17:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

right so... as long as no one thinks that this group would affect the game, as they won't, as that's not what izzy wants but some of u think he does. all they'll do is some admin-like work by filtering bad suggestions and putting up a list of the 5 most srs issues in the game with a few questions/suggestions about them. shard would be great as he puts alot of time in this anyway, the other 4 doesnt matter as long as they know enough about balance not to suck. their opinions won't ruin anything as they're still just some guys on a wiki.... calm down. --Cursed Angel 18:15, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

@67.159.44.138 - Some of your comments are pretty much violations of GWW:NPA and not constructive to this discussion. You can attack Nuklear's methods and ideas, but not his person. Please refrain from those kinds of comments. -- Wyn 18:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Nuklear has a contingency plan with his idea as well, which is great. I think the wiki can afford to at least try his idea just to see how the contributors will respond. Its irritating to see that there are a lot of people complaining about the game's balance, but when it comes to making changes there's an uproar. :) (Terra Xin 18:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC))

Just passing by to see how the community cooperate. Yseron - 90.29.181.169 18:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The persons chosen isn't the main problem. Lets focus on what method to use and not on who's bad and who's not. As a lot of people have pointed out, voting on a wiki is generally a bad idea. Wiki is built on trust and flexibility. If something isn't working, we change it, nothing is set in stone (although policy changing can indicate that sometimes.. :P) - anja 18:42, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Nuklear's idea is a goooooooooooooood one. People make suggestions, they bring the most important and best suggestions to Izzy. Pros: More time for Izzy. They'll pretty much make sure only good suggestions are brought in. They're good. Cons: People are dumb so they disagree.

Also, does this involve only PvP balance or will these guys also think of PvE? Meaning AI and shit. And not as much dumb OP PvE skills. -- Mini Me 18:59, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Nuklear, you text is big and bold, but still wrong. Izzy is in the business of selling games, not in the business of making a tiny elite happy about game balance. Sounds hart? Sorry that's the way it is. ANets PR department would have Izzys skin if he agrees to something that makes 5% of people happy about and 50% raging about elites dominating everything and ANet not listening.

As a side note, "Polls have never worked in wikis, and this would be no exception.", I point you here, here and most important here. --Xeeron 19:49, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

There's a difference between polls and votes, and I think this discussion is about votes. RfAs are polls, yes, and the decision lies with the acting bureaucrat who takes into account the responses. PvX ratings, I believe, get removed if they don't have a reason -- i.e. if they are just votes and not polls. Polls = numbered/bulleted arguments and input which provide an (rough) idea on what the community thinks. Votes = purely numbers; the highest is the decision. RfAs and PvX ratings are polls, this suggestion is a pure vote (and would include a higher number of subjects and voters). -- Brains12 \ talk 19:59, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

(EC)Exactly, Izzy is in the business of making people happy and the make the game sell. Pray tell, how do you sell a game without proper balance? Also, which would make a greater group happy? Izzy doing PR or Izzy doing balance? My guess would be on the second one. I'm guessing making the game better would yield a greater victory over inflating the ego's of a few wikians, but that's me. I'm not saying that he shouldn't be a people person. I'm saying that he'll make more people content if he's more about balance and less about sugarcoating.

So, you're saying PvX works? That's news to me - last I checked, that place consisted of instant 5-5-5ing of meta builds and wtf spam. If PvX worked, they would have been setting the meta, not documenting it (Even gcardinal admits this). So there goes that most important point. Finally, you know as well as I do that RFA's are not polls. In fact, I am geniuinely suprised to hear this from an old pro - Numbers do not count in an RFA, the weight of the arguments of the voters do. I don't think it would be far to say that RFA's are merely PR tools for bureucrats, but that's neither here nor there. Also, what brains said.

-- NUKLEAR IIV 20:03, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with ANJA that the method needs more focus right now than the people doing so. To keep the "committee" from having too much power (if we are forced to go with a committee despite Izzy's wishes) then we need only change them out every couple months, or have specific people do the work for all the even months of the year, and another group for the odd months. That would help keep the suggested a bit fresher and more varied than would only one group of people doing so. Again, method needs more focus right now... so assuming we are going to attempt to go with what Izzy wants at all, we need to figure out how that can be implemented instead of just focusing on the shortcomings of those already asking for/being recommended for a committee seat, when we haven't even determined that there will be a committee yet. lol ~ J.Kougar 20:14, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

While I appreciate the position Izzy is in, needing to not only try to keep the players placated, but also keeping his job security by not angering the boss, he will/has been the first one to admit he isn't very good at the wiki thing. I, for one am thrilled he is taking as much time as he has been lately to respond to our concerns and become more involved in the process. I also know he is busy actually doing his job atm, and isn't following every post in this discussion as they occur, and will, when he gets a chance, come back and read all the arguments for and against his proposals. Maybe we should all take a break and wait to see what he thinks about what has been said this afternoon. -- Wyn 20:23, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) 67.159.44.138 has a point and one that keeps being brought up everyone has a biases. and that's part of the reason why a permanent party of people desideing what is seen wouldn't work and why a system where it changes dose. i think we need to scrap the committee idea and the voting one i think the best thing izzy could do is just select 10 sills one from each profession, and 5 suggestions about things like scythes and how the oblisk work (those were just example i found in the skill balance pages) and comment and make some of the changes. or maybe then see what the community thinks. with the skill thing there are only sooo many skills so geting through them would go rather quickly if we increased the amount to mach a monthly amount.75.172.44.33 20:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

75.172: so make no changes, in other words. --JonTheMon 20:34, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

@jon that's not what i said. i am saying let izzy pick a certain amount of skills at the beginning of each mouth, then we as a community have until the end of the moth to talk about the skills at hand post changes, discuss. all that. then aporpet changes are made. hmm this sounds like the committee idea damn it i am just saying we need to think out side of the box for a solution for this.75.172.44.33 20:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey I've been crazy busy today and been in meetings all day so I haven't gotten to read this, I need to catch up on some stuff, so I'll try and read this when I get in tomorrow or when I get home later. Izzy @-'---- 01:17, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

It honestly doesn't matter if neither Auron, Nuke, and that other dude are perfect, that's why we come up with ten suggestions instead of one. Let's be honest, if you told us four to come up with 10 fixes each, I bet all of us would come up with 4 that match. Let's say I hate rits (i really don't, and I have no clue why people keep telling me I do) and I want to "kill rits." The other 3 would say "Shard, you're an idiot" and my bias against rits wouldn't matter. That's why major courts have many people on them - to eliminate bias. I'd personally rather have 5 people on it than 4, however.

Also, Izzy, your ignore list is comfy ;) ~Shard 02:58, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and letting any random people vote would make assassins insta-godly on the first day. Most humans are not smart, and most humans ARE very biased. If you disagree, look up "bell curve"? ~Shard 03:03, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

tfl;dfr. I leave for a day and this asplodes. x.x Someone leave a summary on my talk if I'm needed. >.> -- Armond Warblade 03:26, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

First off Shard,Armond Warblade and Nuklear are definitely not ideal candidates to represent Guild Wars community, yes they are part of us and they have the same candor as any of us Guild Wars players have but that would make anyone here in the wiki (socks or not) eligible. Second, the poll idea sounds simple, is not complicated. You can make an in game poll system that picks up player suggestions as to what skills the majority of Guild Wars players inside the game think need a look at, number of votes would be finite for each account for a certain fixed period of time, after that time then they can vote again. Third, I don't believe in a committee of wiki users is the answer. It would be taking the power of many and giving it to few and out of real players inside the game, not all players go to this wiki, heck some don't even know about this or the Guild Wars website.--Wealedout 03:46, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Anything requiring "an in game poll system" is far from being simple or feasible at all. Again, people are overestimating what we're trying to achieve here - it isn't a matter of giving common people the power to change the game, rather it's just a matter of allowing people to talk with Isaiah about balance, pretty much like what was happening at his userpage before it became flooded. Erasculio 03:59, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

An ingame voting system will require tons of effort on ANets part which that very likely will not exert for an old game. Whatever system we choose (commitee, polls, voting, staying with that we have or something entirely different), implementing it here on the wiki is our best bet to make it happen. --Xeeron 09:21, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

For the last time most of the community is A RETARD if the community votes we can burry GW already.STOP DISCUSISNG ABOUT IT GW IF EVERYONE VOTES THE GAME IS FKD ITS A FACT NOT A OPINION.

God brains can you pls remove anyone who dares to say its not like this -.-' Lilondra *poke* 10:39, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems that the differences outweight the goal. Yseron - 86.64.70.44 11:15, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

IMO most voters would fall loosely into one of four groups:

1. Players who understand game balance and are trying to improve the game.
2. Players who falsely believe they understand game balance and are trying to improve the game.
3. Players who don't care about game balance and game the system in favour of their preferred professions and/or builds.
4. Trolls.

Ignorant noobs who know they are ignorant noobs but want the game to be balanced wouldn't be a problem because they wouldn't vote. Additionally, oblivious noobs and those who try to game the system don't necessarily agree with eachother, and the groups aren't mutually exclusive. Furthermore, I'm not aware of any deletion proposals for bad suggestions which failed due to a swarm of noobs, system gamers or trolls, so I think that deletion proposals could be a fairly effective additional line of defence against a flood of bad suggestions. By the way, if we are going with a voting system, I believe we should use one subpage per suggestion, which would also allow suggestions to be individually deleted. -- Gordon Ecker 11:46, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

(RI)Okay, most of the feedback I'm seeing is concerned with how biased we would be. Fine, this system has to be based on trust, and I see that the GWW community is not ready to trust the team I proposed. I can live with that.

Then get another 4. It doesn't matter. Something J.Kougar said is very true: We shouldn't be arguing about "Who" it will be, when we don't know what "it" is.

Further, I defense of My SM plan, I would like to remind people that you're not giving the comittee any power. They won't ban anyone. They won't delete pages (other than tagging, but I've been doing that for ages and people don't seem to care). They won't override policy and they will be accountable to the community. If anything, it's just more responsibility for the chosen. We're not electing politicians with immunity, but we are electing filters.

On a related note, I would also like to remind people what the SM Comittee will be doing. Each month (week/moon/year/whatever) they will post a list of serious suggestions that they will choose from the feedback pages. It's that simple. People will still post suggestions on the feedback pages (so there goes the "stop excluding the people!" arguement), and they will still discuss it. The Comittee will only be a convenience for Izzy. I really fail to see the big deal here. -- NUKLEAR IIV 13:57, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

^nuklear just repeated what I said stop discussing about it Lilondra *poke* 15:10, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not like we're going to be "balance dictators." We are just the more outspoken and most knowledgeable people on wiki about balance, so it seems we should be putting up the ideas. Also, we won't be making decisions 100% by ourselves, we'll just be bringing issues other people made on the suggestion pages, deciding which ones we like more or agree with most, then presenting them to izzy. We're basically going to be his eyes and ears for the wiki pages so he doesn't have to read thousands of suggestions.

Like nuke said, if you think we're biased, find more people you trust, but I doubt any biases will show out in the end. ~Shard 18:33, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

"They", not "we". -- Brains12 \ talk 18:39, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

@nuke its not a matter of trust vs biased. you can trust some one and they can still be biased. i really think we need to think out side of the box for this one. and voting and a committee isn't the answer, at least not in the forms that we have talked about. i for one would be more ok with a committee if it had a way of getting feed back from all the major fan sites. and not just the wiki.75.172.44.33 20:22, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The wiki is the central hub for all guildwars operations, so it will naturally have more interaction with guildwars than any other fansite. If other fansites are incorporated into the listing, the wiki would need more people, which makes the structure for collecting data more and more unstable. It can take months before a system like that is set up. At the moment, the idea that is proposed should start off small so that it can be evaluated easily... But hopefully the ball will get rolling as soon as Izzy responds, because the system wont work without his approval. I'm actually very exited with this, I can't wait to see how it'll receive.(Terra Xin 20:31, 24 September 2008 (UTC))

@75.172 So now in addition to setting this suggestion system up, we have to go out and retrieve suggestions from other sites as well? I could see "hey, come here and you can give suggestions" as opposed to "ok, now I'll to go to yyy site and see what they suggest. Now zzz. Now..." --JonTheMon 20:57, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

..... Wow I'm not sure what to say, that conversation degraded rather quickly, no offense but what started out as a simple suggestion on how to improve a process turned into a practically unreadable debate, filled with extreme one sided statements and few suggestions. As a designer my job is to debate for a living, I enter room filled with people and have debates for hours on end about everything from something small like what colors should we used for Luxons to Should we have PvP characters. Keeping a cool head and keeping the flow of a conversation is always tricky. Remember we are all trying to solve the same problem getting upset at someone and attacking their points, really makes this unpleasant to read. @Nuk yes my job is to balance, but anytime a dev interacts with the community they are doing PR, and they are representing their company, if they don't have PR on their mind they shouldn't be here talking to the community in the first place. I'm not looking for some huge increase in how I balance the game out of the wiki suggestions, honestly that's not what I'm going to get from them, the increased interaction with the community allows for a open communication flow which keeps the community more involved, a more involved community leads to more back and forth interaction between design and community which leads to happier communities better balance and overall all a better game, but I'll tell you right now good balance comes from back and forth debate, iteration, analyzation, and strong high level design. Digging through a bunch of wiki suggestions isn't going to suddenly allow me to do my job 10x better then I could before, so this does fall way more into a PR roll then anything else. The main thing I was looking for out of a system was something that scaled, some sort of process that would hold true for not only this wiki but for future products where a community could grow and new systems would not have to be redesigned the whole point of this conversation was to BRAINSTORM some suggestions. Think outside the box see if we can come up with something odd that might work, it's super easy to fall back to something we know will work. The goal is not to come up with a solution that solves our current skills, our current balance, our system, but a system that could handle ANY system, with ANY number of people and my problem is how can a committee which is having a hard time with a simple brainstorming exercise manage a theoretical community of infinite size? So are we over engineering this? Yes that's the point of Brainstorming. Izzy @-'---- 21:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, we could brainstorm, but I think we're going to hit technical problems with it. For example...

• A system that randomly took each month ten suggestions from the Skill Feedback section and gave them for Isaiah to comment. It would allow anyone to participate, as all ideas would have equal chances of being chosen, and it would not rely on voting. In other hand, it would require either some kind of code to get those ten random suggestions, or Isaiah to do so manually; in the case of the latter, there would be complains that he would be favoring some users and ignoring others on purpose (as always happens, thanks to how some people don't understand what "random" means). It would also have no quality control - it could happen that ten bad suggestions would be chosen each month, or suggestions that were already discussed in the previous month and just reworded. Lastly, users could try to exploit this by making bad suggestions on purpose, or just making dozens more suggestions than everyone else, increasing so much the probablity that their ideas will be chosen that in practice only their opinions would reach Isaiah.
• A "weak" committee, to solve the problems in the above idea: to take each month skill feedback suggestions mostly in a random way, just avoiding to get more than one idea from the same user and avoiding repeated suggestions, without any other kind of quality control. More like what a bot would do than acting like real, thinking individuals. Again the problem with the lack of quality control, and we would still have complains about how biased the "bots" would be, even if they just picked ideas randomly.
• Making a theme each month ("Underpowered mesmer skills") and, after a couple days so people discuss about it, taking some of the ideas mentioned for Isaiah to read. Again the problem of how to select which ideas to be chosen - randomization have all the problems above, picking the first ten ideas (each from a different user) would just lead to people rushing, and so on.
• Raw voting: to each suggestion we would add a vote count (or poll, whatever, English sucks) and gauge how well liked each suggestion is. This would allow anyone to be a part of the process, but it would flood the "Recent Changes" part of the wiki and it could lead to many different kinds of abuse (people using proxies to vote, etc). Any kind of restriction to who could vote would go against the main benefit of this idea, which is allowing anyone to be part of the process. The quality control here would also be somewhat weak.
• The committee system proposed: a group of users chosen by the community to pick the best/most important suggestions from the Skill Feedback pages and present them to Isaiah. Something simple to do, but it has the problem of not allowing direct participation by the community, only indirect one. Plus the committee members would be accused of being biased, of chosing bad ideas, and so on.
• A mix of voting and the committee idea in equal parts: the community picks half the suggestions through voting, the committee picks the other half. We would end with the downsides of both ideas (flooding Recent Changes and having committee members accused of being biased, for example).
• A mix of voting and the committee ideas, but not in equal parts: the committee decides on a monthly theme, people make suggestions within that theme, each of those suggestions get votes by everyone and the ones with the most votes would be presented to Isaiah. It would limit voting to only a few pages and theorically flood Recent Changes less, plus the committee would act less and therefore be less likely to be considered biased. But we would still have all the problems with users voting through proxies and etc.

That's all I can think of for now. IMO, none of those would both work and do what Isaiah wants this system to accomplish. Erasculio 22:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm actually liking the half-committee, half voting idea. That would give everyone who cares a chance to be heard, while at the same time preventing poll disasters. To expand, maybe we can do one first, and then the other. For example, a committee picks a bunch of things they think needs to be changed, then everyone else votes on those things. Or the other way around, everyone votes on whatever they want, then each committee member picks a few of the best suggestions. ~Shard 22:49, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Well part of the reason I was trying to brain storm with you guys is I don't know the limitations! I like a mix of the system a lot, as I think the weakness of a voting system is your going to have oddities, I mean it's not like NUK isn't in there cleaning up the stuff every day if a voting system was in place stuff like that would still be required, and you would want to veto silly questions like "WHY IS IZZY SO FAIL" which would get 5 million votes. You could also do it where the committee picks like 50 questions and the community votes on 10 from there. That way the committee can filter and the community can be involved. Izzy @-'---- 00:42, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

your not fail your just confuseing as to some of the changes that are made but that has been a lot better sence the Developer updates have been talking about why some of the changes are made.75.172.44.33 00:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Lol I was just using that as an example as a question that would come up and would get votes but a committee would catch it. Also Izzy sucks you gotta tell him this it keeps him humble! Izzy @-'---- 01:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

My Two Cents: In all honesty, I feel you responding directly to the MASS community has caused a lot more PR Problems than it has solved. I know you only do it in good heart, but the problem is opinion, everyone has one, and everyones is right...to them! You play the game, you know some of the players, especially at the higher level of play, and you discuss with them their ideas and what they see as problems. Thats how it was before wiki, and led to much less dissappointment (and coincidently more balanced times IMO) By opening yourself upto responding to the mass community everyone wants a reply, and not only that, they want their suggested change made. And because of opinion, every suggestion will be argued by someone else somewhere, so you are basically just getting points of view based upon preference. Take an example: RaO, it splits the community, and not equally, the majority of players (and because of my background i talk from pvp experience here) HATE the skill. It promotes bad and skill-less play and is just generally bad for the games balance. However there are others (and if i remember correctly you are one) that love this skill, and the Thumper bar that goes along with it. Now who is to say which is a more 'valid' opinion? After all both are perfectly valid. This is all fine, and the arguements about this can go on and on on forums, wiki, alliances etc etc and it be no problem at all. You can view all these for yourself if you want to, or not if you don't, and no-one is dissapointed by anything. It's only when the hope of a response to such discussions is added to the equasion that dissappointment is also added. Either by not getting a response, or getting one that they didnt like. This all seems very negative i know but i feel the best communication between you guys and the community is the Dev Notes following balances explaining why things were done, they are much more sattisfying to the community than any skill discussion ever is. The overall point i'm trying to make is that at the moment we are heading back towards a situation where the community doesn't actually expect a response, simply through your lack of time, and lack of showing responses. If you put in new procedures or whatever then it again gives more hope of responses and changes....which then will only lead to more dissappointment. Like i said this is just my opinion. --ChronicinabilitY 03:25, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I think the latest idea could work: a committee selects 50 suggestions, and the community votes which ones of those are going to be the 10 suggestions sent to Isaiah. With a finite number of suggestions, we are free to make people vote on what suggestion they believe is the best one, as opposed to giving a grade to each suggestion; we could end with everything in a single page (at the top the 50 links, one for each suggestion, and below each user's vote indication which, among those 50, is his/her favorite one), thus decreasing the Recent Changes flooding and making the entire process simpler. Something like...

===Suggestions===
# Link 1
# Link 2
...
# Link 50
===Votes===
*Suggestion 3. User A, 30 February 2010
*Suggestion 4. User B, 30 February 2010
*Suggestion 1. User C, 30 February 2010

IMO, that could work. Erasculio 03:57, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

i thought i had that suggestion about half a page up.75.172.44.33 04:01, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

What about making the voting and committe completely separate? The committe could prepare reports for Izzy at regular intervals, while a separate list of current skill suggestions organized by rating (perhaps with filters such as a minimum vote threshold) would also be available as a source for additionla feedback. Also, in response to Erasculio's concern about votes flooding recent changes, that issue could be avoided with an appropriate rating extension. -- Gordon Ecker 04:30, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the wiki should serve as base for community relations and player appeasement. It's not what the wiki is for, and not what the wiki should be for (whether in part or full). If ArenaNet want to collect players' opinions in order to appease them and improve their communication with the player base, they shouldn't be doing it on the wiki, a place for documentation and displaying information. --195.195.129.3 12:05, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

another random section break

In terms of brainstorming, let me put forward and compare 5 possible ideas of how to organise feedback:

• Random: Suggestions are one per subpage. Once per month, X suggestions are picked at random and presented to Izzy.

• Voting/Polling: Suggestions are one per subpage. On the talk page (or better, via one of the rating extensions Gordon Ecker linked above), everyone can rate each suggestion. Once per month, the top X suggestions are presented to Izzy.

• Technical Committee: All suggestions are read by a committee of users. They do not rate the suggestions, instead they pick those deemed to be the most popular (according to talk page entries/similar suggestions). Once per month, the top X suggestions are presented to Izzy.

• Content Committee: All suggestions are read by a committee of knowledgable users who evaluate them. Once per month, the top X suggestions are presented to Izzy.

• Ongoing wiki page: All issues are added into one (a few) wiki page in essay form. Everyone is free to edit this page. At any point in time Izzy can look at that page to get community input.

I tried to order the suggestions from "least amount of work needed" to "highest amount of work needed". Having a totally random procedure would definitely be most fair and free of any doubts about bias, but of course random could result in very low key issues being selected or suggestions that meet strong opposition being selected. Voting/Polling also takes away individual bias. The biggest problem here is mistrust of the average user (if a majority of users likes bad suggestions, bad suggestions will be chosen). Unlike random, this also needs considerable more input by the general community, though one of the rating extensions linked above might reduce the impact on RC.

Both forms of committee require a small pool of members with a heavy work load. They also need some form of selection procedure within the committee (unanimity? does each member chose 2 out of 10 suggestions? majority vote inside the committee?). The amount of work for the community outside the council is negligible. Technical committee members might face accusations of not picking suggestions unbiased. A Content committee, on the other hand raises the issue why a wiki is needed if Izzy is going to mainly communicate with only a handful of people - that could be better done in a private forum.

The ongoing wiki page concept does away with many committee problems, but has a big downside as well: The workload of compiling all suggestions into one/a few pages would be intense, both in terms of summarizing and in terms of possible edit wars between different points of view on one issue.

Btw, I did put not mention "very bad suggestions will ruin balance" as a disadvantage for any suggestion. Why? Izzy will not implement bad suggestions. What we need to worry about is good suggestions not making it, not the opposite. --Xeeron 12:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I feel ignored now, given how my summary above had some of those ideas already ;_; But anyway, I favor more a mix between the "Content Committee" and the "Technical Committee" - like Isaiah said, allow a committee to pick the 50 best suggestions, and the community votes 10 of those to be used. This has the advantage of ensuring that no "joke" suggestion will be chosen by voting (given how the committee would act as a fist filter) and ensuring some degree of quality, while allowing the community to pick which issues it likes the most (or considers to be more urgent). We could use that to avoid installing the rating extension, as I'm a bit wary of installing it - once it's in the wiki, people may think it would be good to solve other wiki matters, like policy decisions, and then we would go back to a very early problem in wiki development. With a limited number of suggestions, and therefore limited number of options, users could rank the ideas instead of rating them. Erasculio 13:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

After reading Izzy's post, I understand that this will be a PR project, rather than a Balance one. I have already stated my reasons for disagreeing with this, but it seems that there is nothing I can do or say at this point to change the general mindset going on around.

Well, I'll be an active part of whatever is decided here. My vote (lol irony) is on content comittee, as I believe that will work best for the benefit of the game. -- NUKLEAR IIV 15:19, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Let's see how Izzy feels about this half and half thing before you pull a George Bush. ~Shard 18:54, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I think Izzy's on the right track to be talking about having more than one layer of committeeing (is that even a word?) since the more people the less likely things are to be biased. I know there's been a lot of argument about this but IMO everyone is "biased" to some extent or another, especially since skill balance is so subjective (ofc it depends on your definition of biased, but anyway). Nobody is perfect (e.g. SF with Deep Wound?), but some people are better than others. More importantly having a larger committee or more than one layer would greatly decrease bias and whatnot, because then radically bad ideas are less likely to be shared by a majority (I think Shard said something along the same lines about 1/2 a mile up the page). Also, one important thing to remember is that Izzy will have the final say. The game devs will always do what they want anyway since it's their game, so to speak, so even if a stupid suggestion were to be put through, Izzy would just (hopefully) say "Ha! No way!" (as Xeeron just said above). Any "committee" we get will just be there to help Izzy pick out good suggestions. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:82.3.232.209 (talk).

Erasculio, i came up with the exact same idea about a page up now.75.172.44.33 19:32, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Honestly I'm way less worried about people being Bias, I mean NUK said it best when he said wiki is based on trust but it's not like the committee is picking our tax rate or something they are digging through huge pools of suggestions picking up some questions, sure there is going to be some bias nature in what questions they think are good but it's their judgment that hopefully landed them in that committee spot in the first place. Seems like we are getting closer, anyone else have any interesting ideas? or random off the wall concepts? Like I said no need to be hasty and jump to a solution maybe we should sit on it a little bit make sure we don't come up with something better? or some flaw in the system? That's something we often do here when we find something we like. I'm still in favor of the mixed committee / voting system and I think it's felxable and scalable. Izzy @-'---- 20:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, the ideal scalability of suggestions and stuff is having a constant amount of work to get the same results. Not really practical in real life. Next best method is logarithmic scaling. So for every 2x, 3x, 5x, 10x, whatever the increment is, you only need to add another helper. Still a bit hard to scale. The last thing I can think of is having a hierarchy of helpers.

You'd have a main committee in charge of everything. They in turn would get help from, say, 5 people who are in charge of 2 classes each. Those 5 would each get, say, 2 other helpers who would each take 2 attribute lines. However, if, say, there were only 10 suggestions for monks, there wouldn't need to be any helpers for the attribute lines. Now for cross-class balancing and things like GvG this breaks down a bit, but it's just a thought. --JonTheMon 21:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict) Since you seem to be deadset on community relations Izzy, then it is apparent that a straight committee was never really in the running. However, in all honesty I do not see the community deciding on the most pressing issues at hand. Assuming that the issues are first filtered by a committee, who choose say 50 issues per month, I do not believe that the worthwhile of these will be chosen. For example, issues such as Wounding Strike being overpowered, Wastrel's being similar will probably make it on to the top 50 list via the committee. However the greater community, getting wind of this scheme will be far more likely to vote for less pressing issues that may have made it on to the committee list, which they perceive as being good for the game. Issues such as Wastrel's collapse being nearly useless will doubtless be part of the top 50 at some stage, and it is issues like these that the community will probably see as more pressing, leaving wounding strike etc. out of the final list that gets presented to you. My 2 cents anyways.--Revelations 21:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Lol I more mean if there 10 million questions for the committee to pick through vs 1000 questions to pick through, they just pick 50 questions, and then there is either 1000 votes or 10 million votes. The system still works under both loads. Sure in the 10 million question load which questions the committee picks become a bigger deal but the system still allows 10 million people to participate. @Reve I don't know about that people are going to vote about what they feel needs to be answered, and once again it's up to the committee to keep things moving, but if people really want to know about Wastrel's Collapse, over Wounding strike, then I answer that question and move on to wounding strike next week. and yeah I'm a bit more dead set on community relations it's something I've been a part of in every company I've ever worked on :P I don't feel any one person can balance a game, it takes a healthy interaction with a community and back and forth discussion. The problem is I can't have one on one conversations with 5 million people :P so we try and come up with systems to maximize peoples involvement. Izzy @-'---- 23:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Besides, frankly I doubt we're going to get much more than 50 good suggestions. I would expect the 40 suggestions that were "rejected" one month to be chosen again on the next, together with 10 new ones, so the probability of most of them being eventually replied to is high. One more reason why I think that system would work. Erasculio 00:17, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate that you're trying to get people involved, and I do agree that everyone needs to have an input but I suppose I was just trying to state that IMO it would be a better idea for the community to identify the issues and the committee to submit them, rather than the other way around. I think it would just be beneficial to have users with knowledge and experience of the game and skills to submit the final report rather than by public consensus, which often tends toward issues that may not be as important as others. In any case I do agree that a mix of committee/voting systems is probably the most overall effective way to go about this--Revelations 00:21, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

@Eras: That's probably a good thing. The things that get rejected one month but stay in the top 50 are important enough to change.

@Rev, the thing about giving a population complete freedom is that there will always be a good amount of people who are either acting stupid and making joke suggestions or who are so biased that they will vote on "Make Wail of Doom last 10 seconds" or "Make WS cost 1,000,000 energy." There need to be a few knowledgeable, relatively unbiased people to weed out things like that. If izzy said "what profession do you want buffed," Assassins would get the majority vote by far, simply because lots of players think ZOMG NARUTO IZ 2 KOOL 4 SK00L!!! ~Shard 02:33, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

the concept that xeeron had with the Technical Committee seems decent, i mean when these suggestion pages first started, some skills and there ideas would open up a "walls and walls-of-text" debate about them, reason was that these skills was what people wanted to izzy look at, at the time.( or at the least people involve with the discussion) The idea i get from the technical committee is a group of people would bring up to izzy the more pressing debates of any skill, they do not choose which idea they like, but the skill that most people are talking about. they would go through the pages and see that there a page and a half of people discussing a skill, then they will tell izzy (who might be too busy at the time to look at the pages) in some way, shape, or form. this concept would not be limited to a set # over a period of time,(like 10/week), but when ever a issues came up, it would be hard to be bias picking the most popular topics, large discussion mean alot of people are getting involve, and i wouldn't think a joke suggestion would get a big discussion(although i could be wrong on that one).--Metal Sazz 03:17, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Before I changed it, people thought my "raise Searing Flames to 50 energy" was a serious suggestion. You never know. ~Shard 07:23, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

If I type 50 into the energy field it will crash the game :P Izzy @-'---- 21:29, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Awesome. Not very logical from a programming perspective, but still awesome. ~Shard 22:37, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Guys, let's not derail this. (Tho it is awesome. Did you try it?) -- NUKLEAR IIV 08:39, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I feel the apathy settling in

Right now, the two main options, as discussed above, are:

1) Committee mixed with Voting: a group of users chosen by the community read all suggestions and pick the 50 best ones each month. The community would then vote to decide which 10 of those would be presented to Isaiah.

Advantages

• We have some quality control. The most absurd ideas will be filtered by the committee, so even if people try to disrupt the voting part, the ideas presented to Isaiah would be interesting ones.
• The community gets to directly decide which ideas will be presented, allowing anyone to be a part of the process. Since the system already has a degree of quality control, we could allow anyone to vote here - trying to abuse the system (voting through proxies, etc) would have no considerable impact.
• With a fixed number of suggestions, we could ask contributors to rank the ideas, instead of voting on each of them; it would make the result easier to learn (as we could ask everyone to say what's their favourite suggestion and make a list in a single page, as opposed to having votes on each suggestion's page) and easier to organize (it would make the rating extension for the wiki unnecessary).

Problems

• Voting. There are many ways people could abuse a voting system so the results don't actually represent what the community favors the most. Also, depending on how people want to vote (if not ranking, but rather voting), we could end either flooding Recent Changes or having to instal the rating extension for the wiki (linked above).
• We would end with some users complaining that the committee is biased toward some profession/idea/user/etc. No matter what the committee chooses, it's likely someone will complain about them.
• The entire process (a committee picking 50 ideas, then people voting) could take a long time, meaning we would present suggestions to Isaiah at a slow rate. This may cause some frustration in some people.

2) Technical Committee: a group of users read all suggestions and pick the X most popular ones, according to talk page entries/similar suggestions. Those would be presented to Isaiah.

Advantages

• No voting. It would not require any new extension nor any new kind of formatting, plus it would avoid some of the exploits voters could use.
• No committee to judge which suggestion is good and which isn't, leading to less conflicts as no one would be offended about how his/her suggestion would not have been considered a "top 50" one.
• Could be a quick system, if the committee agrees about what they consider popularity to be.

Problems

• A system that either could be abused (by adding tons of entries into the talkpage of a skill, or making many copies of the same suggestion with just minor changes) or would require considerable discretion by the committee, leading to more claims of it being biased.
• No quality control. Bad ideas could reach Isaiah, as there is no filter.
• The community does not decide directly as they would through voting; it's a more indirect approach.

What do you people think? 1, 2 or none of the above? I'm not trying to get votes, just for people to say if they think those could work or not, and why. Erasculio 17:18, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Ten suggestions per month seems like a fairly low number, however the number of suggestions per month could be scaled up or down at Izzy's request. -- Gordon Ecker 01:40, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I would prefer #2, with a small tweak to add in some form of quality control. The committee takes the 15 or 20 (assuming Izzy takes 10 a month) most popular suggestions, then discusses amongst itself to decide which ten are the most popular, hot-button issues/suggestions, so we avoid the "OMG WTF WS IZ 2 POWRFUL NERF IT"-esque suggestions. calor (talk) 01:53, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

second would be pretty pointless as number of suggestions doesn't equal the skill being more of an issue or more interesting to get an answer to. first idea seems better, maybe making a list where ppl put 10 votes each only once which suggession/s they'd want him to answer to most and go down that list with the 10 highest ranked every two weeks? --Cursed Angel 02:12, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer to use both systems. By the way, I've started a discussion about specific rating extensions at Guild Wars Wiki talk:Requests for technical administration#Rating extansions. -- Gordon Ecker 02:47, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I could live with both. Unless we have a good rating extension installed, I would prefer the second one though. If we have a good rating extension, I'd go with the first one. --Xeeron 09:50, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry been a bit busy with mAT and GW2! I way prefer the mixed committee, the main goal of my proposal was to get as many people involved as possible, this system seems like the only one that truly gets a large number of people involved. I do worry about the Technical issues, just like. "flooding the changed list" and stuff like that worries me. I know these issues are why you dislike the voting stuff, and you have to deal with this stuff way more then I do. Izzy @-'---- 20:24, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Just an FYI, based on Emily's most recent posts, it looks like we won't be getting any new extensions until the 1.13 upgrade is done, though with the current requests for additions, that may be happening sooner than anticipated once the hardware upgrade is done tomorrow.-- Wyn 20:34, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, it needs to be said that edits in the ANet namespace can be quite easily ignored in the recent changes/watchlist. I would not be happy about them, but they are not as "wiki-breaking" as they are made look like here. --Xeeron 21:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

To be honest option #2 sounds much better. My reasoning is this; no matter how we make this voting group there will be a flawed member to this group of people (outliar, biased, afk, abusive and so on). No matter how good a system of people might sound (IE see America) there will always be a failure slipping through (IE see George W. Bush). DarkTiaga

Well, I don't mind a chosen comittee, as long as they know what they're talking about (i.e. no earth-magic-is-only-good-for-tanks-and-wards, smiting-prayers-suck-anyway and especially no pets-are-for-noobs players). The comittee should exist primarily of meta AND non-meta players, to avoid any tunnel vision. In effect, don't choose people just because they are good at PvP, but don't ignore them either. 145.94.74.23 20:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

It's impossible to tell whether or not someone's good at pvp. It takes 0 skill. 72.235.91.16 23:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Ooh, stuff happening. Time to return to the folds of the wiki, methinks :) --'șɳȱɠ'ɍɑʈ 00:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

•  Can we set a timeframe for this please? If we can't get past deciding which one to agree with, we might not actually see this thing in practice until January. People will tend to lose interest over the game's balance as GW2 draws near. Choose a plan, implement it and then we can evaluate it and work on any kinks that we may have missed.(Terra Xin 10:06, 2 October 2008 (UTC))

What I meant was that the comittee shouldn't consist of just meta players, or just self-appointed balancers, or just noobs, but rather, a mix of them all. Never did I mean to say that it should consist only of good players. Especially since good is a relative term in Guild Wars. 145.94.74.23 11:58, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Let me try to speed things up by asking the following question: Is everyone ok with at least one of the 2 above mentioned alternatives? Or does someone strongly disagree with both of them? If the later is not the case, we could narrow down the field to those two and hopefully implement on of them soon. --Xeeron 13:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

No objections here. By the way, in this post Izzy stated that ~10 suggestions per week would be a good starting suggestion rate. -- Gordon Ecker 01:12, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

After reading through this TOWER of text, it's starting to fee like progress might actually be made :D Euphoracle 02:19, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Don't we have to wait until we get the rating extensions to implement all of this? ~Shard 02:27, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

No, the extentions would merely streamline some aspects of the process. -- Gordon Ecker 02:51, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I am against both options. Both will turn the suggestion sections into a "What the majority wants" section, and I have already stated why I oppose that.

That being said, I understand that I am alone in this, and thus will not press the issue. I support the second option, simply because it will be easier to derail. 85.108.218.75 11:16, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with either option, as long as one is implemented soon. I do slightly favor the second system b/c that doesn't require extra community input (they've already stated their opinions on the suggestion pages). And Nuk, it might not end up being "what the majority wants" rather "what a majority of the people think is good/bad" (lumping them together b/c they make walls of text) --JonTheMon 12:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

With some luck, the technical committee will prevent absurd suggestions from actually being considered. There will only be good, quality suggestions for people to vote on. ~Shard 22:45, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Getting this finally done

Ok, we established above that everyone is ok or can live with either Committee mixed with Voting or the Technical committee. So lets decide which to use. --Xeeron 15:45, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I was about to ask if anything had actually happened during my ban, but apparently not. :/ -- Armond Warblade 15:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, either of those would fail, and at this point so would the original committee suggestion. Were it up to me, I'd just tell Izzy it's not going to happen. -- Armond Warblade 15:49, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I would rather have the "Committee mixed with Voting" option, but I think there's a problem we haven't considered yet. Both options require people to make the committees; volunteers who want that kind of work. Do we have enough people who actually want to do one of those two tasks? Erasculio 16:03, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Nuke's out, Auron's said he probably wouldn't be willing, and I'm probably going to rage wiki again in a few days. That leaves... Shard. -- Armond Warblade{{SUBST:Bacon}} 16:09, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

There are a couple of dedicated "improvers" on the current skill feedback pages. Two I noticed (after reading the Rit pages) are User:Lancy1214 and User:Falconeye. -- euphoracle | talk 20:58, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I have to be honest, every other day I'm too pissed to care. If enough people want me on the committee, I'll give it a shot. ~Shard 01:44, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I vote the second one (Terra Xin 19:48, 12 October 2008 (UTC))

Shard 4 prez ;o -- euphoracle | talk 18:56, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Committee mixed with voting plz0rs. Denizen Zero 03:37, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, committee and voting. Let's fix the game already! ~Shard 04:11, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd support the 2nd option. The voting option only seems to be more community-oriented, but in truth that by itself is just limited to those who check the suggestion pages (so it's more or less mostly the same subset of users). That, in my opinion, means having a selection phase then a voting phase serves only to unnecessarily complicate things (yes, with voting, you'll find that you'll need to come up with all sorts of rules to govern the voting). This is especially more so when there's really not a whole lot of months left before GW2.

If we are already intending to give a certain degree of trust to a small number of uses who form the committee, might as well trust them to not be biased and just forego the voting. If we declare that Shard and Terra should filter and decide what is a good/popular/feasible suggestion, do we really need to know how many other people support or oppose their decision. These suggestions are only going to be passed on to Izzy to read. It's not as if they're filtering what gets into the game. If anything, it's a thankless job and I for one don't want to make it more difficult for them. Any voting is probably better used to vote who gets into the committee. So far, we only have Shard and Terra Xin. How many do we want on this "committee" (for either case)? Obviously, it should be an odd number, so I'd say 5 is a good start. -- ab.er.rant 06:06, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm... look at this Guild Wars Feedback Community. I'd say they're better equipped to deal with voting. -- ab.er.rant 07:16, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

It looks like they're also entirely independent from the wiki. I think Izzy would prefer to use the wiki as a medium? He should reply here and lend his opinion if anything is going to get done, imo. -- euphoracle | talk 17:22, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Aye, we may need to look at this GWFC. Personally, I'm very interested, but I know there are skeptics and doubters abound here, so we'll have to wait and see how it does. calor (talk) 18:00, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

One thing at a time. (Terra Xin 09:05, 16 October 2008 (UTC))

Hello! I'd like to apologize for first not reading the entire page up to this point (I thought I was done at the “Wiki down time” section...), and next for not having much of a presence here on the official Wiki up until now. I've been busy for the past year working on exactly the problem you all are facing now, and I'm really happy to see it's already found it's way to your discussion.

My first attempt at solving the “suggestion” problem was a Wiki I created with a polling system called NikiWiki (which was mentioned a few times above, thank you ab.er.rant), but as you have all discovered, a wiki isn't quite the right place for this kind of information. So my second attempt is the Guild Wars Feedback Community, which has a lot more potential (not to mention a better look). Please pay special attention to the Guild Wars 2 Suggestions topic, since that's the primary issue in question here. I can be rather long-winded, so I'll spare you any more of the background/benefits of the site (you can read those here), and just say that it would mean a lot to me if you would all take a look and let me know what you think.

I'm not expecting you to all agree that the GWFC is the solution to your current issues, but I'm convinced its a giant leap in the right direction. Also please note that I'm just a dude from Montana (no corporate entity involved) doing this for my love of the game (and, of course, to see it become something better). If ArenaNet likes the concept of the GWFC site, they can copy it. If they want to own the site, they can have it. Just as long as they realize that suggestions/feedback don't belong in forums and wikis.

I really wish I could have gotten in touch with all of you sooner. I actually tried to get Gaile to take a look at NikiWiki when it was in full-swing and the GW 2 Suggestion page on this site was new, but she kept deleting my posts and never gave me a logical answer as to why. It was very frustrating, so I gave up for a time... Woops, getting long-winded, sorry. I'm now going to read the remainder of your discussion above to make sure I don't miss out on anything important. I'll be happy to address any questions/concerns you have here or you can leave feedback for me here. --Brokunn 03:17, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

It's been 3 weeks since I've left and this discussion hasn't went beyond "lolz let's sweep it under the carpet". I'm amazed at the stupidity. -- NUKLEAR IIV 16:06, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

When people leave and others become apathetic, that's generally what happens. -- Brains12 \ talk 17:13, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

GWFC

I did eventually read through the remainder of this post (whew), and I'm working on addressing some of your concerns you all mentioned above with voting, in addition to providing you a comprehensive list of GWFC benefits.

In the meantime, I've set up a "group" on the GWFC site for you all to experiment with, so you can get an idea of some of the features and potential it has. On the GWFC site, "groups" are a special way for distinct groups of users (Guilds for example), to share topics and ideas between themselves with the option of hiding the topics within from public view and/or restricting access to the group via invitation only. I've set up a Guild Wars Wiki test group for you all to review which contains the following topics:

• What's the best method for handling user suggestions?
  • - I thought this one would ring near/dear to your hearts as you've been discussing it in length for some time. I added a few answers of my own, and copied some from your discussion above. Please feel free to add more =)
• Skill feedback
  • - I've added a few "Skill Feedback" topics that should help give you an idea of how other feedback can be handled on the site. We could set up a specific "group" for skill feedback alone to categorize topics like these, and I'm also talking with the site developers to see if we have other options of grouping related topics together.
• Sample cape contest
  • - Here's a great example of how players could not only use the site to provide feedback to ArenaNet, but also help make decisions among themselves.

Note that to edit/vote on any of the topics within the group, you'll need to click the "Ask to Join this Group!" link on the main group page. Again, any feedback you could provide would be very welcome.

I'd also like to ask you all if you think it would be inappropriate if I mentioned the GWFC site to Izzy on his discussion page? I know he's busy and he probably only gets to view this post on occasion, but I'd hate for him (and all the other developers at ArenaNet) to miss out on at the least having the opportunity to review the GWFC site. Thank you! --Brokunn 00:45, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

You don't need permission to present your idea to Izzy. I'm sure that with proper dedication, this idea of yours will be preferable in the future, Brokunn. But in the meantime, we're really wasting time. Based on the opinions posted, it looks like we're going to go with the Committee mixed with voting. Do keep in mind that we still have the other option on the table, should this one not work out. So let's continue from this point onwards... (Terra Xin 21:43, 22 October 2008 (UTC))

I think the approach you've selected is sound – and I'm just trying to say that the GWFC is perfect for what you've already decided. I agree that having a committee will help manage the sheer amount of suggestions that you have, but you still need to implement a voting mechanism – thats where the GWFC comes in.

Your only other alternative is to implement some kind of voting/polling extension into the Guild Wars Wiki. Trust me when I say that's not an entirely easy task; I've done it before. Getting the voting mechanism set up in the first place is one thing (it will take time/money from someone at ArenaNet), but then what do you do with the data that the voting system collects? How do the people interested in the results sort through all that data once it's built up? With NikiWiki, I had to spend a considerable amount of time writing my own special pages to dredge through that data, someone at ArenaNet is going to have to do the same. With the GWFC, all this is already done!

In addition, we've all seen wiki's with voting capabilities become just another problem themselves (as Xeeron already stated above). The Guild Wars Feedback Community will be different because it was designed to handle this specific task. And as a huge side benefit, it will help get all this suggestion content off the Guild Wars Wiki site where it doesn't belong in the first place (as previously mentioned by Inspired above). Win win win.

Seriously, if you all have a major aversion to the GWFC site, please let me know why and I'll try to address your concerns. If the GWFC doesn't stack up, I'll agree that you should move on. But if there's no reasons why you wouldn't use the site, I have to assume that it's perfect the way it is  ;)

Oh and though I said that the GWFC site is in beta, please don't misunderstand. I feel that the site is ready, I'm just looking for feedback from folks like you to give it a final polish before putting it into full swing. --Brokunn 21:17, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Straight forward question: How do we know you wont pull a Gravewit on us and cash out once you have populated your site? --Xeeron 21:43, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

That's a very good question, and the obvious answer is: you don't. I don't like that answer, so if you all can think of any way that I could prove to you that I'm not a D-bag out for money, I'd be happy to do so. In the meantime, I might be able to address some of your concern with the following:

• For me, this has never been about monetary gain. When I originally began tackling this issue with NikiWiki back in 07, I wanted to take “open source” approach from the beginning. NikiWiki never had any ads or donation requests, and was set up under the GNU FDL in an attempt to avoid the same kinds of issues that arose with the GuildWiki site. Money has never been a determining factor for me with this endeavor, if it was, I think it would be a little more evident in NikiWiki's history. I encourage you all to read a little more about my background and the history of NikiWiki and the GWFC (I've finally got it sorted out a little better).
• The GWFC costs me nothing. In other words, I don't need advertisements, money from Anet, etc to pay for anything for this site.
• As I've said before, if ArenaNet wants the GWFC site, they can have it. It would be nice if they at least acknowledged my existence, but I don't want anything from them... which leads to:

Why am I doing this and what's in it for me?

• First, my original intent was getting some great new ideas put into Guild Wars 2. I not only wanted to see the game succeed, but I also wanted it to become something more than just another MMO. I wanted it to have new aspects never seen in a game of its class, and while I think the developers at Anet are great, I believed that one of the best resources for new ideas was the people that play the game themselves.
• Second, I wanted to build a little standing in the Guild Wars community with something I was passionate about. I never really had much interest in posting maps for dungeons, or figuring out good builds, so I wanted to put my efforts into something I thought I could help the most. I'm sure one of the reason's why all you guys put so much time deliberating, fixing, cleaning, etc on this site is the reward of doing something for the good of the community. Isn't it nice to know you're appreciated?
• Third, I'm a web developer by profession (though the applications I work on 8-5 aren't nearly as interesting as this stuff), so if I can eventually say that I helped build a successful on-line community, that opens some doors for me in my career.
• Lastly, I've been an avid Guild Wars player since the original pre-release of Prophecies. I'm not just some random guy trying to capitalize on an idea - I know this game well and I'm very passionate about... if that counts for anything  ;)

I want ArenaNet to adopt the GWFC site, but I really need all of you to help me convince them that it's the best choice (assuming you agree). Like I said before, I wish I had more of a standing in the wiki community at this point – but I've been spending my time working on this issue for long before it exited on the Guild Wars Wiki. Please understand that I do have quite a bit of experience with it =) --Brokunn 21:39, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

It could be added to the fansite list, but if "adopt" means "host", I don't think ArenaNet could adopt the GWFC site due to licensing issues. ArenaNet couldn't host GuildWiki because it was under a non-commercial license. The GWFC site's content doesn't appear to be released under any license. -- Gordon Ecker 05:20, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

As of right now, I think it should be added to Fansites just with no official status since it hasn't gained that approval through ArenaNet yet. There are a few other fansites listed this way on that page. As for the licensing, I believe that is most likely an oversight on Brokunn's part and needs to be corrected on GWFC. -- Wyn 06:09, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Woops! I didn't even think about the licensing (or lack thereof) on the GWFC! Perhaps this is a perfect opportunity prove my statements above? If ArenaNet contacts me, I'd be happy to apply whatever terms they want on the site. Until then, do you think it would be a good idea to put the GWFC under the same licensing agreement as the GWW, or just leave it alone? --Brokunn 15:57, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Anything which has already been posted couldn't be released under a new license without the permission of the copyright holder (generally the original poster). -- Gordon Ecker 00:44, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

That shouldn't be a problem, since I've been the one posting the majority of the content on the site just to flesh it out. I'm sure the other folks that have contributed wouldn't mind re-posting either (it is still in beta after all). I should probably get this up as soon as I can to avoid hassling everyone. Any other thoughts/suggestions? --Brokunn 15:05, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Advantages

I've been wanting to address some of your concerns about on-line voting systems in general, and why the Guild Wars Feedback Community site is superior. Note that the GWFC is built on a foundation called Grupthink (just as the Guild Wars Wiki is built on Mediawiki). I've summarized many of the Grupthink benefits and made a few notes on why they are particularly suited for Guild Wars feedback:

← moved to User:Brokunn/Guild_Wars_Feedback_Community

(JonTheMon kindly moved this section for me since it was a little long)

If you guys/gals can find a Mediawiki extension that can do all of the above for the Guild Wars Wiki, I'd say go for it. But since I'm fairly certain nothing like that exists, the GWFC is your best option. --Brokunn 22:59, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

---