Guild Wars Wiki talk:Feedback organization/Archive 1

Skill Feedback

Where will the main link to this be? On the Feedback:Main, at the same level as general suggestions, or as a sub-set of Guild Wars suggestions? --JonTheMon 19:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that's still in discussion, which is why I haven't put it in yet. I would like Eras' input on this more before we get too carried away. (Satanael 19:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

There has been a bit of discussion regarding eliminating the Skill feedback in it's entirety and making it part of the suggestion area. -- Wyn talk 19:51, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

... Which wouldn't be a bad idea and would bring a lot positive points from the other structure with it without making it really more complex (one category more or less is not a problem). poke | talk 19:58, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, after looking at it, I do think skill feedback should be under the user pages, but then it's a question of how does an Anet employee only look at Mesmer Inspiration skill feedback? --JonTheMon 19:59, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that was the main concern, but if it can be done, I don't think there is really any strong opposition to the merge. (Satanael 20:01, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

Categories already make that fairly trivial, Jon, if things are properly categorized. i.e. Category:Skill Suggestions with subcategory Category:Mesmer Skill Suggestions with subcategory Category:Inspiration Skill Suggestions. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 20:02, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

With sub-subcategories for each skill in the game? (Satanael 20:13, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

If that's what it takes, but I think subbed down to the attribute might be enough. -- Wyn talk 20:14, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

One large concern I have regarding putting skill feedback in with the rest of the suggestions is that anyone who does not wish to register a username will then simply put all their skill feedback on the developers talk pages. This is something I would really like to avoid. Pictures of Izzy's page before we took control of it come to mind. -- Wyn talk 20:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Sat, remember that categories don't actually have to be explicitly created in order to be used - tagging a single page for a given category automatically "creates" it. So yes, it would be fairly easy to simply allow for categories for every skill with minimal effort. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 20:27, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, as far as I'm concerned, if it works, it works (and if its bad, its bad, right Wyn? :P) (Satanael 20:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

Wyn, it would be easy to simply disallow skill feedback on dev pages.. poke | talk 20:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

You and I define easy differently. :P -- Wyn talk 20:47, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't think it possible if one goes with the forum idea. Skill functionality is such a basic function of the game that it will tend to get invoklved in everything. Either we do forums full out, and then most stuff happens there, or no forums. Backsword 21:21, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Don't think it should be linked at all. Preferably delted asap, but archiving like Xeer requested would be acceptable. Backsword 21:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

(RI) Under the currently proposed categories, we would have a table completely dedicated to skill suggestions. Depending on how robust the table-making system is, we could even make it display automatically which profession is being talked about, and ask contributors to state the skill name when naming their suggestions. We would end with something like this...

User		Last modified		Profession		Skill
Erasculio		22.07.2009				Buff Meteor Shower
Erasculio		09.06.2009				Nerf Shadow Form

Erasculio 14:41, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

No offense, but I don't really like the broken boxes idea you have there. Yeah, column spacing is great, but the broken box.... not so much. --JonTheMon 15:11, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Again Erasculio, I don't mind so much restricting game suggestions to registered users (though it's not my first choice given this is now the only officially acceptable space for suggestions), I do mind restricting skill feedback to only registered users, because after every skill update, you and I both know that everyone and their brother has an opinion on things. This is only going to lead to all the IPs posting their suggestions on Linsey's page, and that is something I would rather we avoid. -- Wyn talk 15:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Jon, I also don't like how these tables look. I have never been able to learn how to make decent looking tables on the wiki (not to mention ones that follow a sane code, instead of this weird "the entire row then the next entire row and so on" thing). I'm just showing what each cell would have, but I would definitely rather have better looking tables.

And Wyn, I think we are going to get people talking about updates on Linsey's talk page regardless of what we do. People have always done that, and the first person who goes there to say "thanks" will bring a wave of people who will see a new section on Linsey's page about the update and then will be pratically forced to share their two cents. As long as we successfully make everyone who would have contributed to the old Skill Feedback thing to contribute on the GW suggestions page, I'm satisfied. Erasculio 15:30, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

But see, we aren't saying that everyone who contributed to the old GW suggestions can do this, only those who are registered users, and that in itself is going to increase the volume of crap that ends up on Linsey's (as well as the other staff) page. I still maintain we need to keep skill feedback at least separate from the rest of the suggestions. I mean, if users wish to create skill suggestions and categorize them as such, that's fine, but we really do need to make this accessible to the entire community, not just registered users... I've always felt that way and that hasn't changed. -- Wyn talk 15:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

You could use the same argument about the entire suggestions system. After the introduction of the Zaishen quests, you saw how many people added their opinions about these new quests on Linsey's talk pages, for example. Now, was the reason they made all those comments on Linsey's talk page how the GW suggestions were closed at the time, or how they would rather make those comments on her talk page anyway? I believe it's the latter, so having the skill feedback system apart from the suggestions not only wouldn't make sense (as the skill feedback is just a bunch of suggestions) but it also would not prevent people from making comments they are already going to make at Linsey's talk page anyway. Erasculio 15:45, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

There is no much difference between registered users and unregistered users; people can always register within seconds, without having to add any real details about themselves (nothing is required other than username and password). There are so many websites out there where you have to register just to see something, and many more if you want to contribute, so I don't really see a problem in having to register to post any kind of feedback. One basic reasoning for having people register before posting suggestions was to make sure, that they actually do care about what they write. Just looking at all the skill suggestions we already have is annoying as there are always some of those one-posters that write some rubbish and go away forever then. Of course that can happen with regular users too, but it is less likely that it will happen that way.

Especially if we go with a system for skill feedback that dedicates one suggestion to one page (as it looks right now), then allowing anons to create hundreds of suggestions is just awful (remember the ArenaNet namespace). And regarding update-comments, we have the update pages itself, which - in regards of feedback - should be considered to be moved to the Feedback namespace later anyway due to the high number of update-related suggestions on them. poke | talk 15:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Fine, I see I'm going to be outnumbered in this.. if registering a username is going to be required for all of this namespace, why don't we just change the entire wiki to require registration to post anything. That will then nullify any concerns I have about unfairness. <edit> So I should just go ahead and delete all the skill feedback pages here? -- Wyn talk 16:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Erasculio 16:13, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Another option would be to give all IP's a single page to comment on, with a big disclaimer on top along the lines of "If you don't want to be mixed in with everybody else, get a user-name. We're not gonna help you otherwise and will impede any efforts of your's outside of this page." --JonTheMon 16:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Done. Now, can we get down to the actual organizational structure of suggestions? -- Wyn talk 16:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

General user feedback sections

Having a simple "Guild Wars suggestions" and "Guild Wars 2 suggestions" page won't work with the new user-based system. How the whole thing could work is not really clear by now. I'll come up with basic ideas about the possible mechanisms and organization on that soon. poke | talk 19:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I was sort of thinking that those pages could be more introductory pages that had instructions on how to create a suggestion, how to find them, etc. with links to where they can go from there. What did you have in mind? (Satanael 19:37, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

I really wonder what kind of introductory you can think of that it justifies a whole page (actually, two pages). It's not very likely that we will have those two pages with lists of suggestions, and as GW1 and GW2 suggestions won't be divided that much any longer with the user-based system, there is no point in splitting it.

When we have an actual structure for the user suggestions, we can always create a base page for creating suggestions, that contains all necessary information. poke | talk 19:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

We could certainly fill one page with instructions and rules for creating suggestions, but you're right, that could be a more general suggestions page, rather than split GW1 and GW2. Then maybe we should have links to the lists where people can browse existing suggestions? (Satanael 19:51, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

So, does that make more sense for now? (Satanael 20:13, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

I've assumed the whole time that they will be divcided. Even if the basic structure is the same, using different tags thT would be no issue. Backsword 21:19, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that they will be divided in that there will be a list for the GW1 suggestions and a different list for the GW2 suggestions, and these lists may end up looking a little different, depending on how that discussion goes. What poke and I are talking about here is just how to get there, we don't need an introductory page for each list since they are eseentially created the same way and housed in the same place. (Satanael 23:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

(RI) IMO, we need two different pages (one for GW and one for GW2), each hosting multiple lists, with each list focusing on a specific theme, drawing from the user-based pages. We would need some kind of automatized system to recognise the suggestions and make the lists, though. Erasculio 14:44, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

There will be more than just two different pages anyway, so we shouldn't stick to such a generic name for two of those pages now. poke | talk 15:43, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Emily mentioned how she would not like a system in which the developers have to look from page to page to page in order to find a suggestion. Having only two pages, each with around 7 to 9 lists, would be better, IMO. Erasculio 15:47, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

There is no point in filling one page with multiple large lists where you have to scroll down for minutes to get the start of the next list about another topic, and you generally have to wait 2 minutes for the page to load.

In the very first instance, Emily requested an easy system for the developers, and I will try everything to make it as easy and practical as possible, but that won't work with your idea of lists. poke | talk 09:30, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Emily words were:

"As a general rule of thumb: the simpler you guys can present the information, the more team members will be able to use it. If a team can go to a single page and see clearly where they need to go from there, chances are they will."

I can't think of anything simpler than saying "the Guild Wars suggestions are in this page" and then allowing the developers to reach all available suggestions through a single link from said page. Having a main page linking to subpages linking to categories linking to the lists and only then linking to the suggestions themselves would be something Emily told us to avoid:

"So, for instance, if you make a suggestion about creatures and it's buried deep inside a suggestions page tucked away in some remote category of the wiki, it's probably not going to be seen by the creatures guys (no slight on them...this is just an example)."

Besides, with a simple table of contents, we remove the need to "scroll down for minutes". Erasculio 17:55, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I think this discussion will be difficult to resolve until we actually see what poke & co. put together. If we see what they put together is too cumbersome/complicated, we can move from there. (Satanael 18:36, 6 July 2009 (UTC))

This project page

With regard to this I was thinking it would be helpful to list all of our red links so that we can have a to do list type thing. (Satanael 19:40, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

See exactly the section above...... poke | talk 19:44, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Pretty vs. functional

Just something I'd like to point out, the main page is "dressed up" with images and the like because it's the main page, the front page of the site. I don't really think the feedback portal will need that kind of dressing up, just like things such as GWW:PORTAL and other such non-frontpage portals don't. Whatever aesthetic we do go with for the portal page (and the pages in general), I'd like to see an emphasis on functionality/usability first, and "prettiness" second. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 19:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree functionaility is paramount, but I would like it to look a little better than our last attempt, since I get the impression that ANet wants this to be recognized as a more involved effort than they have made in the past, and the extent to which we go with "pretty" can help to emphasize this point. (Satanael 19:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

On a related subject, I have uploaded a new devourer image for use on the main page, as the old one was a .jpg and did not support transparency. It was bugging me. Hah. Ha-ha. --Jette 20:13, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Ha ha, that was bugging me to, I even looked around for insect images that were better suited, but alas, they are all screenshots... (Satanael 20:15, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

To an extent, maybe, however just throwing in random images does not a "professional" page make. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 16:28, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, once we know a little better what the suggestions part is going to look like, I think a top-down re-look at the main page is in order. (Satanael 18:27, 8 July 2009 (UTC))

Bug reports and Localization

Should these two topics be combined on a single portal page? Currently the bug reports don't have a 'main portal' outside of the ArenaNet portal. I added them to Feedback:Localization bugs which could be moved to Feedback:Bug reports and Localization. -- Wyn talk 21:08, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and yes... I made them purple :P -- Wyn talk 21:09, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

My first thought (before you posted it here) was "Wyn really loves purple, huh?" – anyway, the merge works fine with me. poke | talk 21:12, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me and I'm fine with the merge (Satanael 23:19, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

Suggestion: for ease of linking and whatnot, perhaps it would be better to keep them at Feedback:Localization and Feedback:Bug reports, but then transclude both of those into Feedback:Bug reports and Localization and use that third, combined page as the link off of the Feedback portal. That way if someone wants to go directly to one or the other, they can (and saves typing/remembering the larger name), but we don't have to link both separately. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:34, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

That works for me too Aiiane, I'll get it done :D -- Wyn talk 03:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Don't we usually go lowercase/standard English for page titles? I'm wondering why it's "Bug reports and Localization" and not "Bug reports and localization". Minor issue, really, but consistenceeee! -- Brains12 \ talk 15:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I had mostly made an exception due to it being the combination of two other page names. But I don't really care either way. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 02:33, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

User pages

So, I would like to create my user page in the feedback area so we can have it to test/build the suggestion creation and listing features. However, before I do that, I recall there was some discussion about how the user pages should be named, and I don't recall that issue getting resolved. So, let's resolve it. If I create my userpage at Feedback:User:Satanael, with subsequent suggestions showing up at Feedback:User:Satanael/Suggestion A, how wildly wrong would that be? (Satanael 23:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC))

Pretty wrong. The debate is whether it should be Feedback:User Satanael/Suggestion A, or Feedback:User/Satanael/Suggestion A. Colons in titles normally designate the namespace. But as you said, that topic was derailed, and no decision was made, so as far as I'm concerned take your pick. -- Wyn talk 03:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Somehow I knew I was getting it wrong. Well, your first one looks better to me, but the second one seems to make more sense in some wierd wiki kind of way. I'll give a couple days (ish) and go with whatever strong opinion prevails. If none are offered, then I will probably just go with Feedback:User Satanael/Suggestion A. (Satanael 03:35, 3 July 2009 (UTC))

Whatever way is preferred, please use User:Examples space :) poke | talk 07:03, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, good idea, I bet that user has a lot more valuable input than I do anyway :P (Satanael 03:41, 6 July 2009 (UTC))

If you don't mind, I'm going to go ahead with the Feedback:User/Example format - the reason for this being that you can then use {{#titleparts: {{PAGENAME}}|1|2}} to easily grab the actual username associated with any page, whereas with "Feedback:User Example" you cannot. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 04:27, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions lists

No idea if that's what people see when they think of this section, but my idea was to have two suggestions pages, one for each game, and in each page having between 7 and 9 lists arranged by topic, as I had described here. However, that system relies on...

1. Some kind of automatic generated lists organizing the suggestions, and we still haven't figured out which system to use. We had originally talked about DPL (which I don't know how to implement for something like this) and poke had mentioned an alternative system (which also I didn't completely understood xD).
2. The two suggestions pages being locked. IMO, this is something extremely important to prevent people who haven't read the FAQ from just editing the list pages and just writing their own suggestions in there, or trying to add their suggestions on the lists manually.

I would prefer a system that is not too easy to use, so we don't have the problems that were being caused by the old auto-pages on the GW Suggestions page and on the GW2 Suggestions page. Erasculio 21:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

There is no way in heaven you are going to force people to read the FAQ or the rules before they start posting no matter HOW many times you flash them in their faces (this has been proven over and over and over just look at how many times a week we have to remove email addresses from the help:ask a question pages). We have to face the facts that this is going to be chaos, the best we can hope for is that it will be organized chaos. If pages don't get categorized properly, they will not show up in any dpl generated list, so it's only going to be through time, trial and error, that people are going to figure out how to get their stuff posted properly if at all. I do agree that the pages displaying the lists should be locked from general editing though. We might want to create a new help page Help:Posting suggestions. -- Wyn talk 01:09, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Ideally, IMO, we would have a system in which the harder part is making the suggestions to actually appear on the lists. So if someone does not read anything and just throws random stuff on his/her pages, said pages would not appear on the suggestions lists, and so no damage would be done to the system. I do think we will need a page explaining to people how to post suggestions, but I think we could make that either part of the FAQ or part of the Rules of this space. Erasculio 01:58, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I disagree, it's a help page, it belongs in the help namespace. -- Wyn talk 02:47, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

With the magic of redirects, a page need not exist only in one namespace. :) (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 05:45, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I'm thinking something that walks people through the initial part of creating their basic Feedback:User Example page, i.e., some "Getting started" link that explains the process to people and gets them started. Once they have gone through that, then they can start creating Feedback: User Example/Suggestion 1, etc. This makes it so that no suggestion gets posted without someone doing a couple of steps and reading some instructions. Does that make sense? (Satanael 05:50, 4 July 2009 (UTC))

The problem is that there's no good way to enforce that they go through a walkthrough the first time, but not any time after that. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 06:38, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Would it be possible to make so that creating their initial userpage in the feedback space is only possible if done using the button or whatever we provide in the "getting started" section? If not, I think it could still be okay if we just don't tell them how to make a suggestion except to say "if you want to start making suggestions, hit 'getting started...'" The process is complicated enough that they will not think of it without us telling them how it works. (Satanael 14:53, 4 July 2009 (UTC))

Exactly. Place the "how to make suggestions" thing in the middle of the guidelines, and those who won't read anything also won't know how to make suggestions at all. Erasculio 15:03, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I find your "Make this as difficult as possible and they will all go away" attitude really distasteful Erasculio. I think it violates the entire spirit of this wiki, and the spirit of why ArenaNet has gone through the process of revising the licensing terms. I say make the instructions as accessible and easy to follow as possible. -- Wyn talk 19:32, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

In this section you complain that we cannot make contributors look at the FAQ or at the rules before contributing, so why are you refusing a system that fixes the exact thing you are complaining about? The idea isn't to drive people away (and please stop puting words in my mouth, or I'll make you see what "distasteful" truly means), rather to make sure people read the rules and to avoid future scenarios like this. Erasculio 20:04, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't like your tone, Erasculio. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 02:27, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

We will never get anywhere if this already slow process becomes bogged down by rhetorics, hyperboles, fallacies or insults. This specific topic is the worst in which to have those things, given how we need not only to discuss the format of the lists, but we also need the technical knowledge of how to actually make those lists, and that's something only a few people here have (I don't, for example). Erasculio 02:35, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Frustration and threats aside (even if we are not professionals, we could at least try to act like them...), I think the point that Eras is trying to reach is that making the system like our previous suggestions system, where we essentially told people "Hit this button to make a suggestion! Oh, and read the rules." is a recipe for disaster. Nonetheless, Wyn is also right, we cannot make it so complicated and difficult to figure out that no one bothers and just heads straight for the dev talkpages. Essentially, a balance is required. I think there should be an inherent step or two between arriving at the feedback space and making a suggestion. Nonetheless, we should make it very clear how to get to these steps, we can do this by having multiple links to the "getting started" page, in the FAQ, on the main page, in any help pages we have, etc. (Satanael 04:58, 5 July 2009 (UTC))

(Reset indent) I'm sorry Erasculio, I shouldn't be snapping at you because of my personal frustration/annoyance that the really vital parts of this are being held up. Regardless of anything else, until we get the actual mechanics of the suggestion lists determined, there is no way for us to do any sort of "how to". If I had the kind of coding brilliance it's going to take to do this, I would, but I even copy/pasting dpl code gives me a headache. /me gives poke a poke -- Wyn talk 05:03, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I apologize to you too, Wyn. I'm frustrated exactly thanks to the same thing - this is not something I can do, or even start. The FAQ pages and rule pages are things we could begin, and I'm confident that they will be finished in due time. The code for this thing, though, is way beyond my head. Erasculio 10:43, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

While I also find the moral implications of "make it difficult, as a sort of culling process" somewhat distasteful, I do see the necessity of having such a system. Making it too easy does, in fact, promote (or allow, at the very least) carelessness and disregard. It's efficient (from a sysoping standpoint - it largely prevents unnecessary page moves/merges/deletions with little effort from the administrative side of the wiki) and easy.

This puts me in mind of a friend of mine who ran into a similar situation with one of their professors. Anecdote time!

The class was given an exam, and specifically instructed to thoroughly read and obey the directions. However, upon seeing that the directions were long (four pages of directions? Come on), many students elected to skip them and continue their multiple choice exam in standard fashion, unaware of the direction that read:

• You will begin with a perfect score, and will be marked off two points for every question you answer. Correct answers will halve this penalty.

While many argued that it was "cheap" and "unfair", those who failed with all correct answers really had no one but themselves to blame. Had they read and obeyed the directions, they'd've had the easiest perfect score of their educational careers.

Similarly, with this namespace, any who do not follow a clearly-detailed process and, thus, cannot cause their suggestion to be made readable, will have no one but themselves to blame. It's also worthwhile to note that, as the process will be constant, those who familiarize themselves with it need only deal with the "difficult" or "tricky" aspects once, as the students would've only been required to read the instructions the first time were they given the knowledge that all subsequent tests would follow the same procedure.

So, while such measures as having a false "Post a Suggestion" page that doesn't actually do anything or placing the link to the "Post a Suggestion" page someplace less-than-obvious may be "cheap", it's a very effective solution, and I think it shouldn't be thrown out for its moral implications. Raine - talk 00:03, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

What do you need?

Hey Erasculio, just tell me what we're working on and I will help anyway I can. -- Salome 16:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the most pressing issue is deciding how the suggestions lists will work, as was (originally xD) being discussed here. All other topics in this page could use more opinions, though. Erasculio 18:52, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

What we need is to hammer out the text for the rules for posting in all areas of the feeback namespace, and to finalize some decisions like color/design. Also input on the FAQ, and other areas the should be included on the main page. -- Wyn talk 21:10, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay well my personal vote is that the green colour design is nice, although I still think the banner is somewhat harsh on the eyes. As the green and the grey seems to clash slightly. Maybe changing the grey to a light green would ease that? As for the FAQ, maybe a good question to add would be "Will I get credit from Anet for any suggestions used?", that way we clear up that anythign put forward their is put forward on the basis of forfeiting all claims of ownership of intellectual property. As for the rules on posting. I can think of a few methods for posting which could work, however its all going to come down to if people are actually going to follow any rules. The more involved the posting rules, the more the namespace will have to be patrolled, however the less organised the namespace is, the less useful it becomes to Anet as a resource. I kinda think we need to separate GW1 and GW2 suggestions. Then after that I think we need some way to divide suggestions for future content from that of feedback on existing content. However how we do that is abit beyond me. -- Salome 21:48, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

So add what you think would be good, and we can talk about it in the section below :D I've also created the start of the Feedback:Rules page and added Gaile's Support rules to it. -- Wyn talk 21:58, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I think we need a "general rules" section covering things that apply to the entire namespace (with stuff like how contributors are forbidden from moving content from the main namespace to the feedback one or the other way around) before the "Game Suggestions" section. Erasculio 23:12, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I just wanted to get it started. -- Wyn talk 23:20, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

FAQ

I have began working on the FAQ. I have tried making it based on the main FAQ, but I think I got the wrong color (it's meant to be green, based on the "official" color of the Feedback section, but I think that shade of green on the background is too dark). Erasculio 18:52, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Colors aren't a major issue at the moment.. (I've been making everything in the namespace purple :P) -- Wyn talk 19:33, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Can I just say that "The Feedback namespace is but one way to get in touch with Arena Net." could be in simpler English (especially as a lot of wiki users don't speak English as a first language) and still retain full effect. Simply change the "but one way" to "just one way". --Alex Eternal 20:22, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't speak English as a first language, that's why the wording isn't that good : P Feel free to state whatever text changes you would like to happen on that page, I have created it just so we would start collectively working on it. Erasculio 20:27, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Do you mind if I reword the faq section slightly? -- Salome 21:28, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Of course not, go for it. Feel free to completely revamp it if you want. Erasculio 21:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

We also need to keep in mind that it's not JUST suggestions that are going to be posted here, so the FAQ should also address things like bug reports and localization, as well as support. -- Wyn talk 22:04, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh the English was fine Erasculio, the problem was it was too complex xD --Alex Eternal 22:20, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Actual listing mechanics (attn: poke)

Before we can get too far with discussing display forms and whatnot for suggestions lists, what we really need to finalize (or at least, get some idea of) is what methods/mechanics we're actually going to be using to manage the listings, whether it be DPL, poke's external bot, some combination of both, or something else entirely.

Poke, I think what we were discussing the other day was using the standard wiki category system for topic-based organization of suggestions. The main issue was the chronological listings, which, if I recall our conversation correctly, DPL isn't that great for handling, since if its results overflow, it no longer guarantees that it gets the newest X results. So in that case, the external bot might be more useful, since it can have a larger degree of customizable logic.

Perhaps, however, we might want to also have a DPL'd page that lists, say, all of the newly created suggestions for the past day or so - this shouldn't overflow the DPL limit, and thus should work fine with DPL.

Just some thoughts. Poke, your input? (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 02:45, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, fully agree, I think figuring the mechanics of the listing is the next step, as this will have a huge effect on how the development of the rules, instructions and overall structure of the suggestions system. Please, oh mighty POKE, show us the way! (Satanael 04:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC))

For the records, this is what I had in mind. A (somewhat simple) template that users would add to their suggestions pages, allowing said pages to appear on the lists. All an user would have to add to his/her page would be the examples I have provided; each parameter would be linked to one list. Those would ideally have some way to exclude ideas belonging to the other lists, something like...

| category = World feedback
| notcategory = Items feedback
| notcategory2 = PvE feedback
| notcategory3 = PvP feedback

And so on, so if an user added the template multiple times to his page, we would not have the same entry on multiple suggestion lists. I'm saying this just so people have an idea of what I had originally thought about, not that I expect us to use this exact system or to even use DPL at all. Erasculio 03:59, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I won't be able to comment on this before Wednesday. poke | talk 09:26, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Filter

What are our plans in regards to preventing with no experience with what they're talking about making retarded suggestions that will A) be taken seriously by ANet, B) discourage ANet from reading any of the suggestions given on these pages, or C) clog the pages and waste lots of space? Allowing any idiot to make obviously bad suggestions will make the entire namespace pointless. There needs to be some sort of requirement to post suggestions in particular spaces here, and it needs to be game-related, not wiki-related (making 1500 edits makes you qualified to elect bureaucrats, it does not qualify you to comment on GvG). Obviously, the criteria should be different for each section -- I'm not going to rip on high-end PvErs because they're bad at PvP or vice versa. But the suggestions need to come from people with experience, rather than clueless morons. The disadvantage to this is that people with valid ideas but no experience would not be permitted to post, but this is a moot pointy, as the intelligent thing for a person without permission to post here to do if they have an idea is suggest it to someone who does have permission -- if any of the people they ask believe it is a good idea, then they can post it themselves. --Jette 23:19, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

None whatsoever. -- Wyn talk 23:36, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Just 'cause you might not think their ideas are worthy, doesn't mean we can exclude them. If their suggestions are bad, I doubt Anet would implement them. And Anet might be able to take an underlying idea behind bad suggestions and make something good out of it. --JonTheMon 23:40, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

You can feel free to comment on their user suggestion talk page, but other that's it. -- Wyn talk 23:47, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

There were suggestions about putting space marines in guild wars from the old suggestions pages ffs, and that was one of the better ones because at least it made me smile. Can we at least have some sort of peer review or something? If there's nothing to prevent stupid suggestions from clogging up the space, then the crap is going to overcome the good suggestions in a matter of seconds. What ANet employee, busy as they are ignoring their success to make a WoW clone, is going to have time to sort through a dozen bad suggestions for every good one? Sure, some are obvious -- atrocious spelling and grammar are usually dead giveaways -- but there are some people out there who have no idea of what they are talking about despite being able to speak coherently. It's like how light travels faster than sound; their post looks intelligent until you start to read it, and then you realize this person has the IQ of a cutting board. And by that time, you've already wasted a few minutes reading their suggestion, meaning at least one good one goes ignored. --Jette 23:55, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

No, every registered user has the right to post any suggestion they please, as long as they follow the proper steps, and follow the posted rules (still to be determined). We have discussed for almost a year now all the various ways that such a "filter" or "peer review" system" could feasibly be set up on a wiki, and none of them are really viable. As I said, you can feel free to add your comments about their suggestion on the user's suggestion talk page. I believe that any ArenaNet staff who does view their suggestions will have enough brains to know a good suggestion from a bad one. -- Wyn talk 23:59, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

ANet wouldn't know a good suggestion if it crawled up their ass and brought them to orgasm through prostate stimulation. If we can't block some suggestions, can we put in a "highlighted suggestions" where 5 or so of the best suggestions are selected by a neutral party and put at the top, for ANet to pay especial attention to? Or, if not, put a giant blinking warning at the top telling people to discuss their suggestions with respected members of the wiki or something before spamming it with garbage? --Jette 00:04, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

And just who would this neutral party be? You? Shard? Me? And why would a respected member of the wiki community be any better to judge the viability of a suggestion more than an Anet developer? I don't think so. After this gets implemented, we can possibly discuss a "featured suggestion" like the "featured article" but I wouldn't count on it. Your personal opinions of the ArenaNet team lead me to believe that you would have less of a clue about what suggestions could be viably implemented than I have. -- Wyn talk 00:12, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

One side effect of limiting suggestions to registered users is that we will limit a bit the number of ideas submited, and those who have to stop and register an account may think a bit more before submiting than some of the contributors to the old suggestions system. We are likely going to get a lot of bad ideas anyway, of course, but "filtering" by slowing people down is probably the best we are going to get. Erasculio 01:38, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry Jette, but censoring ideas based on some arbitrary determination of "good" and "bad" is just not what this thing is about. The only thing something like that would accomplish would be to make an already rude and elitist community down right mean. (Satanael 03:38, 6 July 2009 (UTC))

I understand and acknowledge that everyone has a right to post their suggestions, no matter how stupid and unhelpful they are. And if ANet is willing to work through all of that, then I say more power to them. But I think that, given how big this leviathan managed to get, there needs to be some sort of regulation so that the same ideas don't get regurgitated twenty times and take up space. 98% of the people who visit those pages aren't going to bother to read any rules we post and disregard the fact that they are probably the only person on earth who would care if their idea was implemented, or that it would totally unbalance the game. Look at that page I linked -- would you want to sit and work through all of that sea of garbage to find the one or two good ideas on the page, especially on a busy work day? I know I wouldn't. If we can't censor people for having stupid ideas, can we at least censor them for posting the same stupid ideas twenty times with bad grammar? Or put up a big, flashing section that says "commonly suggested ideas" so if some joker who thinks he's the first guy who wants an auction house (or competent balance team) comes here, they might be more inclined to read it and not post duplicates. And it'd be nice if we could delete suggestions that are obviously flaming, trolling, incoherent, copyright violations, or anything else completely stupid, rather than keep them on some BS about how asking for night elves or whatever is a "perfectly legitimate suggestion." Ordinarily I would just let this be, but this whole namespace is the first indication since... well, basically EVER, that ANet has plans to listen to the community, and I'd like it if it didn't go to waste. --Jette 18:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

One thing I would be fine with for "filtering" suggestions would be a list of things that have been repeatedly suggested and don't need to be brought up again, similar to Linsey's FAQ. --JonTheMon 18:45, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest, Jette, that you read the archives of this page, as everything you have brought up in this section has already been discussed, ad nauseum, not only on that page but on numerous other pages going back years. I would also add that poke, wyn, aiiane, erasculio and myself have all been intricately involved with the creation of not only this system but both of its predecessors, so we are well aware of the difficulties these previous systems faced, including poorly written and repeat suggestions.

I'm not against idenitifying commonly submitted ideas, in fact I sort of assumed we would have something to identify such ideas, but I also add that this is by no means a fix, as the system that created Jette's dreaded Leviathon already had a "big, flashing section that says `commonly suggested ideas.`"

In other words, we're aware of your concerns and we already have thoughts on how to deal with them to the extent possible (most of which are built into our basic mechanics of making a suggestion). When we actually get our basic framework up and running, we may discuss more about this, if necessary. (Satanael 21:50, 6 July 2009 (UTC))

A lot depends on how the pages end up getting structured. From what I understand, each user will have a main suggestion page and then idea subpages that will be indexed on their main page, then it doesn't matter how many times they "regurgitate" the same idea. If each suggestion is going to end up on a list on the primary page, then we could eventually have in issue, however, I don't believe there is any single group of users that have a monopoly on knowing a good suggestion. Part of the rules we have to work out is are we going to limit the number of suggestions any one user can have on the active list that ArenaNet sees? I mean, if you can only present 1-2 or even 3-5 ideas, you are going to take the time to think about them rather than just spewing randomness. -- Wyn talk 21:57, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Jette: [the requirement to post] needs to be game-related, not wiki-related

Assuming we wanted to do that, how would that work? "I'm R15 hero and r10 champion, lissen 2 my ideaz!!"

People are entitled to their suggestions. Even if the dumbest person on earth made a really terrible suggestion, it's still a suggestion that would make their gameplay experience better (otherwise they wouldn't make it). ~Shard 22:03, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) @Wyn: I'm not sure a limit on the number of suggestions per user is a good idea in the long run. I mean, it could work out in the short run, since most well thought out ideas take time to develop and most people don't think of 50 of them in a day, but over time people could easily come up with 50 reasonably well-thought-out ideas. This space will, hopefully, be up and running, taking ideas, for years. Even a really high limit of 20 or 30 could easily be reached within that amount of time. Unfortunately, I think we are going to have to bite the bullet and allow a certain level of suggestion diarhea. Having said that, I don't think we are going to see as many one liners as we did with the last system, if only because it will not be so easy to create a suggestion in the first place. And hopefully ANet employees will help to reward that well-thought-out suggestions and leave the randomness wanting, and that may shape behavior over time. Afterall, if your idea is unreadable, how can one expect the devs to comment on it? (Satanael 03:14, 7 July 2009 (UTC))

How about making it a time-based limitation, i.e. every user allowed to open one suggestion per a week/two (or more, whatever time span we decide on)? This would lessen the amount of throwaway ideas and encourage putting more thought and effort into individual suggestions. However, it could also lead to people creating single, 50 page suggestions along the lines of "everything that needs to be fixed in gw" in order to bypass the limit, so that'd have to be dealt with somehow too (maybe a size limit so they aren't ridiculously large?)...just some of my thoughts, my apologies if this was already discussed somewhere btw. Nate 04:02, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion Nate, I had thought of that as well. Ultimately, I think such a restriction would annoy people more than anything else, and may discourage them from using the proper channels for suggesting ideas (and instead just post on dev talkpages, which we don't want). I think the overall mechanics of the system we are creating will go a really long way to addressing the issues people are raising in this section, i.e., drawing that balance between not so complicated that people can't figure it out but complicated enough that people will have to put more than 5 seconds thought into their suggestion. If my premonition is incorrect, and this thing starts to get out of control again, then I am happy to revisit ideas like limiting suggestions per user or per day and other such ideas. (Satanael 04:11, 7 July 2009 (UTC))

I don't think there should be any limitation on the number or frequency of suggestions. IIRC in the old suggestion namespace, many of the really bad suggestions were created by either unregistered users or by users who only made a few suggestions. I'm sure there's quite a few people who could propose dozens of good skill suggestions in a week, and if the main skill suggestion index gets too cluttered, it can be split up into narrower index pages, and if that is insufficient, we could add some sort of delisting procedure. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:28, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, I guess we'll see how it works when this goes live then. To be honest, I'm less worried about the page being cluttered or too big (which could be addressed by delisting or multiple index pages) and more worried that Anet employees will have to wade through some 100 badly thought-out ideas for every well written, usable one, which would render the feedback unusable. Nate 11:39, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, and one of the ways we are trying to mitigate that problem is by making lists of suggestions that can be easily browsed by ANet staff and anyone else interested. These lists will be split up into categories and will have multiple columns to help sort through the suggestions. For example, one of the things we are hoping to be able to do is have a list of, say, GW1 PvP suggestions. That list would show all suggestions regarding PvP in GW1, and could also sort them based on a variety of defining factors, e.g., list all of the GvG suggestions at the top, list them by creation date or modification date, list them by user, list them by suggestion title, etc. This plus the added info that can be gained from looking at the suggestion title itself (i.e., a suggestion with title "hexxor sklz FTW!" may be less appealing than, say, "Buff Domination skills") can go a long way to helping the devs weed through all of the suggestions and find the ones that will help them the most. Or, at least we are hoping it can... (Satanael 14:42, 7 July 2009 (UTC))

To do list

It seems like we've been getting a little sidetracked lately, so I've created a to do list to help keep us focused and make sure we don't forget anything along the way. Please feel free to add to the list or modify what's there if I've gotten it wrong. (Satanael 16:17, 6 July 2009 (UTC))

Given how poke is busy these days, and how I'm not fond of relying on a single person for any given task anyway, is anyone up to trying to make a DPL system for the suggestions list? Individually I don't think any of us non Jedis can make it, but maybe together we could pull something. I was trying to adapt the skill lists given how they already are pretty looking long lists with enough space, but the problem is that they require three different templates (the skill table one, the skill infobox one and the one summoning the list itself), while our system would require only two. If there were a way to adapt the skill infobox, so it's simpler (we don't need all those categories or all those variables) and invisible (we definitely don't need all that formatting), maybe this would be easier. Any ideas? Erasculio 23:04, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, the main question is, what exactly are you wanting to list? Because as far as just listing every single page in a category, well the category pages already do that. Also remember that DPL is limited to 500 (iirc) results maximum, and thus we can't use it for displaying a giant summary list of everything, or even all of a particular category - the # of elements in a given category will eventually grow to exceed the limit. So anything that's being DPL'd needs some sort of a limit on what it's displaying, to be reasonable. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 01:23, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I actually think the DPL limit is a good thing - it allows us to know how big a page is going to be. An article with 10 lists would have at most 5.000 entries, for example, requiring us to archive older entries.

What I would like to list would be:

1. Author
2. Date of creation
3. Date the page was last modified
4. Name of the page (not User:Example/Suggestion, but rather just Suggestion)
5. For skill pages, also list the profession

And we would likely need a system of categories based on date of creation, so we can archive the older ideas first. Erasculio 02:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that we have no control over what is included and what is excluded if we go over the limit. It's one of the things I've been discussing with poke - even if we tell DPL to order entries by edit date or creation date, that doesn't actually mean that we'll get the 500 most recent - it just means that whatever 500 random entries we do get, will be sorted.

So again, there needs to be some limit besides just the DPL hard limit. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 03:04, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

In that case, we would have to have a way of archiving once we reach, say 400. Once we hit that number, we take 200(?) of the oldest ideas, change their templates so they are not picked up by the dpl, and deposit in an archive. It would be grand if that could be done by a bot, but I'd settle for the ability to do it at all if we can. One other thing we would have to bear in mind with regard to the archiving is that some suggestions may show up on multiple lists, and each list will reach their respective limit at different rates, so would there be a way to archive some lists without affecting the others? (Satanael 03:20, 7 July 2009 (UTC))

Also, we would want some of the yes/no categories that Eras has been talking about. For example, if we have a list of GW1 PvP suggestions, we may want columns that list whether or not the idea covers HA, HB, GvG, RA, etc. And those columns would be different depending on which list we are talking about. (Satanael 03:23, 7 July 2009 (UTC))

IMO archiving older suggestions would encourage duplicates. I think that if an index page gets close to the limit, we should split it into narrower index pages. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:38, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Continual splitting is not really feasible due to the nature of wiki pages - in order to change what list(s) a page falls in, you'd need to edit the page itself, which would involve editing all of the pages for each of the new subcategories - very inefficient if we're talking about splitting lists when the approach 500 entries. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 05:40, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

People can watch the index pages and recategorize their own suggestion pages whenever there's a split. Or they could categorize them in advance if the subcategories are created before a split becomes necessary. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 05:51, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

No matter who would do it or when they would do it, we're still talking about editing hundreds of pages. I don't see that as a viable method. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 06:08, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't like that his 'argument' is still being passed around. Backsword 09:47, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

(RI) I think we could fix the problem of not getting the most recent entries by adding a date category (in other words, adding when the page was created) and using DPL to exclude those dates (notcategory = June 2009 suggestions, for example). I think we could make users add a template to their pages in order to make they appear on the list, and said template would, among other things, automatically add said date category.
And the splitting problem is IMO something we could solve by using Satanael's idea. He proposed using subcategories, so the PvP list would show if an idea is about GvG, HA, etc. Since those would be subcategories users would have to assign to their own pages when they add the template, if the PvP list became too big, it would be very simple to split it into a GvG entry, a HA entry, and etc. We could do the same for the Skills list dividing it by profession and later by attribute (as long as from the beginning we ask people to add a profession subcategory and an attribute subcategory, which would be useful even when using a single Skills list as a way to sort the suggestions). Further divisions would IMO be unnecessary. Erasculio 10:15, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

@Erasculio (regarding edit as of 02:05, 7 July 2009) - If I remember correctly dpl can't list both the creation date and the last edit date, this is based on a question relating to that sort of idea that I asked Poke quite a while ago. Maybe if I get time later today and if I can ever get through my watchlist I might see about reworking my dpl generated suggestion list; which also included a template that would be added to each suggestion page; more in line with the current ideas about how it should look.

One thing however is that due to the limited results dpl can generate the idea that Poke came up with regarding his bot might be the better option over dpl.

Even though I've not been as active in this discussion I have been watching for the most part but I might of missed some other discussion about this on another page. --Kakarot 10:48, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, one of the limits of DPL is that the %DATE% variable can only be set to firstedit or lastedit. Backsword 11:21, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

@Kakarot, so, if poke's bot idea can do everything we have been talking about above, maybe that is the best way to go? I won't pretend I fully understand poke's original idea, but from what I understand it would just be a static table with a bot that runs around every once in a while to fill in the cells with the appropriate content, is that kinda sorta what he was saying? If that's the case, what would be the downside of doing that over DPL? (Satanael 15:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC))

The downside is that it's not done automatically by the wiki itself - and thus if poke's bot were to ever go away (either due to poke not wanting to maintain it, or otherwise losing internet access for a period of time), the system would break. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 17:11, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure about poke's idea, though. First because I'm not sure anyone other than poke has understood exactly what he meant, and leaving this entire system in the hands of one person (be it poke, me, Aiiane or whoever) isn't a good thing, IMO. Second because we are going to have a limit on how many entries we have per list - we can't really have a list with 50.000 entries - and the 500 limit is as good as anything else, IMO. I wouldn't be against adding only the date of the first edit and asking users to replace outdated suggestions with newer ones instead of just editing the original idea. Erasculio 22:11, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Here's my 2cents for what it may be worth. Erasculio, I see you envisioning some grand and complex automatic system to categorize and subcatorize unlimited amounts of data on the wiki. You are going to be disappointed. The wiki is not designed to do those kinds of things. The closest we have is DPL, and that's limited in many way, as have already been pointed out. Keeping suggestions on the wiki mean there will be a certain amount of manual work and maintenance ongoing from day one. I do agree with Aiiane that doing any sub-categorization later is just a bad idea, which is why I really wanted to get a firm categorization structure designed and then we work within those boundaries, period.

Keeping that in mind, I think we also have to designate a period of time that a suggestion can remain active before it must be archived and removed from the active list. There can be exceptions if there is an ongoing discussion with one of the dev's or some such, but I think it needs to be considered. We are not going to avoid duplication of suggestions no matter what we do, so the argument that archiving is going to lead to that is, imo invalid. -- Wyn talk 06:27, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I just wished we could get a system implemented soon so we could stop being stuck in this stage of the discussion : ( Erasculio 10:18, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Erasculio, I'm very sure that Aiiane understands what I meant in the beginning. poke | talk 07:18, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

And yet we are all waiting on you to implement it. That's not a good thing, IMO, not because you would be causing us trouble, but because I'm not fond of a system which relies completely on one person. Erasculio 10:18, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

You are really free to think of some well working system on your own; I don't have to do it, if you don't want that. poke | talk 22:00, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Which is the opposite of what I'm trying to say. I'm not bothered by how this entire thing is on hold because we are waiting for you; I'm bothered by how this entire thing is on hold because we are waiting for one single contributor. If I made a system that could only be implemented by me, it would be exactly the same problem. Erasculio 22:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I think poke's point was more that systems can't just be pulled out of nowhere, someone has to think them up. If you don't like proposed systems, then someone else needs to propose another option. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have time-based categories? Like, based on a date in the template, put it in "PvE Suggestions June 2009"? So, then on the main lists we could limit it to certain time periods? That would help with both keeping the size down, and also the "recent suggestions" thing. --JonTheMon 00:06, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I was hoping for a system that had to be created by someone, but once created anyone would be able to implement, as opposed to a system that requires a specific user both to be created and to be implemented. If I say "let's make a table", I have given the concept of a table, but that's something everyone can do. Saying "let's make a table edited by a bot", well, so far has led us to waiting for the implementation.

Jon, as far as I know (which isn't much), we could add a category stating when the page was created, and then remove those categories, but I think that system works only with days, not months. So we would have "PvE suggestions 20.06.2009", not "PvE suggestions June 2009". It could still be useful, IMO, but... Erasculio 00:14, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The system could be made to categorize by month rather easily. Weekly could also be done, but that would create more confusing categories. And yeah, the categories would have to be based on when the page was created, but I think it could also be possible to have some way of letting them update their page's date. --JonTheMon 00:56, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Timing

→ moved from Guild Wars Wiki:Feedback organization

Heya guys! I just wanted to check in and see how long you think it will take before you're ready for us to open the space? I'm getting asked questions about timing, and I keep mentioning that you're actively working on the project. I was wondering if there's any estimate of completion time for me to pass along? Is there anything that you need from us that's a blocking issue? Let me know! :) -- Emily Diehl (talk) 23:58, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Emily, I think the biggest bump at the moment is probably going to be technical implementation - poke, I, and a few others still need to finalize exactly what is going to be done in the suggestions regard. Aside from the suggestions, the rest of the namespace probably doesn't need that much work - the rules/FAQ/etc pages should shape up fairly quickly and can always be refined as we go. Mostly it's the suggestions system, since that really has to be designed from the start, as opposed to being built up over time. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 00:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

In other words, we don't really know exactly how long it is going to take because we still have a major hurdle to overcome and one of our key players on that side, poke, has said he won't be able to contribute much until tomorrow. If you need a specific timetable, I would be surprised if we get it done this week. Realistically, sometime next week could be a possibility, depending on how the technical talk goes, of course, and certainly no promises are made. Having said that we are all working on it as fast as we can, and I'll be sure to keep you updated if you like. (Satanael 03:11, 8 July 2009 (UTC))

I doubt that. The biggest bump is going to be the bits people haven't even begun to discuss, presumambly because they find them to unpleasant or chores. Backsword 10:39, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure that the ppreference is to give an optimistic answer, but to be realistic, think weeks, not days. Backsword 10:39, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Not really, I mean, I'm not sure what "bits" you are talking about, but as Aiiane said, once the suggestion area is built, we don't need to create anything else, the rest is just polish. True, it is entirely possible that there will be some epic sh** storm over some relatively minor thing like border width or which pictures to use on the main page boxes, but that's a posibility no matter what. My point is, once the suggestion system is up and running, we could technically go live and polish other stuff later. Therefore, the biggest hurdle is the mechanics of the suggestion system, and the rest is gravy by comparison. (Satanael 15:36, 8 July 2009 (UTC))

Backsword, if you have something of substance to contribute to these discussions, spit it out already, but stop with the cryptic comments. If you think there are topics that need to be discussed that haven't been brought up yet, point them out, because if they haven't been brought up, no one has thought of them. Otherwise just stfu, because your non sensical commentary is really annoying. -- Wyn talk 09:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to be part of the drama. Pick another target. Backsword 15:35, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Limitations of DPL and templates

I have some questions about what is possible using DPL and templates? Would it be possible to limit the amount of transcluded text? For example, if some index pages use transcluded summaries, would it be possible to limit the size of those summaries? If so, would truncating everything beyond the character limit be possible? What about omitting the summary if the character limit is exceeded? -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 08:24, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, when including text/sections/something you can specify the maximum number of characters to be included and even append a text that shows that it was truncated. poke | talk 08:28, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

...mm, I answered this the first time you asked it. You can see an example in the linked page in the next section. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Backsword (talk • contribs) at 15:35, 9 July 2009 (UTC).

International Cultural References

Please wait to add any more to this until the Community team responds to my query regarding the project. If they do not wish to continue it, we do not really need to include it here. -- Wyn talk 11:22, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Had a chat with Martin about this. We've collected a huge amount of information on a lot of different cultures, and I think the original purpose for the project has already been served. I think that if we need more information, there's more than enough contributed to take a look at. So I think we do not need to continue to collect more information. Thank you! --Regina Buenaobra 00:56, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Regina! That sounds good to me, I'll go through and delete the feedback pages for this that I created. Also, though, it seems like you guys want to be able to use the existing stuff, or at least to have that option. I just thought I would point out that I asked Emily to check on this from the legal side of it, and she seemed to say that your legal team said it would have to be in the feedback space if it was going to be used. I don't know the ins and outs, and she did mention this was just a quick conversation in the hallway, but if you guys want to be able to use the existing stuff, maybe it would be worthwhile to check with legal to make sure you still can.

Either way, at some point we will have to figure out what to do with that set of pages to prevent people from adding anything more to it. But that can probably wait for now. (Satanael 02:59, 14 July 2009 (UTC))

My guess is all the old stuff will be archived and locked in the Arenanet namespace. -- Wyn talk 03:13, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree with that, simply locking is enough for those. poke | talk 08:35, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Here's an idea

Maybe the wiki media is not a suitable format for feedback, suggestions, conversation or journal entries at all?! Let's get realistic, there are other formats much better suited the task. I don't understand why you're wasting your time. 218.214.126.215 01:12, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

It is not necessary that you understand. (Satanael 03:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC))

The "why" is a very long story. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 08:10, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

You are far from the first to point this out. Many of the people involved in this effort have said the same, in fact. Long story short: Anet is unwilling to make an official forum (yes, we asked), and as long as the official wiki exists, people are going to try to make suggestions on it, so we might as well try to make it usable. - Tanetris 12:41, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Maybe forums aren't a suitable format for feedback or suggestions. The old suggestion pages were a mess, but all the fansite suggestion / idea forums I've seen are even bigger messes. At least MediaWiki's article / talk page split allows actual suggestions to be separated from long discussion threads about those suggestions. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 05:15, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

It's a dead debate. Perhaps a wiki is the best format, perhaps a forum, perhaps a bug reporting system as poke suggests, perhaps something else. But since Anet has nixed a seperate system regardless, matters not. Backsword 13:44, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I think we all should stop all other discussion in this page and begin a long debate about whether do we really need the Guild Wars Wiki or if the GuildWiki is enough. Erasculio 14:12, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

List layout

Before you guys get too much further on the mechanics of the lists, I think it would be worthwhile to hammer out what the overall layout of the lists should be. So far I think I have seen 3 sample lists presented, but only Erasculio's list has incorporated any kind of categorization, which I am pretty sure has been accepted that categorization will be necessary for any list we have. Erasculio's latest idea is presented here and uses the categories by having 3 columns, one that states what the main category is, and two that state what subcategories apply. The weakness of doing it this way, as previously discussed, is it does not adequately handle ideas that span more than one main category or more than 2 subcategories.

However, I was wondering if it would be possible to present the lists in this way:

Username		Last modified		World		Character		Items		PvE		PvP		Skills		Page Title
Erasculio		06.06.2009														Add mudkips to the Gyala Hatchery

If we can do it this way, with yes/no columns for each category, then I think this would be preferable. In other words, I am recognizing that we would have several lists under GW1 and GW2 suggestions, as we have already recognized we will need more than one list. There would be two kinds of lists, the first would look very much like this one above, and be like the master list for, say, GW1 suggestion, and would have all the main categories as the yes/no columns above. At the top of these lists, the title of the yes/no columns would link to more specific sublists: a list for each main category. On these sublists they would look the same but the yes/no columns would list the subcategories.

So for example, if you went to the GW1 master list and then clicked on the "PvP" link, it would take you to a sublist that looks like this:

Username		Last modified		GvG		AB		HA		HB		TA		RA		Page Title
Erasculio		06.06.2009														Make Guild Lords usable heroes in PvP

Is it possible to do it this way? If so, this should pretty well resolve the issue of a suggestion appearing multiple times on a list while also allowing for cross-category suggestions. It's true, if a suggestion incorporates more than one main category, it will show up on more than one sublist, but at the end of the day I don't think that is a bad thing. The purpose of the sublists is to help browsers find suggestions that pertain to that main category, and sort them based on more specific subcategories. So, to keep ideas that apply to such a main catefory out of that list simply because it also happens to pertain to another main category would defeat that purpose altogether. (Satanael 22:58, 12 July 2009 (UTC))

P.S. All due credit to Erasculio, the tables above have been bastardized from old tables he put together in previous discussions about this. (Satanael 23:13, 12 July 2009 (UTC))

Argh, brain melting xD While I would rather use the system I have proposed below (given how it's closer to being finished), this could work, too. As a side point, the problem of one idea appearing multiple times within the same list was my mistake: DPL automatically prevents duplicates from appearing within a single list, so that's not an issue (and don't worry about taking credits for my tables, they are kinda really ugly anyway : D we need someone who knows wiki-chu better than me to design those tables). Erasculio 23:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Eras, I don't want to overwork you or demand too much of people, but if we can make it happen, I think this system can prove more capable in the long run. And, ugly or not, the reason I ripped of your tables is because I couldn't even do that if I was starting from scratch, so don't sell yourself short. Besides, I'm sure we will end up with plenty of contributors about aesthetic before we are done. Skeleton before skin, as they say. And by "they" I mean me, for the first time right now... (Satanael 04:00, 13 July 2009 (UTC))