Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/Categories

Tree structure

The following discussion has been moved here from Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Formatting#General_formatting_conventions_first

Categories. Do we want to keep the old "Something by some type" style of top-level categories? Do we want a root category?--ab.er.rant 02:30, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I definetly support the "Something by some type" tree style. The outcome of the discussion on GuildWiki was pretty clear, and I see no reason to change it.

By "root category", do you mean that all entries should be in the top category as well as the sub-categories? I'm strongly against that. Instead, we may have a sub-category "All" for easy searching by alphabet. If you want to see an example for this, see this one. --Tetris L 08:24, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I never liked those "Thing by type" categories. I remember one was "Armor by prestige". "Prestige armor" is preferable to that. If this refers to where that category is included, then I'm a bit confused. Is this about the hierarchy used? - BeXoR 08:36, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Yea, I don't like them too. By "root category", I mean do we want a top-level category from which you can reach the top-level categories of the various trees that will popup. A category where you can reach the top-level category of creatures, items, quests, missions etc. --ab.er.rant 19:55, 14 February 2007 (PST)

OK, now I'm officialy confuzzled, it must be a language thing no doubt :p - Anyway, the 'root category' as explained above seems logical to me. --Erszebet 04:44, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I'm afraight that there is a big misunderstanding here. I demand that anybody who suggests a structure here shall draw a tree structure to make it clearer. ;) Let's pick an example, for example the skill Mending. I think that the skill tree should look like this:

• Skills
  • Skills by type > Spells > Enchantment spells > Mending
  • Skills by campaign > Core skills > Mending
  • Skills by profession > Monk skills > Mending
  • Skills by effect > Health regeneration > Mending
  • Skills by target > Target ally > Mending
  • etc.
  • All skills > Mending (Optional!)

If you leave away the "Skills by <criterion>" inter-levels, you'll have sub-categories for different criteria on the same level, i.e. "Spells" with "Core skills", "Monks skills", etc. This is a big mess. Each sort criterion must have it's own branch in the tree! --Tetris L 06:33, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Using the tree structure method above also allows for matrix-like structure, but this is optional, and things get more confusing. Using the same example as above, you could add an inter-level "Core monk skills", which would be a sub-category of both Monk skills and core skills. --Tetris L 06:36, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I'm actually thinking if we should try and flatten what we had on GuildWiki. I'll admit that my primary reason for not liking the "this by that" style is because I don't like the "by" there >.< Heck, I couldn't come up with any alternative that is more useful, so I'll withdraw my objection... at least... until I can come up with something better :P -- ab.er.rant -- 22:09, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I think I got it now :p. After reading the discussion on GuildWiki on this, I support the Tetris-tree. --Erszebet 04:23, 17 February 2007 (PST)

On Ab.er.rant's note, I used to have an alternate idea (remove all the "by" levels and put sort-keys on the category page), but it seemed people didn't like it back on GuildWiki. Just to throw it out again, stuff would work out like:

Skills -> Spells | Type -> Enchantment spells -> Mending

Skills -> Spells | Type -> Traps -> Flame Trap

Skills -> Monk skills | Profession -> Healing Prayers skills -> Mending

Skills -> Core skills | Campaign -> Mending

If people also want Monk skills to be sub-categorized by other criteria (some people might want "Monk Signets" etc), then "Healing Prayers skills" would get "Attribute" added as its sort key, and "Monk Signets" would have a "Type" sort key. Again, the category's "article" would explain the index system. -PanSola 23:37, 22 February 2007 (EST)

I am strongly against "something by something" categories. I feel it adds annoying extra distance to category navigation, and that list pages can capture this level of organization well enough already. I prefer the "mess", especially in terms of how categories are to be organized outside of skills. --Rezyk 00:01, 23 February 2007 (EST)

Plural or singular?

The following discussion has been moved here from Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Formatting#General_formatting_conventions_first

Categories. Do we enforce plural for all categories? Do we redirect singular categories to plural categories? --ab.er.rant 02:30, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Actually, I'd prefer singular categories for much easier auto-categorization. But plural feels more natural to most people, and is well established standard on GuildWiki and Wikipedia. :/

As for redirects, as far as I know they don't work for categories. You can redirect the viewing of the category, but not move category entries. --Tetris L 08:31, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Categories should be plural, they refer to a collection of things after all. --NieA7 13:47, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I'd say plural for the same reason as NieA7 said, but why is singular much easier for auto-categorization ? --Erszebet 04:47, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Plural. --Xeeron 05:04, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Erszebet: I should have worded it differently: Singular allows for auto-categorization, plural generally doesn't. That's because in templates like for example Template:Creature infobox people will enter for example "Species = Human". Auto-categorization would now have to know the plural of "Human" to add the article to Category:Humans. In case of "Human" it's easy, just add an -s at the end. But in case like "Dwarf" the -s plural suffix scheme fails, as "Dwarf" becomes "Dwarves" in plural. In 97% of all cases it works, but in 3% it doesn't, and those 3% kill the system. --Tetris L 05:35, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Oh, so it's a technical thingy then ? In that case I support singular. There's no need to make things harder than they already are, no matter how they do it on other wiki's. --Erszebet 03:59, 17 February 2007 (PST)

Plural. The labor saved doesn't justify how much less natural it looks to the viewer. --Rezyk 00:09, 23 February 2007 (EST)

Singluar. Less labor, less things to keep track of, easier to create new articles, more likely to overcome laziness, more likely to contribute more often. -PanSola 00:13, 23 February 2007 (EST)

If we're good to go for auto-categorization, then singular would make things easier in the long run, although I'd prefer plural if there's a simple workaround. -- ab.er.rant 05:41, 23 February 2007 (EST)

Location on page

The following discussion has been moved here from Guild_Wars_Wiki_talk:Formatting#General_formatting_conventions_first

Categories. Are we agreed that categories go at the bottom of the page? --ab.er.rant 02:30, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I'd prefer top (or even scattered over the article!), but bottom feels more natural to most people, and is well established standard on GuildWiki and Wikipedia. --Tetris L 08:33, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Oh man, scattered all over the article would be an adventure on a cat crusade. Sign me up for keeping cats on the bottom. — Gares 10:54, 14 February 2007 (PST)

I agree that they should remain at the bottom of each page. Often there's a healthy chunk of categories attached to an article, which would be a waste of space at the top of the page (and would just be too messy if spread throughout the content). For an example, check out Afflicted Monk. I believe the most important content of every article should be as high up as possible (description, skills, location), with the less important sections near the bottom (like what they drop, categories, and even stub tags). --Dirigible 11:09, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Categories look best to me at the bottom of the page as they were laid out on GuildWiki, but perhaps there's scope to include them in info boxes? It'd be a more logical place for them to my mind. --NieA7 13:49, 14 February 2007 (PST)

Definately bottom, same reasons as Dirigible said...except for the stubs, but that's another discussion :p --Erszebet 04:52, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Very much in favor of bottom, makes editing the article and crusaded easier. --Xeeron 05:04, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I should explain what I mean with "scattered over the article". I mean that each category could appear where it is mentioned in the context of the article. For example:

{{CreatureInfo|...
              |Species = Human [[Category: Humans]] <- autocategorization by template
              |Profession = Monk [[Category: Monks]]<- autocategorization by template
|}

==Location==
*[[Shiverpeak Mountains]]
**[[Yak's Bend]] [[Category: Yak's Bend]]
**[[Traveler's Vale]] [[Category: Traveler's Vale]]

Get it? --Tetris L 05:45, 15 February 2007 (PST)

What's the example for? Everyone so far has not mentioned scattered cats except me and my comment was a joke. — Gares 05:56, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I guess the others didn't even mention it because it seemed so absurd, chaotic and impracticable to them. My example was just to show that it's not so absurd after all. But still I don't expect us to use it. ;) --Tetris L 06:00, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I thought it was my wording which persuaded you to give an example. I was thinking, "My english can't be that bad, I've been speaking it for around 24 years now...and I'm 25" :p — Gares 06:07, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I like Tetris L's idea. It should help cut down on people not knowing what categories to use. -- ab.er.rant -- 16:43, 19 February 2007 (PST)

More issues

Moved from Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/General#Categories

All the above, it's appears we're agreed on using lower case for all section headers except the first word. That should apply to categories as well so the case is done. Here are two more issues with categories that I feel should be decided:

Plural or singular: Singular makes it much easier for auto-categorisation from within infoboxes, but some people feel plurals are more natural.

Sort keys: This should not be complex as most users don't know about this. I think sort keys should be avoided (except sorting by campaign, profession, or All-None categories). Most especially, avoid sorting without the articles ("A", "An", "The"). I'd remember a quest called "A Fleshy Operation". I'd go searching under "A", and not "F" for "Fleshy Operation, A". I believe quest names should not be changed to sort things in a definitions manner. These are quest names, not game terms. -- ab.er.rant 19:57, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Re: sort keys, the only time I support them is for categorizing skill names that would otherwise start with a quotation mark. Otherwise, I find them to cause more confusion than they solve. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:00, 5 March 2007 (EST)

About containing material

I think there is no common usage for categories "contains xyz".

1. full name of material: Category:Contains dust vs. Category:Contains glittering dust. Category:Contains iron should be Category:Contains iron ingot in my opinion
2. singular vs. plural use of material: Category:Contains bone vs. Category:Contains bones
3. Capitalisation: Category:Contains iron ingot vs. Category:Contains Iron Ingot

Could somebody please tell me how to handle this? I would prefer singular (because some items contain only one piece of material), full name (as in salvage info field of infobox), full capitalised as Category:Contains Iron Ingot. If we get some conclusion I 'll change related pages. MSorglos 05:47, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

Sentence capitalization rules would say that lower case should be used. I would rather use singular and shorthand, ie Contains dust, Contains bone. Contains pile(s) of glittering dust sounds strange. - BeXoR 06:51, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

I have no real opinion on how we do it, but if we do go "long form" then we should keep the capitalization from the game (as we would be using the actual in game term). --Rainith 21:02, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

I'd rather go all lowercase than keep in-game capitalisation, to make it consistent with all category names. We can always redirect the in-game capitalisation to the lowercase. I'd choose the "long form" over the short as well; don't really see any benefit of shortening it. New users probably don't even realise that we would shorten it. -- ab.er.rant 00:46, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

What about in the case of plurals. Contains bone is correct, although Contains bones could be too. And what about Contains piles of glittering dust or Contains pile of glittering dust? - BeXoR 01:16, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

I'm torn actually. I feel plural is more natural and intuitive, yet for the possibility of auto-categorisation, singular makes it easier. -- ab.er.rant 01:29, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Well the thing is with bone is that it can be plural or singular - same with feather. If it was piece of bone then it would be a different matter. I think we should stick with plurals. They are already so widely in use and we can live without autocategorisation if we need to. - BeXoR 01:44, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

about plural or singular: what about "Contains diamond" vs. "Contains diamonds"? This could be misleading, you will only get 1 diamond, not more than one which "Contains diamonds" suggest. "long form" seems to be common denominator. Capitalisation still not clear? MSorglos 04:22, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

I'm gonna vote for singular and lower case shorthand. It's descriptive enough and the actually category page will have a link to the crafting material anyway (as would, I assume, the article the category is placed in). - BeXoR 04:39, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

I say shorthand lowercase singular. One argument for shorthand could be: My axe does not contain any iron ingots; it contains iron that I can extract and reshape into ingot form. Singular is appropriate here as we're not talking about singularizing the subject of the category (the items which contain iron, which should be plural). --Rezyk 14:49, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

I started to use shorthand lowercase singular. How to shorten Tanned Hide Square? - MSorglos 15:57, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Category:Contains hide — Gares 16:26, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Shorthand lowercase singular it is. But how should the following part under "Naming" be reworded: All categories must be plural terms, to indicate that it is a collection of articles of a similar theme or nature. -- ab.er.rant 20:38, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

"Category names should generally be plural to reflect the collection of articles they refer to."? Alternatively, we could also expand the names here to include the subject noun ("Category:Contains iron" becomes "Category:Items that contain iron" or "Category:Items containing iron"). --Rezyk 21:08, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

That would be too long I think. "Contains iron" should be self-explanatory enough, since it sits on an item page anyway. -- ab.er.rant 23:41, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Unique item categories

We seem to be all over the map on the convention for categorizing unique weapons. Dirigible posted a good suggestion in Guild Wars Wiki talk:Projects/Unique Items, and I paraphrase his suggestion as follows.

His tree looks like this:

Most unique items (with the exception of Charr Bags, and the multi-attribute weapons such as Wayward Wands, etc.) would have 3 categories.

1. <Campaign> unique items
2. <item type> unique items
3. <attribute> unique items.

The Charr Bag could be categorized in Category:Other unique items. Or only in Category:Unique items since no other non-weapon unique items yet exist in the game. Wayward Wands, Golden Boar Scepters and the like would end up in all of the appropriate Category:<attribute> unique items categories.

Another important point he made is that the naming convention should be Category:Prophecies unique items and NOT Category:Unique items (Prophecies). I attempted to create these category pages but they seemed to disappear. I'm not sure if they were killed by an administrator, so I post this in the hopes that we can get a consensus and I can move forward with cleaning up the unique items categories.

--Rohar (talk|contribs) 10:34, 30 March 2007 (EDT)

Your category names were correct as per Guild Wars Wiki:Formatting/Article names. - BeXoR 10:41, 30 March 2007 (EDT)

Game Terms

I have no clue where else to pose this question but do we have a format for Game terms like nuking echo chain etc? it seems like articles of this nature would be useful but I have no precedent to work with. Or is this information that is considered "inappropriate" for the wiki to cover as its gamer invented terminology? --Chukie1188 talk 05:33, May 11 2007 (UTC) 19:42, 11 May 2007 (EDT)

There's a bunch of pages of that kind, see Category:Terminology stubs and Category:Glossary. And aye, those types of articles are useful to have. --Dirigible 20:10, 11 May 2007 (EDT)

Ok cool I'll probally make the page for Echo Chain at somepoint later Ive seen two red links to it already.--Chukie1188 talk 05:33, May 11 2007 (UTC) 00:24, 12 May 2007 (EDT)

Guild categories

Theres a bit of a situation here with Guild categories. I feel personally, that there need not be so many. RP, Social, Recruiting etc. I see on guild pages Pve, PvP, PvX, Social, RP, Rec Luxon/Kurz, Luxon/Kurz and so on. Thoughts? -- File:Blackgeneralstar.png (General | Talk) 05:01, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Is it just the number that bothers you? Because there are articles in the main namespace that have more categories than that. :P I don't think it's a problem. YOu mentioned 7 categories, some of which are mutually exclusive. - BeX 05:10, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah ignore this. I'm a bit tense right now. I was just looking at how one guild will have PvE PvP and PvX on its page. I was like O_o But most are new to the wiki, so I guess clean up will come later. =) -- File:Blackgeneralstar.png (General | Talk) 05:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

They might have just copy and pasted from a formatting template? I think in those situations, just leave a comment on the guild talk page. And after all, if it all goes down in flames, maybe we won't have to worry about it at all. ;) - BeX 05:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Guild is a namespace that encompasses a lot of content, but in a lot of similar pages. Thus, it's somewhat inevitable that there will be a lot of such categories to try and make it easier to pick out subsets of those pages, since they can't exactly be organized in any other hierarchy, unlike, say, skills. PvP/PvE/PvX is a natural distinction, as is Luxon/Kurzick, and Recruiting and RP are both fairly common subsets users look for. Social is debateable imo, as are the subcategories for L/K recruiting. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 05:17, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

For now, I guess leave it as is. Once things settle down, then we can discuss organization of guild categories. With the new /help command, I think there should be at least some sort of order, but now isn't the time. =) -- File:Blackgeneralstar.png (General | Talk) 05:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Remove proposal?

Is this formatting guide accepted as is? It seems ok to me, so I wonder why no one has removed the 'proposal' part of it. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 00:41, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I think it's fine to "offical-ise" it. -- ab.er.rant 06:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Category for "rare-drop-only"-weapons

I'm talking about items like the Elemental Sword, Icy and Fiery Blade Axe, the Icy Dragon Sword (which is a special case again as it only drops with fixed stats and on one place only, almost similar to a unique item like the Totem Axe.), the Stygian Reaver, Celestial weapons and Zodiac weapons. I planned to include weapons that drop as loot only (Excluding collector weapons like Tormented and Destoryer weapons). Does anyone have a nice idea for the name of that category? Category:Rare drop weapons or Category:Weapons that drop at gold rarity only all sounds a bit strange. —ZerphaThe Improver 14:48, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Category redirects

Can we please add a section/statement indicating that category redirects are not acceptable? The simply clutter up the category tree, and cause confusion if someone adds a misnamed category to an article. -- Wyn talk 04:26, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

iawtc. poke | talk 07:29, 25 November 2009 (UTC)