Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/General/A2

Official terms

Should we include something along the lines of "official terms are preferred"? -- Gordon Ecker 07:42, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Ya, I definitely think Official Terms are better than internet lingo as more people will know the terms than the lingo, expecially if they are new to online gaming.--§ Eloc § 13:52, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Could you specify what you mean some more? Any specific case where you feel this would be necessary to mention? - anja 13:56, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Enhancement vs. mod / modifier and army vs. affiliation. Also, I believe that "ascended armor" is a broader term than "elite armor", but I'm not sure. -- Gordon Ecker 21:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I think it's better to discuss each topic separatly, to define what works best in that situation. I have, for example, seen neither enhancement nor mod/modifier in game. In most cases, I feel that the official term is the best. We say Energy, not mana. We say Health more often then HP. To say that we should use official terms for those kinds of words, is ok to me. But where the official term isn't really obvious, or it provides alot of ambiguity, like all the cases you mentioned, I feel it's better to discuss and form a consensus on a "wiki term" that we feel is less ambigous/more clear, instead of sticking to the official term. - anja 05:19, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Enhancement is in the Nightfall manual. But upgrade component is another, more specific official term which is used in-game. Anyway, general formatting is for broad guidelines which can be overridden on more specific formatting pages, formatting guidelines are suggestions rather than hard rules. -- Gordon Ecker 08:46, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

If I'm reading you right, this time, you just want a general guideline that official terms are preferred, and nothing else? Then I have no objection at all. I guess I'm just so used to it, I thought it was obvious and that you meant something else. Just confusing myself, sorry :/ - anja 10:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

If you put your mouse overtop of a weapon mod, it will say something like Upgrade Component.--§ Eloc § 16:01, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, enhancement is a broader category encompassing both upgrade components and consumable buff items. I'd prefer to use the narrowest applicable official term (upgrade component, inscription, scroll etc.). Anyway, I don't think we should be using unofficial terms in articles without a good reason (such as using HP as an abbreviation to save space in the unique item tables). Anyway, this is mainly about army vs. affiliation. -- Gordon Ecker 01:47, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

It seems okay to me, but I should note that I would not consider any terms like "family", "army", "world", "mob", or "Autodrops::LongStaffWooden12" to be official just because we discover that are used by ArenaNet internally somewhere. Their internal design files and game code shouldn't hold special weight outside of what they cause to show up through official interfaces like the running game, manuals, etc. (Although if ArenaNet says they want to treat a particular term as official, that's fine.) --Rezyk 05:36, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable to use the official / internal terms unless there is consensus not to do so in a specific situation (for example, on Template Talk:NPC infobox, a concensus against using world seems to be developing). I believe that "generally preferred" would be better than just "preferred", as it would more clearly imply the presence of specific exceptions. -- Gordon Ecker 05:50, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

We should just use Official Terms where ever we can and unofficial terms where we can't. And if it comes down to a choice between the two, Official always wins.--§ Eloc § 06:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

True, but there is a need for clarification on what exactly is an "official term." Are official terms what ArenaNet uses in the game and on the website? Or do they also include what ArenaNet uses internally? I would prefer the former. -- ab.er.rant 11:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, maybe not what is used internally. I'd say the ingame stuff and stuff on the site would work as people can easily see where they are.--§ Eloc § 18:49, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

(Reset indent) There is a good reason to use offical terms, defined as those published by Anet; It's what players know and expect. That doesn't hold for terms used internaly, be it by the creature team or some other subsection, or even all of anet. Thus my preference for 'kind' and 'talk' over 'family' on the cired talk page. Backsword 13:49, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I've added a terminology section due to concensus. The only unresolved issue is internal terms. -- Gordon Ecker 10:50, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like a style guide is what's needed here. A list of how and where to use certain terms and grammar. It answers questions like "do I write 'elementalist' or 'Elementalist?'" so writers and editors can quickly get their jobs done. I've drawn one up in MS Word, but can't seem to upload it or create a page for it. Advice?Declan 02:45, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

You can't upload word documents. You can draft one in your user space and ask for comments. For example, User:Declan/Style guide proposal or something, or maybe add it as a proposed formatting. As for the actual formatting you're hoping to show, you'll have to change them to wiki code (see Help:Editing). -- ab.er.rant 03:40, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks! I'll hop on that this weekend and post here when it's up. Declan 05:43, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Alright, it's up!User:Declan/Style guide proposal. Not sure how to make it an official proposal, though.--The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Declan .

British vs American

I notion that we put something like "The English Guild Wars Wiki has no general preference for a major national variety of the language. No variety is more correct than the others. Users are asked to take into account that the differences between the varieties are superficial. Cultural clashes over spelling and grammar are avoided by using the spelling that the word was originaly written in. A list of words spelt differently in each country can be found here" Any objections? — ク Eloc 貢 02:23, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I am pretty sure this was discussed before, and the concensus was to use "o" instead of "ou" for words that appear in-game. If we want to standarize content, i would think we would apply this rule for the rest of the terms that have the same double-spelling as well. Not that i care anyways, since my english is so bad that i misspell things half the time XD.--Fighterdoken 02:31, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

This has definitely been discussed before as there was a policy created explicitly to try and fix it to American English - Guild_Wars_Wiki:Use_American_English which was rejected. We definitely use in game spelling for text from in game (that is; American English) - otherwise it should be left as written. --Aspectacle 05:49, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

For articles, I think that American English should be preferred because ArenaNet is an American studio and the game is written in American English. As for talk pages, I think that anyone who tries to Americanize other people's comments or insists that they use American english on talk pages is probably a troll. -- Gordon Ecker 07:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree, use American English for articles, excluding policies and guidelines - report the game how the game is written, report the wiki how the orginal writer wrote it. -- Brains12 • Talk • 14:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Why? What possible advantage would we get from that? Is there someone having difficulties understanding what "monk bosses have a blue-coloured halo" means? Is there? If not, why would we care? There's only one type of word for which spelling matters, and that's quotes and in-game terms. For everything else, who cares? What difference does it make? "Just because the original game uses it" is a terrible reason, since it's irrelevant to us; what's next, use the same font typeface and size as the game does, just because? Didn't we dismiss the necessity to stick to in-game limitations with the whole "no profanity" discussion? The game GuildWars exists in a different context from this wiki; the game was written by an American team, the wiki is written by an international one. And having someone follow your edits fixing "centre", "grey" and "defence" is not only wasted energy, but also quite disrespectful, as if somehow those were incorrect.

This discussion has already happened before, at Guild Wars Wiki:Use American English, a page which was preserved for exactly this reason. If you guys disagree with that, please revive the policy and lets have that discussion there once again as a community. --Dirigible 14:51, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

If you read an article, or even a group of articles, where the spelling switches between colour and color, you're bound to get it changed. Consistency is one of many pet peeves of wikiers, from what I have seen. Someone is following your edits and "correcting" such things Dirigible, it's happening every day here. - anja 15:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

As someone who is British, I have no problem with using American English on articles which are recording an American-created game. I don't see why it has to go from using the style of language used ingame to having abolutely everything including fonts and colours and font sizes and no swear words. Saying that, I have no problem with using British English for articles, but it just makes sense (to me) to use American. -- Brains12 • Talk • 15:46, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

This feels like it's another one from Wikipedia... anyway, I find something like this to be largely pointless. Saying "English" is enough to tell people what our language preference is. We don't need to explicitly say that we accept all variants of English spelling - people will just whatever variant of English they feel is more natural to write in (and that's exactly what that line above says). I don't really care if someone goes around "fixing" the spellings unless they get into revert wars or are being insulting about it in the summary log. -- ab.er.rant 17:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

The two advantages I see are consistancy and a swift resolution to dialect-related revert wars. It seems that the main objection to Guild Wars Wiki:Use American English was that policies are strict and formatting and style issues do not warrent strict policies. -- Gordon Ecker 02:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I still think it's already covered by common sense and GWW:REVERT. But since the concern is more about revert wars, I'd rather go with something like "This wiki uses American English by convention, since it reflects what is used in-game." Short, to the point, and reflects what is actually happening. -- ab.er.rant 06:51, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. That text would justify those who go around changing perfectly acceptable English into American English. I have no problem with American English, but I do think that it is a complete waste of time to argue about which spelling we should use when it makes absolutely no difference one way or the other. If a "dialect-related revert war" occurs then I suggest we remind those involved of how pointless their argument is. LordBiro 08:55, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent)

In that case, I would have no problem with saying that the preference is American English, but the choice to use it lies with the initial contrubitor, and that choice should be respected and kept (in other words, don't revert their choice of dialect). -- Brains12 • Talk • 14:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

But using both dialects within the same article is messy and unprofessional. --Gordon Ecker 00:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I always said, preference is American English because that is what the game uses and the company is North American. So if someone goes around changing spelling to American English they can and it should be left at that. But if someone goes around changing American to British English, then you can switch it back and point to genform. I'm all for consistency, so we should pick one. It doesn't mean that anyone has to go around changing things, unless they are incredibly bored and want to. - BeX 00:45, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm thinking mostly along the same lines. @Biro, regardless of whether we have a line pointing out our spelling preference, we already do have times where people edit a page just to change the spelling to American English (similar to people editing a page just to "fix" a redirect). We simply can't prevent such behavior regardless of what we say. So instead of making it open for debate and revert wars on which form should be used, I'd say it would be better to at least have a preference rather than letting it up to individual users and allowing a small chance of covert revert wars. If someone wants to bother searching for every single occurrence of British English spelling and then changing it to American spelling, well, so be it, if they find it fun, as long as they don't cause any trouble. -- ab.er.rant 01:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Since it seems my 'Americanization' of a few articles yesterday rekindled this debate, I feel I need to put in my two cents (for what it's worth). To start, I live in America, and write/type American English. Consistency is a pet peeve of mine, and it's real sloppy to have some articles or text on a page in one form of English, and other text and articles in another form. But I'm accustomed to seeing colour and knowing that it's color. I'm fine reading British English, it's not at all difficult to read. Yesterday, I happened to be amazingly bored (to the point of throwing a tennis ball of the ceiling) and decided to change a few articles with British English words to American English. I'd prefer to see all articles standardized with American English, but I'm not going to fight and fight and fight for that. A a side note, editors commenting on talk pages should use their most comfortable form of English, be it British, American, Canadian, AIMSpeak, or Bork! Bork! Bork! (Although I'd prefer not to see the latter two). Calor (t) 01:33, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

There's clearly no consensus on preference here. So it'd be directly false to claim that it did, which is in effect what a guideline does. Backsword 08:40, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

No one's claiming concensus, the discussion just started. -- Gordon Ecker 10:44, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm thinking about the community in general. Whatever is said here, there is not going to be general agreement amongst editors that don't read pages like this, and they'll continue to use what feels right to them. Backsword 04:09, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

With what I said, editors can use whatever they want, as long as it's English. Having one as preferred would simply help to prevent revert wars. - BeX 07:56, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding concensus, the same could be said of any formatting proposal. Most people who polish articles probably do read pages like this, and most people who don't polish articles probably don't care and aren't hurting anyone with their contributions. If people object later, they can come here and get the offending formatting element rescinded. -- Gordon Ecker 08:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

My real honest belief about this whole discussion: "Don't these ex-colonies and ex-colonialists have anything better to do than argue about coloUr?" You should all be glad I don't start being consistent by writing Farbe instead ;-) --Xeeron 16:14, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually that would be a very nice idea! :D poke | talk 17:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

i find it difficult to believe that there's no policy on this already. i also find it difficult to believe someone would argue that we should ignore different spellings of the same words considering the type of ppl that edit wikis. there's nonstop effort put into achieving consistency and there's no way we should ignore something so basic. american english or bust. this has nothing to do w/ nationalism and everything to do w/ keeping things consistent. the game is developed in american english and that's the most straight forward path for development of the wiki. if this game were developed in the u.k., i'd say exactly the opposite. --VVong|BA 04:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I expect this will be the last post I make on this subject, but I want to finish with a question: If Guild Wars had been made in Germany what language would this wiki be written in? If it had been made in China what language would this wiki be written in? I will give you a clue; the answer is not German or Cantonese. LordBiro 09:17, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Whichever dialect of English it was localized in. If the localization dialect was inconsistant, I'd prefer formal British English. -- Gordon Ecker 10:09, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

This is the English wiki. The game just so happens to be primarily in English. If the game was a Chinese game, this would still be an English wiki. Calor (t) 19:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Xeeron in that this is a mostly pointless discussion, which is why I suggested that we just lean our official preference to American English and be done with it. Why? Because American English currently happens to be what's adopted by most contributors. May I remind that this is just a guideline and not policy? It's not going to say "you must use American English", it's saying we prefer American English for consistency and to reflect in-game. If you want to continue typing in British English or Canadian English or even Manglish and Singlish, that's all fine and dandy - go ahead and have fun - just don't complain or revert if someone changes it to American English for consistency. I see this "official" preference to be a tool to cut off future arguments about what version of English to use. And if Biro ever checks back, the example is rather unconvincing. If a game was made in China and people started an English wiki for it, I'll support whichever "style" of English is the most obvious. Just look at the wiki for Perfect World. What English variant to use? My answer: Whatever variant the translators decided to use.

Again, in short, we lean towards one preference and be done with it. We don't deny other people's rights to use whatever they want, yet we have a preference for consistency and a guideline to head off similar arguments like this. -- ab.er.rant 01:08, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

We'd never be done with it. Even if we write it in a guideline people still won't be in agreement on it. Additionally, since there is no objective AE, you'd imediatly have to start the debate on what to consider proper AE. Moreover, once you open up for prescribtive rules, you get a myriad of other issues that would be debated. Backsword 10:00, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I wrote three long paragraphs to explain my points and refuting your concerns but figured I just wasted my time and don't want to waste anyone else's time. This will never get a good consensus so I'll just let it drop (and in that, I'm also refusing with adding any statement whatsoever declaring a use of English that's already implicit to begin with). -- ab.er.rant 10:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Other wikis use one type as a convention without huge drama. People are making this decision to be a bigger deal than it is. - BeX 10:55, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

The point I was trying to make above was that the language used by the wiki should not simply reflect the subject. What if ArenaNet produced a British English locali(s|z)ation? Would we create a separate wiki, the only difference being that everything is (spelt|spelled) correctly?

Anyway, I agree that we seem to be making mountains out of molehills. Let's just accept that we'll use American English so I can get on with being sad about it :P LordBiro 11:33, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

<- agrees on AE - so come on, let's make Biro sad! :D poke | talk 17:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

ellipses

Should we include a note about ellipses? In-game text generally uses three periods with no spaces before or after for ellipses in sentences and four periods with no space before and one space after for an ellipsis and period at the end of a sentence, however it's quite common for transcriptions of include spaces before and after ellipses, or to only use an ellipsis rather than an ellipsis and period at the end of a sentence. -- Gordon Ecker 03:43, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

While I won't go out of my way to edit a page just to change it, my personal preference/habit is to have a space after it, regardless of how they type it in-game so I tend to hit the spacebar for it if I notice it when I'm editing a page or section that has some sort of dialogue on it. -- ab.er.rant 06:38, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

As always, if this is about quoting from ingame I think we should stick to verbative copy. (Document the game as it is, not as you think it ought to be.). If it's about original text, I don't want to get into the enitre prescriptionism thing. Change it withing the normal revert rules, if you want. Backsword 06:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm suggesting that we include a note mentioning that quotes using this punctuation style should be presumed to have correct punctuation and should not be altered without in-game evidence to the contrary, and that quotes of text which deviate from this style should be marked with a {{sic}} tag. -- Gordon Ecker 20:32, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

bolding article name in lead section

for months i've been going around bolding the article names in the lead section. i was reverted and noticed finally that there doesn't seem to be a guideline on this. i had just assumed that w:Wikipedia:Lead_section#Bold_title was applicable and didn't think to check here. so my question is have i just not found that guideline or was there a reason for not using it on this wiki? i know i'm not the only one who bolds article names b/c there are so few articles that don't have it. --VVong|BA 15:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Let's put it in then. I'd say there are more articles with the article name wiki-linked than there are those without. -- ab.er.rant 14:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I thought this was in the article formattings already, honestly. I pay alot of attention! :P - anja 14:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

how about something like this:

Bold title

The article's subject should be mentioned at the earliest natural point in the first sentence, and should appear in boldface. Avoid links within the bold title words. The name of the subject is often identical to the page title, although it may appear in a slightly different form from that used as the title, and it may include variations. For example, in the article "Guild versus Guild":

Guild versus Guild, also known as GvG or Guild Battle, is a strategic form of PvP which matches two teams of eight players from different guilds against each other in the Guild Halls.

If the topic of an article has no commonly accepted name, and the title is simply descriptive — like Guild Wars on Wine - the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text; if it does happen to appear, it should not be boldface:

Wine provides a win32 api implementation for operating systems not made by Microsoft and can be used to run Guild Wars on such systems.

If the topic of an article is a quest - like The Misplaced Sword - the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text.

This avoids needlessly awkward phrasing, repeated words, and allows for direct links to the general topics ("Yort the Bronze asks you to help him recover his Ceremonial Family Sword"). --VVong|BA 18:35, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

PvP weapons

I wrote down the skins list once here. I planned to let the according names of those "regular" PvP weapons redirect to this section. Now some of them are already created. Do you think the others should be created accordingly as well? And if yes, should we maybe leave a note about the skin overview on PvP Equipment? Possibly also in the aquisition section linking the "Weapons Creation Screen (J)" —ZerphaThe Improver 14:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I read over it, but I'm not comprehending some of it. I just got out of fencing, so my mind isnt working... . What I'm getting is that on the skins list section you had originally planned to give a link to the actual weapon. But since some of the PvP weapons are already created (mainly be me >.<), you want to redirect them to there? I'm sorry, i'm completely lost.... ~ Wandering Traveler 18:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

you really don't have to worry for doing this, having entire articles rather than redirects could possibly even be better :) You really don't need to stop creating these articles, you're doing good work. Though these are my proposals for these weapons:

• Use equipped appearance for them rather than icons. (I suppose you don't need to reupload an extra image for them, using the existing image of it's skin is ok i think. Icons will become added later with a template change of the infobox)
• Add a "Stats"-section, as these weapons are always available with maximum damage, iscription slot and are costumized on creation.
• Mentioning the PvP equipment panel once in the "Aquisition" section is enough as well, so the general description can be shortened.
• When writing down the bows' skins, don't forget to change the link as the weapons have disambigs. ("Shortbow" for example refers to the bow class)
• You could possibly also leave a note that these weapons can already be dyed on creation, though that's possibly not needed as it is mentioned in the PvP equipment article, which is linked in the aquisition.
  

—ZerphaThe Improver 21:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I'll be sure to include that. Thanks Zerpha :) ~ Wandering Traveler 22:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, glad if you like it. Another thing: Do you think we should explain that we are talking about the shortkey with "PvP Equipment (J)"? Possibly "PvP Equipment (Shortkey: J)" instead. —ZerphaThe Improver 22:13, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I think just the "J" will be fine, as having that right after usually signifies a shortkey. We might want to include it on the PvP Equipment page though. ~ Wandering Traveler 22:16, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, sounds fair. And the shortkey is already mentioned on the page - first line ;) —ZerphaThe Improver 22:31, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, another thing. I forgot to mention that they could possibly get a special category as well, though i don't know which name this category should get. —ZerphaThe Improver 22:38, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[[:Category:Starter PvP Weapons]] maybe? I'm not sure, thats the only thing I can think of >.< ~ Wandering Traveler 23:02, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds plausible, actually. —ZerphaThe Improver 23:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Sic tags

IMO {{sic}} tags should be placed at the end of sentences after any punctuation marks, and should not have a leading space. -- Gordon Ecker 20:24, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. It's easier to point out the error when the template is directly in front of it; it's also easier for people who might want to correct the non-errors to see that they should not correct it -- if the template is at the end of a sentence, there's an even larger change for it to go unseen and unspecified. -- Brains12 \ talk 20:28, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

What about when it's used to point out a punctuation error, such as a space before a period? At the very least, I think we should discourage leading spaces before sic tags in order to make spacing errors clear. -- Gordon Ecker 20:39, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

A better solution would be to avoid placing sic tags immediately before punctuation marks. -- Gordon Ecker 21:44, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Right after the problematic text would be the most logical for me. Same rule as superscript and subscript text. -- ab.er.rant 14:37, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, are there any objections to including a mention of sic tags, specifying that they should be placed after the problematic text, and should never be padded with additional spaces or placed between text and punctuation marks? -- Gordon Ecker 06:21, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I've added it. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 02:56, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Ban on blinking text

IMO we should categorically disallow blinking text. -- Gordon Ecker 06:16, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I would amend that to disallow blinking text outside the User namespace. -- Wyn 06:20, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I've never seen blinking text in articles, so I'm not sure why this is being brought up here. -- Brains12 \ talk 13:30, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Same. I see no need to disallow something that isn't even used or a problem yet. At least, I haven't seen it used (or my memory terribly fails me today). Calor 14:35, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

It was on ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Scratchpad until it was removed in this edit. -- Gordon Ecker 07:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)