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Proposing historical content change.

Per the recent discussion on the community talkpage, I am going to propose a change to the Historical content section of this policy. I will try to implement TEF's idea because it was widely well received. The goal of this change is to hopefully put more responsibility of maintaining guild pages to the guilds. Removed text shall be struck through, new text shall be italicized.

• Guild pages will never expire.
• A guild pages will be tagged as {{inactive guild}} if both of the following two conditions are met: it has not received any edits for 3 months.
  • Condition 1: Wiki inactivity - The guild page has not received any edits for 3 months.
  • Condition 2: Inactivity outside of Wiki - Any listed forum and/or website has not received any GW-related edits for 3 months.
• Any guild member or user of the Guild Wars Wiki may remove the {{inactive guild}} tag if they know that the guild is still exists active.
• If a guild page is tagged as {{inactive guild}} for 12 months and has not received any edits to indicate that the guild is active, the guild page will be tagged for deletion.
  • If a guild is disbanded, a former guild member or user of the Guild Wars Wiki should tag the guild page for deletion.
• Guild pages will be considered historical and tagged with the {{historical guild}} if one of the following two conditions is met:
  • Condition 1: Wiki inactivity - The guild page has been tagged as inactive for 3 months.
  • Condition 2: In-game inactivity - The guild is known to have been disbanded.
• The historical article is to be moved to a historical page [[Guild:Guild Name (historical)]] for reference purposes
  • Historical guild page content will be limited to primary information and guild cape image. Additional images and content will be removed.
• Users may only remove the {{historical guild}} tag if the guild is in fact still in existence.

Steps to archiving historical guild pages can be found here.

The final result should look something like:

1. A guild page will be tagged as {{inactive guild}} if it has not received any edits for 3 months.
2. Any guild member or user of the Guild Wars Wiki may remove the {{inactive guild}} tag if the guild is still active.
3. If a guild page is tagged as {{inactive guild}} for 12 months and has not received any edits to indicate that the guild is active, the guild page will be tagged for deletion.
   • If a guild is disbanded, a former guild member or user of the Guild Wars Wiki should tag the guild page for deletion.

Due to the nature of the updated policy, the section should be named 'Inactivity and deletion'. Any comments? I would especially like to hear from the man himself, TEF. --Riddle 22:21, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Comments on proposed changes

• I took the liberty of numbering the bullets above, so that they are easier to reference. (The final policy can have numbers or bullets, depending.)
• (3) I don't think that we should tag the guilds for deletion. I prefer the policy to read, If a guild has been marked as an {{inactive guild}} for 12 months or more, its article can be deleted at any time. → That allows us to not worry about stale articles for months and then purge at will, in a one-time project (we might never find the need to delete).
• (3b) I don't think the sub-point is necessary: (i) stale articles will be marked as inactive in any case; (ii) there are a tiny number of folks that will be responsible and mark-for-deletion articles for disbanded guilds; (iii) the more likely scenario seems to be that a disgruntled former member decides to play havoc with the guild's article (so let's not encourage that behavior).
• I think everything else fits with where the discussion was leading.

(As a side note: this is/was a group effort; I think my primary contribution has been to collate everyone else's suggestions into one section early in the discussion, which helped everyone to realize how close we were to agreement on most of the ideas.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 22:51, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I proposed tagging for deletion as a means to get the sysops' attention. I figured that we would use a speedy delete instead of the standard delete process, so the sysops can delete straight away. Someone will probably keep a DPL of expired guilds, but the sysops might not necessarily read it.

The subpoint was meant to reinforce the idea that the guild is responsible for their page, but I see your point. I'll be fine without it. --Riddle 23:50, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Any last comments?

→ moved from User talk:Tennessee Ernie Ford#Any last comments?

I figure everyone has been busy the past few days with the Arenanet Open House, but do you have any last comments on GWWT:GUILD? I think there was one issue that didn't seem quite resolved to me: Tagging for deletion. I figure that we'll be using a speedy delete tag (Probably G4: Housekeeping) and that tagging is not entirely necessary. The hope with the tag is to get sysops' attention to a page that needs to be deleted, rather than initiate a delete process. Anyway, I can change the text around from "will be tagged for deletion" to "will be promptly deleted." How does this sound? --Riddle 17:13, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Dude, You shouldn't make headers like that, I thought he was getting Permab& for a second. --BriarThe Spider 17:36, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I strongly prefer it to read, can be deleted after 12 months of inactivity — there's no need to specify anything further. Part of the goal of the policy change is to put more of the burden of guild article maintenance on the guild members and reduce any efforts by the wiki community. Even a speedy delete tag requires (a) someone being familiar with the delete codes and (b) an admin to delete.

Tagging and deleting both require active responses from us; saying that we can delete allows us to leave the articles (if they aren't cluttering) or simply delete them all in one fell swoop. The first possibility is the least effort imaginable and the second puts it into the realm of special projects, rather than perennial janitorial work. (I'm also thinking about a year from now, when there will be more staff available for GW2W and fewer here.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:47, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Final Product

• A guild page will be tagged as {{inactive guild}} if it has not received any edits for 3 months.
• Any guild member or user of the Guild Wars Wiki may remove the {{inactive guild}} tag if the guild is still active.
• A guild page can be deleted after 12 months of inactivity.

I have also updated Template talk:Inactive guild#Text change. Will this work? --Riddle 00:41, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Wasn't there also something about changing the {{inactive guild}} tag to include a date stamp for when it was added? That way if someone does decide that they want to do some cleanup, they can see when the page was tagged. --Rainith 01:07, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Adding a time stamp makes sense. Also, Riddle: did you mean for 15 months of net inactivity (i.e. 3 + 12 more)? or 12 months total (i.e. 3 + 9 more)? (either works for me; I just want to make sure that was what you meant). — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:09, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Rainith: I don't remember seeing that. I was thinking the date stamp would be for when the page will be deleted. Currently, the template has a parameter for a date stamp, but we could just remove that and make the date stamp automatic. Should the date stamp be the date it was tagged, the date it expires, or both? Is there any advantage to having a date stamp for the day it was tagged?

TEF: yes, it would be 15 months of net inactivity. --Riddle 03:28, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Entirely possible that I'm just misremembering things. I was thinking just a simple date stamp for when the page was tagged so that it would be obvious when it was okay to delete. So if the page was tagged with {{inactive guild}} on Dec. 9 2009 you would see that in the notice and then it could be deleted if you looked at that page today (as an entirely arbitrary example). Up to you or whomever as to including the day or just month/year. <edit> And I was thinking an automatic stamp. If someone wanted to figure out an automatic stamp that would add 12 (15? I'm confused now) months on to today's date and say This page may be deleted on XXXX if no edits are made to it. that would work too. Just something so that a clear date is there and people adding the tags don't have to work for it (i.e. do the math from today's date) as the point of this whole revamp seems to be to make less work for people.  :) --Rainith 04:24, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) So, we tag on date X and the tag says (words to the effect):

• As of [today], This page has been inactive at least 3 months.
• On [today +12 months] (or any time later), we can delete the page (since, by then, this article will have been inactive well over a year).
• It's easy to prevent this: just make any change (PS: don't forget to remove the tag).

Does that summarize what we've been saying so far? — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:44, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Looks good to me. --Rainith 00:49, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Late to the party not being really on the wiki any more, but I would just like to add that the reason I before was so adamant about the forum/website activity was the short time span involved, only 3 months from tag to move was just way too short. With these new rules of tagged for 12 months before delete it makes more sense to drop the outside activity clause, making it easier to bot periodically. Anyways, I also changed wording on the inactive guild / waiting to be tagged lists to reflect the policy change. --Lensor (talk) 13:25, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Notable guilds and inactivity

So, with the new guild policy, notable guilds were kinda lost in translation. Before (before the "historic" tag), the consensus was that notable guild pages would never expire. As in being deleted. Of course, when the "historic" category was started, this clause became obsolete, because no guilds really ever expired anyway. However, now that inactive guilds are deleted, I think the cannot-expire-clause for notable guilds should be reinstated. It would kinda suck if guilds such as ZoS or The Spearmen were deleted from the wiki just because the guild as such became inactive. Notable guilds are a part of GW history, and I think it is important that they are kept, forever. When GW2 players want to know about the famous guilds of the GW1 era years from now, their pages should still be here. So, I propose the following under the "Inactivity, clean-up, and deletion" heading:

• Guild pages with the notable tag will never expire. In stead, they will may be moved to historical content after 12 months of being tagged as inactive.

Also, I propose moving ALL current "historic" guilds back into the general Guild namespace, pretagged as inactive. This way, the "normal" guild pages will be deleted in 12 months the same as the guilds tagged today, and the "notable" guilds can be moved back to "historic" in an orderly fashion. --Lensor (talk) 19:29, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, the whole idea of guilds being displayed as "notable" is to keep them in some kind. So handling them just like normal guilds would be rather pointless. poke | talk 21:16, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Soo, is it ok if I go ahead and change it, or do I have to do some request for comment thingy first? (the notable guilds never expiring part I mean). Also, can wikichu discern between notable and non-notable guilds when/if going through a tagged guilds list for mass deleting, or is a separate "notable guild inactive tag" needed?--Lensor (talk) 14:05, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I think I'd rather see us not worry about distinguishing between different notable guilds. Those that want to keep their articles up-to-date will do so (and it will be obvious, especially if they are winning guilds). Those that don't... are still notable, no matter how many years since their last victory.

Remember, the impetus behind the last policy update was to reduce to zero (or near zero) the amount of work required of non-guild members in maintaining the guild space. The least amount of effort is simply to leave a {{guild|notable}} article alone (i.e. that tag means we never have to touch the page again, unless there's a policy violation). – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 00:37, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Yea, the main point was notable guild pages should never ever expire. With the add that should we ever want to, we *could* move old notable guilds to historic content. Although that latter point is not really needed, just more of a just-in-case. Just saying that guilds with the notable tag cannot be tagged with the inactive tag works too. Is it possible to make GWWT disable the "inactive guild" tag from notable guilds? At the very least the "inactive guilds waiting to be tagged" lists could be updated to not display notable guilds to begin with. In any case I still think that the historic guild category should be emptied of everything not notable, although not a priority. It is just.. messy.. the way it is now. --Lensor (talk) 10:29, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, went ahead and added a non-delete clause for notable guild pages, should be uncontroversial enough. I have also fixed the "waiting to be tagged" lists to not include notable guild pages.--Lensor (talk) 16:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Historical guilds

Now that old guild pages are deleted in stead of archived as historical would it be possible to do some serious cleanup of the historical guilds category? Basically as a preparation getting our house in order before GW2 launches. What I propose is that, once GW2 hits, we only have actual active guild pages left at GW1W in addition to all the notable guild pages that are kept for posterity. In accordance to the new guild policy, I think we could just make one great bot sweep and delete all the non-notable historical guild pages that have had no edits for more than 12 months (i.e. the vast majority). Anything left after that could be just tagged as inactive and get deleted in due time along with all the other inactive guild pages. We could even un-historify notable historic guild pages and abolish the category altogether if feeling ambitious. Thoughts? --Lensor (talk) 09:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how it benefits the wiki. In contrast, I can see two reasons for preserving older guild articles:

• I imagine that between the time the public beta is announced and GW2 is launched, lots of people will return to GW1 to confirm their account ID, top off their HoM Score, create a new toon to reserve the name...and some will look for their guild on the wiki.
• Aren't there other reasons for notability within the gaming community? Are we saying that only a PvP guild deserves a historical record on the wiki? some have been famous for hosting events or providing a service (running guilds or there was a guild that used to provide an escrow service among those trading pre-gold for post-gold).

Having said that, I don't feel that strongly about this; if there's a bunch of people that want to purge the wiki of untouched guild articles with few views, then I won't block consensus. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 08:20, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Heh, I hardly think there are "a lot of" people wanting to purge the wiki ;) I just think that with less and less activity in GW1, including the wiki, it would be nice to do some cleaning to lessen the mass of pages to manage. And do note that the "notable" tag is not only PvP guilds, it is for all guilds "acknowledged by ANet". Also, since the current policy is that we can delete all non-notable guilds after 12 months of inactivity it is inconsistent to keep just the historical guilds forever "just because". Your argument of returning players wanting to see their guild page is just as true, if not more so, for guild pages going inactive today as for guild pages going historical 3+ years ago. Do note though, it is not like I am adamant about the issue, I just like order and consistency :) --Lensor (talk) 17:38, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Eh, by "a lot of," I meant 2-3 (in other words, not just you and I deciding amongst ourselves). ANet might have acknowledged non-PvP guilds in the past, but I can't remember the last time they did so. So, for the moment, we're speaking primarily of PvP guilds.

Anyhow, my point is that there's not really anything to manage. The old policy required a lot of work to preserve stuff: we warned people that their article was going stale, we marked it as stale, and then we moved it to historical. The new policy requires no work: we can leave pages alone forever — if we ever decide that we need server space or need to delete files to be able run clean-up bots more efficiently, then we can immediately delete any/all guild articles that have been untouched for 12 months.

My argument is "why invite any work right now?" (especially since there's little tangible benefit). In contrast, doing nothing means we can focus on something else (and, as a bonus, if people return after a long absence, their guild's article will still be there). – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:41, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Just curious about this part: "lessen the mass of pages to manage". Exactly what does that mean? What changes are being made to the historical pages that would require work to update/maintain them? Do you have to air them out every few months so they don't smell? -- FreedomBound 11:49, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Well one could just leave them forever, not doing anything to them. It is just.. messy .. having a gazillion mostly blank old pages and a whole "dead" category cluttering up the place. As for benefits, besides the de-clutter factor: People making a new guild with the same name as an old disbanded one not running into trouble. Less pages that can be vandalized. No forgetting that someone has IGNs, sometimes even with e-mail addresses, on a guild page they made a thousand years ago (the closer GW2 gets, the more people are going to want to hack GW1 accounts for perks). Things like that. But again, if no one sees the point, messy the guild namespace shall remain! XD --Lensor (talk) 23:54, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I would also like to see the historical guilds category cleaned up. All non-notable guild pages should be treated the same, historical or not. Zeptozoid 13:33, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Vandalism by ex-members

This Guild:Veratis Adeodatus has suffered content issue by two ex-members User:Moonshadegold and User:Elryia, its cape image replaced with an inactive picture. Currently, the Guild pages guide does not provide any direction on steps to follow if an ex-member wants to remove references to self (only) without looking as a vandal. Yoshida Keiji talk 09:16, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

The guild was inactive since 2010 so it warrants deletion, especially when a member who previously maintained the page now requested the guild page to be deleted. -- ab.er.rant 06:33, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Inactivity/clean-up policy modification

I've been rearranging a lot of guild pages in the last few months, and based on this activity arose a proposal to implement the following changes to the terms of associated inactivity/clean-up policy. What do you think about these, folks?

• A guild page can be tagged as an {{inactive guild}} if it has not received any edits for 6 months.
• A guild page can be deleted after 2.5 years of inactivity.

Dmitri Fatkin (talk) 23:22, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

I think that would be a fair change; or maybe we could even go up further. Given the game’s activity, I don’t think we should enforce it as strictly as we did in the (former) past. We just can’t expect the remaining active guilds to actually keep updating their wiki page (if they even care about it…). On the other hand, I would kind of feel bad for eventually deleting good guild pages just because the game is dead and nobody of that guild actively plays any more.

So maybe we should consider the alternative of tagging guild pages with {{historical guild}} after those two years instead of deleting them, if the guild page meets a certain quality and content level. What do you think? poke | talk 07:05, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

(At the same time, we shouldn’t bother moving all those pages to <Guild name> (historical) to avoid too much work on this) poke | talk 07:10, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Good day, Poke. My personal opinion on the above is that your reasoning consists of a very well-grounded solution. If it's possible to consider such an option and in case it actually isn't going to take way too much of your time, I would have preferred all of non-notable guild pages which didn't receive an edit in the last 2 years to be automatically-moved into historical guild pages category with all of the associated talk & sub-pages content. We might have to manually-fix some of the relevant template & category calls here and there later on, once the movement completes, at the same time, it appears on the whole to me as the most-efficient clean-up approach from what we've got at the moment. Dmitri Fatkin (talk) 14:40, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Major rewrite needed

Since the Guild: namespace was done away with some time back and guilds need to be on user pages now, this entire policy needs to be re-written, if not trashed altogether. I'm tagging it with a cleanup in hopes that someone with more knowledge of current situation will get to it. Or if it should just be trashed change it from cleanup to delete. --Rainith (talk) 20:32, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Something tangentially related that I remembered the other day: the F10 menu in-game links to (the now locked and uncreatable/uneditable) guild namespace for every guild in your alliance. horrible | contribs 21:18, 28 January 2021 (UTC)