Guild Wars Wiki talk:Guild pages/Archive 5

Inactive/historical guilds

I have some difficulties in understanding how the newly implemented thing with inactive and historical guilds works. As far as I understand, guild pages will be tagged after 3 months as inactive (when there was no edit) and after another 3 months, they will first, be tagged as historical instead, and second, be moved to Guild:Guildname (historical). While that sounds fine for keeping guild pages as long as possible on the wiki and about removing the work to tag and delete inactive guilds, there are some other issues, I would like to address:

1. When moving an inactive guild page to its historical name, what happens with the redirect? Will it be kept?
   1. If yes: How are people who are adding a new guild page supposed to find the correct page? They will automaticall follow the redirect and might get confused when looking at the existing page which doesn't apply on the current guild and with the historical guild tag on the top. Maybe they even don't know how to get back to the redirecting page, so they will just edit the historical page instead or leave the wiki without editing at all.
   2. If no: How are people, which guild page was tagged and moved as historical by mistake, supposed to find their old page and get it back in the original state? It happened already now with the inactive guild deletion after 6 months. As a guild page will be moved after effective 6 months with the new policy nothing changes there, and people might get problems.
      Also when having the redirects be deleted, we have even more work to do (not counting the process of getting inactive first), as we have to change the tag as historical (1), move (2), tag the redirect for deletion (3) and delete the tag (4) instead of just tagging the guild page as inactive and deleting it later (as it was done before)
2. What happens when we have multiple historical versions of one guild(name)?

It would be better to have pages tagged as inactive again after 6 months and then after another 2/3 months automatically tagged (or the inactive-tag only changes its appearance and category) as historical without moving at all. Then we could add a big note on the historical tag which explains on how to create a new version of this guild page, if the information doesn't apply to the existing guild (i.e. moving it and recreating the page then). poke | talk 19:03, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I think we could work this issue by following the next steps (all inclusive):

• After 3 months of inactivity, the page is tagged as inactive.
• After 6 months of inactivity (that is, 3 months after being tagged as inactive) the page is tagged as historical
• Pages of guild that are known to be disbanded will be tagged as historical regardless of inactivity time.
• Pages tagged as "historical" will be moved to Guild:BASEPAGENAME (historical).
• If two or more historical guilds exist with the same name, we will use general naming disambiguators as per the guild policy or our general naming guideline (ie: Guild:BASEPAGENAME [tag] (historical), Guild:BASEPAGENAME (date) (historical)).
• After the guild article was moved to it's historical counterpart, the original page (that is, Guild:BASEPAGENAME) will be blanked, a disambiguation link pointing to all the historical content will be left for reference purposes, and a note stating that if a new guild with the same name arises they can create the guild article on the same page (again, Guild:BASEPAGENAME).

By following these steps, i think we could avoid all the problems you mention on your post. But, in any case, your alternative is a lot more easier to implement in the long run, even though i still feel users may just ignore the "this is historical content" warning and go and edit the article in case of naming conflicts if we go by your proposal.--Fighterdoken 19:17, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

That still doesn't address the issue of the redirects created by moving the page. Though at this point, we have 2 months to work out these issues since all guild pages currently tagged as inactive have a 3 month window rather than one. -- Wyn 19:21, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I am quite sure the 5th point on my list was intended to adress the redirects problem by effectively removing the redirect.--Fighterdoken 20:34, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds workable. -- ab.er.rant 16:46, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Since no other proposals have come up yet, would be a good idea to start moving historical guild articles already to a proper disambiguation page as i proposed above, or is safer to just hold and decide later if problems arise?

Either case, i made up something like the template i was thinking (here) for allowing both, disambiguation on guild articles vs their historical counterparts, and for adding to blank guild articles in case the move requested above is accepted.--Fighterdoken 05:05, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with the change to the template, and as there are only 4 guilds currently with Historical status, I don't see why not. -- Wyn 05:12, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Language: avoiding cleanup-deletion

In order to try to prevent deletions because of cleanup by non-compliance of the language section of the policy (mostly due to people not paying enough attention to the article they create), should we start a project for gathering translators, or should we just leave it to recent-changes stalkers will?.--Fighterdoken 21:33, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I have started tagging the foreign language pages for translation, I thought I'd get a few more done before requesting translators, however if you wish to get a project started, that would be great! The tags are adding the pages to Category:Translation needed with subcategories for language (I'm still getting the categories set up), to make it easier for translators to identify the pages.-- Wyn 22:03, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

For now i think the category may be enough for users interested in helping . Since you are still setting it up, any chance of the category list being separated by language of origin?--Fighterdoken 22:07, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean, but take a look at the main category and the subcategories that I've done so far. Does that do it? -- Wyn 22:18, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Yup, that was what i meant :).--Fighterdoken 22:21, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Well I can help out with translating all the Dutch pages, but it'll have to wait seeing as I'm going on vacation in about... 3 hours. -- Mini Me 09:51, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Cool, it's going to take at least a week for me to get all the pages tagged with the other workload I'm anticipating in the next few days, not to mention leaving a little time to actually play! We have allowed 6 weeks for translations and other changed to be done, so have fun on vacation!-- Wyn 09:54, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I will hold also a little before adding translation to pages for now. I think it would be a good idea to give guild article editors the chance to write it themselves, at least until the last week of August.

By the way, would it be better to go for full translations (so guilds can the cut what they don't want), or just small summaries for the non-english articles?--Fighterdoken 18:10, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The policy calls for summaries, and in cases where the is large amounts of text I think a summary is all that is needed, but on pages with limited text, full translation is going to be better. -- Wyn 20:14, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Formating policy

I thought the agreement was to include only the nonformstingbits for now? Yet what was implemented was full of formzting rules, going about as far as one side had asked for. Wasn't that just what we were to hold of on at this point. I don't think the current policy is valid if not supported by concensus at least on some point in time. Backsword 07:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

The only hard formatting restrictions in the policy are in regards to the templates. The formatting issues that were left out were over all page formatting. If you feel that "Guild pages should not deviate from the style and formatting guideline in formatting or content" needs to be removed, I have no problem with that. However I will point out that consensus was on the policy AS IT STOOD.-- Wyn 07:44, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

It's blatantly wrong to claim there was concensus for formating policy. Several people posted against it and never changed view. Them not posting against implementing it repeatedly every few days doesn't mean there is consnsus, just that they're not spamers.

I think all formating policy needs to go from this policy documentation until such a time as there is support for it. That includs formating rules I myself strongly support. Backsword 08:03, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, your personal strong support for anything in any policy is not a prerequisite for it getting implemented, and to say otherwise is just false. I think we should see what everyone else has to say about your claims before any change is affected.-- Wyn 08:07, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

There are a few things worth to mention here.

• Yes, we didn't reach concensus on the level of formatting restrictions for the policy, so the line Wyn mentioned should be removed changed for now.
• In the same way, since we didn't reach consensus on formatting, all the formatting restrictions from the previous policy still stay.
• The issues some users had with this policy were only related to the level of customization allowed, and we came to an agreement that we could still require default infoboxes under the condition that, were customization allowed, their customization were also discussed. So since the requeriment of it was not contested in the end, the line Wyn mentioned is actually the only thing that needs to go be changed.--Fighterdoken 08:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

You are right, I did not mean that any formating rules from the old policy needs to go. I meant the new ones. The guild infobox is also fine by the argument you make. (tho' that is a pretty silly compromise) The rest needs to show support, which I may have missed as per the infobox (too many walls of text on that page) or else go, not just that line. Backsword 08:23, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I removed the disputed line.-- Wyn 08:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Please point out what other language you are disputing exactly, because other than requiring the default guild tag, infobox, and alliance nav templates I don't see any other formatting requirements in this policy.-- Wyn 08:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Seconding that request. Most of what is in the policy now just switched places from the previous revision, or had minor rewords to match with the way it was being enforced; but in what refers to "formatting" there appears to not be any other new addition to the policy, as far as i see it at least.--Fighterdoken 18:28, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Revisiting the historical section and minimum required content

To all of you who elected to stop deleting guild pages, and move them into historical status instead, I would like to point out some hard numbers. By cutting the timeline in half for the period of time it takes a guild page to be deemed inactive, the list to be tagged went from pretty much up-to-date, with less than 100 pages needing to be tagged, to well over 1000. Since dpl will only list 500 I can't give you an actual number. So far, pages have been tagged whose last edit was the middle of March (still 2 months away from the 3 month mark set by the new policy) and the currently visible list contains 500 and only goes to the end of April. There are currently almost 800 pages tagged as inactive, with the first of the moves slated for the first week in October. By setting the bar so low for required content (simply having the guild tag, guild infobox, and one contact) it means we will be archiving literally thousands of pages that are imo, blank. So far, I have had some help tagging, but not nearly enough to get caught up, and I can't imagine what is going to happen when October gets here and all those pages need to be moved, and edited for archival storage. While I knew the changes to the guild page policy were going to create work, I guess I anticipated more help from the people who called for these specific changes to accomplish it, which so far has not been forthcoming. Any ideas? -- Wyn 10:00, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I was tagging pages that don't meet minimum content and haven't been edited for 3 months yesterday, and tagged just under 100. However, of those I checked (about 300 more), lots only met the requirement because they filled in the 'Leader' part of the infobox, meaning they had indeed supplied a contact method, but the rest of the page was blank. This, to me, just seems silly - IMO, the pages should just be deleted. Personally, I also think that a guild that has been tagged as inactive for three months should just be deleted, rather than being archived. Adding a requirement that someone needs to try and get in touch with a leader of the guild strikes me as a horrible waste of resources; if the guild doesn't care enough to make someone edit their page twice a year (3 months before being tagged as inactive, three more before being deleted) there's no point in having it. If they miss it, they can just get it undeleted - which is a lot less effort. That's my take on the matter, anyway. Ale_Jrb (talk) 12:54, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Probably a solution could be to remove the "inactive tagging" of pages, going straight for "historical content" after six months. This could reduce the need to check the pages at least to some degree.

Also, please note that the problem with extending the requeriments for content is that there is no proper way to word, nor to police the limits for content. There have been guilds that had fully information in the infobox and were tagged in the past for cleanup because "they had no content". On the other hand, there were guilds that had walls of text on their page, but in the end they said nothing about their guild. In this regard, i will keep opposing requering guilds to have a "descriptive paragraph" because is just redundant, mostly misused, and easily by-passable.

If we feel a way to filter is still needed in order to avoid keeping "blank" articles, i think we could REQUIRE to have full content on the infobox (even if the entry data is filled with "none"). Others expressed issues before for this, under the grounds that not all the information is available, but if the person that creates the article is related to the guild then at least he should be able to ask on his guild for the missing info.

By the way, i feel the policy wording failed there in the end. We require minimum formatting, we require guild name, we require guild tag, and we require contact information, but only the first three are considerated in the "besides minimum content" paragraph, so a reword may be needed. I would suggest changing the line to:

• Must contain a minimum of one in game or wiki contact, or other contact method, such as a website, forum or email.
• "Must contain information about the guild other than just the name, tag, contact information, and basic formatting.".--Fighterdoken 22:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I would like to up the requirements as well. A guild page exists to explain a guild. If all the guild page has is the name, tag, and contact information, well... it's not very informative. It doesn't say anything about a guild other than who created it. Which is pointless if we're aiming to be a resource where people can look up guilds to join. Let's not blindly have pages for the sake of having pages. If we agree that our guild pages are meant to explain/detail/document guilds, we should require a bit more than just names. even a single paragraph of "We are a fun little guild made up of real-life friends" is several times more useful than just the infobox. -- ab.er.rant 05:47, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I think we can agree that current requirments are too low. I'd warn for Aberrant's approach though. Assuming recruitment was what stranded this discussion in the past. It's simply not true that all guilds recruit.

Also, we'll have to be rather general. If we specify, say, that there must be at least a single sentence overview, what about guilds that have excellent content, but none of it is an overview? Those that made the page would have had no way of knowing that would be required. Backsword 15:09, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

How about "a minimum level of descriptive content" then? --Xeeron 15:12, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with that, but, I'm going to beat Fighterdoken to the punch here, because I know what he's going to say... what may be "a minimum level of descriptive content" to me, may not be to someone else, so what guidelines are we going to use to tag? I would personally be satisfied with a single sentence as mentioned by Ab.er.rant.

I personally feel that if a guild does not take the time within the first 2 weeks of page creation to add an acceptable level of content, they more than likely never will, and the pages will just end up tagged as inactive in 3 months anyway. So tagging them for cleanup and deleting after 2 weeks simply deals with them a bit faster, as well as removes them from the archival process. If a guild wishes to create a better page later, they are welcome to recreate it, or ask for the deleted page to be restored. -- Wyn 15:22, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Acording to this, we would allow then a guild that has name + tag + contact + "We did it for the lulz" to stay, but a guild with FULL infobox and no "descriptive content" be removed? If it were the case, then i would like to at least require guild articles to fill up the content of the infobox besides requiring them to include "descriptive text". After all, every guild has: name, tag, guild leader (even if it changes), amount of members, faction (even if none), playing style, territory and language.--Fighterdoken 18:02, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

(reset indent) I think that it should be made quite a bit stricter. The thing it, there simply isn't any point having an article on a guild that only has *enter amount* of stuff there. I think a full infobox and a descriptive sentence (at least 1) would be fine. Anything less, and the page should be tagged for cleanup, and deleted if it isn't met in 2 weeks. That means that the pages have to be at least alright, and any that are already great should be spared, as they'll meet it anyway. Ale_Jrb (talk) 18:10, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Ale jrb. Having blank pages such of this is, in my opinion, pointless. That page could have been completed in 30 seconds, and under the current policy, it's okay - and in three month's time will be tagged as inactive, and archived. Upping the bar for content levels is necessary. We should only be archiving pages that have some good content levels, not "blank" pages. -- Indochine talk 18:23, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Well, if this doesn't justify the "don't give them an inch because they'll want a mile" philosophy. We're already requiring plenty of information and it already sounds like it's plenty of work just verifying that the pages meet that. Guild Wars doesn't require all this additional information when creating a guild and I don't see any need for the wiki to require it either. I think the policy is restrictive enough and should be left as is. -- Inspired to ____ 18:31, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

@Indochine. It may seem pointless to you, but it wasn't pointless to the creator of that page. It also wouldn't be pointless to me if I wanted to find some information on that guild. It may not provide much, but it could easily provide more then I had before I went there. -- Inspired to ____ 18:31, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

@Inspired. The only point there was to the creator of the page is they found the link in game and followed it, and said, oh wow, we have a page on the wiki! They most likely didn't read the policy, don't even know it exists even though notices of it are splashed all over the creation screen as will as within the guild notice box at the top of their page, and don't care about adding content to the wiki. So the point of keeping it should carry just as much weight or consideration as they put into creating it.-- Wyn 16:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Wyn said it all :/ -- Indochine talk 17:21, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Who cares if they read the policy or not, if they are abiding by it. Furthermore, policies which are intuitively followed by users are better than ones which can only be expected to be accurately followed if read carefully. Why does it seem like you're arguing that we should change the policy to require more because some page creators get lucky and happen to accidentally follow the current policy and therefore it must not require enough info. Afterall, how many who haven't actually read the policy would think that they might be required to add some type of comment. So, since the author only put little effort into creating the page, we should put more effort into deleting it then they put into creating it. Well, I disagree but I'm done putting anymore of my effort into this and will check back at some later point to see what you all ended up doing this time. -- Inspired to ____ 19:09, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you should take 5 minutes and read the first post by Wyn stating the reasons as to why this is discussed again. The problem here is not "wasting our time with reasons for deleting pages", but "not deleting pages is making us waste a lot more time that what we used to waste deleting them".

As someone said above, i would like having my cake and eating it too (meaning, "full infobox also" if the "small paragraph" idea is aproved), but any change at this point has to be done trying to solve the maintenance issue first, and leaving the "what i think" for later.--Fighterdoken 21:31, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Aagghhh! I read it and chose not to get involved in self-inflicted problems. It's this circular policy changing that get's really annoying and results in policies that almost no one really agrees with or intended to have. I didn't think we should have changed the policy from what it originally was and stated that it appeared to be a "make work project" to me back then. Okay, over-ruled by "wiki consensus", fine. Now...omg this a lot of work, let's use that as justification to go even further down the road of discouraging casual editors from becoming involved in the wiki. Now what will follow is weeks or months of "can we change this yet" until it will most likely be changed at some point shortly thereafter (unfortunately annoying persistence does pay off around here). With the only question being was it changed to exactly what someone wanted or were they forced to compromise to get some change made, because if there was some type of compromise, the circle will continue on and we will get to address it again at some point thereafter or as you put it "for later". And, yes I know the answer already: "It's a process". -- Inspired to ____ 21:57, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

While I agree that policies should be intuitive and should not impose unnecessary work onto users, I don't understand why you think this updated policy discourages new users more than the old one.... you think we should just delete them in 7 days instead of 14? Guild pages have been deleted for not having enough basic info even before the change to this policy. -- ab.er.rant 06:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I also agree that policies should be intuitive, but they should also be functional in serving the best interest of the wiki. I don't believe the current level of content required for a guild page serves the best interest of the wiki. I didn't at the time the changes were implemented, but I was overridden by consensus. I see no harm in revisiting this issue now that we can actually see the results of the changes that were made. Ideally, I would like to see a completed infobox, and a minimum of one descriptive sentence about the guild, though a paragraph would be better. This should at least give us a basic overview of the guild, and would be worth archiving. And yes, getting caught up to current HAS been a lot of work (but it's done now), and getting the initial archiving done is going to be a lot of work, but that is not the reason I have brought this back up. -- Wyn 09:21, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

The purpose of guild namespace is to document the guilds. If they don't add the sane minimum of required content, such as presented in this example, then their pages should be deleted instead of placing them into the archive. There should be a minor requirement of additional, guild-related descriptive information, as having only guild names and tags is not enough to appropriately document the guilds. Dmitri Fatkin 22:37, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Going back to the topic, i see that Inspired is not really happy with regulating the guild namespace, but i have yet to see a proposal for alternatives from his part. Still, to adress some of the concerns by Inspired, maybe we could opt for some of these alternatives?

• Keep minimum content restrictions as they are for "live" guild articles. Inactive guild articles have to pass a second set of minimum content restrictions (paragraph et all) in order to become tagged as such, or are tagged for cleanup instead.
• Keep minimum content restrictions as they are for "live" and "inactive" guild articles. Articles to be marked as "historical" will undergo a content check first at admin discretion; if it passes stays as historical content, if not goes to the trash bin.

(Even so, at this point i would prefer if we raised the minimum content restrictions for all guild articles by equal: live, inactive and historical).--Fighterdoken 22:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I also would not like to see different rules. Things are complicated enough as is. KISS, Backsword 15:11, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Cape images

Well My friend Seru made a walk through on how to make better cape images. Here it is. Blood 02:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

That's great :) If he's done with it, he can move it out to main space, put it into Category:Guides, and then we can link it (since we don't usually link to pages in the user namespace). -- ab.er.rant 02:44, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

It looks like most of the images were deleted. :( I don't think they were copyright violations, they were just fair use. :/ Biscuits 17:20, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

We can't use Fair Use images Biscuits. -- Wyn 17:23, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not convinced those images needed to be deleted though. Is a screenshot of an application a copyright violation? I don't think so. It probably doesn't require even Fair Use. But IANAL. *shrug*. Biscuits 23:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Tip

For teams translating guild(s) use Google Translate. It should help :). Dominator Matrix 01:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Please don't... if you don't read the language well enough to translate into English, don't translate. Mechanical translation is just not reliable enough. -- Wyn 17:24, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Required Content

"Must contain the default template {{alliance nav}} if the guild is in an alliance and wishes to display that information." Ok, so you have to have it, but only if you want to? Does not compute! It seems like it's trying to say, if the guild is in an alliance, use this template, but that shouldn't then go in the "Required Content" section. ¬ Wizårdbõÿ777(talk) 18:22, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The point of that was that it had to be the default template, not an altered one. -- Wyn 18:25, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

That's what I was guessing (see the second half of what I posted). But that doesn't seem like it should be in required content - I'd say put it in explicitly allowed content, phrasing it something like "Alliance information is allowed. If the guild wishes to display alliance information, use the {{alliance nav}} template." ¬ Wizårdbõÿ777(talk) 18:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

That's clearer. Or: "If the guild is in an alliance and wishes to display the member guilds, they must use the {{Alliance nav}} template". Although if a guild wanted to list the alliance guilds in their writeup too I don't think that should be prevented. Biscuits 22:16, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd be fine with moving it to explicitly allowed content, or rewording as long as it's intent of the use of the default template is maintained. -- Wyn 22:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The idea that it is trying to convey is: Alternate templates are prohibited.. As long as that is conveyed, I'm fine with any wording and placement. Backsword 00:50, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

The wording I'd use is, 'Guilds wishing to display their alliance information must use the {{alliance nav}} template.' or 'Guilds wishing to display their alliance information should use the {{alliance nav}} template. Alternate templates are not allowed.' I think something like that reads best. Ale_Jrb (talk) 15:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

To stay consistent I think 'Guilds wishing to display their alliance information must use the default {{alliance nav}} template.' would work best. -- Wyn 16:26, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with that wording Wyn, also based on what I've read this is also being moved from the "Required content" section to the "Explicitly allowed content" section, if so that sounds fine to me. --Kakarot 18:14, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

So, should we consider consensus to have been reached on this? -- Wyn 15:32, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it. I'll implement the change unless there are any further comments in the next day or so. -- Indochine talk 15:50, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Historical content

There has been some disagreement on what the Historical pages should contain. I would like to propose creating a guideline outlining the steps for moving Inactive/Disbanded guilds to Historical status. It could be a subpage of the policy. -- Wyn 15:35, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

A clarification would be useful at this time, but however I would like to point out that this historical policy may be a good idea on paper - but I've only seen myself and Wyn actually moving guild pages. The list of guild pages to be moved is getting longer every day and I doubt that we will be able to keep up with only two people working on it. Is it worth it? -- Indochine talk 17:55, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

On the good side, if only you two are on it, chances of the guideline passing are higher. Just watch this page, where the change proposals are often stopped because of people who doesn't like them and don't want to discuss why, plus they don't want to propose alternatives either :P.--Fighterdoken 21:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I have started outlining what I feel should be done here, and would like any comments/additions/revisions. -- Wyn 18:17, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I would like to point out that retaining these pages was NOT part of the original changes requested to the policy, and I believe it would be more than appropriate if the people who demanded this change be added should assist in the work. -- Wyn 18:20, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I like what you have done, Wyn. And seriously, this is more than a 2-user job... -- Indochine talk 11:23, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

"The people who demanded" the inclusion was nonexistant if i remember right. I asked if we could add the line, but i remember no one actually standing and saying "i think it's a bad idea", so please, don't blame me for proposing an idea if you actually did nothing to prevent its implementation at the time it was discussed.

Regarding the proposal for a historical guideline, it seems fine as it is, and i probably would go a bit further and remove any/all sub-pages from the guild article, leaving only the main page for reference purposes. In any case, i still think we should try to merge this with GWW:GUILDS if possible.--Fighterdoken 04:33, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

K.. demanded was a bit strong, I grant you... I was feeling a bit overwhelmed that day, I apologize. -- Wyn 04:50, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Translation not completed

If a guild page marked with {{guild translation needed}} is still not translated and falls into the inactive guild category; we still tag/delete it right? --Antioch 19:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

We don't delete, just tag inactive and after 3 months we move to historical, but keep the translation tag. Hopefully we can get translations done on the historical ones at some point in the future. -- Wyn 19:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Er, yeah, don't delete. You know what I meant! I guess I'm too used to the old way. :-/ --Antioch 23:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Revisiting the revisit of historical content

500+ guild pages need to be moved, tagged and trimmed to comply with the policy. This number is growing by around 5-10 each day, and will continue to grow as long as the guild page policy stands as it is now. It would take one extremely dedicated (otherwise it couldn't be done) person several hours to clear this backlog as each page requires five actions (move, replace redirect, new tag, capeimage change, removal of extra stuff and optionally comment removal) to comply with the policy. Each of these requires extensive copy pasting and repetitive clicking; It's tedious and boring. I see no help from the people who suggested for these changes - Where are you?

I think the policy should be changed on the grounds that it creates huge amounts of work and for the most part, this is unnecessary.

• Do we really need to document disbanded guilds?

I don't think we should, unless it's a notable guild. How many people are actually interested in that small guild with three members from one school that was disbanded months ago?

I think the right to a guild page comes with ownership of a guild. Disband the guild, and you forfeit that right. For inactive guilds, verification that they still exist should be found, otherwise they should be deleted. Guilds that still exist but have received no edits for three months should be fine - if verification can be found that they still exist.

I think the wiki should be used for documenting guilds (among other things), not somewhere offering free webspace for advertising your guild. We are not the classified ads section of your local newspaper; it's beginning to look like some people think we are. Guilds should have a paragraph summarising the creation, activities and members of the guild. I understand the problems people have with this suggestion, but I really don't like the fact that we're archiving many pages with minimal levels of content. A lot of the pages just aren't worth effort of moving them. -- Indochine talk 19:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

So, if i get it right from your... rant, you want:

• If a guild is declared disbanded, the page is deleted.
• If a guild is declared inactive, the page is deleted. It can be restored anyways if needed. Who is on charge of checking if they are active?
• If a guild is disbanded or inactive, but notable, the page stays as historical.
• Reduce the amount of allowed content on guild articles to informative only. No more rosters, list of individual accomplishments, or aditional "fluff".

That was it?

And seriously, what is with the "where are You?" statement? For starters, I never said I was going to help. Second, YOU took part on the previous discussion too, and are as responsible as I and Wyn on the fact that changes got aproved as they where. If you were so opposed to them, you should have spoken then and not come now to put the blame on others. --Fighterdoken 19:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The person who tags it inactive should be checking forums etc for recent posts. If there isn't any available, they are tagged, and it is up to the guild or friends of the guild to realize it's been tagged and fix it. They have 3 months to do that before it would be deleted. I seem to remember you being the first one who didn't want these things deleted, so come help us archive them if that's the way you want it. -- Wyn 19:34, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I was involved in the original discussion to change the policy, only discussions after it was changed. I assume by supporting a policy you would be interested in helping.

No, I don't have a problem with "fluff". I prefer pages with these additional details. I don't like guilds that only have name, tag, and contact. I don't think you can accurately portray a guild with that limited information. -- Indochine talk 19:41, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

You assume wrong there. By supporting a policy i try to ensure that what i think would be good, what i think would be the best course of action. or what i think we are forgetting to consider, is put on the table. I may offer more or less support to one point based on which one of those three points i am trying to make, but that doesn't mean i am going to assume an active instance on the application of the policy.

Back on topic, i think we already agreed that guilds HAD to have something else besides "minimum content restrictions"? (so if it is only minimum, they are still cleanup/deletion-able). I may be wrong on this, though.

About the archiving of non-notable guild articles, i was not the first that brought it up, i was pretty much the only one during that draft in particular. The change was aproved under the grounds that "no one cared about it, and no one saw a reason to reject it either", and all further discussion was related to the way it would be implemented.

If you guys think the archiving of non-notable guild pages has become too resource consuming (i think we had a simmilar discussion already when we raised the minimum requeriments for guild articles), and that the net gain of having such articles on the wiki is overweighted by the effort needed to keep them visible, then i see no reason for such process to continue being executed.--Fighterdoken 20:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

There is one extremely easy way to reduce the effort needed to zero: Simply stop deleting inactive guilds. Take a look at this history for an example of the unneeded effort it creates. And that is not the only guild I have to do this for. Punishing guilds that don't use the guild namespace as their weekly changing guild roster host with inactive tags and complaining about the wiki developing into a web host doesn't fit together: The inactive tag is a pain in the ass for those complying with the rest of the policy. --Xeeron 22:05, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

So what's the point of having a policy if we're just going to use workarounds to avoid using the inactive tag? Does this not highlight the flaws in the current policy? I agree with you: we should not punish guilds that don't need to constantly update their page. If guilds are know to exist, then let them be. -- Indochine talk 22:13, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how is he proposing to use workaround on the policy. I think he is proposing to remove once and for all the "inactivity" mechanic from the policy (and thus, the "historical" mechanic). It seems like a good alternative actually, since you could still delete on request, on disband (if requested) or as per cleanup.--Fighterdoken 22:20, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Neither do I when I re-read it and followed up on some links. I thought Xeeron was suggesting to do this for all "inactive" guild pages. -- Indochine talk 22:31, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that asking a guild to make an edit every 3 months is asking THAT much of anyone. And you can extend that to 6 months if you take in the 3 months it sits with an inactive tag on it. I don't know a single guild that doesn't change SOMETHING in 6 months. -- Wyn 00:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and can you please point me to just where the minimum requirements for guild page content was changed (since the new policy was implemented)? because not only did I miss that, but it never got added to the policy. -- Wyn 00:35, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The thing is, even with the old 6-months limit, we still had users that came one or two months after deletion requesting for the article to be restored. I think it's understandable that, if nothing changed in 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year, the guild article remained unedited (and maybe they thought editing "just to point that they are alive" was not the best course of action).

About the other, i thought that the line "Must contain information about the guild other than just the name, tag, and/or basic formatting" (quotation from GWW:GUILD#Required content, 4th bullet) was there for that, since "contact" is already "minimum content". In any case, that may have been just my interpretation of the wording.--Fighterdoken 05:09, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Fighterdoken is right, I feel the policy would be better without that. --Xeeron 22:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I think there are three seperate things you bring up, and I don't really see how they belong together.

The first, frustration of having to do major work is understandable. I foresaw this, but didn't object because I don't think it does significant harm as long as it got done, and I sort of expected those that wanted all the disambig moves and frequent taggiong to actually do it. I disagree with FD that this gives us any sort of responsibility. It's an obvious consequence, so it would be expected of those wanting it that they knew that effort involved. Given that the wiki is an volunteer effort, it it hardly to be expected that the ones who wanted it then just sit back and others do the work.

The second part with disbanded guilds is a bit irrelevant, since we don't have any such status on the wiki. We have a historical status that includes both guilds that have maintained their guild page in good order and thus have no need to edit it, as well as guilds that haven't bothered to update while still active. That ontop of disbanded and abandoned guilds, the latter which I could see treating as disbanded if it wasn't for the fact that the still prevent others from using the name.

The third part, about changing paradigm seem completly out of place. You think the current workload is too high? Then, who will maintain all those guild articles you want instead? That's at least an order of magnitude more work. And really a discussion that should take place seperately, if it's need again. Backsword 16:03, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I think we are back to "Nobody cares about the guild namespace, let it rot." which is just abhorrent to me. I believe poke has come up with a few ways that the manual work of archiving the pages can be minimized (still working on details) and I am happy to archive those pages that I believe are worth archiving, and they are NOT simply the notable guild pages. I have brought up during the policy change discussion and since it was implemented that guild pages should be required to include at least a paragraph of text about the guild, philosophy, playstyle, whatever. I find archiving these pages that imo are blank (containing nothing but basic formatting and a partially completed infobox) to be a momentus waste. Deleting these pages would lose nothing of value or interest, and would eliminate easily 1/3 of the currently tagged inactive pages. -- Wyn 16:25, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

My suggestions will reduce the total amount of guild pages. It's the responsibility of the guild to ensure that their page meets the requirements in the policy. If a page doesn't meet the requirements it'll be tagged for cleanup, like they are now. This doesn't create any extra work; it only reduces the amount work as pages no longer get moved to "historical" status. -- Indochine talk 20:15, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, by increasing the requirements for minimum content, yes, it would reduce the total number of guild pages through cleanup deletions. I think we are saying the same thing Indo, I'm just more focused atm on dealing with the pages needing to be archived. -- Wyn 20:18, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

As long as requirements remain as concrete as possible, there should be no problem in increasing them (even though you would still need to check all the historical counterparts for compliance which means another batch of job). It's the vague requeriments (like, "you have to have a paragraph that i wouldn't tell you what has to contain, but if i don't like it your page will be deleted) what may bug me.--Fighterdoken 20:30, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

(ri because I don't think it exactly relates to the above post, but it's in line with the subject thus no new heading) So I just removed the inactive tag from our guild's page. It wasn't difficult. However I question the whole point of this.

First, what sorts of active edits does the wiki expect? It's not supposed to be just a roster, according to the policy pages (which would be my first thought on frequent changes). Our guild is a PvE guild so we're not changing things like ladder position or guild hall. Do other guild pages get edited weekly? If so, with what? Making it shinier and prettier? See "Guild pages should be stable" in Explicitly Disallowed Content, and explain to me how that corresponds with active edits.

Second, it's awfully nice that the guild members have to check their "stable" web pages themselves. You would think that at the very least, a note would be put onto the Talk page of the guild leader. If I upload an image that doesn't follow naming convention, I'll get a note on my userpage. Or at least, most of the courteous people who edit the wiki will do this. For instance, a note (admittedly old note) on guild leader's talk page: "The image you recently uploaded (Image:Jinx-cape-wiki.jpg) does not comply with the Guild Wars Wiki image naming policy and has been tagged for deletion. Please feel free to re-upload the image under a correct name." That's cool. Problem noted, person mentioned so if there are questions it can be resolved. Why isn't the guild leader notified when the page gets an inactive tag? Or would that be considered to be too much work? (note that that's sarcasm. If you can find a way to tag inactive guild pages, you can find a way to add a note to guild leader Talk pages)

Third, if we're discussing archival of interesting guild pages and deleting uninteresting guild pages, who's going to decide on interest? I fully admit that our guild page isn't very interesting. And honestly if it was deleted five minutes from now I don't think the wiki would lose anything. But I also strongly dislike the idea of removing uninteresting guild pages when there are so many uninteresting user pages as well.

Finally, I fail to see the point in having an expiration on the guild pages in the first place. My userpage takes up more server space than the guild page does. But my userpage doesn't have a three month expiration. So the expiration rule can't be about trying to conserve space on the server, or else all pages not in the main namespace would expire after three months and be deleted soon thereafter. Why the strict rules on the guild pages?

Seems to me like the wiki really doesn't want guild pages, with contradicting rules and non-user-friendly notifications. Ha. Can you tell that this whole thing annoys the carp out of me? --Nkuvu 22:36, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I will answer you point by point, at least how i see it.

1. For "stable" guilds, yeah, it makes no sense. I have seen some guilds that have been well over a year without substantial changes, and the only reason they edit their page is to remove the "inactive" tag, so from that point you are right. The problem is, not all guild are "stable", so we need some kind of way to ensure that a guild still exists in-game, since most of our guild articles just get a few modifications within a couple of days, and then the user never appears on the wiki again (or just creates a new guild article without deleting the old one). One option that was proposed in this discussion is that we leave all guild articles and just delete on request (or if the disbanding of the guild is known), but that would leave us with a lot of 1-2 person guilds, whose existence in game would be dubious at best (and we don't really have the time to check each and every one of them in-game).
2. You are right, probably leaving a note in the guild's leader talk page about the inactivity would be good, but we run into two problems: First, not all guild articles (actually, a small percentage only) is created and managed by the guild leader. And second and most important: not all guild articles are created by registered users or users with a static IP. As such, contacting guild maintainers is too difficult to make in practical. We could leave a note in the talk page of the guild article, but same as the article itself, not every user in charge of maintaining them checks them often enough.
3. I think that is exactly why i disagree with such proposal. If we were to say "we only archive notable guilds, as per ArenaNet", then that is a concrete selection process that every guild is able to know if they fill or not. But, as you word it, saying "interesting guilds" or "near complete" is just too vague, and depends too much on the mood of the sysop in charge. And sadly, the mood of some users on the wiki varies too much for making "discretion" an option in this regard.
4. Same as with Xeeron's idea some paragraphs above, i think that is another option we could consider: just forget about "guild articles expiring". We could just keep all guild articles, deleting them only on request (or when we are sure they are not more), and we could avoid leaving "blank pages" as some call them by raising our minimum content restrictions (again, in a "concrete" form). Treating guild articles as Userpages (for retention purposes only) could also give sysops some additional free time by removing the need of checking if guilds are active or not, and having to move/fix/retag/delete guild pages that expire.--Fighterdoken 04:54, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, ArenaNet is no longer maintaining/updating their Notable guilds page (and actually haven't been since March 2008), so that is no longer "concrete criteria" of what to keep. Again, I don't believe it's that much to ask that a guild make some effort to maintain their page, check it for corrections/notices, etc. I do agree that a 'stable' guild does not require much editing, but I know of very few guilds where the membership number NEVER changes, or the names of Officers NEVER changes. If this is the case with your guild, then you need to just realize the Guild Page Policy that you were asked to read and abide by when you created your guild page here, says you need to make some sort of maintenance edit once every 3 months, or it will be tagged as inactive, and if it does get tagged it's up to you to remove that tag within 3 months if it is incorrect, or your page will be archived.

I do agree with Fighterdoken that while notifying the primary editor/guild leader would be great in a utopian community, as he said, most of the guild pages here are created by anonymous IP users, or by registered users who only registered, created their guild page, and then left. I would also point out that the majority of the maintenance on the guild namespace is done by a very short list of very dedicated users (myself included), and in the 4 months since this policy was amended, almost 3000 guild pages have been tagged inactive. -- Wyn 05:23, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

"but I know of very few guilds where the membership number NEVER changes" I know of guilds where this changes several times aday. Which is why we don't allow it on pages, making it irrelevant. It's just the info that doesn't change that we want. Backsword 16:51, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Fighterdoken, Wyn; I agree (Wyn summed up my position). I also agree with the last point of the list of Fighter's. In this we get - proper retention of information (for the anti-delete folks), and improved information (for the "raise standards" people), and in this we get a substantial cut in work-load for sysops and users too. I believe that is a good and strong common ground compromise. --Antioch 05:32, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

**Addition** Never mind, I forgot if we have really, really old pages then the Category:Recruiting guilds would be useless. Perhaps if a guild is recruiting it needs to be edited regularly to keep its "recruiting" status? --Antioch 05:43, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I guess I don't agree with just leaving all guild pages forever because unlike userpages, one of the purposes of the guild namespace is to provide information to people looking for guilds to join. As PoA pointed out, all of the 'Recruiting X guilds' categories would become unusable very quickly. If you don't think that people look at guild pages here when they are looking for a new guild, I can tell you that since I've been maintaining my guild page, I've had more requests from people to join my guild because they saw the wiki page than any other recruiting tool.

I do feel that upping the minimum required content would substantially cut down the number of pages that do stay on the wiki. I am open to whatever type of wording would achieve this. My ideal would be a minimum of 3 sentences pertaining to the guild history/philosophy/playstyle/membership. Of course more is better, but I think a 3 sentence paragraph is a reasonable requirement for anyone creating a page, and would better fulfill the purpose of the namespace. -- Wyn 07:12, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd also agree with increasing the minimum requirement for guild pages since every time I go to check the recently created guilds for cleanup I see so many pages with no content other than the guild name and a partially filled guild infobox, sometimes only the leader is filled in which would seem kinda pointless if I was actually searching for a guild to join since I would want to know more info about the guild than the name and guild leaders name.

As to the suggestion of leaving a message on the guild leader/guild page creators talk page when tagging it as inactive or even for cleanup, as the others have said the majority of guild pages are created by an anonymous IP user or if by a registered user it is usually by a one time edit user or at least has been for the last little while so it would be almost impossible to do even though it would be a good idea to inform them.

Finally as to deleting guild pages I'm unsure if the current system is completely better than what we had before; deletion for inactivity; since it's created a lot of extra work partially due to the number of previously tagged guild pages. Having said that it has also meant that we retain info on the guilds that have a decent level of information and has meant that currently stable active guilds that have no reason to update their page aren't deleted simply because they weren't edited; even though if the person creating the guild has read the guild policy they should check up on the page at least every three to six months to check up on it; but it has similarly meant that guilds that just meet the current minimum; required templates and guild leader; also get retained although increasing the minimum requirements could help to alleviate this problem it also could mean that people will again have to go through all historical guilds already moved to check if they meet the new requirement. --Kakarot 14:12, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Trying to respond point by point as well. More or less.

1. If a guild page was created by a now-inactive user, then a note on their Talk page will go unnoticed. Expiration will happen as it does now. If that user has set up email notifications of Talk page changes, however, it's a friendly reminder about the expiration. Is it a lot of work? Yes. But so is tagging and removing inactive guild pages. The current process of tagging and relying on the guild members to check frequently seems very unfriendly to me. Even hostile. Also, if the guild page was created by an IP address rather than a logged in user, I could see a notification being left or not (probably not). Look at the guild leader, and if they have a userpage here, leave a note. If it's just an IP address, skip the note. That's really not hard to figure out, is it?
2. Wyn, you are active on the wiki, so lots of people see your pages -- I'd agree with your point (about people requesting guild membership) more if you rarely visited the wiki yet still received guild membership inquiries. Consider a scenario where someone says "well it's easy to sell things in game, I say WTS in cities all day long and can easily find a buyer." That person is active and visible so it's no surprise at all that they're being contacted. Back to the wiki, are other guilds receiving tons of membership inquiries just by being on the wiki?
3. Expiration of pages for non-recruiting guilds I see no point in whatsoever. Please give me a reason for this policy. I would agree with a change to the policy where a recruiting guild needs to be actively edited every three months and non-recruiting guilds would not expire. But I can't think of any reason to make the non-recruiting wiki pages expire after any amount of time. Again, I question the things like userpages which take up the same server space, but do not expire (that is, removal of old guild pages due to server space is highly unlikely, and that's the best argument I can see supporting this). From Fighterdoken: "we need some kind of way to ensure that a guild still exists in-game..." Why? Do we also need to make sure the users who have created userpages are still playing the game? Who cares if it's a two-person guild that hasn't been active in the game for six months or more? If they're not actively recruiting, how does this harm the wiki?
4. I'm against minimum content rules. They're too arbitrary, or subjective. Guild information that fulfills Wyn's proposed "three sentence" rule: We are a PvE guild. We play when people are online. We like gold. Wow, that's sure informative. But it fulfills the rule, so it must be a "good" guild page, right? In other words, when you set minimum rules for compliance, people will conform to that minimum. And others will do more. As it stands now, there's a minimum set of rules for a guild page in place. As you can see, lots of guilds will fulfill that minimum and do no more (the [jinx] page is not exempt from this, so I'm fully aware that I'm calling the kettle black). If we try to define it as "three good sentences" we're quickly into "by what definition of good?"

But I find the attitude towards guild pages on the wiki to be very poor. Feel free to slap that Inactive tag back on the jinx page (actually I'll probably do that myself), because I'm certainly not going to be editing the guild page any more. If you look back when I first started with the wiki, my biggest contention was how the guild pages were handled, and how the policy was enforced. Nothing has changed since then, so I don't want to be part of that any more. --Nkuvu 18:32, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

"3 sentences" So we'd delete pages for using commas rather than periods? It's that sort of arbitrary hard rules that causes issues later on. It is better to provide a more general rule. Backsword 16:54, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Current policy already requires the tagger to check contact info, and wiki user is given as an alternative. If you list the guild leader's page as contact, then that should be done. If it's not, it's the failure of the induvidual tagger, not the policy. Backsword 16:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The policy presently states that the inactive tag will be added when both conditions (wiki AND in-game inactivity) are met. What are the standards for verifying in-game inactivity? We have a number of contacts listed our web page, as well as in-game names and event times, which would be a good time to try to reach us. Two of our allies also has the same sort of content. The guilds' pages were marked inactive, and it doesn't appear that any genuine attempt was made to verify "in-game" inactivity via easily available information from the wiki. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Anjastjarnskott (talk).

There are no official standards to how in-game activity can be tested - however any reasonable attempt to contact members of the guild is acceptable. Unfortunately, this does not always happen; many users cannot be bothered. -- Indochine talk 21:23, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The reasonable standard is to look for activity on a guild forum. If there is no guild forum listed, it gets tagged. The policy clearly states that any guild page not receiving an edit in 3 months will be tagged. It is up to the guild to comply with policy and at least do basic maintenance of their page, once every 6 months is not that great a thing to ask, and simply removing the inactive tag is in fact a qualified edit. If you wish your guild page to not be tagged, simply make one edit every 3 months. The purpose of this is to try keep guild information current and correct on the wiki. If we did not have a time frame, people would simply create a guild page, and then forget it exists, and we would have literally tens of thousands of out-of-date guild pages. As for the amount of work those of us who care to maintain the guild namespace do, consider the fact that easily 100 new guild pages get created every week. That's 5200 new pages in a year. Most new guild pages are created by new guilds, most of which are disbanded within a month. The wiki, and those of us dedicated to maintaining it need to have a means to eliminate inaccurate information, and anyone that edits here has some responsibility to maintain what they edit. -- Wyn 21:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the policy clearly states that both the last edit date and in-game activity are key for determining inactivity, and for good reason. Since the policy also strongly implies that Guild Page edits should be low volume (not for use as a "guild web page," forum, nor for posting volatile information such as ladder status nor weekly events), the date of last substantive edit is not sufficient to satisfy the question of whether the guild is active. A guild that is compliant with the policy, is successful and has a stable focus and officer/contact roster may not be making many edits. When an editor applies only that half of the "inactive" policy which is convenient for them, they will frequently label active, compliant guilds "dead." This is somewhat inexcusable when guilds have current information listed, can be contacted via the "email this user" link, especially if they have recurring weekly event times listed, with contact names. All of which we have. We did not have a forum listed, but that has been added now, even though it is neither "in-game" nor mentioned by the inactivity portion of the policy.Anjastjarnskott 22:19, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Notable guild status

As pointed out above, ArenaNet has stopped updating/maintaining the Notable guilds page, and has shelved the Guild of the Week program (basically since Regina took over as CRM). I believe it's time for us to establish our own criteria beyond what is posted on those ArenaNet pages for currently notable guilds. I believe (though I haven't been able to get any confirmation when I've asked) that ArenaNet's criteria was the top 16 guilds were identified as notable. This does not need to be our criteria, but whatever we decide needs to be applied equally, not arbitrarily based on what one person feels makes a guild notable. I would suggest the top 8 tourney guilds each month (considering how few of them actually maintain a page here). Or possibly any guild that reaches top 20 on the ladder. -- Wyn 07:12, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Would we make any PvE guilds notable? If so, I'd say community involvement would be a good indicator. --JonTheMon 14:52, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I would say yes, but determining if a PvE guild is noteworthy is a little more subjective. Perhaps if the guild made a mainspace article about a community event (like Pink Day in LA). --Antioch 21:24, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

If we "really" had to, i would prefer, in regards of PvP, that we declared as "notable" only the winner of each month; in the case of PvE, none actually is really noteworthy, since even in-game events can be manipulated to just appear as notable when they are not.

Either way, if Anet really scrapped the whole "notable" status of guilds, i think we should also scrap the "notability" mechanic on all process regarding guild pages..--Fighterdoken 21:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

How about lead guilds of major, stable, alliances? These are often well known, eg. talked about ingame and people know about them just from their name. That seem 'notable' to me. Backsword 16:47, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I could stand behind that. --JonTheMon 02:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

So, until this is all worked out, someone could add the notable tag to any guild they wanted and there would be no real way to determine whether that was appropriate or not????? I would say that the best way to deal with ANet no longer "recognizing" guilds would be to remove the tag altogether. At this rate, ANY guild could misrepresent themsleves as "notable" and there is no way to verify it... 76.4.255.185 05:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

No. The current policy is quite clear about what qualifies currently as "notable", so a guild deciding on their own that they are will be reverted. We don't police things according to what we plan to do, but about what we already did.

Once we change the policy we could start theorizing about how guilds will bypass our wording, but until then what is written is what we are ruled by.--Fighterdoken 07:51, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

ANet has, in the past, recognized (PvP) guilds that have performed well in several tournaments, even if they've never won one. Only listing gold trim guilds would be pointlessly limiting. - Auron 07:55, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps, but is a concrete way of categorizing them. "Performing well" is not really an option we should consider. In any case, don't need to limit ourselves to a single condition.--Fighterdoken 08:04, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Let me just say that I am against scrapping the notable tag. I believe there are still notable guilds (both past and present) that deserve the special recognition, both pvp and pve. I will openly admit that I know NOTHING about pvp guilds, other than seeing their names pop up in game when they hold halls, so I am more than willing to bow to those of you with better knowledge, though I would like to see it NOT become extraordinarily elitist, so maybe the top 4 in the monthly tourneys rather than simply the winners. Keep in mind that many of those guilds do not maintain a guild page here, so including them in the list of eligible guilds hurts nothing. PvE guilds on the other hand, I do have a fair amount of knowledge about which guilds have been sponsoring/hosting in game or game related events (video contests, large themed gatherings), which have very positive impacts on the pve community and the success of which is easily verifiable by looking at the comments on those event talk pages (not to mention that I have attended many of them). I believe these guilds have earned the special recognition of notable status. -- Wyn 08:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Events are mostly done by a few induviduals, with perhaps donations from their guilds, but often also from others. Since events have nothing to do with guild functions, any conection will by neccessity be subjective. Aditionally, I don't want people doing events just so they can call themself notable. Backsword 20:09, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Since we don't know who Anet thinks is performing well, that's not a very useful position. Top 4 or any other arbitrary limit should work fine tho'. Backsword 20:09, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry Backsword, I strongly disagree with you. Most of the notable events are run by guilds/alliances, not individuals. If we are going to limit notable status to pvp, then I say we just get rid of it entirely. -- Wyn 20:19, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, most in-game events i see documented on the wiki are done by Blade Radio or Burning Freebies. Also "in-game events" have in the past led to problems of attribution in the wiki already, so imagine what would happend again if people start with the "i did it, not the guild" issue.

I guess we could do something like "guilds who organize in-game events at least on a monthly basis", but as BS (*smirk*) said, we could end with guilds who would start making (lame) events just so they could call themselves notable. Plus, i am sure not all guilds that are notorious (or at least widely known in-game) organize events for publicity. I still think PvP is the only objective way we have to categorizing them.--Fighterdoken 20:31, 30 December 2008 (UTC)